Each year, select Start Co. teams are invited to San Francisco to meet with potential investors, mentors and network with founders in the Bay Area. This year, six teams made the trek to the West Coast to attend the Evolving E Summit, meet with investors from ventures like Growth X and meet founders at incubators like Runway. In this blog post, we’ll recap the top activities of each day to give an inside look into founders’ experience. In “Key Learnings”, we’ll recap the top overall learnings from the trip.
Sunday, October 9th: Four of our 2016 Summer of Acceleration graduate teams — Homey, Soundways, FitNexx, and ProxBox — landed in San Francisco ready for a week of constant networking, meetings, and office hours. They were joined by two of our alumni teams, FrontDoor and CodeCrew, as well as one of our current AgLaunch teams, Skycision, throughout the week for office hours, meetups, and events.
Monday, October 10: In the afternoon, the teams had office hours at the Market Bar in the Ferry Building with a handful of West Coast investors. The teams had time to talk with investors from e.Ventures, Growth X, MergerTech, Keen.io, TechCode, SendGrid, Twilio, and Early Growth Financial Services, only to name a few. Building relationships, creating partnerships, and acquiring insight from major corporations that remain intimate with Start Co. is what our startups are constantly exposed to, even on the West Coast.
Tuesday, October 11th: That morning the Start Co. team toured the Runway Incubator located in the Mission District of San Francisco. The large co-working space holds up to 90 startups and currently holds 70. The Incubator gives each startup a working space along with access to the open co-working spaces, kitchens, event area, and even their zen room. There are two conference rooms for startups to converse with some privacy, and one is shaped like a giant igloo! The incubator is a large space that is cunning with an edgy taste. It is definitely inspiration for Start Co. and was a pleasure to explore.
Wednesday, October 12th: Wednesday was by far the busiest day. We first attended the 2016 Evolving E Summit hosted by GGV Capital that was located at the Terra Gallery in the South Beach area of the city. The Summit featured multiple talks throughout the day with a handful of talented and experienced entrepreneurs, and we’ll give more details into our insights from the Summit in our next post, “Key Learnings.”
Later we visited the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center located in-between the Financial Center and the South Beach area in San Francisco. The center is an open, non-profit space that acts as a resource to many entrepreneurs and provides them with mentors, training, and networking. The building is tall and made of glass amongst other skyscrapers. The interior features a co-working and networking room with tables, chairs, and tv screens. The other side of the building holds an event room with a massive screen, a small stage, and chairs. They also have a broadcasting room that is kept to the side, filled with live cameras and a screen that takes up an entire wall. Resources that the Nasdaq Center provides for its community are tips on how to deliver a lean and persuasive pitch, how to create an effective presentation, overcome a fear of public speaking, learn how to negotiate deal terms, prepare your business to be media-ready, and how to get your small business ready for a big challenge.
That night, our final night of the trip, Start Co. held a mixer for our startups, partners, and investors at the restaurant at Aventine Taverna in the Financial District of San Francisco. We invited West Coast Angels, Investors, Partners, Founders, and VC’s to mingle and network with the startup teams, Homey, ProxBox, Soundways, and Fitnexx, as well as some of our alumni teams, FrontDoor and CodeCrew. The night was a success with much constructive conversation throughout the night. We occupied the entire bottom floor of the restaurant, and it was a networking madhouse. It was the perfect way to end a successful week on the West Coast.
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Lindsay Gess is a rising senior at Rhodes College and an Associate at Start Co. She can be reached at lindsay.gess@neverstop.co