Class #2September 10, 2013
DIVING IN & STARTUP HUSTLEHow to get your foot in the door.
Peter Boyce II | @badboyboyce
Peter Boyce IIInvestor, General Catalyst PartnersCo-founder, Rough Draft Ventures
Founding Director, HackHarvard & HCVPApprentice / Boston Director / Partnerships, Skillshare
Harvard College, Applied Math & CS ’13
What We’re Seeing• Weekly pitches | across all Boston schools | investing $1-25K
• design-centric | mobile | tools | front-line (ex. bitcoin)
• University-focused (you’re the target customer)
• eCommerce & payments
• On-demand convenience / service
• Career / recruiting / professional
• Disrupting / Displacing archaic industries: health, K-12
• Crowdfunding & collaborative consumption
• Hardware ‘renaissance’
Then vs. Now
What’s changed on campus at Harvard? In Boston?
What It Takes To Be A Student Founder• Team: scaling & growth via talent
• Product-focused: idea --> validation, integrating feedback
• Vision for the road forward: milestones, timeline
• Always be learning: product, people, reading, experiments
•Questions to ask yourself:
• How much time can I allocate to this?
• What metrics / scenarios would lead me to....
• What skills do I have? What skills do I need to develop?
• What’s my unfair advantage? Secret-sauce?
Resources for Student Founders• Locally: Rough Draft Ventures, DRF, Intelligent.ly, GA
• Accelerators: YC, DreamIt Ventures, Bolt, Techstars Boston
• Space: Harvard iLab, Koa Labs, Workbar, CIC
• University: hackathons, professors, competitions, dining hall!
•Community & Online:
• Learning: Blogs & Twitter, HackerNews, Skillshare, edX
• Events/Network: Scrambles!, unConference, CoFoundersLab
• Stay Informed: Greenhorn Connect // BostInno // VentureFizz
The Student Advantage
✓ .edu email address✓ Lighter commitments✓ Wide-open imagination✓ ‘Reality distortion’✓ Customer / Learning / Network density
Joining a Startup
Team | Operational Experience | Responsibility | Risk Profile | Learning
‘Come Together Like Voltron’
Reading
Relentlessly Resourceful - Paul Graham
http://www.paulgraham.com/relres.html
Reading
How things get done - Sam Altman
http://blog.samaltman.com/how-things-get-donel
The Road Forward• At the Scramble this weekend:
• Make new relationships
• Take ideas & translate them into MVP’s / validation
• Get out of your comfort zone: biz <-> product <-> tech
• Sustain the momentum:
• Get out into the Boston tech ecosystem
• Find new online learning sources & at your university
• Identify + reach out to mentors & collaborators
Have an epic
Scramble!
Say hi:[email protected]
@badboyboycepboyce.com
(slide design inspiration by @jackrmcdermott)