“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
~ Dr. Seuss

Time is a funny thing.  When you are young, you have seemingly boundless amounts of it. You wake up very day, full of zeal, and passionately chase your whim du jour.    Then, one day you wake up, and you realize that time has become a commodity, with a value all its own, and the opportunities to continuously expand your horizons have narrowed considerably.  The energy once dedicated to challenging the status quo and pushing boundaries ultimately succumbs to other forces … gives way to other things.   Eventually, every pursuit gives way to something else.

I guess this is as formal an “announcement” as I’m going to give on this, but after a lengthy period of soul searching, I have made the very difficult decision to largely step away from StartupLounge.com.

Five years ago or so, when Mike Blake and I came up with the concept of StartupLounge, neither one of us had any idea of what we were getting ourselves into.  Truth be told, I think if we had known how much work we’d need to put into something like this, we may very well not have started it at all.  Some folks have called StartupLounge “influential” or “important”, and I suppose to some extent it is.  But really, at the core, it is/was really about helping people help themselves, then to help others – and about 2 guys having fun yapping on a mic every now and then. And I will tell you – I most certainly learned more about our collective craft than others probably learned from me.

My reasons for stepping back from heavy involvement in StartupLounge is complex, and somewhat difficult to explain.  A big part of it is the time commitment required to record and produce podcasts (40 hours a pop), organizing events, PitchCamp, evangelizing, etc.   I simply do not have the time anymore to contribute at a high level in order to continue making a difference.  And when you’ve poured your heart and soul into something for as long as we have with StartupLounge, it makes the decision a very emotional one, to say the least.

Another huge factor in my decision is simply the level of energy required to perform my duties at my day job (StarPound).  Although we have a great deal of work ahead of us, the team is really doing some great things there. We’ve recently raised another round of capital, and are heads down on a ton of different things right now.

Finally, and perhaps the most important reason, is my family.  As it stands now, I am rarely home in time for dinner (thanks in part to Atlanta traffic).  I have a wife and two young daughters at home that I hardly ever see these days.  And this needs to change.  So, something has to give.

I should also add that there has been some speculation that my health is suspect, and that this somehow is contributing to my decision.  This is patently not true.  Sure, I’m battling a kidney stone right now (ouch!), but this too shall pass (literally and figuratively). Trust me. I’m as fit as a horse.  Then again, they shoot horses when they actually do get ill, so maybe that’s a bad analogy to go with.

Through StartupLounge, I have met some incredibly wonderful people over the past several years.  Entrepreneurs, most of which want to do something great.  Investors who actually want to engage with them.  And a wealth of community leaders and stakeholders who want to make a difference. I place an extremely high value on these relationships, and hope to continue nurturing them for years to come.

One person in particular, though, has meant the world to me throughout this journey.  Mike Blake.  I have come to rely on his wisdom and sensibilities for so, so many things.  Not just professionally, but personally as well.  I can only hope to one day even begin to repay him for the friendship, comaraderie, and contributions he has made to my life. Mike and I remain the best of friends, and I appreciate his understanding and patience throughout my rather circuitous decision making process.

With all of that being said, I should add that StartupLounge will continue on.  The inimitable  Josh Watts has agreed to replace me as the co-host of our podcast.  If you don’t know Josh, you should.  I can’t think of a better person to step into that role.  He has a solid understanding of early-stage entrepreneurship, technology, and carries with him a wicked sense of humor that will help keep the StartupLounge podcast as entertaining as ever.  So for you die-hard listeners of our podcasts, rest assured, it will continue to be worth tuning into. Who knows?  I might even make a cameo appearance every now and then

All of the free StartupLounge events will continue, including PitchCamp, Startup Seminars, and of course, the thrice yearly StartupLounge gathering in Atlanta.  Expansions are already underway to carry the philosophy and beliefs behind StartupLounge to other areas, including Savannah and Raleigh/Durham.  Mike is 100% committed to doing this, and his continued leadership will turn this into a reality.

