austinpreneur

Austinpreneur's Guide to SXSW 2011

If you're an entrepreneur coming to Austin for SXSW 2011, here are the events you won't want to miss!

Thursday

• 4:00pm-10:00pm ATX Startup Crawl
• 6:00pm-8:00pm Austin Tech Happy Hour

Friday

• 5:00pm-7:00pm Entrepreneur's Lounge at Fogo (invite only)
• 5:00pm Bootstrap Meetup 
• 6:00pm-10:00pm Ignite SXSW
• 6:00pm-9:00pm Mixergy SXSW Live Bonanza

Saturday

• Lean Startup SXSW
• 11:00am Jason Cohen - A Bootstrapped Geek Sifts Through the Bullshit
• 1:30pm Austin Ventures Party (invite only)
• 3:30pm Joshua Baer - 5 Secrets to a Killer Elevator Pitch
• 5:00pm-7:00pm Entrepreneur's Lounge at Fogo (invite only)
• 6:00pm-9:00pm Austin on Rails Party
• 6:00pm-9:00pm Wordpress Party
• 9:00pm 500 Startups Afterparty (invite only)

Sunday

• 10:00am Capital Factory Office Hours
• 12:00pm Inbox Love Lunch (invite only)
• 5:00pm-7:00pm Entrepreneur's Lounge at Fogo (invite only)
• 5:30pm Data Cluster Party
• 8:00pm Capital Factory Dinner (invite only)
• 8:00pm-11:00pm Tech Cocktail

Monday

• 10:30am Accelerator
• 5:00pm-6:00pm Trilogy Alumni Happy Hour
• 5:00pm-7:00pm Entrepreneur's Lounge at Fogo (invite only)
• 6:30pm-8:30pm StartupBus Finals
• 9:00pm Startup Digest / Kauffman Foundation Party (invite only)

Tuesday

• 10:30am Accelerator Finals
• 3:00pm IronGeek Competition
• 5:00pm-7:00pm Entrepreneur's Lounge at Fogo (invite only)

Everything starts with the ATX Startup Crawl on Thursday the 10th at 4:00pm. 

After you check-in on Thursday hop on the Smiley Shuttle and catch a ride to 20 Austin tech startups within a 1 mile radius. Visit Capital Thought, Gowalla, Infochimps, OtherInbox, PeopleAdmin, Tabbed Out and a dozen other startups. Each one will have beer, games, music and more waiting for you. Most startups are clustered so that you can visit 2 or 3 at each stop. More than 1,000 people have RSVP'd so we know this is going to be a blast!

Friday night lets Ignite SXSW!

In this Ignite we’ll ask 16 experts in their fields to look ahead 10 years and help us understand how our every day lives will be affected by advances in technology and society. This will be an official SXSW event promoted in the booklet and directory. Anyone with a SXSW badge can attend without a ticket but we still would appreciate if you would register so we can plan better. There are a limited number of tickets for sale to friends of Ignite who will not have SXSW badges. We’re psyched that Dorkbot will be joining us for the event and setting up around the perimeter of the Music Hall.  

Saturday you don't want to miss Jason Cohen's talk Saturday at 11:00am in Salon AB:

A Bootstrapped Geek Sifts Through the Bullshit

After starting four companies, I've found that some widely accepted advice lead me to failure while trusting my (inexperienced) gut lead to success. So many business philosophies profess they're the One True Way, yet different business face different hurdles. With stories, six actionable lessons, and a workshopping of 37signals' philosophy, you'll learn when to follow the rules and when to go your own way.

Saturday at 3:30pm please attend my interactive talk in Salon AB:

5 Secrets to a Killer Elevator Pitch

Everyone in a startup should be able to give the "elevator pitch", even the programmers! Having the right pitch can help you land a big customer, catch an investor's interest, or just explain what you do to your mom. Learn about the 5 secrets to a killer pitch from an expert speaker who has pitched at TechCrunch50, SXSW Accelerator, Ignite, DEMO, and many other competitions. This is not for beginners! These investors have seen thousands of pitches and invested in hundreds of companies. Come to this presentation after you’ve already given your pitch a 100 times and are really ready to take it to the next level. First I’ll spend 20 minutes talking about the 5 secrets and show some killer examples. Then the panel of investors will take five volunteers from the audience and work with them to improve their 2 minute pitch. Come prepared! And just to eat my own dog food, here is a 5 minute elevator pitch for this presentation!

I need 5 volunteers to come up on stage and pitch their company, and then receive some feedback from myself and other mentors. Please email me or reach out on Twitter if you're interested in being one of the companies.

