The best way to persuade students - or anyone else for that matter - to build and support startups, is to help provide what those startups need to survive - i.e. funding and customers (not necessarily in that order ;-) )
Let's do Funding first. I believe it's in everyone's interest to make the various funding discussion that are going on about town more open and more transparent. Entrepreneurs would get to know who's got money, what's a good deal, and how much of their right arm they have to cut off to get it ;-). Angels might not like it so much, but it would be a good thing for us. Then there's the new microfunding trend. I imagine most of us are familiar with what Diaspora achieved using http://www.kickstarter.com. We could promote something similar with a "Go Aussie" flavour. It could even be used for pledging skills and labour. If nothing else it would give entrepreneurs an easier way to maintain a conversation and provide an air of legitimacy for their "three Fs". Customers. Who you know is eveything. At the very least, we should be using this community to foster useful introductions. A simple mail list like the one we currently have is too blunt an instrument for this, which brings me back to my initial comment re. ning.com. siliconbeach.org built on a service like that would let us do Linked-In-like introductions. And the more intimate nature of the SiliconBeach community would allow us to make introductions with more confidence than we could using Linked In. Steve -- Stephen Young Chief Bot Wrangler @ wik.me (http://wik.me) Managing Director @ FactNexus Pty Ltd (http://factnexus.com) Founding member @ Knowledge Rights Forum (http://knowledgerights.org) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. Guidelines on discussion: http://tr.im/ujKF No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself: http://tr.im/ujMm To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en
