Tweet I’m proud to announce tha the Co-Founders Meetup is expanding to Austin, Texas! I was tired of people saying “how come the co-founders meetup is only in Silicon Valley”. “We need one where I live.” Fine! If you live in Austin, just sign up on the Meetup website. Locally, Ricardo is graciously helping me [...]
Tweet Last night was the Paris Founder Conference (more on that in another post, but if you can’t wait to hear about it, you can read TechCrunch France’s coverage of it here). A frequent topic of conversation came up: the misunderstood entrepreneur. When you start a startup, even your own family doesn’t understand why you [...]
Tweet This week has been very productive (and it’s only Tuesday morning): First on Monday, VentureBeat published my guest column on the winning pitch at the Founder Conference. It’s worth watching the video and reading the analysis, if you ever wondered why no one calls you back after you pitch your idea. Then this morning [...]
Tweet Possibly the most popular part of the Founder Conference this year was the live pitch feedback, a workshop run by Adeo Ressi. We actually extended its allocated time by 20 minutes because it was so popular. The rules are simple: you give your best elevator pitch, in less than 1 minute, as if you [...]
Tweet I’m posting the videos of the Founder Conference here on my blog until we revamp the Founder Conference website… By the way, if you want to be the first one to know about the next Founder Conference, there is a sign-up form on the right. Should you join an incubator such as Y-Combinator, the [...]
Tweet In the tradition of the Co-Founders MeetUp of Silicon Valley, the Founder Conference will feature 12 pitches from startups. If you need help to build your startup, you should apply. However, note that this is not the place to launch your startup to the press, or expect to raise money from venture capitalists. Other [...]
Tweet Being an entrepreneur is quite popular these days, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Everyone thinks they have what it takes to be an entrepreneur. As part of my work with the Founder Institute in Paris, figuring out who will build a great startup is a big topic. Your resume can tell. I know, it [...]
Tweet Last Thursday I attended Stanford Design EXPE, where a dozen teams of students present the result of their 9 months of innovative work in relation with a corporate sponsor. The twist is that all projects must build a hardware prototype (I guess because it’s linked to the Mechanical Engineering department). For me, it was [...]
Tweet I love advising early-stage startups. A question I get frequently is “how to formalize bringing a co-founder on board.” I could write a book on the topic, but it’s really much simpler than that. Here’s how you do it in one tweet: @joe I expect this co-founder position to be worth ~30% equity. My [...]
Tweet Yesterday was the third Co-Founders MeetUp of Silicon Valley, which set a new attendance record of 120 people. 12 startups pitched their idea with the goal to attract co-founders. The quality of the ideas was very high. Another thing I liked is that this MeetUp truly opens my mind: it’s like a giant idea [...]