#LPA17 First Week – Quick Summary

We just finished half of Launchpad Accelerator boot camp #3!
It’s a lot of work but great fun.

As I wrote in the past. I’m having a real fun to leading Google Launchpad Accelerator. If you don’t know what we do and didn’t click here. The goal is to help tech startups build successful business. We focusing on emerging markets and working with a group of talented mentors (from Google and outside) to bring real value to the startups.

How?

We are running this program by working closely with these startups and helping them with the most critical challenges. You can see below all the startups that are taking part in this class.

The analysis and guidance are being done by mentoring sessions. In these sessions we leverage the vast experience of Google’s engineers and other external mentors from top companies and venture capitals in silicon valley.

We covered topics like: Progressive web apps, Android, Firebase, Growth hacking, Business, Fundraising and any other challenges that the startups wanted to get help with. It’s a packed two weeks, but the beauty is (that in most cases), the mentors giving the entrepreneurs hooks and not fishes. Our goal is to learn from these sessions and share the finding publicly. So I hope to have a lot of new posts for you in the next several months.

This week we had some inspirational talks and lots of productive sessions. A quick browse in the photos (or this growing set of photos) below will give you a glimpse to the magic that is rolling in our startup space in San Francisco.

How To Ask Good Questions?

When you are helping entrepreneurs and developers, you want to lead them after you understand their specific situation. Asking a question is an important tool that will let you investigate what are the strengths and weaknesses.

It’s a skill, so like any other skill, you can improve it. I found that there are (almost) no ‘dumb questions’. In many cases, the basic questions are the most revealing ones. Similar to the “5 whys” that are helpful to get to root cause of a problem.

Before you asking the question, do some homework and try to find the answer yourself. Later, when you ask the question, say what you did in order to find the answer. This will help you to establish the conversation and show that you did some homework on the topic.

Some suggestions that will improve your questions:

The Idea Factory Review

I’ve just finished “The Idea Factory” and although it was long, I really enjoyed it.

It deals with a question that kept me (and many others) busy in the past few years: What causes innovation? and it’s doing it by telling the history of the most productive scientific laboratory on the planet (between 1920 to 1980): Bell Labs.

How did this organization become such a success story?

Bell labs produced seven Nobel Prizes and contributed important innovations: the transistor, transatlantic cable, the laser, UNIX, C++, photovoltaic cells, error-corrected communication, charged-coupled devices, digital communications and the mobile phones.

Want Great Startups Ideas? Think On Problems!

A question I get from time to time is going around “How can you come up with a good idea for a startup?”

It’s the wrong question. In order to get to an answer you do not want to think on a great idea for a startup. Because this won’t lead you in the right path. It might be a cool idea that you and your friends think is wonderful but if it’s not a real problem in the real world, most chances are that people won’t find it useful.

If it’s not useful, you won’t be able to monetize it and build a sustainable business. After all, a startup is a temporary organization in a hunt of scalable, repeatable and profitable business model. So you want to improve your odds in this hunt by identify a common problem.

It’s not only that the better way is to look for problems. It should be a problem that you have.

The very best startup ideas usually contain three aspects:

1. You (the founder) want to have it. It’s your personal pain point.
2. You can solve it.
3. Few others realize that these ideas worth the time and energy to pursue.

Go North Innovation Event

The founder of Research In Motion talking about quantum computing

I’ve just finish to give me talk at the Go North event. The goal of this talk was to expose young entrepreneurs to the power of the web platform and how they could leverage progressive web apps in order to improve their businesses. It was very cool to meet with a lot of developers and entrepreneurs that are passion about the mobile web. One of the interesting questions I got was around AMP and PWA and how to bridge between them. Here is the detailed answer. The shorter version is that you want to start with AMP as a great first impression that you give your users (it’s all about speed!) and later stay engage/productive with PWA.
The two scenarios below tell this story in a nutshell.

Startup Pitch Deck

In the past 5 years, I meet with hundreds of entrepreneurs and developers that were starting a new company.
In many cases, it was during a pitch or mentoring session.
I learn a lot from these meetings.

One surprising learning was a common intimidation from pitching your startup. If there is one thing that entrepreneurs are really afraid from is this moment of true, when they need to sell.

Let’s not get into the why here but focus on what can reduce this stress.

If you think about it, it’s a way for you to gain trust and show that you can deliver.
No one (with experience) want to see that you got all the answers but investors do want to see that you are thinking on the right issues and you have a plan. It’s true, that “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face” but it’s still valuable to see such a plan.

Here is the template for a good pitch deck.

The one I will use myself and tell my kid to use.
You can feel free to add slides but please keep in mind that your presentation should not be longer than 15 slides as you want to finish it under 20min and leave room for open conversation.

A New Space For Startups In San Francisco

Today we are opening our new Space for startups in San Francisco.
I can see that you are asking, what?

Well, it is a place to explore the latest technologies and learn how to build successful startups. It a great feeling to build new things and especially when you have the chance to dream about something and than move it forward so it become a reality. I am excited about this place, as it will give us a good option to help more and learn more.

Look below who open it 😉