There’s a .00006% Chance of Building a Billion Dollar Company: How This Man Did It. Red Bull launches accelerator for music startups. Red Bull is to launch an accelerator for startups -- called Red Bull Amplifier -- that aims to connect digital innovators to the company's audience of music fans. Red Bull is working with design and innovation consultancy Sidekick Studios on the accelerator programme, which will not involve an exchange of money nor an equity stake -- rather it will give startups access to some of Red Bull's audience (the brand says it has more than 35 million followers across its social channels) as well as to artists and venues. Amplifier has been launched as an alternative to "classic accelerators" such as YCombinator and Seedcamp.
Red Bull says that there are "no limits or expectations on the kind of ideas it is seeking to support" and that the criteria for submissions are simply that the product is innovative and enhances the music experience for fans or artists or both. "Startups need money, yes but they also need access to users. Startups can apply through the Red Bull website. The top 10 startup founder blogs every entrepreneur should follow. Your Tumblr is broken. Fix it — Startup Shenanigans. Do you know at least one company that hosts their blog on Tumblr with a domain like blog.myawesomestartup.com, because doing that is easy and fast and there is no reason why you shouldn’t, at least to start with?
Of course you do! Now, do you know at least one company that has their blog logo point to *drum roll* blog.startup.com? As in, if you click on their name or logo you get a circular reference to their blog, with no way to get out? Yeah, like two out of every three company do this insanity. It doesn’t just bother me, it infuriates me. Frankly, I don’t care if your conversion from blog to the website sucks. Sometimes, when I read an interesting post on somebody’s blog, I actually want to check out their product. You just captured my attention and then you punched me in the face! Here's how I did it for blog.scoutzie.com <h1 class="blog-title"><a href=" title="Scoutzie.com" class="scoutzie-logo-link"> Scoutzie </a> • <a href="/">blog</a></h1> 6- Save!
A Co-Working Space For People Who Give A Damn Explodes In Los Angeles. If you find yourself at the Hub L.A. on a post-industrial block of downtown Los Angeles, you’ll encounter all the features you might expect from a co-working space: Raw-wood planters and ample natural lighting. Zig-zagging communal tables, ready to host a row of MacBooks. Wall-sized white boards marked up with words like “inspire” or “collaboration.”
But click "Apple + F" on the Hub’s website, and you won’t find the word "co-working" written a single time. Rather, co-founder Nick Kislinger calls the Hub a “members’ space for people who give a shit.” While the 4,000-square-foot former warehouse may be ideal for cranking on a laptop all day, those in charge of Hub L.A. insist that the physical space is just the beginning of an exclusive social experience and community--portending a model of co-working spaces that’s more like a Soho House for social impact professionals. And it also means letting the right kind of person in. So far, the concept seems to be working.
Black Swan Farming. September 2012 I've done several types of work over the years but I don't know another as counterintuitive as startup investing. The two most important things to understand about startup investing, as a business, are (1) that effectively all the returns are concentrated in a few big winners, and (2) that the best ideas look initially like bad ideas. The first rule I knew intellectually, but didn't really grasp till it happened to us. The total value of the companies we've funded is around 10 billion, give or take a few. In startups, the big winners are big to a degree that violates our expectations about variation. That yields all sorts of strange consequences. To succeed in a domain that violates your intuitions, you need to be able to turn them off the way a pilot does when flying through clouds. [2] You need to do what you know intellectually to be right, even though it feels wrong. It's a constant battle for us. Harder Harder Still Wait, it gets worse.
Except an inverse one. Notes. How do you know an idea is worth implementing? | About bootstrapping, entrepreneurship & personal development. Ideas are just that. Ideas. They live in your brain. I can easily come up with a thousand ideas. I guess thousands of people claim that they “had exactly the same idea as Mark Zuckerberg“. But an idea is nothing more then a thought. Graphically speaking… So, from that endless pile of ideas you have, given there is a huge cost/time needed to execute them well, how do you pick the ideas worth implementing?
