April 30, 2009
Mashable panel at 92YTribeca
posted by philip in Snooth
Mark and I spoke at a panel on “Lessons from the Local Startup Community” held by Mashable at the Tribeca 92Y.
It was great to speak alongside some great companies: Behance, SavvyAuntie, Aviary and of course Mashable. Our slides (just 3 of them, as we were trying to be short and punchy) can be seen here. Our key points were:
- A startup is like a race car - not only is it fast, its likely to break after 500 miles, and to get anywhere on your limited resources (time, money, manpower) you need to focus like a laser.
- When you are a new startup, its hard for an outsider to tell if you have any prospects, as a result getting the first deal is key. To close that deal, you do what it takes: beg, borrow, negotiate, compromise.
- With software most of what you’ll need already exists, and its generally free (open source). Leverage what you can before you start building things that you could have picked up from elsewhere.
- Get involved in your community, give back and help others - be it geographically local (NYC and San Francisco for us), or thematically similar (wine and open source for us). Not only is it beneficial to the company, its the right thing to do.
No audio unfortunately, so let me know if anything’s unclear in the slides.
