Come join us Tuesdays at 9am for an hour

Daily Cafe
902 NW 13th Ave at NW Kearney
dailycafe.net

Founder’s Coffee is a low-key, weekly get together for Portland entrepreneurs to connect with each other.  No speakers, no pitches, just business founders gathering together to visit for an hour.

The first couple weeks have been excellent.  We’ve filled the long table at the Daily Cafe and a lot of smart folks have shown up and met other smart folks.  Seems like a lot of folks are making it their business to find strategic partnerships and those conversations seem to be taking place at Founders Coffee.

RSVP on Upcoming:
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/4573036/?ps=5

Congrats to one of our summer Portland Ten companies, ShopIgniter (also known as Cularis), for being one of 9 Oregon companies selected to present at Venture Northwest! Best of luck to founder Alan Wizemann and his cofounders Dan Warner and Jason Glover.

About ShopIgniter

ShopIgniter is a real-time, social eCommerce platform with an intent-based search engine for Twitter, FaceBook and other popular social networks. It can manage multiple sales channels for products, including their marketing and promotion.

Built for boutiques, small businesses and the enterprise, and delivered as a Software as a Service or download, ShopIgniter is a complete end-to-end solution for online sales.

Ever wondered how private equity investors (angels, venture capitalists) evaluate tech startups– and what founders can do about it?

The following presentation outlines 3 types of "unfundable" startup styles, and the 1 "fundable" startup style that attracts investors and is most likely to be stable & grow over time.

There’s a lot that founders can do to affect the current status, opportunities, and future of their projects– if they know what to look for, and are willing to objectively and frequently make changes and tough choices.

Helping founders see clearly and accurately understand where they’re at, is absolutely one of the most rewarding aspects of working with entrepreneurs through the Portland Ten’s "10 at $1MM by 2010" goal.

Building A Stable, Fundable Startup

This fall, we began offering the Six Week Sprint, a lightweight version of our $1MM bootcamp, open to freelancers/consultants and small business owners, as well as tech founders.

The participants are loving the program! It has provided the following benefits to them:

• Jumpstart biz dev/sales efforts
• Accountability to peers & advisor for weekly progress
• Peer support in making tough decisions and taking action on critical business tasks
• Clarity, focus, and accelerated efforts in starting or growing business
• Increased ability to make strategic decisions based on financial indicators– revenue, cashflow, pricing
• Emphasis on employing yourself and others at your full market value
• Expanded network of contacts
• Fresh ideas, critique, and clarification of your project
• Opportunities for one-on-one learning and course correction in basic business skills– sales, networking, marketing,

The feedback overall has been tremendously positive, and based on interest from the community, we will hold another Six Week Sprint October 12-November 20.

Attend An Orientation

If you’re interested in participating, please review more information about the program here, and then RSVP for an orientation meeting October 5th or October 8th. You can also contact us with questions or to get more information here.

What Participants Say

"The Portland Ten Six Week Sprint is perfect for any business owner who is overwhelmed, losing focus, or simply wants to increase revenue. As an entrepreneur starting a new business, I didn’t know where to start or what to spend my time on. This program has quickly given me the structure I need to launch, sell, and market this new business."

-Kate Walling

"As a newer business owner, I have found Portland Ten’s Six Week Sprint to be very valuable in building my business. I have made many contacts and leads that I would not have otherwise made without the program. It has been great to be a part of a supportive group that is invested in your success and is eager to help. 

More links from our Portland Ten founders’ mailing list– these ones from our summer session. Enjoy!

Minimum Viable Product

• Great article on the benefits of taking the "minimum viable product & selling to clients to fund a company" approach: http://www.socialtimes.com/2009/09/screw-investors-get-customers/
• http://groups.google.com/group/lean-startup-circle/browse_thread/thre…
• http://www.seanpercival.com/blog/2009/07/29/the-12-startup/
• http://venturehacks.com/articles/minimum-viable-product

Free Online Biz Classes from MIT

• http://www.collegemogul.com/content/8-free-online-entrepreneurial-fin…

Press/Media

• http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/01/10-words-i-would-love-to-see-banned-from-press-releases/

Bootstrapping

• http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html
• http://kineticac.posterous.com/ideas-are-cheap-development-easy-so-wh…
• http://www.seattle20.com/blog/Bootstrapping-stories-Financing-Your-St…

