Johns Hopkins University - Member News

Hmm. The Future of Product Placement

  Initially I was very annoyed that Ashton Kutcher’s company was selected as one of the 50 most innovative startups at TechCrunch50 and I largely still am. However, after I learned that the primary monetization for the site’s video content was via product placement, it really got me thinking. If the future of media is video and content creation on the web, and if said distribution necessitates use of many different sites (i.e. not walled gardens), than the future of advertising could really be product placements. What does this mean? I think it means opportunity. One of the great things about product placements is that there is almost unlimited potential for availability; a movie script could literally have hundreds of placements if folks were willing to invest the time to tweak sets and wardrobes. Alternatively, an entrepreneur could just automate the process and help to set market rates. As an example, take a look at the image up top. It’s a blueprint showing areas where adver...

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Mark Cuban on Entrepreneurship

Mark Cuban on lessons learned: …before you have kids and get a mortgage, that’s the time to go after it [entrepreneurship]. I cant tell you how many girlfriends I’ve had that said “me or the business?”, and I said “what’s your name?” -From an interview at TechCrunch50 in San Francisco. Full text here.

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SuiteMatch Launches Marketplace for Shared Office Space

SuiteMatch appears to have launched a marketplace for shared office space in New York City. NYC startups could surely use just such a service! Currently, users can list spaces for free as well as search the listings for free. There are 22 listings with prices from the $500’s-$5,000 per month. SuiteMatch is a great service, but the trick will be whether or not they can spread awareness of their brand and website to the point that folks outside of other startups will create listings. Also — this is New York City. Unless there is some barter going on, even a low price per month is likely too high for most cash-poor startups. While there isn’t much info available on the company via Google, it appears that one of the founders is Barry Mazza of Always Water, a NYC-based design studio. From the website: When an individual or company with extra offices, unused workspace or empty cubicles rents or subleases to another individual or company, we call it shared workspace. Think o...

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Harry and Louise Return, Single Out Startups

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGvkZszS21Y Louise: You know…Lisa’s husband just found out he has cancer Harry: But, he’s covered, right? Louise: No! He just joined a startup and he can’t afford a plan -Commercial from HarryandLouisereturn.com (see video above). Part of a campaign to increase healthcare awareness...

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Obama on the High Tech Jobs of Tomorrow

“We measure the strength of our economy not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a new business, or whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off to look after a sick kid without losing her job - an economy that honors the dignity of work. The fundamentals we use to measure economic strength are whether we are living up to that fundamental promise that has made this country great _ a promise that is the only reason I am standing here tonight….I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the startups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.” -From Barack Obama’s Acceptance Speech at the DNC. Full text of speech available here. Good stuff.

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Responding to Rejection

People say you can tell a lot about someone’s character based on how they handle defeat. I have been faced with a number of rejections lately and figured I’d post on some of the types of responses available. Since the majority of the rejections I’ve received have taken place over email, the focus of this post is in responding via email. Ultimately I think some response is better than no response. Say Nothing: Sometimes you think this an impressive response indicating that things are going so well, you’re too busy to even bother. Sometimes you mean for the other person to go f*** off. Make sure you realize that this is the most likely interpretation. Say Something (Positive): A curt, but gracious reply. Leave the door open to some future relationship potential Some people will use the opportunity for a last minute grab: pointing out a miscalculation, a likely oversight or otherwise providing new information. You’re indirectly asking for re-consideration Say Something...

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Carey Business School Welcome Remarks

The following are some welcoming remarks I gave the incoming MBA class at the Carey Business School of Johns Hopkins University this past weekend [Saturday, August 23rd, 2008]. My name is Sam Huleatt and I graduated with an MBA in finance only a few months ago.I am really delighted to give this year’s Alumni welcome to the incoming class because my experience at Hopkins is one that has already had a profound impact on my life and I love opportunities where I can express how well I fee my degree has prepared me to achieve goals both in my professional and personal life. It’s also an exciting time to be an alumnus and student as the school continues to undergo significant changes. First of all — congratulations on your acceptance!Second, the reality of graduate school is probably starting to sink in for many of you. Some of you may find yourselves wondering exactly what challenges lie ahead. For example, many of you are working full-time, others are balancing family lif...

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How to Hack FeedBurner and Get 2500 Subscribers Overnight

Neat trick… Just because some competitor’s blog shows 10,000 subscribers…don’t take it at face value Feedburner hacked! from Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Vimeo.

