Some great interviews
July 30, 2007
Here’s a great audio interview that W3W3 did with Brad Feld. He talks about his new office in Boulder, and all the activity here. He also talks about TechStars and some of the companies beginning to emerge from it such as J-Squared Media, Intense Debate, and MadKast. You can give Intense Debate a spin by commenting on this post. Brad also talks about some great exits happening lately here in Colorado and beyond and some broader venture capital trends and investment themes.
Meanwhile, over on a brand new and apparently anonymous blog called CocosDir, there is a great interview with David Duey. David and Heather are the couple from Florida that are moving to Boulder that I wrote about a few weeks ago. That same blog also has a nice interview with Andrew Hyde about Startup Weekend. I can only hope this new blogger keeps chugging. I enjoyed reading about both people.
Ok, ok, I got an iPhone already
July 28, 2007
I held out for a couple of weeks. I said “I’ll wait and get a second generation iPhone.” I was doing so well.
Then my Blackberry Pearl started sputtering out (email me if you want it cheap). It kept reporting that the SIM card was missing, and I had to reboot it three times a day. And it mysterious stopped syncing my calendar. This, coupled with not being the coolest kid on my block anymore, was all I needed. It put me over the edge.
I went to the Apple store at 8:45 one night, and there were 6 iPhones left. I set it up with my MacBook Pro and had no problems. The iPhone loved me. And I loved it. I stayed up playing until 3am that night.
I noted two big missing things right away that would affect me. There was no RSS reader and the Bluetooth implementation was pretty weak. The rumor is that they’ll be updating the Bluetooth implementation via firmware in the future. Let’s hope that’s true - I’d like to be able to see the contact record for whoever is calling me appear on my MacBook Pro. That’s a nice feature. It should also let me send text messages from my Mac via my phone. Other phones do it - seems like a big oversight for the iPhone.
RSS turned out to be no problem. I’m a huge Newsgator fan and love that my feeds are always sync’d no matter where I am. Once I saw their iPhone implementation I was blown away. It’s a sweet reader that fits right into the iPhone experience.
Maybe this Newsgator reader will even give Feld a reason to give the iBrick a second chance? ;-)
MadKast - Share the love, bloggy style
July 26, 2007
There are several companies at TechStars that are nearing an early launch. One of them is MadKast, which you might have noticed on my blog for the last week or so. It’s the little green icon next to the end of the title of each post. MadKast makes it easy for people who are reading a blog post to quickly share it with their friends. It supports both email and MMS sharing, as well as all the popular social bookmarking sites. They also plan to support sharing via instant messengers soon. MMS is neat because the recipient actually gets the full blog post on their mobile phone. MadKast also plans to deliver a suite of analytics that help publishers understand reader engagement, sharing statistics, and more.
I like that MadKast saves every contact that I share content with, so that next time I want to share something, I don’t have to re-enter the recipients information. I can just tag an existing contact or two, and click share. It’s even nicer that this works across any MadKast enabled blog, not just the one where I initially created the contact.
Johann, Josh, Doug, and Tony are all from the Los Angeles area and are the founders behind MadKast. They’ve spent the last eight weeks or so here in Boulder building MadKast and falling in love with the place. Now MadKast has decided to stay here in Boulder after the summer, officially making MadKast a Colorado startup. Woot!
Try out MadKast for your blog, and let the guys know what you think. They’re on about 35 blogs so far and it’s still in beta, but they’ve made this really easy to do - it’s a single snippet of javascript that goes right before your </HEAD> tag. If you use Blogger or TypePad, they’ve made it even easier with auto-installers. Either way, it should take you about 30 seconds.
Let the MadKast guys know what you think. There’s a feedback button right inside the widget itself and contact information on their web site. They’ve been great at taking feedback all summer and iterating quickly.
Top ten reasons to go to Startup Weekend
July 20, 2007
Sure, Startup Weekend didn’t crank out a working project in two days. The reasons are now very well understood.
I’ve been to BarCamp about 5 times now. For me, it always results in meeting a few interesting people, and learning a little bit. This is much like what I get out of a conference, but more focused on my community and self-organized to ensure relevance to the attendees. By mid-day Sunday it’s always fizzling out and I lose interest in the leftover topics.
Startup Weekend is completely different. Here’s how.
It’s obvious to most that you learn by doing. The simple fact that Startup Weekend has a community united by an audacious common goal (however unrealistic) bonds the participants in a way that a BarCamp or any conference for that matter simply cannot match. Rather than petering out on Sunday night, Startup Weekend just keeps getting more interesting. The social dynamics that come with a bunch of really tired and highly invested people are just amazing. Especially for startup junkies.
Startup Weekend is not about the end result, although that can be quite interesting. It’s about the journey, the friends you meet along the way, and the direct and meaningful experience that you now share with them. Here are my top ten reasons that you should go to Startup Weekend.
10. You actually earn meaningful equity in an interesting company for just two days work. This is #10 because this is most likely worth nothing. But hey, you never know.
9. Be known. Startup culture in any city is a tight knit group. Make sure everybody knows you’re a part of it - otherwise you may miss out on being part of the next interesting thing in your town.
8. If you go, and spread the word, then more people will get it. So many just don’t and it’s a little sad.
7. You will seriously get high off the energy. The live feed, the blog coverage. People will care that you’re there. Even the haters will come out in droves.
6. You will learn to have new respect for what other people with other skills bring to the table - this will help you tremendously in your career.
5.You will improve the local tech community in ways that you cannot comprehend ahead of time. Future co-founders will meet, experts will emerge, people will catch the startup bug. This is good for you, and it’s good for your town.
