Happy April. Keep Grinding! See You Soon.

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Happy April, Grinders! March was a busy month with over 20 Startup Grind events hosted around the world, including a panel at SXSW on Why Austin? Is Awesome for Startups.

We are selling out events across multiple cities so please plan ahead and book your tickets now! Get a Global Pass and reserve your VIP seat at all Startup Grind events, including summer socials, holiday parties and the Startup Grind 2014 conference next February.

View our highlight video of Startup Grind 2013 and our latest videos featuring interviews with Steve Blank, George Zachary, Mark Suster (GRP), Dave McClure (500 Startups), Clayton Christensen (HBS), Ann Miura-Ko (Floodgate), Leah Busque (TaskRabbit), Naval Ravikant (AngelList), Patrick Collison (Stripe) and more.

We’d love to see you at one of our upcoming events. Let us know how we can make your startup journey more connected and inspired. We’re listening and want to help.

Startup Grind Upcoming Events
4 April [North Bay] Kirit Patel, Price Waterhouse Coopers
4 April [Cyprus] Claus Rosenberg Gotthard, S2 Development Ltd
10 April [Kansas City] Thom Ruhe, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
11 April [Silicon Valley] Dan’l Lewin, NeXT, Microsoft
16 April [Chicago] Seyi Fabode, Power2Switch
16 April [Dallas] Michael Segrest, Silver Creek Ventures
16 April [St. Louis] David Karandish, Answers.com
16 April [Dubai] Duplays
17 April [Los Angeles] Ed Ulbrich, Digital Domain, Ender’s Game
17 April [Boston] Johnny Monsarrat, Turbine, Hard Data Factory
17 April [Melbourne] Rick Chen, Pozible
19 April [Guangzhou] Zach ‘Hoeken’ Smith, MakerBot, HAXLR8R
22 April [Washington, D.C.] Dr. Magid Abraham, comScore
23 April [Seattle] Greg Gottesman, Madrona Venture Group
24 April [Stockholm] Hjalmar Winbladh, Wrapp
25 April [Ottawa] Renée Warren, Onboardly
25 April [San Francisco] Adam Goldstein, Hipmunk
25 April [Lehi] Nick Efstratis, Epic Ventures
26 April [Singapore] Roger Egan, RedMart.com
29 April [Austin] Mellie Price, Source Spring/Front Gate
29 April [NYC] Bob Dorf, The Startup Owner’s Manual
30 April [Waterloo / Toronto] Startup Grind After Hours
1 May [Philadelphia] Wayne Kimmel, Artists & Instigators
8 May [Los Angeles] Peter Samuelson, Revenge of the Nerds, Starlight Starbright Foundation
13 May [Toronto] John Ruffolo, OMERS Ventures
16 May [Washington, D.C.] Nigel Morris, Capital One
21 May [Chicago] Howard Tullman, Tribeca Flashpoint
29 May [Austin] Hall T. Martin, Texas Entrepreneur Networks
6 June [Silicon Valley] Jessica Livingston, Y Combinator
12 June [Los Angeles] Mark Suster, GRP Partners
13 June [San Francisco] Mikkel Svane, Zendesk
24 June [Austin] Kevin Koym, TechRanch Austin

 

Event Recap [Video]: Hear from Eventbrite co-founders Julia and Kevin Hartz on building a business as a couple, as interviewed by TechCrunch’s Colleen Taylor at Startup Grind 2013.

Join our awesome team!
We’re recruiting sales and marketing interns for our Palo Alto office and community leaders to launch Startup Grind in cities around the world.

From The Vault: Ben Parr (Editor @ Mashable)

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Easily one of our most eccentric speakers with a lot to say, Ben Parr was editor at Mashable when he spoke at Startup Grind. Watch to learn more about him growing up to be an astronaut, creating the next great company, and contributing to the entrepreneurial  world.

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An Event You Could Not Miss // Startup Grind 2013 (Melbourne Retrospect)

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I run the Startup Grind Chapter in Melbourne. Before I joined the team I had a couple of Meetup Groups with about 1200 members in total, so I was no stranger to holding and running events. I can’t remember how or why I reached the Startup Grind website, but the day I did was the day my life and reason for holding these events would change forever. I always wanted to help people, help them learn, encourage them to keep going and sometimes when people hear you say that they are skeptical, but that is the truth and perhaps only the people that put the time into growing a community and work hard to promote event after event for the benefit of others can understand that.

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Startup Grind Silicon Valley Hosts Dan’l Lewin (Cofounder @ NeXT, CVP @ MSFT)

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Thursday, 11 April

Reserve Your Ticket Here

Dan’l Lewin, Corporate Vice President for Strategic and Emerging Business Development, is responsible for leading Microsoft’s global engagement with venture capitalists and venture-backed startups and business relationships with strategic industry partners. Additionally, Lewin is the company’s ambassador and spokesperson for Microsoft’s global citizenship efforts to empower youth through education, employment and entrepreneurship. Lewin has executive and site responsibility for the company’s operations in Mountain View, California, which currently employ more than 2,500 people. Lewin has spent more than 30 years as a Silicon Valley-based executive, leading sales and marketing divisions for companies including Apple Computer Inc., NeXT Inc. and GO Corp. Before joining Microsoft, he was CEO of Aurigin Systems Inc., a startup that pioneered intellectual property asset management. He has also consulted for emerging companies, venture capital firms and corporate joint ventures. Lewin serves on the boards of the Churchill Club, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the Tech Museum of Innovation, where he served as past chairman of the Tech Museum Awards program. In addition, Lewin is on the Corporate Advisory Board of the National Venture Capital Association. He holds an AB in politics from Princeton University.