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To Save Healthcare We Need Big Compromises From Everyone

The following is a guest post, submitted by John from MeetingWave. John is competing to win a free ticket to the Web 2.0 Expo in New York and he’s passionate about  the need to reform healthcare. Enjoy. — In order to save our healthcare system, we need big compromises from everyone. First, trial lawyers need to accept tort reform. I recall the NYT times editorial this past year that asserted that trial costs are “less than 5% of health care costs” - First, that’s a really big number. Second, I think they ignored the cost of settlements, spiraling malpractice insurance and defensive medicine. Second, insurance companies need to reduce administration costs and play more fair with patients. I heard you can get a masters degree in how to fill out insurance forms. Ever see all the different forms at a doc’s office? Give insurance companies one year to come up with a single form for doctors to use. I’d recommend a single payment system (doctors only interface with one f...

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Twitter Brainstorm Leads to Fay Cleanup Effort

This week I’ve been corresponding a bit with Eric Norlin, one of the creators of Defrag. For those unfamiliar, Defrag is really the thinking man/woman’s conference assembling some of the brightest minds in technology in a non-valley setting (Denver, Colorado). According to the website the focus of Defrag is “solely on the tools and technologies that are leveraging the “social” aspect of software to accelerate the “aha” moment.” Speaking of aha moments… Eric is located in South Florida and has been hunkering down in preparation for Hurricane Fay. Earlier today Eric tweeted a request for thoughts on a link between Fay and Defrag. Seeing Eric’s question I responded, suggesting that the conference donate a percentage of revenue from tickets sold to the cleanup effort. Voila! Defrag announced it will be donating 25% of ticket sales this week to a Fay relief fund. Awesome and generous. Just another example of the power of flow apps to act as a platform for...

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Two Free Tickets for O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo New York

I know my blogging has been a bit inconsistent this summer and for that I apologize. I’m hoping to get back on track starting now! The awesome folks at TechWeb and O’Reilly Media are letting me attend Web 2.0 New York (September 16-19th) and have also offered two TOTALLTY FREE tickets to give away for readers of LeveragingIdeas! For anyone who has never attended an O’Reilly conference they are THE events for anyone in the web 2.0/startup space. It’s an amazing opportunity to listen to some of the most thought-provoking leaders in the technology space — and to network with web 2.0 Illuminati, investors and startups. Tickets are normally $1300 — so believe me, this offer is a big deal. I’ve decided the most equitable way to give away the tickets is by asking interested readers to support two causes that I’m truly passionate about: Ticket One: I launched StartupTweet.com last week and have gotten a tremendous response. However, there is still a ton of great content...

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Developing a Superior Psychology

Entrepreneurship is extremely difficult. The road is paved with ambiguities, ups and downs and strained relationships. But there is one certainty – the entrepreneurs with a superior psychology are the ones who ultimately triumph. Paul Graham has an amazing essay on fundraising he published this month. It’s a must read. Paul gets at this very notion. Unlike say, pro basketball, entrepreneurship doesn’t discriminate based on things outside an individual’s control like speed, size or sheer athletic ability. Certain people have more connections and more access to capital. However, even then, that advantaged person needs the right mentality to capitalize on those advantages. While such people are fortunate, they can only stay ahead of the curve for so long. There is such a high correlation between mindset and success that an entrepreneur with a superior psychology can catchup — any lack of advantage can be overcome rapidly. I hope to refine my thinking on this topic and post so...

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Protected: Sex Sells But At A Cost to Your Brand?

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

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Introducing StartupTweet

Today I am launching StartupTweet, a website I dreamed up last Friday. StartupTweet allows anyone to contribute to a knowledge-share of resources (posts, links, video, files) focused on startups and entrepreneurs. With the help of Zvi Band, who created our wonderful logo, I was able to get StartupTweet built, launched and populated with content all within a single weekend. Go register and check it out. What’s StartupTweet Do? Think of StartupTweet as a cross between Del.icio.us, Mahalo and Hacker News. My idea is for a ‘better’ social bookmaking site specifically targeted at entrepreneurs and startups. Probably ten times a week or so I end up intensely searching Google for resources, recommendations or advice. Help is out there, but it’s scattered across blogs, video sites or hidden in interviews and PowerPoints. My goal with StartupTweet is to have a community help neatly assemble all that great content, advice and resources in one spot. Why Did I Make This? First, I’m comp...

