The StartupMonthly team recently participated in Bubble Tank, an event hosted by Sarah Austin, which seemed to be a tasteful adaptation of NBC’s Shark Tank. A camera crew perused through the audience, capturing shots for their upcoming startup reality show.

The entire day provided great insight into the pitch operations of an early-stage startup company. But what mostly caught my attention was the heavy media presence, and how it influenced the entire event process. The camera followed Austin, filming every interaction she had. Photographers snapped away during each startup pitch. It was not only the cameras, but all of the smart-phones actively capturing key moments onto Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Not only does the event happen, but it also becomes documented in real-time. This event was the intersection of technology and community, virtual merged with physical, URL and IRL. Everyone there had an online presence, whether it was their own or their company’s.


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The first StartupMonthly accelerator program comes to an end this week as we are wrapping up with a string of demo days for our startup teams. These five companies have traveled from Belarus, Lithuania, and Russia to participate in our two-month program, and it was our great pleasure to guide them through the web of Silicon Valley. 

Alex Zoloratov shares his experience telling us what Silicon Valley and StartupMonthly has provided for his company, MapsWithMe. He claims that what makes Silicon Valley unique is its spirit, explained as a “high concentration of tech companies” that leads to a “high amount of talented people living and working in close proximity.” In other words, networking is the name of the game and the Valley is the best place to do it. 

by Amy Kwan
A few months ago, Steve Blank, our advisor at StartupMonthly, gave a presentation at an ARPA-E conference on the scientific method for getting technology to market, or, as he puts it, how to fail less.  In his presentation, Steve outlines ways to make startups successful.  He provides examples of startup ventures and how they utilized his tools for success.  He emphasizes that a startup’s goal must be to search for a repeatable and scalable business plan, utilizing agile engineering and a business model canvas.  

Here are some interesting things that I learned from his presentation.  

• Startups fail because they confuse the idea of searching for a business plan with executing a business plan – startups cannot utilize existing plans.  Instead, startups need to keep searching for the right business plan.

by Sarah Khogyani

David Weekly met up with our startup teams this week for one-on-one mentorship sessions. The teams pitched their ideas, and received plenty of valuable advice. After which, David let me in on three general things to remember when pitching business ideas.  

1. Make your idea easy to understand.

“Don’t make me try to guess what your company is,” Weekly emphasizes. In fact, the most effective ideas should be explained in one sentence, if not three words. Listeners don’t like feeling confused, and so communicating clearly and directly helps you move onto more productive discussions.