Great New York Area Resources for Entrepreneurs!

David Teten has a great and comprehensive post on the education programs available for entrepreneurs in the New York region and he also has a really good list of sponsors of conferences and events in the region. If you are a New York based company, check out David’s post here.

The programs should help start-ups understand how to win the first four games in their “Minute To Win It Entrepreneur Competition“, including:

– Game 1 – Get started: The game is won through generating enough raw ingredients and passion to get started and start winning games, including a core team of one or more people with the right characteristics and enough capital to win one or more games. These programs should help you assess whether you are ready to get started and also help you close any gaps that you have on your management team…they are great networking events.

– Game 2 – Understand targets: The game is won by generating target Market, User, and Buyer Clarity and Insights that will allow the company to exploit an attractive market opportunity and wow the market participants. These programs should help you to understand how to gain clarity and insights around your targets.

– Game 3 – Create users through well designed user “touch points”: The game is won by creating whole product and development strategy and execution that wows the users, ultimately optimize value for the users (Like Aspirin, Vitamins, and/or do for their users) and ensures that the ongoing touch points with the users grow the value and relationship (thereby minimizing attrition, maximizing ongoing revenue, and maximizing word of mouth from existing customers [the most important ingredient in influence marketing]). These programs should help you to develop your first whole products and how to continuously improve them through agile iterations.

– Game 4 – Create buyers through well designed buyer “touch points”: The game is won by generating a Go-To-Market strategy and execution that finds, wows, and converts target prospects into buyers effectively and efficiently. These programs should help you to establish your first marketing channels and sales channels leading to your first customers (a.k.a., customer development) and how to continuously improve them through agile iterations.

As an Expansion Stage Venture Capitalist who invests globally, we see the development of regional ecosystems in many different regions. It has been really great to watch the development of the New York ecosystem over the last several years and we are looking forward to investing in one of the New York based companies that are participating in the ecosystem that have won these first four games and are looking for another great partner to help win the remaining 6!

Note: David’s post is also re-posted on the NextNY site here. NextNY is a great resource for the NY region.