Startup 2010 is a business plan competition and one-day event about entrepreneurship and digital business that will showcase 10 top startups competing for bragging rights, buzz, and a $100,000 prize. The conference is co-hosted by Silicon Alley Insider and New York University’s Stern School of Business, with support from exclusive founding sponsor General Catalyst Partners.
If you attended last year, you know that the day was filled with insights from digital all-stars and business plan pitches from 10 aspiring startups, followed by tough questioning and feedback from a panel of judges. Thriving legal startup ArticleOne Partners won the grand prize — and set a high bar for this year’s participants.
Startup 2010’s sessions will explore the intersection of mobile and content. With the arrival of the iPhone and the Android, will mobile finally fulfill its hype?
TICKETS on sale now! Get early-bird tickets for just $295. NYU Stern students get in free.
$100,000 Prize: Ten aspiring entrepreneurs will pitch their business plans in the hope of winning a $100,000 prize. The prize includes a $25,000 cash investment from General Catalyst Partners and $75,000 in goods and services ranging from:
Up to 6 months of office space in NYC at TechSpace
Legal services from Cooley, Godward, Kronish
Opportunity to launch at DEMO
Web hosting
And much more
ATTENTION ENTREPRENEURS: Submit your business plans now! Applications are open today through April 12. [Note: While the conference will focus on mobile + content topics, applications can be for any type of digital business.]
Don’t miss this annual forum for outstanding entrepreneurs and early-stage companies to meet VCs, investors, journalists, and other members of the East Coast startup community.
A great write-up of the sage (and virtually unanimous) advice from the participants has been posted on VentureBlog by August Capital’s David Hornik (host of the annual Lobby conference.) Here’s the distilled summary of his summary:
It’s a small community — if you screw one entrepreneur, you’ll be out of the angel business because entrepreneurs talk (Conway)
Angel investing is about learning on the job, which means that you can plan on screwing up your first 10 deals at least (McClure)
If you assume that the money is gone once you’ve invested it — that it is like a lottery ticket — then you will have a better time angel investing (Buchheit)
Work with other angel investors so that you can get the advantage of their expertise (Zurich)
There is no rational way to arrive at valuation, so don’t be overly concerned about getting it right (Graham)
Don’t worry if the idea seems crazy — if it didn’t seem crazy, it would be too late to invest as an angel (Graham)
The lifeblood of angel investors is deal flow — you need huge deal flow to find enough stuff that is worth investing in (Ravikant)
The best deals come from other angels(Ravikant)
Don’t be afraid to throw a little dynamite into the status quo and see what comes out of it — often times interesting stuff emerges (and sometimes nothing does) (Dearing)
The Rule of 12 — you need to invest in 12 companies to have statistical diversity — invest in fewer than 12 deals and you run the risk of them all failing (Maples)
Like in the movie “Oceans 11,” you want to pull together the best team of angel specialists there are out there — it increases the likelihood that the company will succeed (Maples)
Help bring your entrepreneurs together so that they can learn from one another (Poler)
By being a connector, you will see the most interesting stuff and work with the most interesting people (Senkut)
Angel investing is all about the syndicate — you can lead if you want to but it can be lonely until others join in the syndicate (Clavier)
Angel investors need to distinguish themselves from others with money – what do you bring to the table? Contacts. Experience. Advice. (Young)
Only invest in stuff you actually know something about — otherwise you’re just buying a lottery ticket (Young)
As I mention early and often to anyone who will listen, the sensei of state-of-the-art presentations (which you will use to raise startup funding, inspire your team and sell your product to customers) is a gentleman named Garr Reynolds, the former Manager of Worldwide User Group Relations at Apple Computer. He writes the most influential blog on the subject, Presentation Zen, which was recently turned into the most influential book on the subject, Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter), a copy of which I present to every CEO who comes to me for training.
I have been asked to essentially talk about the contents of the book. I will indeed talk about the themes and ideas covered in the book, however, I have entitled the presentation How to Think Like a Designer (and why it matters). The applications of the items I discuss will focus on presentations, particularly presentations that are given with the aid of slideware, but the ideas can be applied to other types of presentations and even other types of disciplines such as web design and professional communications of all types. I have come up with a list of 10 ways to “think like a designer” with examples for each and applications for presentation design. Yet, there are of course more than 10 things we can learn from designers that may help us in our own work, so if you’d like to share your list — or even just a few tips of your own — please share those below. I appreciate your comments. Look forward to connecting with you during the webcast.
I can’t recommend this highly enough, but if you are not able to make the live webcast (at which you’ll be able to ask questions), the archive of the webcast should be available about 72 hours after the live event. Garr’s presentation, blog and book are mandatory reading for any entrepreneur who is serious about communicating his or her vision.
The National Angel Organization - the association of angel groups in Canada has some very interesting summits coming up in the next few months. Our neighbors to the North are vigilant users of Angelsoft and its very exciting to see how they have and continue to use all the features of Angelsoft to promote entrepreneurshp all across Canada.
The first event is the NAO annual summit. The summit will bring together angels from all across Canada and the United States. It will be help in Halifax from October 15-17. (http://2008summit.eventbrite.com/) Angelsoft will be hosting an Angelsoft Lounge all throughout the summit for angels and angel group managers to wander in and out of to get demos and other information on Angelsoft. We hope to see everyone there.
