Sproutly A Blog for Young and Growing Entrepreneurs

Startup

Running The Marathon

It’s common saying in the Valley that your idea will fail and constant production iterations are inevitable. However, when taking a quick glance around, all we talk about are the instant successes. Facebook seemed to have taken off from the getgo. Twitter was always about status updates. And Google was web search from day one. [...]

The Customer Development Model

It’s pretty clear now that “getting users” isn’t a simple thing to do. I came across a presentation that addresses just this. It claims that startup’s focus too much of their early attention on product development, and not enough “customer development.” As a result, startups fail not because engineering was broken, but because their offering [...]

Jessica Mah’s $500 to Startup

Jessica Mah, 18-year old entrepreneur, launches her startup, internshipIN, today. Her total cost was about $500 and roughly two weeks of development time. She started the website with two other friends (Arielle Patrice Scott and Andy Su) at UC Berkeley, with her story here:
internshipIN began at Gypsies, the local Italian restaurant in downtown Berkeley, where [...]

Kevin Rose: Start Up During A Recession

Kevin Rose chimes in on why he thinks it’s good idea to do a startup in the midst of an economic downturn. My views is similar to his. He agrees with Paul Graham’s original post, and so do I. Since Facebook, Youtube, Digg, MySpace, and Flickr were founded, there hasn’t really been any other companies [...]

Brightkite for iPhone

Cool.

Loopt Coming to T-Mobile G1

Loopt just announced it’s Android version of its application.
Loopt on Android is coming soon and the team here has their hands full developing on this wonderful and robust platform. We’ve included a sneak peek with two screenshots. On the left is the Map View of you and your friends with a roll of your friends [...]

Sharing The Idea

Every founder is protective over his ideas, and he has every reason to be. For example, Steve Jobs will let Microsoft down for supposedly taking the GUI. Thinking of an idea is hard and many founders believe that they are the only ones working their ideas. More often than not, there is another founder thinking [...]

YCombinator Gets Record Number Applicants

YCombinator’s winter cycle applications were due on Friday. As Paul Graham explains, YCombinator received “more applications this time than ever, and by a large margin: 10%.” In case you don’t know, YC is an unique fund that focuses on seed investments, usually attracting a younger crowd. They don’t officially disclose actual application numbers, but [...]

Under 9000 and Starting Up

Most college seniors are sweating now due to the economic downturn: How am I going to find a job? But maybe there’s also a bright side to all of this. As bad as it might seem to do a startup, right now might be the time to do so. You might be thinking, “What? Crazy!” [...]

Startup: The Psychological Factor

I think the hardest part of doing a startup is the psychological factor. During conferences, there are always panels about raising money, bringing together a world-class team, and staying competitive, but there’s little talk about the founder’s lifestyle. However, before you get going on a building that killer app, you have to have heart for [...]

← Before