My friend Albert Lai just launched his new company Kontangent. It's a viral analytics tool that seems pretty neat! I am going to get the demo soon I hope. Albert is one of the few people who has started more companies than I have!
I just found Russ Beattie's blog post where he talks about shutting down his company Mowser.
The post is a really mature analysis of his situation and reminds of when I left the first company that I started. I'm not an expert on his space, or on his company but I have been in his shoes before staring into the abyss.
Russ - best of luck in the future. I hope you'll find that the experience has made you strong and that you do try again someday.
I came across a great post by Dave McClure about how the process through which you get to a signed termsheet is way too complex and I TOTALLY AGREE. His comments about VCs and lawyers needing to innovate and remove the reams of paper and make the terms simpler to understand are spot on. I wish that it would happen but I think that there are huge barriers.
The big problem is that the alignment of interests is really off. The level of complexity advantages both the VCs and the lawyers.
Dave talks about how VCs are advantaged over entrepreneurs because they do these transactions all the time while entrepreneurs only go through the process only once every 5-10 years.
The piece he didn't talk about is that lawyers are incented because they get paid hourly to make things complicated. They are also incented even when capped to show how good a job they do by generating reams of paper.
The stack of paper - It's impressive. You feel more justified paying your bill. Too bad its not useful.
My good friend Dave Schorr just sold his company Weather Bonk to the Weather Channel. It's a perfect fit.
Weather Bonk began as a labor of love for Dave. He wanted to create a way for his wife Michelle to see where the fog line in San Francisco was before she went running. Over the years he kept doing more and more with it until it moved from being a labor of love to a full on obsession.
It's great to see him part of a larger organization that can help support his dreams of extending and improving the site!
I was doing my morning feed reading when I came across an excellent article by David Chang (via Signal vs. Noise - the 37 signals blog) who runs two amazing restaurants in Manhattan - Momofuku Noodle Bar and Momofuku Ssam Bar. Thanks to Jeremy and Jon for introducing me to them!
So forget the food for a second. David talks about the real issues that he faces running a successful business in a hyper competitive industry. I don't know him but I feel like I've found a kindred spirit.
I wish wish wish that I could recommend Google Calendar as a startup tool with no reservations. I can't though and I we are going to have to switch away from it.
I think that it's great when you're two guys (or gals) in a garage but it really breaks down as your organization grows.
ADVANTAGES
DISADVANTAGES
Doesn't handle personal vs.work accounts
It's a really big pain to use if you have multiple email accounts. Say an account for work and a personal account. If your Google account is hooked up to your personal account (like mine) and then you start getting calendar invites to your work account the integration is unworkable
Sharing model doesn't scale with your organization
The way you share things in Google Calendar (if you don't want to share it with whole the world) is you have add people individually to give them permission to see your calendar. This is fine when you have two people, you go in and you give the other person permission to see it. When you have 10 people the model really begins to break down.
Each new person who joins the company needs to share their calendar to every other person in the company AND every existing person needs to share their calendar with the new person. This is non-trivial and people balk.
Lack of Outlook integration
This one is truly killer. Sales people love love love their Outlook client. You have to pry it away from their cold dead fingers. They complain constantly about how the integration doesn't work. Ultimately this is the tree that broke the camel's back.
CONCLUSION
If Google can fix these problems (which seem relatively solvable) they'd have a killer tool that I'd certainly be willing to pay money for.
In the mean time I think we're going to look at a hosted solution for Exchange.
I stumbled across Buildv1 through my friend Kareem's blog.
It aspires to be a place where entrepreneurs can connect online and maybe find a great co-founder to start a company with.
At first blush it really looks like just like a job board though. Granted it's probably a more focused job board since it has startup relevant fields etc. but it's really sort of a job board.
I think if it got critical mass it could be useful to find opportunities. There really isn't a great place to do that now.
My biggest request for the Buildv1 team would be that I'd want to learn more about the founders and their backgrounds before I decided to make a connection.
You can read more about what the founders think on (ofcourse) their blog.
We're looking for a VP of Business Development and a VP of Marketing.
If you've got a solid track record we'd love to talk to you.
Ok - this is a new tool for me but I have to say that I LOVE my $20 all you can eat Cingular Wireless data plan.
The best part about the plan is that I can hook my Nokia phone up to my laptop and thus give my laptop connectivity wherever I go. I hate being dependent on wireless hotspots - the providers are inconsistent from airport to airport and hotel to hotel.
The speeds aren't necessarily awesome but at 100kbps it's better than dialup and being able to get connectivity from anywhere is really useful.
Ok I found this through Valleywag (I admit I read it).
Cambrian House, bought 1000 pizzas and brought it to Google. Why? I'm not sure. As a publicity stunt I think they could have figured out better ways to spend the ~$15,000 it must have cost to do it.
You can see see video here.
The silliest part for Cambrian is that I even after thier stunt. I don't know what they do.
I promise Aggregate Knowledge will never do this. Ever.
