January 2011

GreenhornTV Episode 57: January 30th – February 5th

Welcome to another awesome week in Boston! January may be behind us, but February will be bringing it on with tons of great events! As always, we count down the can't miss events of the week. Read on to see where you should be!

 

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Founder's Friday: Followup.cc

Who are the faces behind a company? How did the company get started? These are common question you may have about startups you see and hear about. If you don't get a chance to personally meet the founders, you're unlikely to ever know their story. That's what Founder Fridays is all about.

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Creating the Right PR Statement

Every company sets out to solve a problem, which is outlined in their mission statement. However, when it comes to describing that message to their customers, competitors, and market. This message often becomes jarbled, misinterpreted, and some occasion’s completely different than what they wanted to say. Follow this strategic PR process to help you create that perfect message.
There are few questions you must answer, so let's start:
 
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Book Review: Getting to Plan B

Have an idea for a startup? Good. Are you ready to accept that it's wrong? What do you do when your initial idea fails? How can you turn a failed first attempt into a successful business? These question and more are answered in Getting to Plan B by John Mullins and Randy Komisar

Whether your startup is one year or one day old, this book will help you better evaluate your idea and determine your business model that will build a sustainable business. If you're a student of Lean Startups, this fits perfectly with the customer development methodology.  

There are quite a few great concepts that Randy and John cover in Getting to Plan B, but I'd like to highlight a few that stood out to me:

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Tim Chae: The College Entrepreneur's Toolbox: Run & Manage a Startup on a College Student Budget

 

In the spirit of the upcoming Lean Startup Meetup with Eric Ries (Jan 27th), I have put together a list of all the free or incredibly cheap tools to help you run your startup with efficiency and less stress.  Running a startup, especially the earlier days of it is stressful enough, so you can do with less of that.  I personally use a good majority of the products from this list, but for the ones that I haven't used, I've only heard good things about it.
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Greenhorn TV Episode 56: January 23rd – Jan 29th

Welcome to the last week of January! While January is slowly fading away, the events have really started going. This week we have over 40 awesome Boston startup events, with over 150 this month! That's a lot to choose from, but we narrow it down for you with this week's episode of Greenhorn TV. Watch or read on to find the *can't miss* events of the week!

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Founder Fridays: Aprigo

Who are the faces behind a company? How did the company get started? These are common question you may have about startups you see and hear about. If you don't get a chance to personally meet the founders, you're unlikely to ever know their story. That's what Founder Fridays is all about.

This week we have Ron Zalkind, CTO and co-founder of Aprigo, a could data protection company.

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Observations on the Boston Entrepreneur Ecosystem: A Year in the Boston Startup Scene by Jeff Seibert

It's now been exactly one year since I moved to Boston (Cambridge, to be exact) from Palo Alto and in that time I've had the opportunity to meet and get to know many, many amazing people, attend countless startup community events, and watch the high-tech entrepreneurship scene here spread its wings and grow noticeably. The greater Boston area and everyone involved here have a lot to be proud of and a lot to look forward to.

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Greenhorn Connect's Future: A Platform for Boston

It's been 16 incredible months here at Greenhorn Connect and as 2011 has kicked off with a bang, I'd like to take a moment and reflect on where we're headed with the future of Greenhorn Connect.  Now that the big question is less about "what is Greenhorn Connect" and more about "what's next for Greenhorn Connect" I'd like to share some of my vision for how we'll be evolving along with the Boston ecosystem in coming months.  

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Vision, Mission, and Gameplan

Every now and then, you come to think of an interesting idea and try to figure out what next steps to take. Follow my three-step approach of turning your idea into reality.

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Greenhorn TV Episode 55: January 18 - 22

We hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend, but now we're back to another great week in the Boston startup community. This week there's over 30 great startup events and office hours going on. Don't know where to go? Watch the video or read the show notes below to find out about the *can't miss* events of this week!
 
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Web entrepreneurs: you have no idea what your customers are thinking...

In late 2009, my best friend Jennifer and I decided to start an internet company building affiliate-based shopping sites.  I had recently read about the Lean Startup philosophy, coined by two entrepreneurs Eric Ries and Steve Blank.

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