Talk for attendees of the Harvard Innovation Lab - Startup Scramble Oct 18 2013. Outlines trends in student startups in Boston, with a few findings & anecdotes from the perspective of Rough Draft Ventures (student-led partnership to back university entrepreneurs). Thanks to Stephen Douglass for organizing and Neal Doyle for hosting!

1. DIVING IN & STARTUP HUSTLE
How to get your foot in the door.
Peter
Class #2
Boyce II | @badboyboyce
September 10, 2013

2. Peter Boyce II
Investor, General Catalyst Partners
Co-founder, Rough Draft Ventures
Founding Director, HackHarvard & HCVP
Apprentice / Boston Director / Partnerships, Skillshare
Harvard College, Applied Math & CS ’13

3. What We’re Seeing
• Weekly
•
pitches | across all Boston schools | investing $1-25K
design-centric | mobile | tools | front-line (ex. bitcoin)
• University-focused
(you’re the target customer)
• eCommerce
& payments
• On-demand
convenience / service
• Career
/ recruiting / professional
• Disrupting
/ Displacing archaic industries: health, K-12
• Crowdfunding
• Hardware
& collaborative consumption
‘renaissance’

4. Then vs. Now
What’s changed on campus at Harvard? In Boston?

5. What It Takes To Be A Student Founder
• Team:
scaling & growth via talent
• Product-focused:
• Vision
for the road forward: milestones, timeline
• Always
•
idea --> validation, integrating feedback
be learning: product, people, reading, experiments
Questions to ask yourself:
• How
much time can I allocate to this?
• What
metrics / scenarios would lead me to....
• What
skills do I have? What skills do I need to develop?
• What’s
my unfair advantage? Secret-sauce?

6. Resources for Student Founders
• Locally:
Rough Draft Ventures, DRF, Intelligent.ly, GA
• Accelerators:
YC, DreamIt Ventures, Bolt, Techstars Boston
•
Space: Harvard iLab, Koa Labs, Workbar, CIC
•
University: hackathons, professors, competitions, dining hall!
•
Community & Online:
• Learning:
Blogs & Twitter, HackerNews, Skillshare, edX
• Events/Network:
• Stay
Scrambles!, unConference, CoFoundersLab
Informed: Greenhorn Connect // BostInno // VentureFizz

7. The Student Advantage
✓
.edu email address
✓
Lighter commitments
✓
Wide-open imagination
✓
‘Reality distortion’
✓
Customer / Learning / Network density

9. Joining a Startup
Team | Operational Experience | Responsibility | Risk Profile | Learning
‘Come Together Like Voltron’

10. Reading
Relentlessly Resourceful - Paul Graham
http://www.paulgraham.com/relres.html

11. Reading
How things get done - Sam Altman
http://blog.samaltman.com/how-things-get-donel

12. The Road Forward
•
At the Scramble this weekend:
• Make
• Take
• Get
• Sustain
new relationships
ideas & translate them into MVP’s / validation
out of your comfort zone: biz <-> product <-> tech
the momentum:
• Get
out into the Boston tech ecosystem
• Find
new online learning sources & at your university
• Identify
+ reach out to mentors & collaborators

13. Have an
Say hi:
epic
peter@roughdraft.vc
Scramble!
@badboyboyce
pboyce.com
(slide design inspiration by @jackrmcdermott)