Going to California: ERE Expo in San Diego until Wednesday, Bay Area Thursday to Monday

I'm headed out to the ERE Expo in San Diego--I got a very exciting invitation to be a part of their startup panel along with Benjamin Yoskovitz (Standout Jobs), Clint Heiden (VisualCV), and Dan Arkind (JobScore).  What's so cool about our panel is that we all represent different aspects of the job process...

You will be able to discover a career on Path 101, present yourself well with a Visual CV, engage with a company and apply through Standout Jobs and then hopefully make your way through the company's recruiting process, which might be managed by JobScore.  Nice!

Since I was out there anyway, it was startup cashflow-friendly to swing by the Bay Area and stay with friends.  Given the success of our first "Entrepreneurship Listening Tour" we decided to get in touch with a bunch of experienced people to get some feedback and to get on the Bay Area VC radar for later this year.

We're pretty booked during our days, but we'd love to catch up with and meet a lot of people.  On Thursday afternoon, we'll be co-working out of Citizen Space, and then heading out later to 21st Amendment.  Come work with us (or eat/drink with us)!   Tell us you're coming out that night here!

If there's anyone you really think we should meet--smart VC's, entrepreneurs, developers, please let us know.  E-mail us at us@path101.com or follow us on Twitter (@ceonyc and @alexlines). 

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Fun with Simulscribe Transcription Errors

"It's Kylie at (Restaurant?) Capital.  I'm just calling to let you know that Josh is on his way there and he's about 5 minutes away."

...or Carly from First Round Capital.

"Hi, Charles. It's Mom. Nana just called. She booked a ride with (Ces and Roy?) tomorrow, so she booked, and she's coming into Brooklyn, okay"

...Who the f are Ces and Roy and why are they driving my grandmother around?  Ohhh...  Access-a-Ride!

Charlie, I'm picking up the (aero bed?) for you in (Lennington Panes?). It's $99.00 and I have a 20% coupon.

...Lennington Panes...   a window shop that sells air beds?   Ah...   Linen's and Things!

I'm not sure I understand why I need FriendFeed

I'm looking at Fred's FriendFeed.   So, I guess it's like RSS for people.  PSS?  PeopleSimpleSyndication.

So now I'm seeing the Fred Channel...  All of Fred, all the time.

But, to be honest, I don't want All of Fred.

Fred and I don't share the same music tastes, which is mostly why I don't follow his Tumblelog.

Not only that, but this feed gives me flat Fred.  It takes Fred out of the context of the medium. 

So now I'm seeing his Twitter messages on a webpage.  I hate reading twitter on the web.  I like Twitter because it's live--real time.  It makes me feel connected to people who aren't physically occupying the same space.  Twitter breathes and has a heartbeat.  I don't want to see Fred's twits hours later on a web page.  I want to see when he's listening to some song I prob won't like right at the moment that he's listening to it, b/c it's kinda cool to know what he's up to at that moment--so I get twitter messages on my phone.

A while ago, people asked Fred to separate his blog feeds into VC, Music, and other stuff.  I would have been offended, but Fred complied.

For me personally, if you don't want to read (or at least aren't willing to skip past) my kayaking photos, than don't read my blog... or don't complain. 

How long before people want a VC Fred FriendFeed and a Music Fred FriendFeed.  Than what have we accomplished?  Wouldn't it have just been easier to pipe all the stuff to Fred's blog and locate it all there?  Than, at least each individual node on the network controls itself, its own data, etc.  Now it's all being aggregated up by another social network layer. 

I'd rather hand all my data to myself... on my blog.  I'd still love to post weekly song charts, daily twitter updates (for those who aren't on twitter) on my blog via a timed XML-RPC post.  In the meantime, I like the control of following certain people's blogs, but not their twitters, and their flickr account, but not their blog, etc. 

 

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Every company should be its own Startup Camp

There's always a lot of talk about ways to promote innovation.  Let's see... you've got incubators, incubator-like investors like Ycombinator or TechStars, StartupWeekends, BarCamps, Coworking, Jelly,

And yet people complain about how hard it is to start a company.  Can't find funding.  Can't find developers.  Need design help.

So when people like Calacanis talk about starting a "startup camp", I actually think it has the pottential to perpetuate a problem. 

There are people who would all too eagerly sign up for Jason's startup camp that, if they don't get in, will just sit on their asses and just work on their TechStars or Ycombinator application.  Don't get me wrong--every entrepreneur should have the attitude that Jason does:

"Perhaps my favorite thing to do outside of building companies is help other folks build companies."

But unfortunately, a lot of startups only look to A-list bloggers and these well publicized programs, but fail to recognize that much of what they get from that kind of connection can and, actually, MUST be replicated to achieve success.  So, it's great if you get into one of these things, but don't wait!!  There may be some people to help you, but no one is going to help if you don't help yourself first.

Build your own "camp"!!

Your industry isn't "Web 2.0."   If you are Snooth, then your industry is wine.  If you are Sportsvite, then your industry is recreational sports.  If you're BricaBox, you need to know the publisher/CMS world.  You need to spend time with the experts, and even the incumbants in the industry--the people who you want to strike business development deals with.

And frankly, you can and should do this on your own.  Established companies want to know who the innovators are.  If they're smart, they want to talk to you earlier rather than later, so you can innovate in a way that helps them out as well, rather than crush them later.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when startups that are stuck in the idea or even early development phase haven't had any conversations with potential customers, partners, etc.  And I don't mean, "Oh, yeah, we talked to one guy who works for Big Media, Inc. and he said they'd use it."   I mean 30 conversations that go in-depth.  Even 50!  Kick the tires of your business plan by talking to the people you're actually trying to get into business with.

