Thursday, January 20, 2011

Mock Pitching Brad

Tomorrow, Friday, at noon I will be mock pitching my friend Brad Hargreaves at General Assembly: five slides, five minutes. I am going to conclude by yelling, "Brad, show me the moneeeeeey!" Or maybe I will not yell, he is a friend, but I w-i-l-l deliver the line.



Why did I pick Brad? Well, he is a friend. He is an amazing blogger. He "gets" tech. He is an entrepreneur at heart, although he has worn a few different hats along the way. When I first met him he was an Entrepreneur In Residence at a VC firm.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

The Best Way To Deal With Venture Capitalists

An assortment of United States coins, includin...Image via WikipediaVCs are money people. And many entrepreneurs fall for that stereotype. VCs are not rich people - well, many are - but my point is VCs are not big money people who are itching to get rid of the money that is, oh, such a burden on them. VCs are entrepreneurs themselves. They go raise money. They raise money promising to grow that money. The good ones do. The best ones grow the money like money were raining from trees. If you put that first 100K into a company like Google, you see a growth that is better than any winning lottery ticket ever.

There are many, many VCs out there. There are many, many, many would be tech entrepreneurs out there. As an entrepreneur you should not need money. You should be able to generate revenues and profits.

Top VC Bloggers: The Numbers Don't Look Right


TechCrunch has an interesting post: The Top 20 VC Power Bloggers Of 2010.

It's good to see Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, Chris Dixon, Charlie O'Donnell, and Albert Wenger on the list. These are people I have met in person or, in Brad Feld's case, interacted online. Of all the people on the list, I personally know Fred Wilson best, either in terms of how often I visit their blog and leave comments at their blog, or in terms of how many times I have met in person.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Kiva And My Outfit: Three Major Departure Points

Image representing Kiva as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBaseI am a huge fan of Kiva. They went from raising $5 million five years ago to raising over $100 million last year and are projected to raise close to a billion dollars in five years. But that would still be a drop in the ocean. Global poverty is no small challenge.

There are more than 10,000 MFIs - microfinance institutions - in the world today. But global poverty is as big as ever. It looks like a virgin terrain to me. There is so much work to do.

Going For Profit



Yunus is the father of non profit microfinance. When the white people in the Arctic Zone of Scandinavia awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize, he made a little over a million dollars.

My FoodSpotting Day Hangover

Image representing Foodspotting as depicted in...Image via CrunchBaseFoodSpotting Day was January 15, and granted I celebrated it in two different cities, the celebrations have to stop at some point. But looks like my FoodSpotting Day hangover goes on. It is not like I have a new idea to share, but I do feel the urge to flesh out a few things I have suggested before.

The Most Popular Dish In New York: Shake Shack Burger, Madison Square Park
World FoodSpotting Day 2011: January 15: Photos

I am not the best person to talk about the food recommendations business, but I don't get the impression FoodSpotting is lacking for direction on that front. It is moving full speed ahead there.

Catchafire


My two tech partners and me were at this event earlier in the evening. I got to meet and get to know the entire Catchafire team, it felt like. And this entire time I have been thinking of them as a non profit. They are a for profit like my outfit. And they cater not only to non profits. It felt to me like I could find some part time consultants through them.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Intrepid Woman Rachel Cook


Last night I was at Gizzi's Coffee for a screening of the MicroLending Film by my colleague Rachel Cook. Later we went to a birthday party of a friend to our tech partners Sunil Madhu and Marty Monaco. That was at Draft Bar in Brooklyn. Sunil was at the screening too. He left for the party early.
The Glass Hammer: Intrepid Woman: From Futures Trader to Microfinance Film Maker: I was working as a Futures Trader on the European shift – in the middle of the night, Chicago time – in September 2009 when I first came across an op-ed in The New York Times written by Nick Kristof the month before, “The Women’s Crusade.” I was completely floored by the article – it told the stories of women in the developing world, facing terrifying, seemingly insurmountable odds. And some of these women were able to overcome these odds using a development tool I’d heard little about – microfinance. I was intrigued. Microlending seemed to help women, and it seemed to be a high-return financial investment – both topics of high interest to me...... While maintaining my trading job, the crew and I traveled to South America and filmed in Paraguay in 2010, and we’re only getting started – we’ll continue filming throughout this year...... I love trading. I wasn’t a superstar, but I was profitable over the course of my career when trading a variety of products, including during the financial collapse in 2008. I made more money than I had expected to see at 25 ..... But over the course of my trading career it became increasingly evident that much of the criticism about the trading world was all too true – particularly in its attitude toward women. ...... During my tenure at this first shop, the 2008 presidential elections were happening, and I’d hear these macho frat guy-types yelling at the TV, telling Palin to “go back in the kitchen” after Senator McCain first announced her as his VP pick. ...... we’re planning to shoot in Bangladesh and India in late February, and will also film in Kenya and in New York, in the interest of making this a truly comprehensive project about microfinance and how it impacts women
Rachel's Microlending Film was the best of the three movies shown for the evening. The other clips had too much forced violence. It was like, okay, time to end the 15 minute movie, let's kill a character.

The Most Popular Dish In New York: Shake Shack Burger, Madison Square Park


You have to wonder, how does Charlie O'Donnell figure these things out?

Go Easy On Charlie Now

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Happy FoodSpotting Day Soraya Darabi

Webby Connect 2008 - 039Image by lizstless via Flickr

Okay, so FoodSpotting Day was yesterday, but I just noticed my Soraya Darabi blog post for the first time has become a top five blog post for the week at this blog. Most of that traffic is, I believe, coming from Google. Looks like a lot of people are doing searches on her name.

Union Square Ventures: A Real Choice

Image representing Scott Heiferman as depicted...Image by Meetup via CrunchBase
Union Square Ventures: The Opportunity Fund: For entrepreneurs, this means that if you are leveraging the economics of Internet-based networks to transform some aspect of the global economy, Union Square Ventures can be a partner, whether you are just launching your service, funding rapid growth, or spinning your business out of a larger entity. We can work with you if you need $250,000 or $25,000,000. We can invest in New York, San Francisco, London, or Berlin, and most places in between. We hope you'll think of USV as stage-agnostic, highly-focused investors who can add value to your company.
Fred Wilson is my favorite solo blogger. I drop by his blog most days. The days I can't, I drop by the following day and catch up on the missed posts. When I drop by, I leave a short comment. I was here!