AngelSoft & Dinging Bells

4Sep/08N/A4

AngelSoft & Dinging Bells

Hank Williams wrote an interesting post today, talking how how cool the AngelSoft homepage is.

He points out that seeing the activity on the site is not only interesting for visitors, but great for employees too. Hank goes on to recall the dinging bell Jeff Bezos put in the Amazon.com office to tell employees a sale had been made.

Hank is 100% right (I'm willing to say this once a year, so happy birthday, Hank). I love talking to the AngelSoft team about their product because they know so much about what goes on behind the scenes with angel investors. The CafeMom fellas are the same. It's not a black box to them... it's a living breathing application where real people are getting stuff done.

As Fred points out today, AngelSoft's transparency also brings light to an industry (not just employees or users). The 1% figure (as commonly known, and reinforced by AngelSoft with real data, 1% of deals end up with funding) caused a good discussion in the comments of Fred's post . It's information like this which helps rationalize an industry wrought with mystique, confusion, and heartbreak.

What other industries need more transparency?

About Nate Westheimer

Nate is the Co-Founder and VP Product of AnyClip. He is also the Organizer of the 10,000 member NY Tech Meetup.

Tagged as: AngelSoft, Hank Williams Leave a comment

Matt Rosen

How about politics?

Gov. Jindal passed significant ethics reform in Louisiana earlier this year. Some details:

"We have enacted personal financial disclosure for elected and senior appointed officials in state and local government for the first time in Louisiana’s history. We have prohibited contracts between state government and legislators and executive branch leaders – forcing officials to choose to work for themselves or the people of Louisiana, but not being able to do both.

We have also increased disclosure laws for lobbyists, and ended the ability of lobbyists to wine and dine legislators with expensive meals. With these reforms, Louisiana will rank among the Top Ten nationally in lobbyist transparency.

Taxpayers have the right to know who is trying to influence their representatives and for what purpose, and with these reforms we have made our state one of the most transparent and open in the nation."

How about a site that discloses every public official's receipts/expenditures? How about simple, transparent and searchable voting records? Legislation introduced?

Then, when a candidate runs for office and says "I fought for..." or "I have a record of..." they can be taken to task simply, and directly.

In addition, forget tax reports, I'd love to see a candidate's college transcript. I don't care about grades. I just want to see what they studied. If you haven't progressed past Economics 102, you shouldn't be allowed to be President.

Matt Rosen

Follow up...Here's a start:

http://www.opensecrets.org

"OpenSecrets.org is your nonpartisan guide to money’s influence on U.S. elections and public policy."

Hank Williams

Thanks Nate, I'll take it :)

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