Talk to other entrepreneurs, too.  Not everyone can have a sit down with Mark Zuckerberg, but not everyone is trying to build Facebook either--and there are lots of entrepreneurs that are much more local to you and much more accessible that you should be talking to.  Surround yourself with these people.  Join or form small groups of startups that meet weekly to get and give feedback.  Understand the successful companies in your space and what lessons they learned on the way up.

Again, don't get me wrong, it's cool to spend a summer on someone else's dime.  But, if you don't get into Ycombinator, that shouldn't stop you from getting the advice and feedback you need to move forward!

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links for 2008-03-22

• louisgray.com: LinkedIn Company Detail Shows Silicon Valley Carousel: Silicon Valley Blog
  (tags: path101 profiles rgp)

My friends on MyBlogLog

My friends on MyBlogLog, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

I love when MyBlogLog is filled with friends.

The Silicon Alley Reporter: A good example of how to disrespect the work of the people who came before you and not play nice in the sandbox

Let me start off by saying this:  Gary Sharma's Alley Reporter site is great, in terms of the service that it offers, the layout, the content, etc.

But, as we all know, the name "Silicon Alley Reporter" originally referred to a trade pub that Jason Calacanis started in 1996.  Jason was a major pillar of the NYC web community in the 90's and did almost as much as anyone to actually make it a community and put it on the map.  He grew a 16 page photocopy magazine into a 256 page glossy through pure hustle, and somehow, even in the worst of times, turn it into something saleable.

I've been fortunate to get to know a lot of people who were around the NYC tech scene back then, and so when I started nextNY and heard people talk about "building the community", it bothered me.  There's been a tech community in NYC dating back years and years--or did everyone think that Mayor Mike had the only startup on the block with Bloomberg, LLC so many years ago? 

In the late 90's, DoubleClick was an alley mainstea, but even before there was DoubleClick, there was Bell Labs.  New York metro area tech has been around for some time.  Fred Wilson's been in New York VC for more than 20 years, for example. 

While I'd say the entrepreneurs of my generation have done a great job in connecting the disparate parts of the tech community, it's important for me to recognize that we are building on the work of lots of hardworking people who came before us.

So when this tech events site called Alley Reporter popped up, it really bothered me.  The only reason anyone would use that name would be to benefit from it's existing cache--built up by someone else's work. 

According to Alley Insider, I'm not the only one it's bothering.  Dow Jones, who acquired the original entity that held that name is looking into asking him to stop using it. 

Apparently, though, the trademark has gone stale.  There may not be a technical reason why it can't be reused, but I don't think this is just a technical issue.  It's an issue of respect.  Jason built up the value of the name, and I think it's just the right thing to do to acknowledge that and get his ok on it.

And frankly, it's also a better business decision.  If Gary went to Jason out of respect and Jason loved the idea of reviving the name, there's no better person in the world who could promote it. 

Similarly, when I started nextNY, I went to Scott Heiferman to get his feedback, because he had been running the NY Tech Meetup.  I didn't need to go to him--I just felt like it was the right thing to do.  By asking Scott if it would be ok to talk about nextNY at a NY Tech Meetup, we were able to get a big boost from his thumbs up and that's where we got a lot of our initial members from. 

The other thing about this project is that there were other people working on putting together event lists that could have been worked with as well.  As a little side project, Lee Semel and I put some resources into NYCTechEvents.com a while ago so that the tech community could have a place to post and share events without signing up for anything.  That site now powers the Silicon Alley Insider's events calendar.  We don't make any money from it--we just wanted the community to have it. 

Somebody once accused me of being down on Alley Reporter because I was jealous his site was "better".  That's just ridiculous. Seriously, I've got better things to do than compete on free events sites that I'm not even running as a business.  If you haven't noticed, I'm trying to run a company. 

Is NYCTechEvents better than Alley Insider?  No, it's not.  It's fine, but like I said, the look and feel of Alley Reporter is really great--top notch even!  Had Gary approached us and said that he had some ideas for an events site, I'm pretty sure we would have just let him update the template or figure out SOME way to work together, because all we want is for people to know what's going on in the community. 

Instead, we have two calendars now...  this is just silly.  I've suggested to Gary that we share events back and forth, but it's been a month since he said he was "giving some thought" to that.  Of course, he can do anything he wants, but since when is playing nice in the sandbox not also a generally good business strategy for startups? 

Similarly, about two weeks after Allen from Center Networks launched a tech directory of local companies, Alley Reporter came out with the same thing.  Again, it was definitely an improvement, but I was actually sort of annoyed for Allen's sake.  He had been promoting Alley Reporter since it came out, and to just copy a feature without even so much as trying to collaborate with Allen?   Seems like it would be better to be friendly with others trying to do similar things and offer to power everyone else's sites rather than just ignore (or copy) the work of others and move forward alone.

My suggestion to Gary is that he take the great site he's built, come up with an original name and domain for it, and open up some conversations about how to work with people already doing things to organize community info.  Play nice in the sandbox and everyone wins.

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links for 2008-03-21

• kiwitobes.com » Blog Archive » Walmart Growth Video
  Viral Walmart Outbreak
  (tags: growth video virus walmart)

Purple Nike Sneakers: DO NOT WANT!

Purple Nike Sneakers: DO NOT WANT!, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Cool... I'm on the nextNYer's show talking about nextNY

Paul asked me to come on and talk about Path 101, but I thought it was too early for that.  I didn't want to cross that hype line since we don't have our product out yet.

So instead, I suggested that I might come on to talk about the community behind the name of the show, so last week I recorded a spot about nextNY.

And to answer Jen's question, yes, about half my waredrobe is black t-shirts.

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