November 2011
1 post
Eight New Mobile Startup Ideas - Looking Back at...
Recently, Founder Labs— the mobile-focused incubator that I started in August 2010— proudly presented eight fledgling mobile startup ideas, just five weeks old, graduating from our fifth class in San Francisco. Of twenty-four participants in this class, half quit their day jobs to follow their entrepreneurial passions before or during the program. 37% of the participants are...
October 2011
2 posts
Social, Mobile Start-Ups Lure Silicon Valley...
Shaherose Charania, who, as CEO of Founder Labs and founder of Women 2.0, finds funding for start-ups, works with new entrepreneurs and matches them with VCs, said, “we have a lot of founders in the community who have raised money in the past three months. Social and mobile commerce are definitely hot right now, as are tools to enable mobile development and distribution.”
Read the entire...
Apply to the Free Founder Showcase Pitch...
By Jonathan Greechan (Partner, The Founder Institute)
Are you a seed-stage startup looking for funding or exposure? Apply to the Founder Showcase Pitch Competition, where previous presenters have raised over $20 million without ever being required to pay a dime. To apply for your chance to present on-stage, click here.
Any company less than two years old with less than $250,000 USD in ...
September 2011
5 posts
Why You Should Build Your Own “CEO Club”
by Sonia Sahney Nagar (co-founder and CEO of Smarketplaces, and Founder Labs NYC graduate)
I can’t take credit for this idea, but I think it’s fantastic. I recently attended Arianna Huffington and Donna Karan’s WIE conference in New York (Women Inspiration Enterprise). My startup,Smarketplaces, was invited to participate in a pitch event that happened at the end of day one, and I decided to show...
How To Get Tweeted By Dave McClure
It all went down exactly a week before demo day.
4:00pm: our team was getting ready to present our progress taking part in Founder Labs to Dave McClure, of 500 Startups, and John Malloy, of Blue Run Ventures. We were 4 weeks in, with only 1 more week to go before final demo day before an audience of investors and advisors, and we were scrambling.
We had been exploring various ideas,...
Have breakfast with Silicon Valley startup...
[Sponsor an educational video series from Founder Labs and get one hour of 1:1 time with startup luminaries and VCs like Steve Blank, Eric Ries and Ann Miura-Ko : http://www.indiegogo.com/FounderLabs ] Founder Labs is producing an educational video series of eight episodes that focus on the early stage team and company formation and idea validation that takes place in Founder Labs. The...
The Art Of Customer Research: Part 2
In Part 1 of this piece, I had touched upon various challenges that beset qualitative user research… which brings me to some how-tos I’ve learned that are good practices that can help with customer research:
11 tips for getting the most out of your customer research
Define your goal thoughtfully. First off, it’s important tobe clear on what your goal is for any user research at hand. If...
The Art Of Customer Research: Part 1
The challenges of qualitative investigation
Customer research really is an art.
In my experience, I’ve seen fewer than a handful of excellent user experience researchers who have an innate knack for it. Unfortunately, more often than not, qualitative research is muddied by:
users wishing to please the researcher
unmindful leading questions by researchers, and
artificial settings and tasks...
August 2011
1 post
Really listening to advice as an entrepreneur
As an entrepreneur, you are constantly bombarded with advice on everything, from what you should be doing, to how you should dress. No matter who you talk to, chances are he/she will offer you some advice. Thus entrepreneurs seem to develop a shell around them, and most of the time, simply ignore the advice. This is completely rational: if you just took all the advice you received, you would...
July 2011
5 posts
"Founder Labs was the best way to keep my thoughts...
A few weeks ago, Founder Labs’ first session in New York, lead by Shaherose Charania, wrapped up with an awesome demo night at the USV event space. Leading up to that evening, I spent many of my nights and weekends working with her and the teams as a volunteer, and I’m grateful to have been part of it.
Founder Labs team Smarketplaces presenting on Demo Night to judges Fred Wilson and Jenny...
Shai Goldman, Director Of Silicon Valley Bank,...
Shai Goldman is a Director at Silicon Valley Bank and a long term supporter of Founder Labs. Silicon Valley Bank is also a sponsor of Founder Labs. We caught up with Shai to discuss some key trends in technology, mobile, entrepreneurship in NYC and the role of Silicon Valley Bank in the startup ecosystem. You can follow Shai Goldman on Twitter @shaig and Silicon Valley Bank @SVB_Financial.
FL:...
Fred Wilson on Mobile Startups, Team Diversity and...
Unions Square Ventures (USV) partner and Founder Labs mentor Fred Wilson has worked closely with early stage companies for several years. We caught up with him at his office to talk about USV’s investment philosophy, the startup ecosystem, team dynamics and mobile startups. FL: Thanks for taking the time to sit down and chat. To start, can you talk about what effect you think programs like Founder...
"Founder Labs is a winning formula" - Mentor Fred...
The first session of Founder Labs in NYC wrapped up with Demo night at Union Square Ventures on Wednesday. Mentors Fred Wilson and Joanne Wilson were instrumental in bringing the program to NYC.
Fred Wilson was an active mentor during the program and a judge on Demo night - he wrote a blog post about Founder Labs and the teams that formed during the 5 week session:
“The first NYC program was...
