I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
official daine visual archive
Xuebing Du
JVL
titsay
Product Placement
★
hello vonnie
Janaina Medeiros
No title available
ojovivo
untitled
$LAYYYTER
Sweet Seals For You, Always
if i look back, i am lost
Keni
tannertan36
Discoholic 🪩
Monterey Bay Aquarium
noise dept.
seen from Malaysia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from United States
seen from United Arab Emirates
seen from South Africa
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from Singapore
seen from Türkiye
seen from Russia
seen from Lithuania
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Singapore
seen from Australia
@thetravelst
Deloitte Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship's Founder Awards - Yesterday night, we are so honoured to be one of the recipients of the Founder Awards. It's really great to be recognised for all our hard works the past 8 months, and officially, we are now part of LBS business incubator programme! Yay us!
A rickshaw ride from Kerala to Gangtok, India in 2 weeks? Check. An ambulance drive from London to Ulan Bator, Mongolia? Check. A bike ride from Paris to London? Oh wait, that's today!
That's right. Our co-founder and adventure junkie (and occasional masochist), Tak, is at it again. This time, for a very good cause, indeed. From 21 - 23 September, he joins 39 other brave participants in TechBikers initiative in a nice 300km "stroll" from Paris to London to support children's education and literacy by raising money for an amazing charity, Room to Read. The goal is to raise £20k to build a library for children in Nepal. Now, that's a nice money to spend rather than just shopping for that new iPhone 5.
At the moment (21 September 12:11pm), we are at £17,497.10 and we need more helps from you guys to help support this great initiative. So, why wait, simply go to http://bit.ly/techbikers and simply click "Donate Now". Then, sit back and relax as Tak is doing all the hard work for us...
Oh, have we mentioned if we reach our team goal, Tak is committed to dying his hair with Room to Read colours - the nice blue, green and yellow - altogether? Visually speaking, that's really something.
Campus Party Europe - a truly global geek-fest
This past week the team at Travelst (my cofounder Chotipong Leenutaphong and I) were in Berlin attending Campus Party Europe, an event the BBC described as "Las Vegas for geeks". Other than that strap-line we didn't know much about it, so thanks to a free ticket and bus transport from London from Founders Fit, we took the offer and left last Sunday afternoon.
Immediately we could get a sense of how big this event was - just for starters this was hosted at the Tempelhof airport (one of the world's largest building at one point)
So first the talks - of all the talks we heard the more interesting talks were: * Nicole Simon - real actionable social media tactics. No fluff. Well, maybe just a little. * Rainey Reitman from Electronic Frontier Foundation - blogging to change the the world (love the title!): internet freedom with international case studies * Itxaso del Palacio - on fundraising strategy * Sascha Pallenberg - on how to blog - authentically and courageously But other than the workshops there was other serendipitous connections and conversations: * Tom Curtis from BlueVia who covered our startup in their blog * Joan Wolkerstorfer, a fellow UChicago grad who shared her story learning Ruby on Rails from scratch. Always great to connect with fellow Maroons (and have a fantastic burger in Berlin to boot!) * Kate Andrews, cofounder from Loco2, an integrated train ticket booking platform we admire for tackling a huge challenge * Bran Busovsky from TranslateKarate, an awesome startup tackling internet translation
And last but not least (by a long shot!) Deniz Gultekin - the community manager for Campus Party who really led the way to make this experience the best it could be So what were our key takeaways? One - there is a ton of free stuff when O2/Telefonica is involved. From tents, SIM cards, Mozilla and Telefonica tshirts, to 4GB USB sticks, to Etsy laptop cases, there was so much to horde. So a great big thanks to O2/Telefonica, but most of all - everyone involved from there as a volunteer! However the cleverest thing we saw by far was Floqq's "So Tweet Me Maybe" stickers Two - Campus Party is about the talks, but it's much more about networking and meeting with like-minded geeks - think of it like a tech-centric SXSW hosted all across the world. When you have the high concentration of geeks from all across Europe, each circle with different expertise (from robotics to hardware to hacking), one cannot not (sorry grammar nerds) learn through this cross-pollination process. We had an awesome time, and with Campus Parties in London and San Francisco coming up soon, we're game!
Related articles
The best of Campus Party Europe 2012 (video) (venturebeat.com)
Women Rocking Campus Party Europe in Berlin (thenextwomen.com)
Geeks gather for Campus Party in Berlin (googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com)
Coverage on us at @CampusPartyEU from Telefonica's Blue Via #cpeurope
A big shout-out to all the love in NYC
We came back from a general NYC trip a week ago, and we must say the energy and vibrancy of that ecosystem was absolutely awesome. One, the size of Manhattan just bodes for quick and sometime spontaneous interactions. Two, people in the startup community are often connected by only 2-3 connections. Three, the culture is one of paying it forward - people just always are willing to help, either giving feedback on product or introductions. So with that being said we have to thank a long list of friends that made our trip that much better, that much more fruitful, and that much more fun. Thanks for introducing us to the NYC community and keep it touch from here in London! (in no particular order of course) Eric Price - Fab Keenan Cummings - Wander Ryan Weber - Pickie Josh Emert - GoChime Shai Goldman - Silicon Valley Bank Rithesh Menon - Rewind.Me Jin Sha - Long Tail Video Samir Malik - 1 Doc Way Noelle McHugh - DreamIt Ventures Richard Lau, Alex Oviedo, and the rest of the TechStars Patriot Boot Camp NYC community Maud Pasturaud - Gilt Groupe Rodrigo Calvo - Mr. and Mrs. Smith Juliana Lamberti - Tablet Hotels Grace Nasri - Find the Best Carla Holtze - Have to Have
And a special mention to Clare Tischer from TechStars who helped us tremendously from Boulder!
