innonate

Today, I’m very excited to launch a new project with my friend Adam Quirk called “The Interwebs.”

The Interwebs will be a weekly web video show about the business of media and technology featuring recurring segments. The goal: to provide insight into the Interwebs industry which is both smart and funny.

Many of the segments will be hosted by our friends in the industry, so be on the look out for some great content to be developed over the next few months.

Also, while at SXSW this weeek, we’ll be doing an abridged version of the show everyday! This is thanks to a sponsorship deal we’re doing with Angelsoft’s Investor Search tool, released earlier this week.

Follow @TheInterwebs on Twitter and subscribe to our Tumblr-hosted feed to get the most recent updates.

Lastly, feed free to get involved by reposting our episodes and even working with us to create segments of your own.

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 of a VC firm or angel group.

With this new tool, entrepreneurs can input various stats about their company (including industry preferences, revenue, product stage, and investment size) and receive a narrowed list of VCs and angel groups which typically invest at those terms.

Good work team!

Today at 4pm EST, join me on Sun’s Socially Speaking BlogTalkRadio show hosted by Sumaya Kazi.

Show link here.

On the show, we’ll be talking about “Social Media in an Offline World,” drawing on my experiences in the New York tech community.

For instance, I’m going to mention how at my first nextNY event I remember someone, as we were introduced, saying “You’re ‘innonate,’ right?” That really drove home the value of an online personal brand, even in the offline world.

Anyway, I’d love to include your insights, thoughts, and anecdotes about how the two intersect, so leave a comment here and please listen in and call in to the show today at 4pm.

A few weeks ago, after my NY Magazine “Geek on Demand” article, I went over to Air America’s studios down the block and recorded a fun segment called “Pimp My Tech.”

Episode One of Pimp My Tech is now live (see above), so go check it out. Episode Two will be coming soon…

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 not quitting one’s job is actually a sign of a great entrepreneur — especially in economic times like these.

So, in today’s video (see above), I ask: Should entrepreneurs who are currently employed stay in their jobs as they try and startup their company, or should they quit and work full time?

Comments encouraged!

Tipping my cards here a bit…

In a few weeks, you going to see a new show on the Interwebs, called, “The Interwebs.”

The Interwebs is a weekly web video collaboration I’m doing with Adam Quirk of Wreck and Salvage, as well as a handful of other web entrepreneurs you know and like (well, maybe not like).

One segment of the show (which will be weekly) is called “This Week” (or something like that) and is about the news of the week (go figure!). To get some practice, I recorded this clip this morning (see above).

Of course the real segment will be much shorter (probably 1.5 min) and more scripted, but I need practice turning on a camera and talking to it, so this is what I created. The rest of the show will also be comprised of short clips, featuring other people, creating a ~10 minute show about the business of media and technology, through the eyes of real entrepreneurs, not journalists (exception: you’ll probably see some faces like Dan Frommer of SAI on screen from time to time).

I’ll go into more of our reasoning for focusing on entrepreneurs in a later post, but essentially I think entrepreneurs are the smartest — and most fun — folks I know, and I want this show to be both smart and fun!

So, look for the pilot right before SXSW, and then look for The Interwebs to be reporting from Austin, TX for all five days of SXSWi (which we’re open to sponsorships for).

So, here’s the first screen test for The Interwebs. It will only get sharper, pointier, and better for you.

Feedback wanted!

Yesterday, Silicon Alley Insider wrote that Obama’s pick to head the Justice Department’s antitrust unit is decidedly and publicly anti-Google.

Now, as Henry Blodget put it, this in no way means a certain antitrust movement against Big Rainbow (Google):

Hard to view this as anything but negative for Google.  A strident government attack on the company seems unlikely (and ill-advised), but Google’s future moves will almost certainly be more scrutinized and restricted than they have been to date.  That’s not good for shareholders.

However, I wonder if we as startupers — rather than shareholders — should encourage or discourage such an action.