Market Research

• http://www.formspring.com/surveys.html

Beta Landing Page Sample

• http://www.panic.com/beta/

Founder Ego

• http://sarahprevette.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/gumption-the-necessity-…

Open Source

• http://newton.typepad.com/content/2009/07/professional-open-source-so…

Fundraising/Investors

• http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/2009/07/bizarro-fundraising-aim-low…
• http://bostonvcblog.typepad.com/vc/2009/01/sway-and-irrational-vcs.html
• http://www.techflash.com/venture/Andreessen_Horowitz_introduces_a_new…
  http://blog.pmarca.com/2009/07/introducing-our-new-venture-capital-fi…

Pricing

• http://eliainsider.com/2009/07/24/psychology-of-iphone-pricing/

Failure

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA6HEY2C6u4
• http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2009/01/07/is-failure-a-black-mark-for…
• http://blogs.openforum.com/2009/06/30/a-dozen-donts-for-entrepreneurs/

Guerilla Marketing

• http://www.bootstrappingblog.com/50-guerrilla-marketing-tactics-you-s…

Cap Table

• From @marc1919 truly excellent post about seed and VC investment with live spreadsheet from @capitalfactory mentor @kipmcc http://bit.ly/BfFmF

Work/Life Balance

• http://blog.asmartbear.com/blog/sacrifice-your-health-for-your-startu…
• http://steveblank.com/2009/06/18/epitaph-for-an-entrepreneur/

Automating Customer Support

• You build it, they manage the calls and routing: http://www.twilio.com/

Business Plans

• How to write a business plan* (Wall Street Journal) http://snurl.com/knv4v
• Truth be told, most business plans fail to make much impression on potential investors. Most aren’t even read in full. Their shortcomings tend to be obvious even in a two-page executive summary, largely because they are written before enough real work has been done to create a solid foundation. http://snurl.com/knv4v

GTD/Productivity

• Things, built by www.culturedcode.com - runs only on mac and iPhone. Perfect, flexible Get-Things-Done application.

During our first round of Portland Ten, our founders shared a lot of links & resources through our internal mailing list– enjoy!

Market Validation

• http://sbinfocanada.about.com/cs/marketing/a/marketresearch.htm
  
• http://www.statpac.com/surveys/surveys.pdf
  
• http://www.bizhelp24.com/marketing/market-research-questionnaires-3.html
• http://marketing.about.com/od/statisticsandresearch/a/mrktrsrchbudget…
  
• http://sbinfocanada.about.com/cs/marketing/a/targetmarket_2.htm
  
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_research
  
• http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0803/gallery.jobsqna.fort…
  
• http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2004/03/24/5-questions-you-shou…
  
• http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing/market-research/1959-1.html
• http://www.bizhelp24.com/marketing/market-research-questionnaires-3.html
  
• http://www.bizhelp24.com/marketing/questionnaires—targeting-and-cho…
  
• http://www.bizhelp24.com/marketing/structuring-your-questionnaire—w…
  
• http://www.bizhelp24.com/marketing/tips-and-things-to-avoid-in-questi…
• http://smallbiztrends.com/2008/05/how-do-entrepreneurs-come-up-with-n…

Competition

• http://thenetsetter.com/blog/strategy/6-strategies-to-take-on-an-esta…

Revenue Models

• http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/981-the-secret-to-making-money-online
• http://spellr.us/plans.php
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_model
• http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/03/10-business-models-to-monetize-…
• http://www.boxuk.com/blog/monetizing-your-web-app-business-models
• Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free
• The benefits of a monthly recurring revenue model in tough economic times http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1471-the-benefits-of-a-monthly-rec…
• Struggling to Monetize Web 2.0<http://web2.socialcomputingmagazine.com/struggling_to_monetize_web_20...
• How to Price your Web App<http://thinkvitamin.com/features/webapps/how-to-price-your-web-applic…
  
• http://delicious.com/olynnduncan/revenuemodels
  

GTD/Productivity

• http://www.gtdtimes.com/2009/04/20/david-developed-gtd-because/
• http://techwraith.com/2009/02/gtd-with-gmail-filters-labels-quick-lin…
• http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-in-labs-multiple-inboxes.html
• http://periscopegadget.com/  (Basecamp Gmail integration)
• http://www.liquidplanner.com/blog/2009/04/02/multi-frakin-tasking-bet…
• http://www.rescuetime.com
• http://basecamphq.com/