As for me, well, it isn’t like I’m completely falling off the face of the earth.  I’ll still be around, helping as many people as I can, where I can.  I just may not be as visible. I will continue to attend StartupLounge events when I can, as well as others.  I continue to take enormous satisfaction in helping others achieve success, be it through mentoring, speaking, coaching, etc.  Oh, and continuing to learn new things myself.  I can’t imagine my life without those things, quite frankly.

Enough rambling from me.  I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.  Peace out.

Cheers.

My best friend Mike Blake, and his awesome band, HarveyNation, are helping us with our cause.  They are turning their upcoming gig into a fundraising event for the Roberts’ family.  If you are in Atlanta, and want to have a great time while helping out a family in need, here is the info:

Tree Pub and Grill
5071 Peachtree Industrial Blvd (recently renamed Peachtree Blvd)
Chamblee, GA 30341

http://www.thetreepubandgrill.com/

Band goes on around 9:30 on Saturday, August 14.

Hope to see everyone there!

I’ve been dropping hints about our latest project (StyroFone) for the past few months. This week I had the chance to speak at ClueCon 2010 in Chicago to show it off a bit. We got a great response, both during and after the event, so I thought I would take a few minutes to post something here for those who are interested. Thanks to the great folks at FreeSWITCH for putting it on – wonderful event!

What is StyroFone?

StyroFone (henceforth referred to as simply “SF”) is a mashable, SIP compatible soft phone distributed as a browser plugin.  It isn’t a Flash phone, or anything like that.  We decided to distribute it as a browser plugin to provide persistence of voice connectivity from page to page, as well as to provide a better platform for mashups.

@zlu had a pretty good summary: @zlu #styrofone, takes the guts out of skype and puts in the browser!

At StarPound, we love our beer, and why not?  Let’s face it – when most people think about IP telephony and converged applications, they immediately think of beer.  We are no different.  So, one afternoon, Wei Wang (CTO) and I were at our local watering hole near the office discussing this and that.  Short version – a few beers later, we had conceived the idea behind SF, and started working on the prototype.

The phone app itself is fully SIP compliant, with full codec support (G.711, G.729, et al), echo cancellation,  and can be used with any SIP service provider or switch.

We have a few major goals in the design of the phone.

First and foremost, we wanted it to be seamlessly integrated into the browser.  By this, I mean that it should not disrupt or deter from the surfing experience.  It should augment it.   The phone should not be “intrusive”, but “supportive”.  Don’t want to see the phone?  It minimizes and resizes like Firebug.  We’ve also implemented things like customizable click-to-call capabilities (phone links on web pages are turned into links which popup the phone and start dialing the number for you).

Right now, we’re targeting Firefox/PC for the initial launch, but we’re going to expand that as quickly as possible to IE, and for Macs. And yes, we’re looking at the iPad as well.

The second goal was to ensure that the phone was “mashable”.  See the screenshot below for an idea of what we’re talking about:

So, a call comes in, and all of a sudden, you get to see cool things about that person, like CRM data, Twitter feeds, blog feeds, their Flickr feed, remote weather, etc.  You get the idea.

There is a full API as well, for controlling the phone (making calls, call control for conferencing, etc.).  This is extended into the widget area as well.  The widgets are all driven by what we call an “event bus”, so they can send and receive standard SF events, as well as their own custom events.  Widgets can communicate not only with the phone itself, but also other widgets.

The widget API can also be used to fully integrate into your PBX for voicemail management, user directories, etc:

We’re also incorporating browser sharing, so while you’re talking with someone, you can collaborate over the web together. If you want to bring another colleague into the collaboration conference (or even just a voice conference), you can just drag them into the phone.

StyroFone also has a TON of applicability within vertical markets.  Consider customer service and call centers.  How about your customers conversing with a customer service agent over voice/video/collab at the same time?  Yeah, it looks cool – can’t do a screenshot of that just yet, but trust me … it’s cool as hell.

We use SF for calls all the time internally at StarPound.  I even had a conference call at a local cafe over SF and local WiFi.  It pairs nicely with USB Bluetooth headsets as well.

