VCs vs Entrepreneurs in the Shake Shack Challenge, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Thanks to Daryn from TeachStreet.com who joined me and Bryce Roberts from O'Reilly AlphaTech for lunch today. I wasn't thinking I was going to be back so soon, but it was Bryce's first time. We had Shack Stacks.

tmarman: The @shakeshack event was a resounding success - everyone thank @ceonyc again for his effort on setting of up. Go #nextNY!

vacanti: @ceonyc Best new york tech event I have been to, BY FAR. Awesome job.

dangellert: Back from basketball and a great event put together by @ceonyc. Great food and great people

jonsteinberg: @ceonyc Let me throw my kudos on top of everyone else. Fantastic event...great meeting face to face (again)

DorianBenkoil: @ceonyc It was a wonderful thing, all that Shakin' going on.

Dan121377: @ceonyc A for the event. A+ for the Hannibal Smith reference.

sachinag: @ceonyc That was great. You should be proud. Many thanks!

alexandergordon: Fun night at @ceonyc's @shakeshack and TechSet. No more talkie, time for sleepy

rauenzahner: @ceonyc knows how to set up an event. ShakeShack was a huge success and I met some really awesome people!

caroliiine: Also, big props to @ceonyc for throwing one hell of a burgerfest.

tobins: @ceonyc Thanks so much for putting @shakeshack together. Met a lot of new folks and had great discussions.

epc: @ceonyc Fantastic job on @shakeshack tonight!

christianbusch: Thanks to @ceonyc and chi.mp plus other sponsors for pulling together @shakeshack! Good community event and great people

Shripriya: @ceonyc very nice job, charlie. you should be proud of yourself...

dherman76: Great job @ceonyc for @shakeshack event. Had a great time!

WayneMulligan: @ceonyc Great event Charlie!!

zarzecks: @ceonyc kudos on such a great event. Was a blast.

jasonoliver: @ceonyc great job with the event man. Let's definitely grab food sometime soon.

tikkers: Huge thanks to @ceonyc and chi.mp and the rest of the sponsors for the @shakeshack event!!

whitneymcn: @kortina Good to meet you too, and @ceonyc - thanks for making this happen! Great party, though I'd expect nothing less from @shakeshack. :)

kortina: dinner @shakeshack w @navajeet @ceonyc @innonate @charlesforman @rauenzahner @jonsteinberg @whitneymcn @alexlines @ et al! back to work...

Philip_James: Great event @shakeshack, good work to @ceonyc

dam00n: @ceonyc great event fantastic kickoff to the week

CathleenRitt: Hey @ceonyc and the people at chi.mp and of course @shakeshack sure know how to throw a party

Jschwa: @ceonyc seriously nice job that was no joke

innonate: @ceonyc Is. The. Man. GREAT party man. You killed it.

ronaldbradford: home after Web 2.0 NY events. Shake Shack, sponsored by chi.mp and Women in Tech. Both great networking.

mylerdude: Wow! The @chimp bash at the shake shack totally rocked. NYC take note: that's how it's done.

MCholly: very goid NextNY event at (drum roll please).....shake shack! Nice meeting food and seeing familar faces

BeenVerified: Shake Shack event went great, will post pics on blog soon. Gearing up for Web2.0 Expo now...

imnoah: Good food at shake shack/nextny party. Now off to techset party

RobFarrow: Hanging at shakes shack, crowd is jumping

mknell: wow - the entire Shake Shack is shut for this...Cool :)

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

Perfect storm: I just started teaching my entrepreneurship class again at Fordham this semester, @shakeshack is tomorrow, I'm raising capital for Path 101, dodgeball and softball are starting up for the fall again...    but no worries.  No blogging hiatuses.

I had a VC ask me today how I have the time to blog.

It's 11:41PM right now.  I'm in the office, and I'm blogging.  I make the time.

Can't wait to bike home tonight... it's such a nice night out.

2008-09-15_1533, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

... right in front of my apt, too. That was a great spot!

"Now, I want to be clear and speak directly to those of you who LOVED that Palin interview. You're an idiot. I mean that. This is not one of those cases where we're going to agree to disagree. This isn't one of those situations where we debate it passionately and then walk away thinking that the other guy is wrong but argued well. I'm not going to think of you as a thoughtful but misguided person with different ideas who still really cares about the country and the world. No, sorry, not this time. This time, if you watched those interview excerpts and weren't scared out of your freakin' mind, then you're mentally ill, mentally disabled, or mentally disturbed."

