In celebration of Global Entrepreneurship Week, Pittsburgh-based Innovation Works announced it is now serving up its first installment of Startup Recipes — a new series of do-it-yourself guides for founders looking to start a company and attract customers.
Developed by a team of professionals at IW, a seed-stage investing firm, the first set of 20 recipes are free to everyone and cover many of the introductory-level types of resources budding founders are often in need of most. The recipes are written with the intent of being of use mostly for technology-centric startups, though IW stressed those are hardly the only types of companies that can benefit from the guides, as much of the advice and tactics throughout the series are universal.
"There’s no shortage of strategic advice for founders out there. What I felt was missing is the tactical side," Jim Wrubel, an IW portfolio executive and one of the main authors of Startup Recipes, said in a statement. "Even something as seemingly simple as ‘register a domain name for your online presence’ can be a complex process…Startup Recipes is the missing ‘how-to’ guide for entrepreneurs. It’s not culinary school, it’s for those of us who are reading the directions on the back of the box of mac & cheese while the water’s already boiling, trying to get a meal ready so we can move on to the next 900 things we need to get done."
The first batch of recipes can be found on IW's website. The organization said it expects to launch additional guides in the future. For now, the recipes focus on the four different stages startups might find themselves in; research, create, launch and scale.
IW intentionally selected the tools referenced in each recipe to ensure they offer a combination of broad features and at either no- or low-cost to founders.
"There are so many great business ideas coming to light in Pittsburgh right now – from students winning competitions to people exiting their old job to address a critical gap in the market to seasoned entrepreneurs working on company number two or three," Rich Lunak, president & CEO of Innovation Works, said in a statement. "There is a lot of entrepreneurial enthusiasm, but not enough resources to get all these worthwhile ideas off the ground. Startup Recipes is an effort to democratize entrepreneurship and give everyone, regardless of background, the basic ingredients they need to bring their startup concept to life."
IW is the southwestern Pennsylvania representation of the statewide Ben Franklin Technology Partners organization and is funded in part by the Ben Franklin Technology Development Authority.