Design/Basic Identity/Landing Pages

• http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/web/50-totally-free-lessons-in-graph…
• http://www.crowdspring.com/
  
• http://www.overnightprints.com
• http://naturallyobsessed.com/ 
  
• http://new.myfonts.com/
• http://www.copyblogger.com/seal-the-deal-10-tips-for-writing-the-ultimate-landing-page/

Google Apps

• http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/03/bad_rap_against.html;jsessionid=EZFRGIRLF2BUIQSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN?print=true
• http://is.gd/o3rV

Iterating

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/david_han/623205062/sizes/l/
• http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/02/26/amazon-shopping-cart/
• http://venturehacks.com/articles/minimum-viable-product

Extreme Programming

• Ward Cunningham, on Extreme programming
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqeJFYwnkjE
  

Object oriented CSS

• http://groups.google.com/group/object-oriented-css/browse_thread/thre… 

Scalability

• http://mosso.com 

Wireframe software

• Visio
• http://www.axure.com/ 
• http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/OmniGraffle/
• http://konigi.com/tools/omnigraffle-wireframe-stencils
• http://www.gimp.org/
  
• http://www.inkscape.org/
• SmartDraw

Startup Advice

• http://paulgraham.com/13sentences.html
• http://www.cpd.ogi.edu/mst/capstone/17Mistakes.htm
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip1zsUIosoA (Don’t Stop Believing, Jason Calacanis)
• From @rosshill http://twitter.com/rosshill: "Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capability to recover when failures occur." - Pixar 

Cofounders

• http://www.myhightechstartup.com/2009/02/20/finding-a-co-founder-wher… 
• http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/03/advice-on-equity.html
  http://nancykingsearch.typepad.com/nancy_king_search/2009/03/what-it-… 

Finance/Accounting

• http://www.freshbooks.com/
• http://outright.com/
  
• http://shoeboxed.com/

Legal

• http://www.mzclaw.com/blog/

Webconferencing

• https://acrobat.com/
• http://www.gotomeeting.com/
• DimDim or Yugma
• iChat AV

SEO

• http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/22426.asp
  
• http://sbimonline.com/content/local-search-statistics-and-small-busin…
• Apparently, it’s estimated that 20-50% of all searches are local & 61% of all local searches result in a transaction. (From
  
• @CheriHegi<http://twitter.com/CheriHegi/status/1425906780>summarizing facts from the two articles).
• http://www.google.com/sktool/#keywords
• http://www.woopra.com

Fundraising 

• http://swooshing.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/startup-seed-raising-skillzzz/ 
• http://www.techstars.org/2009/02/07/techstars-model-seed-funding-docu…

Pitching

• StartupNow pitches (3 Portland Ten founders, starting at minute 40: http://bit.ly/DDwMP)

Come join us Tuesdays starting on September 29th at 9am for an hour

Daily Cafe
902 NW 13th Ave at NW Kearney
dailycafe.net

Founder’s Coffee is a low-key, weekly get together for Portland entrepreneurs to connect with each other.  No speakers, no pitches, just business founders gathering together to visit for an hour.

See you Tuesday morning!

RSVP on Upcoming here.

Quick note of congrats to two of our summer portfolio companies who are launching products this week–

DedicatedMaps.com– http://dedicatedmaps.com/
ShopIgniter– http://shopigniter.com/

Both teams have worked extraordinarily hard the past several months to get things off the ground for launch, and their efforts are paying off in momentum and client interest. Congrats to both teams, and keep up the great work!

Image: DedicatedMaps.com exhibiting at the Clean Pacific Conference & Exhibition on September 14, 2009.

We’re getting ready to kick off our Six Week Sprint, and holding an orientation meeting tomorrow night at 6 pm at NedSpace Downtown (920 SW 3rd Ave.)

About Six Week Sprint

The Six Week Sprint is open to tech founders as well as freelancer/consultant/small business owners. It follows the same methodology of the "10 at $1MM by 2010" bootcamp, packaged in a jump-start, lower commitment & lower-cost format.

You can read more about the program here.

Goal:

Jump start each participant’s startup or self-employment efforts– shift the business from your current operating style, to doing things in a way that puts you on track to generate your first (or next) $100K in revenue.

Timeline:

6 weeks: September 14-October 23

Participant Orientation:

Join us Thursday, September 10th, 6-7:30 pm, at NedSpace downtown (920 SW 3rd Ave) to meet others participating in the Six Week Sprint.

RSVP on Upcoming here.