By Eric Cantor (Participant, Founder Labs)

The brainstorms flow, the sketches come together with a final flourish, and the engineers reason through how the database schema can be perfectly laid out. But the tough news for most potential startups comes when they “get out of the building” and go find out if the product fits the market. Who are you serving exactly? Do they really want it badly enough to engage with it in these crowded times where there are 5 apps for everything? What problem are you solving? These questions and more needed to be answered as we intensify the Customer Development (“CustDev”) process during week 2 of Founder Labs.

Getting Out of the Building

The emerging movement around Lean Startup methodology embraces the agile, nimble, incremental build of a product, starting with a clear focus on customer needs and navigating the way to a business model and an ecosystem. This focus on solutions and customers, rather than technology or product, is one I’ve always followed, and has served well in a variety of sectors and segments including my last few years of work in Uganda, where rapid prototyping was a critical step in everything we attempted. Read More »

By Virgilia Singh (Participant, Founder Labs)

All Founder Labs participants had to choose their partners for the next 4 weeks. It’s like a game of dodge ball, where you have to choose people based on compatible skill set and personality. And boy, was it an intense 2 hours!

People teamed up based on a variety of reasons, from similar interests to pure likability. During this time we had Shaherose’s voice in the back of our mind “people matter, ideas don’t” — something we learned quite quickly.

At the end of the day, the people you work with and the team dynamics that ensue as a result matter more than the idea you initially come to the table with. There were teams that were interested in education that ended up pitching ideas in online marketplaces. Others walked into the program with one very focused idea, but then ended up pivoting after finding a good group to work with. Read More »

Founder Labs is a pre-incubator for people with ideas or those looking to meet co-founders. During the 5-week program participants validated their ideas, created rapid-prototypes, and evaluated potential co-founders. 5 groups worked in parallel on different early-startup mobile startup ideas. Some will continue together, others will choose to regroup.

Meet the founders that came out of the Founder Labs Mobile Edition (Winter 2011): Read More »

This guest blog post on “Lessons Learned” comes from Founder Labs participant Zuhairah Scott.

Many of you are likely familiar with Eric Ries’ blog “Lessons Learned”, considered by many to be the bible for anyone looking to launch a lean start up.

I am no Eric Ries, but I’ve learned lessons during my month at Founder Labs worth sharing. Read More »

This guest post is by Diana Chen, a Women 2.0 Startup Weekend attendee from last November. Diana is currently in the Founder Labs program in Menlo Park, CA. She blogs about her early-start mobile startup experience:

Startups aren’t easy. Nor are they particularly comfortable. In all E’s it’s been exciting, exhilarating, exhausting. Some days, someone tells you your product is amazing and you feel terrific. You’re getting somewhere, you’re creating the product of your dreams, you sing and cartoon birds will help you get dressed in the morning. Read More »

This guest post is from Sally Grisedale about Customer Development for the Lean Startup – Notes from Alexander Osterwalder, Steve Blank, Cindy Alvarez and Hiten Shah speaking to Women 2.0 Founder Labs participants on January 23, 2011

In week two of Women 2.0 Founder Labs, the stars of the startup business world kept appearing to shine on us. This week we heard from Alexander Osterwalder the author of “Business Model Creation”; Cindy Alvarez and Hiten Shah from KISS Metrics on marketing strategies for startups and Steve Blank author of Four Steps to the Epiphany, discussing what makes Silicon Valley scalable startups so different from traditional business models. Read More »

“Learning to Pivot: Notes from Eric Ries speaking at Women 2.0 Founders lab” is a guest blog post from Sally Grisedale, a Founder Labs participant.

The first week of January 2011, I started a five-week program led by Shaherose Charania, CEO and co-founder of Women 2.0, to collaborate with engineers, designers and business leads on building a startup mobile business. By day five, 18 people had formed five teams and were pitching their ideas to a star studded team of mentors and advisors. Read More »

Week 5 at Women 2.0 Founder Labs means final presentation night to a panel of judges.

Several members of Labs, including Jennie’s team, wound up at Twilio’s API Hack Day (pictured left), where they worked on FrankenBrain at the event.

