An Insiders Look At The Startup World

Two years and half ago I chose to stop my 10-7 “normal” job life to jump into a 24-7 exiting and demanding entrepreneurial life. I quit a job I had enough of, convinced a friend to jump on board and started working on my “big idea”.

After the first 2 weeks of excitement, my partner in crime and I noticed that we needed money to fuel our passion and keep escaping the reality that everyone else was living.

Money… Where To Find It?

As a first time startup founder I had few (unclear) ideas where to look for funding. I knew a lot of people but very few (actually no one) rich enough to show me some cash. I started going to startup meet-ups, attending events of different kind trying to find out where the truth was. After roughly a month and a half of tiring research, I decided to go back to the only resource I had already heard and did some research about, accelerator programs. I started applying, like crazy. First in Berlin, then pretty much everywhere.

Did we have a product? No.

Did I know what actually meant joining a startup accelerator? No.

Was it easy enough for me to find out more about other founders experiences? No.

Nevertheless, after two and a half months of digging through websites and applications, with a prototype (which was quite horrible, to be honest…), we found money.

You Need Even More

Hallelujah! I thought, The most difficult part is done, now it can only be better.

It turned out that finding money in the current economy is not that complicated (although I wouldn’t want to minimize our extreme efforts). However, to become successful, a startup founder needs way more than capital. A startup founder needs connections, mentorship and guidance, especially in their first venture. After a year and half diving into the startup world, I had to stop and go back to the hard reality everyone else lived in (another story for another time…). Despite this, I took a look back at the time spent working on my startup and identified several pitfalls, both internal and external.

Answers Are Not Easy To Find

I learned from internal mistakes and started to see how external influences affected my success. That’s when MyStartupLand started to take form in my mind. Today, if you look for a job, most likely you go to Glassdoor and check, among other things, what ex/current-employees are saying about that company. What about if you have a startup and want to get funding from an accelerator/incubator? What if you are about to spend $2.000 for an event? What if you need to shift your attention for 2 weeks on a startup competition? As a first-time startup founder, I didn’t really know the answer to all these questions.

Were these worth my time and money? Was I ready to get into a life-long relationship with someone I knew nothing or very little about?

Focus: Transparency And Clear Information

I love startups and I get excited just by talking with founders and listening about their projects. That’s why for one year I sacrificed most of my weekends and evenings working on different website designs, ideas and structure, learning some basic coding and swearing at that time when I chose to study marketing instead of computer science… until few days ago I launched the latest version of the platform.

As of now there are about 100 startup accelerators and about 20 events listed (growing every week). More than a dozen of startup founders already shared their thoughts, giving valuable insights that otherwise would be impossible to find anywhere else.

So, how is it different now?

Research Capability

After talking with few fellow startup founders, one of the main advice I got about the previous website version was to improve the research capability. With so many accelerator programs, startup events and competitions, making research easier for users was a must.

The research now allows you to quickly check keywords (for example if you want to focus your research on cloud, mobile or gaming), location (after your approval, it can automatically check where you are located and show results accordingly), lastly you can browse categories and select what you are looking for.

The result page has also been improved, pin-pointing on an interactive map the results you are looking at.

Page Layout

The page now is a lot clearer and contains only relevant information for users seeking whether a startup accelerator, event or competition is the right one for their startup.

Anonymous Reviews

The platform allows startup founders to share their thoughts anonymously. Why? I don’t think a review website has to have a negative focus; however, most of us associate reviews with negative rather than positive ones.

For this reason, and also considering that startup accelerators are partners of the company, identity is kept completely secret. Having said that, each and every review goes through a check process in order to ensure the best possible experience for users.

A startup founder can easily grade a program, event or competitions on important factors and then personalize the review to give more details.

These are just few of the improvements I managed to make. I am not a developer, so I am quite proud of the result. Having said that, I will keep working on adding new stuff and features. Ultimately MyStartupLand will become the reference website for any startup founders looking for insiders look in the startup world!

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