How To Launch a Startup: Ideas, Acceleration, Raising Capital and More

March 6, 2008

I was very glad to see that someone recorded the recent Blitzweekend presentations. Stephane Daury did a great job recording everything, and I’ve enjoyed watching the presentations I didn’t see.

I gave a presentation at Blitzweekend about starting a company. It was a mixture of a few things including:

The presentation is a bit longer than I intended it to be, but I’m pleased with the results. A bit more practice would have helped, and more point form notes instead of what I had written up to use. But I hope people enjoyed the presentation and got something out of it. Anyone?

Anyway, if you’re interested in learning more about Standout Jobs, where it came from and some of the lessons learned so far (and you want to see me “in action” – after all, who wouldn’t?!?!) please check out the presentation and let me know what you think.

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Comments
  • Do you think this is applicable across the world?
  • I think that it is a great presentation. Some of the ideas are just what young entrepreneurs need to learn about from some one like you and I bet they went away from the presentation with more optimism than when they came in!
  • ben,

    i can tell you this was a great presentation, i got to talk to many entrepreneurs/teams who told me it was very inspiring, and who wished you were there on saturday or sunday to give them some advice.

    thanks again,
  • Hey Ben, this is a strong presentation and some great guidance. Particularly your point that as a founder you never stop raising money. I had never heard that before and never recognized it until you said it, but it's true.

    We're building a prototype and raising money at once. Through that process I've found you just have to get used to running the two streams and do your best with them.

    Now the second balancing act - running the big-picture business and detailed execution at once - presents an additional challenge.

    It seems to me the most natural fit in most startups is to have the technical founder more focused on the details of execution, especially in the early days when breaking new ground is such a priority. But that just be in our situation and with our team.
  • @heri: Nice to hear the feedback was good. I stupidly forgot to tell everyone where I blog, but hopefully they can find me. And they're welcome to ask any questions...I'm not TOO hard to find!
  • @James Christensen: I don't see why not...I'm sure some things are different when it comes to raising capital, for example, but the struggles and issues in starting a startup are (in my opinion) universal.

    @James (from adhack): Thanks for the comment. I agree regarding the separation of work between the technical founder and a non-technical one. But, any founder that's not neck-deep in execution is going to be in trouble later on. So it's hard to separate things TOO much.
  • Jiansbond
    Hi

    Ben mentioned a good site to read up on the VC funding process called " venture ---". Can someone please clarify which site he was referring to. I tried to reply the video a couple of times but still could not make the second word.

    Thanks alot !!!
  • @Jiansbond -- The site I mentioned was Venture Hacks -- http://www.venturehacks.com -- definitely worthwhile.
  • Jiansbond
    Thanks Ben !!!

    I honestly discovered your blog yesterday and now I'm addicted :)

    A lot of good information here, thanks for sharing.
  • @Jiansbond: Great. Were you at Blitzweekend?
  • Jiansbond
    Unfortuntely I'm not in the vicinity, I'm in the NYC region. In addition, I already have a solid concrete idea I'm currently pursuing. Planning to launch in May/June, if you are interested then I'm definitely interested in getting your feedback on it. I will contact you once the prototype is ready.

    Best,
  • This blog has been proving to be an important addition to my bookmarks!

    Ben, thanks you for sharing that very powerful and insightful presentation. And don't worry to much on forgeting to mention about your blog on your presentation. I am pretty sure they would remember your name and would find their way here as well ;)
  • Gotcha Ben -- thank for the info.
  • @Jiansbond: Well I'm glad you found the presentation useful, even if you're not in Montreal.

    Please do keep in touch on your project, happy to help where I can.
  • Thanks for the presentation ben, It had a lot of interesting information
  • @David: Glad you enjoyed it!
  • Ben, it was great..! Thanks for coming, it's always great to have entrepreneurs encouraging the future generation :)
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