Jason was kind enough to provide his take via e-mail on a wide range of topics, including his involvement with Open Angel Forum, the latest doings at Mahalo and in the blogosphere, and the future of the New York Knicks.

What is Open Angel Forum, and what’s your involvement with it?
Open Angel Forum is a movement to create a *free* forum for angel investors and startup companies. It is a for profit effort that will not profit from charging startups access to angel investors.

The format will be like any other angel forum: a handful of startups will pitch a room filled with angel investors. If there is a match the investors will follow-up with the startups and make an investment. We’re going to start in Los Angeles, where I know two dozen high-profile angel investors, then we will move on from there.

You’ve always been something of an iconoclast. Do you see your current campaign to end the practice of angel investors charging entrepreneurs to hear pitches as part of some larger “quest”?

When I was coming up as an entrepreneur I had to fight for everything I got and there was no clear roadmap of how to be successful. I’ve been more successful than I probably deserve, so I’ve been spending 10% of my time trying to give back to “the game.” That’s why I started the TechCrunch50 conference with Mike [Arrington], that’s why I angel invest and it’s why I started This Week in Startups. I like to share what I, and others, have learned. I think entrepreneurship is a beautiful thing.

Is the practice of charging entrepreneurs to pitch similar to agents charging aspiring writers/actors to review their work/resume?

Exactly!

They are just as predatory and slimy as “model agents” who charge aspiring models for head-shots and modeling lessons. It’s repulsive, and no real angel investor charges.

What stage should startups be in when they approach OAF and what range of funding will be invested to successful entrepreneurs?

We’re going to target the OAF at pre-Series A obviously, but it will be open to entrepreneurs with or without a track record.

What kinds of startups will OAF be looking for?

Ones that want to change the world in the technology space I suppose, but we’ll see where we take it. If folks want to pitch restaurants and sports drinks, well, I guess we would consider it!

Can you describe the first time you pitched angel or VC investors – what was it like?

I think one of the first times I pitched someone it was Jerry Colonna of Flatiron Partners. He took the time to explain to me how venture capital worked and what pitching was, and that’s why he was a great VC.

Your lengthy essays that you send to your e-mail group (and repost at times to your blog) are always interesting, opinionated, and fun. Any additional plans for these?

Yes, I’ve got about five that are between 60-95% done. I just like to sit with them for a while. I’ve got one on “creating a corporate culture document” and another on building community that I’m almost ready to hit the send key on.

You famously “retired” from blogging some time back, but now use your blog presence as something closer to a microblog (posting pictures, content snippets, links, and video, etc.). What are your thoughts on this, and what’s your take on the state of the blogosphere?

Blogging is great and I read blogs all day long. However, my goal is really to have a deep meaningful discussion with people. For some reason I’m able to accomplish this best via email. I’ve gotten 2-3k word responses from CEOs of other companies to my essays! These same folks would NEVER have responded in a blog post, so I’m sticking with photos of my dogs for my blog and email for long essays.

What is the goal of Mahalo 3.0 ?

We’re trying to merge content, q&a and search on one page. It’s a really hard thing to do visually, and the truth is no one has ever done it.

Essentially we’re making Wikipedia-style pages with Yahoo Answers and Google search bolted on. The trick is to try and make it not feel bolted on.

How has the mission of Mahalo fundamentally changed, if at all, since you founded the company?

The mission remains the same: To help people find information they can trust.

How we accomplish the mission has changed. At the start I thought we would be 80% search and 20% content. Today we’re 50% content, 30% search and 20% Q&A. So, we will keep playing with the dials until we get it perfect. We’ve got two or three more years of work and I think we will solve the puzzle. If we do, we will have a site that is bigger than the Wikipedia.

Is your goal for people to think of products such as Google, Wikipedia, and Mahalo when looking for information and resources on the Internet, or do see it from a different perspective?

When people think of Mahalo I’d like them to think “the best page on the internet for any topic.”

Additionally, I’d like some percentage of folks to think Mahalo is “the best place to start” their Internet journey. That’s a really hard thing to do, but I think we will take 10% share of the search space in the next couple of years.

I’ve long thought that the changes that Netscape (now Propeller) went through while you were the GM there would greatly influence the future of web content; that is, a combination of user submitted content, original content, and editor-curated content would become the norm. What’s your take on this?

