Disqus - Friends of Jschwa

Re: Wesabe's Merchant Pages

evbart — Sun, 04 May 2008 03:06:06 -0000

Just caught up with these guys at Finovate last week, and I really liked the new feature. I tweeted right before the event, that I had started to use wesabe less and less because I hadn't seen much innovation lately, but this is definitely a reason to go back! Online personal finance tools are getting to be a dime a dozen, so value like this is going to be key to get away from the pack.

Re: New wheeling transportation alternative

evbart — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:46:32 -0000

oops, I didnt see the currency. $250 better, but thats a decent used bike, and close to being a new bike.

I also don't see if its any more efficient than a skateboard. Just dorkier? Maybe easier to learn? Safer?

Re: Social Content

evbart — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:39:04 -0000

Could you expand on how wikipedia, 43things, and aviary are social conent platforms. It'd be useful that you build a list of social content platforms, and how/why they are.

Youtub - video
Flickr - pics
Yelp - rest reviews
Digg - articles/posts?
Delicious/Diigo? - bookmarks?

Re: DFJ East Coast Venture Challenge – LIVE BLOGGING

evbart — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:42:22 -0000

Did you ever find out the details of the prize? Is it an equity investment, how is it structured?

I've been seeing more of these equity prize competitions and I think its an interesting model, particularly in the angel space where it helps attract investors and get them comfortable with the investment process.

Re: DFJ East Coast Venture Challenge – LIVE BLOGGING

evbart — Thu, 22 May 2008 10:40:05 -0000

Mark,

Thanks for the details. Now it makes a bit more sense how you can award the
prize winner the investment without too much previous negotiation on
valuation, etc.

The other place I've seen this model is through an event we (Angelsoft)
helped out in Oregon. They have an event called Angel Oregon, where around
50 angel investors put in $5000, and then they collectively choose the
winner. I can't remember if they did a convertable note or not, but the
event seemed to be a big win for them. Most of the startups involved got
traction, the winner went on to VC round, and because of the low entry on
the investment side they helped recruit a few new angel investors for their
angel fun.

Here's the link: http://www.oen.org/events/ao/

Sorry I missed your event, thanks to Nate for filling me in.

Re: I was right. Facebook is spun.

evbart — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:11:03 -0000

Well, your screaming about not being open hasn't made it to Mr. Jobs, because he's building a successful dynasty on being completely closed, and ignoring all the rules that apply to everyone else! Check out this article about "How apple got everything right by doing everything wrong" ( http://www.wired.com/techbi... )

I havn't been back to facebook in a long time, and its really funny how its now just reaching some of my friends from waaaay back. So basically its a online address book, that won't let me take my contacts with me.

Re: Dopplr vs. Tripit: they should merge or integrate

evbart — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 07:12:06 -0000

I have to look into the ical subscription integration. I provide the link at the end of the post, but it essentially it suggests that you can get Dopplr to automatically recognise your Tripit trips from the Tripit ical feed.

Sounds reasonable, so I just need a spare second to try it out.

Re: Dopplr vs. Tripit: they should merge or integrate

evbart — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:35:04 -0000

Isn't pageonce.com just an aggregate viewer? Allowing you to view all these
services at once? It dont think its connecting the data between any of
them.

Re: [bijan sabet] the personal tumblelog of Bijan Sabet

evbart — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:03:05 -0000

I think there are two critical points here

1) Message forums are old school. They have extremely valuable discussions, and a very strong community, but they are built on old software, and tough to find. Finding a good message forum with the right expertise in it is priceless!

2) The message forums are a good user base for new web2.0 products. Twitter on its own was pretty useless, but channel a good community onto that tool and you have something very exciting. I'd bet that there are lots of cool new tools that don't have strong underlying communities, that could get a boost by working with forums.

Peter Davis's comments seem relevant as well. The members of these message forums may be pretty old-school, and they may not be all that interested in trying super flashy new services?

Re: Dopplr vs. Tripit: they should merge or integrate

evbart — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:34:08 -0000

I agree completely! Thats really what I was trying to get at in my post.
Tripit, on the surface, does provide a huge amount of value. It makes my
life easier today, and I would not want to go without it. And honestly I
think the functionality behind the plans@tripit.com email is probably more
difficult to copy. Seems like a lot of work must go into building a
database of reservation emails.
Why does a site like Tripit, that has clear value, not "feel" as social or
as useful as a site like Dopplr? Is the fact that its not social, therefore
giving it less of a reach make us value it less? Aka Dopplr reaches out and
informs all of my friends, therefore its more useful?

