Our first trip to Denver was on a party bus.
Poker Night was just a good way for us to get to know KKO,
which is a local law firm, a little bit better in a more informal setting.
Andy, a lot of bacon across the shrimp.
I mean, being a startup itself is gamble.
In real economic theory, it makes no sense.
We're kind of putting all our cards on the table, going all in.
Based on probability, we think we have a probable chance of making money,
and this is the way that we went about it, to actually decide to start a company.
One of the executives from Microsoft who came in to speak to us said,
a quote that was really memorable, start-ups play poker and big companies play chess.
So the poker game was awesome because Alex actually made it to the final table.
His skills got him there.
Skills and persistence.
It's all about skills and persistence and dumb luck.
My card sucked.
So like, with a table this big, someone's going to get a good hand on this.
Poker has an element of luck in it, but you can try to minimize the amount
of luck that plays a part in your success.
The way you do that is understanding the circumstances
and giving yourself the best opportunities to be successful
and taking risks and being open-minded.
And I think that's the same way you run a company.
The founders have continued to meet amazing people
to give them feedback on their ideas.
Greg Kohn from Yahoo spent the day.
Are you based in LA?
I love the Dodgers thing, you big Dodgers in.
Big Rockies.
This is my second time out to Techstars and I'm thrilled to be back.
It's a great group.
I think Boulder's obviously got a lot going on in it
in terms of entrepreneurial energy.
And, you know, I'm here because I love doing this
and because, you know, we're at Yahoo, we're very invested
in the startup ecosystem and the developer ecosystem.
Congratulations.
Congrats on getting to Techstars.
We generally describe Techstars as consisting of three parts.
The first four to five weeks is really the first part
and the first part is about really figuring out
exactly what the right thing to be working on is.
The times are getting tougher almost every day.
On average, I would say we've been sleeping, you know,
between four and six hours a night recently.
There's too much exciting stuff happening to sleep.
It's our deploy script, which failed.
So that's what Charlie and I are trying to fix right now.
One of the big challenges is so much is coming at us.
There's a concern that you try to do too much.
So I think it's that balance between pursuing too much
and really hitting one thing out of the park.
Well, right now we're spending a lot of time kind of refocusing ourselves
on where do we want to be by the end of the summer.
I think the other big thing that we're working on
is taking our business out of the garage
and making it feel more like a business.
Hey!
Being in Texas is like anything.
It's not masking the realities of our life
that we're still living with our families at age 26.
And, you know, eating...
TMI, man.
TMI.
Too much info.
Hey, Nate and Natty.
Are you guys going to be around for dinner?
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
The idea is important, but the people are probably the most important.
We'll ultimately arrive at the right idea if they're great founders.
We came to the Techstars to try and answer the question,
how does a band become famous?
And our current site, NexBigSound.com, was an attempt at that.
The Nex Big Sound came in and about a week into the program
pretty much dropped their original idea.
They were working on the same market, which is the music space.
We're getting ready to pitch for the first time.
Five-minute pitch.
Our new idea.
They're on to a new thing, figuring out how to describe it now.
And they're starting to build it, and it's really cool.
So this is version two of the Nex Big Sound.
We'd love to hear your feedback.
This is where our head's at currently.
I'm constantly nervous.
I'm not more than normal.
He is constantly nervous.
I don't know why.
So we changed our idea.
We're still in the music space.
We're really excited about it,
and looking forward to sharing more about it soon.
Keep it locked.
So we're just leaving that first phase of figuring out your idea,
really nail it.
The second phase tends to be heads down,
work on your product, really get it ready.
And the third phase, sort of the wrap-up of Techstars,
is getting your investor story right,
finally leading up to investor and demo day.
You know, when we start our sessions,
the first thing I usually do is say how many days
are left to investor day.
I like to think it was a starting point for the company.
It's not the ending point of Techstars.
It's not the ending point of Techstars.
