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Oh hey this is a good thread. I'm still in school, but I spent my sophomore summer interning at a tech startup, my junior summer interning at a sort-of-startup (it was acquired by a large tech company a few months before I joined so it was like 50% startup 50% large company feel), and am interning at a small local VC firm at the moment. I'm hoping to join a startup (or potentially a large tech company if it's the right opportunity) or maybe even start something if I get the right idea at the right time when it comes time to graduate. The main problem I'm facing is finding a good role at a startup as a business person in an entry level role. It seems to be a lot of being in the right place at the right time since most won't openly recruit college students unless there is a really compelling case.
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Oct 10, 2011 19:59
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Vladimir Putin posted:So basically he's got to get a powerpoint deck together and pitch to whoever will listen? I'm sure his CEO is trying to ring people up and set up meetings right now for them, if he's a decent CEO. I'm just curious as to the funding environment because he seems to be nervous about the availability due to the ongoing economic crisis. If he hasn't, he should read this book. It's a really good book to learn how venture capital firms work and how to go about negotiating with them as an entrepreneur.
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Oct 10, 2011 20:37
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Me and five other dudes started an advertising agency a year and a half ago. Not sure if it meets the same definition of start that most people use as we're not trying to create a new service or market. It's been a very rough ride thus far. We did it with no loans, none of us had any savings to invest, we had to remove one member of our LLC without the help of an operating agreement, and our lack of any business-y people has led us into quite a few bad decisions. Despite all that, we've done enough work to pay our own salaries (mostly) and overhead. One of our biggest problems has been finding non-creative team people (anyone who actually knows how to run a business, account managers, project managers, etc.) who are willing to take on the risk of joining a fledgling company at lower pay with the incentive of ownership, profit sharing, etc.
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Oct 12, 2011 16:47
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powderific posted:We had to remove one member of our LLC without the help of an operating agreement Could you talk more about this? We are facing a possible situation quite similar to this, except that we haven't officially formed the business yet. (Person in question isn't fulfilling promises, pulling own weight in the project)
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Oct 12, 2011 17:07
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It really, really depends on the statutes in your state. Before this year, Nebraska's LLC statutes were incredibly bad and offered no guidance on what you could or couldn't do. Every lawyer we talked to said that you can't take away someone's ownership unless it's in the operating agreement, and the best thing we could do was close the company, wait a month, and then start a new one. Even doing that he could have filed a lawsuit. That wasn't an option for us as it would have meant essentially giving up on the agency entirely. So, we fell back on verbal agreements we'd all made informally and voted him out. There was no precedent in Nebraska for this sort of thing so it was ripe for a lawsuit and really neither party had a great case. Had it gone to court, I'm guessing he wouldn't have gotten any of the monetary damages he wanted and we wouldn't have been able to remove him from the LLC. Eventually we settled out of court. It didn't cost us too much as the guy is great at making enemies and was being sued for slander by his subsequent employer. Since you haven't actually formed the business yet you might be in an easier position, but some states would consider you a partnership of some kind already just by you all working together. This is one of those questions where you'll really need to see a lawyer familiar with the laws in your area.
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Oct 12, 2011 17:37
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Hey everyone, wanted a critique on my startup: We noticed a few problems in the start up world: 1. It is getting increasingly difficult to search for a domain, the time it takes outweighs everything when the product should be the focus. 2. It is prohibitively expensive to buy a domain from other sources. Our site alleviates these two concerns. We create BRANDED domains: we sell the domain + logo. Our site is here: http://namella.com/ We're looking for some feedback on our site, is our value proposition clear? Other directions we could take with this site is that it spurs entrepreneurial ideas within the viewer...
