Armed with a background in finance and math and a zeal for building a great product, Crow decided to go all in on ShopTalk upon graduating in May and has quickly learned some tough but valuable lessons that most 22 year olds have yet to even fathom. Crow took some time between pitching to investors and hiring a staff to discuss the exciting journey of running and building a company like ShopTalk. Click read more for the full interview.
Companies large and small have been trying to find the right balance between social networks and consumer purchases. Figuring out the perfect solution has been the goal of recent Notre Dame grad and passionate entreprenuer Robb Crow. His answer? Shoptalk. Started a couple years ago during a late night skype sesson between Crow and his fellow co-founder/classmate from ND, Shoptalk allows consumers to share their purchases easily and effectively on their Facebook Newsfeed. ShopTalk then lets you cash in on your actions by rewarding its users with discounts from the retailers they promoted.
Armed with a background in finance and math and a zeal for building a great product, Crow decided to go all in on ShopTalk upon graduating in May and has quickly learned some tough but valuable lessons that most 22 year olds have yet to even fathom. Crow took some time between pitching to investors and hiring a staff to discuss the exciting journey of running and building a company like ShopTalk. Click read more for the full interview.
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CAREER ADVICE FROM THE MAN BEHIND LINKEDIN Linkedin’s recent success can be attributed to many factors, including a growing user base and a strategic shift to becoming a content and news provider. But In order to understand the what behind the site’s success, it might be helpful to understand the who as well, and no one has provided more value and insight for Linkedin than it’s Executive Chairman and co-founder, Reid Hoffman. Hoffman’s professional exploits expand well beyond Linkedin. When he’s not running the internet’s largest professional social network and 15th most visited site on the web, he’s helping Graylock Partners, Silicon Valleys top VC firm, grow and develop wildly successful startups like Airbnb or Dropbox. And with the time he has left over, Hoffman continues to offer his advice by sitting on the board of directors for companies such as Zynga, and Shopkick. While he could have spent plenty of time counting the insane amount of money he has made over his career, Hoffman decided to share his tips and insights by writing a career advice book. Hoffman’s book on professional career advice, entitled The Startup of You, was released in the spring of 2012 and quickly vaulted to the top of the bestsellers list for both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. In just over 200 pages,Hoffman draws upon his experience as a successful entrepreneur and investor to give simple and down to earth advice that applies to working professionals in any and all industries. Despite the book's corny title, Hoffman makes effective comparisons between creating a startup company and creating a successful career. For example, he artfully crafts an early chapter in the book that urges workers to identify their own competitive advantage by discovering an unique intersection between their assets, aspirations, and market realities: If you want to chart a course that differentiates you from other professionals in the marketplace, the first step is being able to complete the sentence, “A company hire me over other professionals because . .. “ How are you first, only, faster, better, or cheaper than other people who want to do what you’re doing in the world” A handful of sections in the book as well as its hardback cover sometimes make The Startup of You feel like a 200 page ad for Linkedin. Fortunatley, Hoffman fights the urge to write a book that focuses solely on the value of a professional network by offering helpful career planning tools and insights for professionals fresh out of college up to seasoned managers, and everyone in between. His consistent yet well founded tips to “invest in yourself” and “pursue breakout opportunities” could certainly pay dividends well beyond the corporate world for anyone who chooses to read. Those not interested in purchasing the entire book should at least spend some time checking out the book’s website or blog.
HOW venture for america is changing the way top college graduates think about their careersIn a time where many college graduates are struggling for employment, having a student trade a top paying job at an investment bank or consulting firm for a job in a struggling city with a serious pay cut is not the easiest sell to make. But that was the idea formulated by Venture for America's Founder and CEO Andrew Yang, and its growing like crazy. Founded back in 2011, Venture for America is based on the mission of revitalizing cities and communities by creating opportunities and jobs for residents while connecting the VFA "fellows'' to local startup scenes throughout the country.