Highlights from Startup Grind 2013

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As if you haven’t seen enough video footage of Startup Grind 2013′s global community event last month, we’ve gone and taken some of our favorite parts and mashed them together in a highlight reel for your viewing please.  Thanks to all the Chapter Directors, speakers, volunteers, and community members for coming, participating, and making it the most fun 2-day stretch we’ve had maybe ever.

Bing Gordon, Partner @ KPCB, Startup Grind Interview (Full Transcript)

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Last month I had the opportunity to sit down with Bing Gordon, founding team member of Electronic Arts, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), and a board member at Zynga and Amazon. Sitting down with Bing was a complete guilty pleasure for me as an ex-EA underling and personal admirer of his distinguished career. The community didn’t disappoint as about 300 people showed up to listen to him talk and kick off our 2013 global community event. Full transcript and video below.

[00:00:00] DEREK:  Welcome to StartUp Grind!  I think you went shopping before…

[00:00:06] BING: I schwagged up.

[00:00:09] DEREK:  Well, welcome.

[00:00:10] BING:  Thanks.  Nice to see you again.

[00:00:11] DEREK:  Yeah, it’s good to see you.

[00:00:13] BING:  I was kind of curious whether you’d be sprouting a toupee since the last time I saw you.  You know, some people, when they go into Startup Land, they trade in everything they believe in and most people start doing everything they believe in.

[00:00:26] DEREK:  I had one for a while.  It just wasn’t a good look for me.  So… Read more →

Lessons for Startups from Jermaine Dupri

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Original blog post written by David Deal @ iCrossing

Startups have a new role model: Jermaine Dupri. Lately the music mogul and iCrossing branding partner has been sharing his story at events such as StartupGrind, where he joined thought leaders like Clayton Christensen on February 6 in Silicon Valley to discuss the state of the art in creating business growth. In February he also participated in Atlanta’s Tech & Startup Week, joining Scott Case for Startup Rally and the launch of Startup Georgia (the official regional chapter of the Startup America partnership) and then addressing emerging businesses at the monthly Founders Fables. His story is compelling: how social media communities such as his own Global 14 level the playing field and by creating destinations for young entrepreneurs with ideas and vision. And he’s been making an impact in real-time, generating a firestorm of tweets and photos wherever he speaks, such as the Startup Georgia attendee who tweeted, “Listening to @Mr_Dupri working hard at #startuprally taking time and killing it. First time this place has been focused and quiet all day.” Fresh from celebrating the 20th anniversary of his record label, So So Def Recordings, JD sat down with me to discuss why he’s talking to emerging entrepreneurs and what he’s been getting out of the experience. Here’s what he had to say…

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From The Vault Anthony Soohoo (CBS Interactive)

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One of the first big Startup Grind events was with Anthony Soohoo in June 2011. Anthony came and spoke about a variety of topics including Dotspotter (acquired by CBS) and his varies roles at companies like Yahoo!, Apple, Inktomi, and Bain.
[00:00:27] QUESTION:Well, we are stoked to have Anthony tonight. For those of you are not familiar with Anthony, Anthony worked at Apple in the nineties out of school, he then went to business school at Harvard, and he came back and worked at a number of different startups and had a number of different roles. Finally he ended up at Yahoo and had a senior executive role there, left Yahoo, started his own company that he called Dotspotter, which I will let him tell us a little bit about. Dotspotter was acquired by CBS one year and one day after it was founded. Wouldn’t that be nice. Then Anthony subsequently ran CBS’s interactive business for a number of years and he recently left to found another company, Booyahlabs. What is Booyahlabs?

[00:01:23] ANTHONY: Its still in stealth mode as they say its in the consumer internet space. At the intersection of mobile and health care.

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Full Interview: Ryan Smith (Founder & CEO) of Qualtrics at Startup Grind Utah

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Interviewing Ryan Smith was a major guilty pleasure for me. I first met Ryan at school in Provo Utah. We used to play massive networked Halo team games at least weekly and multiple times per week during finals (yeah grades were not so good). When I first met him he was already working on Qualtrics with his dad.

Provo, a town of just over 100,000 people is a buzz with talk about Qualtrics. They’re sucking in talent and growing like crazy. Watch this edition of Startup Grind Utah when we talk through how they grew from doing $100K per month in the basement, to a company with 300 people and $70MM in funding.

Startup Grind goes to SXSW

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This year Startup Grind is part of the official SXSW schedule.  Saturday Morning at 9:30am, Startup Grind Austin Director Andi Gillentine, gets four different views of the Austin Startup Ecosystem and answer the question “Why start a startup in Austin?”

Bijoy Goswami Founder of BootstrapU, Jim Butler from the City of Austin, Kevin Koym Founding Partner of TechRanch Austin and Susan Davenport for the Austin Chamber share their perspectives of the Austin Startup Scene.

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