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Oct 12, 2011 20:49
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sry4partying posted:Our site is here: http://namella.com/ I like it! I'll chime in with four quick things after a 30-second look over: 1. Play with the tagline a bit and see what works best. If I'm understanding the value prop right, I'd suggest "An available domain name + matching professional logo for $199." 2. Is that competitive pricing? I vaguely recall reading about services that specialize in naming things on the very high-end, like massive consumer electronics products or new pharmaceuticals. I wouldn't be surprised to see if someone were doing just this part of it for the bootstrap market. So, is a name and a 99designs-ish logo worth it for $199? Am I saving money? Are you guys good at this naming thing or are you just smoking the ganj once a week and buying up domains? 3. About domains: can you offer added TLDs (.net, etc.) and common typos/misspellings? Can you ensure that the name won't be fighting for Google PageRank? 4. The grid of available names/logos may be sending me in the wrong direction. Is that your inventory of available names and that's what I get to run with right now? I'm much more interested in having a quick conversation with you about what my startup idea is and paying you $X for a clever name/domain and logo within a week. All that said, I think you're solving a legit problem and someone may buy into this.
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Oct 13, 2011 00:15
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Powderific, thanks, all good points for me and my partner to reflect on.quote:4. The grid of available names/logos may be sending me in the wrong direction. Is that your inventory of available names and that's what I get to run with right now? I'm much more interested in having a quick conversation with you about what my startup idea is and paying you $X for a clever name/domain and logo within a week. I'd buy that service right now. We are currently using Knackeo, but I think we need a better name and logo, mainly because of issues around pronouncing it.
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Oct 13, 2011 00:41
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Nybble posted:That's the funny thing about Startups. Most ideas "have been taken", "someone just got funded", "you'll never get traction". You must get past this to be successful. I live in this area, what kind of education tutoring are you doing?
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Oct 13, 2011 02:53
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Deception posted:I live in this area, what kind of education tutoring are you doing? Essentially, everything! We are lining up teachers in a lot of areas that aren't usually covered by traditional tutoring websites, whether it be driving, meat butchers, or composting! But we'll have the old standbys too, like Piano, Math, English, etc. The most important thing I think that we are doing is keeping track of what you're learning, so that you can use that experience elsewhere and show off skills that you've learned from our teachers. We want to be a "signal" that people can use to show off their talents, in addition to traditional learning sources (College, certification schools, etc).
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Oct 13, 2011 03:35
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sry4partying posted:Hey everyone, wanted a critique on my startup: One big thing I think you may be neglecting is the IP side of this. The memefront.com and memeoable.com logos in particular look like ticking time bombs, no one really knows who originally created those images, so there is no way to prove that you aren't infringing on someone's IP. There is no way I would want to take that risk with my startup. The PayPleaser logo looks way too much like the PayPal logo, so there's another lawsuit waiting to happen. Also, what exactly am I buying? You're selling more than domain names, so what else does the $199 buy? A PNG file? Copyrights to a logo that you may or may not have? Assistance in building a website or brand? You need to make this clearer.
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Oct 13, 2011 03:55
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snagger posted:I like it! I'll chime in with four quick things after a 30-second look over: 1. Yea the tagline needs work, it needs to be short enough to look good but descriptive enough to get the point across. 2. I'd like to think we're good at this naming thing, look at the fantastic names we have in our portfolio! Offering a service is in our immediate future, were planning on building that into the site without taking away from the pre-branded brands. 3. We don't want to offer any pre-branded TLDs that isnt a .com. We will work with a custom job if the customer wants it. 4. Thats what we have available for our pre-branded domains. Phase two is to introduce customization/professionalization for people's brands. Our idea is that this "store" should give us credibility for people to pay for custom jobs where real money is.