Lean Startup SXSW

If you're not planting at the Convention Center for the day, it might be worth the trip up to the AT&T Executive Center at UT for Lean Startup SXSW. Many of my favorite speakers will be on stage including Eric Ries, Dave McClure, Hiten Shah, Ash Maurya, Jason Cohen and Steve Blank. I'm sure this will be an incredible event and full of quality people.

Capital Factory

Applications are being accepted for our third summer program with Capital Factory 2011! Partner with 20 successful entrepreneurs to be your mentors, plus get $20,000 in cash, free office space, legal services and more. Now is the time to meet with mentors, ask questions, and get feedback. Sunday morning we're holding Capital Factory Office Hours from 10am-noon at the Convention Center and its open to anyone who wants to stop by. Location will be announced on Twitter so follow @CapitalFactory.

Inbox Love

I'll be making sweet Inbox Love for lunch at a special email lunch I'm putting together with Jared Goralnick and 500 Startups. Inbox Love is focused on email as a platform - it's not about email marketing, spam or security. I'm looking forward to seeing many of the connections I met at the Inbox Love conference in Mountain View last month in a casual setting. Thanks to Port 25 for sponsoring! If you would like to attend please email me or reach out on Twitter for more info.

StartupBus Finals

FIVE buses full of 40 strangers are converging on Austin from around the country. On the way here, they are forming teams and building startups in a StartupWeekend fashion. They will arrive on Thursday for the ATX Startup Crawl and then have the weekend to try and get some initial traction with their product. On Monday evening, we'll be having finals to choose the best companies from all of the buses. You don't want to miss this event.

IronGeek

On Tuesday come see me compete in the DAS IronGeek competition. I'll be typing Dvorak, assembling computers, and other feats of geekiness. Come cheer me on, I need your support!

Entrepreneur's Lounge

Hanging out at Fogo next to the convention center is now a tradition for SXSW entrepreneurs. Also known as the "Meat Up" because its held at a Brazilian restaurant. Go up on the rooftop deck, enjoy some drinks and snacks, and meet up with other entrepreneurs and investors.

What other entrepreneur events are YOU looking forward to? Please leave a comment.

Mission: Austinpreneur on assignment in Puerto Rico

    

Earlier this month I was fortunate and flattered to be invited to keynote the Puerto Rico Venture Forum in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This was my first trip to Puerto Rico but it definitely won't be my last. My wife Amy came along for the trip and we got to spend a day exploring through the forts of Old San Juan. It was such an easy trip - no passport, everyone speaks English, and they use dollars for money. Gowalla was already there too - most of the places I visited were already listed and one of the old forts even has a custom stamp! On our next trip we want to explore the bio-illuminescent algae, caves, mountains, beaches.

 

I want to thank Grupo Guayacan and all of the great people we met - everyone was so welcoming! Special thanks to Francisco, Bob, Eva, Joanna, Paul many others. And of course thank you to Manuel Rosso for introducing me!

The Puerto Rico Venture Forum is the culmination of the EnterPRize competition - a business plan competition that on its face looks very similar to Capital Factory. They have a longer process that starts with a business plan competition and extends over the course of a year or more. There are five finalists each year and the top 3 receive $25k, $15k, and $10k in addition to other free services and mentorship.

I was very impressed with the Puerto Rico startup scene. The community is highly educated, with expertise in biotech, aerospace, manufacturing, and more. I met a dozen young entrepreneurs and many of the elders of the community as well. The energy and enthusiasm was infectious!

The five finalists that presented were:

• Adiestrate.com - Online Learning Classes
• Edunarium - Online Learning Store
• EMM - Simulations for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
• NanoEssentials - Nanoparticle production
• Sonar Sending Technologies - Medical device for improving catheters

Unfortunately, none of the five really got my juices flowing. All of them had interesting ideas and viable businesses, they just weren't in my areas of expertise or interest. I wish there had been an email marketing company! Still i was impressed by what I saw and wish all of the companies the best in their entrepreneurial journey.

 

 

Angel Investor Panel moderated by Frank Peters

Frank Peters of the Tech Coast Angels led a fun and informative panel of angel investors with Mic Williams of the Boston Harbor Angels and Christian Meade from a Mexican angel investor group. Here are some of the best quotes from Twitter: 

"Don't tell me what the rate of return will be, tell me who your potential acquirers are" - Frank Peters

"Investors want NO risk, high return" - Mic Williams

"Investors want to give you money once you don't need the investment anymore." - Frank Peters

"New angel investors should 'just watch' for 6 months before investing. At the start, every deal looks good!" - Frank Peters

I definitely plan on checking out the Frank Peters Show podcast about startups and angel investing.

