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• Greg Greiner 7:04 pm on October 14, 2012 Permalink  

  StartX Applications are Open! Due November 1st. 

  Serious about your startup?

  Join the Community of Stanford’s Top Founders

  
  

  Apply Now

  

  StartX accelerates the development of the highest-potential Stanford founders through experiential education.

  Our program provides:

  • Community: A close-knit peer community of the best Stanford entrepreneurs who learn from, motivate, and support one another
  • Alumni Network: A diverse community of 220+ high quality StartX alumni founders in all industries and from all backgrounds who have raised on average $1.42 million per company
  • Mentorship: Top tier mentorship from serial entrepreneurs & investors
  • Training: Access to training from relevant experts in any industry to guide you in every aspect of starting a company
  • Resources: $3-5k per founder, office space, housing, free legal, up to $20K free cloud computing, accounting, and more
  • Access to Capital: Connections to top investment firms and angel groups, as well as a large number of individual angel investors

  
  We take 0% equity and charge nothing.

  In order to be eligible to apply, at least one founder of the company must have been enrolled as a Stanford student, post doc, or professor within the last three years of the application period.

  StartX is stage agnostic; companies have entered the program at a variety of stages from preparing to raise a Series A to having recently developed an initial prototype.

  If you do not fit the requirements listed above for the accelerator, there are other ways to join the community.  If you have any questions about whether or not your company is a fit for StartX please contact us.

  We accept founders in all industries and from every background. This includes biotech, clean tech, clean energy, hardware, medical devices, non-profits, music, finance, IT, etc.  Historically our founders have been ~40% PhD students, ~30% Undergraduates, ~25% masters and ~5% professors across different departments and disciplines.  Additionally, over one quarter of our founders have been women.

  Check out recent press mentions of StartX in  Forbes, Business Insider, TechCrunch and VentureBeat.
  Read articles about our recent companies: Bell Bio, Maykah, Game Closure, Boosted Boards, Stem Cell Theranostics, and Qwhisper.

   

  Here’s how to apply.

  
  

  Check out our info session: Wednesday October 24, 7 PM @ Nitery 209!

     follow StartX on twitter  |   like us on our fb page: StartX
   

• Greg Greiner 8:56 am on September 6, 2012 Permalink  

  StartX Announces Partnership with Microsoft, Bringing 2012 Fundraising Total Over $1M 

  More to come today at the Demo Day live stream at 5:15pm. Be sure to check it out!

  StartX is pleased to announce a Signature Partnership with Microsoft to support high-potential
  entrepreneurs coming out of Stanford University. As StartX’s newest partner, Microsoft will
  provide financial sponsorship, technical resources, and significant scaling and distribution
  opportunities for StartX’s portfolio companies through Microsoft BizSpark.

  With support from its partners now totaling over $1M this year, StartX can continue to fulfill its
  mission of becoming the best place in the world for entrepreneurs to develop.

  “StartX’s vision is to combine the wisdom of the private sector with the energy and imagination
  of founders coming from an institution like Stanford. This vision comes to life now because of
  the rich bench of mentors and advisors from the venture and entrepreneurial world that offer
  their time and expertise to the program,” said Dan’l Lewin, corporate vice president, strategic
  and emerging business development, Microsoft. “We are honored that Microsoft BizSpark can
  support this effort.”

  Over the last several months, StartX companies have begun leveraging Microsoft’s resources as
  part of their company development. For example, Microsoft is working closely with Appfluence,
  a StartX company that builds priority-management software solutions for executives and
  managers. Microsoft is providing extensive technical, business, and design resources for
  Appfluence to migrate their award-winning product, Priority Matrix, to the Windows 8 platform.
  MindSumo, a platform for companies to actively engage with students by posting real-world
  challenges for them to solve, has also been working with Microsoft.

