How to Start a Startup. March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard Computer Society.) You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed. And that's kind of exciting, when you think about it, because all three are doable. Hard, but doable. And since a startup that succeeds ordinarily makes its founders rich, that implies getting rich is doable too. If there is one message I'd like to get across about startups, that's it. The Idea In particular, you don't need a brilliant idea to start a startup around. Google's plan, for example, was simply to create a search site that didn't suck. There are plenty of other areas that are just as backward as search was before Google.
For example, dating sites currently suck far worse than search did before Google. People Raising Money. Intel Capital. Upstream Ventures – Early-Stage Cross-Border VC in Asia. Sierra Ventures - Leading Early Stage Venture Capitalist - Global and US Wide. FAQs. Note: See our application FAQ if you have questions about the application process. How much funding do Techstars companies receive?
You get $18,000 in seed investment and you are offered an additional, optional $100,000 convertible debt note by a group of prominent VCs immediately upon acceptance into Techstars. You also have access to great perks such as free hosting and services, sponsored meals, office space with the other teams, and more. There is immeasurable value in the connections and advice that you’ll receive when you start your company with Techstars, and also in the opportunity to pitch to angel investors and venture capitalists at the end of the program during our Investor and Demo Day.
What sorts of companies do you fund? We fund technology oriented companies, typically these are web-based or other software companies, but we’ve funded companies that don’t quite fit that mold as well. I understand Techstars is the subject of a documentary TV show. No. There’s no catch. No. Exclusive: Inside the Startup-Generating Secrets of Y Combinator. “We want to fund you guys,” Graham will say as his greeting when he calls to deliver the offer. “There are three of you, right? It would be $20,000 for 7 percent.” The amount of equity that Y Combinator asks for is the same in almost all cases, but the dollar amount of the investment varies slightly: each team would receive $11,000, then an additional $3,000 for every founder up to $20,000 for three or more founders. Most founders accept the offer on the spot, but Graham allows those who wish to ponder the matter to take a bit of additional time. Sixty-four companies would be chosen for the summer 2011 batch from the 2,000 applications.
Six years after Y.C. had made its first investments, Graham attempted to tote up the value of the fund’s investments. One could say that the outliers—Dropbox and Airbnb—are the only ones that matter to the Y.C. fund. When it first launched, Iminlikewithyou was an online dating site. “There are 48 start-ups so far. Incubation | archimedes labs. Incubation always has played a big role in determining the direction of a product.
Incubation is really the same as early stage experimentation. It is where we play with concepts, ideas, features and products before subjecting them to any real market pressures. Historically I have always incubated. – EasyNet, in 1994, came about after 2 years of playing with AOL, Compuserve and Demon Internet in the UK. If it wasn’t for the experimentation and play there would have been no EasyNet. –RealNames came about after a year of playing with mapping French MiniTel addresses to URLs and building browser plug-ins to enable the Minitel addresses to be resolved to URLs. –TechCrunch was initially Mike [Arrington] ‘s way of gathering and filtering data about the emerging Web 2.0 landscape in 2004-5.
–Edgeio was incubated for almost 2 years before it did a seed round and launched in 2005-6. But incubation alone doesn’t cut it. Themes are not fixed. Today our theme is the combination of –Stage 2: “Idea”. Contact → Accelerator Ventures. Business Plans: Although we accept business plans from everyone, the most effective way to contact us is through an introduction or referral by someone in our network. This includes entrepeneurs, lawyers and venture capitalists we have worked with in the past who are also familiar with your background. If you want to send us your business plan directly, e-mail us at: info [at] acceleratorventures [dot] [com] LA. About AngelPad « AngelPad* AngelPad is an intensive mentorship program founded by ex-Googler Thomas Korte to help web-technology startups build better products, raise the funding they need to succeed and ultimately grow more successful businesses.
In 2015, AngelPad was ranked No.1 by MIT’s U.S Seed Accelerator Rankings and Strictly VC named it the “Anti Y-Combinator“. Since launching in 2010, AngelPad companies have raised over $250m in funding and generated over $800m in exit value. Exits include Mopub (acq. by Twitter), Adku (acq. by Groupon), Astrid and Blink (acq. by Yahoo), Spotsetter (acq. by Apple) and several others. Twice a year, AngelPad provides an 10-week intensive mentorship session to a dozen carefully selected startups. Companies that join AngelPad are in different stages, from idea stage to early traction, but most of them have not raised money and are within 6 to 12 month of starting up. At AngelPad, we roll up our sleeves and work alongside you. What’s unique about AngelPad? Interested? Chicago Startups: Incubating and Accelerating | Excelerate Labs. I/o Ventures. Partners Aber Whitcomb Linkedin – Aber Whitcomb was most recently CTO and a co-founder of MySpace where he was responsible for the engineering and technical operations groups of one of the world's most successful social networking sites.
Since its founding, Aber has overseen the technologies that have enabled MySpace to grow from 0 to over 130 million users. Aber is a recognized expert in large scale computing, networking and storage and frequently speaks about these matters. Ashwin Navin Linkedin – Ashwin Navin was the President and Co-founder of BitTorrent until August 2008. Mentors Our friends in San Francisco that will stop by frequently Those outside San Francisco who will stop by from time-to-time. Home - TechStars.