Cool Startup Conference - Music Hackday (NYC)

We're doing our best here Ztartup to keep track of the many cool #startup conferences happening around the US (and world). From HTML Tutorial to Startup Bootcamps, there are a ton of great events that we'll be featuring here at Ztartup.com (tips can always be sent to ztartup@gmail.com) -- for now here is our first featured event:

MUSIC HACKDAY NYC

Billed as "a full weekend of music hacking. Software + hardware + art + the web. Come build the future of music" Music Hackday took place from February 12-13, 2011 at New York's General Assembly .

All signs indicate that the weekend was a great success--as @Twilio tweeted on Sunday night:

#Musichackday is off to a great start, 72 hacks to present and a bunch of awesome prizes. http://live.musichackday.org

The whole twittersphere (twitsophere?) was buzzing with tweets about #musichackday -- you can see them all right here .

One idea from Music Hackday was Youzakk.com Youzakk.com
which "automatically generate playlists for venues based on Hunch-powered preferences of ppl currently checked-in on 4SQ" according to @kylecameron

Music Hackday was even featured on Tech Crunch in an article by Tarikh Korula (@Tarikh) called "Nerds Ditch Grammys for New York’s First Music Hackday."

By the time the dust had settled on Sunday night, the following three winners were announced:

Invisible...Stuff

Djtxt

and

Stingers

Congrats to all for an awesome event!!!

(Z)

Finding $$$ (from angels, VCs or anyone :-)

Once you've got your team put together you probably are thinking about capital. You'll have to put up your own cash (all investors want to see your skin in the game), but how do you get help beyond friends and family?

Like yesterday, could be a VERY long post with a million ideas and tips but we're just going to mention one resource: Founders Space (http://www.foundersspace.com). The mission of Founder Space is front and center on their site:

OUR MISSION

Founders Space brings together founders, angels, VCs, advisors & innovators to help startups rock the world. Feel free to Contribute, become an Advisor, or join a Roundtable. 

***
As always thoughts from the community will be featured/highlighted as they come in.

Thanks,
(Z)

Find a Tech Co-Founder...Mission Impossible?

The team here at Ztartup hears from our friends on both coasts that finding a tech co-founder is universally tough and getting hard by the day. So what are the coder-less but idea-possessing masses supposed to do? Based on personal experience DO.NOT.USE.ELANCE.

The easy answer is networking and "getting out in the community" according to most of the people that you'll talk to. Just like most things in life, who you know and the people you meet are going to be your best resources, but we want to highlight at least one resource for now that seems promising. The site is called Startup and startups can post jobs on the site for free. We haven't tried it yet, nor are they sponsoring this post...we just hear it's a great resource and look forward to trying it out ourselves.

Here's their pitch for "Why Startuply?" -- "Because talent + fit is what we're all about. We give job seekers the power to compare apples to...well, oranges, and companies the ability to share both their vision and the reality of startup life."

Again this is just one resource and answering this question is one big goal of ours here at Ztartup, so you can expect to hear plenty more from us on this topic. We're also reaching out to developers now for interviews and insights on what projects they're interested in working on right now.

Happy Saturday and good luck!

(Z)

Daily Must Reads For Startups (v 1.0)

We recently spoke with a partner in an early stage VC company who suggested the following "must reads" for people in the startup space.

Venturebeat.com
Techcrunch.com
Techmeme.com

Thoughts? Agree? Disagree? It's obviously a short list...what should we add for next time???

(Z)

EDIT (2/13/11) - Thanks for suggesting the addition of ReadWriteWeb to our list Guarav! We now have four great sources of info you should think about checking out every day!

Recap of Great #Startup Tweets Today

Energy and excitement is really starting to build in the startup world here in early 2011 and we want to share some of the great tweets from today capturing that vibe that we retweeted @ztartup -- hope you enjoy!

(Z)

@Wayne
Boston has never had such a vibrant, strong startup ecosystem as it does now. And it's going to get better. #win

@shanereiser 
LaunchRock: Founded at #StartupWeekend Philly on Saturday. Hit TechCrunch today. tcrn.ch/dGEptd via @TechCrunc

@WikkitWikkit 
Great to hear about LA enviro 4 #startups @PerfectMarket - @WikkitWikkit is looking 2 add #santamonica / #venice office + #nyc (current HQ)

@theferf 
Want to build a startup in Nashville? Need $15k, engaged mentors & access to angel funding? Check out the @jsfoundry at theferf.com/dBvxo7

@StartupWeekend 
Looks like Startup Weekend Austin is coming along nicely! http://bit.ly/eEVeNp Who's going? #swaustin

@Vedhagiri 
techstartuptips: There possibly can't be a better time for launching your #tech #startup http://ow.ly/3TFHZ SN http://ow.ly/1bgYuJ

And finally for a little entertainment--

@kevcorti
Bootstrapped startup? Can't afford to pay staff? Try witty insults and cheap motivational stickers. Works at #soshigames

ZtartupNY Inaugural Event - Poker For Founders

Let's face it, no matter how passionate we our about our startups they take time away from other really important things like our families/friends/significant others. They can also take away time for fun which is pretty damn important too. One thing this founder always worries about is everyone not having enough fun working on the startup (I mean it still is technically work, right)?



ANYWAYS, since this is a blog for founders and we all know meeting people in the startup space can be a huge help, we're combining networking with no limit hold 'em for our first ever Poker for Founders event in NYC. While we're still working out the details (location, donating proceeds to charity, etc) we wanted to get the list going early. All you need to do is shoot a quick email to us (ztartup@gmail) with your name + startup name and website.

Look for similar events next month as we build out the Ztartup network to include ZtartupLA, ZtartupPhilly, ZtartupBoston and ZtartupBoulder.

Can't wait til the cards are in the air!

(Z)

Ztartup Launches - looking for contributors

If anything is clear following the launch of Startup America, it's that the startup culture in America is alive and well.

What may or may not be doing so well every day are all the people out there in the trenches, drinking red bull, tweeting like crazy and generally doing anything and everything to make their startup successful. Ztartup is a destination by those people, for those people and about those people.

We look forward to featuring startups and the people making them great from Silicon Valley to Boulder to Philly to Boston to NYC to the rest of the world and offering some thoughts and guidance along the way. Should be quite a ride.

(Z)

PS - For now please email us at ztartup@gmail.com if you have a post you'd like to contribute. (official @ztartup.com email addy coming soon :-)

PPS - You can follow us on Twitter @ztartup ... lots and lots of tweets about #startuplife