I'm Joe and I'm a strategic advisor to startups and software companies. I also enjoy cycling and dabbling in more creative endeavours too...
I'm Joe and I'm a strategic advisor to startups and software companies. I also enjoy cycling and dabbling in more creative endeavours too...
New to startups? Don't know where to start? Here's some tips...
Events
Not only can you meet a lot of people at events, but you can learn a lot too.
From simple networking events to more content-led events like fireside chats, or panel sessions, events are an invaluable way of expanding your network, getting to know the ecosystem and learning towards whatever role you're hoping to play.
You can also attend more active events like Hackathons, these are long working events that aim to "hack" together a business (Minimum Viable Product - MVP) or a solution to a certain brief. I started at Startup Weekend in 2012 and went on to run a number of really fun hackathons.
Reading - Stay up to date
Get your finger on the pulse and keep it there.
Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit, Techcrunch, The Next Web, Tech.eu any number of blogs, the list could go on and on. Things can change quickly and if it relates to what you're doing, then you'll need to know about it as soon as possible.
Reading - Texts
As well as keeping up to date, there's a huge amount of wisdom between the pages of a large number of books.
I don't read anywhere as much as I'd like to, but here are a few recommended reads:
The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
Startup Communities - Brad Feld
ReWork - Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
The 4-Hour Work Week - Tim Ferris
Hackers & Painters - Paul Graham
The Mom Test - Rob Fitzpatrick
Creativity, Inc - Ed Catmull
Atomic Habits - James Clear
Influence - Robert Cialdini
Thinking in Bets - Annie Duke
Traction - Gino Wickman
If you want somewhere to start, I'd really recommend Influence.It's fantastic for understanding human behaviour and motivations. Whilst it talks about "persuasion" and "compliance", I've found it most useful for understanding people and when they are trying to manipulate you! Traction is also a great book for setting up an operating system for your company.
If you're going to fail your startup, make sure you learn from it.
Here's a collection of brave individuals who have prepared a Startup Post Mortem, for you to learn from...
Blab was a livestreaming app which grew from a hackathon project to having 3.9 million users in less than 1 year. It is no longer running...
Wattage aimed to bring mass-customization to electronics. It was an online platform that is both a tool for creation, and a marketplace for buying.
Tab (previously Subscrib) was a web-based prepaid loyalty app that started in the basement of Campus London in late September 2012 by Shawn Zvinis, Christoph Sassenberg and Gary Luce.
99dresses was a virtual closet that allows users to trade fashion items with other users.
Dinnr was an ad-hoc, same day ingredient delivery service. Select a recipe on our website, and we deliver everything you need to cook that recipe at home, all the items pre-measured with printed instructions.
Microcosm was a community CMS as a platform and service, a Tumblr for forums. It allowed non-technical people to create and run a community site hat would comfortably scale from small groups of 50 people to very active communities of 50k people.
Kolos was an iPad steering wheel for driving games, hardware is particularly difficult to get right and this proved too difficult.
CB Insights also have a list that is updated fairly frequently - there are hundreds!