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The Art of the Demo

Update: Three days later and TechCrunch has just posted a “how to demo post.” Copycats I don’t claim to be a demo god, but I have spent a lot time researching best practices, getting feedback and practicing our pitch for Workstreamer. Here are some takeaways that might helpful. A demo is visual performance, done in front of a live audience and should be entertaining and informative above all else. Note: this is very different from an investment pitch. Presentation counts for more than the actual product. Use this to your advantage: a well-positioned demo can make up for a lack of actual functionality. Preparation: Practice, practice, practice. Use different contexts: in front of a mirror, with family members and over the phone Watch other good demos. Seems like a no-brainer, but most people don’t think to do it. Watch Steve Jobs on Youtube. Review videos from last year’s TechCrunch40 No brainer. Know your audience. If you can, ask ahead of time what will be th...

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Could Anything Disrupt Google?

Google seems to be on a tear. The 100 pound gorilla in the technology space. Unstoppable. But… Storage space is increasingly a commodity as evidenced by Google’s Gmail. What happens when a user can download the entire Internet? Searches could then be conducted instantaneously. Advertisements would be unnecessary. Thoughts?...

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What’s This Blog All About?

I started this blog back in 2006 with the intention of educating young people on technology and finance as well as to highlight the trends and experiences I was witnessing personally as an entrepreneur. Over the last two years, I’ve realized that I’m more interested in focusing on the environment of early-stage companies. To clarify, an early-stage company may or may not be a startup. Likewise, startups do not only need refer to technology-focused companies. Even the definition of early stage is disputed. What;’s considered early stage in Boston is likely very different from what’s considered early stage in the Valley. So what’s so interesting about early stage companies? First, early-stage companies are often — but not always — run and managed by entrepreneurs who tend to be thought leaders and risk takers. An entrepreneur can be of any age, gender, race or creed…there is no Ivy League, SAT or IQ prerequisite. Next...

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Hybrid VC: The Preemptive Buyout Model Revisited

Last February I suggested a possible hybrid-model for venture capital firms: locating pre-VC backed technology plays, buying them on the cheap, then augmenting the companies with a pre-assembled all-star team of managers. Looks like Austin Ventures was listening: Today, Austin Ventures announced its second $50 million investment to back a seasoned entrepreneur to head this very model. Austin Ventures entered into a partnership with Sherman Atkinson to form ATCOR Holdings, Inc. The new company will focus on acquiring and operating businesses in high-growth sectors of online advertising, marketing and digital media. AV has committed $50 Million of equity capital to support management’s strategy to build a leading new media franchise through both organic growth and acquisition. Mr. Atkinson will serve as Chief Executive Officer of ATCOR. This is the second $50M new entity that Austin Ventures has created in the last few months. The idea for both companies appears to be using a series of...

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How to Validate a Startup for Investment

Leveraging Ideas The early life-cycle of a startup is all about validation. Especially for first-time founders, the struggle is often to figure out what’s missing or what can be done to convince an investor to take a chance and invest. Whether looking for funding, or convincing a prospect to become a customer, startups must provide outsiders with ‘reasons to believe’. Unfortunately there are only a handful of ways this can be achieved. In this case I have made an attempt to highlight a hierarchy of validation points for startups during the fundraising process based on my own personal experience. It’s my belief that this is roughly the rank order by which people (particularly investors) will evaluate the worth and/or potential of an early stage company. Note that as you move up the pyramid, the degree of validation increases. Also note that the product itself is not really ever the focus. I think in today’s world, a quality product is really second to eyeba...

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Inspiring, Teaching, Leading

Last weekend I had my ten year high school reunion. Over the weekend I heard an amazing story about a well known faculty member. I want to share the story because to me it is the absolute definition of leadership. [Note: I have purposely decided against publishing this professor’s name for privacy reasons] I attended a boarding school in Connecticut. While I was there — and for years before and after my own graduation – one professor stood out among the rest. Over his tenure of 49 years, he served as an inspiration in the classroom, on the playing field and in life as an adventurer. An economics professor by trade, this teacher is cited several times in the famous book, Barbarians at the Gate. The great financier Henry Kravis has repeatedly attributed his massive success in business to the teachings of this professor. As a lacrosse coach, his leadership resulted in the school being considered a premier national team, winning championships and producing numerous collegiate divi...

