coworking-news

New Chairs at The 3rd Place! Woot!!

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:51:46 +0100

Stop on by and check out our new chairs at The 3rd Place! Nice'n Comfy!!

The 3rd Place - NCAA Basketball Bracket - Standings (so far)

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 15:17:04 +0100

Well, as of right now the leader in the standings for The 3rd Place NCAA March Madness Basketball Bracket is.....(drum roll please).....

Anna Dinndorf - look out she is on a roll selecting 34 out of 51 correct so far...here is what her bracket looks like:

New Wall Art @ The 3rd Place!

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 20:45:59 +0100

You have to stop by and check out our new wall art! We have got beer coasters from all over the world on display. I'm talking all over the world...from Amsterdam to Buenos Aires and everywhere in between. The prize possession of the collection: A beer coaster from the "Hotel Nacional de Cuba". If you have any coasters lying around the house that you think would make a great addition bring it with you!

New Member Profile: DEEP3R Social Media

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 22:25:53 +0100

Tony called one day and asked if he could stop by to check out The 3rd Place. He ended up coming in that same day. Decided to come back the next day with his computer, etc. and spent the day with us. That was two weeks ago...and he has been back every day since!

Tony is the CEO of DEEP3R Social Media

His company does Social Media Management, Social Media Training and Coaching, and Wordpress Site Design.
Check out his website here: http://deep3rintel.com/

Tony is into cars and is also an avid blogger. Here is his blog: http://deep3rintel.com/

The 3rd Place hosts art show to benefit Japanese tsunami orphans

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 17:50:23 +0100

Lisa Erickson created 28 sume-e-style paintings to illustrate the Japanese poem "Strong in the Rain."

St. Anthony Park artist Lisa Erickson has created a 14-page booklet with 28 sume-e-style paintings to illustrate a famous Japanese poem that has been circulating around Japan after the March 11 tsunami and earthquake.

All profits from the sales of the booklet will go to Ashinaga, an organization that provides healing programs for children who have lost parents due to disaster. The group is currently focused on building a “Rainbow House” in the Tohoku region, where children can receive grief counseling.

A show of Erickson’s paintings will open Thursday, Aug. 18, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the 3rd Place, 2190 Como Ave. Micawber’s Books, 2238 Carter Ave., will be selling the booklet.

Each book is signed and numbered and sells for $10. You can find out more about it at Erickson’s website, www.apapersnowflake.com.

3rd Place member Jon Schumacher meets President Obama!

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:00:51 +0100

Although Jon wasn't invited to the White House because of his affiliation to The 3rd Place, we still thought it was pretty cool...and we are pretty sure Jon let the Commander in Chief know how important centers for collaboration and co-working like The 3rd Place are to our nation's economy.

Startup Lessons Learned - 2011 Simulcast

Sat, 21 May 2011 15:39:25 +0100

The 3rd Place is proud to host the 2011 Startup Lessons Simulcast this Monday, May 23rd from 10:30am-5pm. Please stop by anytime, it's free!

You can sign up here: http://bit.ly/tcstartups

Startup Lessons Learned 2011 is the sequel to last year's inaugural event, which brought together nearly 400 entrepreneurs and executives interested in building and supporting lean startups. The goal for this event is to give practitioners and students of the lean startup methodology the opportunity to hear insights from leaders in embracing and deploying the core principles of the lean startup methodology. The day-long event will feature a mix of panels and talks focused on the key challenges and issues that technical and market-facing people at startups need to understand in order to succeed in building successful lean startups.

Do You Have a Startup Idea and a Day Job? Join Us for Startup Workshop at t3p!

Wed, 11 May 2011 13:23:11 +0100

Events like Minnebar, Minnedemo and Startup Weekend are energizing and showcase the vitality of the MN startup community. However, it takes more than a single day or a weekend to get from concept to customer. If you have an idea and a day job, join us!

What: Get from concept to customer in 6 weeks

Why: Inspiration, education and execution

Who: Developers with an idea and a day job (solo or in teams of up to 3)
Limited to 6 teams, (First come first serve - 4 spots still available)

Where: the 3^rd place

When: 6 working sessions. Tuesday evenings May 17 thru June 28, 2011 from 6:30 - 9pm

These will be working sessions with a mix of presentation and discussion, featuring some guest speakers and exploration of valuable tools and resources for gaining insight and saving time. The sessions will be focused on customer discovery, drawing on the framework from Steve Blank’s book Four Steps to the Epiphany. Over the course of 6 weeks, work with a cohort of other startups to verify your problem, your product and your business model. By the end of the sessions, decide to Iterate, Execute, or Exit.

What’s included:

A copy of Steve Blank’s book The Four Steps to the Epiphany ($40 value)
$100 Google Adwords credit for testing your concept
Snacks and beverages at each session
Taking action on your idea (priceless!)

Price: $40 (for the book)

Registration limited to 6 teams. (First come first serve - 4 spots still available)
Interested? Contact zack.steven @ monkeyislandinc.com

Content Overview

May 17 – Introduction and Product Hypothesis

May 24 – Customer Hypothesis and Channel/Pricing

May 31 – Demand Creation and Market Type

June 7 – Competition and Problem Presentation

June 14 – Customer Understanding and Market Knowledge

June 21 - No session - get feedback from prospective customers

June 28 – Verification and Summary. Iterate or Exit

We have officially reopened our outdoor seating area!

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 20:03:47 +0100

Spring is in the air...so today we took the tarps off our picnic tables and officially reopened The 3rd Place outdoor seating area. So stop on by and take in a little free WiFi and some sun!

Lean Lessons Learned (the Hard Way) or: Where was Eric Ries in 2008?

