What happens when you invite smart people to brainstorm on how to jumpstart a startup? Ideas happen.
Photo by Tech Cocktail
That was the idea behind the Startup Telepresence Roundtable organized by DJ Saul, Vice President of New Ventures for iStrategyLabs. The event was held at the AT&T Innovation Center.
Photo by Tech Cocktail
The startups were in four cities – New York, San Francisco, DC and Miami. DJ told them they had two minutes to say “who you are, what you’re working on, and your problem or issue.” The focus was on how to solve their problems “through connections, technology and collaboration.”
Kane Sarhan, Co-Founder of E[nstitute], a two-year apprenticeship program, wants help with finding his target age group and reaching scale. During open brainstorming, Kane was advised to:
- Leverage media coverage to raise awareness of his startup and increase in-bound links.
- Reach out to students’ parents.
- Position E[nstitute] as the go-to alternative to college.
- Identify celebrity spokespersons to reach target audience via social media.
- Establish relationships with charter and private schools.
- Connect with social entrepreneurship centers on college campuses.
- Check out the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.
Next up was Ruchika Kumar, Founder of Boutiika, an e-commerce site that aggregates small boutiques in San Francisco and New York. Ruchika’s challenge? How to scale up quickly on a bootstrapped budget.
To get out of the bootstrapping phase, Ruchika was advised to develop a business plan. She should identify the most valuable activity or content that Boutiika provides. She also should identity her customers and their personas. Other ideas:
- Add a Facebook share button.
- Create a weekly newsletter to showcase what’s new in the stores and on the website.
- Use the ambassador model to build the local network and offer a commission.
- Collaborate with special events like Shecky’s Girls Night Out.
- Offer invitation only events to make people feel they are part of an exclusive network.
- Find celebrity style icons.
From across the conference table, Aditi Shekar, Director of Changeshops for Ashoka Changemakers, shared her challenge: How to move an idea beyond the startup stage to the next level? Aditi wants ideas on how to scale matchmaking. Some suggestions:
- Use a tagging system to match Changemakers with other organizations and investors.
- Check out The Hub, a global community of social entrepreneurs and social enterprises.
- Focus on the quality of the relationships rather than the quantity.
- Make emotional connections; serendipity and emotion play a critical role in matching.
Jacob Israel, Co-Founder of VaultBox, a personal inventory system, is based in Miami, but his problem was no day at the beach. How do you convince people they should inventory their property before they suffer a loss? Good question. Some answers:
- Identify potential partners, including pawn shop owners and local police departments.
- Offer group discounts to homeowners and condo associations.
- Establish relationships with property insurance and home security companies.
- Establish an emotional connection; trigger the feeling of being burglarized.
- Promote service during hurricane season.
DJ plans to create a Facebook group to continue the conversation.
