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Mobile Apps—Gold in Them There Hills?

May 14, 2009

For those of us waiting outside the Finnish Embassy earlier this week to get in for Mobile Monday (a.k.a. dcMOMO)—all that was missing was the velvet rope. “Okay, we’re only going to let 20 more people in—to the rest of you, we’re sorry.” Me lucky.
Geez. You’d think it was a not new club. [...]

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Great Missed Expectations

April 2, 2009

Several times in my career, I’ve excitedly joined up with a partner — usually technically adroit, often visionary, always inexperienced. Each time, it seemed a natural fit. We were complementary — I brought a wide variety of tech-marketing and business skills, and most important, experience. And we got along really well. [...]

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The Rules for Entrepreneurs

February 24, 2009

Venture Files founder and former curator, Steven Fisher, wrote a series last year that remains one of the best of its time. Even though he has moved on and is working with Network Solutions, I think it’s as important now (if not more so) than it was last year at this time. This is a consolidates (and updated) version of that series.

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Getting Physical

December 21, 2008

“I love software,” my friend used to say, “But it’s soooo dehumanizing!” Perched 18 feet in the air atop a scissors lift the other day, it occurred to me that variety in work not only makes the experience more enjoyable, it’s essential . . . especially, something physical to contrast and complement time spent at the computer.

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Bail Out Entrepreneurs, Not Big Auto

December 13, 2008

So, the Auto Bailout bombed in the Senate. Good. (Never thought I’d be writing about it in Venture Files . . . but then, I never imagined it might affect entrepreneurs — including me — directly.) It’s an intriguing tale of desperation, fear tactics, and irony . . .

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Are You Captain of Your Destiny?

December 8, 2008

Returning to quickly skim my blog reader 1,000+ after two weeks’ head-in-the-sand, I see ‘Pownce acquired,’ and ‘Yahoo’s Chief of Insights Joins Bunchball.‘ My spin radar immediately starts blipping, because I know that behind the ‘good news,’ guts are wrenching. Decisions are being made for people, and that never feels good. Yet another reminder that all the sacrifices may well be worth captaining your own destiny.

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Term Sheets Series Introduction (Classic)

December 3, 2008

I have read Brad Feld’s blog “Feld Thoughts” for some time now.

Although I haven’t met him in person, I have exchanged e-mails a number of times and will say that he is a very insightful guy. I hope to move to Denver or buy a place there soon, so I owe him a beer for all his good advice.

Plus he is a huge 24 fan like me, so that gives him the extra gold star.

About a year ago, he started a series on “Term Sheets”. It is located here and it is what I will mirror in its structure. Why mess with a good thing, right?

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Bubble, bubble, bubble – In Private Equity not Web 2.0 (Classic)

November 29, 2008

Being a serial entrepreneur I have been through many business cycles, but the Internet boom of the late 1990’s was an extremely heady time. People were so enamored with what the Internet could do, every one really believed that the old rules didn’t apply.

The reality was that those rules applied more than ever and with the crash in the early part of the century we have tried to learn our lesson.

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I Love Social Networking, But . . .

November 18, 2008

As the song goes, it don’t pay my bills. So I signed on with a startup that does. Hopefully, I can do both. But talk about two different worlds . . . Hardware, not software. Distinctly un-social. Government, not commercial. Business, not consumer. And funded, not — well, self-funded.

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Creative Ideas for Capital

November 3, 2008

A great side-effect of entrepreneurs’ optimism in tough times is creativity. At our OpenCoffee last week, discussions got lively when talk turned to bootstrapping — not just self-funding, but all sorts of alternatives for producing live-giving capital and conserving what you do have. Time to put on your thinking caps.

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Damn the Economy — Full Speed Ahead!

October 29, 2008

Random-sampling the mix of entrepreneurs who made it to OpenCoffeeDC earlier this week, the wretched economy has deterred um, let’s see — no one. Gotta love that entrepreneurial spirit!