“So what did you think of our project?”
We get this question after every Startup Weekend, from almost every team.
We believe in transparency and openness, so we’ll answer those questions out loud, in a series of blog posts, as well as in email to each team.
Row 55, SQ919 from MNL to SIN. The JFDI team are squashed elbow to elbow like frogs in a claypot. Hugh has the window, Erin the aisle. Earlier in the day, the team unwisely decided to mount a taste test between Jollibee and McDonald’s; the two fast food industry leaders are now fighting a war in our stomachs for market share, measured by poop volume. If a slightly grouchy tone appears in these posts, please do not, as the saying goes, attribute to malice what can be explained by intestinal distress.
“So what did you think of our project?”
We get this question after every Startup Weekend, from almost every team.
We believe in transparency and openness, so we’ll answer those questions out loud, in a series of blog posts, as well as in email to each team.
First we re-pitch the project, based mostly on what we heard on Sunday night. Four minutes isn’t much time for a pitch, so we beg your forgiveness if our understanding doesn’t match your vision.
We analyze what we do understand of the idea using a fairly standard framework. Most early stage angels and VCs carry a version of this framework around in their heads; this just happens to be what we use at JFDI.
Then we send your idea over to the Web 2.0 Body Shop for a tune-up, courtesy of our good friend Ted. Ted’s a green sea turtle, Chelonia mydas, but that’s a story for another time. Ted will get your idea up on the hoist, throw out the stock rims and put in sports slicks, swap out the engine for a V8, and slap on a new paint job. You might not recognize the idea when Ted is done with it, but that’s what makeovers are all about. As Derek Sivers says, there are many ways to look at an idea. Some ideas are already perfectly keyed to the zeitgeist; others are transformed by the application of the Web 2.0 aesthetic. We offer one possible permutation; can you think of others?
We send your idea to Ted because Ted has read every single article ever posted to TechCrunch and BoingBoing, he’s read every book about Internet culture from the Cluetrain Manifesto to Nick Bilton’s I Live In The Future & Here’s How It Works, every Internet magazine from Wired to Red Herring, every book on startups from The Art of the Start to Founders at Work to Four Steps to the Epiphany to Eric Ries’s Lean Startups to Startups Open Sourced.
And that’s just in his spare time. Ted’s started three successful Internet companies and twice as many failures; he’s bootstrapped, raised funds from VCs, raised funds from corporate venture funds, gotten acquired, IPO’ed and cratered. He’s been around the block. Now he’s retired. He smokes cigars, he drinks single malt Scotch, he fixes old cars and new ideas, and he turns his gimlet eye on young entrepreneurs. When you don’t pay attention, he shouts at you.
For each company, we ask Ted what he thinks. And when he answers, he doesn’t pull any punches.
The Pitch
We borrowed this from Adeo Ressi at the Founder Institute.
My startup:
is developing:
to help:
to:
The world is ready for our innovation because:
We’re the right team to do this because:
We will make money by:
Our startup differs from competitors in that:
The Framework
What kind of value does this startup create? Cultural / Social / Financial
Is this a scalable business?
Does this solve a hard problem?
Does there seem to be a large, ripe, and growing market?
Is there a barrier to entry?
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Opportunities:
Threats:
Does this team have good timing? Is this happening at an interesting time?
Idea/Founder Fit: (do the team seem to be scratching their own itch, or someone else’s? Does the team have industry experience or do they seem to have picked this idea at random?)
Execution Capability:
Overall Frog-o-meter:
The Reviews…
We’ll take one team at a time. Stay tuned.