We think this is all pretty cool stuff. However, what is probably even cooler than the phone, is the business model we are refining for it.  The phone itself will be freely available, so you’ll be able to download it and use it for personal use.  But our business model, we think, will allow us to offer a completely free phone service for subscribers.  When we say free, we don’t just mean SF-to-SF.  I’m talking about SF to PSTN, cell, etc.  A free global communications network.  This is our goal, although this will not be a day-one service.

There’s a LOT more to StyroFone than I have time (or authority) to discuss right now.  However, I will no doubt write more about SF as we move closer to the next beta cycle.  If you are interested, you can head to styrofone.com and apply for it.

Cheers.

A lot has been written about the plight of Patricia Roberts and her family here in Atlanta.  You can read about it here, here, and here, although here is a summary version, courtesy of Dave Walters at TechDrawl:

… a most unfortunate story this week: the foreclosure and eviction of a Lithonia family whose son was the first Georgia casualty during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Spc. Jamaal Addison was killed during an ambush on March 2003, and the Lithonia branch of the United States Post Office has been renamed in his honor. And in a miserable twist of fate, the family is set to be evicted on the very day set aside to honor Spc. Addison, Monday August 2nd.

Above: Patricia Roberts (R), mother of US Army Specialist Jamaal Addison, mourns along with other family members during his funeral at White’s Chapel United Methodist Church in Georgia on Monday. Addison was killed when his unit was ambushed by Iraqi forces on March 23. Source: Atlanta Journal Constitution

There has been some stuff written about what we’re trying to do to help the family.  While I appreciate the effort to spread the word, it isn’t about me, or some kind of magical thing I’ve done.  There were/are a lot more people involved in this.  I just made some phone calls, really.  Here is the story.

After reading Bo Emerson’s AJC article which shed light on his family’s difficult situation, I decided to see what we could do to help – being a vet myself, and having kids of my own, it just hit me hard.  After some super-sleuthing by Robert Shoe, my fellow ex-Army bizdev guy at StarPound, we were able to track Ms. Roberts down and talk with her about her situation. I had several different (very emotional) conversations with her, and I will tell you, Patricia Roberts is one of the most wonderful, salt-of-the-earth people you will ever meet.

My immediate concern was three-fold: 1) secure adequate housing for the family, so they wouldn’t have to worry about that, 2) keep the family together in the process (they already had to split up among relatives and friends, including Ms. Robert’s own mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s), and 3) ensure that Little Jamaal (his young son, who was only 2 when his father died) would be settled in time to start school. After this, we could knuckle down and help Ms. Roberts secure new employment (and we’re already making progress on that front).

I had been in contact with my wife, who had shared some of this with our own four year old daughter, Katie.  When I got home that night, Katie was full of questions.

• “Daddy, why does Little Jamaal need a new home?”
• “Where is his mommy?”
• “Mommy said something happened to Little Jamaal’s daddy. What happened, Daddy?”
• “So Little Jamaal’s daddy was trying to stop the bad guys?”
• “What kind of bad guys?”
• “Are the bad guys going to come to our house?”
• “Daddy, I’m scared of bad guys.”
• “Ok, Daddy, I won’t be scared any more.”
• “Daddy, I made a picture for Little Jamaal, can you give it to him?”
• “It’s a picture of their new house and he is looking out of the window at the sunflower. I even signed it with my name!”

I tried to navigate the endless barrage of 1-800 numbers, customer service agents, and loss mitigation “experts” from Suntrust (the foreclosing bank), but basically ended up wasting 3 or 4 hours on the phone.   I “get” that they are a business, and at the end of the day, they have policies which need to be upheld.  But when someone calls offering a financial solution in a situation like this, I would have expected to be received a bit more warmly, and that’s all I’ll say about it.  We could have gotten her current with her mortgage payments, bought it out of foreclosure for her, etc. But, no dice. Suffice it to say, I knew we had to take a different path.

To their credit, Suntrust at least eventually gave her family an extension on when they had to be out of their current home.  Of course, this was after they got hammered by Senators, the folks at Ft. McPherson, and other folks in the community.  But still … it does help.

