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Week Three – Gaining Traction
This past week of the StartFast program was a momentous one as each of the eight teams began to get traction. We started off the week with a Memorial Day barbeque at Nasir’s. With their complete team...
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Week Four – Starting to Scale
On Wednesday, June 6, StartFast mentor Brad Feld, Managing Partner of Foundry Group and father of TechStars, presented on how to get the most from mentors. He then answered questions. Mike D’Eredita,...
View ArticleWeek Five – Growth Hacking
I always meet very interesting people when I visit General Assembly in New York. Upon arriving Monday before teaching my class, Growth Hacking or How to get your first 1000 (or 500,000) users I ran...
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Week Six – Stress Fractures
Steve Blank likes to say that all startups learn from failure. At StartFast, a big part of the process is to define a business hypothesis, test that hypothesis and learn from the results. A failed...
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Weeks seven and eight: The Rise of the Lean Product Manager
Pitch practice has begun at StartFast along with the requisite preparation for Demo Day. Every team is creating a presentation as well as an online data room with the basics that an investor would need...
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Week Nine – Community
Week 9 of the StartFast Venture Accelerator has come and gone; four weeks left to go until Demo Day, August 16. This week everything that happened pointed to the word Community. For example: SU and...
View ArticleWeek Ten – Investor Ready – 11 ways to improve your odds in raising capital
Throughout the StartFast program we drive our teams to build great companies and stress that this is much more important than raising money. Nonetheless, building a high-growth company requires...
View ArticleInvestors – How to increase your chances to get in on the next big thing
He who has the gold rules. This is almost always true. The exception is when a deal is so hot that investors are competing for the company’s attention. As an investor, should you just shy away from...
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Week Eleven – Balance
“The long practice of daily work gives us the muscles and sinews to uphold the work that wants to move through us” – Julie Cameron, The Artist’s Way This summer the StartFast teams have worked...
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Week Fourteen – Proud
StartFast Demo Day August 16, 2012 (last Thursday) was a remarkable experience. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle called it, “An Amazing and Important Day.” After the event two investors approached...
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Build a great company
Every startup accelerator program has a theme. All accelerators introduce companies to mentors. Many focus on raising capital, teaching companies how to pitch, how to prepare for due diligence and...
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The StartFast Way to Get More Done
I know you’ve wished for more hours in the day. What if you could actually get them? What if this was not a fantasy, but a real possibility? The lucky few who get into the StartFast Venture Accelerator...
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Local Woman in Tech and Entrepreneurship Leader Joins the StartFast Team
We’re pleased to announce that Kate Brodock will be working with us at StartFast this year. Kate will focus on marketing and communications, as well as continue as a mentor for the third year in a...
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Going to the Source
On a flight to New Zealand on Fiji Airlines last year I was pleased and surprised to be given unlimited free bottles of Fiji Water onboard. Fiji Water is so plentiful and available on Fiji Airlines...
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Lighting a fire in the startup ecosystem
Back in 2011-12, I was passionately driven to light a fire in the startup ecosystem that would catch, grow, spread and brightly illuminate the future. I’d spent my career, spanning a quarter of a...
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Creative Collisions @ SXSW 2014
GIF created with CineGIF The word “serendipity” (happy accidents) was coined in 1754 in a letter from Horace Walpole to a friend in which he describes unexpected discoveries by reference to a fairy...
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Databubble Live Now at StartFast
Visitors connecting to the “StartFast Guest” wireless network with the password “sfvaguest2014″ are connected to the world’s first commercial databubble powered by Interface Foundry, giving them...
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The One Metric That Matters
At StartFast we say that a startup can’t outspend its competitors, but it can out-focus them. It’s crucial for a startup to focus on improving one thing at a time, using analytics tools to...
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5 Tips for Accelerating Your Startup
Life in a startup moves pretty fast, but sometimes progress seems to take forever. How can you make more progress in less time? Here are five proven tips for enhancing productivity. Understand the...
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What do investors want?
I’m an anomaly. I’m an entrepreneur, an angel investor and an institutional investor (venture capitalist) all at the same time. I’ve been an entrepreneur for 30 years, and angel investor for 7 years...
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