Hello Everyone. This is blog post #1. As some of you already know, RaceMenu was selected as a finalist in the 2011 MassChallenge $1million Startup Competition.
First things first, we want to make sure you know:
- what MassChallenge is, and
- what we’re doing down here for the next few months.
MassChallenge is the world’s largest startup competition and it’s based right here in Boston. The competition began in April with nearly 800 companies from 24 countries. The judges narrowed it down to 300 teams in early May and then selected 125 finalists for the Accelerator Program. Finalists get three months of free office space, top-notch mentorship and a shot at $1million in cash for the top 16 teams. (4 x $100K and 12 x $50K awards)
The free office space? Incredible. You know that brand new building next to the ICA? Yup! We’re on the 14th floor, overlooking the Boston Harbor, Southie and the Seaport. Thank you, FanPier! (we should probably thank AuBonPain, Starbucks and Boloco for the “free” office space they provided us over the last year too.)
We’ve been here for two weeks and have taken FULL advantage of everything the MC organizers have lined up for us. Yesterday was our last day of Boot Camp, which featured workshops and presentations by some serious A-listers from the Boston startup scene including Bill Warner (founder of Avid), Jeff Taylor (founder of Monster.com), David Friend (founder of Carbonite), Jeff Bussgang (entrepreneur turned VC) and Colin Angle (founder of iRobot) to name a few. They (and many others) shared insight, wisdom, war stories and tips they wish they’d known when starting out.
So why start a blog? Well, for starters, Laura Fitton told us to. And if Guy Kawasaki listens to Laura, so are we. Besides, we’ve been brainstorming on ways to share this amazing MassChallenge experience with our friends, family, teammates, fellow race directors and other startups; a blog obviously helps with that goal. Finally, our girlfriends (or husband, in Jen’s case) will be seeing much less of us during the next three months so this will help with our alibis.
In this space, we hope to post all sorts of stuff, such as:
- bios/interviews of the people on our team,
- challenges which we encounter while developing our company,
- success stories & questions from race directors that might be useful to share with you,
- guest posts from athletes, race directors and other MassChallenge competitors,
- pictures from the biggest whiteboard in the world… yes, you can write on almost all the walls here.
We’re planning several exciting announcements in the coming days, weeks and months as we focus on accelerating RaceMenu to the next level. We’d love for you to come visit our new space, especially if you’re already in the area. Just drop us a line first to make sure we’re at our desks; we’ve been scheduling as many meetings as possible with our fantastic mentors (whose names we’ll be announcing very soon.)