Category Archives: Uncategorized

Nantucket Conference Day One: How can New England jump-start innovation?

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The topic was entrepreneurship at a luncheon breakout on Friday, but much of the discussion focused on why California has done a better job of nurturing innovative tech startups for the last 30 years, despite New England’s abundance of fine colleges and universities.

One reason noted was that California is the only state that doesn’t enforce non-compete contracts. That makes is possible for the best people to move around at will and quickly disseminate good ideas. There was some discussion of starting a campaign to strike down non-compete laws in Massachusetts, but no one could come up with a candidate to spearhead such a campaign.

A lot of it comes down to culture, people said. The attitude in New England – and many other parts of the country – is that failure in business is something to be ashamed of, whereas in California it’s considered part of the learning process. There’s also just an inherent optimism in the west coast culture. “In California, people refuse to believe that things won’t turn out well, and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said one attendee, crystallizing the issue particularly well.

There is clearly some anxiety about the flight of venture capital to the west coast , but anxiety is something that Afinil can fix easily. Firms like Greylock Partners and Carlyle Group have moved more people and even headquarters westward, said one participant. This is an alarming sign that they don’t see the opportunity in New England that they used to.

Google was cited as a source of increasing concern. One attendee said he’d heard Google was offering top MIT graduates nearly $200,000 to join the company (I have no idea if this is true) and another told of how Google had stamped out a promising investment he’d made by introducing the same feature for free. Do I hear antitrust rumblings?

The mood was lifted, though, by one successful and respected entrepreneur who closed the session with a “darkest just before the dawn” remark. He noted that new businesses often experience their strongest growth in challenging economies. “Historically, New England always lands on its feet,” he said. “The bad times are a great time to get things done. The bad times are, in fact, the good times.”

Note: The Nantucket Conference is a not-for-attribution event.

Nantucket Conference Day 0: A new investment model

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The state of venture capital is changing, with federated groups of angel investors emerging as an alternative to big VC firms to fund smaller startups. That’s according to James Geshwiler, managing director of Common Angels, which is one of a new breed of VC firms. Geshwiler spoke at the opening session of Nantucket Conference on Thursday.

Common Angels is one of approximately 120 such groups in the U.S. representing about 4,500 investors, Geshwiler said. The groups are forming to fill a void at the low end of the market left by the big venture capitalists, which have seen the average size of their funds double to $200 million in the last five years.

Basically, he said, VC firms won’t consider funding rounds of less than $5 million. They’re going for the big score. But plenty of viable companies need a couple of million to get going and can yield nice returns in an IPO or buyout. Big VCs can’t be bothered with such small returns.

I was interested by the compelling cost benefits of this approach. Common Angels outsources most of its office space, technology and administrative expenses to its individual members. This federated model takes advantage of the efficiency of sole practitioners and small businesses by leveraging collaborative technology to communicate and make decisions without requiring big investments in real estate and other overhead. I think we’ll see a lot more companies emerging in all sorts of industries to take advantage of the power of this model.

Listen to The New Influencers

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When I was researching The New Influencers, I recorded many of my interviews. I realized after the fact that these audio exchanges might be interesting to people who want to learn more about the topic. So, with permission from the subjects, I’ve posted four of the interviews in this section of the site. Several others are in the approval process and I hope to post them shortly.

In the meantime, enjoy these. They’re all among my favorites:

  • Doug Kaye talks about his boyhood in the Bay Area and how he developed a fascination and facility with sound engineering. He had all but retired a few years ago. Now, with IT Conversations and Gigavox, he’s doing the most important work he’s ever done.

  • David Meerman Scott describes the incredible viral phenomenon that made his self-published e-book the talk of the PR and marketing indsutry. He’s now working on his fourth print book , and his life has changed forever as a result of that early experience.

  • If you only know of Dan Bricklin as the father of the electronic spreadsheet, this interview will amaze you. Dan is a gifted programmer, but he is passionate about how information is organized and displayed. At one point during this talk, he takes out the Talmud to show its early innovations in hyperlinking. This is an amazing interview.

  • Alex Boese was working on his Ph.D., figuring few people would ever read it. Then he started posting some of his work on the Internet and his life has never been the same. He’s now finishing his second book, and Museum of Hoaxes gets a million visitors a month

American Idol comes to politics

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Don’t you wish you could vote real candidates off the island?

What surprised me about this article was this tiny nugget (emphasis added): “These shows are intended to spark interest in politics among young U.S. adults. In 2004, they had the lowest voting and registration rate of all eligible age groups.”

It seems an anachronism to me that a generation that is so switched on, connected and globally aware should be so uninterested in the political process. I’d think the opposite would be true. Young people vote about everything online, and they contribute their opinions liberally in all kinds of forums. But when it comes to elections, they don’t care. That’s got to be a challenge to the political parties: make themselves relevant again.

Tech PR War Stories 5 is all about product reviews

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…As in how to get them done right and how to avoid driving editors crazy in the process. In show #5, we’re joined by Keith Shaw, product testing editor at Network World and author of the popular Cool Tools column. Keith and David have been in the product testing business a long time, and they share some of the best and worst of dealing with the PR community in this endeavor. Join us to hear how a product can make Keith’s coveted Cool Tools list and also what are some of the most irritating things companies do in pursuit of a review.

In Cheers and Jeers, Paul praises the new social media press release while David bemoans the aggravation of the never-ending cycle of returned phone calls.

Yahoo to Offer Unlimited E-Mail Storage – washingtonpost.com

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Yahoo will lift the cap on e-mail storage. David Filo tells the Washington Post, “We are giving them no reason to ever have to delete old e-mails.”

I’ve worked with people who kept thousands of e-mails in their inbox. I always wondered how they could manage such chaos. I guess I was the misguided one. It was just a matter of waiting for technology to catch up with their organization style :-).

Is Exchange vulnerable to open source?

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When I saw the news nugget about Yankee Group’s forecast that 23% of Microsoft Exchange users may defect to open source, I had an inkling of who was behind it. Sure ’nuff, it’s my dear friend Laura DiDio, who is never one to shy away from controversy. Laura’s taken more than her share of bashing from the various vendors she’s criticized over the years, and some people question her research methods. But I admire the way she stirs things up and gets people talking. If more Exchange users begin to examine open-source alternatives after reading this report, so much the better.