Ultra Light Startups™ is an online and in-person community for entrepreneurs, investors, brands, and professional service providers building innovative online businesses. The community is centered around monthly pitch/panel/networking events and accompanying online forums. Events cover topics related to Technology, Design, Marketing and Finance.
November 2010 - The Email Mafia 0:00 Interviews (Chris McCann, Peter Shankman) 9:30 Introductions 15:30 Pitches 1:09:00 Interviews (Cynthia Franklin, Matt Wilson, Jason Baptiste, Fredrik Maroe, Joseph Rosenberg) 1:28:30 Panel - The Email Mafia
This panel is designed to help you understand the technology, implementation, marketing, virality, privacy and control implications of the Facebook Platform, and current best practices for integrating Facebook into your web application. Elements of the Facebook Platform to be covered by this panel include:Social Plugins (The Like Button, Recommendations, Activity Feed, etc)OpenGraph / Graph APIFacebook ApplicationsFacebook Connect / AuthenticationFacebook Markup Language (FBML)Facebook Credits...
This event will:Provide an overview of essential design topics for web entrepreneursProvide an overview of working at a startup for designersConnect designers and startupsPanel topics:What are the essential web design disciplines and why is each important? - graphic/visual, interaction, information architecture, print, branding/identity, user experience, research, usability testing, etc.Examples of startups with successful web design. How were these design efforts staffed/resourced?Startup des...
What is game-based marketing and how does it work? Examples of successful game-based marketing strategies and why they are successful (e.g. Foursquare, LinkedIn, commenting in blogs, answering Q&A questions). Practical advice for developing game dynamics into an existing marketing strategy. Effective methods of "gameifying" any online business.How to incent and motivate participation through gamification. Use points and leveling up to get people to do anything (e.g. the “completion bar” on Lin...
This is a panel discussion regarding the various aspects and issues of financing lean startups, beginning with a definition of lean startups to distinguish it from other startup description terms such as ... What is an "lean" or "agile" startup? Do non-lean startups exist? What are viable options for financing a startup until you achieve profitability or fundability? Is "lean" a (temporary) stage of a startup or a (permanent) type of startup? If it's a stage, what is the objective of the stage...
Mobile StartupsSurvey of the mobile startup ecosystem. How much money has been made, by whom, on what platforms, with what types of applications?What differentiates a successful mobile application from an unsuccessful one?Designing and specifying a mobile application.Finding and evaluating mobile application developers (agencies, freelancers, permanent hires).Developing an application for the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile platforms. Building cross platform mobile applications...
What is an ad network? What is an ad exchange? Why do they exist? Who uses them? Types of ad networks - Representative, blind, targeted Ad exchanges, ad servers, demand-side platforms, publisher-side platforms, data providers Technologies/media - Display/banner, text, video, mobile, email, SMS, rich media, flash, etc. For Publishers - Selling Inventory on Ad Networks and Exchanges How to profitably use ad networks and exchanges to sell your ad inventory Estimating revenues and comparing across...
Terms: SEO/SEM/PPC; keywords, pagerank; on-page vs. off-page; black hat vs. white hat; crawling, indexing & ranking Strategy: Defining objectives, ROI tracking/analytics, keyword and competitive research, research tools On-Site Tactics: Sitemaps, robots.txt files, page title/H1/H2/meta/URL, image alt tags, manual submission to search engines, internal linking Off-Site Tactics: Link building, social media, PR, backlinks via badges, widgets (html, iframes, javascript) Myths and Facts: Duplicate ...
Topics: What is a social website? What makes a site social? Why people participate online. Why some social sites work and others don't. The psychology of online social interaction. An overview of interactive design patterns for online social interaction. What works and what doesn't. "Paving the cowpaths" Visual design that complements interactive design. Launch of a social site. Bootstrapping a community from zero users. Getting over the "sign-up hurdle". Monitoring, analytics and design itera...
Why is brand important to a tech startups? What difference does a good (or bad) brand make for the likelihood of a startup's success? How important is a good name and domain name for your startup? How do you come up with a good name? When is it worth it to buy a domain name? What is PR / public relations? How is it different from marketing? What is buzz? How can it be generated and sustained? What is the purpose of PR for a startup? Do all startups need to do PR? When in a startups lifecycle s...