Jennie Lee’s Story

Frankie Looks Back – a Women 2.0 Labs Retrospective.
Read More »

Here is a blog post from one of the teams at Women 2.0 Labs this fall 2010 in San Francisco. This week, visiting advisor Brad Feld from Foundry Group was in town to drop by Women 2.0 Labs and give his feedback to the teams.

Sela Davis’s Story

As we entered week 3 of Women 2.0 Labs, Team Modalware started to worry. Read More »

This week’s Women 2.0 Labs update comes after meeting Eric Ries in Week 1 of Labs.

Madhavi Jagdish’s Story

After an intense week, we had a lively and engaging session with Eric Ries, creator of the Lean Startup methodology. He illustrated Lean Startup concepts using examples from past experiences including IMVU and current, like Food on the Table. Eric inspired us to talk to prospective customers about our ideas to make sure we weren’t deluding ourselves that we had the best idea in the world (aka the reality distortion field). Read More »

Women 2.0 Labs is a 5-week
pre-incubator for engineers, designers, business and marketing mavens to begin to develop high-growth technology ventures in San Francisco, CA. This Women 2.0 program is open to both women and men.

Deadline to apply for your spot at Women 2.0 Labs: September 4th, 2010.
If you applied to Women 2.0 Labs, hang tight! We will be notifying selected participants on September 13, 2010.

Keep your day job, join us afterward!
The pre-incubator program in San Francisco starts September 28 and ends October 28, 2010.

Hosted by:

Selected participants will moonlight in teams on weekday nights and weekends at the Women 2.0 Labs co-working space in Menlo Park — and every Thursday night, demo their latest prototype. Participants will be joined weekly by industry leaders serving as visiting advisors. Take a look at the advisors from the last Women 2.0 Labs session for an idea of the advisors involved.

Who should attend Women 2.0 Labs?

- Someone with an idea they’d like to validate, and passionately curious about starting a startup
- Someone without an idea, and passionately curious about starting a startup

How is Women 2.0 Labs different?

• We are focused on rapid prototyping.
• You work hands-on with potential team members.
• You don’t have to quit your day job or drop out of school. Come with enough energy to burn the midnight oil after work/school hours.
• There is no curriculum.

Are you an engineering student?

Are you interested in founding a startup? Join us! We’ve reserved a few spots for engineers still in school, or recently graduated, to join Women 2.0 Labs. Email baat@women2.org if interested.

Press on Women 2.0 Labs

Women 2.0 Labs was featured on TechCrunch for “Breaking Up The Boys Club: Inside Women 2.0 Labs [video]“ and on ReadWriteWeb: “Incubating Women Entrepreneurs” and “Women 2.0 Labs Graduates Its First Class of Founders”.

Check out blog posts from previous Labs participants:

• Rebecca works on a health startup
• Kimberly ponders her MBA
• Vida quits her engineering day job to live the dream
• Anna expounds on gut feelings vs. testing and communicating
• Tiem expresses great appreciation for his team
• Beatriz flies in from Barcelona for a summer in SF

Do the math:

   5 engineers (software, hardware, bio)
+ 5 more engineers (students)
+ 5 designers
+ 5 business / marketing people
+ 5 week program
+ 5 days a week (M-F after work)
+ 555 dollars to join the race
—————————————
= 5 startups will emerge

The $555 fee is per person, regardless of the role they take on the team.

Why $555? Two reasons:

1. If you rent a co-working spot in San Francisco, it would cost $500 per person a month. Not only are we providing a co-working space, we are creating a hyper-smart environment for you to build, and we are giving you access to investors and entrepreneurs for advice. We want you to build authentic relationships and great products.
2. We do not take equity.

Add up your “eating out” money each month, it’s about the same. Save it by investing in your startup!

Refund Policy: Due to the up front costs we incur and the structure of the program agenda, a 50% refund will be allowable until the end of the first week of the program. Refunds for emergency situations will be considered with proper documentation. Email us to discuss obtaining a refund.

Fall Schedule for Women 2.0 Labs

Women 2.0 Labs participants will meet on Thursday nights from 6pm to 9pm from September 28th through October 28th, 2010. Teams demo their latest product releases each Thursday evening. Teams are allowed to use the San Francisco space to work on their startups on weeknights from 6pm to 9pm.

