Note to iPhone team: let me have 1 unified inbox. You know how to do it. See: Mail.app ;-)

Note to iPhone team: let me have 1 unified inbox. You know how to do it. See: Mail.app ;-)

November 5, 2009  

Very cool time-lapse of last night’s NY Tech Meetup. Jenny Kortina did this with iTimeLapse.

November 4, 2009  

Claude Levi-Strauss was my intellectual hero. Read all about it here.

November 3, 2009   1 note  

A year ago today I was camped out in this historical home, on the banks of the Ohio river, in southern Clermont County, Ohio, fighting for Barack Obama’s unlikely campaign for President.
Hard to believe it was just a year ago. I still remember the fierce urgency of Now that drove us during those final weeks, days, and hours.

A year ago today I was camped out in this historical home, on the banks of the Ohio river, in southern Clermont County, Ohio, fighting for Barack Obama’s unlikely campaign for President.

Hard to believe it was just a year ago. I still remember the fierce urgency of Now that drove us during those final weeks, days, and hours.

  1 note  

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Jelleestone - Money Can’t Buy Me Happiness

GET ON IT!

October 28, 2009  

Here’s the lineup:

5 Min:
MongoDB
Daylife
Solvate
AdMeld
Belgrave Trust


NY Tech Minute:
Neighborhoodr
UrbanInterns
Maggwire
SuperGlued
Klickable

Also, be sure to join everyone at the NY Tech Meetup after-party, where Avi Flombaum of DesignerPages.com and Spencer Fry of CarbonMade.com will be DJing and buying the first 100 people drinks at The Black Door (127 W. 26th St. Betwn 6th & 7th Ave).

  12 notes  

Leadership is when you see life as a pentatonic scale.

(My dad shared this with me and said, “Way cool — especially for anyone who has led a group — musically or otherwise.”)

 

homescreens:

Nate Westheimer’s home screen
Bitter sweet sunset, signaling an end to a very taxing - and rewarding - trip.

Bitter sweet sunset, signaling an end to a very taxing - and rewarding - trip.

October 23, 2009   1 note  

Gratuitous Picture of Yourself Crushing It Friday! #CrushIt

Gratuitous Picture of Yourself Crushing It Friday! #CrushIt

October 16, 2009   9 notes  

I love this City. I love this company.

I love this City. I love this company.

October 13, 2009   8 notes  

In 2008, at a tech conference in Chicago, Gary keynoted and called me out in front of hundreds of fellow technologists saying, “I know my friend Nate Westheimer is not living his passion right now and it kills me.” He was right. That was when BricaBox was on its last legs, and he was a big part of helping me know it was time to let go and move on — one of the most important career moves of my life.
My post “It’s Time to Crush It!” about why you should buy Gary Vaynerchuck’s new book.

  2 notes  

Why I Love My Job: My mind is officially blown at least 3 times a day.

Why I Love My Job: My mind is officially blown at least 3 times a day.

  3 notes  

caterpillarcowboy:

mikehudack:

“When you take any money at all from a big VC in a seed round, you are effectively giving them an option on the next round, even though that option isn’t contractual. And, somewhat counterintuitively, the more well respected the VC is, the stronger the negative signal will be when they don’t follow on.”

Chris Dixon (via entrepreneurwisdom)

Yes. This always bothered me. I’d rather raise from a group of great angels (and therefore herd a lot of cats) than run the risk of having a seed VC not lead the next round. And if they do end up leading there are lots of distorted incentives that can cause serious problems for the entrepreneur. Negotiate too hard and you lose your lead and end up sending a really negative message to other prospective investors. Not good.

(via mikehudack)

Thanks for the advice, would love to hear more about it. About to go through this now for the first time. Definitely leaning towards doing a syndicated angel deal than a VC seed round that also requires a board seat and other strings. Pros / Cons?

(via caterpillarcowboy)

Your angels should get a board seat. More specifically, the lead should represent them as a class on the board. I guess this doesn’t always happen. It’s the way it worked for us, and it worked reasonably well. At some point they should expect to give up their seat as they get crammed down by professional venture investors in later rounds.

I think there are many reasons to go with an angel syndicate over a VC in an early seed round. The follow-on issue is only one of them. You also get more diverse advice. You also get friends. No investor is really your friend, but angels are probably as close as any investors get. Most angels invest because they love it, not so much for the returns. VCs are professionals that are fiduciaries for LPs (pension funds, university endowments, etc). They’re more likely to be dicks because sometimes they have to be dicks. You want investors who you can grow with.

There are exceptions to every rule. I think it would be tough to turn down a seed round from USV, for example. But imagine how much it must suck to have Fred put in $500,000 and then refuse to participate in your next round. Everyone out there thinks Fred has one of the best noses around. How do you explain to potential funders that Fred won’t be participating? This is always a problem, but it’s much more pronounced early in a company’s history when concrete metrics are hard to come by and you’re still to a large degree selling vision.

This is great, thank you.

Ditto.

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