In the meantime, Mike Blake and the great folks at HA&W stepped up to offer tax/accounting advice on how to treat the property if we were able to work a deal with Suntrust. Even though we chose a different path, they were absolutely awesome.

I immediately called my good friend and VetLoop co-founder Jason Jones of Cresa Partners here in Atlanta.  For those that know Jason, well, I don’t need to say anything else.  Jason is a former naval aviator who ran missions off the carrier U.S.S. Enterprise. He is also one of the most charitable and good-natured guys I’ve ever had the privilege of calling a friend.  Jason stepped up and got involved with us, as I knew he would.

One of our customers, Doug Ingram (DHL), was in our office working with our team on a project.  After mentioning the story to him, Doug stepped up and got involved as well.  On the side, Doug dabbles in rental properties.  He had an idle house that happened to be sitting on 6 acres of land he bought down in Fairburn, just south of Atlanta.  He graciously offered to let the Roberts’ family use the house until they could get back on their feet.  Several of us offered to pay her rent there, should she decide to stay longer (a point that Doug readily dismissed as unnecessary).  One evening, we went down to the house to check it out.  After spending a few hours on site, it was evident that we were going to need a veritable army of people to help get the house to a livable state.  We lined up a bunch of really great friends (aka the StarPound Flag Football team, Nest Construction, and some other folks) to come down on the weekend and do an overhaul.

I was thrilled that we had pulled together a solution for the family.

However, the next morning, after further reflection, we just didn’t feel good about putting her in the house – it just needed too much work.  The house was built in 1958 and had seen better days.  So, another path would have to be found. I was reminded of one of the many bits of wisdom my late father shared with me growing up. He used to tell me that “the worst feeling in the world is wanting so desperately to help someone, and feeling powerless to do so.”  I was starting to feel that way a bit.

Sometimes, the easiest solution is right in front of you.  Thanks to my good friend Mike Blake for slapping me silly and telling me what should have been obvious.  We’d raise enough money to cover the family’s rent in a decent rental home here in Atlanta say, for a year – plenty of time for her to get back on her feet, and take care of her family.  We’ve already identified several properties that might be a good match for the family. We all started throwing money into the hat, and very quickly found ourselves with $4,000. And this is what I need help with from the community out there.

Please.  If you can contribute to the effort here, please donate to the fund below, which will help provide a longer-term solution for the family:

Chase Bank
JAMAAL ADDISON II MEMORIAL FUND
Routing #: 061092387
Account #: 490132066
1-800-788-7000

What is $5, or $500, or $1000?  Put off buying that new car (that’s what my wife and I did).  Trim your Starbuck’s habit back for a while. At the end of the day, it is a small price to pay for doing the right thing to help give this kid some stability in his life.  He will never know his dad, and I’m not really certain as to the status of his biological mother. His life has already been changed in a way that will affect him profoundly as he gets older. Let’s not let it get any worse. Let’s get his family into a stable position, get him into school, and well, let him be a kid.

I never knew SPC Jamaal Addison, although I suppose one day I will get to meet him.  He paid the ultimate price to give us the freedom to talk about startups, technology, and other things that don’t really matter at the end of the day.  And his family needs our help.  Please help us.

–

UPDATE: Benefit concert

–

44 unanswered voicemails.  That’s how many I had on my iPhone the other day when I came up for a little air after being heads down with our team on our upcoming new  release of the StarPound platform.  My StartupLounge email is full – I have no idea how many hundreds of unanswered emails are waiting for me there. If you are/were one of those 44 people, or one of the countless people who have tried to contact me via my StartupLounge email address – I’ll apologize en masse now.  I’ll also go ahead and tell you that most likely, your voicemail or email will be deleted without my reply.  It’s just too big of a hole for me to climb out of at this point.

So why I have been incommunicado lately, or as @Unblakeable puts it, apparently in the witness protection program?  We’ve been heads down working on the next release of our platform, and launching several new customers (including a Global Fortune 100 customer – whee!).  Oh, and talking with investors, growing our base of channel partners, and pulling more than a few all-nighters. Suffice it to say that “free time” is somewhat of a myth around our office these days.

