Today, I’m pleased to announce that Localmind has been acquired by Airbnb. See Techcrunch’s story and Airbnb’s blog post for more info. Localmind was Year One Labs’ first investment, and it’s our first exit as well. It’s a fantastic day for the team: Lenny Rachitsky, Beau Haugh and Nelson Gauthier. They worked like crazy over […]
The Future of Startup Accelerators
I’m not much of a prognosticator, but recently Sarah Needleman from the Wall Street Journal called me to ask my thoughts about startup accelerators. She had found a blog post I had written (How to Maximize the Value of Mentors in Startup Accelerators), and wanted my input on a story she was writing. Funnily enough, […]
Weekly Investor Updates (How To Communicate with Investors & Mentors)
At Year One Labs we had 20 mentors and investors. It was (and remains) a great group. Many of them were quite active in helping our portfolio companies; many continue to help. A number of them went on to invest in the companies as well. Our system for providing mentorship to the teams wasn’t perfect […]
Localmind 2.0 – Tapping into Real-Time, Local Knowledge with “Area Questions”
Localmind came out of Year One Labs (where I’m a Founding Partner.) They raised a seed round in July, 2011 after graduating from the accelerator. Since then they’ve been working on a lot of interesting stuff, and today they launched one of their biggest updates yet: Localmind 2.0. Elevator pitch: Localmind allows you to tap […]
Speaking at the Michigan Lean Startup Conference
I must say that I was very surprised when I was asked to speak at the Michigan Lean Startup Conference on May 17th. The lineup includes some awesome speakers and Lean Startup / customer development experts: Steve Blank, Ash Maurya, Dan Martell, Brant Cooper, Patrick Vlaskovits, Dave Feinleib and Noah Kagan. And me… What the […]
HighScore House Launches at 500Startups
HighScore House is one of our portfolio companies at Year One Labs. After leaving Year One Labs, they decided to join 500Startups and go through the 3-4 month acceleration program to continue building their product, learning and growing their network. Yesterday, they presented at 500Startups’ Demo Day. It’s interesting to see the pitch evolve – […]
A Massive Opportunity to Create Massive Damage Success
Massive Damage is the location-based mobile game company that graduated from Year One Labs last year. I’ve written about them in the past. Their first game, Please Stay Calm (a zombie apocalypse game) is killing it with a strong, dedicated user base, fun / addictive gameplay, and lots of cool stuff coming soon. Plus, the […]
Year One Labs Completes its Incubation Phase
Today we announced the completion of Year One Labs’s incubation phase. I’ve been working on Year One Labs since April, 2010. For those that don’t know, it’s an early stage accelerator using the Lean Startup methodology. We made five investments (which was our plan) and have been very pleased with the results so far. In […]
HighScore House is Hiring
HighScore House is a Year One Labs portfolio company. The company was founded by Theo Ephraim and Kyle Seaman. HighScore House is rethinking the way kids earn the things that they want, while making the lives of families easier and more positive than ever before. They use game design to motivate kids to take on […]
Massive Damage Launches Please Stay Calm in the U.S.
Massive Damage is a Year One Labs’ portfolio company, founded by Ken Seto and Garry Seto. The company has just released their iOS game, Please Stay Calm on the U.S. App Store. They’ve been beta testing it with players in Canada for about a month, and now they’re ready for prime time. Please Stay Calm […]
Founding Partner at 