I decided to revive my formspring.me account and I’ve been amazed at the high quality of questions being asked of me. I’m going to keep answering questions there and will look to integrate that stuff into this site when I get around to doing a redesign. In the meantime head to:
http://www.formspring.me/sanjay
To ask me a question or see how I’ve answered other people’s questions. Thanks to all for asking such great questions!
{ 0 comments }
The Shotput Ventures partners have been in the throes of deciding what startups to fund for this upcoming summer 2010 class. But in doing so we’ve discovered that the time has come for us to adapt, change, and morph the way our organization is going to deal with potential portfolio companies. But first, a little history.
In 2009, we got together to launch a seed-stage accelerator like those that are thriving in many other cities from Silicon Valley, Boulder, D.C., New York City, and even Rhode Island. Overall, we think this explosion of early stage opportunities is great for entrepreneurs especially given that all of the partners of Shotput are also entrepreneurs. But this ongoing explosion has created a problem, at least for us although we suspect it has (or will) hit other incubators as well. Namely it seems that the number of these programs has grown so large that the supply of good seed-stage startups isn’t filling the capacity these programs have. So we had two choices: iterate or die. Since we’re entrepreneurs…
We’ve decided to iterate. Last year we were iterating during the summer program when we discovered things weren’t working as well as they should, but I digress – this post is about the future, not the past. What we’re doing now is blowing up the whole concept of the “summer program” for Shotput. No longer will our investments be focused on one single summer class. We will have an ongoing application process and as we find startups that fit our profile, we’ll make investments. There are some potential downsides to this approach like losing camaraderie among similar staged companies progressing in lock-step through a defined program.
That said, we think the upside is far greater. No longer do entrepreneurs have to wait to apply to Shotput or think about timing their launch with the end of our summer program (you read that right, no more demo day for us). We will also now have the flexibility to look at entrepreneurs who we would like to fund but who aren’t ready for funding. For these folks we will give feedback and guide them to a point where we think we could fund them and increase their probability for success.
And that brings us to an important point – what is not changing. The current partners of Shotput are still committed to being involved and investing in startups. Each startup that we invest in will be assigned a Shotput partner (based on expertise and interest) who will meet with that team one to three times a week. The three month intensive program will be tailored to what that company needs and to ensure that they can execute on a plan for success.
So there you have it. Like all good entrepreneurs, we’re adapting and iterating to changing market conditions. More details about the ongoing application process will be coming soon.
[cross-posted at Shotput Ventures]
{ 1 comment }
I’m going to be cleaning up this blog soon and doing a full analysis on Startup Riot 2010 after that. But in the meantime, I thought I’d let folks know about some of the great press we got for Startup Riot this year. A full list is on the Startup Riot website but the most interesting thing that has happened recently is a full piece on the event by CNN. I was also interviewed for World Business Today by Colleen McEdwards on March 5th but I haven’t found that online yet. If and when I do, I’ll do a quick post about it. It was pretty fun and my first time on live television.
UPDATE: Video now embedded below.
{ 2 comments }
I shot out a quick little tweet about this and there was some interest so I thought I’d dash off a longer blog post.
For a long time I’ve used the habit of using custom email addresses for each online service I sign up for. I’m planning on discussing this (and some other related tactics for real world use) in my Crushing Your Head newsletter soon, but in essence all the email addresses go to one unified email box and let me figure out who is doing what. This way if one unique email address starts getting spam (or email from another party), then I know who the leaker was.
I was trolling through my spam folder and found this today:
And all the emails were being sent to an address known only to Seesmic. I don’t actively use Seesmic (I’m a Tweetdeck and Brizzly user for now) but did sign up a while ago (and switch for a while) when Seesmic had some advances in their client that no one else had. You’ll notice that the first spam sent was on 6/10/2009, then another on 6/22/2009, and then the barrage starts in mid December.
So what does this tell me? Somehow Seesmic’s database has been compromised somewhere in the chain and now the email address they have for me is in the wild (UPDATE: apparently this was reported and blogged about by Seesmic here). This same thing happened to me a few years ago with an email that Ameritrade had for me. I complained to them and they said in essence “we’re looking into it”. A few months later a class action lawsuit was filed (not by me) and was recently settled (I think).
So what are you doing to protect your customer’s personal information?
{ 4 comments }
I’ve been thinking about doing something for good deals and tricks with technology that I’ve discovered and keep finding. So I’ve finally gotten into gear to set up a mailing list. I’m targeting a monthly mailing (for now) that will discuss how to get great deals on all things technology related. Every now and then I may throw in other deal opportunities that are just too good not to share. A lot of the recommendations will probably skew towards entrepreneurs and startups but any technology enthusiast will probably find something good in the newsletters. So if you’re interested, head over to crushingyourhead.com and signup.
Before you ask, no there won’t be any online archives for the mailing list. These deals and tricks are too good to have floating out on the Internet – if that happens the deals/tricks may disappear. So if you want to be in the know, sign up for the mailing list.
Oh, and if you’re on Twitter, you can follow crushyourhead where I’ll give more frequent tips on good deals (technology and other stuff) that you may want to jump on.
{ 0 comments }
