Posted by mark.
Results > Posts Filed Under > Startups
Nov
1
Posted by mark.
Mike Arrington is a genius. Main-stream journalists sit up, knees together, back straight and start taking notes because this is a master at work. His recent blog entry titled Scamville calls out the most focused on and buzz-worthy companies in the valley for making money from advertising scams and accuses Facebook of encouraging a vile cycle of revenue and crappy marketing. The effect for Techcrunch is that it forces a number of high profile companies to respond and creates a …
Oct
31
Posted by mark.
This is a brilliant short talk by Tina Selig asking students “If you had $5 and 2 hours, what would you do to make as much money as possible?”. Her point that capital can simply be a distraction is a view I’ve held for a long time – especially in the context of cheap-to-start-and-run consumer web startups.
Oct
15
Posted by mark.
Under the guise of fostering innovation, guys like The Life Sciences and Healthcare Venture Summit, who spammed me today are happily taking money from entrepreneurs and offering a tax deductible day out of the office in return. Perhaps I’m inspired by Jason Calcanis’s recent jihad against investors that charge you to pitch, but these high cost ‘for-the-startup-community’ events are a waste of time and money and something that’s been grating me for some time now.
The event above charges you $595 …
Oct
14
Posted by mark.
What’s a Bleet? A blog entry that really should be a tweet.
Naval and Nivi (venturehacks) posted an interesting tweet today:
Chris Dixon on the problem with taking seed money from big VCs: http://j.mp/2BHIPe. Some solutions: http://j.mp/4hFSsL
I agree. I think there’s cachet value in having a large VC invest and based on Chris’s (IMO correct) views you need to decide if that value is worth the extra equity you’re giving up. The only scenario I can think of where cachet adds tangible …
Oct
12
Posted by mark.
Update: I wrote this blog entry and then predictably, I unposted it after my more diplomatic side took over. But it got out via my RSS feed anyway and a friend enjoyed it. So here it is in all it’s left wing liberal glory. I’m switching the published date to today. Enjoy.
I’m an immigrant.
“Oooh nasty! Are you here to send your dirty kids to our schools?”
No.
“Are you going to leech of our social security?”
No
“Are you going to steal jobs from …
Oct
11
Posted by mark.
I’m sitting here laughing hysterically at 3am trying not to wake the whole house.
Found this old fail surfing youtube:
Oct
9
Posted by mark.
Update: My real-time traffic feed says it all. Thanks for the mention and link-love M.G. and Techcrunch.
Two people died and 19 passed out at an Arizona sweat lodge last night. The author who hosted the event is James Arthur Ray and is an avid Twitterer. He deleted his 10 most recent tweets after the deaths, but Twitter search still has them cached. I’ve been aware of this for a while because every now and then I’ll go flying …
Oct
9
Posted by mark.
Jun
7
Posted by mark.
Google Groups archive of the STS mailing list isn’t working reliably, so I’m archiving a few emails I’ve sent to the STS list here. One day when I have too much time I’ll create a reliable threaded archive of the whole list. I sent this as a reply to a “getting started” advice request from a Seattle entrepreneur:
Alfredo,
I’m sure you’re going to get a lot of advice from the good folks on this list. I’m going to give you my …
May
15
Posted by mark.
I posted this today to the Seattle tech startup mailing list. A few folks liked it, so I’m reposting it here. It’s in response to a NY Times article talking about VC’s not caring about a business plan.
In my experience the most interesting things to a prospective valley based technology investor in descending order are:
Traction and (rapid) growth to date
Team and their history
Product
My view is that there are two universes you can exist in with distinctly different laws of investment …