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:37:44 +0100

We recently found out about the AppSumo Lean Challenge for startups and thought that entering via this blog post would be a great opportunity to share lessons we’ve learned, connections we’ve made, and resources we’ve discovered at Monkey Island over the past 5 years.

Monkey Island began around a basement card table, with 3 childhood friends sharing conversations about technology as a tool for changing the world. Our first offering was visionary but plump - old school business planning gone wild. We’ve achieved failure, pivoted many times, and now sit on the verge of launching our most promising product, having already proven product/market fit and signed paying customers.

PLUMP. Our first offering was www.buythechange.com – classifieds with a conscience. A hyperlocal social commerce platform with the aim of building community through commerce and giving back to non-profits. We did everything by the book (unfortunately the book wasn’t “The Lean Startup!”)

We wrote a 40 page business plan with detailed financials out 5 years. Made the semi-finals of the Minnesota Cup competition twice. Have since learned that a 10 slide deck is all you really need. (Thanks @VentureHacks and Jawed Karim)
We raised investment from friends, family and angels
We successfully spent the funds as planned, on development (and lawn signs, coffee sleeves, legal fees, a promo video design services and copywriters and more)
We were on TV
Even Tim O’Reilly thought it “could be the start of a significant trend”
Rebuilt the service from the ground up 3x so we’d be ready to scale
Had a knack for continuing to add “essential” features before launch
Failed to achieve critical mass. Despite its flaws, Craigslist has liquidity that’s hard to beat.

LEANER. While buythechange began with a focus on cause-based connections it evolved into a local play based on user feedback. Neighborhoods and location became a much more important point of connection than cause affiliations. Around this time in late 2008 Twitter came on our radar (thanks @philiphotchkiss!). As we began exploring Twitter we couldn’t figure out how to find local connections and saw an opportunity to create a local Twitter directory. So we built LocalTweeps – the ZIP code level Twitter directory, which was leaner by necessity. Running out of money will do that.

www.LocalTweeps.com is the leading ZIP code level Twitter directory with over 60k users in all 50 States
We launched 3 weeks from the initial conversation, using a PowerPoint UI and no reporting.
Simple registration via Twitter included a viral feedback loop. Launched with 3 tweets from us and went viral, registering over 750 users an hour in the first few days
We have continued to get registrations every day since
Began to implement advanced features of selective status updates, DM notification of new listings, events and specials creation, city-specific feeds Twitter feeds, and the ability to follow other users.
Had lots of users, but were unable to bring in enough revenue to continue to fund development and customer support.

LEANEST. In order to generate revenue to continue to fund development we began consulting on social media for small business, with a focus on Twitter. We found that the greatest challenge our customers had was growing an audience of engaged local followers who could become customers. Not finding a tool that solved the problem to our satisfaction, we set out to build one. We’ll soon be launching SMBtweet, the easiest way to grow your business with Twitter. It’s targeted at the 20 million SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) who are increasingly turning to social media for customer engagement and acquisition. SMBtweet contains a proprietary algorithm that takes into account location, relationships and keywords and other Twitter data to simplify and automate follower growth. This time our go to market strategy has been leaner and more effective:

Our vision began as a more comprehensive Twitter for Small Business tool but has been boiled down to the MVP of high quality follower acquisition. >Focus<
We created and tested landing pages using Unbounce and doubled our conversion rate to get over 200 customer registrations in advance of launch
We sold the service to local businesses and provided it manually while the software has been in development.
We’re going to market with a validated monetization strategy
Rather rent an office on our own, we're operating from the 3rd place, the Lean Coworking space we founded in Jan. 2010

Summary of lessons learned (and still learning)

Surround yourself with good people. Get the support of family and friends. Find cofounders you trust. Get involved in the local and national startup community.
You’re not in business when you have an office or a business card. You’re in business when you have a customer.
Ask yourself what you’d do if you had “the money” and why can’t you just start doing it anyway?
Sell it before you build it. Let the customer tell you when they need more (information, functionality) in order to buy
Constraints are powerful, whether they relate to money, time or character count.
Direction and trends are more important than volume. Data converges surprisingly quickly, even when you don’t want it to.
Don’t be afraid to share your ideas. They’ll get stronger (not stolen) and execution is where the true value lies.
Cash is king. It’s not so much about how much time you have, it’s how many iterations you can achieve in however much time it is. Speed matters.
Get it as far as you can with your founding team. People are more receptive to help/join when they know you’ve done all you can.
Just get started. When you build, you learn.

Resources we’ve used and recommend:

Logo and site design: 99 designs
File sharing: dropbox
Landing pages: Unbounce
Lead Gen mailing list: MailChimp
Customer Feedback: Uservoice
Project Management: BaseCamp
Analytics

Google Analytics
Chartbeat – realtime traffic
Clicktale – screencasts of real visitors and heat maps

Customer surveys – Survey Monkey
Twitter – get connected to the startup community

Must follow! VentureHacks, Steve Blank, Paul Graham, Fred Wilson, Eric Ries, Dave McClure, Dan Martell, Jason Fried

Resources we’ve discovered via the AppSumo Lean Startup Bundle and look forward to using:

Agile Project Management - Pivotal Tracker
Analytics and Heat Maps - Crazy Egg
Surveys and Market Research - Ask Your Target Market
Twitter data via API - infoChimps
Chargify for recurring billing – so long Authorize.net!
Snap Engage for realtime customer support chat

Why we need funding
Funding = focus. We’ve done everything from raking leaves and moving furniture to selling cars and consulting to fund product development. We’ll do whatever it takes, but the money we win from this competition would go straight to development. No Aeron chairs.

Are you starting something? We'd love to hear from you. Now, back to work!