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1st rule: Wear your T-Shirt…

2nd rule: Wear it until you raise your seed round.

3rd rule: Don’t you dare clean it until money is in the bank!

Here’s our newest T.

Staff.com – Connecting Great Companies with Global Talent

Looking for a co-founder? You’re in luck! Check out CoFoundersLab, a startup dedicated to helping entrepreneurs like you find the right co-founder. Whether you’re looking to join a startup, seeking someone else to join your venture, or open to either, CoFoundersLab can help.

Create a FREE Basic entrepreneur profile, or opt for a paid Pro Membership profile for greater visibility and access to even more exclusive tools and features to help you find that perfect co-founder. You can even conduct an advanced search to find other members of FounderFuel who are looking for a co-founder. Make sure to add ‘FounderFuel’ on your profile so others can do the same and find you! 

Find a co-founder on CoFoundersLab

We all know that the best things come to those who ask, so Clarity is asking startup communities all over for their best piece of startup advice!

The top 100 submissions will be featured in their brand new guide, Get More Clarity: Straight Up Startup Advice from Experienced Entrepreneurs, alongside experts like Eric Ries, Dave McClure and Lewis Howes.

Want to submit your piece of startup advice? Get it in here. We’d also love it if you shared your advice in the comments too!

Here’s to a successful year to all startups out there.

Wishing y’all product-market fit, growth, virality, funding, partnerships or whatever else your priority is right now. Keep plugging away and remember to focus on what matters most for your business.

We’re expecting 2013 to be another great year for FounderFuel and look forward to working alongside as many of you as possible.

Get your application in by February 8 2013 for the Summer 2013 Cohort here.

Cheers everyone!

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or any other holiday this time of year, chances are you’ll need a gift or two to give your startup friends. But what to get the entrepreneur that has everything? They’ve got the iPhone 5, the iPad Mini, the newest Android, and all the newest and most popular apps already installed. Already out of inspiration? Well, to keep inspiring you without making you perspire too much over your holiday gift lists, we’ve compiled a few lists from a few sources to help you with your last-minute holiday shopping!

1. Give the gift of style.
Your startup friends dress like they’re 16? It was cool back in high school, but they need to step up their look. Sign your guy friends up for services like the Hunt Club at Frank and Oak, or others like Unscruff and Trunk Club that send guys great wardrobe pieces on a regular basis without them having to think about it too much. 

2. Help them accessorize.
For their gadgets, there are always accessories. Get them a cool iPad case or messenger bag and they’ll honor their gadgets by making them look cool. Check out this DODOcase for iPad. 

3. Get them a ride.
Bikes, cabs and the subway can only get you so far. For the entrepreneur in your life that is sans vehicle, but probably in the possession of the UBER app, get them  an UBER gift card (US cities only). 

4. Help them decorate.
Decorating can be overlooked when you’re running a startup 24 hours a day. Luckily, sites like Instamaker, Stitchtagram and Bumblejax ”let you pull photos from a variety of social media platforms and turn them into blankets, pillows, mural wall art…all sorts of things. Beyond creating lasting memories, a pillow and a blanket might come in handy for those all-nighters at the office.”

5. Help them tune in–without any background noise. “LiveWires‘ $295 custom-fit, in-ear earphones offer the ultimate in noise cancellation — they’re physically blocking outside sounds from reaching you.” Open-plan working space distracting you? These’ll get you into the zone. 

6. The slopes…on their local trampoline For the shredding entrepreneur (no SR&ED pun intended), “the foam-padded Bounceboardwill let them keep in shape offseason by practicing their board tricks on the trampoline at their local gym or in their backyard, for under $80″–sounds to us like a great office party idea!

7. A safe ride home. With holiday parties all around, many are eating, drinking, and being merry. What if they’ve had one too many? “The SipSmart Straw from Canada‘s Ladybug Tek allows you to find out your blood alcohol with a quick breath, for about $5.” Not only are these fun to play with at parties, they’ll ensure your entrepreneur friends get home safely from all those startup holiday parties.

Thanks to Young Entrepreneur and Forbes for those lists. What are you giving the startup entrepreneur in your life? Share your gift ideas with us in the comments!

We’re excited to announce an important change to the FounderFuel program. As of today, future cohorts will receive $50K in exchange for 9% equity instead of the old $25K for 6% model.

This change to our offering reinforces the FounderFuel program at the forefront of accelerator innovation.

