by: John “Chief NerdGiraffe” Cihocki You probably hear about “the cloud” all the time, and how it’s fundamentally and rapidly changing the way internet technology is conceived and developed. But what does it mean for you, the tech entrepreneur with a tight budget, perhaps little or no technical skills, and limited runway? In reality, “cloud” is just a generic term for an abstract pool of computing resources that you can use in virtual chunks. These chunks might be a virtual machine to run application servers, virtual storage areas for data, or even an individual virtual process to execute a task. …

On Oct 20th, I was invited to give a talk at NYU Stern as part of the Entrepreneurship Speaker Series. Below is a video of the talk, key takeaways and my slides. Enjoy. Video Key Takeaways Investment and tech talent is earned not given.  What can you do to further your idea on your own?  How can you validate your idea and demonstrate traction without spending a huge amount of time and effort building product? Pick an idea in an area where you have strong domain experience, know the problems and have the connections to sell.  Look for markets that …

For most people the idea of launching a half-baked product is horrifying. You’ve been talking up your idea for months, been working crazy hours and even taken money from friends and family. This is the first time people will be seeing what you’ve been dreaming about and you want everything to be perfect. You feel like your entire reputation is at stake. Unfortunately, you didn’t work with StartupGiraffe and things aren’t there quite yet. The site doesn’t work in IE (which your mom uses), crashes your browser if you click too many things too quickly (which your annoying co-worker has …

We speak with a ton of idea stage entrepreneurs. Many times, people think we’re going to “Zuckerberg their Winklevoss” and steal whatever brilliant ideas they have. Because of this, they speak in generalizations and vagaries (it’s like LinkedIn meets Yelp for Healthcare with Farmville-style gamification). Unfortunately if you don’t tell us the details and motivations behind your project we can’t give any feedback or really figure out if working together is possible. We feel that you should not only tell us your ideas but share them with others too. Here’s why: Talking is the Easiest Way to Get Feedback The …

In our first few months working on Startup Giraffe, we’ve personally met with about 50-60 entrepreneurs.  Over the course of our meetings, we’ve often come across people in the same predicament: A Brilliant Entrepreneur (let’s call him Abe) with no technical experience has a great idea for a web or mobile app. Abe’s ready to quit his day job to devote himself making his app successful. He’s reluctant to go with a dev shop like Startup Giraffe to produce his product. He’s worried about putting off finding a technical co-founder until later because he thinks he’s just putting off an …

Since the launch of Startup Giraffe I’ve had the opportunity to speak to 50+ idea stage entrepreneurs.  I’ve been amazed at the diversity of good ideas that folks from outside of the startup scene have.  Through conversations with them I’ve realized that many could improve the way they think about launching products.  Here are some of the most common mistakes we see: Feature Set is Too Broad for a First Iteration Many entrepreneurs we’ve met want to build products for everyone.  Successful products start by having a tightly defined, niche audience and growing out from there. Products built for everyone …