GAN

OCTOBER 9, 2019

No matter where you run a company, you’re probably making trade-offs. There are pros and cons to operating anywhere, for sure. But, I know that operating your company in a smaller city can feel really, really hard. You face a lot of challenges—anything from your commute time, to finding great talent, to landing big investments, to connecting with your target customers (fashion and beauty companies come to mind, for instance).

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GAN

SEPTEMBER 8, 2019

Hamburg is Germany’s second-largest city with 1.8 million people and a metro region of about three million. The city is, of course, known for its seaport, the third-largest in Europe. It’s also among the top three locations for the aviation industry in the world. Hamburg prides itself as “The Gate to the World” and is home to all branches of the economy, ranging from aviation to maritime and logistics, as well as the creative and media industry.

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GAN

SEPTEMBER 17, 2019

We just finished the first leg of the GAN Momentum Tour in Pittsburgh. It was the first of five trips we’re making around the world where accelerators, corporate partners, and startups come together around one purpose: Helping startups who are operating in unique places around the world (“everywhere else” places—the cities that might not be considered major tech hubs) gain more momentum, wherever they call home. You can see a 90-second video of all that happened here.

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GAN

NOVEMBER 5, 2019

I work for Chargebee, the recurring billing and subscription management product used by thousands of customers in more than 53 countries and a proud GAN Partner. In my role, I head up one of our strategic initiatives, called “ Chargebee for Entrepreneurs ,” where we work with 100 accelerators and incubators to identify high-potential startups globally.

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MAGNiTT and 500 Startups jointly launch first 'State of MENA Startups 2019" report. Survey findings reveal insights on trends in fundraising exercise, exit opportunities, hiring, and growth optimization.

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GAN

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

Each week, I receive dozens of updates from startups—everything from founders I’ve just chatted with briefly, to founders I’ve mentored, to companies that have asked GAN Ventures for funding.

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GAN

NOVEMBER 26, 2019

In just a few weeks, I’m going to see my mom for the holidays. While I’ve been in the startup world for over a decade now, I know my mom (and many of my friends) have no idea about all of the startup jargon we throw around, especially when it comes to the type of support startups can receive. Words like accelerator, incubator , venture studio, and others are terms that sound the same or are very confusing. And my mom and friends aren’t the only ones who are confused.

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GAN

OCTOBER 2, 2019

If you’ve ever wondered what an island like Bahrain has to offer to entrepreneurs and startups, we’re happy to fill you in and let you know how the ecosystem here has developed with the support of key stakeholders. Background on Bahrain.

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GAN

JULY 15, 2019

I work for Chargebee, a recurring billing and subscription management product used by thousands of customers in more than 53 countries and a proud GAN Partner. As part of the Chargebee team, I head up one of our strategic initiatives, called “Chargebee for Entrepreneurs,” where we work with accelerators and incubators to identify high-potential startups globally.

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GAN

MAY 8, 2019

There are 115 accelerators spread across 160 cities in the GAN Community. Their breadth, impact, and results are amazing. In 2018 alone, more than 35,000 startups applied for just 1,344 spots at those accelerators. So, this past week, I asked leaders at GAN programs one simple question: Before applying to your accelerator, what would you tell startups they need to do to prepare for your program? Here’s What They Said. Candice Matthews-Brackeen. Hillman Accelerator and NewMe Accelerator.

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This resource discusses the gap between early funding from friends/family and the more substantial rounds from angel groups and VCs. Why does this gap exist and what can be done about it?

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GAN

DECEMBER 11, 2019

If you read my blog regularly, you know I’m a really big believer in revenue as one of the most important metrics for startups. And, that partnering with corporates is one of the best ways for startups to generate revenue. Corporates, of course, are companies considered to be part of the “Fortune 500” or those on the S&P 2000 and they share a few things in common. First, they have capital.

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GAN

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Over the next few weeks, you’ll be trying to hunt down the perfect gift for everyone you adore. And, while you could easily just shop online at the biggest company on the planet, wouldn’t it be even better if all of your purchases came from companies you could name—companies that will use the revenue they make from your purchase to buy from other startups or to funnel back into their local communities? Plus, don’t you want to buy something unique? I thought so.

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GAN

JANUARY 21, 2020

When Reilly—my partner at GAN Ventures—and I are in the final stages of talks with a company we might invest in, we always ask a question to every CEO… How would you describe your company culture to someone who was thinking about joining your team? Somewhere around three-quarters of the time, their response is something to the effect of, “We have a ‘work hard, play hard’ culture.”