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Oct 13, 2011 17:19
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Konstantin posted:One big thing I think you may be neglecting is the IP side of this. The memefront.com and memeoable.com logos in particular look like ticking time bombs, no one really knows who originally created those images, so there is no way to prove that you aren't infringing on someone's IP. There is no way I would want to take that risk with my startup. The PayPleaser logo looks way too much like the PayPal logo, so there's another lawsuit waiting to happen. We've definitely taken this into consideration. I think our designer went a little too close with PayPleaser and that is something were working on. The meme stuff is so publicly utilized that really, nobody can claim ownership. You're buying a brand, an identity. Have you ever tried to come up with a catchy name for your startup, along with a logo? We're targeting developers that want to focus more on their product and don't have time to deal with the domain name/logo search process. They can come to our site and drop a couple bills and have a fantastic domain with a logo that will last them through the first round of funding. You'd be paying MULTIPLES of our price for the work we offer on Sedo or Brandbucket.
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Oct 13, 2011 17:27
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sry4partying posted:3. We don't want to offer any pre-branded TLDs that isnt a .com. We will work with a custom job if the customer wants it. On one point, I have an unanswered question. On the other, I have an opinion: 3. If I give you $200 to buy fotouplodr.com, I don't want there to exist a competing domain (such as the .net variant) OR another service with the same name that already exists in Google results. Are you taking these potential customer needs into consideration with each domain name you offer? 4. OK, so having been introduced to BrandBucket, I see that they offer a similar service to your 'phase one,' and you're trying to undercut them. Which is fine - I find their designs more appealing but much more expensive. If you want to undercut those guys, that's cool, but I think the bigger opportunity is in what you're calling 'phase two,' and you could instead create a portfolio of clients akin to any web designer's portfolio instead of showing your inventory. (Edit for clarity: I think you should move straight into phase two as quickly as possible.) Lastly, now that Konstantin has brought up the IP question, you guys may want to make sure you're digging deeply. Hiplure, PayPleaser and MoneyTilt all called to mind Shopify due to the font, and MoneyTilt's little icon thing looks like it could have come from a stock library. snagger fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Oct 13, 2011 |
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Oct 13, 2011 18:28
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snagger posted:On one point, I have an unanswered question. On the other, I have an opinion: 3. That's an interesting point. I think once we gain traction including recognition of the Namella brand, we can definitely start to consider these. As it stands, brandbucket does not provide this service and they are wildly successful. However, it may be a way to differentiate ourselves from them. Interesting, thanks. 4. Right, It really depends on the direction of the customer. If our pre-branded domains are successful, we will build up that business. If our custom products are successful, then we will focus on that. In the meantime, until our site gains traction, I feel it is in our best interest to offer both services side by side. We're working on our site to bring notice to our customization services. Thank you for your comments everyone!
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Oct 13, 2011 20:46
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So I thought I would write some more about the business I'm developing, I guess either people will find lots of issues that I haven't thought of, or maybe interested on following progress, I don't know. If it sounds a bit rambling I apologise, I've just kind of written as stuff comes into my head. Essentially I want to start producing websites for accountancy practices in the UK. I've come at this from the accountancy side of things as I am a chartered accountant, and I have seen not only quite a few awful websites, I've also prepared accounts for firms that take in quite a lot of money while being awful at running their business, and frankly I think I can do better. My main obstacle (and it's a pretty big obstacle) is my lack of knowledge on the web design/development side. I've always poked around with websites but the more I do the more I realise I have a lot still to learn. On the other hand, looking at the competitors in the market, they all use basically the same content on each website they produce, so a lot of the work will boil down to a creating a design and tweaking bits of the website to be specific to each practice, which obviously isn't straightforward, but I think I can pick it up pretty quickly. Of the competitors, there's around 5 that cater specifically to accountancy practices, and they range in price from around £100-£250 a month. My old firm pays £150 a month for a website that hasn't been changed in the last 3 years, looks awful and doesn't work properly. Obviously there is also competition from generic web design firms, however the specific firms differentiate themselves with a decent amount of technical content, tax calculators and so on, which I would also be able to produce because of my background (my problem from here is the time it will take to produce). I've pretty much decided that I'm happiest using Wordpress as a CMS for this - I've played around