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Social Media Deal Flow Continues

PaidContent has released its second installment of the Social Media Deals Report.  The team analyzed deal flow a 15-month period starting in January 2007. Some highlights… Venture Investment in Social Media: Total number of investments: 400 Total number of disclosed investments: 341 valued at $2,763,715,000 Average investment size: $8,104,736 Best estimated value of overall investment in the space (disclosed and undisclosed): $3,074,215,000 total invested Acquisitions in the Social Media Space: Total number of acquisitions: 131 Total number of disclosed acquisitions: 41 disclosed valued at $13,422,310,000 Average acquisition size: $327,313,415 Click here to download a free executive summary...

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Personal Relationships Drive Investment

  The old adage for raising money is that investors invest in the team first and the product or service second. Therefore, if investors primarily invest in people, then what they are really investing in are relationships built on trust. This is why entrepreneurs tend to raise money from friends and family first –  they know you best and trust you most. Though it’s not easy, trust can be created from scratch. That said, if you’ve quickly burned through all your immediate prospects with whom you have significant pre-existing trust and relationships, you need to must be prepared for the consequences: fundraising will take a long time. So where does investor-investee trust come from? The deepest levels of trust exist among people who have shared experiences: a former boss, teacher or colleague. You’ve been in the trenches together. Trust can also come from reputation or achievement; for example, the previous successes of an entrepreneur. To a lesser extent, trust com...

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The Role of Tipping Point Marketing in Web 2.0

In my last post I alluded to something I called tipping point marketing. This is a phenomenon that is hugely relevant to web 2.0 and well worth considering in early stages, in particular around a launch strategy. It’s something I am currently thinking through with Workstreamer. There are a number of key industry events that have become literal ‘launch pads’ for new products and companies to debut. The best known is probably Techcrunch50, but others include DEMO, Web 2.0, and even South by Southwest. The idea behind tipping point marketing is straightforward. A startup *could* spend $50,000 over five months attempting to organically drive traffic to its website: using Google and Facebook advertising, writing a blog, appealing to influential bloggers, etc. However, a startup could instead choose to focus its efforts on exploiting key events, time periods and news that result in short massive bursts of new users and have the added benefit of momentum. Affiliation with certain e...

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Get Your Viral On

So you want to make your product or company go viral. The first thing to know is you don’t choose viral; viral chooses you. The best you can do as a marketer is position something to have viral potential. This is accomplished by positioning your product in three ways: Psychological Undercurrent Social Value Proposition Maneuverability Psychological Undercurrent. Sounds almost military, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. Psyops and captology relate to the art of influence. If you want something to become viral you need to appeal to that which is cool, unique, novel, sexy, exclusive or shocking. These are the things that make an impression. Things that people will rally behind and ultimately share. Social Value Proposition. No matter what you are offering, it must have some value. Without value you cannot reach a sustainable viral loop. Therefore, whatever you are offering (whether a product, a meme, music, etc) needs to provide value. People need to be able to understand what...

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Twitter Looks to Outsourced (Re)Development Experts

Back in May I wrote a post suggesting that we were going to see a rise in outsourcing to software product development firms as a method for quickly assembling a team and in helping to minimize technology risk. Twitter must have been listening… Via VentureBeat: Twitter, the messaging service that many of us love — and love to complain about when it experiences downtime — has hired a premier software development firm to help it rebuild its infrastructure, we’ve heard and confirmed with the company. The name of the firm is Pivotal Labs, a quiet but impressive group of big-gun, for-hire developers that already counts business software company SalesForce and a long list of startups as clients. Also of note is that Pivotal Labs qualifies its client list with this phrase: “There are more startups that are in stealth mode, and larger clients that are a little shy about us mentioning their names.” More: Duncan’s take...

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Startup Marketing: Starting from the Inside, Out

You are about to launch a new product or service and you *think* you’ve decided on a key demographic to target: say the 18-34 crowd. However, instead of focusing on marketing to a theoretical audience based on attributes such as age, sex, income, etc (standard acquisition marketing) first priority should be developing a strategy driven by user life-cycle. Specifically, life-cycle related to product engagement. If this sounds confusing, don’t worry, it’s not. Acquisition marketing is important, but should initially take a back seat to retention marketing. And to get the most out of a retention marketing strategy, it’s best to create specific strategies for the multiple sub-communities that will develop based on their stage of product involvement. Communities you should have a basic strategy for: Acquisition: [Future Users] Allocate ~30% resources here · People you want to use your product but who do not know it exists · People you want to use your product but who ar...

