The More You Know…

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Danne Woo

I am the founder of datavisu.al, a web-based tool for creating data visualizations. We just finished week 2 and are about to jump into the 3rd week of SLP and so far its been great, informative but incredibly exhausting. I have been pounding the pavement trying to talk to as many designers and data analysts as possible. Last weekend I was able to present datavisual at the EYEO Festival in Minneapolis which is an amazing festival revolving around data, design and programming. I was also able to present at a Visual.ly meet up last Wednesday and got to talk to some amazing people there as well. And then in between those events I have been going all over New York talking to just about anyone who deals with data or charts and graphs.

But when I am not out of the building talking to people I am back at the NYU Poly Incubator with my fellow SLPers learning from Frank, Lindsey and the rest of the SLP profs. Not to mention the great guest speakers like Giff Constable and Trevor Owens. But we do still find time to have some fun. Last Tuesday was our first social night out (well night in). Soham and Jerry of lumiti put together a Start Up Jeopardy night for the rest of us, sadly my team did not win but we came so close during the final round, AARRR!!!! I knew the second “A” wasn’t Advertising, oh well.

So all in all I am learning a lot about my users, a ton about the start up world and loving every second of it. Glad to be a part of SLP and cant wait to see what next week has to offer.

- Danne Woo

The Search

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Patrick Yan

Our first lesson in the Launchpad drove home the point that startups aren’t just small versions of normal companies. Instead, we defined a startup as a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. This was my first exposure to the lean startup methodology, and also the first really structured way my co-founder Ran and I tackled our startup CrashDwell.

Instead of executing a business plan, our aim is to discover the problems and needs of customers and deliver a solution that creates value. As a lean startup, we’re finding this out by actually talking to potential customers. This customer discovery process has been more helpful than any finance or marketing class I’ve taken at Stern. From speaking to over twenty customers in the past two weeks, we’ve already dispelled some of our assumptions on what customers are comfortable doing and garnered new insights on behaviors and pain points that we otherwise never would have known existed. Continue reading →

Discovery Discovery Discovery

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Soham Sutaria

Last Monday June 3^rd was the start of the Summer Launchpad Program. Lumiti was chosen as one of the 9 start-ups, out of 100+ that applied, to take part in the program. The theme that resonated with me throughout the week was discovery. My first discovery was one of awe when I looked at the list of teams, mentors, and advisors that were part of the program. The other teams not only include individuals with masters and doctorate degrees, but also each team has a great concept and has already developed a prototype. Looking at the list of mentors, we have some of the most successful entrepreneurs and VC’s in the city that have graciously agreed to take part in the program. Continue reading →

Trust Your Gut: An Interview with Ari Goldberg

Posted on June 6, 2013 by Peter Ryan

For entrepreneurs, the road to success is not all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a difficult journey where only a few will reach their destination. Those few will have struggled more than they have succeeded. The success stems from four essential entrepreneurial ingredients: personality, environment, connections, and perseverance. It takes a special type of person to walk the road to success and Ari Goldberg is one of those people. He is the founder of his once emerging startup and now thriving company called StyleCaster.

Continue reading →

Introducing the NYU Summer Launchpad 2013 Class

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Frank Rimalovski

Next Monday, June 3rd, we will kick off the NYU Summer Launchpad—a 10-week accelerator program that will provide graduating NYU student-entrepreneurs with the skills, space, funding, and mentoring needed to help them launch commercially viable startup ventures.

Summer Launchpad is an intensive program that will support startup ventures through the notoriously difficult stage of early development and will provide them with resources, personalized instruction, guidance, and connections to increase the likelihood of their success. Participating teams will be steeped in lean startup principles using techniques for testing hypotheses, experimentation, and iteration as they search for a commercially viable business model. Continue reading →

If an image is worth a thousand words, what is a word worth?

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Anne-Laure Fayard

In a world of text messages, IM’s and tweets, 140 characters has become a standard and talking about “writing” can seem dated. In fact, some might think of writing as the obsolete activity of handwriting. While there recently has been several books arguing for the need to think of handwriting, I’ll be more “modern” here and consider writing as a mode of communication that one can do with a keyboard as well as with a pen or pencil.

