Fast Forward

Fast Forward is a initiative/project that I cooked up & named while reading Startup Communities by Brad Feld. I'm still reading through it by the way.
With Fast Forward, the local talent from Oklahoma City's tech community will be invited to participate in a three-week program where aspiring founders will pitch their ideas to these skilled individuals. Folks will be free to join any team, as they see fit to invest their time.

• What's in it for the aspiring founders? How do you qualify as one?
  • The What
    1. Team Building - Every good startup needs a great set of people behind it. Contacts made at Fast Forward should serve to provide direct access and future leads to talented people.
  • The Who - Pitching directly to folks that have the skills needed to help you make your startup ideas into a reality is good enough to qualify as an aspiring founder.
• What's in it for the talent? Who exactly are the participants?
  • The What (updated: Oct 30, 2012)
    1. Job Opportunities - Fast Forward should serve as proving grounds where your work speaks for your skills.
    2. Wet Feet - Its tough to understand the nuances of the startup scene. Even more so, for folks that have gained experience with the status-quo workforce and aren't quite sure if they have the kind of high-risk, high-reward appetite required for staying motivated through a startup. Worse still, most people undersell themselves and are convinced that they wouldn't be able to make the cut or learn new thing fast enough. Participating in the 3-week cohorts, should help talented people get acclimated.
  • The Who - Designers, developers, students & anyone willing to work and provide meaningful leverage to those pitching their ideas.
• When do the investors march in? (updated: Oct 30, 2012)
  • I hope to network and actively bring in other Entrepreneurs as leaders to help run Fast Forward and with them should (no doubt) come their extensive network of backers to tap into. B U T keep in mind that Fast Forward has the goal of NOT taking a cut out of anyone's pocket. So there should be a clear separation between what the program does and the leads that aspiring founders follow up on.
  • Oklahoma City is fortunate to have accelerators like Blueprint for Business (BP4B) and VentureSpur in place. Fast Forward graduates should be able to carry their momentum forward by applying to such great programs. (DISCLAIMER: There is no affiliation between the accelerators and Fast Forward as of now. I'm just mentioning them because they exist.)