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Real-World Value Litmus Test for Startups

Maybe it’s because I studied a decent amount of economics in school, but I think the first step in marketing anything on a large scale is to know the economic conditions and trends you’re selling into. The best products will address gaps and problems being actively discussed on the public record. While a valuable product will sell regardless of economic conditions, strategic positioning can still be influenced by astute economic observations. The best place to get a quick overview of macro trends and conditions is by paying attention to quality newspapers. As an example, here are paraphrased quotes lifted from Sunday’s New York Times Business Section and Magazine: By 2010, China will have more Ph.D. scientists and engineers than the United States. These professionals are not fundamentally a threat. To the contrary, they are creators, whose ideas are likely to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, not just the business elites. The more access the Chinese have to American and...

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Free: The Business Model of Paul Coelho and the Grateful Dead

A reader from Sydney, Ian van Niekerk, sent me a great article featured in February’s Fortune Magazine. The article discusses how Brazilian author Paulo Coelho has been an apostle of the economics of free Internet distribution for years. In 1999, best-selling author Paulo Coelho, who wrote “The Alchemist,” was failing in Russia. That year he sold only about 1,000 books, and his Russian publisher dropped him. But after he found another, Coelho took a radical step. On his own Web site, launched in 1996, he posted a digital Russian copy of “The Alchemist.” With no additional promotion, print sales picked up immediately. Within a year he sold 10,000 copies; the next year around 100,000. By 2002 he was selling a total of a million copies of multiple titles. Today, Coelho’s sales in Russian are over 10 million and growing. “I’m convinced it was putting it up for free on the Internet that made the difference,” he said in an interview at this...

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Slide Giving Up on Facebook? What’s It Really Mean?

From Alley Insider: Slide, the company that makes Facebook’s most popular apps, says it’s done making new ones for the social network. Keith Rabois, VP of strategy and business development, told us this week that the company wants to concentrate on making the existing apps like FunWall and Top Friends better — and ultimately figure out how to generate real money from them. …Read between the lines here, and you can see a slightly different story: Slide is saying that the great Facebook app land-grab, which kicked off a year ago, is over. And it’s ended up with the best property. I find this development very interesting. You would assume that Max still talks to Peter regularly and by default Mark. If real opportunity were to be had on Facebook, Slide should thus be best positioned to take advantage of it. The fact that Slide is seemingly moving away from innovating on the Facebook platform either indicates that something new is coming to Facebook and Slide wa...

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Startup Marketing: Metrics and Strategy

At Workstreamer I’m in charge of marketing and strategy. As I have begun developing our marketing, I have become deeply bothered by the lack of resources available to marketing strategists of early early-stage companies. Aside from the awesome work and insights of Dave McClure and Andrew Chen there seems to be a real lack of resources. Distribution of a new company is maybe more important than the product itself. Yet, everywhere you look online, all you find are blogs about web-design, venture capital and branding. Yes, there are generic marketing blogs, but how you market a new web service is a unique beast. So where the blogs written by top strategists? Where are the articles dealing with how you ‘scale’ or ‘bootstrap’ a marketing campaign? Starting Monday I’m going to devote the next couple months to discussing the marketing strategies and tactics we will deploy with Workstreamer. This should be a great learning experience for me personally. I have never marketed someth...

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The Obama TwitterFountain

I have used the new application TwitterFountain to show instances of the keyword “Obama” in Twitter superimposed over images tagged ‘politics’ on Flickr. This is sweet! There is some great potential here for brands...

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How to Make Email Introductions

One of the best things you can do to build social capital is to make introductions to people who could mutually benefit from the connection. Yesterday I mentioned that introductions are actually great both for the person making the intro and the person receiving one. Today I want to suggest a tactic for making a proper introduction over email. Although it may seem less personal, I have found that email is the best way to initially introduce people. Arranging a phone introduction is awkward – better to introduce two people over email and then let them discuss their business without you and at their convenience. A good email introduction has a subject line such as “Sam Meet Ben. Ben Meet Sam.” When writing an introduction I like to address one person directly and then suggest that that the other person initiates the next communication. For example, if Ben asked me to introduce him to Peter, I’d write something like Peter, I wanted to introduce you to Ben. Ben is the product guru...

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Anything Can Be Hacked. Everything Should Be Hacked.