The golden rule Basically, it all comes down to this golden rule that every entrepreneur should carve into his heart. Which ideas are worth implementing? What’s the risk if you first implement and then try to sell your idea? “The worst ideas we see at Y Combinator are from young founders making things they think other people will want.” - Go hunt customers, and sell your “product” (even if there is no product yet to sell!). 1 – Cold calling. 2 - A product sales website. 3 - “Naked” Google Ads “Is this blah blah blah?” “How you know this works?” A must read before making any venture capitalist pitch. Five venture capitalists: Dave McClure, Mark Hsu, Phil Morle, Vincent Lauria, Leslie Loh share what they look for in startup pitches. A successful business usually requires a good marketer. A good marketer can sell the vision of the company to new partners, to potential customers, as well as to potential investors.
However, there might be times when being a good marketer is not enough, especially when you are pitching to raise fundings from venture capitalists. People often talk about venture capitalist as sharks and will capitalize any sign of weaknesses. Luckily, there are certain Do’s and Don’ts when pitching to VCs, and we managed to speak to five reputable venture capitalist who has been at the other side of the table on their thoughts: Dave McClure, 500 Startups - Avoid the future tense.
Dave McClure is known for running 500 Startups, an accelerator program which spawned quite a large amount of successful companies such as TaskRabbit, Twilio, SendGrid and Udemy. How to Get to Your First 1,000 Users. William Griggs, is a startup marketing guru who helps startups craft and implement their go-to-market and user acquisition strategies. You can find more about him at TheStartupSlingshot.com, or follow him @tssupdates.
So you’ve got an idea for the next big thing. Awesome! How are you going to get people to know you exist? Your biggest competitor isn’t someone who offers a similar service. It’s indifference. Every single one of your target customers is bombarded daily with requests for time, attention, and money. Below is a step-by-step process you can use to begin developing a unique and compelling marketing plan that will attract your first 1,000 users in no time. Figure Out if Your Startup Idea is a Great One In short, it comes down to where you are on your search to obtain a problem/solution fit, also known as product/market fit. Next Steps Build a minimum viable product Work to achieve problem/solution fit Suggested Resources Determine How to Grow Your Startup Prepare For Launch Launch 1.
Technicalblogging. <div class="greet_block wpgb_cornered"><div class="greet_text"><div class="greet_image"><a href=" rel="nofollow"><img src=" alt="WP Greet Box icon"/></a></div>Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to <a href=" rel="nofollow"><strong>subscribe to the RSS feed</strong></a> for updates on this topic. <div style="clear:both"></div><div class="greet_block_powered_by">Powered by <a href=" title="WP Greet Box WordPress Plugin" style="text-decoration:none;">WP Greet Box</a><a href=" title="WordPress Plugin" style="text-decoration:none;">WordPress Plugin</a></div><div style="clear:both"></div></div></div> Blogs are an excellent tool for promoting your startup or business.
How to fix it. Invest in Lines, not Dots. Invest in Lines, Not Dots Everyone seems to be in such a rush to get shacked up these days. In normal times investors will look for “traction” before investing. We want to make sure we’re in love. This sometimes frustrates entrepreneurs who just want to “get back to running the business.” The first time I meet you, you are a single data point. For this reason I tell entrepreneurs the following: Meet your potential investors early. Most importantly tell them what you plan to achieve by the next time you see them. I spoke about this more in depth in these two posts: 4 things I look for in an investment & how to manage VC relationships. The thing is, by the time I get to know you I start to see patterns.
All of these meetings don’t actually require you to prove that you’re “killing it” over night. I had 15 meetings or more with Evan Rifkin over a 2-year period of time long before I invested in Burstly. I spent the past week in New York. So here’s the thing: 'Pivoting' Pays Off for Tech Entrepreneurs. “Social Ideation” Startup AHHHA Turns Users’ Ideas Into Real Products. You know those random ideas for new inventions that occasionally pop into your head? The ones you never do anything with? A startup called AHHHA wants to help you turn them into actual products — and about a little more than a year after launching, its announcing the first four “AHHHAs” (i.e., “aha!”
