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Insights: Keeping Your Eyes Open For The People You'll Meet

How did a quick weekend trip (for a birthday) to Los Angeles result in the creation and funding of a startup? Eric Koester, co-founder of Zaarly, tells the fascinating story in our Insights and Opinions section today.


"Sounds great," he said. "We'll go to LA for the weekend, hang out with some friends at Startup Weekend and celebrate your birthday. It'll be a blast."

Those brief words between two friends and eventual business partners launched a whirlwind that would wind up becoming a new company, a new product, and most importantly -- a team of incredibly talented individuals trying to build a new peer-to-peer platform for amazing entrepreneurs and small businesses. That was the start of Zaarly.

But let me back up just a bit. How do you go from a weekend birthday celebration to building a company powering a community of thirty-thousand entrepreneurs and over 500,000 users, raising funding from some amazing partners and investors, launching at South by Southwest in Austin, and convincing the likes of Ashton Kutcher and Meg Whitman to buy into your dream? Turns out that this weekend birthday celebration at Startup Weekend at CoLoft in Santa Monica was the perfect cocktail for... (More...)


Read the rest of Eric Koester's story at Keeping Your Eyes Open For The People You'll Meet.