Michael Seitzman: Sarah Palin Naked

As many of you know, we have a very special event going on here in NYC next Tuesday night called @shakeshack.  The name comes from the Twitter bot us Big Apple geeks use to organize our midday jaunts to the famous Madison Square Park Venue.

The event is going to be huge: 300 key people in the NYC community:  VCs, Angels, developers, designers, business people.  You can check out the attendee list here.  Sorry, but it's totally full!

We couldn't do the event, however, without sponsors, and a number of startup and tech friendly folks stepped up to make it happen.  We'll be spotlighting those folks leading up to the event as part of their sponsorship, but more than anything else out of our appreciation for their support.

Our first is Square 1 Bank.  I asked Brad Steele about what the bank does and here's is response:

"In a nutshell, we specialize exclusively in providing commercial banking services and senior debt financing to venture capital-backed companies and venture capital firms.  That's all we do.

We are keenly aware of the ups and downs, life cycle stages and challenges early stage, emerging growth companies face as they drive to become a large, dominant player in its space.  The traditional, mid-market regional and larger money center banks like the ones you mentioned below, are no very little about the venture capital world, entrepreneurs and start-up companies. It's important for an emerging growth, venture-backed company to surround itself with professionals who specialize in their world. 

That's us. 

You wouldn't go to a mortgage company for a car loan.  Why would you go to a bank who doesn't cater to venture-backed companies when you have an option which does?

"Innovation. Risk. Potential." High-tech shorthand like this describes the very essence of hundreds of young technology companies in the New York area.

For traditional business banks, terms like "conservative" and "risk-averse" are more appropriate descriptors--a profile that contrasts sharply... ...with hard-charging technology companies and their equally aggressive professional investor partners.

Square 1 specializes in meeting the requirements of emerging growth, venture-backed technology and life sciences companies.  We tailor our service offerings and lending styles specifically to the needs to these companies and their more mature counterparts.

Venture bankers like those found at Square 1, on the other hand, understand that traditional attributes may not capture the true value of an enterprise and they are willing to consider additional factors.

For instance, the expertise and track record of a high-tech company's top management carries a great deal of weight. Another critical factor (particularly for start-up firms) is whether the company has gained the backing of a financial firm. Professional investor backing is a key consideration for venture banks, and the larger and more experienced the venture capital firm is, the better chance the company will have to obtain a bank loan. Venture bankers will also evaluate the company's intangible assets. For example, intellectual property--including patents, copyrights and trademarks--may be considered acceptable collateral."

You can learn a lot more about Square 1 Bank at @shakeshack, where Brad and several members of the Square 1 Bank team will be in attendence, or you can contact him directly at bsteele (at) square1bank (dot)com.

Selling perceived control to fear is a great way to generate revenue.

It's also a great political strategy.

It's short term, sure, but very repeatable short term.

Yammer is Twitter for corporations, but people don't need or want corporate control over their twittering.

"Anyone with a corporate email can sign up and follow other people in their company. But if a company wants to claim its users, and gain administrative control over them, they will have to pay. Its a brilliant business model."

Yammer Takes Top Prize At TechCrunch50

I don't know about you, but I don't exactly want a corporate IT department controling my communication apps.  Plus, doesn't this sort of sound like racketeering?  It's not like Get Satisfaction, where companies may pay one day to participate and get data.  No, companies will pay to "gain administrative control"... ie shut it down/make it no fun, kill the community.  If I'm placing my bets, I'd lean towards companies becoming more open and participatory, teaching employees how to behave in public and seeing the ROI from that involvement, not locking them up more.

Didn't we try this with instant messaging, and didn't IT departments just concede victory to AIM and let everyone put AIM on their desktop?  Sure, it came with that silly disclaimer IM, but people wanted the same apps they used at home to be available at work.  Add on the fact that Twitter is on mobile via SMS and will soon go live again on IM, and there's simply no way companies can block usage.

Companies may in fact wind up signing up for this, but I can't imagine that many employees would really want to us it. 

Big corporate, please keep your filthy hands off my 140 characters!

I've posted this before, but it's really all I want to say about this...

Empire State Building at dusk, originally uploaded by pinhole.

