Blowing up startups with design, data and distribution
500 Startups is a new kind of seed fund and startup accelerator. We believe successful internet startups are born from usable design, customer-focused metrics, and online distribution.
My idea is to create a system called The Startup Guild that is somewhat like a distributed and virtual version of YCombinator. The Startup Guild would use game mechanics to help track and match up participants into self supporting mastermind groups. As an analogy, if YCombinator were client-server, the Startup Guild would be a torrent tracker.
The main premise of the guild would be to help entrepreneurs build their first profitable business via the unfunded route of bootstrapping, however there would be nothing about the guild to exclude participants from seeking funding or placement at an incubator.
My objective was to take a month off work, shut myself away in my apartment, spend a month coding up all of the basic plumbing I needed to get the first core part of my service in working order, and profit. Needless to say, I failed to reach my goals, but not for any of the typical reasons like poor project planning, lack-of-focus, and so forth. No, I failed because I took the experiences of other entrepreneurs too literally and tried to "be my own boss," without appreciating what that really means.