  “For many founders in StartX, access to top mentors and technical expertise is a crucial element
  for their long-term success,” said Cameron Teitelman, founder of StartX. “Working closely
  with Microsoft is a great opportunity for StartX founders to leverage the products, resources and
  connections they need to accelerate their business.”

  Microsoft BizSpark is a global program that helps startups succeed. With over 50,000 startups
  from 100 countries in the program, and a global network of 2,300 BizSpark partners, Microsoft
  provides great business value at no cost to young technology companies around the world. The
  program offers a wide range of Microsoft technology as well as technical and business expertise.

  Microsoft joins StartX’s other financial sponsors including AOL, Greylock Partners, and the
  Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, whose grant to StartX was announced recently.

  

  Microsoft’s Dan’l Lewin shares entrepreneurial war stories with StartX founders

   

• Greg Greiner 10:33 am on August 26, 2012 Permalink  

  UI/UX Design StartX Roundtable featuring Idean and designer Cielo de la Paz 

  User interface and user experience design is something that is essential for all internet based startups, but is something that is very hard to get right. StartX hosted a UI/UX roundtable to help our founders learn more about best practices from top designers’ perspectives.

  The featured speakers at the roundtable included employees from Idean,  a Finnish design firm with 20+ years of UX research and client experience and Cielo de la Paz, a lead interaction designer with experience at Hotwire, Ancestry.com, and Williams Sonoma. Some of the key points are outlined below:

  • Definitions: UI is what the user sees when interacting with a product and UX is the design of the large “user experience” that encompasses UI, content, visual design, etc…
  • What makes good UI/UX? Simplicity, getting in the mindset of the target user, paying attention to details, and most importantly testing.
  • Testing: everything needs testing and you should be constantly collecting feedback. An outside perspective is very important as you intimately know the product and understand it, but others don’t. Lastly, it is always important to have something to show when testing, don’t give hypotheticals. If you’re asking which color is better, show both colors.
  • Important Metrics: Depends on product, but some key ones are conversion, where users dropoff, and bounce rate.
  • Testing on a busy schedule: Plan ahead to make sure your tests are efficient and realize it only takes a little bit of testing to get a lot of value.
  • Never stop iterating!

  
  If you have any questions about this talk or if you would like to get involved in the StartX community feel free to email us at info@startx.stanford.edu!

  

   

• Greg Greiner 12:37 pm on May 29, 2012 Permalink
  Tags: StartX News ( 11 )   

  Startup Accelerator – What is it and How Does it Help? 

  People curious about StartX often ask us a lot of questions to understand what we do and how we do it. The most common questions are “What is a startup accelerator?” and “Why is it important?”, so we decided to address these questions fully here.

  What is it?

  A startup accelerator is an organization that works to accelerate the development of early stage companies by providing an ecosystem and the resources that help high quality startups further their growth quickly. This is important for startups, because there is a window of opportunity that these startups are trying to access, and they need to reach this window at the right time with the right capabilities. Most accelerators take a percentage of the startups equity in return for this support.

  What kind of startup accelerator is StartX?

  StartX is the Stanford Student Startup Accelerator, and is a non profit entity. The mission of StartX is to help the most passionate, talented and innovative founders develop as entrepreneurs. StartX is not your average startup accelerator. What really sets us apart from other incubators and VC funds is that we are entirely an educational initiative. Since we take 0% equity, we are able to recruit and advance the development of extremely talented founders who don’t want to give up any portion of their company, and at the same time provide the same kinds of benefits that other incubators provide. Our companies are extremely diverse, from gaming and e-commerce to battery technology and stem cell engineering.

  How does StartX help?

  We provide these founders with a powerful community of some of the best entrepreneurs in the Valley, who provide each other with peer learning, motivation and support. We also offer a highly structured mentorship program where each company is provided a dedicated set of mentors who help them think through business and founder issues. In addition, we also have a strong community of mentors who come in to provide the companies with real time education as and when they need it. As a startup accelerator, we also provide a number of infrastructural resources, including office space, free legal services, banking etc.