Startup Heroics
From Zero to Startup HERO!
After getting bounced around a few teams (no fault to OD) I ended up very last minute putting together an ecomm platform to help funnel donations for scholarships to On Deck called
All Hands: On Deck
I still have to connect the ecomm part to some products, (hopefully OD swag for public consumption but waiting to hear back) and I'm working with Peer, the head of product at OD and the founder of LeanHire (which was acquired by OD) on getting the open graph hooked so I can feature the OD fellows on the site as well to show donors what their support is going towards.
I really didn't expect to win any of the judging, so I am humbled and honored that my GBW side-project is well-received and looks to actually be getting deployed.
Immediately after my presentation, another team decided to back my efforts by funneling their fundraising efforts towards the OD Access Fund via All Hands: On Deck.
Bonus validation!
It was a stressful, super-fast, last-minute build but in the end, it was worth it and I am proud of where it's going.
Got the invite/acceptance to the inaugural No Code fellowship from On Deck ( beondec.com/nocode) and couldn't be more excited.
Some are calling this the next YCombinator except that so far they not taking any equity which is amazing.
There's a tuition fee (which can be reduced for some) but for what you get out of the 10-week fellowship and the continuing connections beyond is totally worth it.
Planning on working on a skunkworks project finally, focused on helping non-tech founders get MVP's or prototypes built to test with customers and/or investors.
Now we are a team of 4 distributed across N. America
Our latest addition is Vineet Sinha who comes to us in as an advisor and limited contributor to our voice offering.
Vineet is currently the Chief of Emerging Technologies at Salesforce and the creator of the HTML-like framework for voice called Violet. He also has his own new AI product that we intend to collaborate together on for another offering still in stealth.
Additionally, I have David Lin, a fantastic contributor working our tech stack and integrations, automation amongst many other things. He comes to us with a long background as a project manager for Microsoft and other gaming companies.
Right now we are working hard on getting the whole stack sorted, our email marketing sequences down, as well as building the platform and finding interesting ways to create our content and the curriculum for the upcoming UpStar.Academy.
Also, the time is long overdue for an update to the main site. I originally threw together what we have super-quick using Carrd (thanks AJ) just because YC was pushing everyone in Startup School to push out an MVP that week.
I am also mentoring on MentorCruise if anyone needs help with their startup, product, design, or branding/marketing.
More coming soon.
I stumbled upon an ideal match for helping me create an educational product for startup founders!
I wish I could tell you some really actionable tidbit on how I acquired my co-founder but it was honestly serendipity.
I just happened to see something he posted on LinkedIn after I accepted a connection request, and it was just enough to intrigue me into taking a quick peek at his LinkedIn page, which then was enough for me to realize this was someone I should try and connect with.
I had no expectation of what the outcome would be, I just felt it couldn't hurt.
Well we hit it off amazingly and he is fully behind my vision and is willing to even drop some of his other commitments to take this on fulltime (while also supporting Danny Forest's SkillUp Academy efforts as the Chief Of Operations)
He is a long-time educator, school principal, and entrepreneur with experience in developing and deploying learning systems, relationship-building, and social marketing.
Furthermore, some of the value he brings is in that he is able to "call the baby ugly" when need be and "poke the dragon in the eye" when necessary. In other words, he can "handle" a creative -type founder like me.
Still considering one more co-founder, ... now if only I could get a clone of Arvid from FeedbackPanda and/or Vlad from Weblfow!
Back to work.
More to come soon..
I didn't realize how long it's been since I updated here! Ooops!
So a lot has happened since I last checked in. The first investor I spoke about on here was a total fraud but I saw it coming so it was a good learning experience for me anyway.
None the less, I was able to take that experience and begin working in earnest towards a guidance product for new founders and things have been going very well.
Just for the heck of it, I went through YCombinator Startup School 2019 and am currently in the Winter 2020 cohort, now mostly as a free advisor to other startups.
Doing a some validation questions too even though I am really past that point. Not just because I am scratching my own itch as a serial founder but because of the immense amount of founder feedback I have already collected telling me GO!
I feel while I have this large of a group of mostly first-time startup founders collected in the same place thinking at least partially in the same direction, I might as well collect as many founder stories as I can.
It gives me a chance to give back too. I have been spending anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours a pop on calls with these SUS students/founders and the feedback has been great. As per an attendee's recommendation, I decided to add a "Buy Me A Coffee" link to the follow-up emails, and let's just say people have been surprisingly quite generous!
More news to come..
In an effort to ensure that any founder, regardless of financial ability, can access UpStar, I am strongly considering a free ad-sponsored tier.
My thinking is that it probably won't be hard to sell ads to the over 5000 companies making products aimed at startups.
And since I'm aiming for a truly global market including people just getting their hands on their first 3g devices, it needs to have a free tier that is legitimately useful.
Bells and whistles can be in the paid tiers, much like carrd.co
Meanwhile I lost all the major overhaul work I just did on my carrd landing page.
I somehow didn't notice I was working on and saved an older iteration so I have only myself to blame but it was a wakeup call for sure.
Designing on the fly using templates can really bite you in the ass if you need to try and duplicate it.
Which I still need to recover from starting tomorrow but kudos to @ajlkn for taking the sting out a little with a compassionate offer.
Fortunately I do have some heat map recordings of the updated site in Hotjar to visually reference so I can probably get a pretty close duplication in a day or two.
Co-founder???
I'm am considering taking on an sweat-equity partner to help me with the content load and user engagement maybe more depending on what this person can bring to the table. I'm not stingy at all.
You can find it more about me at http://www.gregzen.com
Anyone interested feel free to drop me a line.
Still sorting out our tools/solutions/tech stacks.
Going to be a busy week for sure!
Hack on fellow IH'ers!
I should have done this already but as a solo-founder, I am just always so swamped with "jobs-to-be-done".
I'm going to try and do weekly updates at a minimum
Currently still in YC Startup School and focused on UpStar full-time by myself. Making great connections and figuring out which deals to take advantage of (part of what is slowing me down) and how to use them.
Working on the details of the new landing page https://upstar.carrd.co which is a temporary home until I can transfer the domain startupheroics.com to carrd in a little over a month.
Finally sucked it up and made a landing page at https//upstar.carrd.co
As a designer, it kills me to use a template but it's a quick dirty MVP and I can always build and import later. The page is live now but only the form is functional.
Updating content etc, and setting up for analytics via Segment next.
Unfortunately, I cannot use my new domain just yet because I can't transfer it to carrd for another month as per ICANN rules as I just purchased it at the beginning of this month. I could use a redirect but then my analytics are basically useless.
Patience, grasshopper.
so, for now, it's https://upstar.carrd.co
coming soon,
Feedback welcome & appreciated!
Out of the blue, an "angel" investor out of London showed interest in me and my ideas. He liked both the passion-projects I had on deck but essentially forced me to choose which one I wanted to run with.
UpStar is unofficially born!
The investor turned out to be a wannabee-shark in angel's clothing. Good learning experience though.
I invested enough time mapping out the whole idea, technologies, pitch etc, I decided to green-light it and pursue full-time.
Currently self-funding until bootstrapping can take over.
At this alone for now.
This year's YC Startup School should prove useful!
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