Corporate Venture Capital with Blake Modersitski

Next we heard Blake Modersitski speak about corporate venture capital. For a while he ran the venture capital group at Novell (reporting to Eric Schmidt, who is now CEO of Google) and now he's with UV Partners. 

Blake warned to "be careful about taking a high valuation early on [from a strategic investor who might be less valuation focused], it can make it harder to raise more money later." 

He also cautioned that "if you're taking venture capital from a company, cut your business deal first because it can be harder to do it after." 

 

From Bootstrapping to Venture Capital with Brian Halligan

My favorite talk of the day was probably Brian Halligan from Hubspot. He had great content but also a fun and engaging delivery. Many of his points resonated well with the Startup Lessons portion of my keynote that followed. 

Brian presented an interesting equation to illustrate just how hard it is to get funded by a VC. Most VC's require up to 8 meetings to a termsheet, and at each step of the way it just takes one "No" to eject you out of the process. He gave most people a 50/50 shot at each step, which leads to the following formula:

    F(VC) = 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 
    F(VC) = about 1 in 200 = 1/2 of one percent

I don't think he was trying to be exact, but more just to show how the process works and how easy it is to get a "No" somewhere along the way.

Some of my favorite quotes from Brian's talk:

• "Syndication is bad for founders - it's better to make the VC's compete"
• "Build it or sell it: you only need 2 founders for your startup"
• "Series A is about founders, Series B is about market, Series C is about business model"
• "don't bootstrap by just writing checks from your bank account, instead you should invest with a convertible note" 

Keynote - Mission: Austinpreneur by Joshua Baer

My keynote was the conclusion of the event and I presented over lunch in a beautiful room overlooking the sea. I talked about my passion for entrepreneurship and the companies that I've started, described Capital Factory 2009, and shared some Startup Lessons I've learned along the way. I wasn't able to record the whole thing but I have 20 minutes that tell my story from my first dorm-room dotcom in 1999 to the founding of Capital Factory.

I'm hoping to be invited back next year. I would love to come early and help the companies to prepare their pitches.

Keep your eye on Puerto Rico

Some of the entrepreurs that I talked to said that they often are discouraged from pursuing entrepreneurship - they are told that it would be better to get a safe government job. I think they just need some success stories to point at. And with them, more successful entrepreneurs as mentors. Fortunately there seems to be a strong sense of loyalty to the homeland - many of the people I met were born in Puerto Rico, went to school or a job in the US, and then came back to Puerto Rico. And I could see that they are bringing back more and more of the entrepreneurial spirit.

Overall I was very impressed with the entrepreneurial community in Puerto Rico. It's small but passionate. It's just going to get easier and easier for startups in Puerto Rico. The same forces that made "$500,000 the new $5,000,000" will soon make $5,000 the new $500,000. As the cost of starting new companies drops capital will no longer be a limiting factor.

Here are the complete slides from my keynote:

KXAN story on the Tesla

On Wednesday morning KXAN met me at the Harris Hill Road track to take a look at the Tesla Roadster #83.

Steal all my email secrets on Thursday at Innotech

On Thursday the 16th at 9am, Dennis Dayman and I will be giving a presentation on email deliverability at the Innotech conference in Austin. Come pick our brains about whitelisting, authentication, reputation and the infamous spam folder! We're also a great resource to ask about the various third party email providers and services.

• How can I get in touch with someone who can really help me at Hotmail or Yahoo?
  
• What can I do to reduce the number of people who click "this is spam" or unsubscribe from my emails?
  
• I've been told that I'm hitting a "spamtrap". Now what?
  
• How do I get off a blacklist?
  
• Do I need a dedicated IP address?
  
• Can I buy email addresses to add to my list? What about list rental?
  
• Any other questions that you want to ask!

We'll be giving a 20 minute overview of email deliverability and then we'll open it up to the audience to talk about real problems you are facing and suggestions for tackling them. We need your help! Please come prepared with questions about your email marketing programs.