Dozens of startup companies in a handful of cities across the US. have reached out to Venture for America and its talented, driven class of recent graduates. Venture for America recruits its annual class of fellows, trains them in a five week startup boot camp on the campus of Yang's alma matter, Brown University (topics include sales, SEO, financial analysis), and matches them up with a startup where they spend two years developing their entrepreneurial skills while adding great value to the company. The organization has been growing rapidly, both in terms of an expanding and competitive applicaiton pool (550 applicants this year with just a 16% acceptance rate), and its partner cities (expansion plans for next year include St. Louis, Pittsbrugh, and New Haven). We caught up with Anh-Ton Tran, one of this years fellows, to get an better inside look into Venture for America and how he and other fellows are taking the right step to understanding the delicate balance between paycheck and passion. Full interview and infographic in read more. Terrible at remembering names? Knowyo can helpStartups solving some of the smallest yet most frequent problems in our lives can often be the most unique and exciting to follow. It seems like every day I walked across campus during my four years of college and passed someone whose name I forgot. Whether it was pulling out my phone and pretending to text or replying with the generic yet slightly insulting "Hey, man", I barely found a way to avoid these daily awkward moments that painfully reminded me how bad I was at remembering names. Co-founders Sohn and Elie Schoppik might have found the perfect solution for me, and the hopefully millions of others who suck at remembering names, with their startup Knowyo. Through the process of gamification, Knowyo tests your knowledge of your fellow professional contacts on Linkedin. After being provided a picture of the contact, users can guess the name, receive a hint, or receive a single letter of the person's name. The software also tracks your progress and lets you know where you can improve. Click here for the a quick 5 min demo/pitch with feedback from judges at San Francisco's 2013 Lanuch Festival Since I no longer have the option to duck into the dining hall or fake speedwalk to a class I'm not even late for, I'll probably use this fun and easy way to remember the names of people in my office I should know and want to know. For anyone even slightly interested in startups and what goes on behind the scenes, Startup Weekend is a perfect opportunity to start. Put simply on the group's website, "Startup Weekend is a global network of passionate leaders and entrepreneurs on a mission to inspire, educate, and empower individuals, teams, and communities." Most events span the course of a weekend (54 hours), will cost you around $75-$125 (roughly the same amount you've been saving for that vintage Crossfire set on Amazon), and can range from usually 60-120 participants. Additionly, a host of speakers, panelists and coaches (often from the local startup community) will show up to support and guide those who attend. I attended my first Startup Weekend earlier this year out at Notre Dame, and quickly realized how the majority of those eventful 54 hours can boil down to how you handle ten very exciting yet critical minutes. Dogs can be a mans best friend, but who knew there was so much money to be made on our four legged companions. There are 80 million pet dogs in the United States alone, and anyone who owns a dog knows just how great a helping hand in anything from dog food to dog walking can truly be These various startups are doing their best to capitalize on the dog lovers in all of us:
gORGEOUS MOBILE-oPTIMIZED SITES IN MINUTESI first learned about Strikingly after reading a feature on Y Combinator by Nathaniel Rich in the May 2nd edition of the New York Times Magazine. In order to add a personal feel to the article, Rich picked a few startups and founders to detail, one of them being Strikingly and its three determined founders: David Chen, Daefeng Guo, and Teng Bao. The article is worth a read, and made it easy to root for these founders who turned down lucrative job offers and went through several series of pivots to come up with their final product. Brief insights into stressful moments, like the drama behind determining which founder would make the pitch on demo day, paint a picture of founders who clearly the realize how the success of their idea often weighs in the hands of VCs with short attention spans and deep pockets. Demo videos are a great ways for startups to quickly and easily showcase a problem the company is trying to solve and how they go about doing it. These 2-4 minute videos, often animated and featuring a friendly yet informative narrative, can be found on the homepage of most startup websites. I'll try and put up one or two a week to interesting and neat startups, along with a completely random and totally unrelated youtube video. P.S. Saw the co-founder of Rentalutions, Ryan