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Kevin Siskar
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Monday, May 18, 2020 - 7:36am
Finta helps early-stage start-ups raise capital faster. Automating the
fundraising process and streamlining the tedious, manual, step-by-step
operations of a fundraise, while securing all of your important diligence
documents in one place. Helping companies save time, raise more, and
increase efficiency.
Wednesday, May 13, 2020 - 8:38am
After almost five years as Managing Director of Founder Institute New York,
I will be moving on to my next adventure. I first became involved with
Founder Institute back in 2012 as a founder in the program, before signing
on as Director of the New York program in 2015. I am very proud of the
growth Founder Institute has had over that period of time, both on a global
level, and across New York.
Saturday, May 2, 2020 - 7:38am
When Colleen got pregnant nine months ago, we had no idea the rollercoaster
we would be in for.
Monday, April 27, 2020 - 9:38am
If you work in tech you have probably heard this quote over the years: “The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.” William Gibson - August 1993
Having lived in New York City for most of the past decade, I have often felt like New Yorkers live in the future compared to others around the country. Fast-casual salad restaurants, seamless, electric bike shares, uber, revel, spectacles, ramen burgers, cronuts, the void VR, capsule, etc, all existed in New York City (and to be fair other tier-1 cities) before making their way out into the smaller cities, then the suburbs, and finally the rural parts of America. Normally the process of “innovation sprawl” can take years.
In the very short amount of time we have all been in this global COVID-19 pandemic, technological innovation has been sprawling faster than ever. Everyone everywhere is being forced into the future. Using and adjusting to future technology to help cope in their own ways with the virus.
Saturday, February 22, 2020 - 9:38am
Imagine being on a cruise with friends and a good business idea comes to
mind, then months later, your idea is now being distributed in Walmart’s
around the world! Today’s guest, Alexis Beechen was enjoying her time
partyin’ and thought, putting wine in a can would be much easier to
casually drink.
Thursday, January 30, 2020 - 9:38am
Imagine being on a cruise with friends and a good business idea comes to
mind, then months later, your idea is now being distributed in Walmart’s
around the world! Today’s guest, Alexis Beechen was enjoying her time
partyin’ and thought, putting wine in a can would be much easier to
casually drink.
Thursday, December 12, 2019 - 8:38am
Packing for a nice relaxing vacation, you look around, and realize, you
have these beautiful plants that you have worked so hard in growing, and
you wonder, are they going to be thriving when you get home?
Thursday, November 28, 2019 - 8:40am
Welcome to Season 3 of Ambition Today! My guest today is Taylor Jacobson.
He is the founder of Focusmate, the app that helps you focus and in return
be more productive. In this episode, we discuss with Taylor what in his
personal life lead him to the idea of needing a solution like Focusmate, as
well as his personal take on a lot of procrastination issues.
Thursday, November 7, 2019 - 2:33am
Earlier this year, in response to the question “What are the most common mistakes founders make when they start a company?”, Justin Kan, the Founder of Twitch & Atrium, responded with the following:
“Mistake 1: Underestimating the importance of narrative when fundraising:
I firmly believe that investors invest in (and employees join, and journalists write about) compelling stories, and your pitch deck is really just a vehicle for telling the story you want to tell. So, start first with the narrative and build the deck after you have it nailed.”
Finding Your Killer Company Narrative:
You need a killer company narrative for your startup pitch. Wether you are telling your family about your company or speaking with investors while fundraising, how you communicate your company’s narrative matters.
From a pure story perspective, how do you do that? Let’s quickly introduce two frameworks we will be using.
Framework 1: Story of Stories
With this question in mind, I was recently reading a series of new posts called The Story of Us from one of my favorite authors, Tim Urban. In it, he breaks down the specific characteristics required for a normal story to become a story virus.
Saturday, November 2, 2019 - 10:33am
As we close out one decade and enter another it is worth reflecting on what has changed in the last ten plus years of the Venture Capital industry. Pear.Vc recently published a wonderfully insightful deck, the Seed Financing Landscape, on just that and I thought it was worth sharing. The Venture Capital & Angel Investment landscape keeps moving upstream.
Saturday, October 5, 2019 - 7:33am
On October 2nd, five new companies and six founders graduated from Founder
Institute New York as the 20th cohort in New York City! The companies in
this cohort represented several industries including augmented reality,
healthcare, real estate, financial technology, and more. A noteworthy
mention for this cohort is that graduates are 83%, female founders!
Monday, August 26, 2019 - 9:39am
I will keep it short on why you might want to file a 83(b) Election with
the IRS and focus more on how to file it, since that is likely why you are
reading this. This article from Cooley Law does a pretty good job
explaining in much greater detail why making an 83(b) Election with the IRS
can be beneficial, as well as this explanation from Wealthfront. Now on to
the how to file your 83(b) election instructions.
Monday, August 19, 2019 - 8:38am
Over the weekend I saw one of the best Deepfakes of my life. If you don’t
know, the deepfake definition is when you combine and superimpose existing
images and videos onto source images or videos using a machine learning
technique known as generative adversarial network. The phrase "deepfake"
was coined in 2017. This is what I saw on Twitter on Friday and it blew my
mind.
Sunday, August 18, 2019 - 9:36am
Being creative is hard. It’s a lot like frequently going to the gym. When
your consistently going, it’s easier to keep going. But when you fall out
of it, it’s like climbing a mountain uphill to get back in your creative
flow.
Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - 7:31am
I started to wonder if it was possible to take a pulse of where the biggest
difficulties still exist for startups in 2019 and came up with this little
experiment I would love for you to participate in. I want to know your
answer to one question. If you could wave a magic wand and automate one
thing in your business, what would it be?
Thursday, August 1, 2019 - 8:31am
I am very excited to say that we have graduated the Inaugural Founder
Institute Buffalo cohort on July 18th. Nine new companies and founders
graduated from Founder Institute Buffalo from our Spring cohort. The
companies represented several industries ranging from fashion, to electric
vehicles, to daycare and more.
Thursday, May 30, 2019 - 8:20am
On May 28th, five new companies and seven founders graduated from Founder
Institute New York as the 19th cohort. The companies represented several
industries including real estate, financial planning, music therapy and
more.
Tuesday, May 14, 2019 - 1:21am
Bryan Janeczko has a colorful portfolio of businesses including: NuKitchen,
a food preparation service that helped people eat healthier, which was
later sold to Nutrisystem. Gro Academy, an on-demand startup academy,
Loeb, a new-approach to launching startups. Now, his latest venture that
is currently in the seeding stage is Nunbelievable Foods, a baked goods
company that turns their profits into feeding the homeless. Bryan was also
recently named Top 23 LGBTQ people in Tech.
Saturday, April 20, 2019 - 9:42am
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Tuesday, April 9, 2019 - 8:04am
From being forced to layoff his whole staff, to selling his company for
$140 million, our next guest, Michael Diamant, has great insight on how he
became successful. Michael Diamant created a well-known brand with his
wife, called Skip Hop, which was sold to Carter’s for $140 million.