Here are the slides:

Deliverability Innotech 2008

Email Secrets from Deliverability.com Joshua Baer & Dennis Dayman The Basics Sender ID Authentication Domain Keys Authentication Delivery Seeding Feedback Loops Whitelists secret #1 relevancy is most important secret #2 reputation is more important than content secret #3 From and Subject are most important secret #4 it is hard to send email by yourself secret #5 there is no secret to deliverability tell us your secrets tell us your problems Resources http://www.deliverability.com/ http://www.returnpath.net/ http://www.pivotalveracity.com/ http://www.lashback.com/ http://postmaster.aol.com/ http://postmaster.yahoo.com/ http://postmaster.hotmail.com/

Come hear about OtherInbox at Amazon Web Services Start-Up Tour next Thursday

Next Thursday, September 11 I'll be presenting OtherInbox at the Amazon Web Services Start-Up Tour at the Austin Music Hall. Register for the event and be one of the first to hear about OtherInbox!

SXSW Panel Picker is up - cast your vote!

Every year, SXSW puts up all of the great panel submissions and lets the community vote on which ones are best. They combine this data with their own advisory panel and staff to select the final panels.

At the very minimum, please show your support for me and OtherInbox by clicking here and
PLEASE VOTE 5 STARS FOR THESE 4 PANELS.
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/index/3/company:otherinbox

Here is a list of all the panels I'm involved in, of course I'd recommend them all!

Don't Declare Email Bankruptcy! Take Control of Your Inbox.
Joshua Baer, OtherInbox.com

Your inbox is overflowing with spam, bacn, ham, email lists, Bcc's, and even a few emails that you actually want to respond to. Learn about new tools to help protect you from spam, prioritize your inbox, and save you time. Don't be a slave to your inbox!

Should I Build my Startup on Ruby on Rails? Joshua Baer, OtherInbox.com

You've heard Ruby on Rails is the hottest new technology for developing web applications. You've also heard of concerns about scalability and hiring talent. How do you separate the facts from the hype? Hear the business perspective on why to consider Ruby on Rails now and why you might want to wait and see. Get ready for a head-to-head comparison with PHP, Java and .NET!

Hackproofing Ruby-on-Rails Web Applications Mike Subelsky, OtherInbox.com

Ruby-on-Rails makes building web applications deceptively simple, and for most Rails startups, security is usually an afterthought. Through a live coding demonstration, I will demonstrate how thinking from the attacker's perspective can help you protect sensitive data and avoid the pain of a hacking incident.

Scaling Ruby-on-Rails Using Cloud Computing Mike Subelsky, OtherInbox.com

Skeptics argue that Ruby-on-Rails "can't scale". In this talk, I prove them wrong by demonstrating how cloud computing technologies have changed the game, enabling developers to use the expressiveness of Ruby and Rails to build high-performance applications that scale easily. Will include a case study and live scaling demonstration.

Email Deliverability Secrets from Deliverability.com Dennis Dayman, Eloqua & Joshua Baer, Datran Media

Okay so you have read all the white papers about email deliverability and you've got the basics covered - but some of your email still goes to the spam folder. Learn about advanced techniques for segmenting by IP address, building your email reputation, removing spamtraps, and more. Find out how to get your problems priority access from ISPs like Hotmail or Yahoo. Plus we'll take 3 volunteers from the audience and help to diagnose your deliverability challenges on the spot!

Spend More & Pay Less: How to Create a Great Company Culture Brett Hurt, Bazaarvoice & Joshua Baer, OtherInbox.com

Learn from successful entrepreneurs the do's and don'ts of building a company culture. Take home a list of specific ideas you can implement to make your employees perform better and increase their loyalty. What's the rationale behind providing free drinks, catered meals or free cab rides? How much strategy and financial information is appropriate to share with the entire company? Can employees work from home? How do you celebrate your successes? Find out what really works and what is just a waste of time and money.

Hire an Employee, Hire a Local Contractor, or Outsource it Overseas? Steve Bell, ShangBy.com & Joshua Baer, OtherInbox.com

Should you hire employees in-house, work with local contractors, or outsource overseas? Learn the overall pros and cons as well as the specific exceptions. Hear personal success stories and horror stories from entrepreneurs who have extensive experience building products in-house and overseas. At the end, we'll take specific examples from the crowd and give recommendations on how to proceed and who to work with.

So You Want to be an Angel Investor? Hall T. Martin, Central Texas Angel Network & Joshua Baer, Austinpreneur

Wishing you were an early investor in Facebook? Have some extra cash? Or maybe you just love talking to startups? Whatever your reason is, Angel Investing can be fun and financially rewarding. As software and hardware costs go down, many startups don't need as much money and Angel investors become more attractive than venture capitalists. Hear from a panel of experienced Angels to learn basic strategy, evaluate opportunities, negotiate terms and find other investors to partner with.

