Open Dinner with 2009 European Marshall Fellows
March 4th, 2009 • Marshall Memorial Fellowship • 1 comment
My yearly duty to coordinate for some European Marshall Fellows has swung back around. As a part of that, I’m opening up one of the dinners to everyone in the community. If you’re at all interested in meeting some Europeans, talking about international relations, politics, or just hanging out – feel free to sign up and join us for dinner on March 12th at 6pm. Full details on upcoming.
Khosla on Venture Capital
March 4th, 2009 • Entrepreneurship + Startups, Technology, Venture Capital • 3 comments
Charlie Paparelli pointed me to this New York Times article which has two quotes that I very much agree with. First Vinod Khosla says:
Mr. Khosla said his firm operates like old-fashioned venture capitalists, “where people took technical risks and really helped entrepreneurs, as opposed to today, when a lot of the venture capitalists are financial investors, more spreadsheets than technology.”
and then
“That’s what Pierre is uniquely equipped to do, because he has run operations and founded a company,” he said. “He understands what entrepreneurs are dealing with, can help them with technical problems and engage at a level that an M.B.A. can’t,” Mr. Khosla said.
This is exaclty what we are trying to do with Shotput Ventures. We had a great kick off evening last night and I’m really looking forward to the first class starting this summer.
US Foreign Assistance Responsibilities
March 2nd, 2009 • Business • No comments
I was recently at a meeting where the below chart was handed out. Download the original from the Brookings Institution to get a better view of the page.
The chart, made by Lael Brainard for her paper Security by Other Means, shows how complex US foreign assistance objectives are. More importantly you can clearly tell that when so many organizations have such overlapping priorities on the same objectives, there has to be waste in the system.
Most of us (by us, I mean you folks reading this post) have probably never worked in government. But we have worked in a corporate environment. Think about how many times you’ve had groups/individuals with authority/responsibility over the same objective. How badly did that slow down the process to get anything done? More importantly how much money was wasted on getting everyone to agree to accomplish something?
I think there is a lot to learn here. Besides the fact that visualizations can be made to make things look more complex than they possibly really are in order to prove a point.
Atlanta Open Coffee – March 2, 2009
February 26th, 2009 • Conferences + Events • No comments
We’re sticking OTP for the next Open Coffee. It’ll be March 2, 2009 from 2pm until 4pm at the Northern Star Coffeehouse in Norcross.
If you’re an entrepreneur, angel investor, or VC you’re welcome to join us. If you’re not one of those three things, you’re welcome to stay away from this get together.
Feel free to RSVP below or on the Upcoming event. Or don’t and just show up. Whatever.
Also, do you find keeping up with these local events tough? If so, I’ve started an announcements only mailing list that you can subscribe to. Just send an email to atlstartups-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and you’ll get the announcements. I plan to keep the list postings to about one every few days at most but in no case more than one a day. Or you can just keep coming here to read the latest event scoop.
Georgia Startup “Award”
February 25th, 2009 • Entrepreneurship + Startups, Rants, Technology • 17 comments
About a month ago I got into a scuffle over these tweets that I made regarding a comment that Tino Mantella made about Twitter where he said (emphasis is mine):
Q: Are you twittering or blogging?
A: On and off. I only do it when I have something to say. I am not a big fan of telling people my every step. I can’t understand why people are twitting that they are going to buy ice cream, recording baseball scores minute by minute, or what they did on their summer vacation. My news just is not that interesting, and, in my opinion, theirs isn’t either… message to twitters… stay of [sic] the airwaves unless you have something to tell me.
In case you think this is a case of a reporter getting the facts wrong, you can read essentially the same message on Tino’s blog.
The point of the scuffle was that I didn’t “get” TAG because I don’t go to their events (completely true – I only go when invited and someone else is paying for me to attend). That said, this tweet from Allen Graber says it all for me:
I’d say the whole thing deserves one of these stickers.
Update: To be fair, I think this post may be skewed because of my recent interaction with Tino and Allen does say this to defend TAG.
Update 2: One final note and I want to be clear about this. I think the staff and Tino are doing a great job putting on a HUGE event. It’s hard putting on events and it’s easy to find fault at this, that, and the other. At Startup Riot, WiFi access was a MAJOR FAIL. That said, I think there needs to be a little bit more thought on who is footing the bill for a large event like this. Should it be the large technology companies here in town or startups? I favor the large tech companies. But that’s just me.
Update 3: As Paul Freet points out, the costs to participate are spelled out on TAG’s site. That’s totally cool and so the above is probably unfounded but still perhaps some thought needs to be around the ability of these companies to pay. But do note that five scholarships are given to waive the entire $1,000 fee.
