Day One: CaribbeanStartups.com Didgital Accelorator

Yesterday was Day 1 of the first digital accelerator I have ever participated in. It was a lot of information to take in for just a few hours. There is a lot to be said for the journey of learning — it is constant and you have to listen or you will miss out on so many lessons.

The curriculum snapshot for the day was as follows:

Monday: 7pm-9pm EST
7–7:15 Leveraging the Caribbean startup ecosystem and positioning yourself as a Caribbean entrepreneur
7:15–8:00 Product development 101-Ideation, Beta Testing, Customer Acquisition
8–8:30 Customer development 101- How to get 10,000 users in 6 months
8:30–9:00 Email Marketing w/ Partner-Send Grid
9:00–9:30 Q/A

It was the best crash course in lean startup methods I have ever seen. It was like taking a college summer course. There was so much rich information on how to build out your MVP, social media and finding your first customers. Learning about Bounce Exchange for the first time to understand the traffic on my site was very interesting to me. Can’t wait to be able to test this out today to be able to find out even more about my customer.

We also had a chance to jump into the do’s and don’t of email marketing. This is a skill that every company needs today to be able to make the most of what the web has to offer. At BeautyLynk we are still learning how we can leverage email to make our visibility even better in the areas we currently service (Boston, Atlanta and soon New York and Philadelphia). Each startup that participated received a great surprise at the end of the workshop with a huge credit to use SendGrid as email provider for the next year. It is something that can help our companies grow for sure.

Make sure to keep up with me! I have two more days to go!