US Custom House / WeWork

Are you a founder struggling to explain your startup in a clear and compelling way? Does it take too long for people to “get” what your company is about? Would you like to feel more confident in your pitch?

Get the breakthrough you need to tell a bolder story about your startup...no matter how complex your product is. Join me, messaging strategist Emma O’Brien, for a workshop to help clarify and strengthen your startup’s story.

In this small workshop, you’ll learn 3 proven strategies -- illustrated by real-life examples -- to frame your startup in a way that gets people genuinely interested. You’ll be guided through simple exercises to get started, plus the opportunity to get on-the-spot feedback.

Whether you’re just working on an idea or trying to attract investment, this workshop will help you uplevel your messaging, pitch your startup, and allow you to move forward with clarity and conviction.

Aggregate meetup No. 17! Everyone is welcome!

shiny (https://shiny.rstudio.com/) is a popular web application framework for making interactive visualizations and dashboards, allowing R users to share their analyses in an interactive format with minimal web programming expertise. In this workshop, we will produce a simple data exploration dashboard with tooltips using the shiny, ggplot2 and flexDashboard packages. I will introduce the basic concepts behind programming a shiny application, as well as some useful design patterns (reactives, tooltips, observe/update/isolate). Basic familiarity with R programming concepts and ggplot2 are suggested

We will not have pizza this time, but we will have some drinks, and perhaps some light snacks.

Agenda:

• This aggregate will be a bit different from the others. pdxrlang member Ted Laderas (http://laderast.github.io/ - https://github.com/laderast) will give a workshop on using Shiny. More details to come!

• Bring your computer!

• Time: 630pm - 8pm

Aggregate meetup No. 16! Everyone is welcome!

We will not have pizza this time, but we will have some drinks.

Agenda:

• brief intro/R project or problem: We'll go around the room, each person talk about an R project they've been working on, or a data/data-science problem, or something they want to learn, etc.

• After going around the room, anyone can share some code they've been working on and want help with / want feedback on. Make sure to have this ready before the meeting. Discuss here https://github.com/pdxrlang/aggregate/issues/8

• Before arriving, use the pdxrlang/aggregate GitHub repository to discuss ideas for things to work on at aggregate - https://github.com/pdxrlang/aggregate/issues

• Do bring your computer (if you have one) in case you want to demo something.

• Time: 630pm - 8pm

We're all faced with the challenge of creating an awesome software product for our customers. A big part of this is having a highly functional software development team.  

In this Meetup we'll discuss:

• When to develop software in-house versus outsourcing or partnering with another software platform. Some SaaS companies utilize a mix of in-house and outsourced developers. We'll brainstorm various possible approaches.

• How do you train new developers?  What approaches have been successful and what has been a dismal failure? - Does it make sense to hire senior developers only or a mix of junior and senior developers?

• Team / project organization - Do you do daily standups? How do your organize sprints? How are deadlines established and by whom? Is your team in the same office or are some remote? What tools do you use (Slack, Trello, etc.)? With all of the bugs, feature requests, UI overhauls, when do you ship updates to the product?

• Communication and transparency - How do you speak to the rest of the team in a language everyone understands? Do you hold weekly/bi-weekly meetings to announce progress? How do you showcase new features to clients?

Coffee, tea and draft beer will be provided. Come hang out with other SaaS founders and share your story!

If there's more on this topic you would like to discuss, send us a message and we'll try and get it added to the agenda.

Aggregate meetup No. 13! Everyone is welcome!

We'll have pizza and drinks.

Agenda:

• brief intro/R project or problem: We'll go around the room, each person talk about an R project they've been working on, or a data/data-science problem, or something they want to learn, etc.

• After going around the room, anyone can share some code they've been working on and want help with / want feedback on. Make sure to have this ready before the meeting. Discuss here https://github.com/pdxrlang/aggregate/issues/8

• Before arriving, use the pdxrlang/aggregate GitHub repository to discuss ideas for things to work on at aggregate -https://github.com/pdxrlang/aggregate/issues

• Topics for the night so far:

•  coming soon ...

• Do bring your computer (if you have one) in case you want to work on something.

Acquiring customers for our SaaS companies is arguably one of the most difficult challenges we face. We need to figure it out what works and what doesn't work, and we need to do it before the money runs out.

In this Meetup we'll discuss:

• The marketing strategies that are working for us, and the ones that didn't.

• Lessons we learned taking our products to market.

• Paid vs organic marketing channels: which ones are best for every stage of growth.

• How we've identified our most profitable market segments and how we're providing value to them.

• Social media, search engine marketing, PR and advertising. Pros and cons of each channel, and which ones are right for us.

Coffee, tea and draft beer will be provided. Come hang out with other SaaS founders and share your story!