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GAN

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

We just finished GAN’s first Momentum Tour, a four-stop global tour with events in Pittsburgh, Hamburg, Lima, and Manama. The entire purpose of this tour from the very beginning was to help startups operating in places like these—smaller markets that aren’t considered the world’s major tech hubs—to have additional connections, tools, and resources to build and grow their companies, wherever they are. Which, by the way, is GAN’s mission.

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GAN

DECEMBER 17, 2019

It’s that time of year: annual planning. Nearly every company on the planet is taking a look at what they’ve done and what they’re planning to do in the coming year, and we’re doing it right along with them. Two things typically undergird all of the questions that surround this process—company values and a mission statement.

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GAN

APRIL 23, 2019

Last week, I spoke at InBIA’s International Business Incubation Conference in Minneapolis. InBIA brings together a curated group of incubators a few times a year, and they had me talk about the difference between accelerators and incubators, as well as how the two can work together.

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GAN

JANUARY 14, 2020

Running a business isn’t easy. Demands from your team and your clients can fill every minute of every day and it can be hard to prioritize the work that’s actually essential to you and your company. So sometimes, it really can help to get feedback at the right time, from the right people—people who understand the intricacies of your business and who allow you to be incredibly open and honest. For most companies, that means having a board of directors.

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GAN

JULY 2, 2019

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” ” — Lewis Carroll. Last week, Exponential Impact’s latest cohort visited the GAN office. XI is a GAN Accelerator located in Colorado Springs and this cohort of founders is an amazing group, just starting the program. When thinking about what I should say to them, I remembered something that Steve Blank shared with a bunch of the Techstars founders we brought together in Las Vegas back in 2012.

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GAN

AUGUST 28, 2019

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself in a conversation about startup newsletters with some of GAN’s corporate partners during our yearly Partner Summit. We’d been chatting about newsletters we loved when I went a bit negative and opened up about a newsletter I had a lot of judgments around.

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GAN

SEPTEMBER 25, 2019

This past week, I took a look at the 25 investments that GAN Ventures has made so far. Mostly, I was just checking to see who I’ve followed up with lately and who else I should reach out to so that I could say hello and see how things were going. But while looking over the list, I started to wonder if there might be any common denominators across the group.

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GAN

MAY 29, 2019

I help run two different businesses: GAN and GAN Ventures. At GAN, Dani runs the day-to-day operations as the company’s COO. And, at GAN Ventures, Reilly and I run the company as equal partners, which—of course—makes Reilly my business partner. This means I have two allies, Dani and Reilly, who I’m constantly working with to build and grow these organizations. We have incredible relationships and I couldn’t have chosen more fantastic people to work alongside.

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GAN

JULY 9, 2019

Last week, I wrote about how essential it is to ask yourself one important question before going through an accelerator program: What do you want your (work) life to be like? Meaning, unless you define what you want your time in-program (or when starting really anything) to look like, the world around you will surely help do it for you. I keep coming back to this question since writing it last week, though. Because I think there’s actually a deeper question behind this question.

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GAN

APRIL 2, 2019

I gave Dina a call on Monday. Dina oversees business development for GAN Partners, the innovative corporates like Allstate, Prologis, and UPS that engage with startups in the GAN Community. She’s had an amazing three months. She’s been working hard, traveling a ton, and doing the right things to find new partners. And, on the call, we had some really great back-and-forth about all of those new partners. Then something popped out of my mouth, somewhat unexpectedly.

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GAN

AUGUST 13, 2019

I had lunch the other day with an investor. Not to talk about investment for GAN, but to just share what we’re up to, where GAN Ventures is headed, and to build a friendship with someone who shares a ton of mutual friends and personal values and just generally does similar work in the world. In other words, I mostly wanted to get to know him personally, as someone I already value and respect. We had a great lunch. But it’s what he did after our time together that really struck me.

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GAN

OCTOBER 2, 2019

Last week, we were in Lima for our second stop of the Momentum Tour ( video here! ) We met with government officials—the people who oversee the support that startups receive directly from the country—investors investing in the country’s best seed-stage founders, and corporates doing business with the country’s newest startups. Everywhere we went, I asked this one question. Did they feel like Lima was a great place to grow a startup?

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GAN

MAY 22, 2019

When GAN Ventures considers whether to invest in a startup, we look for four primary things: Authentic founders: Founders that know their own strengths and weaknesses and aren’t afraid to ask for help. Passionate founders: Founders that joyfully know more about their market than most people would think is normal to know about anything. Mission-driven founders: Founders that truly believe they’re changing at least a small part of the world and will stop at nothing until they do.

