Startup Resources for finding a job with a startup, or raising money for your startup

Hello Duke students,

I often get asked by students about potential job leads at startups.  What I've found works best is pointing students to some of the best aggregated lists of startups online, and suggesting that the students reach out to Duke alumni at those startups (or contact the companies directly if there are no Duke alumni).   As a Duke entrepreneur told me "I like it when a student finds us, and explains why they'd like to work with us". 

So for those of you in a similar situation, I'd suggest you look at some of the resources below, try to find the startups that are a really good fit for you both industry-wise and geographically (as Brad Feld of TechStars likes to say, first figure out where you'd like to live).

Since many of you are going to spend significant time on this during the upcoming winter break, I thought I'd pull together some resources and make them available to you.  This is not meant to be comprehensive, but hopefully will highlight a few things that will be helpful to you.

Finally, some of you may enjoy trying out JobKatch to organize your job search, created by a local entrepreneur.  Check it out: http://www.jobkatch.com/

Best of luck.

Howie

Local Startup Job Resources

1) Downtown Durham Startups - http://www.downtowndurhamstartups.com/ (put together by Taylor Mingos '07, CEO of Shoeboxed.com)

2) Council for Entrepreneurial Development - http://www.cednc.org/ (check out the presenters at their venture conference)

3) LaunchBox Digital - http://www.launchboxdigital.com/ - local IT incubator

4) JoyStick Labs - http://www.joysticklabs.com/ - local gaming incubator

5) Synecor - http://www.synecor.com/ - a combination of a local life science incubator / venture fund (though mostly they do their own in-house developed projects)
6) Local VC firm portfolios

Intersouth Partners - http://www.intersouth.com/

Hatteras - http://www.hatterasvp.com/

Aurora Funds - http://www.aurorafunds.com/

Southern Capital Ventures - http://www.southcap.com/

IDEA Fund Partners - http://www.ideafundpartners.com/

SJF Ventures - http://www.sjfventures.com/

7) Research Triangle Foundation - http://www.rtp.org/main/index.php?pid=166&sec=1 - see the listing of companies in Research Triangle Park

8) Join the Entrepreneurship At Duke - Startup Matchmaker Google Group - http://groups.google.com/group/entrepreneurship-at-duke---startup-matchmaker/ - students post their startup needs here.

9) Southeast TechInventures - http://www.southeasttechinventures.com/index.php - spins companies out of universities

10) Listing of Duke Startups on DukeGEN (several local) - http://www.dukegen.com/dukestartups

11) First Flight Venture Center - http://www.ffvcnc.org/tenant_directory.cfm - local incubator

Non-Local Startup Job Resources

1) Join DukeGEN - with over 2500 members from Duke's entrepreneurial community

2) VentureLoop - http://www.ventureloop.com (see VC portfolio companies that are hiring)

3) DEMO - http://www.demo.com/ - check out the companies that pitched here

4) TechCrunch Disrupt - http://disrupt.techcrunch.com/2010-sf/ - check out the companies that pitched here

5) YCombinator Jobs - http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs - job listings at graduate companies of YCombinator

6) TechStars Jobs - http://www.techstars.org/jobs/ - job listings at graduate companies of TechStars

7) Search Capita IQ for recently funded companies - https://www.capitaliq.com/index.aspx - very good database on private fundings, access available at Fuqua's Library

8) Early Stage East - http://www.earlystageeast.org/ - check out the companies that pitched here

9) Florida Venture Fourm - http://www.floridaventureforum.org/subpage.asp?id=33 - check out the companies that pitched here

10) Southeast Venture Conference- http://www.seventure.org/ - check out the companies that pitched here

11) midVenturesLAUNCH - http://midventureslaunch.com/ - check out the companies that pitched here

12) Check out the Inc. 500 - http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2010/index.html - good way to identify growing companies in your area of interest / geography of interest

Resources for Raising Money

1) KickStarter - http://www.kickstarter.com/ - post a project to raise money directly from people

2) AngelList - http://angel.co/ - very active angel network

3) Angel Capital Association Directory - http://www.angelcapitalassociation.org/directory/ - listing of many angel groups, funds, networks

4) DukeGEN Investors - http://www.dukegen.com/duke-vcs - listing of Duke alumnus who are venture capitalists

