The WilmerHale/WeWork Labs Summer Legal Series!

Our goal at WeWork Labs is to help entrepreneurs and starts and that's what we're doing. Join us for our awesome legal series with WilmerHale! WilmerHale and WeWork Labs are pleased to present the 2011 Summer Legal Series. Attorneys from WilmerHale’s Corporate Practice present and answer questions on various topics of interest to emerging companies and entrepreneurs. Please join us for the final presentation in the series:  The Exit: IPO, Sale or Secondary Market? Presented by Bob Schwed With more than 35 years of experience in private equity, Bob Schwed has represented venture capital and buyout firms as well as companies in various investment activities, including early-stage investing, initial public offerings and leveraged buyouts. He is an adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School, where he teaches a course in venture capital law. WilmerHale is proud to be the law firm sponsor of WeWork Labs  and is dedicated to fostering collaboration among intelligent, creative and driven individuals.
WHEN Wednesday, September 7, 2011 5 -7 p.m.	WHERE WeWork Labs 154 Grand Street New York, NY
If you'd like to attend, please email me at jesse@guyhaus.com and I'll send you details.

What do you do when times get tough?

We may or may not be in a tech bubble today. Some say "hell yes we are" and others are still saying "what are you talking about?!" but one thing is for sure... things will change. They always do. In the case of raising money and building successful companies it's no different. Over the next 12-18 months we're going to see tons of companies close up shop like MyNines, fanvibe and Skribit but we'll also see people getting smart, real smart.

Two months ago a few others in the startup space and I were sharing a beer (well, I was having something gluten free) and we began discussing what happens when money and runway starts to run out. One option is to close up shop but the other, more reasonable and intelligent option is to get together and build something amazing. Right now we've got tons of super talented people spread out among every startup industry on the planet from fashion to finance and ecommerce to social. As times get tough, the best thing that can and will happen is that people join forces.

We're already seeing this type of thing (not necessarily because of money issues, yet) among startups. Just today, Health Month and Contagion Health created the new Habit Labs and only a couple of weeks ago, LocalResponse bought Philo and while it's not exactly a startup, recently Meltwater purchased IceRocket (which is still amusing to me).

I won't be surprised if this trend continues upwards. Got $1MM? Buy that other group that raised $250k started by a few smart guys, bring your dev teams together to kick ass and build an awesome product and company. That'll get you through this bubble, er, thin film of soapy money/tech/design filled with air. :)

WeWork Labs Demo Day

Most of you probably know but if not, I'm one of the co-founders of a space in SoHo, NYC called WeWork Labs. My partner, Matt, and I opened it in the beginning of April of this year and it's been amazing! The people that work out of here (47+ entrepreneurs) and the startups that are being build here (currently over 24) are just fantastic!

In order to help people share their ideas and gain helpful feedback we hold "Demo Days" frequently at the office. These demo days are very informal, and usually consist of 6-8 great people sharing their products in 4 minute chunks. Everyone in WeWork Labs shares their thoughts, offers their support (sometimes morale and other times real development, design or business support) and has a good time learning about their fellow office-mates.

We have one scheduled for next Friday, August 12th. Right now we have 8 great companies scheduled to demo. If you'd like to swing by to see some of the awesome startups that are working out of here, let me know. Send an email over to jesse -at- guyhaus.com and I'll send you the details.

In NYC? Come learn about raising money (from F&F to angels/VCs)

At WeWork Labs, we love to help out our fellow entrepreneurs. That's why we work with the aweosme folks at WilmerHale to put on this legal series to help the whole community. It's free, it's helpful and fun!

WilmerHale and WeWork Labs are pleased to present the 2011 Summer Legal Series. Attorneys from WilmerHale’s Corporate Practice will present and answer questions on various topics of interest to emerging companies and entrepreneurs.

 
Please join us for the third presentation in the series:
 
Raising Money: From Family and Friends, to Angels to VC's (Part 2)
 
Presented by Bob Schwed
 
With more than 35 years of experience in private equity, Bob Schwed has represented venture capital and buyout firms as well as companies in various investment activities, including early-stage investing, initial public offerings and leveraged buyouts. He is an adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School, where he teaches a course in venture capital law.
 
WilmerHale is proud to be the law firm sponsor of WeWork Labs 
and is dedicated to fostering collaboration among intelligent, creative and driven individuals.
 
WHEN
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
5 -7 p.m.

 
WHERE

WeWork Labs
154 Grand Street
New York, NY

Please RSVP to m@simande.com if you'd like to attend so we know who's coming.
 
If you would like to submit your questions in advance, please email leigh.ollman@wilmerhale.com.

From idea to product in 24 hours...

Many would think it's not possible but it is once you've got a little practice under your belt.  It's great to continue to hone your skills. When you're a business man or woman you should be out there closing deals. As a technical guru you should be fixing problems and coding away. And when you're a startup guy you should be making things that solve problems or provide people joy. That's what I decided to do this weekend.

While I was getting ready to go to bed around 10:30pm on Saturday evening I came up with the idea. I had a few things I needed to get done on Sunday and I needed a quick way to make sure I got reminded to do simple tasks when I needed to. So I set out to build it myself.

I woke at 10:15am on Sunday morning and I got to coding (eh, it's more hacking than coding when I do it) and within a few hours I had a framework for my product built on a platform called Twilio. Twilio lets you build apps that interact with real telephones (both phone and text) and that's exactly what I needed.

As I walked out the door at 1:30pm to wander around the city with my wife I also set out to figure out a name for the project. I turned to a friend's awesome product, Domainful, that was built to solve a personal need as well. Domainful lets you check on available domain names and then purchase them all through a couple of text messages. It's super simple and in only a few minutes I found one I wanted and bought it - HitYouBack.com.

Once I finished grabbing coffee, wandering around Union Square and checking my mail at the office we headed home. As Magda made dinner I put a few finishing touches on HitYouBack. I added some error checking and helpful messaging and threw up a simple site. It went live at 7:28pm with a tweet.

So in actuality it took me about 21 hours to go from an idea to a simple product. Since I'm building a startup full time right now, GetMinders, I need all the help I can get. And what better way to continue to educate myself than launching new things all the time?

P.S. - If you'd like to give HitYouBack a whirl it's pretty easy to use: Create a new text to 484-819-0577 that begins with the number of hours (from 1-24) until you'd like the reminder to come and the message you'd like to receive. If I wanted to remind myself to go to the post office tomorrow around noon, I'd send "12 Go to the post office" since it's almost midnight here. Enjoy!