In the past, of course, startupers and VCs have rushed to Google’s defense (see my Google Antitrust articles from 2007). Not only has Google maintained relatively good Karma among the early stage community (awesome APIs will do that), but also Google has been seen as an attractive exit option for startups ever since they went public in 2004 and began a buying spree.

However, an analysis of this list of Google acquisitions (graphed below) reveals a suppressed appetite in Mountain View, leading me to wonder if keeping Google as a monolith is such a great thing for startups and VCs, who — in a SOX environment — increasingly rely on acquisitions as a way to realize the value of their company or investment.

If Google’s status as a monopoly were taken on by the Justice Department (and if the DoJ prevailed), Google would likely split itself into several smaller companies, leaving the world with several powerful, cash-rich micro-Googles, in turn leaving with world with that many more exit or business development opportunies for startups.

On the flipside, if Google isn’t split up, its obvious that Google’s appetite for acquisitons will continue to slow, if not halt altogether, in fear of inducing futher scrutiny from the DoJ.

So, disregarding any political beliefs, corporate loyalties or grudges, I wonder: Should those of us in the startup market hope for a Google shakedown? Would an antitrust suit do us well?

The answer may be surprising.

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 “Common Email,” under a Creative Commons license. Feel free to copy, paste, and send to any entrepreneur seeking funding too soon and being unnecessarily canny about his/her plans!

Hi, without knowing more specifics about your startup, I can only assume that without even a prototype you’re too early to be seeking funding. I’d work on getting the product finished and out in the open, being widely used.

Theses days, it’s a rare case (usually proven entrepreneurs an investor has worked with before) that something not-yet-built or even not extensively used gets a real look from investors let alone investment.

Also, I’d adjust your thinking a bit about what “bootstrapping” means. $200,000 is a real Angel round these days. Bootstrapping means using your own money (or that of close friends and family), and usually less than $50k of it, to get something built and in the market, gaining adoption or customers. One company we invested in last summer was nearly cash-flow positive upon investment, and they had only spent $15,000 getting to that point.

Lastly, building a User Generated Content (UGC) site without one or two technical co-founders is going to be super tough, because its both hard to innovate and cut through the noise in the space. If your idea is truly great, and you have the prowess to breakthrough the flurry of UGC sites launched everyday, I think a good entrepreneurial test will be either finding a person or firm that shares your passion and wants to work with you for free or equity, especially if you don’t have the funds personally to get this built by paying someone. (Of course the flip side of this is finding an investor who is also equally passionate about the product you want to build and also has the desire to bankroll the first iteration of the project.)

It goes without saying, all of this is tough!

I hope this feedback is valuable. If you’d like to pass on more specifics about your project, I’d be pleased to give more specific feedback. But, from the outline you gave me, I think your best bet is to forget investors for the while and get building!

Regards,

Nate

The following post is by my father, Richard Westheimer, who has the joy of working both in the early stage tech world, as an investor and occasional Board member, and in the stock market, as an investment advisor. He sent me this story earlier this morning, and I have edited out the name of the company and replaced it with “SomeCo.” ~Nate Westheimer

A funny thing happened on the way to the SomeCo board meeting.  I traveled from a world of increasing doom and gloom — where jobs are lost at a furious clip, where banks are dysfunctional, where hyper-inflation looms behind each threat of deflation, where demagogues rule that airwaves, and a Max Headroom world beckons.  And I entered a world of possibility, action orientation, strategy, and tactical planning.

The meeting began with the expected report of expense reduction:  20% slashed from the expense line — 70% of that was body count — mostly from the SG&A side of the ledger.  The CEO reported increased efficiencies, elimination of dead wood, reassignment of tasks to more appropriate players, and little or no encroachment on quality or revenue potential.  Sales are actually up a bit year over year as other companies see using SomeCo’s services as a cost cutting avenue.  John Doe CEO has hired recently — a fellow with expertise in product development.  His addition has brought increased discipline and focus.   The deals for possible strategic partnership with several Chinese concerns are heating up — not cooling.  Board of Director members who were advocating selling at a deep discount 6 months ago are talking strategy for growth.