I still believe in that mission, and I think even Kevin Rose does to a certain extent–but on a different percentage. In fact, their Digg Dialoggs are a great example of laying produced content on top of community content. Gawker, GDGT and the New York Times are all doing similar things by promoting consumer content to the top level.

Curation is the future of the internet.

The Knicks… any hope?

Absolutely! The Knicks are going to trade [Eddy] Curry right after Christmas freeing up a lot of cap space.

LeBron [James] will lose to the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals and then sign with the Knicks. He will then convince Chris Bosh to join him and the Knicks will win three championships in a row.

A boy can dream right?

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

Pretty interesting stats about entrepreneurs from a report called The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur. ]]> http://onlinemediacultist.com/2009/10/01/12-facts-about-entrepreneurs-that-will-likely-surprise-you/feed/ 3 http://onlinemediacultist.com/2009/08/20/success-motivation-what-entrepreneurs-should-not-do-%c2%ab-blog-maverick/ http://onlinemediacultist.com/2009/08/20/success-motivation-what-entrepreneurs-should-not-do-%c2%ab-blog-maverick/#comments Fri, 21 Aug 2009 01:18:46 +0000 Eric Berlin http://onlinemediacultist.com/2009/08/20/success-motivation-what-entrepreneurs-should-not-do-%c2%ab-blog-maverick/

I get deal pitches daily.  I want all of you to understand the code words that IMHO are sure fire signs that the entrepreneur has no idea what they are doing and is destined to fail.  This is from an email today, redacted of course to protect the guilty.  My interpretation of the letter is in bold.

My name is John Doe, CEO and Founder of John Doe Unlimited Innovations and Technology, LLC. JDUIT is an innovation conglomerate, designed for many different industries and is dedicated to improve the quality of life for individuals throughout the world, one step at a time.

The first thing I do at this point is look at the senders email address. Is it an email with the company name in the URL ? If it isnt.. ding, ding, ding.  They sender has come up with a name, but doesn’t have the focus or confidence to put up a website. This person was using a gmail account. Next my #FailDar was ringing louder than Larry Kudlow talking nonsense on CNBC about green shoots when I read the “designed for different industries and is dedicated to improve the quality of life of individuals throughout the world, one step at a time” Im sorry, but could anyone possibly invent and write anything that is more full of shit than this person ? That has to go down in business letter history as one of the all time worse lines. If you want to get someone interested in your company, DO NOT tell them you are going to save the world.  You are not. No one will believe you will. Save that nonsense for your grandma when you are trying to make her proud of you.

PR spammer/e-mailers are taking a beating this week. This rant courtesy of Mark Cuban. Enjoy.

Posted via web from Eric Berlin\’s posterous

Welcome to Lessons Learned by Eric Ries. Want to learn more about me? Try About the author. Trying to learn more about lean startups? See The lean startup comes to Stanford or The lean startup.Twitter. Yes, I’m on it now: http://twitter.com/ericries

Eric Ries’ Lessons Learned is a great blog, and I totally dig the concept and practice of the Lean Startup…

Posted via web from Eric Berlin\’s posterous

The zero cost startup has led to the age of the “microstartup.” It’s no longer two folks in a garage hoping to build a prototype in order to land a huge VC round, then getting millions of dollars to build out an office. Microstartups are sustainable from prototype to launch and on to a core user base, all for around $5-10,000 in costs.

It’s all about super low cost, low overhead, fast iterative releases, and high engagement with audience and customers. It simply makes sense that these kinds of companies are the ones that are going to innovate in this “post web 2.0 era” and in this crowded and noisy Internet space that we’re all playing in.

And so it’s interesting that a Calacanis piece also pointed me to a new $300 million “micro VC” fund launched by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

The technology industry has never been more inclusive, what with folks like Y-Combinator, BetaLabs and Founder’s Fund doing smaller investments and now this. If you’re looking to raise capital it’s fairly simple: go to the Valley, pick a growing market and get two or three qualified folks to work with you on tackling that market. The money will then show up–even for first time entrepreneurs–if you pick a growing market and try to kill it.

