This article is written by Jeremiah Uke, a Contributor Author at Startup Etohum.
Andersen is the co-founder and CEO of Startup Grind, a community of over 600 Chapters in 120 countries designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs. Derek has vast experience in entrepreneurship and was present at Etohum San Francisco conference, where he shared his views on entrepreneurship.
Derek is the co-founder and CEO of Bevy, a SaaS (Software as a Service) product that helps companies build community in real life. Bevy powers event communities for Salesforce, Atlassian, Asana, Duolingo, and others. Derek co-founded Startup Grind, a community of over 600 Chapters in 120 countries designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs. Currently, since 2012 Startup Grind has hosted 7,000 events for more than 250,000 people. In 2010 he co-founded Commonred which was acquired by Income.com. Derek also previously worked at Electronic Arts on games like Burnout and The Sims 3.
Startup Grind is the largest independent startup community, actively educating, inspiring, and connecting more than 1,500,000 entrepreneurs in over 500 chapters. Startup Grind nurtures startup ecosystems in 125 countries through events, media, and partnerships with organizations like Google for Startups. Founded in Silicon Valley, Startup Grind has helped millions of entrepreneurs build their businesses, connect with strategic partners, and secure funding. Talking about Startup Grind at Etohum San Francisco, in his words; we have three core values which are:
1.Give first before you take
2.Help others before you help yourself
3.Make friends, not contacts
We have had 20 million of our content watched, I spent most of my childhood in Europe, I have interviewed about 100 of the top founders in Silicon Valley and founders in the world, and I see one pattern over and over again which is that it's just not perfect. I worked at Electronic Arts for 7 years and failed every 6 months, it felt like 70 years. When I started to decide that I wanted to become an entrepreneur, and I saw the co-founder of Youtube Steve Chen, I saw him come up with a presentation, he could not work with Powerpoint slides, then I thought to myself, if the co-founder of Youtube cannot operate Powerpoint slide, I can definitely build Youtube myself.
I decided to quit my job with Electronic Arts to start a game called Stevie On Football, we raised funding for it starring a famous athlete called Steve Young, it gives the best advertising to our then client but got a 5.5 rating out of a possible 10. We lost all the money, I felt really sorry for myself for about 3 weeks, then I read a book “4 Steps to The Infinity” which explained that you need to get product market fit before actually spending money on marketing, I decided to try again but next time. In 2010 I hosted my first Startup Grind event in my office, 6 months later, about 4 people showed up for the event, I thought it was wasting my time and I thought it will fail just like my first startup.
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