Umair Haque has a great post on how to hack the industrial economy. Umair’s main point is that hacking should be encouraged and applied to the world’s big problems. Why is everything hackable today? Because in the edgeconomy, the universe of the economically possible has exploded: resources are more and more accessible. And if you can get your hands on it, you can hack it. The point is simple: nothing is impossible when you’re hacking. In the comments the idea of a shared wiki for hacker collaboration is shared. I believe that Workstreamer will immediately be able to make an impact in this very type of context and that really excites me. One application that is making a positive difference in my life as of late is called is itself a hack: Ad Art. Ad Art replaces advertising on websites with art images. The art shown is updated every two weeks and features contemporary artists and curators. Such a great idea and I find myself actually exploring lots of new art. You’re right Umair...

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Life Cycle of Cool

As an MBA student I learned about the product life cycle, explaining how the conditions in which a product is sold changes over time as it moves through a succession of stages. While I didn’t have time to make a pretty graphic, I thought I’d take a crack at what the lifecycle of “cool” might look like. You can see the main axis correlation between time and impact. The longer a product can keep its status of cool, the more of an impact it can make on a large scale. Figuring out how to make something cool or viral is really the perfect storm, or a series of storms coming together at just the right time. One thing to notice is that the sustainability of a product or service crowned cool is much shorter than the in the traditional product lifecycle. I have also included a period for rapid decline since our modern, more prolific flow of information, means that an anti-cool meme can result in a product being dethroned at a much faster rate. One thought that also occurred to me is h...

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Don’t Be Fooled By Venture Capital Brokers

On Friday night I published an inappropriate post. A reader pointed out my mistake in the comments and I subsequently pulled the post. I owe an apology for making accusations without proper due diligence. For that I apologize. While my methods were unfair, the point I was making is 100% valid. If you are raising capital for a startup, you will run across no shortage of people who *claim* they can help you get funded. It might be in the form of someone asking for equity in exchange for serving as a company advisor. Or, it could be a company like Terem Capital who offers ‘funding’ workshops at $2495 a pop. As a general rule of thumb, unless the person you are speaking with is a) capable themselves of anteing up cash, or b) has themselves received substantial funding, take all advice with a grain of salt and with NO EQUITY or other compensation. I understand the difficulties for entrepreneur raising money when they personally have few connections. Under such scenarios, pressure builds...

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Don’t Get Ripped Off By Venture Capital “Brokers”

Stuff like this makes me really angry. I noticed this in Google Adwords. Entrepreneurs who don’t know any better might be enticed to spend $2495 for a “workshop” with Terem Capital. Right. Terem lists no portfolio companies on its site and several anonymous quotes. And who is running the workshop? Jodin Hansell whose bio credentials include producing a pilot for an animated television series and Steve Herczeg who has 27 LinkedIn connections! From the website: “Terem has the skills and contacts to guide a new business much like a shirpa guiding a climber over rough terrain” I’m all for starting consulting comapnies, but this seems borderline dishonest...

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Exclusivity and Social Design

Exclusive: Adjective. a) Excluding or having power to exclude b) Limiting or limited to possession, control, or use by a single individual or group Good Magazine has an interesting dissection this month of the world’s most exclusive groups. Not surprisingly almost all the groups have very limited information available about who they are, what they do, or what they believe in. Examples include the Order of Skull and Bones, the Bilderberg Group and the Bohemian Grove. However, the group that Good determines to have the most power – and the most exclusivity? The World Economic Forum. Interestingly, Davos is completely open about who is involved and what are its objectives. Most attempts at designing exclusive communities start with the premise that the group must be exclusive and/or secretive from the start. Maybe it’s the wrong approach.

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PitchMonster: Prepare for Venture Capital and Angel Pitches

I wanted to try something new. I am making available a few pages of advice I put together from leading venture capitalists and angel investors on how entrepreneurs should prepare for an investment pitch. In the spirit of Seth Godin, I am calling this PitchMonster. Hopefully I’ll create some additional e-bookish resources also under the PitchMonster name when I have time. Download Pitch Monster Here. These are notes that combine my own personal thoughts and experiences, along with those of the best minds in the early-stage investing business. I hope this helps a few people out there. Also, if folks come across sections they feel need updating or clarification please do not hesitate to contact me. If you are coming across this post and it’s your first time visiting, feel free to download PitchMonster for free, but also please consider subscribing via RSS.

