Jason Calacanis has a new cause. He is railing against the so-called “pay-to-pitch” phenomenon. A good read – check it out here. Update: Scoble, Fred, and Lance have since commented on it as well. My views on the pay-to-pitch thing are pretty well known, as I’ve written about it a ton in the past, and …
Matt McCall (Draper Portage Ventures) wrote a very interesting post yesterday. In it, he describes the current venture capital landscape as having “flatlined”. Matt is an ultra bright, fairly conservative venture capitalist (at least he was way back when Portage was a key investor in one of my past lives – MetalMaker). A good read …
I had a fun lunch with Drew Ermenc from Catalyst Magazine last week. Our office is actually upstairs from theirs, so it was pretty convenient. Among the many things we talked about was the status of “rockstar entrepreneurs” here in Atlanta. Specifically, they are working on some events for later in the year, and were …
One of the really fun things about being involved in the early-stage scene here in Atlanta is that I get to network and meet with a lot of people who share the common vision of fostering a better startup ecosystem for our community. Included in this are representatives from various chambers of commerce, academic institutions, …
I learned to play the game of chess as a kid, although I’m certainly no Gary Kasparov. I have always been intrigued by its simultaneous complexity and simple elegance. After running several startups, and going through the exit process more than once, I have come to the conclusion that running a company is very akin …
I came across this great story on the Kenneth Cole website. There is definitely a lesson here for early-stage entrepreneurs on resourcefulness, and doing what it takes to get the job done. As a side-note, Kenneth Cole is now doing revenues of over $500M each year. Cheers.
I have been contemplating writing this post for about 2 years, and have been jotting down various notes for it for at least a year. There are lots of ways to unethically nudge your fledgling company along. For example, you can artificially inflate your numbers. “You’ll love our site! Millions of other people are already …
We are now at three weeks until the next StartupLounge.com Capital Connections event, and we have sailed past the number of RSVPs for the previous event. Right now there are over 200 people registered to attend, and we expect that it will climb to at least 250-300 before the event date arrives. I’d like to …
Sooner or later, every startup struggles with the issue of how best to offer healthcare benefits to their employees. In a recent StartupLounge.com podcast, we were joined by Angus Mcrae, a guy who does a ton of consulting and brokering for healthcare benefits for Atlanta-area high-tech startups (for companies like N2 Broadband/Tandberg, ViTrue, etc.) As …
The next quarterly StartupLounge.com Capital Connections event will be held on August 29th here in Atlanta. If you are a fast-growth entrepreneur in the Southeast U.S., or an investor who’d like to network among such innovators to scout for new deals, head on over to StartupLounge.com and sign up. If you missed the last event, …