SOS: StartupYard Open-Source

Last month, we announced that we would be “open-sourcing” The StartupYard Program, and inviting local Prague-based startups to attend workshops with the StartupYard team. We’re happy to announce that this program has now started.

 

SOS: StartupYard Open-Source: The Schedule

There will be 4 sessions a week, initially, and the first term will run from next week, until the end of February. Depending on the interests of both local startups and our StartupYard mentors, we may soon be able to add more sessions, including some run by members of the StartupYard Community.

The Workshops will be individual for each team, and will take place at our homebase at Node5 and will not be public.

The sessions will be free of charge. Teams need only fill out a short application, and they will then be invited to sign up for a slot in one of 4 workshops.

  • Mondays: Write the Perfect Press Release, with Lloyd Waldo

  • Tuesdays: Keys to an Effective Landing Page, with Lloyd Waldo

  • Wednesdays: Writing and Presenting A Killer Pitch, with Cedric Maloux

  • Thursday: Perfecting User and Financial Projections, with Cedric Maloux

 

Sign Up For A Private SOS Workshop

Note: We may select which teams will be invited for the workshop based on various factors. 
 

Thank you for the opportunity to consult our project with Mr. Maloux, it was very inspiring and beneficial. I appreciate his advices very much and of course we will use them.  He does a great job!” – Marie Ratajová

 
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Why Open-Source StartupYard?

 

The aim of SOS is to give a small slice of the StartupYard experience to a local team, and just as importantly, to open StartupYard’s doors to the local tech community, and increase the quality and depth of our connections with local entrepreneurs. As our director Cedric Maloux stated when we announced this program, we hope to see StartupYard grow in its important role as a vital resource for local tech entrepreneurs, as well as the investors and advisors who make entrepreneurship in the local ecosystem possible.

What benefits the local tech community, in terms of the quality of work being done, the quality of the investors interested in the region, and the innovativeness of new projects, ultimately benefits StartupYard and our investors. We have to recognize and promote this virtuous cycle with the local tech community, and that’s what we aim to do.

What you Can Expect from SOS

These sessions by no means comprise a complete list of the skills that StartupYard promotes among its accelerator teams. However, they focus on the key areas of weakness that we consistently observe among local startups and entrepreneurs. The communication workshops (on Press Releases and Landing Pages), which I will run myself, focus on the key concepts of good communication that will help a small company to avoid quite a few common mistakes. They will also lay the groundwork for a company to develop a strong communication style that can be applied to many different areas, by focusing on a few crucial communication formats that all startups have to master.

Cedric’s sessions, dealing with the topics of pitching and making financial and user projections, will focus on another crucial failure point for startups: investment. Not only will his workshops focus on practical skills for pitching, and practical issues of creating and maintaining good projections, including specific best practices, but they will also show how crafting a pitch and a financial plan will define the early success or failure of a company in the eyes of investors, and help make clear the best path forward for a growing company.