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Mike Kirkup | Dangers of Chained Assumptions
http://mikekirkup.com/2014/02/05/dangers-of-chained-assumptions
Dangers of Chained Assumptions. Posted on February 5, 2014. A common challenge for early stage entrepreneurs is finding a problem that is worth solving but struggling to come up with a viable business model that supports it. This is a challenge that tends to impact student entrepreneurs more than most because it is very difficult to make money when solving student problems. In this example, the founder is chaining together a list of assumptions. Here they are in order:. As you can see, the major assumpti...
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Mike Kirkup | Book a Meeting – Post Mortem
http://mikekirkup.com/2014/04/30/book-a-meeting-post-mortem
Book a Meeting – Post Mortem. Posted on April 30, 2014. On Friday (April 25th), Brian Hogg. And I decided to shut down Book a Meeting. After 8 months of active development and work on the project. I want to share what I learned through this process in the hopes it can help the next startup founder. Book a Meeting was conceived in April 2013 based on a conversation I had with Ted Livingston. A startup founder emails me asking to find time to meet. Here is an example of Step #3. 3 Interest vs. usage. 4 Sol...
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Mike Kirkup | Grow Conference 2014 – Day 1
http://mikekirkup.com/2014/09/03/grow-conference-2014-day-1
Grow Conference 2014 – Day 1. Posted on September 3, 2014. Theme: Living in a connected world. Is Disruptive Innovation Crossing the Chasm or Jumping the Shark? 8211; Brian Solis (Altimeter Group). Digital analyst studying impact of tech on business. We don’t challenge convention enough. Amazed by how quickly Uber and Airbnb became verbs. There is an unsaid belief that everyone is disruptive. But that isn’t true. Too many people copying. Too many simply making iterative improvements. Why so many remotes?
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Mike Kirkup | The hidden benefits of Y Combinator
http://mikekirkup.com/2014/05/26/the-hidden-benefits-of-y-combinator
The hidden benefits of Y Combinator. Posted on May 26, 2014. When startups consider participating in Y Combinator (or any accelerator) there are a number of obvious benefits including mentorship and funding. I would argue that the hidden or unspoken benefits of the program in many ways can outweigh the obvious benefits. With 7 companies from Velocity attending Y Combinator. We have some good anecdotal data on the additional benefits of joining the YC program. 2 Living with your co-founders. Sorry, your b...
mikekirkup.com
Mike Kirkup | Blog
http://mikekirkup.com/blog
I am leaving Velocity. Posted on April 5, 2016. The Three Rules of Silicon Valley. Posted on October 29, 2015. BNN Interview – Talking startups. Posted on October 19, 2015. Posted on September 4, 2015. One of the most common questions I get from new founders is how they should compensate their first employee. We call your first set of employees founding employees because although they are not officially considered founders they are joining the company at an extremely early stage and sharing much of t...
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Mike Kirkup | Currency matters!
http://mikekirkup.com/2015/05/20/currency-matters
Posted on May 20, 2015. It has been too long since I last blogged and I wanted to spend some time sharing lessons we are learning at Score More Baseball. One of the biggest lessons learned this week was that currency really makes a difference. When we first set up payment through Stripe we were selling to the local community in Waterloo such that charging in Canadian (CDN) dollars made perfect sense. Like I said, currency matters! 2 Replies to "Currency matters! May 20, 2015 (8:42 pm). Some html is OK.
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Mike Kirkup | The trend back to text messages
http://mikekirkup.com/2014/09/24/the-trend-back-to-text-messages
The trend back to text messages. Posted on September 24, 2014. This past weekend I had the opportunity to judge some of the amazing hacks at Hack the North. I remember a world where mobile browsers sucked or didn’t really exist yet. Back in the days when your browser supported standards like the Wireless Access Protocol. Now, 10 years later, I am surprised to see the movement back towards text messages and other solutions including extremely sophisticated websites that do not require an app download....
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Mike Kirkup | About
http://mikekirkup.com/about
Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts by email. I am leaving Velocity. The Three Rules of Silicon Valley. BNN Interview – Talking startups. Giving back with GiveGetWin. Send to Email Address. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Email check failed, please try again. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
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Mike Kirkup | Should universities have venture funds?
http://mikekirkup.com/2014/10/21/should-universities-have-venture-funds
Should universities have venture funds? Posted on October 21, 2014. However, few are asking the big questions. Should universities be building venture funds in the first place? Are universities well suited to running an investment firm with a core focus of investing into its own alumni? What downsides should universities be considering when thinking through whether to start a fund? Talking about the performance of investments comparing geographies. Funds that focus based on stage or sector tend to pe...
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Mike Kirkup | Grow Conference 2014 – Day 2
http://mikekirkup.com/2014/09/05/grow-conference-2014-day-2
Grow Conference 2014 – Day 2. Posted on September 5, 2014. Why Big Brands Need to Innovate – Bonin Bough (Mondelēz International). Huge opportunity today with media on mobile. but so little spending by brands on mobile today. Brands are worried mobile isn’t a scaled technology. 1B people in the world own a mobile device but not a toothbrush. Hackonomy – opportunity to create value by breaking things. Build a culture of breaking things. Looked at re-inventing oreos by looking at 3D printing of them. Very ...