Khosla on Venture Capital

March 4th, 2009 • 3 comments Entrepreneurship + Startups, Technology, Venture Capital
Tags: Shotput Ventures, Venture Capital

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.

Georgia Startup “Award”

February 25th, 2009 • 17 comments Entrepreneurship + Startups, Rants, Technology
Tags: startups, Technology Association of Georgia

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.

Startup Riot 2009 – The Good And The Bad

February 24th, 2009 • 8 comments Business, Conferences + Events, Entrepreneurship + Startups, Venture Capital
Tags: Atlanta, presentations, Startup Riot, startups, Venture Capital

Wow, so Startup Riot is done for another year.  It was bigger this year than last year in terms of total attendees (300+ this year!).  Again, like last year I can’t really judge if it was a success.  So instead I suggest you read what Paul Stamatiou, Lance Weatherby, TechDrawl/Celia Dyer, Dan Melton, and Tejus Parikh, said about the event.  Like last year, I haven’t been able to find any negative blog posts on the event.

So from last year, I learned two things and I think I fixed both this year. One was taking Advil and trying to sit throughout the day to save my back and legs.  I did that this year and it helped a bunch.  Second was those folks trying to sneak in who were really service providers.  I’ll talk about that below but it wasn’t a big deal this year (or at least I haven’t heard anything about this).

One thing to address this year is if I thought the event was good.  Honestly, I thought the event ran well and everybody seemed to have fun.  But I started thinking about why I wasn’t that excited about the presentations themselves.  I’ve seen every single company present at least once, if not more times, before they got on stage.  I’ve also looked through their slides and information a bunch of times before the big day.  Add to this that I’m going to watch every presentation once I get the video in order to sync up the slides, and I’ll know the pitch better than anyone other than the presenter.

But this event isn’t for me.  It’s for you.  I don’t do this event to get anything out of it.  Sure, more people know me and that’s worth something I suppose.  On the other hand, people get upset at me and flip out when I say they can’t come or give conditions on their attendance because of how they’ve acted in the past.  I suppose the old adage is true, if people aren’t getting upset with you about what you’re doing, you aren’t doing anything worthwhile.  For the five people who got upset at me this year over a simple, little event like Startup Riot – thanks for proving that I’m doing something worthwhile.

This year I was told by someone that they had heard “mixed reviews” about Startup Riot (they probably made it up since this was in the heat of an email argument but I thought I’d take this seriously).  Since I’ve heard no such thing I decided to send out a survey timed to the exact minute the event ended (thanks Mailchimp!) with the hopes of capturing the sentiments in the moment.  I’m blown away that more than 100 people, 1/3 of the attendees, have filled out the survey.  I’m also blown away that the option to give an anonymous survey was available but only a handful took that option.  Those anonymous entries aren’t any more harsh than the other surveys and I intend to respond individually to all folks who supplied their email address.  But for now, let me discuss some of the results and what I saw as the good and bad of the event.

The Good – The Presentations

It happened again this year. Basically everyone stayed within their three minutes. The only presenter that went over was the last one of the day and I gave some leniency because one presenter didn’t show up that hour (said presenter also hasn’t responded to phone calls or emails).  That said, I view that overage as my failing, not the presenter’s.  They were a last minute addition and I hadn’t fully vetted them like some of the other presenters. I won’t let that happen again and plan to adjust the selection methodology for next year.

The Good – The Keynote

Everyone said the keynote was great. Unfortunately, there was too much going on that I couldn’t actually listen to the talk.  Fortunately Chris has posted his talk on GitHub (figures, right?).  Funny thing about that is that seven people have forked the file. I’m not the only one who finds that funny either.

The Awesome – The Sponsors

I can’t say enough about my awesome sponsors.  This year we saw the return of sponsorship by Angus McRae, Jungle Disk, Nelson Mullins, and UBS.  All four of these folks sponsored the first Startup Riot when they had no idea if I could pull off what I said I was going to pull off.  Even after seeing everything that happened last year, all four of them returned to support the community.  Because of that and the fact that all four of these groups plus our two new sponsors absolutely rock – I recommend you seek out any/all of them as your needs dictate.

Need help with insurance/benefits? The first and only place to go is Angus McRae. Even if you just have a question, they’ll help you out.

Need to make sure your data is safe and secure in the cloud? Only stop is Jungle Disk. I’ve been trying out other services but Jungle Disk is the only application I can find where I can control my encryption keys and thus make sure no preying eyes look at my data.

