evans ink

I thoroughly enjoyed the chance to spend a couple of days in Montreal with a very engaged group of startups, at the Montreal Startup Camp on January 20th, 2011.  The theme for the Camp was Failure.

Below is the presentation I gave, entitled “My mistakes. Some advice from a well worn path”. It was intended to give a little perspective from a decade of startup experience, and the learning that comes from a pretty broad range of personal and professional challenges along the path!

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I’m been enthusiastically hammering my head against the wall of local media and small business revenue models for over a dozen years.  About a year ago, I strapped on my early stage start-up skates and wobbled my way back onto the ice.

the napkin phase

A lot has changed in the 6-7 years since I was an early stage entrepreneur.  While running a 150-person local media tech business keeps you contemporary with industry knowledge, rolodex and perspective, you forget the scrappy exhilaration and anxiety of a from-scratch business formed around a shining new idea. It also gives you a near carnal attachment to a clean cap table;)

learning to lean

I’ve read with a mixture of enthusiasm and marginal skepticism the lean start-up school of thought.  The “agile + listen to your market + pivot quickly” logic is high quality stuff for any start-up to seriously digest.

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You may know I’ve been working on a new start-up for the past 6 months, pretty much heads down – stealth by default, not design.  Actually we’ve been very active in our market, just totally focused on product, not business cards or websites!

In a couple of days, we’ll be taking the wraps off.  We’ve been chosen to launch at the DEMO Conference, which is a great venue to jump off the ledge with new products.  I’ve done this once before; it’s a pretty intense and fun launch pad!

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