April 2010
Ben Arnon: A Foursquare Graduation: Jeremy Arnon's... →
Jeremy Arnon is one of our angel investors (as is his twin brother Ben). This is his interview with Tristan Walker, Foursquare’s VP of Business Development, as published in the Huffington Post.
So, I e-mailed Dennis (Crowley). I e-mailed him about ten times before he responded. He finally got back to me, said he was happy to chat and asked if I was ever going to be in NY. Of course I said...
I will be in SF 5/10-5/12 and LA 5/13-5/16
Who wants to meet up? Email me: dave@postling.com
hello, romantic.: one last try. →
instead of caving in and going through kickstarter, i am trying one last time to raise enough funds to finish developing this pile of film that is slowly collecting more and more grain in the depths of my refrigerator. i will save you the pain of explaining once again how appreciative i would…
I don’t have any money myself (still paying off CC debt), but I think Megan needs it more...
erinjoan:
Reason I’m Single #26: Currently watching a NOVA special on behavioral economics and irrational purchase behavior.
Swoon.
“Apple is planning to charge advertisers a penny each time a consumer sees a...”
– Mac Rumors: Apple Mac Rumors and News You Care About
Brass. balls.
(via superamit)
Startups: Hire my friend David. He's a developer.
My friend David is a software developer from Chicago who quit his job, put all his stuff in storage, and drove to NYC in hopes to join a startup. Since he doesn’t know the community here, I’m helping introduce him to the right people. He has a BS and Masters in Computer Science from Cornell and has a specialty in machine learning. He’s looking to work at a startup where he can...
How to Win the Hearts of Investors
stevewelch:
How to Win the Hearts of Investors
To me investing in early stage entrepreneurs is kind of like dating with the hopes of finding the girl you are going to marry. Like a marriage, there is no turning back once you put money into a deal and while it can be very rewarding, it also requires a long-term commitment of working with the person you invest in.
Like my dating philosophy...
“Innovation is almost insane by definition: most people view any truly innovative...”
– Ben Horowitz (via entrepreneurwisdom)
JUST PLAIN CRAZY: Startup Raises $14 Million Six... →
First of all, can we all agree we’re in a second bubble?
Second, I wonder if he took this latest $14M and put it straight into his pocket as a reward for letting his investors increase their equity stake.
HP to Acquire Palm for $1.2 Billion →
HP and Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase Palm, a provider of smartphones powered by the Palm webOS mobile operating system, at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $1.2 billion. The transaction has been approved by the HP and Palm boards of directors.
“Realize that a startup puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything...”
– Marc Andreessen (via saadiq) (via mikehudack) (via brooksjordan)
and over and over and over. Seriously, how nuts do you have to be to do a startup?
Texas gov. shoots, kills 'wily' coyote during jog... →
shorterexcerpts:
elizablr:
nb808:
shaneguiter:
Pistol-packing Texas Gov. Rick Perry has a message for wily coyotes out there: Don’t mess with my dog.
Perry told The Associated Press on Tuesday he needed just one shot from the laser-sighted pistol he sometimes carries while jogging to take down a coyote that menaced his puppy during a February run near Austin.
Perry said he will carry...
Pozit.com — A design process retrospective →
razorsharp:
A designer’s process is a personal approach to solving design problems. This is a walkthrough of my design process for Pozit, a recent project here at thoughtbot.
Kevin Burg is a fantastic designer, so it’s great to get a look at his workflow. Sadly, neither my sketching nor my photoshop skills will ever match the quality of his!
Kevin designed the new Postling homepage and I...
“Lastly, increased excitement around early-stage companies is also responsible...”
– Frothy Times for Web Angel Investing (via tylerhwillis)
So true it’s painful. This is the beginning of the 2nd bubble, no doubt.
It's official: awesome people are changing the...
heyamberrae:
We LOVED our first NY Nightowls meet-up and hope you did too!
Missed out?! NOT TO WORRY! We’re back at it for round two this Tuesday, May 4.
Work on awesome stuff? Stay up late at night? It’s your lucky day! This is the meet-up for you!
30 spots to fill. RSVP to experience the fun.
Photos from tonight’s meet-up:
(via nynightowls)
Looks like an amazing time! Sucks that I live...
Charles Smith's Tumbl: The paywall comes crashing... →
Robert Parker’s wine advocate has shut down free access to its bulletin board system:
http://dat.erobertparker.com/bboard/BBAnnouncement.htm
And with that announcement, 9 years of my posts and contributions came to a crashing halt, with no notice, no email, nothing. As I understand it, the…
Definitely a lesson to be learned here about community management.