Mozilla launches Web FWD, an innovation...
This week, Mozilla Labs launched Web FWD (Web Forward) - a community-driven innovation accelerator. Web FWD supports web app, mobile, or social product innovators by providing a space at Mozilla where they can build their products. Founder Labs CEO Shaherose Charania is a mentor in the program.
The program has rolling admissions, so founders can apply at any time. During the four week program,...
June 2011
6 posts
Founder Labs Week 4: How To Pitch To A VC
It’s the end of week 4 here at Founder Labs, and the pressure is on. In just 3 days, we will have our final presentations, so all of the Founder Labs teams are working fast and furious to build out our demos and hone our pitches. On Wednesday, we will present our ideas and learnings in front of a room packed with over 60+ mentors, entrepreneurs and a panel of investors.
This final push...
Creating And Launching The Thinking Person's Drink
Our Final Demo Night for Founder Labs NYC is sponsored by Prometheus Springs, the world’s first capsaicin spiced elixir. This beverage company is a NYC startup and has been on shelves for 24 months now and is available in Whole Foods and other premier markets like Wegmans, Sunflower Markets and Central Markets totaling up to about 1000 stores. We’re interviewing Rahul Panchal...
Founder Labs Week 3: A Start up is Born
(Union Square Ventures Partner Fred Wilson listens to presentations from Founder Labs teams)
Ethnographic Study: When happens when you place 16 bright, enthusiastic and well armed people in a room for 48 hours, and tell them to naturally pair into groups of four to start a company? Is it mayhem? Is it lean & mean product development-speed-dating? Or is it a brilliant way to connect...
Founder Labs Week 2: Customer Development - Where...
(Founder Labs Team Spiderfruit doing Customer Development in Union Square Park - June 12th, 2011)
The brainstorms flow, the sketches come together with a final flourish, and the engineers reason through how the database schema can be perfectly laid out. But the tough news for most potential startups comes when they “get out of the building” and go find out if the product fits the market. Who...
Founder Labs Week 1: All Hail the Team!
Week 1 started out with a bang as all the Founder Labs participants had to choose their partners for the next 4 weeks. It’s like a game off dodge ball, where you have to choose people based on compatible skill set and personality. And boy, was it an intense 2 hours! People teamed up based on a variety of reasons: from similar interests to pure likability. During this time we had Shaherose’s voice...
Founder Labs Week 0: If you thought the world were...
Perhaps none of us would ever admit to believing in the proclaimed day of rapture, or perhaps the 14 of us who arrived on one of the rare sunny days of 2011 figured that it would be as good of a day as any to meet some new people and start a new company.
Personally, I arrived at 9:30 a little bleary eyed. It was a Saturday morning after a particularly long flight with a botched connection from...
May 2011
2 posts
Founder Labs Week 0: Founder Speed-Dating -- Focus...
This past weekend marked the beginning of Founder Labs’ first NYC endeavor. Like many other entrepreneur-support programs, Founder Labs aspires to foster the development of start-ups that will change the world… However, Founder Labs differs from other programs in that it focuses on picking people pre-team, and creating a mash-up of individuals’ unique skills and talents.
Part science experiment...
Founder Labs NYC launch featured in Xconomy
The NYC launch of Founder Labs was recently featured in Xconomy. Read on to learn about how Founder Labs came to NYC, what we look for in applicants and why Founder Labs is “practical, hands-on instruction” for those who are new to the complexities of starting a business.
Picking the right team can make all the difference when launching a new venture. Starting on May 21, a group of some 16...
April 2011
1 post
President Obama @ Facebook Townhall and FL Alumni...
Dreams do come true.
For Raissa Nebie, so far two in 6 months: start her startup Spoondate and the second, meet President Obama. Yes, at Founder Labs we can make some dreams come true (and fast!).
Raissa came to Founder Labs with just an idea, “I want to start a dating site for foodies” is what she used to say, and now with funding from 500Startups and mentoring, she’s poising...
March 2011
3 posts
Founder Labs Comes to NYC
After 3 sessions in the San Francisco Bay Area with 60 founders, we are bringing Founder Labs to NYC. It started with just a discussion late in 2010 and is now live and ready for you New Yorkers. Since this city never sleeps, co-working at Founder Labs after work hours should come naturally to you all.
Hackers and engineers, designers and marketing mavens go ahead, and apply, we have about 15...
The start of Founder Labs
Here we are — 60 founders have gone through Founder Labs in 3 different sessions, right now we have about 5 companies in the earliest stages hacking and building away, 1 funding event (read about it here), and now we are quickly building ourselves into an independent entity from our origin, Women 2.0. Meet Founder Labs here. It all started from a small idea and a big challenge from, Steve...
Founder Labs - a flash back
We’ve run Founder Labs three times already, twice in San Francisco with the support of True Ventures and in Menlo Park with Blue Run Ventures. To give you an idea of how it all works, we’d encourage you to read stories from past participants. The previous 3 sessions where held under the Women 2.0 brand thus the blog posts are found on that site.
Labs 001: Summer 2010 Week 1 Update Week 2...
