Our teams have traveled from as close as SOMA in San Francisco to as far as Bucharest, Romania to immerse themselves in the capstone of our program: graduation! You can still catch them in San Francisco at a mixer tonight, as well as pitching tomorrow from Mountain View (and live stream) at noon and 6:30pm PST.
A few highlights so far:
- Last night we subjected them to grilling by a panel fo key industry investors and communications experts (David Ascher, Dia Bondi, Sarah Cone, Charles Hudson, Ullas Naik and Naval Ravikant).
- We proceeded to provide them with copious amount of food and alcohol at The Slanted Door.
- We invited Ben Adida, the Mozilla pro on identity, to get them up to speed on Persona, Mozilla’s “single sign-up” service.
- We also invited Bill Walker, who heads up Mozilla’s App Marketplace initiative, so share more on how the app marketplace ecosystem is evolving and support our teams’ involvement.
Bill Walker shares the latest greatest about the Firefox Apps ecosystem.
If we don’t see you at our next 2 events (see top of this post), we hope you can tune in on AirMozilla tomorrow at noon or 6:30pm PST to hear our teams directly!
Dia Bondi holds our teams in rapt attention as she takes them from presenting stale, flat facts to building compelling stories.
We did it! We graduated our 2nd batch of _amazing_ WebFWD teams this week!
We started with a pre-graduation pitch panel, putting our teams in front of some of the sharpest minds in investment, pitching and public speaking there are. On Tuesday, our teams got grilled by:
The feedback was intense, which was the point. Our teams recovered at La Mar before heading home to watch themselves (and the feedback) on video before the Big Day.
How would you feel if this group was staring like this at YOU while you pitched?
Then Wednesday happened. They practiced. They shared with Mozillians. And then they presented to the world! About 80 people turned out at our Mountain View HQ + others tuned into the live stream, tweeted and then mixed with the teams afterwards.
In addition to the pitches, attendees at graduation learned that one of our teams raised a round of funding and another one was acquired.
Overall a super successful event (we haven’t even mentioned the food and booze ;). You can check out some of our photos here.
Our success, of course, owes largely to everyone else who supports us! Here’s how you can help:
Stay tuned for more news from our alums and our new batch of teams, to be announced in the next few weeks!
Warm regards,
Tomorrow — Wednesday, Jan 23rd — our 2nd WebFWD cohort will graduate and we want YOU there - in person or via live stream. Details and RSVP at this link > http://webfwd2graduation.eventbrite.com
Why should you go? In the spirit of David Letterman, here are the Top 5 reasons, in ascending order of importance:
(5) Half of our teams use the metric system. Amsterdam, Canada, France Greece and Sweden will be In the House. Since we’re in the U.S., we’re not sure if that constitutes a “half” — you tell us.
(4) Eats and Booze. We’ll have plenty of good stuff for you to nibble on and slurp when the pitching’s done and you start schmoozing with our teams and the other great investors, service providers, entrepreneurs, engineers and other cool people who will be there.
(3) Pitch pitch pitch. They’ve been pitching to one another, to us, and to some super cool mentors, and will continue doing so right up until next Wednesday.
(2) Our teams are simply awesome. They’ve won industry awards, acquired customers, done deals, gotten 2M+ YouTube views (yes, just one team) and more; you can read the details here.
…and the kicker:
(1) Special announcements will be made *at* graduation! In addition to all the great work they’ve done in our program, our teams will be sharing some special news at the event that your ears will hear first.
We hope to see you there!
— The WebFWD Team
p.s. we are also still accepting applications for our February class through January 31 > http://webfwd.org/apply
Not expected to attend, but certainly welcome.
Over the past 3.5 months, our teams have poured hours of work into their strategies, user research, marketing and positioning tactics and more. They’ve spent lots of time on BigBlueButton coaching one another and sharing best practices, victories and challenges. They’ve met with our mentors, acquired customers, and pitched pitched pitched.
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list. Each team has done some super cool things during their time in WebFWD. Below is our chance to brag about them. If you want to hear from them directly, please be sure to check them out next Wednesday, January 23rd as they graduate (RSVP here — live stream available). There will be a few more announcements then ;)
— The WebFWD Team
During the WebFWD II Program, our teams have accomplished a lot! Some highlights:
codebenderUpdate 9/20/12: you can see the photos from our very successful graduation here
In the spirit of innovation that marks Mozilla, we launched WebFWD last year as an experiment. The main question we needed to answer was whether we can offer help to open companies that want to grow. Real, valuable help.
To answer that, we lean heavily on the success of our teams as one of our most important metrics; without them, we’re nothing. Below is a summary of some stellar things our teams have done over the past several months working with us (and others). We hope you can hear them elaborate on these accomplishments at their graduation this Wednesday, September 19th either live or via live stream!
