| Is "Stealth" the Best Way to Build Your Business? I'm just returning from another really great year at SXSW. It's always fun to meet up with so many new and old friends in just a few days in Austin. Beyond that, one of my favorite thing is bumping into so many entrepreneurs I've never met who are working on interesting problems. However, this year I met a concerning number of entrepreneurs who wouldn't tell me anything about their business. They explained they were building it "stealth". I fear this has become the default course of action for far too many startups and in many cases it's not the best plan. Interestingly, very active angel and COO at Square, Keith Rabois weighted in on Quora in response to the question: "What are some concrete reasons for *actively* stealthing a startup?" last year.
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Facebook Partners with Seedcamp to Support European Social Startups Seedcamp, often described as the European equivalent to Silicon Valley's Y Combinator, has announced a partnership with Facebook to help support socially-oriented startups. The partnership means that Seedcamp participants get product, technical, and design support, as well as early access to beta programs on the Facebook platform. Seedcamp says that many of its companies are already work closely with the Facebook platform, and the closer partnership will give those startups a boost. As Seedcamp notes on its blog, "Since many of our portfolio companies use parts of Facebook's offerings in their setup, talking to the folks working on these products directly will be a massive help. In addition, an early look at what is coming up will enable Seedcamp companies to be ahead of the market and to play with cool new features first."
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How to Flip Your Startup in 5 Steps Steve Blank, author of Four Steps to Epiphany, has helped formulate the thinking behind the Lean Startup methodology, together with Eric Ries. I had an opportunity to meet him during a discussion around the Startup Genome project. He observed that most startups that succeed aren't lean: their goal is to have an exit rather than a scalable business. What would be the methodology for startups that simply want to flip? Flip startups are agile startups that aim to exit quickly. Unlike Lean startups, their priority isn't to learn in order to create a scalable business model. Instead, their goal is to create a promising product. For example, it could be a successful single app or game. The idea is to build a hit that would make the founder(s) an appealing and quick talent acquisition (sometimes referred to as an acq-hire). This is lean development without any customer development. The focus is on building. Recent examples include Blindtype, Hipster or About.me. All three were bought before or right after launch.
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Australian Incubator StartMate Graduates Its First Class of Startups StartMate, a new seed fund that has brought the Y Combinator-model of incubator program to Australia, has just graduated its first class of startups. StartMate's three-month program offers mentorship and investment to five selected startups. The program culminates in a two-week trip to Silicon Valley, which the startups are now in the middle of. And like most incubators, StartMate culminates in a Demo Day, one in Sydney and one in Silicon Valley, where participants in the program get an opportunity to present in front of early stage investors.
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Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: 75th Session Spotlights The Midwest This week's One Million by One Million roundtable was our 75th session, and we worked today with three entrepreneurs from the Midwest region of the United States. Our co-host for the program was TiE Midwest, based in Chicago. First up, Priyanshu Harshavat, from Evanston, Illinois, presented Socioclean, a service for cleaning up your reputation on social networks. The company addresses a widely-experienced pain: employers are now using social networks for background check on issues such as comments about prior employers, substance-usage, and general image issues that may come across as red-flags to a prospective employer. Jobseekers, therefore, need help cleaning up their social media profiles so that objectionable material does not find its way to these background check scenarios, disrupting their chances of getting hired.
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Women 2.0's Founder Labs Expands to New York City Women 2.0 announced today that, thanks to its success, its Founder Labs pre-incubator program will become its own, separate organization. Moreover, the program will expand from its current San Francisco location to New York City, with the first East Coast program set to begin in May. Founder Labs has been a core piece of the Women 2.0 mission: that is, to increase the number of female founders of tech startups. The pre-incubator program lets participants keep their day jobs, with its sessions held on nights and weekends. It's a fast-paced, five-week program, focused on building mobile apps, giving participants hands-on experience validating an idea, and working with others.
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