Welcome to StartupDay 2009

It’s great to be at StartupDay, early and ready to go. This is looking to be an exciting day here in downtown Bellevue.

They have put together a great lineup of speakers. I’m looking forward to hearing from Richard Barton of Zillow, Ksenia Oustiougova of Lilipip Studios, and Dave Schappell of TeachStreet.

Sunday edit:

I took notes at the event and I’d like to share some of them with you. If you’re one of the speakers and like (or don’t like) what I wrote, let me know! I hope I do justice to the speakers with these comments.

Marcelo Calbucci (Event Organizer)

Did a good job of introducing the event and promoting the sponsors. Put an a spectacular event.

Hillel Cooperman – Why Do a Startup?

An unexpected view on why to create a startup. He mostly talked about why he created a startup and how much damn work it takes. A reality for those unaware.

Takeaways: Don’t quit your day job; not even when you think it’s time, because it’s probably not. It takes a lot of work.

Josh Petersen – Pick an Idea

First, have lots of ideas. Collaborating is a necessity. When selecting an idea, keep in mind that we have biases, including towards our own ideas. Solve your own problems. Use a technique called “regret minimization framework” to decide on what project would you later regret not doing. Ask yourself: What if it works? And will I be happy with that outcome?

Colin Wong – Co-Founders and Advisors

Trust is critical. Find cofounders who complement you. Cofounders can provide operations, capital, knowledge, and introductions. Advisors provide knowledge and introductions. Pitfalls to cofounders: delivery (or not) of promises, conflict of personality. Build mechanisms to modify terms, partially to allow for a graceful exit if necessary. Put the terms on paper, even if they feel informal. Set expectations (of time, etc) with advisors. Be open to offering 1-2% equity instead of cash.

Alex Algard – Growing Through Bootstrapping

Cut non essential expenses. Work understaffed. Work with people with complementary skills. Know key financial terms – don’t get ripped off. All decisions inside the startup should be based on the $ it has today. Read “The Bootstrapper’s Bible”. Join local organizations for startups.

T.A. McCann – Funding Through Angels or VCs

T.A. talked mostly about how to go about acquiring outside funding for your startup. Write an operational plan instead of a big business plan. What investors are looking for: 50% people, 25% idea, 25% execution. I listened to T.A. give advice to a pre-entrepreneur during lunch. He really knows what he’s talking about.

Kelly Smith – Naming and Branding

Getting noticed is the hardest part. Be straightforward with intent and purpose. Feel special! Brands start with good products. Brand is difficult to replicate. Make fun stories. Say audacious, yet truthful, statements.

Dave Schappell – Building the Product

Cycle: build team, ship prototype, simplify, test, avoid the giant decider, scrum. PODS- Product Owner Daily Scrum.

Alex Berg – User Experience and Metrics

A small team that’s fast. Design patterns – not just for code. Fail quick, fail cheap. Use prototyping tools. Use personas. Despite the title, Alex shied away from talking about metrics.

Mike Mathieu – Acquiring Customers and Marketing

The worst insults for your startup are: feature or product, not business. You have to have sauce to have secret sauce.Value is defined by the customer. Working capital. Customer scalability. Know the unknowns. Build a revenue engine.

Shelly Farnham – Networking and Partnering

When networking, ask yourself “could this person be a: partner? customer? investor? advisor?” Seek diversity. Freely give away your ideas and knowledge. Go to events with possible customers.

Unfortunately I missed two presentations, which were:

• Ben Huh – Advertcraptizing: Where’s the Silver Lining?
• Alex Castro – Making Money Through SaaS

Ksenia Oustiougova – When It All Fails

I was so into Ksenia’s stories, I forgot to take notes. She talked about how startups can fail. About putting too much into the business and how it impacted her family.

Jonathan Sposato -  Being Acquired

17 secrets: 11 things you can control.

Rich Barton – Closing Keynote

Be revolutionary. Have a big hairy audacious dream (BHAD).

Articles with Advice for Startups

These are just a few articles I found while browsing around that I found interesting and perhaps useful for startups. The first link is a must!

• Answers to every Seattle tech startups question ever asked – humorous slide show of questions and answers of Seattle tech startups.
• Hard work is essential for startups but how much is too much (part 1) – life balance article.
• Building Startup Sales Teams Tips For Founders – found this through OnStartups blog.
• Your revenue and a harsh fairytale when building a good sales team you kiss a lot of frogs – building a sales team: when and how. Found this from above article.
• Why Your Business Blog Shouldn’t Be On BlogSpot.com – after reading this article, I decided this blog should really be on it’s own domain. I need to do lots more research first, though. I have heard that WordPress is much nicer than BlogSpot when it comes to transitioning.

Let me know what you found interesting, what changed your thinking, and what was boring. I love getting comments! I respond to all.

I’m also interested in how you came across my blog. Comment about that too.

Websites Devoted to Startups in Seattle

There are many sites out there dedicated to helping startups in Seattle and I went on a hunt to find them. I recently compiled this partial list on my own from meeting people, reading blogs, and following links.

• nPost
• Seattle 2.0
• On Startups
• Seattle Tech Startups

Another category of links I found useful is local tech events. Many of the above sites have a list of events. In an upcoming post, I will list all of the event sites (Seattle specific) I know of so far. If you know of more sites I should be connected with, post a comment. I will read it and respond.

For those of you that read my first post, I will be posting more than once a week, for a few months, just to get my blog out there. Two or three post per week will be my goal.