"I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body." - Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

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

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

I just bought a Vitamin Water in Grand Central. What are the chances that I'm ever going to need to return this, or prove that I was in Grand Central at 7:45AM today?

I also got one when I used my credit card to pay for my Metro North Ticket. Some people check their credit card receipts against their bill at the end of every month. I don't know a lot about ticket kiosks but I'm pretty sure that whatever transaction processing system they have, it's always going to print the same number it on the receipt that it charged on my card. Plus, if I ever really needed to prove a transaction, that record is on my card...in the cloud somewhere.

Either way, if your time is worth anything whatsover, I'm betting that extensive physical receipt tracking has a negative ROI attached to it.

Plus, how many millions of pounds of paper and ink are we throwing away every year in receipts we don't need? That's what I always think about when I get receipts. I've never in my life used a receipt for anything. I charge most of what I buy on my credit card and pay it off right away (or at least used to before I started a company) and so I have a record in the cloud of my purchases. Could I have been mischarged here and there? Probably, but it might have also been in my favor, so I doubt it amounts to much. I've got better things to worry about.

With all the green things we're supposed to be worried about, who's solving this wasted receipt problem? How about a first step that says that no one gives you a receipt unless you specifically ask for it? Weren't they supposed to be doing that at restaurants with water to conserve? Let's conserve paper and ink and do away with this relic of our analog past.

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

You have a good point and I believe that this is part of a much bigger problem. Silicon Valley is like a big light bulb, and it attracts a lot of startups who come here to live the dream just to get burned in the end. Starting a business is not about meeting with VCs or belonging to a TechCrunch or Demo club, it is about getting customers to pay you for the value you bring to them. I see a lot of CEOs here in the Silicon Valley who don't seem to realize this. They want to play the competitive game of getting funded, telling the right story to an investor and getting a check from them is validation. But who's to say that the investor really knows better? Or the Techcrunch or Demo selection team for that matter?
Nothing beats market validation, and paying customers as a proof...

Is it me or does the west coast technology scene resemble something of a car accident?

Who's in?  Who's out?  Who gets an unfair look at coverage?  Who charges for what?

Among all that catfighting and negativity, how is anyone supposed to get their startup taken seriously? 

A VC asked me the other day if I was thinking about participating in TechCrunch 50 and I nearly laughed out loud.

I respect Jason Calacanis and Mike Arrington for their ability to self-promote, but remember, its self promotion that's their specialty, not the promotion of others.  Once again, the big news coming out of TechCrunch 50 isn't the companies--we don't even know who they are yet--it's the promoters. 

Let's get it straight.  No company has ever been made or broken on TechCrunch, and the idea that Mike has been called a "kingmaker" is laughable.  If he was a kingmaker, he would have taken the $5 million he had to build Edgio, and made himself a startup king. 

Instead, he found out that there's no substitute for a great product and great marketing.  That's what makes or breaks companies.  If you've built something really great, you need to systematically find your target audience and get them using it, and build in the product features that make it easy to spread.  For most startups, the crowd at TechCrunch50 and Demo isn't anything close to the userbase most of these companies are looking to get.

In fact, if you're participating in anything that has an embargo attached to it, you're wasting valuable opportunities to get in front of reporters when there aren't dozens of other companies all trying to launch at the same time.  You can say that TechCrunch 50 has no cost, unlike Demo, but there's a real cost to it.   Time is money to entrepreneurs, and if you're not allowed to talk to reporters, and each day you burn more of your own or your angels money, participating in this conference is costing you real money. 

That's another reason why I'm happy to be building my company here on the east coast, where we don't let all this startup stuff get to our heads, because our egos are kept in check by the enormity of other industries around us.   When you're big in tech in the Valley, you're huge.  When you're big in tech in NYC, you've still got a ways to go, and for a hungry entrepreneur, that's a much healthier place to be. 

"I believe I can help to grow our community, evolve the purpose of the organization, strengthen our partnerships with related organizations, and evangelize our vision to the greater population. I bring a fresh perspective and want to challenge some of the preconceived notions about what’s possible in this community. We’re at the tipping point of going mainstream and need to prepare for the influx of new professionals to come. I want to help make it happen."

- Whitney Hess

Whitney is super-committed to building community and I'm a big fan of her professional approach.  If you are an IAI member, please consider giving her your vote.

It's almost as if they were writing for Obama in a message to the Republicans:

"I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid... you're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you."   - Neo, The Matrix