Week 0
Idea Brainstorming and Team Formation.

Week 1
Thursday, September 30, 2010: Visiting Advisors: Eric Ries (Creator, Lean Startup) and Jon Callaghan (General Partner, True Ventures)
Saturday, October 2, 2010: Visiting Advisor: Anna Billstrom (Prototyping Workshop)

Week 2
Wednesday, October 6, 2010: Ask Your Target Market Demo (7pm)
Thursday, October 7, 2010: Visiting Advisors: Steve Blank (Creator, Customer Development) and Ann Miura-Ko (Partner, FLOODGATE)

Week 3
Wednesday, October 13, 2010: Visiting Advisors: Brad Feld (Managing Director, Foundry Group)
Thursday, October 14, 2010: Visiting Advisors: Mari Baker (President & CEO, PlayFirst),
Dan Martell (Co-Founder, Flowtown), and Jo Anne Miller (Golden Seeds)

Week 4
Wednesday, October 20, 2010: Visiting Advisors: Braughm Ricke (VP Finance, True Ventures), David Weekly (Founder, Chairman, & Chief Product Officer, PBworks) and Victoria Ransom (Founder & CEO, Wildfire Interactive)
Thursday, October 21, 2010: Visiting Advisors: Hiten Shah (Co-Founder & CEO, KISSMetrics), Cindy Alvarez, and Dave McClure (Investor, FF Angel LLC)

Week 5 — Final Demo Night
Thursday, October 28, 2010: Live Feedback Visiting Advisors: Puneet Agarwal (Early Stage Venture Capital, True Ventures), Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (CEO, Polyvore), Steve Jang (Co-Founder, Schematic Labs; Mentor, i/o ventures), Daniel Levine (Early-stage Associate, Accel Partners).

We are currently accepting company sponsors to provide food/drink for an evening in exchange for your logo on this page and a 3-5 minute pitch at event. Please contact shaherose@women2.org if interested.

Women 2.0 Labs will be held at True Ventures

The San Francisco office of True Ventures is located at Pier 38 on The Embarcadero. View map here.

Coming from the South Bay? Pier 38 is only a 10-15 minute walk (or 2 MUNI lightrail stops) away from the 4th & King Caltrain station in San Francisco!

Women 2.0 Labs (Fall 2010) Visiting Advisors:

Eric Ries (Creator, Lean Startup) – Thursday, Sept. 30, 2010
Eric is an author, speaker, and consultant for The Lean Startup. Previously, he co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). In 2007, BusinessWeek named Eric one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech. He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups and venture capital firms. In 2008, he served as a venture advisor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Jon Callaghan (General Partner, True Ventures) – Thursday, Sept. 30, 2010
Jon is truly passionate about early stage companies. He has founded three companies of his own, and his venture capital career spans 17 years, includeing consistent early stage success. Before founding True, Jon was a Managing Director at Globespan, where he served on the boards of Copan Systems, FilmLoop, Glu Mobile (fka Sorrent), Ingrian Networks, Next Medium Networks, Nominum Corp., Plaxo, Sigma Dynamics, and Vazu. Jon holds a BA in Government from Dartmouth and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Anna Billstrom (Prototyping Workshop) – Saturday, Oct. 2, 2010
Anna started as a Perl and Java developer back in the Dot Com Era. In the past seven years, she’s specialized in CRM Consulting for some of the top Fortune 500 companies. She’s a core contributor to Ruby on Rails’ blog solution Radiant and her iPhone app development has resulted in two awards (“Best New Developer” and “Best Social Game”). Anna graduated from Women 2.0 Labs with her start-up FreezeFare, developing a functioning prototype in the first week. By participating in weekend hackfests, she has a very practical perspective on how to rapidly prototype with agile tools.

Steve Blank (Creator, Customer Development) – Thursday, Oct. 7, 2010
Steve moved from being an entrepreneur to teaching entrepreneurship to undergraduate and graduate students at UC Berkeley, Stanford University and Columbia University/Berkeley Joint Executive MBA program. The “Customer Development” model he developed in his book is one of the core themes in these classes. In 2009, Steve was awarded the Stanford University Undergraduate Teaching Award in the department of Management Science & Engineering. In 2010, Steve was awarded the Earl F. Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.