4. You’ll probably fail fast. When you do your next startup, you’ll have an invaluable failure under your belt. If you don’t fail fast, you might have have something meaningful on your hands.
3. You will understand who the true rock stars in your community are and this knowledge is simply invaluable. Rocks stars do stuff - you can’t stop them. Here you get to witness them at their best. You get to identify them.
2. You will make new friends. Not acquaintances. I’m super introverted, and I made new lifelong friends at Startup Weekend. Yes, lifelong. I knew them before, but now I get them, all from that amazing weekend.
1. I can guarantee that you will never forget your experience. Since all of life is simply a series of (hopefully) meaningful experiences, you should be looking to have more. This is an easy way.
Andrew has allowed the fervor around Startup Weekend to take the natural course. It’s just launched a new web site, and is now planned in Toronto, Houston, Boston, New York City, West Lafayette (IN), and Washington D.C. This is largely the handiwork of attendees who experienced the first Startup Weekend in Boulder and of those who participated online via the live video and chat feeds. There were around 70 in Boulder, but there were literally thousands who watched, listened, and rooted for us all weekend long who will now help run with Startup Weekend in their own cities.
It’s nice to see that Startup Weekend is no longer just a Boulder phenomenon. My prediction is that we’ll see different results in different cities and for different reasons. This should continue to be fun to watch.
Thinking Open
July 17, 2007
Jason Haislmaier of HRO has finally stopped bugging me. He’s been sending me emails about open source legal issues for several months now. Don’t get me wrong, these are very valuable emails, covering topics like IBM’s patent vault and GPLv3 and open source Java. I’ve been encouraging him to start a blog instead.
Luckily for me, Jason has started a blog called Thinking Open and I can now just subscribe by RSS. Thanks Jason - I’ll enjoy reading your thoughts on my own schedule from here on out.
Jason is also hosting a webinar on the topic of GPLv3 with OpenLogic this Thursday the 19th at noon MDT, which I’ve added the Colorado Startups events calendar.
Thanks Jason - keep it coming.
Startup Weekend - I’m recovered
July 10, 2007
I’m looking back on Startup Weekend now with a clear head. It seems that I blogged about 100 posts in 54 hours this weekend, over on StartupWeekend.com.
On Monday morning, when I wrote the explanation for why vosnap.com was not launched on time I was fighting through being very tired and very frustrated. But reading through it again today, it still captures what happened accurately. Really, the 40+ comments to that post tell the story - they’re worth a read. Many of the people involved commented, as did the people around the world who were following us on a live cam, via the blog, on TechCrunch, Facebook, and elsewhere. It’s amazing to see how these people agonized right along with us, and their big-hearted responses to my “brutal honesty” post.
Andrew Hyde did an amazing job with this. Interest is pouring in to both of us from all over the world - people want to do their own Startup Weekend. I think Startup Weekend could very easily become a phenomenon.
VoSnap will launch. Today I saw a new alpha version that was basically working, thanks to several on the dev team. People are still working on it today but obviously not in as focused of a manner. I’m still a shareholder in the company, like my 71 oh so awesome new friends. And I can’t wait - but I will.
Jeff Barr of Amazon Web Services wants to meet you on Tuesday
July 9, 2007
Jeff Barr was just at TechStars tonight to talk about Amazon Web Services (EC2, S3, etc). It’s fascinating stuff, and many of the TechStars teams are using these technologies to keep costs down early in their lives. Jeff explains the benefits of the Amazon Web Services quite well - he’s a Senior Evangelist for AWS. The benefits to startups are absolutely huge.
Jeff’s plane home in the morning got delayed a few hours, so he’s hosting a get-together at the Boulderado in downtown Boulder at noon on Tuesday (7/10) for anyone who would like to come hang out and learn more about Amazon Web Services. Just drop Jeff an email at jbarr at amazon dot com if you’d like to come.
Boulder bound
July 9, 2007
Heather and David Duey are a couple from Florida who applied for TechStars for their company, Georneys. They didn’t quite get in, but during the process we exchanged around 50 emails and hopefully I helped them to refine their concept a bit.
They came out to Boulder for a few events and like many who experience Boulder, they loved the vibe. They recently decided to relocate their family and their company to Boulder, as you can see below.
They cited Boulder’s “active and open entrepreneurial community” as the key factor in their move.
I’m writing this post here at Startup Weekend, and there’s another story just like this coming out of here. Jeff Ledoux came out from Rhode Island to interview with Me.dium and hang out at Startup Weekend through his connection to his old college buddy, Andrew Hyde. Jeff said tonight that he’s moving to Boulder for sure - even if the Me.dium interview doesn’t work out. So I asked him why. He said “I’m drawn to the startup scene here, which is huge. It’s really non-existent in Rhode Island, compared to here.”
This is a clear trend, and it’s very satisfying to see weekly examples of people coming here just for the amazing startup culture.
Welcome to the neighborhood David, Heather, and Jeff!
Startup Weekend is now live
July 7, 2007
I’m at StartupWeekend in Boulder and I am liveblogging it. You can literally watch the product development, decision process, give us some feedback on the business, and even do some hourly yoga with us on the live video stream. Stop by, and pass the word!
Startup weekend kicks off in Boulder
July 6, 2007
We’re in downtown Boulder at StartupWeekend. The idea is simple: Get about 70 people together, and build a startup from start to finish in just one weekend. The group wants to launch the startup by Sunday night.
And yes, there are 70 people huddled here. I’m blogging all the gory details, every time a decision is made, over on StartupWeekend.com. Follow along this weekend, and comment!
Wish us luck.
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