5) AngelSoft - http://angelsoft.net/ - software that powers many angel groups - you can search for investors

6) Guide to Seed Fund Incubators - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/guide_to_seed_fund_incubators.php

7) goBIGnetwork - http://www.gobignetwork.com

8) ChubbyBrain - http://www.chubbybrain.com

9) YouNoodle - http://www.younoodle.com

10) Guy Kawasaki's thoughts on raising Angel Capital - http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/03/the_art_of_rais.html#axzz17XLFpHZB

11) NVCA Venture Capital Directory - http://www.nvca.org/index.php?option=com_mtree&Itemid=173

--
Howie Rhee, MBA
Managing Director, Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
Office A236
919-617-1123 Google Voice / Mobile
919-660-1929 Office

Learn more about Entrepreneurship at Duke - www.EntrepreneurshipAtDuke.com
and read our Duke Entrepreneurship Manual - www.dukeven.com.
Twitter: @EshipAtDuke

ReverbNation - internships available

MBA Intern

Want the ultra-fast-paced startup experience? Just itching to put your MBA skills to work in an entrepreneurial environment? ReverbNation is looking for an intern for this summer.  

ReverbNation (www.reverbnation.com) is a web 2.0 company that offers online services to musicians to help them promote and distribute their music. 

You need this stuff:

- be willing to handle priorities that change daily

- enjoy working with a small team

- take on projects and see them to completion in short periods of time.

- get your hands dirty, the CEO regularly does the vacuuming, so be ready for anything

- competitive analysis, survey analysis, basic financial modeling 

Bonus points for:

- Web 2.0 interest/experience

- Music interest/experience

- Previous work with web analytics or software development 

This is a great experience for anyone who wants to learn the day to day issues for web startups, and get involved with an entrepreneurial company right away.   

1 position available

Email Ferol Vernon '09 at fvernon@reverbnation.com

About the Duke Global Entrepreneurship Network

Wrote the following blurb about DukeGEN - thought it might be useful to post here as well.

For those of you that haven't joined or posted a question - check it out here: www.dukegen.com

-Howie

The Duke Global Entrepreneurship Network (DukeGEN) is an online network for Duke's community of entrepreneurs (both  alumni and students). Through DukeGEN, Duke entrepreneurs can both connect with other Duke entrepreneurs and get answers to their questions related to starting a company.

The goal of DukeGEN is "to be a sophisticated and active network that helps create debate, dialogue, and lucky encounters between Duke entrepreneurs."  Founded by Reid Lewis '84, Michael Cann '95, Jon Fjeld '90, and Howie Rhee '04, there is a small committed group of volunteers that are "providing the energy and coordination to encourage Duke entrepreneurs, around the globe, to connect and increase their chances of success."

Since DukeGEN was started in April of 2008, the group has successfully proven it's value to Duke's entrepreneurial community. Notably, DukeGEN now has over 700 members on LinkedIn (and about 90 on Facebook, and 188 members on the Google Group).  In addition, there are some good discussions going on (94 discussions on the Google Group, 26 on LinkedIn).  

Questions that have been posted on DukeGEN have ranged from "how to split equity between founders" to "whether the venture capital model is broken" to getting specific advice for starting companies in "wound care" and "apartment rentals".

All Duke alumni and students are welcome to join.  Go to www.dukeGEN.com for more information.

Sequenomics LLC is a new kind of search company that develops software  tools to systematically search RNA and Protein sequence space – not only  genomic data, but all possible sequences. We are competing in the Duke  Start-Up Challenge and are currently seeking a dedicated Fuqua MBA  student who can take a position of leadership in shaping the company's  business and financial strategies. To learn more, please visit  sequenomics.com, or contact us at mendonca@sequenomics.com

Blinky TV looking for Fuqua MBA students

An alum told me about one of his projects, Blinky TV.  

We are interested in finding one or more Fuqua MBAs interested in interning for blinkytv.com. They would be charged with developing and executing the strategy for the company under my guidance.  We are also hiring a product savvy engineer to build out the site. 

BlinkyTV.com is a social video network for kids under 13, anchored by the best age-appropriate videos on the web. Our editors comb the leading video sites and package the best videos for playback in our custom media player on blinkytv.com. Each of our kid customers can create a profile of his favorite videos and share them with his friends. Kids can also rate videos and submit links to videos that they want us to add to the site. 

