Well, that was quick, wasn’t it? Today it was announced that CardMunch, which just did its seed round of funding in late November, (see my writeup on why I invested here,) has been bought by LinkedIn. Here’s a standard news release on the deal here.
A whole flood of thoughts come by, in this order: (more…)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Bowei Gai, Business, Business card, cardmunch, Eric Paley, iPhone, Jeff Bussgang, LinkedIn, Seed money | 9 Comments »
You can now play around in LinkedIn to see it create your business network map. Here’s mine:
You can get them through the LinkedIn Labs Network function. I just love network maps. Though you can’t see the actual dots and connections on this, I can see who’s connected to whom on my copy. If you care, here’s more on the mapping function: here, here, and here.
Filed under: Angel, Boston, Entrepreneur, MassChallenge, startup, Uncategorized, VC, Vermont | Tagged: Business, Business networking, Facebook, LinkedIn, map, Network, Professional network service, Social network, Twitter | Leave a Comment »
Silicon Valley has Buck’s. Cambridge has the Voltage Cafe and the @venturecafe. Where do entrepreneurs, VCs, angels, and startup professionals go to gather in VT? Well, first and foremost, there’s Vermont Venture Network, which has been meeting monthly in Burlington for more than 20 years, led by Ken Merritt of Merritt, Merritt & Moulton. And there are monthly meetings of North Country Angels (Montpelier), the Vermont Software Developers Alliance (Winooski), the Vermont Biosciences Alliance, and I’m sure other groups (feel free to add your links in the comment section.) All of these groups have agendas, speakers, and an important place in our startup ecosystem. (more…)
Filed under: Angel, Entrepreneur, startup, VC, Vermont | Tagged: Burlington Vermont, Cairn Cross, FreshTracks Capital, Lee Bouyea, meetup, Montpelier Vermont, open coffee, Silicon Valley, Vermont, Winooski Vermont | 4 Comments »
While I’ve listed my favorite blogs (see the Authors tab, as well as the blogrolls on the right hand side), the hard-working folks at Volition Capital just did this amazing blogpost. For those of you who don’t click through, I’m blatantly copying their text and links. Again, for the original, you can go here.
The Global VC Blog Directory (Q410 Avg. Monthly Uniques)
Filed under: VC, Web Favorites | 2 Comments »
Vermont New Business Prescription: Second in a Series
Pulling it all Together
Tomorrow I’m meeting with Vermont House legislators as well as an official from the State Commerce department to talk about startup competitions. As I said below in “Vermont New Business Prescription: First in a Series”, Vermont would do well to create a statewide startup business competition. The State Legislature evidently agrees: they commissioned a committee to put together a plan for a “StartUp Vermont” competition. Why is such an event important? While the annual Invention2Venture conference and Vermont Investor Forum are terrific events aimed at the entire state, both are only 1 day affairs, and neither aims to bring together all of the elements of the Vermont startup ecosystem. There have been a few long-running competitions (Brattleboro, St. Mike’s), but neither aim for a state-wide event. And I have no desire to re-invent the wheel, but we are sorely lacking an event that will bring the entire ecosystem together: entrepreneurs, investors, mentors, educators, lawyers, accountants, consultants, etc. All of the aims of the committee (creating jobs, promoting the state, jump-starting the economy) are spot on. However, if it was easy to have a well-oiled, cohesive economic infrastructure in place, everyone would have one. (more…)
Filed under: competition, Entrepreneur, MassChallenge, startup, UVM, Vermont | Tagged: Alan Newman, Cairn Cross, Champlain College, Hinda Miller, Jerry Greenfield, John Abele, Mary Evslin, North Country Angels, Rich Tarrant, Robert Stiller, Tom Evslin, VCET, Vermont, Vermont Investor Forum | 9 Comments »
I’m not as smart, rich, successful nor experienced as Paul Buchheit, the man who created gmail. So I’ll happily read his thoughts on his first three years of angel investing, and I hope I can look back with the same results. The key finding for me was the humility of his approach. While I’m not a big fan of Tim Ferriss, he took the same sort of approach, looking at his angel investments as a form of tuition for a real world MBA in startup investing.
Here’s Paul’s post:
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2011/01/angel-investing-my-first-three-years.html
And Tim’s interview:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/29/tim-ferriss-angel-investing/
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
My angel resolutions for 2011
LEARNING
Audit Gregg Fairbrothers’ winter term entrepreneurship class at Tuck;
Read Tom Eisenmann’s syllabus on Startups for his class at Harvard Business School;
Study web and social media metrics, and test that knowledge with portfolio companies that are most needy;
Attend the 2011 Angel Capital Association Annual Meeting in Boston;
Become familiar with the Montreal early stage investment sector;
Visit 3+ new angel groups;
Go back and review comments on favorite blog posts, and not just the posts.
EARNING
Minimum 6, maximum 12 deals. More emphasis on mobile, less on healthcare than in 2010; 100% of deals with prototypes done, 66% with revenues;
Hold the line on valuations, and not be afraid to sit out the dance if things get frothy;
Lead at least 1 deal;
Call each portfolio company at least quarterly to see where they need help;
Read ALL the fine print on deals before signing;
Keep track of business expenses religiously
BEING USEFUL
Corral a dozen successful Vermont resident entrepreneurs and investors to act as mentors for a VT Startup competition in 2012, and help make it happen. 4 down, 8 to go. (If you fit this description, call me!)
Something between 50 and 100 original blog posts on this website, with 1 substantial one every other week. And investigate integrating some podcast interviews a la Mixergy and TWIVC.
Try for 5-10 retweets weekly of good comments that haven’t been broadly followed.
Contribute to the virtual community by averaging a comment a day on one of the blogs I follow
Mentor at: TechStars Boston; CapitalInnovation in Montreal; Tuck Business school events; MassChallenge 2011; and locally to any and all Vermont startups.
Answer some Quora questions, not just ask them;
Drive less, video Skype more;
Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
I wish I could go back to school and take this course. Here’s the reading list
http://platformsandnetworks.blogspot.com/2011/01/launching-tech-ventures-part-iv.html
Enjoy it. It will take a while to work your way through. Many of these readings are mentioned in my author’s page, but this is one well-organized list, with several sources I’d not seen before.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
