8/9/11

8/9/11

Good morning, All,

We had our first SOS 1-1 last week and despite the torrential downpour, it was a hit! Yes, it was an outdoor barbeque, and our guest investors, Aaron Price and Joy Marcus of DFJGotham, braved the rains and talked to every SOS member who wanted one-on-one facetime with him. Aaron stayed until well after 10 to talk to everyone! Our hero! Thanks also goes to our sponsors, 1099partners.com, who literally cooked up a storm, rain and all, and met with and advised members as well. Stay tuned: the next one is coming next month and yes, will do a Labor Day bbq as well, for anyone in town.  Date: September 4; Raindate: September 5. To Register: http://soslabordaybbq.eventbrite.com

In the meantime, our next Rocking it out on the terrace event is next week, August 16th. We had quite a good investor turn out last time, so don’t forget to RSVP: http://terraceparty.eventbrite.com/

The web turned 20 on Saturday, and so we decided to do our own then and now, even though ‘then’ didn’t really kick in until well after graphics hit the web in ’94. Then we had sixdegrees.com; now we have facebook. Yahoo was the dominant search engine (remember the appropriately named AOL webcrawler?) and Google is now a verb. IRC and IM predated twitter, but early mobile phones weren’t smart at all and easily doubled as paperweights. Remember paper? Amazon.com was bleeding money in its early years and Jeff Bezos was a laughingstock – who ended up having the last laugh.

So is there really anything new online? Yes, the bandwidth is up and barriers to entry down; names and delivery mechanisms have changed and so have the top dogs. Microsoft was on top back then and Apple was nearly out of business. Times change and will change again and GOOG’s and FB’s hour in the sun shall pass, too.  A number of you were busy having your pampers changed in those nascent days of the web, while others were busy leaving jobs in traditional industries and slouching towards Bethlehem, forging the future: then – and now – the future belongs to those who can see it coming. The game is never over and the players do change, so keep doing what you’re doing. Onward and forward. And happy 20th, WWW.

Deadlines!

StartupChile Round 2 deadline August 11. Start-Up Chile is a program of the Chilean Government, created by the Ministry of Economy, executed by CORFO via InnovaChile, that seeks to attract foreign, high-potential entrepreneurs to come to Chile to bootstrap their businesses with the end goal of converting Chile into the innovation and entrepreneurial hub of Latin America.  Start-Up Chile provides access to a mentors network, attendance to weekly networking events, and the support of the Program which offers all the necessary contacts to find the money, the talent, the expertise, the visibility or other support that you may need. The Program assigns a $40k grant per project ($20,000,000 CLP), a 1-year resident visa to every founding team member provided on the application, a temporary workspace (desk & wifi). And you surrender zero equity in your company. The program is conducted in English, and entrepreneurs worldwide are encouraged to apply. For more information: www.startupchile.org. To apply: http://bit.ly/i8bFur

College students! Moverandchangers.com is all set to launch its third nationwide challenge to uncover the country’s next young entrepreneurs who want to make it big with their innovative ideas for a new business. The contest is open to 16-28 year old college students to develop and produce a compelling business proposal. Ideas must be original, feasible, scalable and practical. More information on the site, which features a video with Dennis Crowley, who, just for the record, wouldn’t qualify for the contest now, nor would he when he first started foursquare.  Deadline is October. Information is here: http://bit.ly/EvBLZ

Global Amazon Web Services Start-up Challenge is on! Deadline: October 2nd. This year, AWS will select 15 regional semi-finalists: 5 each from the Americas, Asia Pacific (including Japan), and EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa), respectively, who will each receive $2,500 in AWS credits. From these, they will select a minimum of 6 finalists to be awarded a package of $10,000 in AWS credits and a trip to Palo Alto, California, to attend the final round of judging. Then, after a day of meetings with the judges, they will announce one grand prize winner at a public event for start-ups and investors. The winner will receive a package that includes $50,000 in cash and $50,000 in AWS credits. To enter: http://aws.amazon.com/startupchallenge/

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For your edification this week:

Lessons HealthTech Startups Can Take From ZocDoc. Good lessons here for all entrepreneurs, actually: http://tcrn.ch/ovTmsa

Venture Mentor. Esther Dyson, who’s both a VC and a mentor, weighs in on both and on philanthropists as well. A good read and for those of you who might have been turned down by Esther, remember: you’re in good company – she said no to facebook, too: http://bit.ly/pHAY4i

How I Raised $350k as a Solo Founder using these 4 Email Templates. Good stuff and very helpful. All spelled correctly as well, for those who read Esther’s piece: http://bit.ly/rbJP64

When Do VCs Make Mistakes. Since VC is as much about feelings as it is about logic, sometimes, they make bad bets.  When does this happen?  Kirill Sheynkman of Greycroft has a few thoughts, including ‘when we follow the herd.’ Been there, seen that, burned that t-shirt, what, eh? http://bit.ly/qcY0zA

Five Myths Challenging Everything You Think You Know About Entrepreneurs. Spoiler Alert: Myth #1 – America’s typical tech entrepreneurs are in their 20s. According to this article, twice as many were older than 50 as were younger than 25; twice as many were over 60 as under 20. http://wapo.st/oEgUzk

5 Ways To Tap Into Ad Agency Funding. From David Rosenberg, Director of Innovation at LBi in the U.S., the world’s leading independent global marketing and technology agency and someone who has been tasked with innovation on the agency side for years, He has compiled a guide to make the most of each agency funding opportunity: http://on.mash.to/nDvpuQ

Where Are They Now: NYC’s Dot Com Entrepreneurs, Part 2: This week, Murray Hidary, Steve Krein, Cecilia Pagkalinawan,  Jeff Dachis and Laurel Touby, who are all up to new and exciting endeavors, hit the spotlight. http://tnw.co/qrBV3Q

Startup Weekend Pep Talk: It Ain’t the Code. Startup Weekend NYC is this week, so we thought we’d share a pep talk Shane Reiser gave at a recent startup weekend. And some good points in there for one and all: http://bit.ly/oiBv3w

Just for fun: iPhone v Android: A State By State Comparison: http://read.bi/mYV91d

Finally, for the design-impaired (like yours truly) Wix now makes it easy to build a good looking mobile website in minutes http://tnw.to/1AG6O

Not only did the web turned 20 last week – StartupOneStop turned two. In honor of the first, this from TheNextWeb, which pondered What the Web will be like in 20 years: http://tnw.co/nmubhj. As for SOS, a big thank you to all of you here on the list and for those of you who know me well, yes, it has to be done: http://youtu.be/UVKsd8z6scw. Cheers to us and as always, help is on the way…

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