Lawyers are a dime a dozen – except for the awesome ones at Nelson Mullins.  These guys really care and aren’t out for just the billable hours like other law firms.  There is a reason that Nelson Mullins is the law firm of Shotput Ventures.

And finally, UBS’ Langley Respess.  Let’s face it, the market sucks.  You have a job and it isn’t to watch the market tick up and, lately more often, down.  Why not employ someone who can make sure the wealth you’ve meticulously managed to grow for yourself doesn’t disappear in a market hiccup?

These four folks rock.  If that’s all we had to sponsor Startup Riot this year, that would have been great.  But amazingly two more groups jumped onto the pile.

The folks at GTRI were ridiculous in their enthusiasm (we’re already talking about Startup Riot 2010!).  After one short meeting, they pushed through their support for the event.  We’ve also started talking about some larger initatives that will help out the entire community so stay tuned for that.

GRA rivaled GTRI’s enthusiasm for their support of Startup Riot.  With the GRA folks, I got a nice warm intro from everyone’s favorite local geek/pundit, Stephen Fleming.  With GRA, we handled everything over email because they were so certain with how good the event was going to be that they just wanted to be a part of it and support the local community.

Both GTRI and GRA rock. Both organizations have focused on their own development of technologies but this direct foray into helping the startup community as a whole is a wonderful development and I hope it leads to long term involvement that helps out everyone.

These six sponsors deserve a TON of kudos for the support and leadership they’ve shown.  Startup Riot would not be possible without their support and encouragement.

The Awesome – The A/V Guys

I can’t say enough about Flashpoint. Those guys rock the house and if you ever need an event produced, you shouldn’t even try to call anyone else.  They aren’t like your typical events folks who just try to jack up the cost on everything.  They’ll help hammer down the price and tell you when people are charging ridiculous stuff.  Just don’t ever tell them that they brought the wrong giraffe to your event.

The Awesome – Volunteers

I had so many people raise their hands and volunteer to help with Startup Riot that it was unreal.  In fact, it was more volunteers than I could effectively use.  People showed up early at the venue to help even though I didn’t ask them.  People came and helped coach companies whenever I asked them.  Startup Riot was a success because so many people pitched in to help. Major kudos to these folks.

The Good – The Venue

Not much to say from last year.  It’s a nice venue. Works well for this event. Only issue is we’re busting at the seams for the number of seats. That may dictate a change for next year.  Well that and the lousy weather.  Not much I can do about that.

If you have any suggestions on other venues, drop me a note or post a comment here.

The Good – Lunch Mixer

I was a little worried about the lunch mixer.  The big problem last year was that so many people went off and had lunch by themselves.  Lunch is a ideal time to get to know other folks.  So with the whole UNO inspired red/blue/green/yellow/wildcard dot scheme in place, it seemed like folks did go to lunch with people they didn’t know.  I did see some groups that were way larger than my dictated 4 person size but hey, as long as people didn’t go to lunch alone I’m happy.

The Fun – The After Party

Other than the threat of tornadoes, it was awesome. Not much more to say.

The Way Cool – All The Coverage

After coming home I realized I took way fewer pictures this year than I did last year.  But happily, I found so many people had taken pictures and uploaded them (with tags!) onto Flickr (many of which I’ve used in this post), so this isn’t really an issue.  In addition, there has been quite a lot of cool video that has been put up.  One of my favorites so far is the video posted by TechDrawl in their recap of the event.  I love the quick takes even though your final shot is of me dorking it up (see video below).

The Bad – The Parking

A couple of people complained about difficulty in locating parking and the cost for all day parking.  For the former, I can help out by providing better maps for next year.  For the latter, I can’t do much.  I could charge $14 more per attendee and give you free parking but that wouldn’t really accomplish much.

I really have no way of fixing this other than getting a venue that isn’t as convenient to other amenities such as food.  Unless someone knows a venue that is the same/better than Twelve and will handle our growing space needs.

The Bad – The Gatecrashing Attempts

Yeah, it happened again but we were pretty prepared for it. Really only one investment banker tried to get in the day of the event. I obviously told him no. If you get a call from an investment banker saying he was at Startup Riot, let me know.  Happy to rip people like that to shreds on my blog or elsewhere.

