My presentation to Frank Chen, Partner at venture capital firm, Andreessen & Horowitz.

1. Zero To One School
Summer Incubator to launch
50 mobile first startups

2. 12 weeks
May 30 - August 19, 2016
Almaty, Kazakhstan

3. 50 best teams from Central
Asia and SEA (out of ~1,000
applications)

4. The teams learn 3 things: iOS
development, mobile design
and getting users.

5. June 2016: basics of iOS
development, mobile design
July, August 2016: building
the app, talking to users, App
Store launch, marketing &
growth

6. The teams work at the same
workspace and each get a
monthly stipend.

7. The budget:
• Monthly stipends: 300 USD/
month * 3 months * 150 people
= 135,000 USD
• Team salary: 1,000 USD/month *
3 months * 10 people = 30,000
USD
• Operational costs: 35,000 USD
• Total: 200K USD

8. Last year, as a proof of
concept, we primarily focused
on apps for the Russian
speaking CIS market.

9. The main lesson is super
obvious in retrospect: it’s easy
to win, but hard to pay the bills
with.

10. This year our focus will be
highest-revenue countries: US,
Japan, China, UK, Australia,
South Korea, Germany, etc.

11. As a result, given our location,
we’re bounded by the apps
solely focused on the world of
bits, not atoms.

12. Categories of apps we’re planning to build:
• Enterprise apps with Slack integration
• Nutrition (food combining, mucusless diet,
intermittent fasting)
• Personal development
• Productivity
• Guided meditation
• Behavioral change
• Communication
• Niche news aggregators (e.g. Watchville)
• Health & Fitness
• Career Advice

13. They should pass the ‘the
toothbrush test’, meaning
it’s something that a
person can use at least
once a day.

14. Building apps which land on the home screen of
millions of people around the world.
Phil Libin’s iPhone home screen

16. Y Combinator + Make School
+ Asia ≈ Zero To One School

17. In the summer 2015, we built 37 iPhone apps.

18. TheSummerStartupSchool.com: from
idea to an original iPhone application
in the App Store in 8 weeks

19. • We announced the program on May 4
• 352 applications in 3 weeks
• The youngest applicant was 10 years old
• The oldest one was 58 years old

20. • We admitted 45 students
• Age range: 14-28 y.o.

21. Curriculum
1. Programming (iOS development): Objective C,
Xcode, git, Parse, etc.
2. Mobile design: UI/UX. Building products people
fall in love with.
3. Traction / growth: getting to the first 1,000 users,
19 marketing channels used by the most popular
iPhone applications.

22. Team
Almas Tuyakbayev, 28
UI/UX Design
• HCI, Carnegie Mellon University.
• Head of the Media Lab at IITU.
• Microsoft Imagine Cup World Finals
2008.

23. Bakytzhan Baizhikenov, 26
iOS development
• Education: London School of Economics,
University of London.
• International Olympiad in Informatics: Gold
2007, Silver 2008, Bronze 2005, 2006.
• Software Engineer, imo.im (2012-2013).
• Founder, Intellection & Crozdesk.com.

24. Zhanserik Kenes, 21
iOS development
• BSc, International IT University.
• Built 8 apps: Being Beethoven,
Persimmon, SafeCity, National Bank
of Kazakhstan, Springfruit, Shopster,
etc.

25. Daulet Kenzhetayev, 21
• iOS/Android development
• CS, Nazarbayev University ‘2017 (on leave)
• Built LonelyKeanu, Kelin (Android)

26. Nurdaulet Bolatov, 17
• iOS development
• Built Syntle.com, Zero Willpower
• 1st place at IV Eurasian Informatics Olympiad
• 3rd place at 13th All-Russian Team Informatics
Olympiad
• Kazakh-British Technical University ‘2018

27. Ayan Yenbekbay
iOS development
• BSc, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
• Built 6 apps: Seansy.kz, Kogershin,
Metio, Galileo, Instamaniac, Never
Drink Alone
• Created popular time lapse videos:
vimeo.com/yenbekbay

28. Arman Suleimenov
• CEO, ZeroToOneLabs.com
• MSE, Computer Science, Princeton University
• Past: founding team, Collections (YC S12)
• ACM ICPC World Finals 2009, 2011
• “The Art of Startup” (Nazarbayev University),
PrincetonStartupTV.com,
TheSiliconValleyIntern.com, ZeroToOneTour.com,
TheSummerStartupSchool.com

29. Some of the apps we built before/outside of the
school.

30. Being Beethoven: the to-do list of effective daily habits from the
world’s top performers: Audrey Hepburn, Tim Ferriss, Tony
Robbins, etc..
http://bit.ly/being-beethoven

31. Persimmon: reach your medium-term goals in 7
areas of your life through the power of
visualization / affirmations and small daily steps.