Costs are low since we are leveraging the bandwidth and other hosting costs of the leading video sites like Youtube, Veoh and Aniboom. We will generate revenue via advertising initially through an ad network targeting kids like GoFish.  While we expect most traffic to occur virally there may be opportunities to supply editorialized kid videos in our custom player to leading game portals like Miniclip, Addicting games and Wild Tangent. 

Existing video sites like Youtube are innapropriate for younger kids. Videos are racy and violent and the comments are uncencored. While BlinkyTV streams videos from Youtube and other sites, comments and links are edited out. BlinkyTV will be the first social video network built from the ground up just for kids. 

If you're interested, email me at hwr2@duke.edu

Check it out.

http://blinkytv.com/

Howie

Anna's Gourmet Goodies

Someone at Duke wrote in:

"[At a recent meeting at Duke] we used the business of Chris Duke (Fuqua 1987) for the new member gifts.  Chris started Anna's Gourmet Goodies in 2001 and his cookies, and presentation, were a huge hit!"

Check them out at: http://www.annasgourmetgoodies.com/default.asp

At Anna’s Gourmet Goodies we bake and ship gourmet cookies, brownies and biscotti as gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, as a thank you, or for any occasion.   

Personalize your gift with a free card and include your special message.  For ourcorporate gift clients, we offer complete branding services with customized labels and note cards.  Whether you choose our bags, boxes, tins or baskets, we prepare each package to create a gift experience that will be appreciated and remembered long after the last crumb is gone.

RTP Startup Showcase - Friday, Nov 21 at Fuqua!

Hi everyone,

We'd like to announce that on Friday, November 21st at 5:30pm, during Entrepreneurship Week, we'll have a bunch of startups right here on campus at Fuqua.

We hope you'll join us.  More info at www.eweekatduke.com

Here are some of the companies that will be here:

ReverbNation

Web 2.0 tools for musicians

Jed Carlson '05

CMO

www.reverbnation.com

Precision Biosciences

Edit genes

Matt Kane '06

CEO

www.precisionbiosciences.com

Brooks Bell Interactive

Online marketing optimization

Brooks Bell '01

CEO 

www.brooks-bell.com

ShareFile

sharing files online

Jesse Lipson '99

CEO 

www.sharefile.com

Science Learning Resources, Inc.

Enhancing scientific literacy throughout our communities with innovative multimedia technology

Gary Duncan

President

Near-Time, Inc.

Integrates wikis, weblogs, and file-sharing

Reid Conrad

CEO

www.near-time.net

PrepChamps

social network for college sports

Dean Bundschu

CEO

iCustom.net

Customized clothing - made to fit

Charles J. Tse

PVee

making solar electricity an efficient and affordable solution for everyone by providing turn-key solar energy solutions

David Bunge

More info at www.eweekatduke.com

Register today!

Work at Shoeboxed

Shoeboxed was started by a Duke alum, Taylor Mingos, and has raised funding and has offices here in Durham. www.shoeboxed.com

About Shoeboxed
Shoeboxed is a free web site where you can store and organize all your receipts. Digital receipts are extremely useful, but scanning all that paper can be very time-consuming. To save you time, we can scan your receipts for you through our Receipt Mail-In program.

Why we started Shoeboxed
We launched Shoeboxed because we believe that receipts are important, but they shouldn't have to be a pain. Right now, our goal is to make it as easy as possible to digitize, organize, analyze, and export your receipts. Looking toward the future, we have lots of ideas to make receipts more manageable and convenient for you. As the world goes digital, Shoeboxed will work to get rid of unnecessary paper receipts that that cause you stress and harm our environment.

They are looking for interns. taylor@team.shoeboxed.com

Cool companies in RTP and the Southeast

Check out some of the cool companies that are in the Research Triangle Park and the Southeast

Companies that presented at the 25th Annual CED Venture Conference at the Washington Duke Inn: http://www.cednc.org/conferences/venture/2008/presenters/index.html

Companies that presented at the 2nd Annual SEVC Conference in Reston, VA: http://www.seventure.org/2008/featured_cos.html

One of the top startup publications: http://www.techjournalsouth.com/

Companies that recently spun out of Duke University: http://olv.duke.edu/IndustryPartners/DukeStartups