The Bad – The WiFi

This absolutely sucked.  There wasn’t much I could do the day of the event.  Before hand I told them we’d have a lot of people online and they need to be ready.  They claimed they could handle 200 people online.  That  clearly wasn’t true.  I’m going to start making alternate plans starting now.  Fortunately I have some potential sponsors who could help in this respect.  I will make it better next year.

The Really Bad – The Rudeness

The other big issue commented on in the survey was the lack of respect to presenters.  Yeah, I mentioned backnoise.com and Twitter as places to chat but it clearly got out of hand.  It is downright disrespectful to presenters who have only three minutes to present themselves when you have folks chatting and carrying on.  I haven’t seen all of the backnoise.com chatter but from the survey results some of it was just obnoxious for the sake of being obnoxious.  Obviously I can’t control who says what in which forum, but I can bar people who are disruptive or disrespectful.

Honestly I care less about what is said in an online forum than the out loud laughing and chattering while people are trying to present.  People don’t come to Startup Riot to see/listen to you chatter and laugh.  They came to network and hear the pitches.  I did note some of the people carrying on needlessly at the event and will consider what to do with those folks for Startup Riot 2010.

Just remember, mean people suck.  Do you really want to be mean to others?

What’s Changing for Startup Riot 2010

Well, I’ve already talked about some attendee issues.  I also got the questions on badges and company names again this year.  More than likely, I’m not changing the badges.  But I hope I’ll be able to afford nicer badges next year.  The sticker badges suck – I know that.  But they have the benefit of costing only a few cents per badge.  Given that quite a few people were approved and didn’t attend (and didn’t pay), spending a lot on a badge for a no show hurts when the cost approaches a buck/badge.  I’m planning on changing the registration method next year too so payment will be immediate upon registration.  This will help decrease my load of trying to get registrations paid for the event.

I’m considering making the initial push for attendees tiered based on past attendance.  I’m not sure how this would work but people who registered and attended this year would get first crack to get in to Startup Riot 2010.  Clearly, some of the folks who were not so nice this year may get pushed into a later tier of folks (read: not invited).  I’m not sure if I’m going to do this but I’m strongly considering favoring people who actually show up to the event.  A filled room is good for everyone who attends.

Getting a keynote was a scramble this year.  So I’m not going to wait to line up the keynote for next year.  I’ve already started working on this now.

I’m going to consider other venues for the event for 2010.  Given the growth path, I think we’re going to be too big for Twelve next year.  There is a possibility that the event will be split into two days – one as a job fair and one as a pure pitch day.  I heard some complaints about the job fair not being well organized.  Totally legitimate because I slammed that into the schedule just a few weeks before the event.  It was poorly thought out and that is totally my fault.  I’ll do better next time.

A few people have mentioned to me that I should get an intern to help with the planning of Startup Riot.  This is a fantastic idea.  I’m not sure how I go about getting an (unpaid!) intern but I could clearly use the help.  If you know of any students who would want to help at the end of this year and beginning of next year to put on Startup Riot, leave a comment, drop me a note, or send me a tweet.

So what do you think? What else was there that was right or wrong about Startup Riot?  What do you want me to add, change, or remove that I haven’t already mentioned?

Startup Gauntlet – December 17, 2008

December 9th, 2008 • Conferences + Events, Entrepreneurship + Startups
Tags: presentations, Startup Gauntlet, Startup Riot

Startup Gauntlet is coming up again on December 17, 2008.  That day also happens to be the first pre-screening day for Startup Riot presentation applications (see my previous post).

For those of you thinking about applying to present at Startup Riot, Startup Gauntlet is an excellent way to practice your pitch before going through the screening process.

Also remember that the monthly winners from December and January of Startup Gauntlet to get an automatic pitching slot at Startup Riot. Yes, that’s right. You don’t have to get a deck together just for me (although your eventual deck for Startup Riot must adhere to Startup Riot rules) and you don’t have to worry about coming to one of the Startup Riot pre-screenings. So go register and work on your pitches!

Why Atlanta Startup Weekend Rocked

November 14th, 2008 • 5 comments Entrepreneurship + Startups
Tags: Atlanta, entrepreneurship, GivingTi.me, Startup Weekend, startups

So a lot of people have written great posts about Atlanta Startup Weekend.  Most weren’t on the team I was on but I’ve spied one from one of the GivingTi.me team members.  I was debating if I should add to the noise and give my perspective.  In the end, I was convinced that I should.

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