The second event is the Co-investment Summit (http://coinsummit.eventbrite.com/). This event is focused on assisting angel groups in getting co-investment funds for exciting companies that are already getting funded by one or more groups. These companies will use this forum to present their companies to the entire community of angels and generate interest to finish out the rounds for the entrepreneurs. Since most of Canada and the United States’ Angel groups use Angelsoft to manage their everyday deal-flow, sharing the deals among the groups is as simple as a single click. The process as defined by the NAO:
We would encourage all angels to attend these exciting events. Angelsoft is proud to be such an important part of both events.
Mark LaRosa and I recently attended the Ohio Early Stage Summit in Columbus and were thoroughly impressed at the progress being made to make Ohio one of the premier places to do business. The efforts by the State over the past few years to develop and foster an environment ripe for entrepreneurship and investment should be a model for others to follow.
Lt. Governor Lee Fisher kicked of the summit with a rousing speech that provided an overview of the various programs and incentives available to both entrepreneurs and investors. Based on the initial results, Ohio is doing a lotright and there is no shortage of enthusiasm to keep that momentum going.
The pieces are all in place. The next challenge Ohio faces, say Fisher and many others, is GETTING THE STORY OUT THERE!
I say they should play up the “Cleveland Rocks” angle…and Cincy, and Akron, and Columbus, and…
For more, click here to read a recent Op-Ed piece from the Wall Street Journal by Fisher and Governor Ted Strickland asking people to take a “look under Ohio’s hood” and see how “its engine is being redesigned and retooled in ways that offer important lessons on how to make an economy more competitive in a global marketplace.”
By popular demand, Angelsoft held its first User Group meeting on May 7th as part of the Angel Capital Association annual conference in San Diego.
There were over 50 people at the standing-room only event, with groups coming from as far as Central America, Maine, Canada, and New Zealand.
The feedback had been that our users really wanted to hear from other users, so we let them do the talking. Our CEO, David S Rose, kicked off the user group meeting with an introduction and very energetic presentation of the Angelsoft vision. After that the users took over.
Women2.0 held their annual event this past weekend at Stanford and over 300 attendees came to watch 5 tech companies with over 50% female ownership pitch. Here are some pictures from the event.
Congratulations to the Koolage, who won the main prize, and to Gaiagy, who won the People’s Choice award for the event. Koolage took home a prize of over $15,000 in business services and a private meeting with Esther Dyson, CEO of EDventure and serial angel investor (member of the NY Angels). Included in the package was a free submission to the Investor Community!
In the first part of last week I attended the first ever Southwest Regional Angle Summit organized by Bob Morrison, the Executive Director of the Desert Angels. The event brought together several local angel investors along with representation from the Desert Angels, New Mexico Angels, ATIF, Tech Coast Angels, and some VC funds.
Though this was a regional even, I dropped in from NYC, and Frank Peters of the Tech Coast Angels made the trip in from southern California. I think we were both quite impressed with what was going on!
Since this was the first year, Bob simply established a suggested agenda, and the conversation was pretty free form. We discussed everything from improving communication among angel networks for sharing deals to marketing angel groups online, and capitalizing on tech transfer opportunities.
The Angelsoft team made several appearances over the past couple weeks on the West coast.
Some highlights include:
1) Evan Bartlett attended the Keiretsu Forum Expo in Palm Desert on January 28th. The event was co-hosted by Steve Weiss, and the Coachella Valley Angel Network.
The winner of the Most Valued Company Competition was a fun wine oriented company called Bottlenotes. They describe themselves as “a personalized sommelier service delivering wine tailored to their members’ personal tastes using proprietary matching technology.”
2) Mark LaRosa and Evan Bartlett then went to meet with Sue Preston in the new offices of the California Clean Energy Fund I . The early stage fund will be closed soon, and when they start taking in deals, they will be using Angelsoft to manage their deal flow!
Mark LaRosa and Ryan Pipkin headed out to Utah last Wednesday to attend the Wayne Brown Institute’s 24th Annual Investor’s Choice® Venture Capital Conference. 23 domestic companies pitched their opportunity to more than 200 investors and equity capital providers at this year’s conference.
Wayne Brown partnered with us last fall when the Institute launched Angelsoft to serve as the platform for both Investor’s Choice® and The Deal Forum. Five Utah-based angel groups, moderated by USTAR, sat down together for a panel entitled “FINDING YOUR FIRST DOLLAR - Trends in Angel Investing in Utah.” Olympus Angels, Salt Lake Life Science Angels, Park City Angels, Utah Angels, and Southern Utah Dixie Angels discussed what they look for, and how to get in front of them for consideration. All five groups on the panel use Angelsoft.
And then we got to ski with THIS GUY!!! Dean Cummings, an Olympic skier, former member of the U.S. Ski Team, the World Extreme Skiing Champion of 1995, and owner of H2O Guides, a heli-ski business in Alaska, volunteered his time at the Investor Ski Day following the conference to take some of us on the slopes and teach us a thing or two. Mark and I couldn’t pass it up. Skiing with him was … in a word … awesome!
