IDEO Human-Centered Design Toolkit

December 13, 2009 by shkadmin

Human Centered Design Toolkit

A free innovation guide for NGOs and Social Enterprises

For years, organizations have used Human-Centered Design (HCD) to arrive at innovative business solutions. In collaboration with the Gates Foundation and non-profit groups IDE, ICRW, and Heifer International, IDEO has specially adapted this process for NGOs and social enterprises that work with impoverished communities around the world. The resulting HCD Toolkit helps organizations understand people’s needs in new ways, find innovative solutions to meet these needs, and deliver solutions with financial sustainability in mind.

[+]

via ideo.com

This is awesome. Usually this kind of stuff is both inaccessible and expensive. If you pair this up with Lean Customer Development and Metrics (such as Dave McClure – AARRR! Startup Metrics for Pirates), you’ve got a really powerful toolkit that can all be freely downloaded.

Filed Under: News

The Startup Bond – Any ideas about this?

December 11, 2009 by shkadmin

So, I've been trying to come up with various exit strategies to present when pitching to an investor, particularly a local one, so trying to find something that makes sense to everyone while not just being the standard "In return for X you are getting Y portion of the company." At the CVCF last month, one of the speakers promoted his method of doing a bond setup which structures the deal more around the return rather the ownership. 

See his site for some details: The Startup Bond

I've mentioned this to one investor, and I think they just couldn't get past the word bond (talking about how bonds are for companies with assets, etc.). 

Following up on my concept for a startup incubator here, and inspired by this Dragon's Den episode:  
I think I would try a tiered structure for the return, so that if a company was able to pay back an agreed amount sooner, then they owe less than if it takes longer to pay it back. Incentivise making a profit earlier, and everything else follows.

Anyhow, does anyone else have other models of how to structure a deal and the exit that is different, but that may be easy for all investors to understand? 
Filed Under: News

You are What You Read – What blogs or feeds do you keep up with?

December 11, 2009 by shkadmin

Just thinking about the new stuff that is getting posted here, but what about the old skool stuff. What is it that people read regularly to find this stuff, and what are your favorites?

My list of site feeds from my iGoogle pages:
(Techish Sites)
http://slashdot.org/ – News for Nerds, says it all. No, my ID is not in the single digits, yes it is under a million. 
http://www.engadget.com/ – How else do you keep up with what new shiny stuff is coming out?
http://www.techdirt.com/ – Copyright, economics, IP, the source of the "Barbra Streisand Effect".
http://arstechnica.com/index.php – General tech and software including biology and other things.
http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml – Mixed bag, but sometimes good articles and photos.
http://xkcd.com/ – Must read. Where else can you find stick figures doing such insightful things?
(Blogs: These are what I've accumulated in the blogs area. Some are very specific to particular software that I'm using.)
http://www.sampiplan.com/ – My company site with blog.
http://agilehongkong.com/ – Waiting to see if there is another iteration of this org.
http://www.engageinteractive.co.uk/blog – Random design firm that has some good JavaScript and CSS posts.
http://www.doctrine-project.org/blog – PHP ORM (if you don't understand what that is, then you probably aren't going to need this)
http://www.tor.com/ – I watch this for free books and comics.
http://bitbucket.org/cleonello/jqplot/overview/ – Charting software for jQuery. 

In addition to this, I also regularly go to BoingBoing, but that is more of a go there and look at the pretty pictures and video than read it on a blog reader.

Anyone else care to share?
Filed Under: News
Copyright © StartupsHK.com