Coon, speak during an event at Chicago's 1871 last month. Real smart guy who knows his product and the market very well P.P.S Malibu is an equally impressive human being, but for completely different reasons. Rentalutions & malibu gets ownedAndy Reid isn't the only big thing to hit to Kansas City recently. Selected from over 1,000 applicants, Kansas City, Missouri became the first official google fiber community back in September 2012 (Kansas City, Kansas was subsequently added a few weeks later). For further explanation behind Google Fiber & Kansas city, check out this brief WSJ Video. The presence of an all-fiber internet network delivering super high speed connection to the community has been a direct catalyst driving the emergence of Kansas City's budding startup community (along with comparatively low levels of rent of costs of living). Intended or not, the presence of Google fiber has lead some residents to open their doors to those looking utilize such crazy fast internet speeds to get their companies off the group. "Home for Hackers" (not a habitat for humanity for down on their luck programmers) is a program where startup founders can live rent free in the fiber-wired houses as they develop their businesses and hopefully move on to bigger locations in downtown Kansas City. Startups looking to call Kansas City their home need to look no further than the Kansas City Startup Village. KCSV provides a community for startup founders to work side by side with other entrepreneurs and share resources and space in a collaborative and welcoming environment. Click here for a list of startups currently in KCSV. Tyler Van Winkle, Director of Product Development at KCSV's hometown hero Leap2, summarizes the benefit of KCSV nicely: Access to the gigabit network is nice," he said. "But it's more about the community that has grown up around the network. It's really helpful to be around a lot of like minded people who support each other." While Kansas City does provide a less cutthroat and competitive community for startups to develop, the city is not without challenges to its many entrepreneurs. The area lacks the kind of VC capital and local talent seen in San Francisco or New York; consequently, many startups emerged as spin offs of large, established institutions (Sprint, Marion Laboratories, MRI Global). It will be interesting to see if a strong sense of community support along with wicked fast internet speeds will allow Kansas City to emerge as the proud and hotly debated owner of the title "Silicon Prarie".
Share your thoughts on Kansas City's startup culture in the comments section below. Having just graduated from college a few months ago, I took one too many surveys and heard one too many speeches about a subject that hung over my head all too often: "finding your passion". Sure I liked sports and movies, but what 20 year old college guy doesn't? Could I really consider playing pick up basketball or quoting lines from step brothers a passion? I always envied the people around me at college who could answer the question about their passion in 2 seconds flat. Whether it was a roommate who loved making music, or a buddy who couldn't wait to go rock climbing, there were people all around me during my 4 years of college discovering and developing their passions, while I was busy switching majors, becoming obsessed with fantasy football,and proudly claiming I had watched every episode of The Wire (must see TV by the way) Over the last couple of years I started reading more and more about startups and entrepreneurs running their own companies. I became fascinated with how startups and the people behind them were solving vastly different problems like the hassle of scheduling doctor appointments or providing efficient transportation to developing nations. I became inspired and enlightened by hungry founders and CEOs who were growing legitimate businesses by doing things differently or doing things better, all while doing it on their own terms. I read books and watched lectures that drove this passion to new levels and lead me to read more, learn more, and ask more. But so what, I read some books and articles, who hasn't. Did this mean I was really passionate about something? I eventually graduated and was lucky enough find a great job and move to Chicago, home to a booming startup culture. Perhaps now is a better time than ever to take my interest one step further and blog about the people, companies, and ideas that are leading the startup revolution. Perhaps writing a blog will help me and others understand what it takes to start, run, and grow a business by interviewing and covering the thousands of people doing it every single day. Perhaps writing a blog will allow me to finally answer that question about passion without hesitation. Or perhaps I'll just lose interest and use this blog as a way to share funny youtube videos until I try and pick up my next interest like sperlunking or larping. I guess theres only way to find out... |
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