Back when I was at GM, working on investing in private equity funds, there were two funds I really liked that the team eventually turned down:

Union Square Ventures, which saw exits in Tacoda, Feedburner, and del.icio.us, and is nearly guaranteed (because of significant revenue traction) $200mil+ exits in Etsy and Indeed.  That's not counting the potential value of Twitter, either. 

The other one was a consumer focused buyout fund called Catterton Partners, which PEHub just announced had a 7x return on Wellness Pet Food.

"Wellness represents the second big exit for Catterton in four months. In April it earned more than 4x its money when it sold luxury hair product company Frederick Fekkai & Co. for more than $400 million..."

I'm not going to say I told you so, but...

Back in February of 2006, when nextNY started, there weren't a lot of social events going on in the NY Tech scene.  Now, it seems like there's a party going on every other day--and not parties for specific user groups or industries, where the chances of you making a connection to someone relevant are pretty good--just these big generalized "tech community" parties with sponsors no one really cares about. 

It's fun if most of your friends are tech and digital media folks, but mine aren't.  I grew up here in NYC and was a finance guy long before I was a tech guy--not that all my friends are finance people either.  My best friends work in publishing, law, and television production.

That's not to say I haven't made really good friends in the tech community.  I have, but I don't only see them at "industry" events.  I try to see the people in the tech community that I'm actually friends with in smaller settings like at the Shake Shack or for 1:1 lunches.  I play on sports teams with them and invite them to go out with me and my non-tech friends. 

So when I bounce from these bigger, generalized, noisy parties early, it's often because there's someone I know for years, maybe since junior high, waiting somewhere for coffee--or I just have a ton of work to do and can't go out every night if I ever expect to see my parents and other family. 

I think because I don't necessarily take part in the "scene" as much as others, I get a little bit of a reputation of being standoffish, or not sociable.  In actuality, I'm very social--just not necessarily with 300 random strangers who also have websites. 

Sometimes, I think that people think this is what is meant by "participation" when entrepreneurs out looking for money or deals for their startups attend these parties.  I don't know about you, but I never quite feel like these big things are my community and I always wind up hanging out with the same people anyway.

I think entrepreneurs are better off spending as much 1:1 time with people who's opinions they respect and admire, who actually know their space a bit, and also creating communities around them.  No matter what the industry or interest, there's a smaller community of people that you should be gathering together to leverage and exchange ideas.

Hey, if you wanna drink on someone else's tab, these big parties are great... but don't mistake them for or let them replace the more authentic, true relationship (and dare I say friendship) building that needs to be part of your networking.

Last Thursday, I attended Jeff Veen and Bryan Mason's Start Conference.  First off, I want to thank them for all their hard work--it was a refreshing event with a sincere approach.  Right off the bat, priced at $200, you knew that these guys were more out to actually lend entrepreneurs a hand than make a quick buck off them, so I appreciated that.

As I sat through the morning interviews they had set up, I realized that successful people have trouble attributing success to specific actions taken.  There were a few spots in the conversations where key points were glossed over with things like, "And soon after we launched, the product took off..."

Whoa!  Back up the truck!

How?  Why?  What caused success and did you plan for it?

I mean, you know, besides the fact that you created a great product and all, because I definitely took that note down.  "Create great product... check."

Failures are often easier to figure out.  Usually, when shit hits the fan, you know exactly what you did wrong, whether or not you're willing to admit it, but success--crossing that chasm is often something that people can debate for years.

I think someone ought to create a conference just about failure--that all the speakers can do is talk about stuff that went wrong.  We'll call it FailureCon or something.  That's one of my favorite things about having so many entrepreneurs as angels--if I could just manage to avoid half the mistakes they tell me they made, Path 101 will turn out ok. 

Still, attempting to get a list of likely success causes and best practices would be a good start.  I would have liked to see more structured conversations.  George Oates did a fantastic job up on the stage monitoring the audience feedback--perhaps another person could have an expanded role in recording specific takeaways and lessons.

That's another cool thing about the conference--George's presence was an indication of their willingness to experiment to create the best outcome possible for all those involved. 

How about a "what worked/what didn't work" ledger, with each speaker needing to add at least one or two things to both?

Or some kind of lesson voting system for the crowd... where the conference recorder person could add lessons learned to a publicly displayed voting site, the audience could add their own, and at the end of the conference, you'd have 10 solid takeaways. 

