President Obama Speech From DC Startup’s Offices
Today President Obama delivered a speech announcing a new energy rebate program from the offices of Washington, DC Startup Company and recent Social Matchbox alumni Opower (formerly Postive Energy). We are really glad to see the White House paying attention to the DC Startup Scene.
When Lawyers Compete We Win
A couple of weeks ago, while watching the Wizards play a team that I can’t even remember from the corner of my eye in a Skybox, because the game was less interesting than the conversations to be had, I had a conversation with a friend who is the co-founder of a startup based here in Washington, DC. The friend is enrolled in something of a self want help group for startup founders. The conversation revolved around who to go to for legal help in setting up the startup the right way for investors to buy in. There was some degree of irony that a conversation among peers about lawyers was going on in the Skybox of a major law firm that just happened to be courting startup founders. The organizers from the group for startup founders was encouraging participants in the program (that charges startup founders to participate) to buy legal help packages from a sponsor. They made a pretty good pitch because the friend was about ready to go for it. I suppose that is one way to figure out who to use for legal advice. Go with the advice of the experts who are charging you for your time and turning around and recommending people who they are also charging for their time. It is a little like matchmaking for entrepreneurs that you pay for. Magical, right? The only problem is that the lawyers being pushed were not local are dispensing law rapid fire.
It seems like legal advice is becoming a bigger commodity this year than ever before. You may recall Launchbox graduate Legal River – they provide “advertising” for lawyers. Today a Silicon Valley law firm launched Series Seed docs, a legal document guide for guess what. I have personally enjoyed reading the Startup Lawyer’s blog. It seems like only a few years ago that lawyers were having debates about whether to upgrade from their antiquated version of Word Perfect.
It really seems like this is an opportunity for startup founders to get a lot of really good advice while they are on the ground floor without paying megabucks for legal advice. Although I will be quick to point out that documents alone do not make for a legal strategy and certainly don’t count when it comes to executing a legal strategy. Things like Patent filings, Trademark Searches, and other things have yet to be commoditized to the extent that legal documents have as far as I know. Perhaps this is the next step in the legal contest. I would welcome an easy to use patent or trademark filing website that helps make the patent search and filing process easy and less costly.
But so far the lawyers have been lurking in the background at events or behind exhibitor tables. I would welcome some good conversations with the lawyers who work with startup and software law in the community. I know there have been a few events, but perhaps we can get more discussions going in the local startup community so that the legal aspects of taking a startup to market are as openly discussed as the design or software engineering aspects.
If you are a startup friendly lawyer in the DC area I would love to hear from you. Feel free to drop me a line – send a note to: contact@socialmatchbox.com .
The Company That We Keep
As the founder of a new startup that is nearing its launch I find the company that I keep is constantly changing based on the rapidly shifting priorities that an early stage startup demands. Over the last three years I divided my time between the various national conferences that relate to the space the startup is in and the seemingly endless number of professional and user group communities that relate to many critical aspects of the startup. You can’t miss out on who the up and coming competition is any more than you can miss out on the latest design and software engineering trends if you really want to be on the cutting edge. There is so much that I have learned during this time. Looking back at the experience ten years ago when I started my last software product company the conversations, conferences and groups seem a lot different. Back then every group seemed a lot more like a happy hour group and the conferences where where you went to learn something new. Maybe it is because I am older now or know who is who more, but I am beginning to notice that the user groups are where people are really going to learn and the conferences are where people are going to drink. Maybe this is because the conferences, while they are different in subject, are becoming more like the high tech happy hours. I attended numerous conferences and happy hours last year. The major difference seemed to be how much the sponsor fees were ($5000 vs. $50 for “BarCamps”) and where the venues were (actual Bars and night clubs vs. Company offices or University Campuses), not who spoke or what was discussed. The SXSW conference discussions (in particular) were more about the party and less about the learning and to top it off, the speakers were the same people that I was encountering at local happy hours. My stock answer for people regarding SXSW is still that I will be going to when I have something that I would like to share with a lot of people who will appreciate something new and cutting edge. The founders of Twitter seemed to both get this and benefit from it too.
In keeping with the title, ‘The Company That We Keep’, I should point out that along the way I have made a lot of amazing friends and acquaintances over the course of the last few years of user grouping, conferencing and hopping from happy hour to happy hour. But in all honesty, somewhere in the last year I started to sense that it was time to move on. Perhaps move on is too strong of a phrase and a better choice of words would be “evolve” or “diversify”. Maybe it was the session at BarCamp on Microbrewing that made it out of the gate or the fact that made a discussion around someone else’s presentation from another BarCamp (rather than being original) or the fact that the Web 3.0 discussion didn’t happen at all (due to a scheduling oversight that killed lots of other cool discussions too) or maybe it was just the fact that the real though leaders just stopped showing up as often and were replaced by the Social Media groupies. Whatever it was, the company that I keep has been evolving as the startup community evolves.