with Drupal & Joomla and found Wordpress easier to use and it's more than adequate for what I need to do. I've designed one website in Fireworks, turned that into HTML/CSS then turned that into a working Wordpress theme - it looks crap but it was more to get familiar with how things work. While I really want to focus specifically on the accountancy practices, I'm starting to think it'll be worth offering up generic web design for whomever, particularly when I'm getting started. The extra money will be helpful while I'm still trying to get clients for the accountancy side of things, and it'll be useful training as well. It also keeps me doing some other interesting stuff while I produce a lot of dry technical content to get that side going. So that's kind of where I'm at - What I am doing at present is training on Fireworks/Illustrator with tutorials at lynda.com, there's also a set of videos on logo design that looks like it could be interesting but I'll get to grips with Illustrator first as it uses that. After that I'm going to carry on making up websites (for examply my mum sings in a choir and does their website, I'm redoing it now, although she doesn't know that!). When I'm happier with how long it's taking to make things, and also with the final product, I will be looking into the best way to host things, considering how I want to price things (particularly on the general side of things), company structure (I'll almost certainly set up a Limited Company for this), and a number of other things I can't recall right now. If people are interested with how I am getting on I'll try and update here on a fairly regular basis. I'm also very interested in issues people might see, obvious things I've missed, reasons why it won't work so I can address them before I stray too far down the wrong path.
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Oct 13, 2011 21:42
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A service to resell good domains to startups is one thing but prebranding them with logos is ridiculous and detrimental to those potential businesses. Branding doesn't work like that, or rather, good branding doesn't work like that.
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Oct 14, 2011 03:34
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mcsuede posted:A service to resell good domains to startups is one thing but prebranding them with logos is ridiculous and detrimental to those potential businesses. Branding doesn't work like that, or rather, good branding doesn't work like that. Care to explain how pre-branding is detrimental to a potential business? Think of a casual entrepreneur who has a full time job, trying to diversify his income stream with a consulting business. He has some ideas for his company, but nothing he's set on. He wants a great domain name that his customers will remember, but nothing he comes up with is available. He's open to really anything catchy, and that's where we come in. He'll visit our site, choose from a few solid domains "Agrity.com" for a hypothetical finance consulting business called "Agrity Consulting" or "RipeBrand.com" for a hypothetical marketing business. The logos are meant to generate excitement for the brand and the domain. We've had a few customers so far that have liked it. 
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Oct 14, 2011 19:22
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The prebranding website idea might find a niche, but personally if I was going to put put my heart and soul into making a company, I'd certainly want to put time into thinking of a name and logo that I like and reflects my business. Doing all that work and then saying "whatever" about its name seems ridiculous. But again, there may be a niche.
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Oct 15, 2011 01:55
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"Casual entrepreneur" is an oxymoron. Normally, to start a business you need to make it more than a full time job. You need to be absolutely committed, if something else takes priority over the business then you will fail. Maybe if someone was extremely well respected and had extremely good connections they could make some money on the side consulting, but they wouldn't need marketing since their business would be entirely through those connections.
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Oct 15, 2011 03:28
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Branding is not branding if it doesn't take into account the actual dynamics of the company the branding is for, their competition, their goals, their audience, etc. Creating random logos is just graphic arts: not even graphic design and certainly not branding. There are already a million places a lazy and lovely startup guy can find a logo at for cheap, why bother, and why target the bottom of the barrel anyway? People that go for that sort of thing probably aren't going to get anywhere with their business. I know there's a school of lean startup thought that completely disregards branding but that's a huge mistake, at the very least drop a grand and get a really good identity freelancer to put something together. mcsuede fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Oct 16, 2011 |
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Oct 16, 2011 06:48
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mcsuede posted:Branding is not branding if it doesn't take into account the actual dynamics of the company the branding is for, their competition, their goals, their audience, etc. Brandbucket.com is WILDLY successful with their business, and we want to take a slice of that. I guess I posted here not to see if this is a viable business model (it is, see brandbucket), but maybe to look for a way to execute better or potentially differentiate ourselves from them.
