Founders

How Will You Measure Your Life?

May 9, 2012 by Derek Andersen

It’s easy to get wrapped up in your startup and life as an entrepreneur, but sometimes you must step back and reflect on your greater life journey. Bruce Upbin has an excellent profile on The Innovator’s Dilemma author Clay Christensen’s new book called How Will You Measure Your Life? I haven’t read the book but plan to do a full review after it releases next week.

Much of the book’s subject seems to come from a Christensen address to Havard Business School 2010 graduating class. It’s a lecture that I highly recommend and have personally read many times over the past several years. Read more →

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Founders

How One Entrepreneur In Singapore Was Finally Accepted To Founder Institute After Three Denials

May 8, 2012 by Guest Contributor

***Son Le Thanh is the Singapore Startup Grind Chapter Director***

Sometime, things come when you least expect it.

Last Sunday I received the acceptance letter from Founder Institute that I was accepted into the Singapore Summer 2012 semester. I finally made it after four times applying for the program and being rejected the previous three times. Let me tell you about how it happened and why I didn’t give up. Read more →

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Founders

Early Startup Time Wasters

May 7, 2012 by Guest Contributor

***This post was written by Jeff Miller who is a founder at Punchfork***

 

A major difference between launching a brand new startup and working on one that’s a year or two old is quality of shot selection. Every day begins with 1,000 doors in front of you: which door do you go through to make the most progress? Shot selection is choosing what to focus on at the expense of other forgone opportunities. It’s one of the most critical skills in running a startup.

As a company matures, I think it’s normal (ideally) for judgment to improve and shot selection to get a lot better, resulting in less wasted time and more forward momentum. This can be driven by many things. Maybe it’s having enough live users to give you feedback on market fit. Or you found some role models to help with targeted advice. Or you figured out how to optimize against your true traction metrics. Read more →

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Trending Startups

AngelList’s Trending Startups (Week of May 6)

May 7, 2012 by Derek Andersen

Here are the latest and greatest startups making waves on AngelList this week. If you haven’t already seen them, here are some different areas to review as you try to find your niche to breakthrough among the investor crowd. Review skills of individual users, search the colleges represented, see the top referrers, tops things that startups need, and top locations which lists more than 40K reviewable startups.

Trending (Week of May 6-May 12)

Goodsie: Easiest and most stylish commerce platform for SMB market.

More Detail: Goodsie is the easiest and most stylish way to set-up shop and sell anything online. Our goal is to be the leading SaaS e-commerce platform for the Small Business market. Ideal balance of ease-of-use and design aesthetic. Features include a real-time, point-and-click design interface, flexible coupon engine, sales analytics, integrated email marketing, Facebook and mobile storefronts, digital fulfillment and more.
Followers: 173
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Founders

Zuck Is Watching You. Don’t Disappoint Him.

May 4, 2012 by Derek Andersen

Thanks Youssef Sarhan for the awesomeness.

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Videogames

Forbes Author Calls Out EA Employee Confirming All Forbes Authors Are Clueless

May 4, 2012 by Derek Andersen

When my two year old speaks does he speak for my entire family? Or if a solider yells something across enemy lines in the heat of battle, is he speaking for the entire army? According to Forbes author Erik Kain the simple answer is yes. On Wednesday he quoted a tweet by a Battlefield Product Manager with a post entitled “EA Product Manager Says ‘Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2′ Looks Tired, Should ‘Take A Year Off’” naming Kevin O’Leary.

He then suggests that while he agrees with the content of Kevin’s tweet about Call Of Duty’s new game (note I independently agree 100%), he’s not sure if it’s right or not. Then he goes on to quote a completely different article at length. “Just shut up EA.  I’m sick of you running your mouth, and this is coming from someone who actually enjoyed Battlefield 3 more than Modern Warfare 3,” Forbes quotes. Read more →

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Games

Stretch Out Your Fingers, Invader Zurp (iPad/iPhone) Is Free This Weekend!

May 4, 2012 by Derek Andersen

Spencer Nielsen is an easy founder to write about. As an engineer at Apple (06-10) he decided to leave the mothership to build his company Aoren Software. One of his first major releases is a game called Invader Zurp. He’s been involved in a lot of projects since leaving Apple (including the original Startup Grind Chapter with me), but he’s plugged along with Invaders Zurp releasing it in late 2011. This weekend only the game’s price has dropped from $1.99 to free-sauce and it’s available for your downloading pleasure here for just a few short days.

Invader Zurp is best described as Jenga + Bombs + Dynamite + Aliens + Tron + je ne sais quoi. You move through the game taking on wave after wave of blocks and towers that you destroy gaining ammo and more credits to buy upgrades. All along the way you’re bombarded with bomb after bomb. To remain alive you can shoot back and destroy the incoming missiles, or you can take out the weapons source.

Read more →

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Startups

Can This Founder Become The Martha Stewart Of Asia?

May 4, 2012 by Derek Andersen

I first met Dina Yuen in a coffee shop in San Francisco in early 2011. She was an early member of Commonred and as was typical operating procedure I would meet with any of the first 5,000 users that emailed me. I was shocked upon meeting her to hear of an insanely ambitious idea: she wanted to become the Martha Stewart of Asia. The goal was shockingly huge but I quickly realized that Dina was the type of person that just might be able to pull it off.

Asian Fusion is a media company that bills itself as a one stop shop for all Asian related topics. They have recipes, travel recommendations, fashion, etertainment, and more. My favorite series they publish is the MVA – Most Valuable Asian. I hope to someday be featured.

Read more →

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Marin

Startup Grind Marin hosts Michael Tchong (VIDEO)

May 3, 2012 by Derek Andersen

Last week we had a great event in Marin starring the founder of MacWEEK and ICONOCAST Michael Tchong. In 1987 he founded MacWEEK and wrote about Apple as he has put it “25 years too early.” I wrote about one of his greatest scoops a few weeks ago. He and his company were the underdog, going up against an Apple sanctioned publication and rival (9-min mark).

The interview and event was organized by Marin Chapter Director David Wamsley. Michael has seen it all having sold companies and shut them down. He also has some very big ideas about Silicon Valley and where the technology industry needs to go in general. We’ll be releasing some individual clips but here is the full length feature for your viewing pleasure.

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