Read more »

Every few months or so, various Atlanta startup thought leaders are corralled together on a panel or round-table to discuss what can be done to improve our startup ecosystem.  Invariably, the outcome is the same: a regurgitated list of things we already know all too well.

Examples:

• Lack of local funding sources for early-stage companies
• Lack of management talent to take a company from startup to growth stage
• Georgia’s legal inability to invest state pension funds into alternative class investments such as venture capital funds
• Too many smart people are leaving the state
• Lack of this
• Lack of that
• Blah.

Undoubtedly, we all want the Atlanta startup ecosystem to improve (or continue to improve, as I believe is the case).   But for the past few years,  there have been two distinct threads running in parallel.

Read more »

I just ordered my personal copy of Faded Glory, a documentary produced by my friend and Atlanta-based filmmaker, Rick Cohen.  If you are actively involved in the Atlanta startup scene, you may have run into Rick before.  Besides being a great guy, and an awesome filmmaker, the story behind the story is one for the ages.

Faded Glory is a true story of a group of aging athletes, good friends for over 18 years, who never gave up the dream of playing baseball at a competitive level. Through the eyes of their manager Rick Cohen, Faded Glory follows the National Network team, 18 men over the age of thirty-five who have overcome life’s adversities, including injury, divorce, bankruptcy, infidelity, drug addiction, incarceration, and one life-threatening disease. It all takes place as National tries to win a National Amateur Baseball World Series title. Faded Glory is a captivating document of friendship, courage, humor, and the indomitability of the human spirit.

Through his hard work and passionate evangelism of his film project, Rick raised some angel capital for this film (partially through connections he made at one of our StartupLounge events).  I haven’t sought permission to mention the name of the investor in question, but he is one of the most successful technology entrepreneurs in the past decade here – and a good guy to boot.  Just goes to show you, no matter what industry sector your venture is in, you never know where a possible angel investor is lurking, and what motivates them to make an investment.

And interestingly enough, this investor shared this with me:

“I did invest some money in his movie as a result of meeting him at your StartupLounge event.  Not so much because I think movies are a good investment, but because I admire his passion and the way he has bootstrapped it thus far.”

There ya go.

The film has gone on to win a lot of critical acclaim:

• Delray Beach Film Festival Audience Award
• LA United Film Festival Audience Award
• ALL SPORTS LA Film Festival Audience Award
• Atlanta Film Festival Runner-Up Audience Award
• Real to Reel International Film Festival Runner-up Audience Award
• Newport Beach Film Festival – Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment names the film – audience favorite.

And hey, you can’t get better endorsements than these:

ANGELO PIZZO -
Writer of both “Hoosiers” and “Rudy.”

“A compelling documentary with authentic, well-earned emotions.”

ROGER TOWNE -
Writer of “The Natural.”

“Roy Hobbs and the New York Knights live in Rick Cohen. I’ve not seen so much blood and guts, self-less honesty, despair, pathos, passion, honor, and above all, — so much bravery in filmmaking.  Rick’s poignantly invested and dramatized love for his friends and the game of baseball shows clearly in this documentary.”

LEIGH STEINBERG -
Legendary Sports Agent who inspired the character of “Jerry McGuire.”

“This is THE documentary that resonates and connects with the deepest hopes and fears of males throughout the country and is a landmark event–Rick is a truly gifted talent! Faded Glory offers an unique opportunity for women to experience the locker room environment and psyche of men in an alternative habitat. It should not to be missed!”

In fact, Angelo Pizzo and David Anspaugh (writer and director of Rudy!, respectively), are now on board to turn this amazing story into a feature film.

Hey Rick, can I get a cameo role for promoting this?

Sooooo ….. support a local Atlanta entrepreneur and pre-order this awesome film on DVD.  Get the original indie film before Hollywood turns it into a blockbuster that may or may not capture the true spirit of Rick’s original vision. You can visit the online store here.

Rick will be attending our upcoming StartupLounge event on March 6th, and we’ll be giving away some signed copies of the DVD there as well …

Cheers.