Tripit could easily add the Dopplr features, but it hasn't. Dopplr is
definitely has some un-tapped potential, and for that reason alone I keep
going back to update my travel information manually even though I hate
manually data entry,.

Re: Sales Self-Sabotage

evbart — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:53:41 -0000

Yeah, convincing someone that they are doing something completely wrong can be tough. If they're calm composed and logical then you can probably tell them directly. Most often, they think they're doing things perfectly right, and they're going to take offense!

Re: David S. Rose interviewed by Tech Confidential on his NY investor ecosystem

evbart — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:07:09 -0000

@Rhody I think we would all agree with you about the building. In particular the possessed man-eating elevator, but you've got to take into account its proximity to the Shake shack!

Sounds like you're a bit confused about whats happening here.

First, there's Angelsoft (where I work), and its definitely a first rate organization creating deal tracking software for early stage private equity investors (VCs, Angels, etc). We may be eager, but we are NOT recent college grads or MBAs working soley for equity.

Second, there's the incubator. These people run their own companies, and they choose to operate out of the incubator for a variety of reasons (share resources, being part of a startup community, etc)

Should you want to do some more reading on incubators, here's a few more:
http://www.plugandplayreale...
http://www.idealab.com/abou...
http://ycombinator.com/

If you take issue with the incubator model or early stage investing, and want to discuss it, we'd love to hear your thoughts.

Re: Why I paid for them (Apple/At&t) to take back my iphone 3G

evbart — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:52:07 -0000

The curve isn't, but at that point i had turned 3G off.
I'm thinking of getting the curve 3G on Verizon, when it comes out.

Re: Why I paid for them (Apple/At&t) to take back my iphone 3G

evbart — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:04:17 -0000

Re-posted over here
http://www.alleyinsider.com...

Re: "It's about execution…"

evbart — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:49:56 -0000

Def agree with "how and whether or not you do it". Though you have to actually decide to do it first, and then you can adjust for the how later. But getting over that first part, and actually executing is a huge hump.

Re: Its about mobile data, not the device

evbart — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:24:23 -0000

Here's an interesting article on SAI about how Blackberry is fairing in the post iphone world:

"Only 5% of iPhone (first generation) buyers were former BlackBerry users, while 32% upgraded from Motorola, 16% from Samsung, 13% from Nokia, etc."

Guess its holding its own!

http://www.alleyinsider.com...

Re: "It's about execution…"

evbart — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:24:45 -0000

Here's two related posts at Venture Hacks.

http://venturehacks.com/art...
http://venturehacks.com/art...

People that invest in ideas generally fall into the Friends, Family, Fools category. Investors want to see traction, and some success first. Build a product, get some sales, get some user/customer interest, get some press, etc!

Re: Un-Fundable: Lifestyle Business

evbart — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:33:29 -0000

The term "lifestyle business" is definitely not a condescending term. Many entrepreneurs have built success businesses that have provided a comfortable lifestyle for them and all of their employees.

The point Jason is trying to make, is that this is not the type of company an angel typically wants to invest in (or can afford to invest in) because the potential returns are often not high enough to justify the risk.

If you look at some of the average stats on Angel investing you'll see that typically 1 in 10 companies is a success, and this one success has to bring in enough return to cover the loss on the other 9 companies. Thats a huge responsibility, many times we’re talking 30x or 40x your original investment!

To cover the responsibility Angel investors focus all of their efforts trying to find companies that can even come close to attaining that astronomical growth. Lifestyle companies typically don’t fall into this category.

That’s why you see many Angels investing in scalable technologies (software, bio tech, cleantech, etc). When they have a successful technology on their hands (google, ebay, a new computer chip, etc) the sky is the limit on the returns, and it can happen very quickly.

On the other hand retail stores, clothings lines, concierge services, or a variety of other businesses that could be a lifestyle business, typically can't grow this fast this quickly.

Its not a matter of putting those companies down or thinking bad of them (heck, the angel investor may have made their money doing a lifestyle business), its just a financial reality that the potential for massive returns needs to be there right from the start to justify the risk.

That being said, given the diversity of angels out there, you might always be able to find one willing to invest in your lifestyle business, but you might just have to spend more time searching for the right match...

Re: The Most Important Person on the Startup Team

evbart — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:27:19 -0000

I know David has already read this one (more than once?), so I wanted to share it with the rest...