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Oct 16, 2011 22:59
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whalesneedlove posted:Why wont this startup idea work? Or better yet, why hasnt it been done? This site does that really well. I used it a ton when I was car shopping. http://www.cargurus.com/
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Oct 17, 2011 00:24
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One interesting idea in that area would be a premium car shopping service. You sign up, and tell them what you want in a car. The site searches all cars advertised online, and recommends cars that meet your criteria, factoring in things like ratings of certain models and pricing guides. It should be able to say things like "This car is priced 10% less than similar cars in your area." Once you sign up and pay a fee, you get a comprehensive package including things like: 1. A full vehicle history report. 2. Detailed information about the make/model that you are considering. 3. Help with financing arrangements if you want to finance the car, so you get unbiased information about how to do that. 4. A local mechanic, hired by the site on a contract basis, will go out and inspect the vehicle before you buy it. 5. If you need to ship the car, the site will refer you to a reputable company that can do that.
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Oct 17, 2011 13:47
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Konstantin posted:One interesting idea in that area would be a premium car shopping service. You sign up, and tell them what you want in a car. The site searches all cars advertised online, and recommends cars that meet your criteria, factoring in things like ratings of certain models and pricing guides. I love this idea. Top Gear in the UK is already halfway there with a Car Chooser that recommends models to look at, but doesn't link to specific cars on sale now on the used market: http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-chooser-launch Their semi-curated search (by listing at the top their best-reviewed cars) already rounds your search down to a good car, if that's what you want, and from there you can add more value by 'fixing' so many other parts of the process like the Steps 1-5 you listed. I like the idea of a curated search, where you recommend the consensus 'better' cars in a particular segment (trivial example: Fit or Golf over a Mini). A few things that also popped into my head: -You could do a deal with a reputable source to get your own car reviews in place. AOL Autos / Autoblog is the first that comes to mind, but there are certainly others. Top Gear makes it really easy with numerical ratings, but some form of content just intuitively feels important to me. Maybe I'm wrong. -Good luck getting a reputable car shipping service on board at such a large scale without creating huge headaches for more than 1% of people who use that particular service. That could create customer service problems almost on the same scale as Airbnb. Serious car forum readers - VWVortex, AI and the like - tend to get one-way flights and hotels instead. That may be worth taking into account. -You could handle financing in one of two ways: deals with companies/banks who want to offer their loan services based on the user's credit history, orrrrrrrrr do the unbiased thing and get some content just like Edmunds' car buying guide, which will inevitably recommend a credit union loan.
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Oct 17, 2011 16:57
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mcsuede posted:There are already a million places a lazy and lovely startup guy can find a logo at for cheap, why bother, and why target the bottom of the barrel anyway? People that go for that sort of thing probably aren't going to get anywhere with their business. I know there's a school of lean startup thought that completely disregards branding but that's a huge mistake, at the very least drop a grand and get a really good identity freelancer to put something together. Honestly, on the internet, the bottom of the barrel is a very very large place. I mean, the entire domain name industry is basically based on the soon-to-be-crushed dreams of the long tail. Seriously though, pre-branding is practically an oxymoron, the whole point of the brand is that people can identify what the gently caress you're providing. If you create a brand divorced from a product, by definition it's a ineffective brand. There's been a terrible trend in tech startups to pick some doofy name and assume that people will figure out what the gently caress it does because it's just sooooo cool, but that whole concept is basically a mockery of actual branding, not to mention an abject failure in the vast majority of cases.
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Oct 17, 2011 18:23
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Konstantin posted:One interesting idea in that area would be a premium car shopping service. You sign up, and tell them what you want in a car. The site searches all cars advertised online, and recommends cars that meet your criteria, factoring in things like ratings of certain models and pricing guides. It should be able to say things like "This car is priced 10% less than similar cars in your area." Once you sign up and pay a fee, you get a comprehensive package including things like: My credit union kind of does something like this but only for new/used cars from dealerships, not private sellers. You tell them what your budget is, what kind of car you are looking for, etc, and they pre-approve you for a certain line of credit and come back with a list of vehicles that fit within your criteria and loan amount.
