Italian Consulate8/23/2013
Friday, August 30, 13
• Laurea in applied physics
• just 6 months...
• 1.5 year traveling around the world
• Shipped about 10 products at Stanford, Microsoft, Twitter, The School Circle, Paperlit, ...
• Now at mightybell.com
Friday, August 30, 13
Friday, August 30, 13
TINKER!
Friday, August 30, 13
• "A me pare che quelle scienze sieno vane e piene di errori le quali non sono nate dall'esperienza, madre di ogni certezza"
Friday, August 30, 13
Let’s Play!
Friday, August 30, 13
• What can you build in 48 hours?
Friday, August 30, 13
Mightybell• Tumblr for community
• 5 people + CTO + CEO
• $4M in funding
Friday, August 30, 13
• PostgreSQL, Redis, Elastisearch, S3
• Memcached
• Rails
• Nginx, Haproxy
• EC2
• Coffescript/Backbone/Marionette
Software Stack we use
Friday, August 30, 13
• Learn several programming languages
• Never, never optimize it unless you have to
• Re-code it absolutely when you have to
• Small is beautiful
• Technology must enable fast iteration.
• Add by subtracting
Lessons Learned - ‘Technical’
Friday, August 30, 13
• tinker as much as you can
• do something that you love
• a good idea is important and “easy”, execution is crucial and very hard(http://cdixon.org/2013/08/04/the-idea-maze/)
• the startup life is harder than you think
• you have to be comfortable being wrong most of the time
• you work hard and make less money than in big c
• you will fail over and over again
• you do not start a company you build it
• think carefully before taking money
• in life and business choose your partners very carefully
• take care of yourself
• find a mentor
• do not trust a man that does not have any skin in the game
Lessons Learned - ‘Start up life’
Friday, August 30, 13
Friday, August 30, 13
Startup Corp.
generalistno-place to hide
everything is changing, fast!
big impact$
huge opportunityhigh risks
specialistyou can hidevery stablelow-impact
better work-life$$$$
some opportunitypolitics
low risks
Friday, August 30, 13
• IoT
• Web/Mobile Technology
• DIY Drone
• 3D Printing
Technology I find interesting
Friday, August 30, 13
• http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/1281-Startup+school+-+The+secret+to+making+money+online.pdf
• http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/canvas
• http://ruby.railstutorial.org/
• http://www.kickstarter.com/
• http://www.edge.org/conversation/understanding-is-a-poor-substitute-for-convexity-antifragility
• @harper, @elonmusk, @ev, @nntaleb, @dhh, @sgblank, @pualg
Some Resources
Friday, August 30, 13