Our blog post on Escape the City (http://blog.escapethecity.org/categories/listen-up-soldier-3-army-lessons-on-escaping-the-city/)
One other article on Informilo (http://www.informilo.com/20120810/london-start-ups-perspective-techstars-patriot-boot-camp-650)
More PR from Tnooz! (http://www.tnooz.com/2012/07/26/tlabs/six-quick-notes-from-a-european-travel-startup-visiting-washington-dc-for-techstars/)
Our blog on the TechStars blog! (http://www.techstars.com/7-lessons-from-techstars-patriot-boot-camp/)
Our pitch video at TechStars
7 lessons from TechStars Patriot Boot Camp
1. Leadership starts at the top
We learned this in the military, and no where is it more obvious than David Cohen’s presence at TechStars. Hands-down the most generous person I’ve met, he is immensely humble and genuine in his passion for startups and supporting us veterans.
We veterans need to honor his contributions to this camp, so we need to support other entrepreneurs and pay it forward.
2. One idea can change and inspire an entire community
Taylor McLemore, architect of Patriot Boot Camp and founder of Prediculous, had a simple idea that he wanted to motivate veterans to become startup entrepreneurs. He also had a family history of service members, and this was his way to honor their service by paying it forward.
Well Taylor, your single-minded determination to help us is greatly appreciated by all of us. More than that, we won’t ever forget your honor, commitment, and dedication. Whenever you want to call on one of us veterans, trust me we will be there for you.
3. TechStars is hands-down one of the most generous tech communities
Over 60 mentors donating their time on Thursday, some flying for far-flung Los Angeles, to show us the ropes of entrepreneurship and taking our businesses to the next level. This network shows why TechStars is truly the #1 startup accelerator in the world.
When asked why they donated their time to help us, they replied that they wanted to thank us for our service. No mentors, thank you. You’ve given us hope that we take the future in our own hands, build companies, and inspire the next generation of vetenpreneurs.
4. Geeks can change the world
Todd Park, CTO of the White House, has the stand-up personality of Ken Jeong and the gravitas of General Petraeus in the technology community. From phrases like “build awesomeness” and “jiu-jitsu the data”, it’s hard not to be inspired by Todd’s energy. Definitely one of my top memories.
5. Military guys are built to build startups
General Casey said that we were trained to be disciplined, motivated, and able to take risks. He challenged us to “dare great things”. I love this comment – like the SAS motto, I truly believe that “Who Dares Wins”. Lastly, he told us not to under-sell ourselves and experiences.
The veterans at LivingSocial echoed the same thoughts. They reiterated that it was the ability to serve the mission, work as a team, and forget their own egos that made them successful as vetrepreneurs.
We are built to do this. Define the objective, improvise, adapt, and overcome. Rinse and repeat.
6. There is no I in team
The Travelst got to TechStars Patriot Boot Camp and had this awesome opportunity because of our team and supporters. There’s no way we would have done this ourselves.
First off, thanks to my wife Mei Kwin. She supports my vision and is incredibly positive every step of the way. There’s no way I would have done all this without her by my side.
Thanks again London Business School Dean Likierman, Rajesh Chandy, Gary Dushnitsky, Nina Bohn, Jon Conradi, Jurek Sikorski, Ivan Shyr, Rosemary Forsyth, Sean Phelan, Vinay Gupta, John Vermilye, Chris Havemann, Farhan Lalji, Natasja Giezen, Jack Huang, Cheyne Tan, Eze Vidra, Haroon Khan, Jay Patel, Beng-Fai Mok, Ravi Sinha, Ulpian Morina, and Ifko Daylev
7. Patriot Boot Camp is finished – so get over it
The entrepreneurship road is long and hard. There’s no easy way out. It’s like BUDS – “the only easy day was yesterday”.
I’m under no illusions that Patriot Boot Camp will solve everything. The mentor network is great and the learnings have been fantastic. But that won’t get us diddly squat if we don’t outwork, outhustle, and outthink. There’s no excuses – it comes down to us as individuals.
My whole life has been trained to get me to this point – a life-changing experience in the US Army, business experience in consulting and investment banking, and a great MBA from London Business School.
So as the Army Rangers creed says:
“I accept the fact that as a Ranger my country expects me to move further, faster and fight harder than any other soldier.”
Replace Ranger with entrepreneur, country with company, and other soldier with others, and the same principle applies.
It’s time to shut up and get shit done. Let’s roll.
We here at Travelst think it's an awesome idea. Biking for several hours, sweating towards a common goal, and for charity no-less. Join up if you can - we think it's going to be awesome!
We are so excited and cannot keep this great news to ourselves! We have just been selected to participate in TechStars Patriot Boot Camp in D.C. between 18-20 July! Summer in D.C.? Not bad at all for the Travelst!
Here it is! Screenshot of our launch page version 2.0. Check it out @ www.thetravelst.com
Another promo poster for our photo contest to tickle your fancy...
