January 29, 2009
My SpringStage business partner, David Cohen, runs TechStars, an early stage summer incubator located in Boulder. Last year 393 companies from around the US applied, few of which were from North Texas. David and his team only accept ten companies each summer, providing $18,000 in seed funding (enough to money for three founders to survive over the summer) plus free server hosting, a nice place to work, free legal services. The real value of the program is access to the mentors, angel investors and venture capitalists (more than 150 venture capital firms flock to Boulder to check out the crop of TechStars startups). Out of the 20 companies that have gone through the program, sixteen of them have received funding and/or become profitable after TechStars ended (this is the real value).
What TechStars is looking for:
- opportunities that leverage the internet
- a team of 2+ (3 is ideal, single man teams won’t make the cut)
- have a prototype (come on, this isn’t as hard as you think)
- completed application or video application by February 15th (the deadline is March 21st, but don’t wait)
You will need to spend 51% of your time over the summer in Boulder (I suggest more, as the value will be the connections you make there). David and his team will help you find very affordable housing. Dallas-based startups accepted into the TechStars program can keep offices in our coworking facility in the INFOMART for the days you can’t make it to Boulder.
So here is my offer: Prepare your application, but before you sumbit it I will review it, providing advice that will give you a fighting chance. ONLY 10 companies make it into the program each year - most of them (16 out of 20) get funded. I suspect that if we can get at least 20 applications in, at least 2 startups from Dallas will make the cut. You have 15 days to get me your application!
Written by Alexander Muse ·
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January 28, 2009
We are looking for ’startup guys’ (guys is gender nuetral) to join SpringStage as local catalysts. First, it might help if I explained what SpringStage is:
SpringStage is a network of community catalysts who are in tune with their local entrepreneurship and startup scenes. The network will formally launch in early 2009 as a blog network. This is the first step in ensuring that there is a visible resource in every community for early stage entrepreneurs.
Today, if you’re new to a city and you want to be involved in the startup scene there, there is no clear cut way to get involved. Springstage hopes to fix that by identifying and promoting credible catalysts in each community. We are providing the infrastructure for those catalysts to begin promoting their location entrepreneurship scene immediately.
David Cohen and Alexander Muse are the founders of SpringStage. Both have been blogging for years and both are natural catalysts in their respective communities (Boulder, CO and Dallas, TX). Their blogs are read by thousands in their community and are considered go to resources on entrepreneurial events and news in their area. Both are experienced angel investors and entrepreneurs.
Springstage was formed to take what we’ve learned and apply it nationwide to foster entrepreneurship. Every local community that hopes to improve the startup activity in their community can learn from those who have been successful doing so in the past. They can follow in our footsteps. 20 other bloggers are already doing so, and we’re just getting started.
Our vision for Springstage is to be a beacon for entrepreneurial activities in local communities across the country. When someone enters a community and wants to get involved with the local startup scene, we want them to think about the local Springstage catalyst as the perfect starting point.
Hopefully that makes some sense. Here is what we are looking for:
SpringStage is recruiting local catalysts, local contributors and national contributors. Our goal is to have a SpringStage Catalyst in every major city in the United States by the end of 2009. Over the next three years our network of catalysts will work together to help promote entrepreneurship through by working to create startup communities in their areas.
Catalysts are assigned a specific territory, usually covering a specific city or state. Next a SpringStage resource will setup a blog where the catalyst should begin to write about their local startup scene. One or two posts each week are required and it is recommended that a catalyst write one or more posts per day. The catalyst should be available for a conference call every other Friday to share experiences, coordinate activities and contribute ideas. Stage two includes hosting offline events such as happy hours, startup mixers, demos and other ad hoc type social events for startups.
Local contributors are usually writers or bloggers who cover startups and entrepreneurs, but who do not have the time to commit to becoming a catalyst. The local contributor simply continues to write or blog wherever did previously, but tags appropriate content with the ‘springstage’ tag and that content is reblogged on the SpringStage startup blog in his or her area. The local contributor owns the content, but gives SpringStage a non-exclusive license to use the content. Local contributors are given a byline and a link back to their blog.