Smash Summit: 5/12, San Francisco →
tedr:
Even today’s marketing agencies agree that brand respect has to be earned, not bought. Marketing can no longer be outsourced or left to a single department, but the action of every employee in…
I will be there as well! Dave McClure has asked me to present Postling… See you there.
Less is Mohrer: Buying Apple stock instead of... →
mikehudack:
mikehudack:
…
Posts like this have been floating around the blogosphere over the past week as they’ve reached new highs. But the “I’d have X if I invested Y in Z” is a stupid game to play. It’s just not how it works. If you invested money in AAPL in the past, you’d probably have sold it when…
Agreed. I did buy AAPL a while ago. I sold a few months later for significant gains. ...
Blippy Apologizes For Publishing User Credit/Debit... →
A much, much better response from Blippy. Wishing them the best.
1 tag
heykurt asked: Could facebook be bought at this point, and if so how much?
“A start-up is a temporary organization designed to discover a profitable,...”
– Steven Blank
Maybe your start-up is, Mr. Blank. Personally I’m not in business simply to conduct cheap and risk-free R&D for Fortune 500 companies. We’re building a real business here at blip. A sustainable business with philosophies and vision and revenue and people. And hopefully the...
Watchhiten:
A video of Drew Houston’s presentation about Dropbox at the Startup Lessons Learned conference on April 23rd, 2010.
My favorite part of his presentation: “Search is great for harvesting demand, but not for creating demand.”
How to present to investors →
Good stuff from Naval at Venturehacks. If you’ve raised money before, you know all of this. For the rest of you, check it out (slides + audio).
“[E]ach of us, writes Bill Plotkin, has a survival dance and a sacred dance, but...”
– The Monster In Your Head » The Gift of the Survival Dance
The Monster In Your Head » Thirty Reminders of a... →
1. Take time to meditate, reflect, and study.
2. Cultivate a household that appreciates the training of a mindful leader.
3. Create moments of silence: retreat to be alone on occasion.
4. Contemplate the impermanent nature of wealth and career.
5. Show respect to those who teach you how to become a mindful leader.
6. On occasion, meditate and study with others who aspire to become mindful...
“It started with Facebook Connect. It extended with search from inside the...”
– Is Facebook the new internet and how soon before Microsoft tries to buy it ? « blog maverick
“The thing is, we’re all in this together. We’re a community of helpers, a sangha...”
– The Monster In Your Head » Barbers Can’t Cut Their Own Hair
“The common wisdom is that you need to be able to describe your product/company...”
– Turning on your Reality Distortion Field « Steve Blank
People have asked me how I managed to raise money in 6 days. The answer is exactly as Steve says - I can pitch enough of my vision for Postling in 30 seconds that investors say, “Tell me more.”
But don’t think it comes...
"Imagine if the Tea Party was Black", by Tim Wise →
shorterexcerpts:
strawberrytwin:
notentirely:
“Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict...
Introduce yourself!
Apparently my post struck a nerve, getting nearly 150 notes + top 5 on Hacker News, resulting in about 6,000 page views. And now I’m at 559 followers, which means I don’t know anything about a bunch of you. So leave me a note on this beautiful Saturday morning…
Who are you? Where are you from? What do you do? What’s your favorite food?
“The company did post a statement on a Posterous blog, which only has one post,...”
– Blippy Incident Shows Why Tech Startups Need An Organized PR Program
This is not to say that you need a PR firm, but you need to think about the potential issues that could arise. How will you handle them? What’s your messaging? Who do you respond to and what should said response be?
Are you...
Tumblr API Wishlist
mwunsch:
With the features Twitter announced at Chirp and Facebook’s new “OpenGraph”, there’s a lot of movement happening in the space of Web Services. Here is a list of improvements and/or additions I would like to see to the Tumblr API:
Better Authentication
It is crazy, CRAZY, that Tumblr has you submit email addresses and passwords unencrypted over the wire as params in the request....
“Location-awareness leads to vector-awareness.”
– Dave Winer opining on the future of location services as not merely descriptive but also predictive. (via erin) (via naveen)
Definitely. With enough data, you can develop similarity scores between places. This is just like Amazon sims - Customers who bought this also bought - except for places:...
“What if Larry and Sergey wanted to recreate PageRank today?
You know what I...”
– FactoryCity » Understanding the Open Graph Protocol
“[Steve Jobs] did the same thing with the original Mac, although then, Flash was...”
– Bruce Tognazzini, Mac & the iPad - History Repeats Itself
Tog founded the Human Interface Group at Apple Computer. His latest article has been making the rounds with people getting all excited about Steve Job’s fearlessness as a leader and long-term perspective. While rare for a CEO and...