I had the opportunity to be the final speaker at the 2010 Indianapolis Startup Weekend event on Sunday afternoon. For the uninitiated, I've included a bit of background from the Startup Weekend website below.
Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.
Over the past few years Indianapolis has quietly been growing into a bonafide startup hub – boasting an impressive array of tech startups, service providers, funding sources, and industry events and organizations. It's gotten so robust in fact, that it's becoming difficult to keep track of everything thats going on. As many of you all know, the gang at KA+A has been working on a really cool project for the past couple of weeks that we're calling the "Indy Startup Genome Project". In short, we're attempting to map the entire Indianapolis startup ecosystem.
We've started by pulling together a list of all the tech-oriented startup in Indy. Currently it's an incomplete list. If you are a founder of an Indianapolis-based startup or you are aware of one that is not our list…
One of the most frequent questions I'm asked is "What have you been reading lately." With increasing frequency, folks are beginning to inquire about what Podcasts I listen to as well. So I thought I'd share a list of my favorite podcasts with our readers. These picks run the gamut from design, to technology, to entrepreneurialism. Some of them are not updated as regularly as I'd like, but they are all thought provoking, interesting, and inspiring. You can find them all on iTunes.
The Accidental CreativeThe Accidental Creative podcast addresses how to thrive in the create-on-demand world by instilling practical, everyday practices that help you stay prolific, brilliant and healthy in your life
I thought this was a pretty interesting presentation by Mint CEO Aaron Patzer. The same Mint that just sold to Intuit for 170 Million. He shares his thoughts on selecting co-founders, how to dole out equity, what to pay employees, etc. It's a pretty revealing look into Mint's early days.
The slide presentation, compliments of TechCrunch, can be found below.
Startup Building 101 -
Obama's recent plan to "smarten up the youth of America" by rewarding teachers and lengthening the school year has left me feeling a little queasy. Seeing that I'm only 5 years out of high school, the reverberation of cheese wagons, SAT testing, and home rooms still permeate my senses every now and then. My experiences growing up in the public school system has left a sour taste in my mouth from careless teachers and outrageous "rules," to standardization up the wazoo. Being a youth leader has also helped me keep up on what's happening inside the school walls, as well as the inside the minds of the students. Since the time I graduated high school, it seems that schools have become more…
At the recent TechpointInnovation Summit, held on September 29th, the attendants spent a lot of time talking about not only about what Indiana has done to be innovative, but how Indiana can continue to be innovative. The stars have aligned to create the right financial, structural and human capital environment that engenders innovation, so how can we use that to our benefit to push ahead?
As companies look to begin or continue to innovate in their industry, there are some important questions that they should be considering in their strategy.
What does innovation look like? The Summit’s Keynote Speaker, Clayton Christensen, Harvard professor and author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, delivered a rich presentation focused on disruptive innovation–improvements to…
Mad Men’s best boy Don Draper is thrilling us again with his smooth one liners. In the most recent episode (Season 3, Episode 2) of the AMC show, which features the advertising heyday of Madison Avenue in the 1960s, Draper is advising a potential client on how to invigorate a deadening New York with the shiny hope of California, when he delivers this gem,
“If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”
No, it wasn’t the start of the “I Love New York” campaign (that’s due in another 10 years), but it was a rather Darwinian response to the vividly increasing social changes of the times. Draper realized that in order to survive in the the new dynamics, you had to control the conversation.
Voting opened up yesterday for the 2010 SXSW panel topics, via the SXSW Panel Picker. Kristian Andersen + Associates submitted a presentation entitled "How to Get Rich Off Your Clients." In spite of the provocative name, it's actually a topic that I believe merits a lot more discussion in the design and consulting community. Below is an excerpt from the submission:
We’ll discuss emerging business models, such as service for equity investing, which allow businesses to share in the success of their clients. By moving beyond fee-for-service, retainers, and fixed-bid projects, consultancies can create sustainable differentiation, make more money, develop healthier relationships with clients, and have more fun in the process.
Make plans to join the Kristian Andersen + Associates team in Austin next March and be sure…
At Kristian Andersen + Associates we bill ourselves as a brandexperience design consultancy. This is a pretty nebulous way of trying to package a handful of distinct, yet deeply connected, disciplines into one cogent, tightly-edited description of our services. As we continue to refine our offerings to clients and partners, we also continue to struggle with how best to articulate those offerings. Ultimately, our mission is to help technology-focused start-ups (and growth-oriented companies) become more successful. The reality of what we do at a high-level is really quite straight-forward.
We help our clients develop their brands and design brand experiences that support the growth of those brands.
This all seems simple enough at first blush, but things start to get complicated when you begin to draw lines…
