Posts Tagged ‘Startup’

Becoming an entrepreneur is a funny business, isn’t it?

Everyone tells you that you need to be determined, to follow your heart in spite of the odds, and if you encompass passion for the idea, success will follow. Yet, then those same folks will turn around and advise you to pay attention to your inner critic.

The truth is, this is just one of many challenges faced by entrepreneurs in their quest to find the right balance that ultimately brings success. Below details why you, the looney entrepreneur, must pay attention to the little voice of reason in your head (yes, the one that really does talk to you) – sometimes.

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Ever since having the opportunity to work with a startup back in the early fall, I’ve jumped on any chance I’ve had to do so again. I loved the atmosphere and the people, but most of all I loved the freedom with which to try and adapt the User Experience practices that I’ve been learning for so long.

Many of the people in my field migrate towards full-time work with established companies, because they desire the security that that type of work brings them. That is all well and good until the complaints about not being respected and not having the opportunity to be innovative and to learn begin. Very slowly, but surely, a change is beginning in the user experience world, and it is one that you as an entrepreneur or small business owner should not only be aware of, but should take advantage of.

User experience professionals are starting to talk about the joys of working with smaller companies and startups… and a very, very early migration has started towards that direction.

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This week’s post is inspired by  New York Tech Meetup. For those of you that are NYC based, I’m sure you know about and/or attended the event. For those of you who are not here in NYC, NYTM is basically one of the biggest, most well known tech/startup events in the area.

Demoing to the New York community is a must for just about any startup in the area. It’s sort of like an initiation into the “you are almost close to making it” world here in NYC. Therefore, the demo, to me, seems like a huge effort to prepare for… and most if not all presenters do prepare a great deal.

• What then makes a successful demo?
• Who usually gets the most buzz, questions and positive feedback from their presentations?

It’s the presenters that think about what the audience wants to hear, NOT what they, as the presenter, want to say. This is where demoing at the NYTM, and anywhere to be honest, becomes a task in User Experience Design.

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