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To Monetize Is To Flummox

The web startup world fascinates me. It simultaneously contains the most potential of any industry, and yet, is also the most precariously positioned. For example, Facebook is a company managed and owned by some of the smartest minds in the world, and yet these same genius-level strategists can’t seem to figure out how they will make money; a strange quandary when you think about it. Facebook needs to innovate and test new routes to monetization, but fearing backlash from another Beacon-type scenario, it must get its next attempt exactly right. Facebook’s is a situation that will undoubtedly make for one of the great Harvard Business School case studies of all time. Yet, at least Facebook has set a precedent that users must sacrifice *something* for use of the service. What happens when a service with no precendet, like Twitter, tries the same?  For any true strategist or problem solver, the monetization issue facing Facebook –and all other web startups — is a true int...

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Entrepreneurs and Venture Capitalists Outsourcing to Product Development Firms

This post was originally written while waiting at the airport in Delhi, India. Recently a number of memes have circulated the blogosphere discussing the impending challenges to the traditional venture capital model. I have been living this new reality and actively commenting on it. Let’s start with a few assumptions: Venture capitalists look to minimize risk in their investments, while maximizing portfolio return Entrepreneurs look to spend as little money out of pocket as possible while maximizing the equity they retain in a new venture Due to low barriers-to-entry for entrepreneurs, the traditional VC model (investing larger sums of money for controlling rights) has taken a backseat in early-stage deals For non-technical founders who require ‘technical reinforcements’ in order to develop an initial prototype, cash flow can be especially tight as the majority of resources go to the third-party builders. One of the common models used by non-technical or limited resourced fou...

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Don’t Mess With Facebook And Its Potential Advertisers

Facebook deleted my account last Thursday and I assumed they would change their minds very quickly given the circumstances. I assumed wrong. The reason I was kicked off Facebook is both silly and kind of fucked-up. Maybe I’m just “one user,” a “statistic” Facebook could care less about given their current circumstances. But considering what I have done for the site, acting as a true evangelist — and maybe their best monetization strategist — the least I deserve is a response. Here’s what happened. The day Facebook Pages launched, and to the knowledge of Facebook, I built five pages on behalf of brands I liked: Polo/Ralph Lauren, Lacoste, Patagonia, Kleiner Perkins (the investment firm) and The Sopranos (TV show). I documented all of it. Then out of the blue, Facebook got angry with me. FACT: I did not ever market to people in these communities; instead I let each community grow organically. FACT: It would have been simple for any of these brands to...

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The Trouble With Convertible Note Deals

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post explaining how many startups are playing dangerous games, banking on small convertible note seed rounds to bridge the gap until they can raise their valuation and then close a Series A without giving up as much of the company. A VC friend recently shared an additional insight that he finds troubling with these types of convertible note deals. It seems that several VC firms have “loaned” $250-$400,000 for which they have given the receiving startup little to no additional support. Of course the same level of human capital investment can’t be expected from venture firms investing such small monetary amounts, but still, the idea in taking smart money is receiving smart money benefits. It also seems that some VCs use this “interim” period as a chance to evaluate whether the seeded company is really taking off. The expectation of convertible note deals is that there will be a follow on Series A relatively quickly with the seeding venture firm leadi...

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The Art of The Delayed Venture Capital Investment

Most venture capitalists never say “no” outright. However, none ever say “yes” outright either. The reason for this is that the longer a venture capitalist can delay having to invest, the less risky is their investment. In fact, every day that they can delay cutting a check is another day that you the entrepreneur are building, acquiring customers and refining your business model. So what can an entrepreneur do? Unfortunately, entrepreneurs do not have much leverage with venture folk, except for the threat of a missed opportunity. Therefore once you can get one group to commit, the fun begins. As soon as you can reasonably and mostly honestly start to apply the pressure, the faster you will cut through the red tape and get to what you ordered. Also never be afraid to let a VC think you will walk away – in fact, maybe you should. Bill Burnham has a nice post for what to do once you have a term sheet in hand.

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Update: I Got Kicked Off Facebook

Just an update for RSS readers becasue many have inquired what happened that resulted in my Facebook Account being deleted. Nick O’Neill has a post at AllFacebook explaining what happened. I have been in contact with both Ralph Lauren and Facebook and hope to be back soon. I will provide an update when/if that happens.

