janson0

Joined 15 years ago

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Member since

Sep 29

Founder of GameWisp (http://gamewisp.com); PhD Student in Computer Science at Vanderbilt University

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Comment · 11 years ago

I would love to get an answer from someone on this for sure!

Comment · 11 years ago

Yeah good point. It's something I forget sometimes that AWS uses AWS... and that even if I don't rely on a particular service specifically, a service I rely on may, in fact, rely on that service.

Hopefully there is a relatively fast recovery on this.

Can anyone even log into their aws console right now?

Comment · 11 years ago

Here's the SQS Error Log right now:

3:14 AM PDT We are investigating increased error rates in the US-EAST-1 Region.

4:06 AM PDT We can confirm increased error rates for CreateQueue, SendMessage and ReceiveMessage API calls in the US-EAST-1 Region and continue to work towards resolution.

5:07 AM PDT We can confirm increased error rates for CreateQueue, SendMessage and ReceiveMessage API calls in the US-EAST-1 Region. As we work towards recovery, error rates may temporarily increase.

6:06 AM PDT We can confirm significantly increased error rates for CreateQueue, SendMessage and ReceiveMessage API calls in the US-EAST-1 Region. As we work towards recovery, error rates may temporarily increase in error rates.

Comment · 11 years ago

SQS is the specific service giving me a ton of trouble right now. Hope they resolve this quickly. Had rayguns about sqs all night heh.

So are they saying they are throttling SQS because of the DynamoDB issue?

Comment · 12 years ago

This is a great, short piece of advice.

Comment · 12 years ago

The challenge in equating our two experiences is the perspective from which the LOI was received. For them, it was a message in the form of another low blow from this high pressure accelerator trying to wrest away 50% of their business. With that mindset, a week probably would have been too short. Who knows.

Ours, on the other hand was, "Awesome! Troy called and invited us to the program! We finally get to quit our day jobs and go after this business full time like we have always dreamed about, and TS is facilitating that! Let's go over this LOI, which is simple and straightforward and doesn't legally bind us to do anything other than say we understand we are continuing the process and wont tell anyone publicly about it and gets us one step closer to Chicago and the success of our business!"

Looking through an LOI and getting it back to them was a joy for us, not a burden.

Comment · 12 years ago

Disclaimer: TS Chicago 2014

It's hard to choose where to start, as this blog post just misses it on so many levels. So, we'll just pick "Mentorship Is Not The Primary Focus."

This summer, we had over 150 mentors complete over 650 30m-1hr long mentor meetings with our cohort. On top of these meetings, each company was assigned a super mentor who worked closely with each team for at least an hour a week, throughout the summer. These mentors hail from companies like Groupon, GrubHub, Walmart, etc. and are not just random business people. On top of that, we spent countless hours with Troy, Steve, and Sam throughout the summer... often late into the night. The passion and care these people and this program exudes towards mentorship and entrepreneurial development is unmatched and, frankly, unquestionable.

Second, the assertion by the OP that "the focus on raising capital is just too strong" is curious and reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the program. I concede that if you plan on doing an accelerator, you should most likely be planning to raise further investment capital after the program at some point. (As PG puts it, "A startup is a company designed to grow fast" and from what I see, usually this growth will be accelerated by the injection of capital.) After going through this program, however, I would say the focus in TS Chicago is not mainly on raising capital at all. Rather, it is squarely on building you as an entrepreneur in order to empower you to build your business, equip you to hustle up more traction, and provide you with the tools to raise money to continue accelerating your growth if you want. The leadership goes above and beyond to make themselves available to you throughout the program regardless of the business or personal need.

Third, the dilution math is just so bad. Other folks have addressed it in this thread, so I'm not going to go into detail. But geez.

Fourth, looking purely at the "valuation" you get for 6% for $18k is an incredibly short-sighted way to understand the value you are getting out of the program. Mentorship, the network, deep friendships, and core business knowledge are just a few pieces of the value added. But even if you want to add pure money related perks, please review this: http://www.techstars.com/program/perks/. Such free. Much hosting.

Fifth, demo day. At first, I was under the impression that demo day was all about pitching investors my business in the hopes of drumming up some interest in our next round of funding. After going through that process, my view changed drastically. I am more equipped to explain my business, our purpose, our plan, and the landscape of what we are doing than I would ever have been without it. Not only do I deeply understand the story of my business, but I can articulate it to investors, mentors, customers, and our team with a clarity like never before. I wouldn't trade that insanely challenging demo day prep process for anything.

Sixth, asking someone a pointed question about the specifics of your business in hopes that they have the answer to it off the cuff with (based on where that point in the interview would have happened) 30 seconds to consider your query is a poor way to judge the quality of their ability to contribute to your business over the lifetime of their involvement.

Finally, I'll end this discussion with these remarks:

TechStars is about relationships and equipping entrepreneurs. If you come into the program with a teachable spirit and are willing to listen and learn from the incredibly knowledgeable and generous people in charge, then you will come away with invaluable experience and tools to apply to your current startup, as well as to other businesses you may start throughout rest of your life. That is truly the offer on the table. Paul and co. missed out, but hey... maybe we were company 11? If so... thanks guys!

Comment · 12 years ago

The space that TechStars uses in 1871 is separated from the main area, in an enclosed office area. Doors can be shut and distraction is pretty effectively minimized. It works pretty well, from my experience.

Also, yeah... The food court is good! But that Duncan Donuts and Arby's certainly is my downfall... ha

Comment · 12 years ago

I was a founder of a company in the TS Chicago class this summer.

I can tell you that this letter of intent was one and a half pages long, contained a simple, bulleted list of documents required for due diligence, and explained the structure of the funding and program.

Additionally, there is a very clear line that indicates that they are willing to extend the deadline provided you give a reason.

Finally, this document is not the formal acceptance of anything related to the program.

I would suggest that "demand[ing] it back" using "high pressure sales techniques" is a strong overstatement.

Comment · 12 years ago

I just did some price comparison. It looks like cloudfront is actually the same price as data transfer out of S3, but in addition you have to tack on a $.02/GB fee to get the data to your cloudfront edge nodes.

If I am wrong about this (and I hope I am), where can I find more information about that?

Thanks!

Comment · 12 years ago

First Try: 2068 pts. 256 highest block...

Comment · 12 years ago

It is great that you emphasize that. Success (or at least progress) seems to come down to what the founders choose to spend their time doing and/or be distracted by.

It is really easy to let meetings distract you from building.

Comment · 12 years ago

I think this article is really short-sighted, in that he is just making a blanket statement that doesn't apply to all incubators and doesn't apply to all companies.

We are applying for incubators now, because it will give us the opportunity to continue doing business and will help us grow our business. We think it will be a good fit, because we are heavy on the engineering side and are looking for some investors to get on board and back our passion with real dollars. Runway + opportunity to focus is the reason you want to get investment or into an incubator.

Anyway, nice work on getting people to your site through a clever title.

Comment · 13 years ago

Thanks for letting me know! Going to update on my development environment so I can run our tests against it to be sure nothing broke.