“Do absolutely everything you can do get into 500Startups,” one of my friends who had just completed the 2nd batch of the accelerator program said, “It’s been a godsend to us.”
Well, it’s only been two days since the start of the 14 week program of the 3rd accelerator batch and all I can think is… Thank god we did.
Outside of the mentor network which has already proven to be incredibly useful and helpful, it’s just been a thrill being able to work next to super incredibly talented and equally as driven founders of the 30 or so other startups in our batch (which even includes one of my favorite sites, Forrst).
On May 8th, my team and I packed up our entire lives’ worth of belongings into my small Mazda hatchback and headed out to San Francisco from Boston, where we had just finished the last gruesome finals of our sophomore years from Babson College just the Friday before that Sunday evening. Our decision to move Redeemr out west was to place our startup in what I thought was the best environment. This conclusion stirred a bit of commotion in the Boston startup scene (and yes, there is a “scene” out in beantown) as we had now become the epitome of the “Boston tech brain drain” where young, first time founders (like ourselves) were moving away to Silicon Valley or NYC. We even got featured on the front page of the business section in Boston Globe about this along with fellow ex-Boston youngsters and 500Startups batch #2, Jeff Lu and Conan Jen of DailyAisle, a wedding planning site.
To convince my friends I wasn’t just “ditching” Boston (because that wasn’t my intention), I had told my friends that going west was because I wanted to be closer to my family in my hometown of El Dorado Hills, a small suburb of Sacramento, but the truth was, the decision was largely based on another reason. There was not one other thing I wanted my team and I to achieve in moving to the Valley more than to become part of 500Startups.
46 hours, 3000 miles, and a lot of energy drinks later, we arrived in our new home in San Francisco (Fun fact: We tried to contact the Guinness Book of World Records before making the trip out, but they didn’t endorse these kind of attempts for obvious reasons). Since then, we’ve been hustling, trying new things, failing fast, and staying flexible with a laser sharp focus on our goals. Through our great friends and mentors who believed in us enough to push us into 500Startups, we achieved our first of many major goals when Paul accepted us into the program just ten days ago.
Now that the program has officially started, I aim to share a bit of the 500Startup experience each week as we get the shit kicked out of us by the mentors. So join us as Redeemr tries to help SMBs, brands and celebrities convert their social media fans into direct sales, with our longer focus on becoming the customer loyalty program for the era of social media. With 500Startups as our launchpad, we’re going to rock this shit.
I can’t stop thinking this is what college should have been.
13.5 weeks until Demo Day. 1 week ‘til launch.
- Tim
good post. now get back to work, youngster!