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GAN

OCTOBER 16, 2019

About a year ago, I wrote a blog post that’s been one of my most-read posts to date. The post was all about why and how startups should define their market size to generate investor interest and excitement. I still firmly believe this is one of the most important things startups can do. And yet, Reilly and I continue to turn down company after company that approaches GAN Ventures without a market size large enough for investment.

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GAN

SEPTEMBER 4, 2019

I can’t remember the last time I was this excited. In just four days, GAN hits the road on our 2019 GAN Momentum Tour, a five-stop global tour focused on helping startups get and sustain momentum wherever they call home. But even if you can’t personally join us on any of the five stops, I still think we all have huge reasons to be excited about what lies behind this tour—. There Are Startups — Everywhere.

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GAN

MAY 15, 2019

If you’re a leader anywhere, a large part of your role will include bringing people together from different backgrounds and sometimes even different cultures—people who hold varying or even conflicting value sets. And getting these varying values and backgrounds and opinions and personalities together can be a huge challenge, especially when they all walk into a room as relative strangers. So, when you actually bring people together and it works well, it can feel truly special.

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GAN

JULY 23, 2019

Each year, GAN asks the accelerators in our community hundreds of questions on their programs with one goal in mind—to gather concrete insights into the state of the accelerator industry as it stands in any particular year. Responses from our yearly survey culminate in a giant data report available to any accelerator from the community that provided us with their data.

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GAN

MARCH 26, 2019

Not long ago, I found myself pitching GAN. The conversation was going well, I felt like I was able to convey all of the main points I wanted to, and our rapport seemed solid. During the first 20 minutes of the chat, I gave background on accelerators, corporates, and the startup studio industry, trends we’re seeing, opportunities in front of us, and a variety of other important data points describing GAN’s work. I nailed it. Or at least I thought I had.

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GAN

AUGUST 20, 2019

Sitting in the Denver airport earlier this summer, I heard our gate attendant get on the loudspeaker to announce that we had to switch gates. As I started to pack my things to make the move, I noticed that the guy next to me was absolutely irate. He couldn’t believe we had to switch gates and he made it known to everyone within earshot. Out loud, he kept ranting about how annoying the airline was, how they always do things like this to him (to him!),

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GAN

JUNE 25, 2019

Last week, GAN released its annual data report and, while the full report is only available to accelerators in the GAN Community that provided us with their program data, you can see the year’s top highlights in an infographic here.

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GAN

APRIL 9, 2019

I’m traditionally pretty particular about doing annual planning every year. I prioritize it heavily because it’s the one time each year when we take a step back and go over our plans for the following year. It includes department-level brainstorming and planning sessions that roll up into full-blown presentations to the C-Suite. I think they’re incredibly helpful and good for a team, and we’ll continue to do them.

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GAN

OCTOBER 29, 2019

One of my favorite theologians is a man named N.T. Wright. He writes a lot on the “afterlife” and what may happen when we die. At the beginning of one of his books, he makes a point about how our view of the afterlife affects how we live today. In other words, what we believe about what happens after we die completely frames how we live and behave today. I bring this up because I have this overwhelming sense that it says something about what founders believe about failure.

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GAN

JANUARY 7, 2020

Closing out last year (and the last decade), a lot of us probably spent at least some time planning out what we want 2020 to look like. Whether that meant building a full-blown plan or just jotting down some high-level thoughts about the next quarter, you probably have at least some vision for what the year will entail. And, given it’s the first full week back to work after the holidays, there’s an excitement to it. The year seems new, and it feels like we can do almost anything.

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GAN

AUGUST 27, 2019

We at AlphaLab and AlphaLab Gear are excited to host top accelerators from around the world when the GAN Momentum Tour kicks off in Pittsburgh from September 9-12. As the North American host for this global tour, we are looking forward to connecting with our fellow accelerator leaders to continue sharing best practices on building our respective ecosystems through our accelerator and other startup programs.

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GAN

APRIL 16, 2019

If you’ve spent any time around me lately—at ALL—you know that I can’t get enough of SoulCycle. It’s a gym where you ride a stationary bike, but it also strangely feels like the perfect mix between both a club and a church. It’s also an incredible workout and, right now, I am SoulCycle’s biggest fanboy. Last month, in the middle of a class, climbing a hill, I did what I normally do when things are most difficult.

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GAN

JUNE 5, 2019

I get about a month of vacation each year and I like to use that time well. After all, a month is a lot of time, but it’s actually not that much time, spread out over 52 weeks. What does “using it well” mean for me? My family and I enjoy experiences. It’s fun hopping on a plane, traveling somewhere new, and introducing our girls to new things. But, last week, I used one of those weeks of vacation to simply chill at my own house with my family. It was great.

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