34. Seansy - movie theaters and showtimes in KZ.
http://bit.ly/seansy

35. Instamaniac - find out how early you
joined Instagram
http://bit.ly/instamaniac

36. • 5-6 products a year
• The multiplication effect
• The best ideas coming from the students

38. On the Demo Day we received personal video addresses from [0]:
• Vinod Khosla, founder, Sun Microsystems, Khosla Ventures
• David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails, co-
founder / CTO of Basecamp, author of “Rework”
• Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos, ‘Delivering Happiness’
• Wendy Kopp, founder of 'Teach for America’
• Brian Kernighan, author of "The C Programming Language";
Unix, AWK, AMPL
• Qi Lu, Executive Vice President, Microsoft, leads the
development of Bing, Skype & Microsoft Office
• Gregory Olsen, 3rd space tourist in history; founder, Sensors
Unlimited Inc
• Frank Chen, venture capitalist, Andreessen Horowitz
• Etc.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4kqRdM3orQ
Чи Лю,вице-президент Microsoft, возглавляющий Bing, Skype & Microsoft Office.

39. I’m Arman.

40. In the summer 2015 at TheSummerStartupSchool.com
we created 37 applications sent to the App Store.

42. Kelin - the mobile only anonymous social network for
women. 145,000 users, 115,000 ‘secrets’ in 4 months
since launch. #1 app in the KZ App Store. http://bit.ly/Kelin

46. BulBul - the encyclopedia of Kazakh music: lyrics,
news, ‘guess the song’ game, etc.

50. Never Drink Alone - one meeting a day with the most talented
people in your hometown.
http://www.neverdrinkaloneapp.com

51. Kairosh - Shazam for 160 songs by Kairat Nurtas.
http://bit.ly/getKairosh

52. KanjiNinja - Fruit Ninja style game to learn 2,000
Japanese characters.

53. Kinza - recipes from what you have in the fridge.
http://bit.ly/getkinza

54. LonelyKeanu - express your emotions with the relevant celebrity
reactions via WhatsApp.
http://bit.ly/getlonelykeanu

55. StartCode.it - the easiest way to learn web development (HTML,
CSS, JavaScript). Treehouse for the Russian speaking audience.
http://bit.ly/getStartCode

56. Camellia - Uber for flowers in Almaty and Astana
http://bit.ly/getCamellia

57. Dilemma - answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to interesting questions and see
the public reaction.
http://bit.ly/getdilemma

58. Syntle - the easiest way to learn programming language syntax
(Objective-C, Swift, Shell, git, Python, JavaScript) with flashcards.
http://bit.ly/getsyntle

59. Finchler - one movie recommendation a day based on the result
of your personality test.
http://bit.ly/getFinchler

60. "NAN" - delightfully simple shopping list app
http://bit.ly/HAHiOS

61. Kitapp - buy and sell used books from your phone.
http://bit.ly/kitappkz

62. Toybastar - the best wedding photographers and MCs.
http://bit.ly/getTamada

63. Critics: But all you’re doing is building fun apps?
Us: “What the hackers do on the weekend is what
everyone else will do during the week in ten years”. -
Chris Dixon

65. The stages of the tech startup: idea -> mockup -
> prototype -> program -> product -> business -
> profits.

66. Critics: “Why can’t you learn this online?”
Our reply: “Online education (Khan Academy, Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, edX, iTunes U) doesn’t
solve all the problems: 7% completion rate. Students lack self-discipline, peer pressure and
creative energy from the like-minded people around” [0].
[0] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/mooc-completion-rates-
below-7/2003710.article

67. A few things we believe in.

68. Unlimited enthusiasm towards what you’re building.

69. “We don’t make movies to make money, we make
money to make more movies”. -Walt Disney

70. Startups fail for only 2 reasons: a) they run out of
money; b) they give up. If you don't give up, if you
avoid death by all means, you will win.

71. “It's better to make a few people really happy than to
make a lot of people semi-happy”. -Paul Buchheit

72. Don’t follow your passion, follow your strengths.

73. ‘If you can't see yourself working with someone for life,
don't work with them for a day’. -Naval Ravikant

74. “Bill is wrong, but Bill works harder than the rest of
us, so even if it’s the wrong solution it’s likely to
succeed”.

75. connect
facebook.com/suleimenov