innonate

Today, Angelsoft, a company I’m very close to, released Angelsoft Investor Search — a tool which should continue the company’s mission to rationalize the venture capital and startup space with better tools and information.
In my experience, one of the biggest wastes of time for both investors and entrepreneurs is when an entrepreneur pursues a misfit [...]

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Today, Business Week points out that some of the best startups came from economic downturns.
Meanwhile, investors often look for entrepreneurs with “skin in the game” — which often means having quit your job to work full time on your dream.
Last night, I got in an interesting discussion with Evan Bartlett (@evbart) as to whether or [...]

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Today I wrote an email reply to an entrepreneur I’ve written a hundred times since I’ve been on the VC/startup advisor side of the table. It’s an email I wish I had written myself nearly three years ago when I began my BricaBox quest, and so I’m releasing it to the general public as the [...]

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Silicon Alley Insider recently issued a challenge:
Despite strong traffic and passionate users, Digg’s revenues blow. During the first three quarters of 2008, Digg saw about $6.4 million on 30 million monthly uniques and lost $2 million. Yuck.
Today we’re launching the Fix Digg’s Miserable Business Contest.
The winning submission will ideally include steps to implement the plan, [...]

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Put this one in the “Low-Brow” category…
My friend Naveen’s and my iPhone app, Drunk Dialer, just got named by Yahoo! one of the “Weirdest iPhone apps” (and then got picked up in PSFK). (Hat tip Michael)
Yeah — it’s weird. But it’s also fun (everyone who tries it giggles while trying it, which is a good [...]

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In the past, I’ve spoken about “egoless community organizing” — and nearly every time I do, people (even those I respect and listen to closely) scoff at the concept.
“It’s naive,” they say.
Not so.
The concept of “egoless community organizing” borrows from two proven — and initially ridiculed — principals from the Obama campaign:
The first, the idea [...]

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As you may recall, a few weeks ago I announced a new experiment called “Office Hours”: I opened six 15-minute time-slots in my schedule — setting aside Fridays from 11:00am - 12:30pm — and opened my doors in an effort to meet folks I ordinarily wouldn’t get to meet.
I’m very pleased to report that the [...]

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Disclosure: I do not agree with *everything* quoted here. Nonetheless, I’ve found these quotes insightful and indicative of how we got into this mess and how we’ll get out of it. Please add your favorite quotes in the comments section below:
Warren Buffett:
Buy American. I am.
Scott Rafer, as told by Aaron Cohen:
“MacroEconomics are fiction,” claimed Scott [...]

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Excuse me for being late to the game on this one, but I’ve been out of the office and away from the tech industry for the last month.
As I left, the startup world was just coming to grips with the new economic realities before them. But now I’m coming back to the full on start [...]

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WANTED: Young people; willing to work 15 hour days for next to nothing; must believe in cause; big payoff, only in event enterprise is successful; proven ability to improvise in tough situations a must.
For nearly all non-technical positions in startups, these are the prerequisites for a new hire. It is a short list, but nothing [...]

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