Techstars Alchemist Blockchain Accelerator — Recap of Week 4

I joined Techstars Alchemist Blockchain Accelerator as a Business Associate in New York City. Over 13 weeks, I look forward to working with the inaugural class comprised of 10 inspiring early-stage blockchain startups (Alkemi, AnyLedger.io, Autom(8), Blockade Games, Embleema, Gilded, Paperchain, Paperstreet, Trixta, Veracity Protocol.)

The following provides a high-level overview of Week 4 of the accelerator program as well as a few personal insights.

Re-read recaps of Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3 to get up to speed.

TL;DR

• Mentor Madness: Part 3
• Founder Story: Tej Bhatia
• Master Class: Customer Discovery with Marisa Rackson from Hubspot
• Workouts & Spin with AWS & Lucky Strike with Cooley / SVB

Mentor Madness Part 3

This week we had our last round of mentors come in, concluding phase 1 of 3 of the accelerator. Next month is focused on TRACTION! Stay tuned.

24 mentor meetings over the course of 3 days. 20 minutes in-person and virtual meetings with industry thoughts leaders, blockchain professionals, and functional experts. This is the power of Techstars mentorship-driven process.

Thank you to this week’s incredible list of Mentors:

1. Brad Mills — Partner at XSquared Ventures — @bradmillscan
2. Chetan Manikantan — Chief of Product and Technology at OM Cash — @manchet
3. Dave Shor — CEO at Lynq —
4. Eric Friedman — Founder at Building the Machine — @ericfriedman
5. Franklin Bi — Associate Director at Wachsman — @FranklinBi
6. George D. Bousis — Founder at Raise — @GBousis
7. Gregory Rocco — Head of Strategy at Alpine — @Obstropolos
8. Igor Telyatnikov — COO at AlphaPoint — @itelyatnikov
9. Jack Lynch — COO at Alchemist —
10. Jesse Warren Tevelow — Founding Partner at BlockTeam Ventures — @jtevelow
11. Joe Murray — Controller at Alchemist — @joemurray27
12. Joseph Weinberg — Chairman at Shyft — @josephweinberg
13. Joyce Yang — Founder at Global Coin Research & BlockchainsForSchools — @joyceinnyc
14. Marc Manara — Business Development Manager at Amazon Web Services — @nhlhomer
15. Medha Parlikar — CEO at CasperLabs — @MParlikar
16. Mike Tarullo — COO at Banza — @tarullo
17. Mohammad Shaikh — Co-Founder & CEO at Meridio — @moshaikhs
18. Micah Spurill — Managing Partner at XSquared Ventures — @micahspruill
19. Naadia Quader — Head of Product & Ops at Bloomberg LP —
20. Pablo Yabo — CTO at Algo Capital — @pipaman
21. Ravi Kaushik — Senior Vice President at Citi —
22. Rich Kerschner — Advisory Board Chair at DrumG Technologies — @KerschnerRich
23. Rob Bailey — CEO at MState — @RMB
24. Simon Bogdanowicz — Founding Partner at BlockTeam Ventures

This week I had the opportunity to follow AnyLedger, Autom8, and Trixta through their mentor meetings. I also had the privilege of sitting with Eric Friedman as he met with several companies.

Some personal reflections after meeting 86 mentors over 3 weeks:

• Mentors are an incredible resource. They leverage their experiences and networks to advise companies through opportunities and challenges. But not all mentors are equal.
• All feedback is valuable. Many mentors had similar feedback; many mentors had conflicting feedback. There are hundreds of experts willing to help navigate the unknown. Ultimately, it is up to the founders to decide which path to pursue.
• The best teams incorporated mentor feedback along the way and A/B tested their pitches. Over time, pitches became simpler and more targeted. Ruthless prioritization was key.
• While blockchain tech is core to many of the company’s stack and business model, complexity should be abstracted away in the pitch. Blockchain-based companies should focus on explaining the problem they are trying to solve and their unique solution. Blockchain technology is the HOW, not the WHY.

Founder Story: Tej Bhatia

This week, we had the privilege of hearing from Tej Bhatia who is currently the Startup Program Lead in NY for Google Cloud. He was most recently an Entrepreneur in Residence at Citi Ventures. His most recent startup post was as COO for Explain Everything, an interactive screencasting whiteboard application. He also served as CEO and co-founder of Chatwala, a mobile video chatting application and Kaptur (acquired), an app that enables users to instantly aggregate all photos taken at any event in seconds.

Key lessons:

• Understand the viral coefficient:

Viral coefficient: What it does and does NOT measure

• Initial team dynamics are incredibly important.

Master Class: Customer Discovery with Hubspot

This week we had Marisa Rackson from Hubspot walk us through strategies for customer development.

We covered how to find potential customers (LinkedIn, Mentors, events, Twitter, referrals, etc.), what to ask them, how to create personas, and how to create a customer feedback loop.

Her presentation was super insightful and timely. Given that most of the companies are trying to find product-market fit, customer discovery is a core part of the work.

Key lessons:

• Find and talk to customers — ask about their current approach to solving the problem you are addressing (“how are you doing this today?”) and what are their pain points (“what is frustrating you”);
• Keep asking WHY until you understand the true motivation behind a customer’s actions;
• Build something people want — find a unique value proposition (UVP), the reason why customers turn specifically to your company;
• Create a continuous feedback loop by learning about the customer journey (understand, measure, drive recurring value)- the ACAF (Ask, Categorize, Act, Follow-Up) feedback loop is a good mental model;
• Collect feedback using NPS scores, Customer Satisfaction Scores, and social media monitoring;
• Categorize feedback into different buckets (product, customer services, and sales & marketing) — then act on it!

Group Workouts & Spin with AWS & Lucky Strike with Cooley / SVB

To keep energy levels high (and our work-life-health balance in check), we had several group activities including pilates, yoga, ping pong, and bowling.