Biz Stone on the Importance of Failure for Entrepreneurs

Biz Stone

Over at Inc. Magazine, Abigail Tracy writes about the importance of failure for Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

Earlier this week, Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, presented at the New Context Conference in San Francisco and highlighted the fumbles from his start-up career–a nice lead up to today’s much-anticipated Twitter IPO.

Stone reflected on his time at Xanga, and said that not focusing on building a strong company culture was his greatest mistake with the start-up. Unhappy with the company’s shift away from innovation and the culture that had developed, Stone quit Xanga. “What I should have done was work really hard to make a change in the company culture,” said Stone. “The lesson I learned was that company culture at the beginning is incredibly important. You have to tend to it…almost as much as you tend to your product.”

Read the Full Story.

Video: Sources of Funding for Startups – What Works and What Doesn’t

 
In this video, Ankit Agarwal from Micello and Nikhil Bhat from PRS Technologies discuss Sources of Funding for Startups: What Works and What Doesn’t.

How do you plan on getting your startup funded? When is the right time? And from whom? These questions vex all founders during their finance process and are a constant source of frustration and challenge. There are various models and ideas out there, but few get creative enough to stay lean and cash comfortable. For some industries, (Enterprise & B2B) making a viable product without any funding is nearly impossible, while for some consumer startups, their go to market strategy can be as simple as developing a mobile app.

Kickstarter Shadow Project Finds its Way into Sci-Fi Original

A while back we wrote about the Shadow project on Kickstarter. Now fully funded with 30 hours to go, this amazing app will reportedly help you record and remember your dreams.

As a writer, I was so intrigued with the possibilities of Shadow that I decided to weave it into my latest Sci-Fi original story, The Observer Effect.

This video trailer is a teaser for The Observer Effect, which is featured in the PrintN’Fly Guide to SC13 Denver.

Tagline: A scientist uses Big Data to try and prove the existence of God.”

Sponsored by Mellanox, the PrintN’Fly Guide to SC13 Denver will feature interviews on Exascale, high performance networking, and the 25th anniversary of the conference as well as restaurant and bar reviews for downtown Denver. Look for it right here in early November!

Download The Observer Effect (PDF).