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Oct 17, 2011 19:46
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sry4partying posted:Brandbucket.com is WILDLY successful with their business, and we want to take a slice of that. I guess I posted here not to see if this is a viable business model (it is, see brandbucket), but maybe to look for a way to execute better or potentially differentiate ourselves from them. I don't really give a poo poo it's harmful to the entire startup environment. There are lots of big markets where you can exploit dumb people that doesn't make it good business as I see it. Anyway, you're right in that we're off topic.
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Oct 18, 2011 03:13
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poshphil posted:stuff Unless you have a natural flair for good design, CSS/HTML etc i wouldn't waste too much time trying to learn the skills to develop sites better than other bottom of the barrel outfits. Theres so many 'completed websites for £199' deals that its really not worth entering. You can buy some $5 hosting, install wordpress for free and get a template such as http://themes.kopyov.com/?theme=miriam for $15, so you've got to either think what are you going to offer thats different or look to resell the knowledge of doing that all that for a small monthly fee. Perhaps look into creating some wordpress plugins which do the tax calculator stuff, install wordpress MU, offer a selection of templates and offer it all for x amount per month? There seems to be hundreds of sites already doing this so maybe you can try and compete with them?
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Oct 18, 2011 20:53
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I've always been curious what the scope of Entrepreneurship is considered 'startup'? Is it a term typically exclusive to internet startups, or just anyone who decides to start a business up on their own and just refers to the infant stages of any business? In any event, I recently have done the latter. I am a working professional (Work for the Trading business of a Fortune 500 Energy Company) and have always had a passion for investment management and financial planning. If I could do that all day/every day I would be in my full element. As I am the single earner in my family with one son and twins on the way, I would need a windfall to be able to execute that dream. Instead, I've gone ahead and bootstrapped my business and will slowly grow it until I can afford to leave the primary job. I'm experiencing all of the same issues a full-time startup has, but just have limited resources and time to tackle them all at once. However, I do not have any ticking clocks going on in the background that are causing undue stress (but I identify that it does dramatically reduce urgency!). Anyone else branching out and forming off-line professional services while maintaining their day jobs? Interested in hearing others experiences, and happy to share mine as well.
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Oct 20, 2011 18:42
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sry4partying posted:Care to explain how pre-branding is detrimental to a potential business? Think of a casual entrepreneur who has a full time job, trying to diversify his income stream with a consulting business. He has some ideas for his company, but nothing he's set on. He wants a great domain name that his customers will remember, but nothing he comes up with is available. He's open to really anything catchy, and that's where we come in. He'll visit our site, choose from a few solid domains "Agrity.com" for a hypothetical finance consulting business called "Agrity Consulting" or "RipeBrand.com" for a hypothetical marketing business. The logos are meant to generate excitement for the brand and the domain. We've had a few customers so far that have liked it. I see where both sides of this argument are coming from, and actually identify with your example. In my startup/side business/whatever you wish to call it, there is less emphasis on the web presence and more on the relationship in person and trust. At this stage of my business, I decided I merely needed an online brochure that was not intended to bring in prospects, but serve as a landing page for people I direct to there that I meet in person. So I selected a name, found a decent theme, made up some copy, hired a goon to do a decent logo that brought it up to a better professional standard (which I completely identify that more thoughtful branding needs to be done, but now is not the time, I could spend weeks PLANNING my business and never do anything. Execution is where success comes from) and I was on my way. If I had seen a service that would do all of this for me for $200, with minimal frills, I would definitely have checked it out. That being said, glimpsing at the site briefly, I didn't see much that would apply to me or make me see that it was oriented toward professional services. I think positioning yourself as a consultant to help a 'casual entrepreneur' do the dirty work to get started would be a wiser choice.
