Category: Startups

Startup Weekend Vancouver, WA

Startup Weekends are open to all!

They are 54-hour events designed to provide superior experiential education for technical and non-technical entrepreneurs.

Beginning with Friday night pitches and continuing through brainstorming, business plan development, and basic prototype creation, Startup Weekends culminate in Sunday night demos and presentations. Participants create working startups during the event and are able to collaborate with like-minded individuals outside of their daily networks.

All teams hear talks by industry leaders and receive valuable feedback from local entrepreneurials. The weekend is centered around action, innovation, and education. Whether you are looking for feedback on a idea, a co-founder, specific skill sets, or a team to help you execute, Startup Weekends are the perfect environment in which to test your idea and take the first steps towards launching your own startup.

When:  January 29 – January 31
Where: Clark College – Vancouver, Washington

Learn more about Startup Weekend >

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Startup Weekend Access Portland – I’m a Mentor

I am pleased to announce that I have been asked to be a mentor for the upcoming Startup Weekend Access Portland event taking place on February 7-9th.

A crash course for those curious about entrepreneurship! You’re invited to attend Startup Weekend Access, a Startup Weekend focused on making entrepreneurship more accessible to everyone. Our mission is to create an environment where anyone can innovate together. We’re focusing on accessibility to provide better access for people with disabilities and fluid collaboration amongst every participant. An appropriate accessible environment with the necessary auxiliary aids support services will be provided!

Startup Weekend’s a 54-hour event where aspiring entrepreneurs, developers, designers, marketers, product managers, and entrepreneurs of all abilities come together to share startup ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups. Essentially, it’s a crash course in entrepreneurship that lets you experience what it’s really like to build and launch a startup.

Whether you have an idea for a new mobile app that will make your life easier or just want to learn more about entrepreneurship, we encourage you to attend.

Why? The statistics are clear, people with disabilities are not only less likely to be employed, but also less likely to pursue entrepreneurship. We hope that Startup Weekend Access will ignite your entrepreneurial spark!

Register now >

Damien Katz: What a difference a few months make

I miss Couchbase terribly, but I’m also glad to be done and start a new chapter in my career. The thing I miss most are the great people there, super bright hard working folks who amazed me on a daily basis. Which, ironically, was the thing that made it easy to leave. Seeing the different teams taking the ball and running with it without me leading the charge. Things at Couchbase grew and matured so fast I started to realize I couldn’t keep up without spending way more time working. I was no longer the catalyst that moved things forward, I was becoming the bottleneck preventing engineers from maturing and leaders from rising.

…

And now what’s next? Well, beginning in January 2014 I’ll be starting at salesforce.com and working closely with Pat Helland on a project that eventually will underpin huge amounts of their site infrastructure, improving performance, reliability and predictability, while reducing production costs dramatically.

Best of luck Damien. I remember sitting in Orlando talking with you and Julian Robichaux about CouchDb back in 2005/2006. You can do anything.

More >

Podcast: Cloud Cost Management Made Easy with Cloudability

On this episode we interview Mat Ellis (@matellis), CEO of Cloudability and talk about how Cloudability can help companies manage their cloud spend.

We talk about:

  • How Mat got started with Cloudability
  • How much cloud spend they are currently managing
  • What types of things are moving to the cloud
  • What newbies to the cloud should look out for
  • How Cloudability helps manage cloud spend
  • The services that they offer and their associated costs
  • The future role of “The IT Department”
  • and much more…

We would like to thank Dr. Marky Roden of the PSC Group for standing in for Julian on this show.

Listen now >

 

PIE: What makes a good PIE company?

You may have listened to the podcast we did with Rick Turoczy who is part of the Portland Incubator Experiment also known as “PIE” back in August 2011. Well, the recent PIE class had their “demo day” back on January 17, 2012 and all of their presentations are now available for you to watch.

Before you watch these videos I wanted to let you know that applications for the next PIE class are now open and will close on February 24, 2012.

Here are the links to the 8 class graduates videos in alphabetical order:

Athletepath
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhzP5upje6U&list=PL552B9270E869DC96&index=3&feature=plpp_video

Cloudability
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgxDkZIyar4&list=PL552B9270E869DC96&index=1&feature=plpp_video

DailyPath
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QwOTXBf5y4&list=PL552B9270E869DC96&index=6&feature=plpp_video

MoPix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JbGAYveOCw&feature=related

Revisu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbaaponbPaI&list=PL552B9270E869DC96&index=2&feature=plpp_video

Spotsi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XQdndRvF8c&feature=related

Stayhound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClznRU8-Xfw&context=C3165fbeADOEgsToPDskIKHrg16WY7vA8IWRTuabzH

VendScreen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATkV294wmqg&context=C3165fbeADOEgsToPDskIKHrg16WY7vA8IWRTuabzH

Rick will be joining us once again for a Taking Notes podcast to talk more about PIE and about all the great things the last class came up with.