2. A History of Startup Platforms 1998 - Web 1.0 A large percentage of startups are built on ASP 2008 – Web 2.0 Most startups are built on Ruby/Rails or PHP. ASP.Net is ignored as a startup platform.
3. What is a Startup? “A regular company executes on a known business model. A startup is a company searching for their business model.” - Unknown (but I’m sure I stole it from someone) “Are you ready to jump off a tall building and build your parachute on the way down? Welcome to Startup Lounge” - Startup Lounge Podcast
4. What I need in a Startup Architecture Speed If I’m heading toward the ground I want to build that parachute as fast as possible. Flexibility I assume that I’m going to make mistakes. Making big changes must be fast and easy.
5. Four Steps to Launching a Startup Signup for BizSpark Design and Mockup Publish a Marketing Website Build your Minimum Viable Product
6. 1. Signup for BizSpark Go to http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/and Microsoft will give you every software product they make for FREE for 3 years if your company meet these requirements: You are developing software You are less than 3 years old You have less than $1,000,000 annual revenue You have some type of website up (even 1 page) You can get someone like these guys to nominate you. Joe Shirey, Microsoft Architecture Evangelist http://www.joeshirey.com/ Dave Drach, Managing Director, Microsoft Emerging Business Team http://www.bizspark.com/Blogs/david_drach/default.aspx
7. 2. Design and Mockup Balsamiq Mockups Demo Balsamiq is the Goldilocks UI mockup tool. It gives you the “just right” level of functionality. http://balsamiq.com/
8. 3. Publish a Marketing Site Cheap but good looking website design 99 designs ($400 - $1000) http://99designs.com/ Cheap but solid hosting Discount ASP.Net ($20/month for web and DB) http://discountasp.net/
9. 4. Build Your Minimum Viable Product HireFlo Architecture Demo Asp.Net MVC = good No Azure!! No Entity Framework? Embrace both HTML and SQL Customer data requires better hosting: ($118 - $250/month for cloud server) http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/
10. We are in a Startup Renaissance!!(and Boulder / Denver is a hot spot) newtechMeetup– About 4 tech startups present in Denver and Boulder every month. The Denver meetup meets on Auraria Campus. The Boulder meetup has free beer! http://www.bdnewtech.com/ TechStars– One of the first Y Combinator style accelerator programs for early stage startups. http://www.techstars.org/ Open Angel Forum – Angel Investors meet in Boulder about twice a year to hear pitches from early stage startups and possibly fund them. http://openangelforum.com/ StartupDigest– Weekly email digest by Chris McCann that tracks all of the tech startup related events in the Boulder / Denver area. http://startupdigest.com/ Lean Startup – Best practices for launching a startup by Eric Reis. Must see video here:http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2329 Feld Thoughts – Amazing blog by Brad Feld, Boulder resident and vocal venture capitalist.http://www.feld.com/wp/