Lately I have found myself mixing it up with user groups when my team is looking for key people that may be found hanging out at a particular event. Right now, for example, we’re looking for a PHP, Ruby on Rails, and JQuery programmers so you may see me at a local PHP, Ruby on Rails or JQuery meetup near you. I’m also spending a lot of time mixing it up with other early stage founders who are considering whether or not to ask for money from investors or who are in the process of raising funds to keep the lights on. A few are looking to turn up the lights. The contrast between the crowds could not be more different. Suits and ties are more common. Hipster shoes are still pretty common. One thing that is a very noticeable difference is the proportion of sales outsourcing firms and lawyers to designers and engineers. While attending the social media mixers and early stage startup events I feel like there is always a large pack of freelance designers and developers. At the investor related events there is always a flock of lawyers and sales outsourcing firms. Another major difference is the number of companies and people who are still talking about offshoring software engineering. In the community and social media events offshoring is still very much a taboo subject, or at least a subject that doesn’t come up frequently. In the investor friendly community offshoring comes up a lot. Even still, there is crossover.
At the end of the day though, the biggest difference that I have found in the two different communities – the social media and early stage crowd vs. the middle to later stage crowd – is the fact that the later stage crowd is full of CEO’s who have done things and who have both feet in the fire vs. the do lots of little things CEO’s who have no idea whether or not they will quit their day jobs and/or freelance gigs to focus on rolling the dice. I still find myself somewhere comfortably in the middle of those two groups. I am self employed and have been for the last going on three years now and am incubating a second company that will be launched in the not so distant future.
Razoo March Goodness Contest
The yearly ritual of March Marchness is almost upon us. For the Razoo team it’s March Goodness time. March Goodness is national nonprofit fundraising competition modeled after the NCAA basketball tournament. The contest includes 64 US nonprofits competing in the Big Dance and 32 smaller nonprofits competing in RazooNIT. The nonprofit teams will try to amass the most “votes” from individual donors (using the Razoo giving platform) in order to win cash prizes. Razoo is a web company that seeks to revolutionize the philanthropic marketplace. They have facilitated more than $18 million in donations to US charities since their launch in late 2008.
This year Razoo’ers are reaching out to the local DC tech community for sponsorships (prize money for the nonprofits), in-kind donations (fun stuff for donors to win), and cross-promotion. Last year’s contest raised $160,000 for nonprofits across the US, and awarded a big prize to a lucky organization. They are hoping we can double that amount this year and assist nonprofits in their ability to raise funds online and function the Web 2.0 way.
The Razoo team believes their sponsors have a unique opportunity to not only promote their own brand on a national platform, but also to support the causes and local charities they believe in. How about some link love for them?
If you are a DC local and want to chat over a beverage of your choice about March Goodness and Razoo’s ideas about getting involved, contact the Razoo team at anytime at marchgoodness@razoo.com or if you’d rather call try 202-684-7552.
Let the Goodness begin!
Invest in America Alliance Program To Fund Tech Companies and To Create New Jobs for College Grads
Invest in America Alliance, led by Intel and supported by 24 leading venture capital firms and corporations plans to invest $3.5 billion in US based technology companies over the next two years. These investments, which include a new, $200 million Intel Capital Invest in America Technology Fund, will target key innovation and growth segments such as clean technology, information technology and biotechnology. Joining Intel in this effort are: Advanced Technology Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures, Bridgescale Partners, Canaan Partners, DCM, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Flywheel Ventures, Good Energies, Institutional Venture Partners, Investcorp Technology Partners, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Menlo Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, North Bridge Venture Partners, QuestMark Partners, Sevin Rosen Funds, Storm Ventures, Telesoft Partners, Updata Partners, U.S. Venture Partners, Venrock and Walden International.
In addition, there are commitments from 17 technology and other corporate leaders to increase their hiring of college graduates, some by as much as two times, to create the products and provide the services of tomorrow. Organizations included in this pledge include: Intel, Accenture, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Autodesk, Broadcom Corporation, CDW LLC., Cisco, Dell, eBay, Inc., EMC Corporation, GE, Google, Inc., HP, Liberty Mutual Group, Marvell Semiconductor Inc., Microsoft Corporation, and Yahoo!. NEA and Updata Partners are both local funds.
