Displaying posts tagged with

“advice”

Your Elevator Pitch Sucks: How Investors Think, by Adeo Ressi at the Founder Conference

Possibly the most popular part of the Founder Conference this year was the live pitch feedback, a workshop run by Adeo Ressi. We actually extended its allocated time by 20 minutes because it was so popular. The rules are simple: you give your best elevator pitch, in less than 1 minute, as if you were [...]

PR2.0 Doesn’t Work (Founder Conference)

I’m posting the videos of the Founder Conference here on my blog until we revamp the Founder Conference website… By the way, if you want to be the first one to know about the next Founder Conference, there is a sign-up form on the right. Here is my favorite excerpt of the panel on getting [...]

What They Eat at Y-Combinator and Other Secrets of Top Incubators as Revealed at the Founder Conference’2010

I’m posting the videos of the Founder Conference here on my blog until we revamp the Founder Conference website… By the way, if you want to be the first one to know about the next Founder Conference, there is a sign-up form on the right. Should you join an incubator such as Y-Combinator, the Founder [...]

Steve Jobs Is Sitting Next To You – Are You Smart Enough to Notice?

Steve Jobs. Guy Kawasaki. Paul Graham. They draw crowds every time they speak at a conference. When I put together the Founder Conference (August 17th in Silicon Valley, in case you haven’t heard yet), securing a line-up of great speakers was very important. I am trying to help as many aspiring entrepreneurs build the best startups possible. [...]

No One Told Me What Being an Entrepreneur Really Means

There are lots of myths and dreams attached to starting a company. Will you be the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg? Will you negotiate million dollars rounds of financing with cool VCs? This is what starting a company really means: e-mailing 100 strangers a day, every day. For the foreseeable future. That’s it. Of [...]

VCs Can Fix Your Team, Not Your Market

I was on the Paris subway, returning from one of the first sessions of the Founder Institute there. Sitting next to me was one of the founders. Something was bothering him. He finally asked: “why do you put so much emphasis on market size? The team, and surely other aspects must be equally important to [...]

Adding a Co-Founder In 140 Characters Or Less

I love advising early-stage startups. A question I get frequently is “how to formalize bringing a co-founder on board.” I could write a book on the topic, but it’s really much simpler than that. Here’s how you do it in one tweet: @joe I expect this co-founder position to be worth ~30% equity. My goal [...]

Ask: I own a great domain name, how can I turn it into a business?

Question: I own a valuable dot-com domain, but I’m not a programmer. I think it could sell for a million dollars someday, with the proper traffic. What sould I do? A: The basic idea here is to build a site to take advantage of the great domain name. By going on FairSoftware and listing your [...]

Startup Advice Contradiction: “Iterate Quickly” or “Trust Your Guts”?

If you have been reading startup advice long enough, you surely noticed two trends repeated ad nauseum. Iterate Quickly Also known as “kill ideas fast”, this advice is saying that your idea is probably not worth the pixels it’s displayed on. Ideas are a dime a dozen, execution matters. You’d be better off with a [...]

Want Major TV Coverage? Successful Entrepreneurs Seize Opportunities

Recently, I was contacted by a major TV show, looking to do a segment on what it looks like to be an entrepreneur building a startup from scratch. I am talking major TV show, with an audience in the millions, not some local news channel. So I e-mailed a few entrepreneurs I know to see [...]