Moments) that it’s commercializing. The AHHHA idea itself (that it could build a community of users willing to submit their ideas for others to refine and commercialize, in exchange for a share of the profits) strikes me as pretty out-there, so the fact that it’s led to some real products goes a long way towards expelling my initial skepticism. As for the four initial ideas, they cover a pretty broad gamut, and it sounds like that’s intentional. AHHHA is announcing these products as part of the launch of version 2.0 of its service.
The first four AHHHAs were selected from more than 5,000 submissions, Crowe says. Why Entrepreneurs Fail And Most Startups Are DOA. Editor’s note: Contributor Ashkan Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of WatchMojo, he hosts a show on business and has published books on success. Follow him @ashkan. This isn’t an anti-entrepreneur rant. It’s also not a piece to discourage anyone from launching their own business. It’s a warning for those who seek to launch their startup to understand some of the lesser-discussed reasons why 99% of new businesses are Dead On Arrival. As outlined, success is 1) subjective, relative and fluid: i) we define success based on what drives us, ii) but we tend to measure it relative to other people’s success and over time, iii) we convince ourselves to change its definition, revising upwards or downwards, depending on the conditions on the ground. 2) a function of six variables: vision, ambition, determination, execution, timing and luck.
Part 1: Before You Launch Your Startup… Sometimes, Macro Timing is Everything Ideally the macro and micro come together at the right time. Wrong Geographic Market. This Startup Reminds Us Why The Best Don’t Need Pitch Decks. While most Angel List profiles include incredible product photos and videos, there is one startup that stands out among the pack. This is the only photo on the remind101 Angel List profile. You probably haven’t heard of remind101, as they are a very niche education startup, but this graph speaks for itself. They have gotten over 130,000 users, with at least 6,000 new users added weekly with very little marketing effort. According to their Angel List status, they broke their sign up records by signing up 3,200 users in one day about a month ago.
Remind101 is a very simple tool that allows teachers to send one-way text messages to their students (and sometimes parents), reminding them of upcoming quizes and homework assignments. Before this, there wasn’t really a safe way for teachers to communicate with students outside of class (we all know Facebook is never a good idea!). Nevertheless, their numbers speak for themselves. Streak - CRM in your Inbox. How Trello is different. By Joel Spolsky Friday, January 06, 2012 Just a few months ago, we launched Trello, a super simple, web-based team coordination system. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and adoption has been very strong, even in its early, 1.0 state.
Trello is new kind of development project for Fog Creek. The biggest difference you’ll notice (compared to our previous products pitched solely at software developers) is that Trello is a totally horizontal product. Horizontal means that it can be used by people from all walks of life. Vertical software is much easier to pull off and make money with, and it’s a good choice for your first startup. It’s easier to find customers. Making a major horizontal product that’s useful in any walk of life is almost impossible to pull off. Forgive me if I now divert into telling you a quick story about my time spent on the Microsoft Excel team way back in 1991. Everybody thought of Excel as a financial modeling application. What was I talking about? Bing! Untitled. Making a truly custom mobile app is difficult, time consuming and expensive. Introducing a new way to develop mobile apps that doesn't suck. Three freemium strategies.
I'm excited to see so much attention being paid to freemium businesses lately. These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. Their economics blends elements of the free, advertising-supported, "eyeballs" business with more traditional e-commerce and subscription businesses. For founders, I think it also has another big attraction: the ability to avoid a lot of "free vs paid" arguments. You can reach for all the scale of a free service and still make money. Andrew Chen recently did a great article on the economic model underlying freemium (it includes a detailed spreadsheet, too!).
The key is to create the right mix of features to segment out the people who are willing to pay, but without alienating the users who make up your free audience. Having worked in the freemium business for a number of years, I can safely report that struggling with these questions never goes away. Free serves paid. Sxsw New Rules for the New Bubble 031211. Hacker News | Every angel investor on Twitter and Facebook. Unit Economics | 24 Ways To Start.
Help for Startups! – A semi-complete list of startup accelerator programs « Robert Shedd.
Socialnetwork. How To Make Money Online - Forbes.com. Original Projects - The Social Network for Ideas. Top 10 Social Networks for Entrepreneurs. Computing Web 2.0 Valuation & Profitability - Bizak.