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How To Pitch: Bootcamp Day 6
May 7th, 2012 by meangeme
On Sunday afternoon, Brett Shellhammer, our EIR, coached our residents on pitching to prepare them for tonight’s pitch night.
He went through the things that all pitches need,
Throughout his presentation, Brett referenced the pitch that Mike McCauley, cofounder of BufferBox, did to win the VeloCity Venture Fund last term.
He also referenced this great article that includes Dave McClure’s pitch tips. One of the key takeaways was talking about more than your cool technology and establishing emotional context for your listener – if you make them care about what you’re doing you’ve almost won.
Brett’s office hours in the VeloCity residence can be found here. He’s available on Sunday from 2-4pm. VeloCity residents: you can book meetings with him whenever you need some feedback, advice or coaching.
We are ready to see what you’ve come up with during hack weekend, see you in the VeloCity Garage for Pitch Night tonight!
Tags: Brett Shellhammer, How to pitch, Mike McCauley, pitching help, VeloCity Bootcamp
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Pitching, shipping & finding your cofounder: Bootcamp Day 4
May 5th, 2012 by meangeme
Last night marked the start of hack weekend! To get the residents ready to go, we brought in Devon Galloway from Vidyard to talk about his experience as a cofounder.
The key takeaways from Devon’s talk: your cofounder needs to be someone you’re extremely close to who you trust to stick with you through the hard times of starting a business. Startup founders do everything – make sure your cofounder is someone who’s willing to put forth that effort and dedication, someone who will do whatever it takes.
Then it was time to talk about shipping – what hack weekend is really all about. Gareth MacLeod, cofounder of Matinee, and Scott Tolksdorf joined us to share what they’ve learned from hacking projects in short periods of time.
What they want you to know before you start hacking: focus on your MVP (because what you think will take 1 hour will probably take 3), communicate with each other (be close enough to high five), don’t try to reinvent the wheel (use existing platforms and build on top of them) & don’t be afraid to ask for help!
Then we started off the 2 minute pitches. The VeloCity residents with ideas pitched them to potential team members.
A huge thanks to Devon, Gareth & Scott for coming back this term and getting our residents pumped for the weekend, we really appreciate their time!
Keep hacking away – we’re excited for Monday night, pitch night, to see what all of you have come up with!
(& as always, pictures from last night can be found on Facebook)
Tags: devon galloway, finding a cofounder, Gareth MacLeod, Hack Weekend kickoff, matinee, Pitching, Scott Tolksdorf, shipping, VeloCity Bootcamp, vidyard
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Accounting, IP & speed dating: Bootcamp Day 3
May 4th, 2012 by meangeme
Last night, the VeloCity residents took over the Accelerator Centre.
We started off Bootcamp Day 3 with Tom Beynon from the law firm McCarter Grespan Beynon Weir LLP. He talked about setting up your company as a partnership or a corporation and the benefits of both, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), and intellectual property (IP). The biggest takeaway from Tom’s talk was not signing anything you don’t understand or haven’t fully read, as well as the value of IP to potential investors.
Next we heard from Christine Reid from Ernst & Young – her most impactful point was straightening out your accounting right away and dating absolutely all of your documents. Don’t want until you have a giant box of receipts to talk to an accountant; keep your records straight from the very beginning.
The summary of all of this: don’t be afraid to ask for help – accounting & legal are extremely important and if you don’t deal with them now, they’ll come back to bite you later. After hearing all of this expert advice, we started the startup speed dating!
It went extremely well, everyone got the chance to meet each other and share their ideas and skills.
Check out the video,
We are very excited for today – finding your cofounder, shipping and the start of hack weekend! See you tonight!
P.S. All of the pictures from last night can be found on Facebook.
Tags: accounting basics, christine reid, ernst & young, legal ip, mccarter grespan, startup speed dating, tom beynon, VeloCity Bootcamp, velocity residents
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The Lean Business Canvas and Startup Design: Bootcamp Day 2
May 3rd, 2012 by meangeme
VeloCity Bootcamp is moving along fantastically! We had a low-key but packed VeloCity Great Hall last night.
Mike Kirkup, our director, started off with the Lean Business Canvas. He gave the residents the lowdown and then went into an example: a lemonade stand. We had lots of creative participation from the crowd (VeloCity students seem to want to make an app for everything) and got down to the point of the hack weekend coming up. Make sure you use the lean canvas to test your assumptions and find out if they’re true and if, in the end, any customer will actually want your product.
Then Satish Kanwar and Arati Sharma joined us from Jet Cooper. We learned about designing a product for usability and focusing on that usability instead of just hacking something cool. Satish recommended going out there and talking to your potential users, saying, “Rarely are you the sole expert on something you’re building for somebody else.” He talked a lot about user experience design, finding your “golden feature” and making sure it’s easy for users to get to it. It was a great talk and we’re thankful that Satish shared his experience with us!
Next we split off into groups and did some intense brainstorming!
One of our favourite ideas was a scheduling map for extremely busy washrooms.
Looking forward to tonight’s bootcamp at the Accelerator Centre – we’re going to cover accounting and legal IP. And some startup speed dating will also go on!
See you tonight!
@UWVeloCity
(And if you want to see the rest of the pictures from last night, they’re on Facebook)
Tags: arati sharma, brainstorming, jet cooper, lean business canvas, mike kirkup, satish kanwar, Spring 2012, VeloCity Bootcamp, velocity residence
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VeloCity Bootcamp Kickoff!
May 2nd, 2012 by meangeme
The first night of VeloCity Bootcamp in the Huether Hotel went extraordinarily well! The energy was through the roof and we got the opportunity to meet so many of our new VeloCity residents.
Our director, Mike Kirkup, started off the night with VeloCity 101 – the lowdown on everything VeloCity.
After VeloCity 101, Liz Koblyk, networking expert, gave our residents lots of great information – getting back to the basics that often get overlooked when it comes to meeting new people. She brought things that seem like common sense to the foreground, including what your body language tells people, how to start a conversation, and what’s considered acceptable behaviour. A great point she really stressed was that you should approach people and assume they already like you. This will put you more at ease and make the conversation go more smoothly.
Then the residents got the chance to actually network – they put Liz’s tips to use, it was an awesome icebreaker!
A huge thanks goes out to everyone who came out, especially Liz for sharing her fantastic tips with us!
With such a great start, we’re extremely excited for tonight! Stay tuned for our recap of startup web and product design & the Lean Business Canvas tomorrow as well as the final post in our So You’re A Startup Series, How To Deal With Startup Life.
Tags: Spring 2012, VeloCity Bootcamp, VeloCity Bootcamp Kickoff, velocity residence
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