Ultra Light Startups Recap

Last night I attended the Ultra Light Startups monthly meeting held at the For Your Imagination studio in NYC. It’s an interesting format as entrepreneurs can pitch their startup in 1 minute for $5. About 40 startups pitched and I will provide reviews of many of them over the coming weeks. About 80 people attended the event and there was a good bit of networking during the event as well. I briefly spoke about my projects and answered a variety of questions about ways to promote a startup.

Here’s how they define an ultra light startup:

• Aim to achieve profitability with little or no external funding
• Have low permanent headcount, low overhead, low budget
• Operate as ‘virtual enterprises’ (outsourcing, partnerships)
• Use off-the-shelf and open-source software and platforms rather than build from scratch
• Use cloud/network computing rather than owning hardware
• Maximize efficient use of viral/guerrilla/social marketing
• Any other low-cost, high-flexibility techniques

Here are a few photos from the event (click for larger version):