October 2010
Beginner
352 pages
6h 11m
English
Content preview from Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 60. Show, Don't Tell
Brad Feld
Brad is a managing director at Foundry Group and one of the co-founders of TechStars.
I get e-mails every day from folks either raising money or telling me about their new idea and asking for feedback. The conventional wisdom is that VCs rarely invest in things that reach them randomly (or over the transom in someone's VC vocabulary—I can't for the life of me figure out why that phrase hangs around.) However, this isn't the case for Foundry Group, as several of the companies we've funded in the past two years were initially from cold call e-mail inquiries (Brightleaf and Organic Motion). I'm very happy to get a steady stream of random e-mails—keep them coming!
I've noticed a trend toward more video presentations lately and I'm reminded of the old writer's adage "Show, don't tell." This applies nicely to every pitch you ever do. Specifically, I don't want to hear you describe what you are going to do; I want to see it. If you haven't built it yet, show me an example. It's always better to point me at a URL, even if it's a very rough prototype, as I can usually get a much quicker view of what you are doing by simply playing around.
One video I watched recently was a two-minute segment of the entrepreneur looking into the camera and describing his business idea. The idea was fine although I could tell within 15 seconds that it wasn't something we'd ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.