Startup2Startup

Speed is an essential quality of any startup looking to take on and usurp its incumbents. Speed to market, speed to funding, speed to hiring and firing all contribute to the success of a young company.

The speaker for our May Startup2Startup dinner will be Mike Cassidy, a veteran of 3 successful startups. Mike’s talk is titled “Speed: The Ultimate Startup Weapon”, and he’ll speak on how to compress your business creation and product launch to just over 3 months.

Mike is no stranger to speed. He’s raised 7 rounds of venture capital for his 3 businesses totaling over $40M, which were later sold for more than $600M altogether. Five of the rounds involved getting a signed term sheet on the same day the presentation to the VC firm was made.

Mike Cassidy has been co-founder and CEO of three start-ups: Xfire, Direct Hit, and Stylus Innovation. Xfire is an IM and P2P service for online gamers that lets them play with their friends more easily, and has over 9M registered gamers in more than 100 countries. Viacom/MTV acquired Xfire for $110 million. Direct Hit was a revolutionary Internet search engine whose customers included MSN, Lycos, AOL, and dozens of others. Ask Jeeves acquired Direct Hit for $500 million. Stylus Innovation’s flagship product was the award winning computer telephony software Visual Voice.

Mike’s presentation on SPEED is below:

Mike is on the Board of Advisors of Jazz at Lincoln Center and is on the Visiting Committee Board of the MIT Media Lab. Mike studied jazz piano at the Berklee College of Music. Mike has a BS and MS in Aerospace Engineering from MIT, and he graduated from Harvard Business School.