Originally published on Medium by Sridhar Kamma, Co-Founder & CEO, Apposphere, Inc.
There are many co-working spaces around, one that especially stands out the most from the rest is Galvanize. As an early stage entrepreneur, I’ve had to grow the network, find the mentors and accelerate my startup. I’ve looked at various avenues, and the best alternative I found particularly resourceful is a co-working space that offers similar programs that are available through an accelerator.
As an early stage startup, you would need a team, and mentors to discuss your business plan and ideas. You would also need to attract your first customer, accelerate the sales and potentially connect with investors to raise capital. All of these are achievable through Galvanize.
Team
Galvanize is a university for data scientists and web developers. Their cohort of students from various programs can help with the development work and potentially could become co-founders or be an addition to the development team. One of the toughest challenges during the early stage is to find developers to complete the development work in-house. Having students with a data science or web development background is a great bonus and a kick-starter for any startup.
Mentors
Every entrepreneur needs a mentor or even a few. Collective thoughts and criticism is always a great way to be guided in the world of entrepreneurship. Mentoring sessions are a great way to polish your ideas, figure out sales and growth opportunities and perfect the pitch deck. They also provided a possibility to connect with investors, by providing an avenue to speak to multiple mentors who had previously created companies, raised funding and worked on growth strategy.
Growth Study Hall
One of the programs that Galvanize offers is the study hall, with talks and discussions from successful entrepreneurs. This helps every entrepreneur acquire ideas for customer acquisition, growth strategy, patent information and funding. You never know who you can meet during these sessions. I even met potential customers during some of these sessions.
Customer Acquisition
With multiple startups co-located at Galvanize, it’s a great way to connect and find your customers, not just within Austin but all major centers within US. Galvanize has member discount sharing program that helps Startups to provide their product or services for discount, which is a great way to gain market traction.
Networking
Galvanize being the new epicenter for Startups and Co-working in Austin, it has numerous networking events and after hour sessions that can help entrepreneurs network for free. This is one way to connect with fellow entrepreneurs, product experts, developers and even investors.
Members and Galvaize Team
The incredible atmosphere at Galvanize makes it one of the unique co-working places to work and share the office space. Kudos to Jessica Cox, Jake, Bill and everyone at the Austin location that strives to make the space most enjoyable to work at, with the passion, enthusiasm and great ethics to go above and beyond to help entrepreneurs and startups to succeed.
I felt truly supported by Galvanize, and sincerely believe is a great place to start and to accelerate your startup!
Level Up
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