I felt like I was on Planet X.  There was almost no discussion of macro mega-risk.  Everyone was either heads-down, grind-it-out, tactical/procedural, build market-share, pricing model refinement, QA, marketing strategy, OR big-picture, level-two break-out growth, strategizing.  Economic shit-storm?  What economic shit-storm?  (This IS an exaggeration, but barely. Folks at the table are suffering.  Businesses they command are facing serious serious strain.  Long term investments are suffering.  But folks were down-to-business.)

I am not faulting our work or actions.  I was really energized by the meeting.  We accomplished a great deal and I left with a sense that business can go on and rebuild — and specifically that SomeCo can.

Sooooooooooooo…. what is going on here. Was this a microcosm of what is happening all over: Businesses tightening up their processes, focusing on core competencies, cutting out non-productive dead-wood, levering existing resources, repositioning for lift off throughout the recovery? OR was a sitting amidst a bunch of “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” Armageddon deniers?

The good news: This is as good a place as any for active investment. The bad news: Well, there may be no good place.

Yesterday marked the two year aniversary of my getting involved in the NY tech community. In fact, I believe February 8th, 2007, was the day I turned my love of community, technology, and innovation, into a career.

Back when I published “The cafeBricolage Manifesto,” I knew practically no one in the New York technology industry, or even New York City for that matter. Sure, I had been piping up for a few months the nextNY list, and I had been to two or three events, but aside from that, I wasn’t participating.

Boy, things have come a long way.

Reflecting on the cafeBricolage dream is not only a nostalgic exercise, but also a good marker for how far NY tech has come in two years. Back then, I wrote:

cafeBricolage would be the NYC incubator for start-ups, but it would be done in a way that NYC needs. Throw out your old concepts of an incubator, and think about this: a collective space, one part cafe and one part office, which could support up to a dozen small resident companies of various smallness, and work-space, geared toward the laptop carrying professional, embedded in a community cafe operated by the members themselves. Since we’re all tech people here, I say in in a way we can all understand: “It’s ‘co-working‘ meets ‘cooperative cafe‘ meets NYSIA meets ‘Digg’” (just kidding about the “Digg” part, it’s just something you have to say in a sentence like that).

While this dream never came to fruition, in the past two years many other dreams have.

New Work City, which grew out of cooperBricolage (which was, clearly, at least influenced by my cafeBricolage Manifesto) launched late last year, bringing a magnificent work and programming space to the New York tech and independent community.

Of course the Incubator at Rose Tech Ventures — the space I currently manage — has also launched in that time. In fact, I met David at the cooperBricolage launch party, where I overheard him talking about the early vision for our incubator. I offered to be the first tenant (as BricaBox back then) and soon thereafter my working relationship with David S. Rose and Rose Tech Ventures began. Now, we have a dozen startups under our roof, weekly programming, and dozens of community events throughout the year.

As these types of community energizing places have emerged, so have new community energizing times.

Last year we saw New York City’s first Internet Week, putting our industry on the same level of other great New York industries. We also saw the Web 2.0 Expo come to New York, making it clear to the industry elsewhere that New York City is a leading place to innovate and develop new technology. And this week, Social Media Week has kicked off its inaugural event, bringing the City dozens of free, community-led events about the area where tech and media are converging: a phenomenon New York City experiences like nowhere else.

What’s remarkable to me is that what’s emerged in the last two years is far richer and sustainable than anything I called for then. While the dream of a one-stop still has its benefits, realistically the decentralized-yet-interconnected nature of today’s New York tech industry sets the stage for futher and futher growth from places not yet imagined two years ago, like the newly-institutionalized NY Tech Meetup, its Community Committee, and the dozens of other new groups which have sprung up in such a short period of time, like Fashion 2.0, Ultralight Startups, and the Entrepreneurs Roundtable.

Looking back on these past two years invigorates me. On a purely personal level, they’ve been two years of tremendous growth. But on a community level, on the two-year anniversary of my involvement in this great thing we call “NY tech,” they’ve been two years of tremendous progress of which I am blessed to have become involved.

Onward and upward, New York!