https://youtu.be/oGJSEC23qzs This is the workshop I often share with early-stage Founders when visiting accelerators like Techstars, Dogpatch etc... It is based on Steve Blanks book and an earlier workshop my former colleague Jens Lapinski gave to one of my cohorts.The workshop gives Founders (and early-stage investors) a common framework to understand where they are on … Continue reading Workshop: How to avoid premature scaling
I was kindly invited to Skolkovo in Moscow to talk about Corporate Innovation and what that means for startups and corporates. In this talk I outline why I think this area is exploding, the data supporting it and what that means for Corporates and Startups. Also weirdly for some reason I forgot to take off … Continue reading The Explosion in Corporate Innovation (Talk Moscow 2019)
You have Product Market Fit (PMF) if 40+% of your users would be 'very disappointed' if your service shut down tomorrow. Sean Ellis, who led growth at companies like Dropbox and LogMeIn, arrived at this insight after years of trying to define what Product Market fit looked like. You can read more about Sean's 'Product … Continue reading Look for ‘Despite Moments’ as you search for ‘Product Market Fit’
Discovering the art of Programming, Presenting, Product and Investing
Time is flying, mentor office hours is wrapped up and we ran a successful experiment by introducing a Retreat for all our companies and program staff on the outskirts of Berlin. (You can read more about Week 3 here) Monday - Mentors and Founder Story 100 Mentor Meetings today from 9 to 12.30 Christina Fonseca … Continue reading Behind the scenes at Techstars – Week 4
Following on from last week, we had 3 more days of mentor meetings and 2 great founder stories this week. Exhaustion is beginning to set in and people are all beginning to share their favourite meditation tips and apps. Monday - Mentors and CEO Meeting 100 Mentor Meetings today from 9 to 12.30 CEO Meeting … Continue reading Behind the scenes at Techstars – Week 3
Following on from Week 1 Orientation, this is where we start to introduce the companies to our mentor network. This year we have scheduled 800+ face-to-face mentor meetings over three weeks. Mentoring is so critical to Techstars that our whole accelerator model is ‘mentor-driven’. (I will write more about our Mentor process in a future … Continue reading Behind the scenes at Techstars – Week 2 – Mentor Meetings
Great companies and organisations are mission led. For example, at Techstars our mission is to help Entrepreneurs succeed. We use a performance management framework called ‘Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)’ to help us ensure we are all aligned to this mission. Whether it is OKR’s or another framework, most people in an organisation have some … Continue reading How OKR’s help you succeed
Techstars Accelerator Week 1 Overview
Founders sometimes underestimate how a great network can help them succeed. In some cases, and in particular with deeply technical Founders with limited business experience, networking might seem like something that ’sales people’ did to gather business cards, travel around the world and enjoy long lunches at the companies expense. Not only is this wrong, but … Continue reading How to think about your network when it comes to startup success
Connor Murphy 