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I Got Kicked Off Facebook

This past New Year’s I made Ten Predictions for 2008 on this blog, including a bonus, eleventh prediction… Well that eleventh prediction has come true: I have been kicked off Facebook for what is, in my opinion, a really big mistake/misunderstanding. Of course since I am the one who was kicked off I will leave it to someone else to cover the story (to avoid bias) and I will link to it when that happens. Needless to say, I have really not done anything wrong and I am confident my account will reinstated after additional consideration. For those keeping track, overall my predictions 1, 4, 6, 7 and 8 have been dead-on (well Yahoo is still a question mark). Not a bad batting average so far! Sam...

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Top Down Selection: Sifting For Quality Information

When I was young we used to have a blast in Florida scooping up gobs of beach sand in a sifter and then shaking out the sand in hopes of finding a shark’s tooth. Now, I find myself doing the same thing with information. Clearly there is more tech information available than one can reasonably consume in a day, or a lifetime. I have already shared how my information consumption habits have shifted to my reading hundreds of micro hunks of content, streamed to me throughout the day, a concept I’m basing a company around. Clearly, this is a trend with legs. Stowe calls this state of mind, having a Tabbed Cerebral Cortex after reading how Amanda Mooney processes information. Likewise, Howard Rheingold is conducting in-class experiments to see how ‘multitasking’ is affecting his students cognition as they read blogs and IM during his lectures. But don’t be fooled. This trend is not all good. Sean Murphy has a great follow-up post to mine serving as a solid counter argume...

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Who Are We? Welcome to the Tribe.

The other day I was talking to a friend about the various communications outlets I use such as this blog, my RSS reader, Twitter, Facebook and a host of other services. My friend then asked what kind of people read Leveraging Ideas? I explained that the make-up of my readership is basically smart people who ‘get it’ technology wise. He was surprised that my readership comes from all over the country, including a huge span in age and profession. I explained that this same group of highly-connected people tend to use and interact across a number of different mediums, like Twitter, Friend Feed or Tumblr, though some tend to only focus their attention on one or two. So, my friend asked, “Are there a lot of people in this technology tribe?” I’ve often struggled with the right term, or phrase to describe all of ‘us’, the folks using Twitter, writing blogs, and generally conversing on social media via the web. In my case, the tribe I’m a part of extends well beyond one servi...

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Monetizing Twitter

Adrian Henry from ReadWriteWeb offers the following suggestion as the ‘Ultimate Twitter Revenue Model’: The perennial debate surrounding Twitter’s revenue model continues to live on…If an acquisition isn’t shaping up, monetization will be necessary to keep Twitter afloat…leveraging context may prove to be a great way to drive revenues while maintaining the integrity of the platform. Essentially, this would entail Twitter parsing over the Tweets of a given user, as well as the Tweets of the users he/she is following. Common keywords, themes, and phrases are then pulled from this data and associated with that user. As a result, highly-targeted ads can be displayed based on the user’s network of content (”web design”, for example). These simple text ads would look very similar to regular Tweets, but would be clearly marked as “Sponsored Content”. Facebook employs a comparable strategy through their News Feed, although ads are based on demo...

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Ten Interesting Memes Plucked From The Blogosphere

I’ve been noticing a lot of memes floating around the social media/2.0 space over the last two weeks and I decided to pluck 10 of my favorites. If you haven’t been glued to Google Reader or Twitter, here is a run-down of memes worth paying attention to… Socialprise: Social tools + enterprise = “socialprise.” According to RedWriteWeb this meme represents one of the biggest shifts in business today. AVC questions whether it’s an oxymoron. Suckage: Refers to a general feeling among smart technologists such as Umair Haque that entrepreneurs aren’t addressing real problems but instead creating ’me-too’s.’ Umair has even issued a challenge. PaaS: Refers to Platforms as a Service (as opposed to Software as a Service). This meme was coined by Tony Bishop who sees it as the invasion of the consumer web into the enterprise Twitter Liberation Organization (TLO)*: Annoying concept kicked around by Techcrunch, Hank Williams and others suggesting that Twitter is ‘to...

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The Anti-Facebook

We recently met with a well-known VC who offered the following observation (I am paraphrasing): At its core, Facebook is pure entertainment. It helps people waste time and feel important – and that’s good. However, we believe that there is an opportunity for a company that does the exact opposite of Facebook. Instead of helping a community of people waste time and be entertained, this service would help them get work done and accomplish productive things. The potential market is enormous. Indeed.

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