2011.02.19
500 Global Team
Ok maybe not QUITE, but they did do something pretty awesome this week. Read on for more.
Since we announced the 500 Startups Accelerator last week, we’ve been having several excellent talks from our SuperMentors. This week, Hiten Shah, Ryan Freitas, and Charles Hudson took time out of their busy day of jumping from burning buildings and leaping tall buildings with a single bound to visit the 500 Startups Secret Lair and share their wisdom with our budding mad scientists (aka accelerator startups).
To kick off the week, Hiten Shah did a “live metrics review” with our startups. Each one got put into the hot seat and shared their current state of customer metrics. Hiten then became Simon Cowell and gave them honest feedback on how they could improve their metrics analysis. (No video available for this talk)
Ryan Freitas, designer and co-founder of About.me (which was recently acquired by AOL), swooped in on Thursday and talked about validating ideas with design. Check out the video below to watch Ryan’s talk. You can also download slides from his presentation here.
Finally, Charles Hudson, co-founder of Bionic Panda Games and venture partner at SoftTech VC, delivered a talk about BD for startups – in particular, how to approach the function and when/how it makes sense for early-stage startups. No video available for this talk, but Charles’ slides are embedded below. Also, Charles wrote a great blog post on BD for startups which you should also check out.
How Not to Let BD Tank Your Startup