The New Inbox Mark Schmulen, NutshellMail & Joshua Baer, OtherInbox.com

Everyone knows that email is the killer app. But we get so much email that we're in danger of information overload - and its only going to get worse. New paradigms for email are evolving to help prioritize the email you want and ignore the email you don't want. Hear from the innovators in Inbox management about what to expect in the years to come.

Bootstrap Your Startup Bijoy Goswami, bijoygoswami.com & Joshua Baer, OtherInbox.com

Dell, Oracle, Microsoft and Virgin were bootstrap companies that were able to get started without raising traditional venture capital. Bootstrapping is not just capital efficient, it has many other positive influences on your business and your potential to profit from its success. Learn why you should consider the bootstrap method and ask questions of a successful bootstrap entrepreneur.

And here are some other friends doing panels that are also worth voting for:

Widgets and Mashups - Enablers or Risky Business?
David Altounian, iTaggit Inc.

Time-to-market demands on web developers are leading to the creation of widgets, mashups, and embed code to add functionality to sites. This panel will explore the options, benefits, and risks of using third party sites and modules.

Dancing With Zombies: Monetizing the 'Old Media' Graveyard Matt Cohen, OneSpot

With online content exploding, the “old media” deathwatch has become a popular spectator sport. But with large financial war chests, millions of readers, and a burning need to re-invent their business models, big media brands aren’t joining the departed anytime soon. They’re just turning into something new. This panel will contemplate the old media metamorphosis and discuss why these brands will offer substantial syndication and revenue opportunities to third party online publishers in the years ahead.

Blog Revenue Strategies for the Web Discovery Era Matt Cohen, OneSpot

What will it mean to be a professional blogger three years from now? As the Web becomes more intelligent, bloggers must be prepared to evolve their publishing, syndication and monetization strategies. A better collective understanding of individual consumers, “smarter” content aggregation tools and new models for content distribution will transform the current landscape, creating new opportunities for market leadership and revenue generation. This panel will examine the major trends at work, and dig deeply into these new opportunities for the online publisher.

PR for Pirates Jeremy Bencken, BuzzStream

Doing your own PR? How to use the latest tools and techniques for finding the right bloggers & reporters, researching their contact info, writing a great pitch, and conducting highly personalized outreach, without making it your full-time job.

The Whole Business Web - Making the Shift Jon Lebkowsky, Social Web Strategies

The accelerating emergence of Web 2.0 and the new converged digital social media enables business to move all its processes, not just sales/marketing/PR, out of the deep-hierarchy low-velocity world of conventional mass-based operations, up into the high-knowledge high-velocity network structures of the Web, creating a whole new platform in which the old tradeoffs of quality vs. speed vs. cost no longer apply. This panel explores how the Whole Business Web is emerging, and how you can make the shift now.

Making Green Visible Jon Lebkowsky, Social Web Strategies

Sustainability requires informed buyers. The accelerating convergence of real and virtual is opening vast new potentials for us to make the “green” visible in every purchase by increasing the interaction between the product and the buyer, making the product’s true history and composition transparent. This panel explores these trends and the globally emerging new technologies and businesses working to make this happen.

Showtime -- Bringing the Co-Web to a Screen Near You! Andrew Donoho, IBM

The Co-Web, the collaborative, media converged web, is upon us. Showtime uses Web 2.0 technologies (OpenAJAX, XMPP and RTP/RTSP) to build a Co-Web page where we all interact on the same data at the same time, see the same context and make better decisions as a result.

Measuring the Health of Your Online Community: Metrics That Don't Suck Miles Sims, Small World Labs

There is a lot of buzz today around measuring & defining community health. This panel will focus on the right way to work WITH your community to measure success and make sure value is being provided for both sides.

In the Cloud: Massively Parallel Computing for Everyone Mason Hale, OneSpot

"Machine learning" once implied PhD's and racks of servers. No more. With projects like EC2, Hadoop and Mahout, and accessible texts lining bookstore shelves, advanced distributed computing techniques are going mainstream. After introducing the basics of map/reduce and collaborative filtering we will ponder the possibilities of web-scale computing for everyone.

Martha Stewart-izing Your Site with Rich Complementary Content Steve Waters, OneSpot

Recipe for Vertical Media Destination Site: Place high volumes of exceptional content in bowl. Add 2 cups of affinity focus. Stir in 1 cup of SEO flavoring for richness. Bake at 500 degrees all day. Serve hot. Repeat indefinitely. Until now, only fabulously wealthy master chefs could make this dish, because only they could afford the staff and tools necessary for its successful creation. This panel will explore the emerging content syndication trends and technologies that are allowing the rest of us to turn our humble sites into vertical media destinations. Felony conviction not included.