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Oct 20, 2011 18:51
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TraderStav posted:I've always been curious what the scope of Entrepreneurship is considered 'startup'? Is it a term typically exclusive to internet startups, or just anyone who decides to start a business up on their own and just refers to the infant stages of any business? I don't have the exact stats on me at the moment, but a very small percentage of startups in America are venture-funded companies. One problem is that a lot of people look at Kevin Rose on the cover of Business Week and watch The Social Network and think entrepreneurship means building the next Facebook. While shooting for the moon probably is the coolest and most lucrative method if you succeed, it is only one way to start a company and a lot of success can be found in "normal" companies too. On the Techstars finale this week on Bloomberg, Gary Vaynerchuck pointed out how everyone was applauding whenever a company announced they raised X million dollars, but no one applauded the company that announced they had so many thousands of dollars in revenue and were able to fund themselves through that, even though that is a lot more difficult and substantive than just getting funding.
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Oct 20, 2011 20:06
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In general, I would define a startup as a small company that aims to make millions of dollars in a relatively brief period by creating a new product or service. Software is most common, because you can build and release new software without spending a ton of money up front. I wouldn't consider a financial planning business to be a startup, because there is a cap to the amount of money you can make, and a lot of companies are doing something similar to you.
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Oct 20, 2011 20:52
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Konstantin posted:In general, I would define a startup as a small company that aims to make millions of dollars in a relatively brief period by creating a new product or service. Software is most common, because you can build and release new software without spending a ton of money up front. I wouldn't consider a financial planning business to be a startup, because there is a cap to the amount of money you can make, and a lot of companies are doing something similar to you. So your definition would be for businesses that have minimal replication costs and are introducing a new or revolutionary product or service? It definitely is a different ball of wax. Perhaps we need a small/self-owned business thread.
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Oct 20, 2011 20:59
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necrobobsledder posted:So, pretty loving high risk, but what's life without risk, right? sry4partying posted:Our site is here: http://namella.com/ http://stylate.com/ And associated discussion on hacker news: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3051758
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Oct 21, 2011 00:17
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Are you allowed to just take a smilie from SA and sell it a la "memeorable?"
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Oct 22, 2011 14:27
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How much credibility does having a PhD or Masters from an Ivy League school give you in the startup world, all other projects/skills being equal? If you have ideas and drive then is it more important to spend 2-3 years networking and working at startups in Boston/Cambridge/Silicon Valley than finishing a higher degree?
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Oct 22, 2011 23:22
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Analytic Engine posted:How much credibility does having a PhD or Masters from an Ivy League school give you in the startup world, all other projects/skills being equal? If you have ideas and drive then is it more important to spend 2-3 years networking and working at startups in Boston/Cambridge/Silicon Valley than finishing a higher degree? I can't say much to the credibility aspect, but I'm going for my Masters for the extra earning potential to backup the startup. In my mind you can never network to much.
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Oct 23, 2011 00:01
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himurak posted:I can't say much to the credibility aspect, but I'm going for my Masters for the extra earning potential to backup the startup. In my mind you can never network to much. Thanks for the perspective. It sounds like having a masters will set you apart. Do most unconnected tech startup guys start with only a good BS degree? I feel like networking is harder in a geographically isolated university, but a higher degree is valuable to me for a lot of other reasons so I don't want to throw away opportunity.
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Oct 23, 2011 00:24
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Analytic Engine posted:Thanks for the perspective. It sounds like having a masters will set you apart. Do most unconnected tech startup guys start with only a good BS degree? I feel like networking is harder in a geographically isolated university, but a higher degree is valuable to me for a lot of other reasons so I don't want to throw away opportunity. Why not just make a advantage/disadvantage list? Basically everyone's situation is going to be unique and in my case I prefer the safe backup in a guaranteed job and earning potential. Not to mention my partner is doing a lot of the in the field experience and I'm doing the books. I definitely could not say if the financial backing was secured I wouldn't drop school right now to get the ball rolling.
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Oct 23, 2011 03:59
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