Take a look at what we have in store for our companies:
- $50K for 9% equity on Day 1 of the program
- $150K in convertible debt at Demo Day 
- $150K of exclusive discounts and perks
- 3 months of free office space in the Valley after Demo Day
- 120 startup veteran Mentors: Serial Entrepreneurs, Investors and Senior Execs
- 800 people at Demo Day, the largest event of its kind in North America

Got what it takes? Apply before midnight Feb 8th 2013 on AngelList or F6S.

Editola is a widget that people (radio and tv stations, typically) can install on their website to bring back the content shared by them and their collaborators across different social media. They’ve made a FounderFuel widget that groups all our collaborators’ tweets, facebook posts, rss articles, and more in one place–a widget that is now at your fingertips! 

Why is this so awesome? It means that all of our mentors, partners and contributors will appear on our widget. Want to know what a mentor is tweeting about, or what news we have to report? No need to search through twitter or Facebook to find recent posts from people who matter to FounderFuel (and to you)–just check out the widget!

With Editola you:

Check out the FounderFuel Editola widget here.

With Facebook’s huge IPO and disappointing aftermath, people [read: investors] are “wondering whether startups are truly worth the high valuations” they’ve been getting, according to Paul Graham. So what should startups expect in the near future? Sure, investors’ confidence has been shaken and the valuations being slapped on the many startups emerging in today’s market have been put into question, but what should startups expect if they’re out there hustling for the dollars? “No one knows yet how much” Facebook’s weakening will hurt future valuations.

To get a better idea of where investments might go in the coming months, looking at US Venture Capital Financings over the years is a good indicator. In 2011, “the venture capital market produced its heaviest deal flow in a decade” and we saw the “highest median acquisition price in VC-backed M&A transactions” since the dot com bubble of 2000. However, these numbers are nowhere near the peak before the bubble burst. There have been far more financings in the past few years, notably in 2011, and the outlook for 2012 was generally positive as we entered this year. But where’s it all going? With the economic turmoil in Europe and stock prices becoming more and more unpredictable, the future of valuations and venture capital investments is uncertain. One thing is for sure though—startups are on the rise and becoming a bigger and bigger part of each one of their markets. Some are making it big, others are merging or being acquired, but they’re growing in numbers—and fast. Although we might put out a word of warning to expect smaller investments when it comes to raising capital, it doesn’t mean that capital won’t be flowing. Startups are gaining traction and visibility worldwide and their communities are growing. Maybe it’s that the people behind them are awesome, or that they work harder than many to make their ideas successful, but whatever it is, we don’t think startups are going anywhere any time soon—even if their valuations fall a little bit.

Read the full article from Paul Graham here. 

On February 27th, 2012, 11 teams showed up for the first day of FounderFuel. They were embarking on a 12-week journey that culminated on Demo Day, when they pitched before an audience of over 700 people. In the nearly two months since Demo Day, Notman House has been eerily quiet, with the teams’ offices cleared out and only a few coming and going for meetings or just to say hi. Although at first glance Notman might make it look like the teams have ceased to exist since Demo Day, the truth is that the end of the program is only the beginning for these companies. In fact, the momentum and power boost that accelerators give their startups should launch them to new heights once the program is over. 

What do we hope the teams took away with them? Sure, business cards, a great network of mentors and investor contacts, key metrics, a clear vision, traction, and great memories–but we don’t want them to forget the importance of their pitch. As Dan Rowinski puts it in a Read Write Start post, the accelerator ”ends with Demo Day. For the companies, Demo Day is just the beginning. The skills that companies learn will be carried with them for as long as they exist [...] if a company cannot nail the pitch, they are done. That is a lesson that extends well past the day those companies leave [the accelerator].” Just as their pitches are crucial to the success of their startups, so is being themselves. In his post, Dan looks at various TechStars pitches, showing how each person showed their true colours. The FounderFuel teams were definitely themselves for their pitches…here are a few examples:

Chris, from TenScores: “I’m Chris from TenScores, come talk to me…I don’t bite.”

Elliot and Angus, from Centerside, had a playful presentation with jokes like “It’s easy” echoed with a “like his mom” on the slides, all the while Angus controlling the slides, making fun of Elliot and getting some good laughs from the audience. 

Steven, from LiveRides, introduced himself as “Friendly Steve,” in keeping with his company’s tagline: The friendlier way to travel. (this was also an inside joke from the cohort)

Noah, from PayPhoneAPP, shared his own experiences struggling with social and print media as a small business owner. 

Each company put their personal touches to their pitches, making them all the more poignant and meaningful for the audience. Every pitch was spot on and they were really able to raise the bar. Now let’s see how high they can take it in the after-Demo Day life!