Ann Miura-Ko (Partner, FLOODGATE) – Thursday, Oct. 7, 2010
Ann is a partner at FLOODGATE where her investment interests include e-commerce, security, and big data. Ann is finishing up a Ph.D. in the Management Science and Engineering Department at Stanford University, where her research focused on mathematical modeling of computer security. She teaches High Tech Entrepreneurship at Stanford and is a frequent lecturer in courses such as Technology Venture Formation, High-tech Entrepreneurship, and the Mayfield Fellows Program. Ann holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Yale.

Brad Feld (Managing Director, Foundry Group) – Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2010
Brad has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over twenty years. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures, a company that helped launch and operate software companies and later became a venture affiliate of the predecessor to Mobius Venture Capital. Brad is also a co-founder of TechStars. Brad has been active with several non-profit organizations and is currently chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology. Brad holds a B.S. and M.S. in Management Science from MIT.

Hiten Shah (Co-Founder & CEO, KISSMetrics) – Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2010
Hitens started on the Internet by founding a Internet marketing consultancy, ACS. He than went on to create Crazy Egg, an analytics tool that visualizes the user experience on a website. Now with KISSmetrics he is working on helping web-based businesses understand their customers better starting with making tracking of business metrics and conversion funnels much simpler and easier to understand. Hiten is passionate about helping other entrepreneurs and startup people. He enjoys advising startups about metrics, product and marketing. Hiten holds a B.S. in Organizational Behavior from UC Berkeley.

Mari Baker (President & CEO, PlayFirst) – Thursday, Oct. 14, 2010
Mari is currently the President & CEO of PlayFirst. Prior to Playfirst, Mari was President & CEO for Navigenics. Mari was an executive-in-residence at Kleiner Perkins. Prior to that, Mari served as President of BabyCenter. Before joining BabyCenter, she played a significant role in the growth of Intuit for ten years. Mari has been recognized in the San Mateo County Women’s Hall of Fame, Fortune’s list of Silicon Valley’s Most Influential Women, and Advertising Age’s Top 100. Mari is a graduate of Stanford University with degrees in economics and sociology.

Dan Martell (Co-Founder, Flowtown) – Thursday, Oct. 14, 2010
An award winning entrepreneur, Dan recently co-founded Flowtown, a company focused on providing web-based tools that allow small businesses to measure their online marketing efforts. Now living in San Francisco, Dan spends the majority of his time looking at ways to build a bridge between Silicon Valley and New Brunswick. As an informal angel investor, he is active in advising entrepreneurs using metric-based marketing tactics to gain market adoption. Dan invests in startups whose opportunities and ideas he can get excited about.

Braughm Ricke (VP Finance, True Ventures) – Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2010
Braughm is a financial and operational powerhouse who maintains close relationships with our Limited Partners and lends financial and operational support to our portfolio companies. He brings nine years of financial experience in the venture capital industry. Prior to joining True, Braughm was the Controller of 5AM Ventures, a seed and early-stage life science venture firm. At 5AM, he was solely responsible for the finance and administrative functions of the firm. Prior to 5AM, Braughm was the Controller at Sofinnova Ventures, an early-stage life science & information technology venture capital firm.

David Weekly (Founder, Chairman, & Chief Product Officer, PBworks) – Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2010
David started the company that became PBwiki (now PBworks) in 2003, along the way creating SingleStat.us and IMSmarter. David has been programming since he was five and has coded for MIT, Harvard, Stanford, There.com, atWeb, and Legato. David wrote the first layman’s description of MP3 in early 1997. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford, where he was a President Scholar and a finalist in the ACM International Programming Competition.

