StartupBus Stanford

StartupBus Stanford Flyer

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 18:32:19 -0500

StartupBus Stanford Flyer

Press Release: Announcing StartupBus Stanford

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 18:11:00 -0500

Date: February 29, 2012

From the Desk of Viraj Bindra, Marketing Director at E2.0

On March 6, 2012, a bus will depart Stanford Uni- versity with 30 buspreneurs, bound for the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive festival to launch their new companies. The catch? Those companies won’t have even been conceived until the students board the bus.

StartupBus is a combined hackathon and road trip to SXSW, currently in its third year, that positions hackers, hustlers, and designers together to see what they can produce under unique and extreme time and resource constraints.

“This will be an opportunity for the most inno- vative and creative students to compete on a national level with entrepreneurs from all regions of the Unit- ed States and Mexico,” said E2.0 Stanford CEO Chase Harmon. “Thirty Stanford students from diverse back- grounds and expertise will form teams to most aptly allow them to do in three days what can take years to accomplish. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!”

Launched by E2.0, the bus departing from Stan- ford will be the first to ever originate from a universi- ty. In the next week, Stanford students will apply to be a part of one of the ten teams on the bus, after which applications will be sorted through and split up into teams by the StartupBus organization. Upon boarding the bus, teams will then have 72 hours to imagine, cre- ate, and position their products for launch in anticipa- tion of their arrival in Austin.

“We’re harnessing the talents of some of the most innovative and technically-competent minds inthe world, and giving them three days to do something huge,” said Saam Mota- medi, Co-COO of E2.0, “I’m thrilled to see the ideas they launch.”

With buses departing this year from New York, Silicon Valley, Florida, Cincin- nati, Boston, Los Angeles, Louisiana, Las Vegas, Washington D.C., and Mexico, and now for the first time, Stanford, this is the largest the event has ever been.

E2.0 co-founder and chairman, Jonathan Manzi, a delegate to the G20 on youth entrepreneurship, commented on the larger scope of the initiative. “Each year, thousands of innovators make their way to Austin to showcase their work, collaborate, and form partnerships. Thanks to the generous support of Microsoft and other sponsors, Stanford students will get to be front and center. In the coming years, we strive to bring the program to several additional college campuses. This is a big win for student entrepreneurs everywhere.”

Students can find more information and apply by Friday March 2 at

Apply Now: bit.ly/startupbusapplication

E2.0 Presents: StartupBus at Stanford

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 17:55:00 -0500

For the first time ever, Stanford has it’s own StartupBus, generously sponsored by Microsoft. Join 29 other Stanford students as you take the most incredible 72-hour bus ride of your life. Form teams, make a startup, and then launch it at South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. The competition is fierce, the application is competitive, and you’ll develop bonds with a kick-ass community of doers. If you’ve ever wanted to test your skills against the best hackers, hustlers, and designers across North America, this is your chance.

The trip features a massive afterparty at SXSW, a grand final at SXSW Startup Village in Austin, a stock market game for home audiences, and StartupBus TV reporting live throughout the three days on the road and SXSW itself.

The bus leaves March 6 and the festival continues until March 13.

If you’re an active or recent Stanford student, we have a special discount code for you to use to claim your seat for only $50 which covers bus transportation to SXSW and back and the StartupBus registration fees (normally $300).

APPLICATIONS CLOSE SOON!

TO APPLY, CLICK HERE.

What to Bring on the StartupBus

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 14:14:00 -0500

What to Bring on the StartupBus:

startupbusfl:

The Bostonian Conductor was super productive and put this together to help you know what you should bring! Thanks Igor! As you can imagine, your productivity will largely depend on having your tools of the trade ready and being able to hit the ground running the minute the bus doors close. This discussion is different for developers, designers and hustlers, so I’ll structure it differently for each group.

Everyone:

Preinstall dropbox for file sharing with your team.

Bring memory sticks for file sharing in dead zones.

Bring headphones so that you don’t strangle your fellow hustler who might be on the call 24/7 with the media, customers, etc.

If you like listening to music while working, don’t rely on Spotify and other streaming services. iTunes will be your best option.

Think of what you want to work on and be ready to pitch that idea with as many facts as possible to back up your thinking (competitors, market size, monetization strategy, etc.)

Hustlers:

Bring a headset with a microphone so that you can pitch to reporters, close deals, and do your thing without disrupting others next to you.

You will probably want to use Skype so I suggest having that preinstalled and working.

You may also want to consider using Toutapp which will allow you to send mass emails using a single template.

Make sure to come with a list of contacts that you want to blast once we’re ready to start marketing.

If you want to be involved in project management, consider using Things. They have a 30 day trial and it’s a great tool for non-collaborative (your teammates will be next to you ) and offline task management. Obviously, there are gazillion other ones. Just make sure to know what you want to use before you get on the bus - don’t waste your time researching while traveling.

Designers and front end developers:

We’ll be using git so have that ready on your machine and be familiar with the commands. Also make sure to have a Github account.

Refresh your jQuery skills if you haven’t touched that in a while. I recommend saving a local copy instead of linking to a remote resource.

We should make sure to use a CSS framework, so familiarize yourself with Blueprint (unless we decide to switch to something else).

If you plan to do any front end development, you should also read the points under “Back end developers”

Back end developers:

Due to the spotty on-board internet connection, forget about developing on a remote server. Instead make sure to have all you need on your local machine, including your development environment and ideally even some manuals, guides, books, etc in PDF format.

For Rails, download rvm, rubygems and everything else you need. For other frameworks, do your own thing. You can build web apps, mobile, or something we haven’t even thought of!

Make sure to have git locally and a Github account. Even better, install Git as a local server so you won’t need to rely on our local hotspots.