But why talk about writing when we “know” that an image is worth a thousand words, and a video is a powerful advocate to your idea? Why talk about writing, in a world of images, videos and podcasts? Why would we need to know how to write? Continue reading →

Inno/Vention: A Student Prototyping Competition

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Steven Kuyan

Twelve weeks ago 61 student teams registered for Inno/Vention, or what they thought was Inno/Vention. For the last 5 years, Inno/Vention was a successful competition seeding ideas like Suneris and Mana Health while guiding them on the road to success. Focusing on the same dream of making it big with an idea, students filled the Private Dining Room to learn more about the launch of this year’s Inno/Vention competition. Little did the students know that months ago Inno/Vention merged with the EIA’s (Entrepreneurship and Innovation Association) SparkStart competition. The result was a competition that closely resembles a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) accelerator rather than a traditional pitching competition. Ideas were insufficient without validation, technologies presented were arbitrary without prototyping and the presentation of both idea and prototype were paramount. Continue reading →

2013 EEX Entrepreneurship Summit crawls through some of NYC’s hottest startups

Posted on April 22, 2013 by chrisgorges

On Friday, April 5^th, the NYU Stern Entrepreneurs Exchange (EEX) hosted its annual Entrepreneurship Summit. Instead of hosting workshops and panels, organizers decided to break the existing MBA conference mold and asked attendees to “Get Out Of The Building.”

The Summit opened up in Paulson Auditorium with an introduction by Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation Executive Director Luke Williams and an engaging keynote about innovation, entrepreneurship, and corporate agility by Michael Wolf, Yahoo! Board Member and founder of strategy consulting firm Activate. After Mr. Wolf’s opening address, approximately 100 Summit attendees were sent out into Downtown Manhattan on a series of breakthrough “Startup Crawls”. Attendees, ranging from MBA students to undergraduates to community members who heard of the event via social media, were exposed to an incredible set of influential entrepreneurs in their native office environments – all within walking distance of the NYU Stern campus. Continue reading →

Pushbacks Answered – Why I Joined Dorm Room Fund NYC

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Kim Pham

This blog post was originally posted on Kim Pham’s blog, where she writes about technology, life, startups, and other musings. Kim is an NYU student, President of Tech@NYU, and now investor at DRF NYC. You can learn more about her here.

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Anyone who knows me knows that there aren’t enough hours in the day.

Because of my already-severe lack of time, I don’t commit to anything without feeling 150% passionate about the project – I honestly just don’t have the bandwidth to.

So when I first heard of Dorm Room Fund (and following similar models), I was admittedly a skeptic. I had a multitude of pushbacks (which I’ll outline below).But after many coffees, email exchanges, and chats with Phin, CeCe, and Aaron, I’m beyond proud and ecstatic to announce that I’m joining the DRF NYC team. Continue reading →

The Entrepreneur, The MBA, and The Misconception

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Austin Clements

I decided to write this piece in response to the WSJ article by Vivek Wadhwa called Why I Don’t Advise Startups to Hire MBAs. Wadwha is an NYU Stern alum, so as this year’s Co-President of Stern’s Entrepreneurs Exchange club I felt personally responsible to address this for everyone who came to Stern with an interest in pursuing entrepreneurship.

So let’s first be clear about what it means to be an entrepreneur. Contrary to what much of the startup community would like for you to believe, your career does not need to have a binary outcome. This billionaire or bust attitude is for a very small percentage of people seeking venture capital for a high growth, high risk endeavor. ~~Many~~ Most entrepreneurs are not seeking a nine-figure exit within a decade, which is why most don’t take on venture capital. Many entrepreneurs have very successful careers generating profits and growing their businesses year over year. Many entrepreneurs can make about as much money as the average lawyer, doctor, or other skilled professional, but will achieve this on their own terms. A good business school can do a great job of helping you better understand the risks and strategies associated with these types of businesses. Continue reading →

Top ten reasons to apply for the NYU Summer Launchpad

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Lindsey Marshall

The NYU Entrepreneurial Institute recently announced that it will be running a 10-week accelerator program beginning in June called the NYU Summer Launchpad for graduating NYU and NYU-Poly student-entrepreneurs. The program will provide our University’s most promising entrepreneurs the skills, resources and connections to develop their startups into viable ventures. We will be selecting up to 10 teams from across all schools and disciplines to take part. Applications are due April 8^th – details and the link to the application can be found here.

Over the past few years, NYU has placed an increasing emphasis on developing resources and programs to support entrepreneurship; we see the Summer Launchpad as an important addition to the growing array of offerings. Today, the University supports a whole host of events, classes, and extra-curricular programs that inspire, educate, and connect students and faculty with an interest in entrepreneurship, helping them take their research and ideas and turn them into commercially viable ventures. With the introduction of the Summer Launchpad, we are creating a program that will support those startup ventures after they’ve been formed, nurturing them through the early, and often difficult, stages of development. Continue reading →