{"id":199,"date":"2012-09-21T10:36:21","date_gmt":"2012-09-21T17:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/?p=199"},"modified":"2012-09-23T23:20:42","modified_gmt":"2012-09-24T06:20:42","slug":"startupville-the-hot-new-social-game-you-play-with-your-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/startupville-the-hot-new-social-game-you-play-with-your-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Startupville: The hot new social game you play with your future"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Welcome to StartupVille!<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a few mint juleps in to the evening when Joe Heitzeberg<\/a> and I started talking about the common experiences of startuphood.\u00a0 “I just maxed out one of my credit cards”, Joe told me, consulting his iphone nonchalantly at 1 in the morning.\u00a0 “I should get a badge for that.”<\/p>\n

We both looked at each other, and the idea for StartupVille was born.<\/p>\n

The folks here in StartupVille are all a friendly crowd.\u00a0 They’re happy to help you plant your rutabaga, or mind the ranch, or explain what it means to have capped participating preference on your doggone term sheet.\u00a0 The rules are simple: Each time you earn a badge, you tweet it (e.g. “Just unlocked #MeltDown badge on #Startupville, but the servers are feeling much better now”). Compete with friends to see who can IPO first!<\/p>\n

“Discover” a badge we left off here?\u00a0 Come to StartupVille<\/a> and tell us about it in the comments!<\/p>\n

Badges:<\/span><\/p>\n

#FounderFun
\n<\/strong>Had the “OK, one of us has got to be the CEO” conversation with a cofounder<\/p>\n

#SwingBetaBetaBeta<\/strong>\"\"<\/a>
\nLaunched product beta<\/p>\n

#ToTheMax
\n<\/strong>Maxed out one or more credit cards in pursuit of noble company goals<\/p>\n

#Rocketship\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/strong>3 consecutive months of 50%+ growth<\/p>\n

#MeltDown
\n<\/strong>First site outage of more than 5 hours<\/p>\n

#ShakeItLikeAPolaroidPitch\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/strong>Told your cofounder to tone down the pitch a little bit, as s\/he was scaring you with the enthusiasm level<\/p>\n

#Perks<\/strong>
\nFirst time you get to clean the company windows, clean the company floor, or plunge the company toilet<\/p>\n

#NerdBird\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/strong>Flown somewhere for purposes of giving a pitch<\/p>\n

#FeldFun
\n<\/strong>Read Brad Feld’s Venture Deals book<\/a> while curled up with a term sheet of your very own<\/p>\n

#SomeStringsAttached<\/strong>\"\"<\/a>
\nCheck clears from your first VC<\/p>\n

#UseOfProceeds
\n<\/strong>Thrown your first post-funding company party<\/p>\n

#Supermodel\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/strong>Got your own company T-shirt<\/p>\n

#DeadTreeDiva
\n<\/strong>Appeared in a print publication with a large national audience (New York Times, Wired, Oprah Magazine)<\/p>\n

#Paparazzi<\/strong>\"\"<\/a>
\nFirst encounter with a “real” person, unconnected to your industry or network, who has heard of your company<\/p>\n

#NotOnTheFirstDate
\n<\/strong>Turned down your first buyout offer<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Game Over<\/span><\/p>\n

Startupville’s not for everyone. \u00a0Some find it too time consuming. \u00a0Some find they hate playing. \u00a0And some wake up with a triple mortgage and a hundred grand in credit card debt, begging for a job at Microsoft. \u00a0But you’ll never know if you don’t give it a try! \u00a0Do you have what it takes to\u00a0win Startupville<\/em>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to StartupVille! It was a few mint juleps in to the evening when Joe Heitzeberg and I started talking about the common experiences of startuphood.\u00a0 “I just maxed out one of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-startups"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":342,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions\/342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}