
Introducing the Startup Guild: A Community for Entrepreneurs - jeffepp
http://justinvincent.com/page/1464/introducing-the-startup-guild
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eggbrain
While overall this seemed quite cool, I had an issue somewhat with the idea of
news.startupguild.net. It's described as "A reddit style link rating & comment
system dedicated to articles related to 'no-investment, start small, get
big'". To me, this is a pretty large subset of what Hacker News is already. If
I was a part of this guild, I'd hate to go to yet another website that is
probably duplicating a lot of the content from HN, in the same style of Hacker
News [ie, upvotes, comments, etc].

I'd much rather have something along the lines of a discussion forum, where
people can discuss problems they are having in the startup world (along with
relevant links and discussions on them), not ranked by points.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I'd really like to have an alternative to news.yc, personally. As a
bootstrapper-type that's not so interested in the YC program, news.yc rarely
offers the type of community that I'd most want to be involved in.

I don't dislike news.yc, but there's definitely room for competition here.

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netmau5
Hey Justin, I'm working on a site called Sparkmuse (in beta) which aligns with
much of what you're describing. Here are some of the things we're working on
right now:

tracker.startupguild.net – The fundamental building block of our current
community is the "Spark", a description of the problem an entrepreneur wants
to solve and the solution want to use. This is an area where people can get
feedback and meetup with potential cofounders. Each Spark is divided into
stages and will eventually track the progress from idea through execution.

news.startupguild.net- We're building an open discussion area for
entrepreneurs to show off their work, ask questions, and have meaningful
startup discussions. Somewhat different, but similar in concept I think. I
don't want to trample on HN because this community is amazing in itself, but
the audience expands beyond startups alone.

blog.startupguild.net – We've been communicating with accomplished
entrepreneurs and investors to schedule times for them to come by and give
direct feedback on our Sparks. Kind of a direct engagement guest blog post in
a manner of speaking.

toolkit.startupguild.net – We're partnering up with a wide range of great
tools and services that have agreed to make deals for entrepreneurs trying to
build their ideas from the ground up. Another project we're developing is
Matchmuse which is like an e-harmony for entrepreneurs, providing
recommendations based on a person's expertise, the expertise they need, where
they live, and the ideas and feedback they have discussed on the site.

I'd love to team up with you on some of these things. If you're interested,
please hit me up, email is in my profile.

~~~
jv22222
Awesome thanks very much. I can see the main difference is your taking a
project driven approach and I'm thinking about an entrepreneur/company driven
approach.

It sounds like people could potentially meet on The Startup Guild and move any
projects they come up with into Sparkmuse after meeting.

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bartjacobs
The real value that a community like this could provide is the creation of
what Justin calls mastermind groups. It reminds me of Sprouter.com but on a
much more personal level. The latter is very important in my opinion. Starting
a business is something you experience on a very personal level and these
groups could provide the help/advice (and possibly support) that a (new)
entrepreneur needs to succeed. I do wonder what the "mentors" gain from this
time investment.

I like most of the idea and am looking forward to how it grows and develops.

~~~
jv22222
Agreed. The Skype based mastermind group I joined made all the difference for
me. I can almost pin-point the date I had my first discussion with them as the
turnaround of my business.

There's members of my skype group who make a lot more money than me, but they
still ask for my advice on other issues such as tech related stuff, asking me
to proof read blog posts, strategy idea bouncing, and other things.

~~~
marcamillion
How does one join the Skype based mastermind group? Sounds intriguing.

~~~
robfitz
You suggest it to 4-8 of your peers and then go out of your way to make it
happen every 1 or 2 weeks in person or on email/skype.

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gojomo
Given your strong preference for bootstrapping – the first problem the Guild
would try to solve is "How can I build a start-up with no investment?" –
perhaps it should be called the Bootstrap Guild.

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mrschwabe
The idea of an entrepreneur powered YC clone is excellent.

This could be even taken to the next level: to foster investment within the
community itself; enabling a platform for established entrepreneurs to invest
in up & coming entrepreneurs.

~~~
nethsix
'Entrepreneur powered YC clone'---an apt description! A possible interesting
investment option would be instead of investing $$$, startup owner can swap
'shares' in their startups. E.g., I have a startup in security but I love
somebody's music startup and vice versa, so share-swap can be done. Details
that need to be ironed out include trust, valuation of shares, accountability
(how do we know that the person we swapped shares would continue to work
hard), etc.

~~~
mrschwabe
Share swaps are a killer idea man. This is going on a bit of an extended
tangent - but the vision hints at being a sort of micro-stock exchange for
startup entrepreneurs. Neat concept.

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marcamillion
This sounds like an awesome idea. Would love to see how it will be implemented
specifically.

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aginn
Hey everyone!

I think we solved this problem, at least in our community. Our first phase is
in DFW. We are gathering incubators to start the funding process. We are
looking to expand if anyone wants to implement elsewhere. We are very "open-
source"

www.techfraternity.com