Lessons Learned from the Open Source Software Neelan Choksi, SpringSource

Open Source Software, once considered revolutionary, has increasingly been accepted as mainstream. In this panel of some of the most experienced open source leaders and analysts, we will explore what has made open source successful and what lessons all businesses can learn from this paradigm shifting technology.

Making Money with Royalties and Revenue Share Agreements
Lou Ellman, RoyaltyZone

Technology companies often enter licensing or partnership agreements to target new markets and increase revenue. The panel will discuss common licensing agreement strategies, keys for success, and effective ways for companies to track and monitor agreement performance.

Join me at Interactive Austin on June 19

I'll be speaking on a panel at 11:00am called "Managing Your Digital Landscape: Success Stories" along with
Andy Meadows, CEO, Live Oak 360; Tony Schum, Director of Economic Development, Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce; and Sam Decker, CMO, BazaarVoice.

Looks like a great lineup with lots of good friends participating including Dave Evans, Bill Leake, Jon Lebkowsky, Lorin Rivers and Michael Wilson.

My personal portfolio of companies is well represented! BazaarVoice, Datran Media, OneSpot and Small World Labs.

Texchange dinner tonight - "The New VC Math: Does Less = More?"

Tonight I'll be leading a table discussion at the Texchange dinner with topic:
The New VC Math: Does Less = More?

With hardware costs dropping and open source software booming, the capital requirements of most Internet business are also dropping. Sounds like bootstrapping to me!

Panelists

Moderator:
Charley Dean – Principal, Silverton Partners

Panelists:
Brett Hurt – Founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice
Mike Maples – Founder and Managing Partner, Maples Investments
Bill Wood – Founder, Silverton Partners

Discussion Leaders

Joshua Baer – Founder & CEO, OtherInbox
Tom Ball – Partner, Austin Ventures
William Chan – VP Products & Co-founder, Crimson Services
Matt Chasen – Founder & CEO, uShip
Morgan Flager – Silverton Partners
Scott Gardner – CFO, Metrosol
Jason Reneau – Founder & CEO, Mindbites
Michael Wilson – Founder & CEO, SmallWorldLabs
Jim Yang – Founder & CEO, Identyx

Austin Rice Alliance Start-up Mentoring Workshop

On Saturday I'll be participating for the second time in the Austin Rice Alliance Start-up Mentoring Workshop.

Last year this was a lot of fun and I got to meet Jeremy Bencken and learn about ApartmentRatings.com and TenantMarket.com. It wasn't long before he sold them to InternetBrands!

In addition to mentoring, Bijoy asked me to give the Bootstrap presentation to the group. I've probably seen Bijoy give it 20 times, so I feel like I could already repeat it by heart - but I'm looking forward to adding my own twist to it!

You can view or download the slides from my presentation here.

Bootstrap Rice Alliance 20080517 - Upload a doc

Read this doc on Scribd: Bootstrap Rice Alliance 20080517

Joshua Baer speaking2008@joshuabaer.com http://www.austinpreneur.com/ Definiton: boot·strap Definiton: boot·strap noun 1. a loop of leather or cloth sewn at the top rear, or sometimes on each side, of a boot to facilitate pulling it on. Dictionary.com
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2006. Definiton: boot·strap verb 5. to help (oneself) without the aid of others: She spent years bootstrapping herself through college. Dictionary.com
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2006. It’s worked before It worked for me D L O S D L O S How about you? Right Action, Right Time Use what you don’t have Demo, Sell, Build (demo - maven) Ideation • Don’t quit your day job • The Human Fabric • The Power of Two • Build the best demo you can • Prepare for the Valley of Death Valley of Death (sell - evangelist) • Take the plunge • Find customers • Fail quickly • Figure out your model • Necessity is the mother of invention! (build - relater) Growth • Time to fix everything that’s broken • Focus on the organization • Focus on recruiting • Most founders get bored • Time to raise capital? Repeat the Cycle Capital Agile Resources • Bootstrap Austin Community http://www.bootstrap.org/playbook • Bootstrap Austin Meetings http://www.bootstrap.org/meetings • Bootstrap Austin Blog http://www.bootstrapaustin.org/ • My blog http://www.austinpreneur.com/ Joshua Baer speaking2008@joshuabaer.com http://www.austinpreneur.com/