The Hypomanic Edge
http://www.hypomanicedge.com/

I think the idea was that multiple people can come together to meet the "Execution" requirement. It doesn't mean you have to have one super human person (though it is possible) that can do databases, front end, sales, marketing, etc

Re: Why do we charge $250?

evbart — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:27:22 -0000

An investor wants to see that an entrepreneur is extremely committed to their startup company before the Angel/VC will invest. One way that an investor can measure this "commitment" is by looking at how of their own money or "skin" an entrepreneur has put into the company.

Did you invest your life savings, and are you maxed out on all your credit cards? Where you able to convince every friend and family member you could find to contribute money to launching the idea?

Passionate entrepreneurs can't be stopped, and they'll do anything it takes to succeed.

Jason offers $100,000 as the threshold, but I've definitely heard investors talk about entrepreneurs needing to break the $500,000 point to get an idea off the ground. This all comes down to your idea, and the capital requirements for launching the company, but they want to see that you've already taken some major steps towards executing.

Its rare that anyone wants to invest in just an idea these days...

Re: Subpoenaed documents at TheFunded reveal more negative commentary about EDF Ventures

evbart — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:04:30 -0000

Seems kind of weird that such a big deal is being made of this. Anyone reading TF should be taking the feedback with a grain of salt, clearly bitter entrepreneurs have motivations behind posting, and clearly entrepreneurs looking for funding need to meet with the VC's and make their own decisions as to whether or not the fund is a good fit.

In the end though, TF seems to be putting more pressure on funds to think about their reputations and their treatment of entrepreneurs, which can't be all that bad.

Maybe TF could find a way to focus the site on whether or not a VC is a good fit for an entrepreneur, rather than simply a + or - rating, which seems to be less useful.

Re: Angelsoft Bay Area Investor Meeting – please reply

evbart — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:36:11 -0000

I just got some good suggestions about making sure to include a networking component to the meeting.

Some users want to talk specifics about the software, best practices, training, etc, so we're definitely going to make sure we dedicate a portion of the meeting to these issues.

Another group of users, thought interested in the software, are more interested in getting to meet other investors on the platform. Maybe we can structure it, so that the networking can happen after the product sessions.

Re: Open Systems, Open Data, Transparency

evbart — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:14:41 -0000

Had to add my 2 cents to clear some things up.

When Jason said most angel networks are not for profit, thats true, because the entity itself is not investing. Angels join a network, so that the network can publicly accept submissions and screen deals. Sometimes they have a full time administrator to do this, and those costs are offset by submission fees and membership dues. The goal of the network is not to make money, it just provides a service to the investors that are members.

The investors themselves make decisions on what they want to invest in, and they are the ones that take the profits/losses, not the angel network entity.

Now these networks as well as all the other early stage investors on our platform take in a huge amount of dealflow, and most of it is not appropriate for their needs, aka. its not "fundable." The idea is too early, the idea is too late, its not in a sector that they have experience in, etc. When you take all these deals into account, then the 1% number isn't all that bad.

Here's the important part:

Angelsoft, is not an angel network, we are a software company. We provide deal tracking and collaboration software to help angel networks, seed funds, AND VCs to manage their investment process and to collaborate with other investors. These numbers we're collecting and making available are not measurements of Angelsoft'ts performance, they are industry stats on what users are doing on our platform.

That's what Fred is talking about in this blog post. Finally providing a way to publish stats on an industry that is typically very closed. Industry insiders like Fred may have a good idea of whats going on, but the rest of the world remains shut out. The more investors start using Angelsoft, the better the statistics, and the more insight the world has into the whole process.

In the end our investors and the entrepreneurs going through the process tend to think this is a better way to do things!

Thanks for the mention Fred.

Re: We are all publishers, where IS my personal publishing tool?

evbart — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:52:08 -0000

Yeah the posterous mission is a great one!

Taking it to the next level will be interesting. The idea really came from the tumblr publishing interface.
http://flickr.com/photos/ev...

Text, photo, quote, link, audio, chat, video.....

Defining posts based on that seems kinda silly when you can just send any of those to posterous, but defining it as a location review (for yelp, and for viewing on a map of your blog), or a book review, or a product review is significantly more interesting.

Re: Administrative Control: Didn't anyone ever hear of Enterprise 2.0?

evbart — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:10:13 -0000

I don't understand all the criticism about Yammer? I don't think its one or the other, and the company definitely isn't taking over my Twitter usage.

Its working great for AS. I want to be able to stay on the same page as all those guys back on the east coast without all our Angelsoft related chatter spilling out into the public via Twitter. If we use it enough, I don't see any reason we wouldn't spend $1 per person to get the pro account.

This isn't instead of twitter, its just along side of it. Not to mention the actual apps (blackberry, desktop, etc) are all pretty good.