One other thing I'd like to hear more discussion of is product.  Making a great product always seems to be what being successful is all about, and everyone usually feels like they have one, but obviously that's not the case.  I'd love to see more product folks go in detail on what makes a great product, how to reposition things when they're not going well, and now to go back to the drawing board.  I'm happy to toss my "7 Product features you should add right now" talk from BarCampNYC.

One other idea...   It seemed like Jeff and Bryan, not surprisingly, attracted a great crowd.  The only problem was, I had no idea who was there and what they were up to, so I really didn't know who to meet.  Perhaps a Ning or Crowdvine site setup beforehand would have done the trick?

All in all, though, I'm glad I went.  Getting to pitch in front of the conference was awesome and I got great feedback (more focused deck coming soon!).  One thing I was a bit surprised at was that other than David Hornik and Rob Hayes, who were both involved with the conference, I didn't spot very many VCs.  You'd think this is the kind of thing investors would show up to.  I guess there's not enough mindless hype about Start yet.  Perhaps that's why I'm inclined to show up again.  :)

The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm:

Links I've recently tagged on del.icio.us:

Links I've recently tagged on del.icio.us:

Links I've recently tagged on del.icio.us:

Picture 839, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Hilarious sign on their front door.

I can't agree more with Andrew Kortina:

"I find my self asking many of my friends these days to start blogging or at least posting commentary on interesting web content. My motivations are partly selfish and partly altruistic.  The thought process:

I like to befriend smart people.  They have good ideas. Conversations about good ideas lead to better ideas. Geographic constraints should not prevent good ideation."

I do the same thing, with varying amounts of success.  Not every smart person in my life is going to agree to start and maintain a constant blog.  What I'd really like is a post by post blog invitation service.  If I could just ping people with questions by e-mail, and their responses could automatically wind up on a blog, that would be awesome. 

Sure I could do a lot of cutting and pasting, but it would be a lot more seemless just to have a page to send questions out to people, and have the responses automatically show up on the blog, like Disqus does with comment notifications.  Plus, you could even e-mail back the creator with a link for editing, ping them with comment notifications when people respond, etc.

The quality of such a blog would depend on the owner's ability to ask great questions to smart and interesting people.

Links I've recently tagged on del.icio.us:

So I was just thinking to myself that I'd love a way to make web pages available offline for airplane and other types of offline reading.

Then I remembered Universal Document Converter.  I'm sure there's some free, open source thing I missed, but a while back I had to convert something to a TIF file or something random like that, because it turns out the copy of Powerpoint I had wasn't exactly kosher.  So I wound up paying for the Universal Document Converter and it's been a really easy way to print documents automatically to PDF.  I don't own a printer and try not to keep any paper files, so this has been a great way for me to organize my digital documents storage.

So I just realized I can easily print web pages to PDF and keep them for later.  There's a bunch of stuff I'd like to read on my plane ride back to NYC and now I have a bunch of PDFs in a folder.  Nice!

Still, it would be cool if something could run in the background pulling in my del.icio.us links that are tagged PDF and automatically do this for me.

I blog and I twitter.  It might seem to some like I'm sharing everything and totally out there, but I'm not.  For example, you don't know who I'm dating.  That's mostly to protect the innocent, but also because it doesn't involve you.  Plus, I believe, unlike some people, that certain personal things don't need to be shared, lest we all appear like train wrecks to the world.  We all know that there are many moments in our private lives that are momentarily or multi-momentarily train-wrecky that don't impact our ability to just get stuff done.

However, everyone's line is different, and so is how we manage ourselves between those lines.  Take Facebook, for example.  I think it's bizarre that people I only know professionally want to be Facebook friends with me.  I deny them not for any other reason than it makes my own experience of Facebook noisy.  Just because we met at a business development meeting doesn't mean I need to see the photos you uploaded of your kids, or when you add a Little Green Patch. 

What this means is that I don't wield the same size sphere of influence as someone like Jason Calacanis, but you know what?  I don't want to.  To me, there's something to be said for authenticity.  I may have 950 LinkedIn contacts, but I actually know them.  And my Facebook friends?  They're actually friends, for the most part.  Yet, I'm still, in my opinion, able to maintain a very extensive and very fruitful online presence. 

