After a great weekend, everybody was ready for the new week. Some people a little more sunburned than the other... ;)

Our first meeting of the second week was at the 500 Startups office in San Francisco. They recently opened this and are still working out of a temporary office, while they are finishing the other office. They now have their first batch of startups there.

We met with 500 Startup Venture Partner, Marvin Liao; 500 Startup Mentor and Founder and CEO of Agile Credit, Mike Sigal and Mike' s friend Scott Rafer, who is an expert in Advertisement and Media.

Marvin first introduced 500 Startups. He talked about their accelerator program (more than 1000 applicants for 30 days!). They have eight Venture Partners and they invest in a lot of companies in the US. Mexico, Brazil and India. The would love to invest more in Europe.

After the introduction, Marvin, Mike and Scott answered all the questions the startups had for them. We talked about investments, legal issues, trends, how to get into 500 Startups etc.

Here are some interesting remarks:

• On ambition: You don't always have to compare to the big American startups. Just think about what your goal is, what you want as a revenue and try to reach that. 
• On raising money: Raising money from Venture Capitalist is like selling your product. It takes a lot of talking and a lot of hard work.
• On trends: There are two kinds of trends: first of all external market trends (e.g. more and more people have a smartphone). These trends will stay for a while, so you can build a company around them. Trends like Bitcoin, are buzz words, all of a sudden everybody likes them. And even though virtual currency might stay around for a while, Bitcoin might not make it. For this kind of trends, it's not always a good idea to try to chase them. Once something is a trend, it's too late already... You will have to catch up with the companies who made it a trend and you will be too far behind.

It was a very interesting meeting, and we appreciated all the advice and ideas!

After the meeting, we went to have lunch at one of Marvin's favorite places "The Grove".

In the afternoon, we had a very inspiring meeting with Shaan Puri at The Monkey Inferno. They call themselves a Startup Studio. They don't look for startups to accelerator. They hire the people first, and the ideas come later and from the best ideas they create startups.  They keep these projects at Monkey Inferno and when they get successful, they graduate and find their own office. 

So they hire talented people, they get a salary and they get part of the equity in each project. Everybody is very motivated to help each other's project out and succeed together. 

 

Shaan gave some advice on how to come up with an idea:

1. take a shower (the best ideas are developed there)

2. solve your own problem (but also talk to other people about it, so you don't get stuck in your own world)

3. go to work outside of tech for a while and come back with great ideas on how to improve things)

Shaan also said it's important to be surrounded by the right people. You should feel comfortable to share your ideas and on the same time be challenged to think further. You have to think outside the box!

The most important thing Shaan looks at when he hires people is tenacity! Very driven people with a good knowledge of their expertise.

Shaan believes that you don't have to concentrate on making your product successful, but you should make yourself successful.

After the talk we had a tour of the beautifully designed office! After the meeting, some of the teams went to Union Square and had a brainstorm session about each other’s project, Monkey Inferno Style!

Again a great day, with a lot of great people in this great city!