Victoria Ransom (Founder & CEO, Wildfire Interactive) – Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2010
Victoria has been an entrepreneur since her early 20s and developed three companies operating today. As founder & CEO of Wildfire Interactive, Victoria led the company to profitability in just one year and built a client list that includes Facebook, Pepsi, Unilever, Sony, AT&T, and Ogilvy. Wildfire is a two-time winner of the fbFund; investors include Facebook, Accel Partners and the Founder’s Fund. Victoria holds a B.A. from Macalester College where she graduated Suma Cum Laude, and a M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Saad Khan (Partner, CMEA Capital) – Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010
Saad focuses on CMEA Capital’s software and Internet investments. He serves on the boards of Pixazza and Jobvite. Prior to CMEA, Saad was Partner at Garage Technology Ventures (GTV), a seed and early stage venture capital firm. During his career at GTV, Saad worked with many emerging technology, software, and digital media companies. Saad is a founding member of the FilmAngels. Saad holds a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and an A.B in Economics with Honors in Science, Technology, and Society from Stanford University.

Dave McClure (Investor, FF Angel LLC) – Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010
Dave likes to hang out with entrepreneurs, and occasionally help or invest in their startups if they let him. Dave has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over twenty years, and has worked with companies such as PayPal, Mint, Founders Fund, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Twilio, Simply Hired, O’Reilly Media, Intel, & Microsoft. Many years ago he used to do real work like coding or marketing or running conferences, but these days he mostly does useless stuff like sending lots of email, blogging, and hanging out on Facebook and Twitter.

Ashwin Navin (Co-Founder, i/o ventures) – Thursday, Oct. 28, 2010
Ashwin was the President and Co-founder of BitTorrent until August 2008. At BitTorrent, Ashwin crafted a business model for the BitTorrent protocol, invented by his co-founder. Ashwin hails from Yahoo where he was a member of the Corporate Development group, responsible for M&A, divestitures and company strategy in the U.S. and key global markets. Before Yahoo, Ashwin worked with Wall Street powerhouses Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Merrill Lynch as an investment banker and research analyst. Ashwin holds a dual B.A. from Claremont McKenna in Government and Economics.

Puneet Agarwal (Early Stage Venture Capital, True Ventures)
Puneet brings a strong mix of operating and Venture Capital experience to the True team. Prior to joining True, Puneet was the VP of Product Management at Geodesic Information Systems, which specializes in mobile and Internet communication products selling to consumers, OEMs, carriers, and online properties. There he helped grow the company from $20M to over $80M in revenue in two years and learned valuable lessons about building a successful team in times of rapid growth. As part of his experience with Geodesic, Puneet lived and worked in India for seven months before settling back in their West Coast offices.

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (CEO, Polyvore) – Thursday, Oct. 28, 2010
Before joining Polyvore, Sukhinder was CEO-in-Residence at Accel Partners. From 2005-2009 Sukhinder was President of Asia Pacific and Latin America for Google, where she built the company’s presence from inception to scale across 40 domains and 103 different countries. Sukhinder first joined Google in 2003 as the General Manager for Google Local & Maps. From 1999-2003, Sukhinder was Co-founder and SVP of Business Development at Yodlee, and previously worked for Amazon.com, News Corp and Merrill Lynch. Sukhinder has served on the board of J.Crew, and is currently a board member at A Woman’s Nation and Jobtrain.

Dan Levine (Early-Stage Associate, Accel) – Thursday, October 28th, 2010
Dan joined Accel Partners in 2010 and focuses on early stage investments. Prior to joining Accel Partners, Dan founded chart.io, a Y Combinator-backed company specializing in visualizing data. Before chart.io Dan was at TechCrunch where he conducted industry research and published quarterly reports about industry trends, funding and M & A. Dan holds a B.A. in History from Yale University, where he was a sprinter on the track team. He now lives in Palo Alto, California.
John Malloy (Partner, Blue Run Ventures) – Thursday, October 28th, 2010
John is a General Partner and co-founder of BlueRun Ventures. John’s investment focus includes internet services, digital media and mobile broadband services. He has 20+ years’ experience as an executive, entrepreneur, investor, and director of venture-backed start-ups, and has served on the boards of over 20 companies. He was the first venture investor in Paypal, for which he was named on Forbes’ Midas List of Top VCs. John was also an early investor in Slide (GOOG) and WiderThan (RNWK). Current investments include Chomp, Slide, Topsy, and 140 Proof. John holds a B.A. from Boston College and a J.D. from George Mason University.

Thanks to Founder Institute. Golden Seeds, and Trivium for supporting Women 2.0 Labs!