Don’t you love it when someone can nut a concept in ten slides with bullets? (Startups should be so easy…) Dayna Grayson from North Bridge Venture Partners (Boston) presented Pacing Your Startup to the current Techstars class this week.
North Bridge is an early stage investor, from everything I hear, they’re a great ally and investor. If you’re a startup and you don’t know anything about Techstars, you had better check them out. They’re one of the best tech incubators in the business.
There is no underestimating the importance of a startup’s pace. While you’re getting your team together, building your product, making plans and validating what you’re doing, it is your pace that drives your early success.
Here are my personal favorites from Dayna’s Presentation:
- Speed is your only advantage. Rock and roll, validate, fail FAST and get it out there.
- If your Mom doesn’t understand what you’re doing, then you need to adjust your pitch. For those of you that think that your parents haven’t understood you, get a non-tech mentor - quick!
- Build Checkpoints into your business. Checkpoints are goals, milestones, and meetings with your board and funders to gather feedback, validate, and adjust. A very healthy thing to do.
I look forward to more posts and presentations by Dayna. She gets it and has a great way of sharing what she knows.
