As a sponsor of Startup Day and entrepreneur enthusiast, here’s a quick shout out and thanks to the Seattle 2.0 team and the army of volunteers who pulled off a great event!  The day was chock-full of casual conversations, and terrific speakers, who shared at least one common element: passion.  They combined healthy (if occasionally daunting) realism, with success stories, inspiration, and practical advice.   Full disclosure—while busy staffing NWEN’s display table, I couldn’t glean every ounce of advice from every speaker, so some sound-bytes and side-bars are reflected below.  That said, check out my personal top-ten take-aways:

• Caffeine’s got nothin on Cooperman. Started off the day with coffee, granola bars, and Hillel Cooperman, dropping an average of two f-bombs per minute, but great advice and anecdotes.
• Two to tango. Ksenia Oustiougova spoke candidly about the challenge of asking for support from the men in our lives (fill in “partner” of any kind and this is true.) Andy Sack’s start-up checklist includes the absolute necessity of getting buy-in and support from your significant other.
• Release early and often. Though his topic was on financing, talking with TA McCann at the event, he’s a poster-child for the importance of beta testing—lather, rinse, repeat..  Gist had something like 47 builds before the official launch. Absolutely fanatical about customer feedback. No wonder FOGs (friends of Gist) are a large and loyal audience!
• Just the stats, man. Dave Schappell’s estimate: one in 15 attendees of Startup Day will actually go try and start a business (and I’m just guessing this is a subset of the 25% of the audience who raised their hands when asked if they’d been called a workaholic before).  Talking with attendees, all of whom found the sessions valuable, a few said: I learned at this conference that I do, in fact, need to keep my day job. Good to learn that now, instead of a bank loan, two mortgages, and three awkward holidays asking friends and family for money later—this is clearly not for the faint of heart.
• People need people. We’ve all heard it before, but Alex Berg suggested a new twist on an old favorite: Jerks are “little jerk factories”; all the sudden you come to work wondering why you don’t like anyone you work with.  Every hire counts (and evidently multiplies!).
• Pick one. Ben Huh: you can be big or focused, but not both. It’s like the project management adage: you want good, cheap and fast?  Pick two.  Ben’s content-rich presentation on the stunning realities of monetizing web traffic dove-tailed nicely with Alex Castro’s talk on revenue models for Software as a Service offerings.  Good stuff.
• Fumpany. Mike Mathieu quipped that the worst insult you can get is: “That’s not a startup, it’s a feature.”  Back in my Alliance of Angels days, my colleague Kevin used to call those “fumpanies” (vs. companies).  If you’re a one-trick pony that could be considered a feature of an existing product, ask yourself what’s to stop the developer of that product adding on that bell or whistle themselves.
• The gift that keeps on giving: Check out the Startup Day twitter stream.  Lots of gems here culled from speaker presentations.
• Got a dog-sitter (thanks, Dave Schappell!).  Now it’s official.
• Got a couple offers for side jobs (thanks, Marcelo, for the pleasure of introducing Ben Huh, Ksenia Oustiougova, Alex Castro and Jonathan Sposato—extra love to the always-gracious Jonathan for suggesting that I become a voice coach—I’ll definitely keep my day job, but got a few business cards from folks wanting to pay for some voice-over work).

So if you’re in that elite group of folks who are inspired by what you heard and Startup Day, what next?  In this reporter’s opinion, sign up now for Entrepreneur University. It’s a logical next step where we’ll both inspire you with nationally recognized speakers and local heroes, and put you to work. With four interactive workshops peppered throughout the day, get your hands dirty wrestling with such challenges as “Will the dog eat the dog food? “How do I finance this puppy?”  “ How can I give my elevator pitch a lift? “ And “How can I harness social media and take the power to the people?”   Not to mention 90 minutes in which you can sit down with an investor one-on-one in our always-popular VC bistro….and/or sign up for a lunch date with experts in raising money, marketing, sales, law, and entrepreneurship.  Hope to see you there!

PS: Though we don’t plan to monetize these particular voice-overs, the NWEN board and friends will be showcasing their karaoke stylings at Hula Hula tonight at 7 PM.   Just sayin. If you read this blog post in time, don’t be shy…join us and grab the mic.

Tags: entrepreneur university, startup day

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