Startups

I'm working on a couple of little startups :) Doing a bachelor degree in innovation and entrepreneurship, although ironically I've learnt more with courses like Steve Blank's lean launchpad http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/ep245/CourseRev/1 and out in the real world than I have in the classroom.

I've just got sick of doing so much talking and very little doing. Learning to think in terms of assumptions and how to best test them, and getting a little better at it. Very much a fan of the Business Model generation based approach.

My main project is at http://offerussolar.com, although it's definitely early days.

Now I've been doing Treehouse Ruby courses for a while to be able to better develop my own stuff. Definitely money well spent!

What's your startup and where are you based? :)

I am located in Northern Colorado. My startup is based on creating and selling wordpress themes. Obviously nothing new, however the market has plenty of room for new ideas and innovative business practices.

I have been apart of many small businesses and startups and too can see the merit in transitioning from the terms of talk to action. Many of my own ideas have been hindered by over thinking the concept and lack of testing.

The startup owners manual will probably be my next read :)

Best of luck to you.

This is really great stuff, guys! Brandon, I'm going to let Pasan and Dan know that you've been enjoying their courses.

Best of luck on your new venture; we would be very interested to hear how it turns out. :)

Thanks Nick! I will be sure to share my experience in the coming months.

Great thread Brandon - thanks for starting it. BTW, I'm from Colorado Springs originally :)

Treehouse is my fourth company. The first one failed, the second one was acquired (DropSend - please don't judge me, they've butchered the design) and the third one was acquired (events company).

Treehouse isn't a startup anymore really. We have 54 employees and are doing around $4m in revenue. Now I'm trying to take it to the next level so we can help as many Students around the World as possible!

Thanks Ryan. I have been following you for a while and you are truly an inspiration. I too have had some failures but it is my drive as an entrepreneur to keep trying, learning from my mistakes, and succeed.

Thanks for creating an awesome resource for people who are hungry to make an impact!

Cheers

Thanks for being one of our Students Brandon! :) We're honored to serve you.

Ryan, I watched your Startup Business videos where they were explaining a business model for an app. Good stuff, esp. since I am currently putting together a business plan for an app. Around the discussion of finances and revenue, I wish they would of talked about hiring a development person for the app. since my experience has been bleak. Also pricing, it seems to be all over the board from $500-$125,000.

My app is not a game and I have done all the graphics in the ipad version for a prototype, but want to develop it for the iphone. I know little about Objective C, any thoughts on who and ideas on hiring a trust worthy person. It is difficult when you live in a small place with little support.

I've been working on a startup for about 2 weeks now. I've had the idea for the last year, but am finally pulling the trigger. It's similar to what treehouse and railscasts offers, but is strictly focused on Linux, Security, and DevOps.

I'm about 2 weeks into coding and should have a working beta product in another two weeks. Hope to get some great feedback from the community here as the product progresses!

Good luck with your startup Brandon and let us know if we can help in any way!

@Damian

That sounds like an awesome project. Keep us posted :)

I will keep you updated as well, I should have my introductory product ready to ship soon. I used my vacation to make some major progress.

Cheers

@Damian - So exciting! Please let us know how you're doing :)

Great thread!

I am new to treehouse and loving it when I get a chance. I have University degree in Finance and Accounting, but still wish I went to university on the tech side of things, because I am sick of outsourcing and relying on others.

Glad I found Treehouse to fill that void and its already paying off on my biggest online venture yet Firepar Golf.

At Firepar we have been implementing the Lean Startup methodology of Build-Measure-Learn and introduced our MVP this year to our target market and made our first pivot in Oct 2012 and confident we have found our way now.

What Firepar does is we sell an automated scoring system to golf courses that takes minutes to score an event instead of hours. We are able to do this by utilizing our Firepar software, our scanners and customized scannable scorecards.

We are also building a community around the data we capture from each golf course and have an app in our timeline that will capture the data from everyday rounds to enhance our community.

Here is out it works: http://www.firepar.com/about/index.html

Cheers