I’d counter that you don’t necessarily have to base yourself out of Silicon Valley, but nonetheless the implications of this fund’s launch are pretty great for innovators, entrepreneurs on the make, and people who care about seeing the Internet economy flourish.

Whether you help run a web-based startup, are a member of an online production team, or earn your living in part by understanding how things get done on the web, it’s important to get a sense of how the most innovative Internet companies create their products and build their businesses today.

Even though the current economic climate is not so hot, amazing advances in the open-source software movement, coupled with vastly reduced costs for such things as infrastructure, bandwidth and software services are allowing web-based companies to develop online products and services faster than ever before. And Internet companies themselves are developing non-traditional strategies that best meet the needs of the hyper-paced modern web marketplace.

Rapid Iteration Model/”Ship It!”
socialmedian founder and XING Chief Product Officer Jason Goldberg discusses the utilization of a rapid iteration model that allows development of “great products and enhancements that meet your needs.” Goldberg has evolved this model into something he terms “Ship It!” Boiled down, “Ship It!” means that product development cycles are run in quick succession, making user feedback explicitly part of the build process. Goldberg goes on to define an ethos that many cutting-edge startups live and breathe today: launching features publicly before they are “fully baked,” with the expectation that avid users will provide the feedback and direction needed to allow development teams to put on the final spit and polish.

We will launch new features before they are finished. Our plan is to get new stuff out there on the site and learn from our users as to how to make them better. You tell us what you like, don’t like, and want to see improved — and then we’ll do our best to keep up with your input.

Whereas for most industries it would be sheer folly to release products that were not yet perfected, on the Internet this is beginning to be more rule than exception, particularly for free and advertising-supported products.

(read the rest of this piece at Web Worker Daily) ]]> http://onlinemediacultist.com/2009/04/02/where-startups-are-headed-rapid-lean-and-micro/feed/ 0 http://onlinemediacultist.com/2008/11/06/charting-a-course-in-post-web-20-waters/ http://onlinemediacultist.com/2008/11/06/charting-a-course-in-post-web-20-waters/#comments Fri, 07 Nov 2008 02:15:10 +0000 Eric Berlin http://onlinemediacultist.com/2008/11/06/charting-a-course-in-post-web-20-waters/ I’ve been throwing the term “post-web 2.0″ around lately mostly as a means of discussing what’s going on right now and what will come next. We know what’s happening now (in part): the economy is shaky, funded start-ups are scrambling to get cash flow positive, and the overall attitude in the Internet industry is less wacky Facebook app, and more solving real problems with valuable product and creating a real business model around it in the process.

Mostly lately I’ve been reading and absorbing, so I thought I’d pass along some of the more interesting pieces I came across just today.

The Future of Startups – Jason Calacanis
Another “one time thing” bloggy essay from the suddenly e-reclusive Calacanis, this is a substantive and insightful look at the horizon for start-ups. My central takeaway is that online innovation will continue unabated i.e. this is a good thing for everyone.

Is the Blog Network model dying? – Duncan Riley
Riley smartly confronts what was until very recently conventional wisdom. That is, splitting out a bunch of blogs under a network can create more value than one or several “centralized” sites. Riley’s Inquisitr is relying on what he calls a Huffington Post model instead, creating a variety of content under one (potentially) “megasite” housing.

Mary Meeker at Web 2.0 Summit: There is Hope – Richard MacManus
Lots of fairly dense stats to wade through here, but the upshot seems to be Meeker’s quote that “companies with cogent business models that provide consumer value should survive / thrive.”

Principles of Lean Startups, presentation for Maples Investments – Eric Ries
This again relates to Calacanis’ thoughts on how today’s start-ups are far cheaper and more efficient to get going than ever before. Ries also brings in the importance of social media penetration.

Oh, grow up – The Economist
The blogosphere is all growds up!

Web 2.0 Summit: Larry Brilliant on investing in the future – Dan Farber
“We are at an inflection point where there are enormous problems to be solved and enormous opportunities.” Notice a trend here?

What Is The ROI For Social Media? – Jason Falls
This is a topic that I see around a lot these days, on Twitter and elsewhere. Start-ups want to promote themselves on slim marketing budgets, and promoting online products via social media is a tremendous opportunity to do just that. However, quantifying exactly what you get out of it for the cost is a trickier issue.