Certainly people have different approaches and that's what I'd like to explore at my SXSW talk with Alana Taylor.  Alana is an NYU student who is a great social networker, but in my opinion, also stays on the right side of the authenticity balance.  I'm sure she'll have a lot to say as a college student about her professional world colliding with her personal digital spaces.

So if you'd like to join us in exploring "Blurry Networks: Friends, Contacts, Followers and Professional Me", please vote for our panel.  Thanks!

Links I've recently tagged on del.icio.us:

[SABYA] I WANT SOME WIDGET           2:09 PM
[SABYA] ARE YOU THERE

ceonyc                                                2:09 PM
What kind of widget?

myplugoo                                             2:09 PM
[SABYA] FLASH CONTET

ceonyc                                                 2:10 PM
Ok... I get you flash widget.   How much you pay?

myplugoo                                               2:10 PM
[INFO] Visitor [SABYA] has left the conversation.

Its been at least a week since I've taken the subway to work. I'm leaving for SF tonight and so I'm wheeling a small piece of luggage around with me. Tonight I'll be participating in the logistics olympics, trying to play a softball playoff game at 6:30, leave by 7:40 from 148th/Riverside and be at JFK for a 9:10 flight. As long as there are no major hiccups, I should be fine--especially for August. Hopefully we put enough runs up early that I can leave 10 minutes early.

Today will be research day at work... I need to put together a clear and consice picture of what's going on in the recruiting market, what's needed, and why we're it. The nice thing is that, because it's such a lucrative market, and that it cuts across enterprises as well as consumers, it's very well covered by some really smart folks.

I thought those two people, the dirty blonde and the tan guy with the goatee, were together when they walked into the car. I guess not. Still, they're standing next to each other, hands on the overhead bar, facing out towards the window. Maybe I should introduce them to each other.

People are so oddly shaped. I'm staring down at my phone typing this and I'm noticing what is obviously my grandfather's ribcage passed on through heredity. I'm sort of barrel chested. I don't know where to go with that. I'm just sayin'.

Glen Frey just randomly came up on my iPod. This always makes me think of the Mets '86 Championship video.

What company makes all these orange and red cellephane veggie bags that all the Asians who get off at Canal St carry? Whoever it is, they have a total monopoly.

The guy next to me is reading a comic book.

This seemed like a short ride.

The woman next to me is listening to a Podcast of WNYC "On the Media". I agree with @tismoi. Very few people look happy in this car.

Kilsy just came on....hard to miss. I knew it right away. They need to make more music or tour more or do anything... very good stuff.

Links I've recently tagged on del.icio.us:

A friend of mine's dad runs a large landscaping business with over one hundred employees.  While the business has been in the family since 1939, when he took it over in the early 70's, he really took it to the next level.  That often happens when the reigns of a business finally pass on to the next generation.

Anyway, what we're doing at Path 101 doesn't even hold a tea candle (yet!) to what he's accomplished.  This is a real business that sells real stuff with revenues, EBITDA, 100+ employees, trucks, etc!  It would be easy for someone with so much success to dismiss a small angel funded web startup in Alpha, but instead, he took a lot of interest  in what we were up to.  He even brought me up to a neighbor as another guy running a business who knows what it's like to work hardest for yourself.  I really appreciated getting that kind of respect towards our humble beginnings--especially from a friend's parent who might naturally be prone to a more unbalanced power dynamic.  Instead, it felt like two entrepreneurs shooting the breeze and it was pretty cool.

And yesterday, I got a nice note from Marc Cenedella checking in to see how things were going with Path 101 and an invite to come chat about the recruiting market and startup stuff.  I'm sure I'll learn a lot more than I can contribute to the conversation, but similar to my friend's dad, he asked some questions in our exchange about what the sweet spot is for when in a person's life Path 101 is useful. 

I really appreciate when successful folks like this can take a second to think about somebody else's business--but more so than that to take it seriously despite the vast distance between our respective progress.  It's a stark contrast to a recent situation where someone told me how they'd do things completely differently and never really acknowledged the progress we had made or my vision for the company.

At the end of the day, I just don't sweat situations like that.  You can't impress everyone and not everyone is going to care what you're up to.  You've got limited time and resources in a startup, and you just need to work with the people who believe in you and not worry about everyone else.  I guess relationships are kind of like that, too.  Some people are going to accept you and be excited to be with you.  If you spend more time building strong relationships with these people, and less with those who aren't interested, your life will turn out just fine.

The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm: