Published on: June 13, 2011 – 9:31 am
By Eric Cantor (Participant, Founder Labs)
The brainstorms flow, the sketches come together with a final flourish, and the engineers reason through how the database schema can be perfectly laid out. But the tough news for most potential startups comes when they “get out of the building” and go find out if the product fits the market. Who are you serving exactly? Do they really want it badly enough to engage with it in these crowded times where there are 5 apps for everything? What problem are you solving? These questions and more needed to be answered as we intensify the Customer Development (“CustDev”) process during week 2 of Founder Labs.
Getting Out of the Building
The emerging movement around Lean Startup methodology embraces the agile, nimble, incremental build of a product, starting with a clear focus on customer needs and navigating the way to a business model and an ecosystem. This focus on solutions and customers, rather than technology or product, is one I’ve always followed, and has served well in a variety of sectors and segments including my last few years of work in Uganda, where rapid prototyping was a critical step in everything we attempted. Read More »
Published on: June 9, 2011 – 9:04 am
By Shaherose Charania (Founder & CEO, Women 2.0 and Founder Labs)
Looking to start a new mobile venture? Looking for a co-founder? Want to validate an idea? Join Founder Labs in San Francisco: Apply by June 24.
Founder Labs is a pre-incubator for new mobile ideas. Founder Labs is a 5 week pre-incubator focused on the first phase of launching a new mobile venture — building a co-founding team and validating a new idea. Recent Founder Labs alumni include Kimberly Dillon (House of Mikko), Rebecca Woodstock (Cake Health) and Raissa Nebie (Spoondate).
20 aspiring startup founders form 5 teams, work for 5 weeks, 5 days a week moonlighting (after working hours) to validate a new idea and build an initial prototype. Founders learn key startup lessons such as Lean Startup principles, Customer Development and more, presenting progress each week to Visiting Advisors. Founders work closely with Mentors who have experience in the mobile space. Founder Labs is half male/female, half technical/non technical. For more info, visit www.founderlabs.org. Read about the program on Xconomy here.
Supporters and mentors in the program include Dave McClure (500 startups), Eric Ries (The Lean Startup), Steve Blank (Customer Development), Theresia Gouw Ranzetta (Accel), John Malloy (Blue Run Ventures). Meet the Founder Labs visiting advisors and mentors. Read More »
Published on: June 7, 2011 – 8:08 am
By Virgilia Singh (Participant, Founder Labs)
All Founder Labs participants had to choose their partners for the next 4 weeks. It’s like a game of dodge ball, where you have to choose people based on compatible skill set and personality. And boy, was it an intense 2 hours!
People teamed up based on a variety of reasons, from similar interests to pure likability. During this time we had Shaherose’s voice in the back of our mind “people matter, ideas don’t” — something we learned quite quickly.
At the end of the day, the people you work with and the team dynamics that ensue as a result matter more than the idea you initially come to the table with. There were teams that were interested in education that ended up pitching ideas in online marketplaces. Others walked into the program with one very focused idea, but then ended up pivoting after finding a good group to work with. Read More »
Published on: May 26, 2011 – 7:41 am
By Sonia Sahney (Participant, Founder Labs)
This past weekend marked the beginning of Founder Labs’ first NYC endeavor. Like many other entrepreneur-support programs, Founder Labs aspires to foster the development of start-ups that will change the world… However, Founder Labs differs from other programs in that it focuses on picking people pre-team, and creating a mash-up of individuals’ unique skills and talents.
Part science experiment and part social experiment, the program combines 8 engineers, 4 designers and 4 business-focused people for 5 weeks. The program encourages the development of 4 person teams, and provides tender-loving-care in the form of mentorship from experienced entrepreneurs, investors and mobile experts.
This is the stuff reality TV is made of, but hopefully ours is the uplifting, happy-ending kind of reality TV like Extreme House Makeover vs. the train-wreck, booze-filled dramatics found on the Jersey Shore or the Real World. Read More »
Published on: March 22, 2011 – 7:49 am
Founder Labs is coming in New York! Join us May 21 to June 29, 2011.
Founder Labs selects about 15 hackers and engineers, designers, product and marketing mavens to begin to develop high-growth mobile ventures in NYC. You may apply individually. However, pairs or teams who want to work together and have not locked in their product or idea, may also apply. Founder Labs builds teams and validates ideas. For more information on Founder Labs NYC, click here.
TechCrunch covers Founder Labs spinning out of Women 2.0 and the NYC Launch. You can also read from local NY investors Fred Wilson and Joanne Wilson about how they are supporting Founder Labs. Read More »
Published on: February 27, 2011 – 10:09 pm
By Dharini Ramakrishnan (Co-Founder, TetherPad)
Over the years, I have worked in a variety of team settings – big and small, culturally diverse, geographically distributed – in large and small companies. I have devised techniques for team building and collaboration. At the beginning of the 5 weeks of Founder Labs, I consciously set aside these techniques and emarked on a journey of discovering what works and what does not work in forming and building a team. Based on my experiences, here is a list of to-dos when it comes to picking your team and working with them. Read More »
Published on: February 25, 2011 – 2:10 am
Founder Labs is a pre-incubator for people with ideas or those looking to meet co-founders. During the 5-week program participants validated their ideas, created rapid-prototypes, and evaluated potential co-founders. 5 groups worked in parallel on different early-startup mobile startup ideas. Some will continue together, others will choose to regroup.
Meet the founders that came out of the Founder Labs Mobile Edition (Winter 2011): Read More »
Published on: February 24, 2011 – 2:11 am
Guest post by Sheetal Dube (Co-Founder, Tetherpad).
When we presented our Women 2.0 startup idea Tetherpad, a travel management solution for busy people, on the mobile Founder Labs Final Demo Night, we had no idea that it would be a crowd favorite. For five weeks, Dharini, Everett and I worked 
diligently on validating our problem/solution hypothesis and communicating our minimum viable product (MVP). The process was a huge learning experience.
As Everett’s guest blog post on Women 2.0 Founder Labs suggested, our team went through a number of ups and downs. So when the esteemed panel of John Malloy, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, Dan Levine and Tim Connors picked Tetherpad as one of their top teams for a hypothetical next meeting, it was unanticipated and felt a bit surreal when the audience also picked us as their favorite. Personally, this was a huge validation. Five weeks ago, I did not know where to begin, let alone give advice to others. Read More »
Published on: February 10, 2011 – 12:58 am
This guest blog post on “Lessons Learned” comes from Founder Labs participant Zuhairah Scott.
Many of you are likely familiar with Eric Ries’ blog “Lessons Learned”, considered by many to be the bible for anyone looking to launch a lean start up.
I am no Eric Ries, but I’ve learned lessons during my month at Founder Labs worth sharing. Read More »
Published on: February 9, 2011 – 10:38 am
This week, Everett Harper guest blogs from Founder Labs – “When your idea has no game”.
Our team of foodie travelers share a common problem – travel and review sites generally stink at making recommendations with our tastes in mind. We’ve been hungry in London without vegetarian options, driven around wine country trying to avoid tour bus parties, and sought a decent playground for two cranky kids. So, we figured there was a travel product we could design with these travelers in mind. In the first few weeks of Founder Labs we proposed: Custom itineraries! Crowdsourced targeted recommendations! Photo album collaboration! Read More »