National contributors are similar to local contributors, but do so on a national basis. Their contributions consist primarily of blog posts covering startups and entrepreneurship on a general basis, not necessarily associated with a particular area. Again, the national contributor simply continues to write or blog wherever did previously, but tags appropriate content with the ‘springstage’ tag and that content is reblogged across the entire SpringStage startup network. The national contributor owns the content, but gives SpringStage a non-exclusive license to use the content. National contributors are given a byline and a link back to their blog.
Would you make a good catalyst?
Anyone can make a great catalyst. It simply takes a) five to ten hours a month, b) a desire to connect with local entrepreneurs, c) the ability to write a few blog posts a week, and d) the dedication to stick with the effort for at least a year. Each SpringStage community will look different depending on the catalyst; there is no right answer. Great fits could include:
- Angel Investors
- Venture Capitalists
- Entrepreneurs
- Would-be Entrepreneurs
- Writers
- Academics
Interested? Apply Here: http://www.springstage.com/join-us/
Written by Alexander Muse ·
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I have always used this blog to ‘time-shift’ conversations, so it makes some sense to give those of you with an interest, an update on what I am working on these days:
Last summer we reinvented Big in Japan and turned it into a publisher of mobile applications. Our first application, developed in house, was called ShopSavvy. The application, built originally for the Google’s Android platform (available on T-Mobile) allows a user to scan the barcode of any product to find competitive prices from online and local retailers. With hundreds of thousands of users in the US, the application is the second most popular in Google’s Android market. I have been doing quite a bit of traveling for our European launch (Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago, Hamburg, Germany last week, France next week and Barcelona, Spain the following week). Of course this has really eaten into my blogging (sorry about that). You can following the action at Big in Japan on our blog here.
Around the same time we were reinventing Big in Japan I teamed up with David Cohen of TechStars fame, to launch SpringStage. Our goal with SpringStage is to build a network of individuals like ourselves around the world interested in helping promote entrepreneurship. Today we have ‘catalysts’ in more than 20 cities and hope to cover more than 100 cities by the end of the year. Check out our 2009 schedule for Dallas. The best way to follow what we are doing at SpringStage is to check out our homepage and of course the startup blog in your area (I cover the Dallas area).
More than a year ago we teamed up with my old YEO friend, Brad Merritt, to launch WhiteBox. WhiteBox provides insurance premium finance and collection services to the automotive industry. Using a fairly cool platform we are able to fund vehicle service contracts on behalf of car buyers and collect the premiums via ACH. This business really got started when we decided to take our agile development experience and apply it to a real world problem. Focusing on a very specific niche has turned out to be a great opportunity.
Towards the end of 2008 we had the opportunity to augment our IT services business, Architel, with the assets of another public IT business. Formerly known as AtlasTG, we renamed the business SevenLayer and incorporated its offering within Architel. Scott Ryan, my business partner who runs Architel, has been a real sport providing the cashflow to support our various efforts (including Big in Japan, SpringStage and WhiteBox).
Finally, we received a term sheet to fund our contractor referral business called ServiceGuy. Last week I met with the strategic investor and suggested that it might make sense to sell it to them instead of accepting an investment. They agreed and I am hopeful ServiceGuy will have a new owner who will be able to turn my little idea, into a real business. More to come on this soon.
I almost got myself in a pickle when I offered to buy JPG Magazine, but fortunately for my schedule they spurned my offer. This year I am going to hire a business development person to help me manage my time and activities. If you know someone please have them contact me. Anyway, you are now up to speed.
Written by Alexander Muse ·
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I had an interesting call from an executive from a major grocery chain last night about our mobile price comparison application: ShopSavvy. He couldn’t imagine a world where grocery stores would publish inventory and pricing information. He explained that grocery stores rely on loss leaders (i.e. items prices especially low) to get shoppers into their stores in order to buy other items at relatively high prices. If shoppers were able to find the loss leaders and avoid the items offered at higher than market prices he was concerned that grocery stores would suffer fatal price compression. For example, if you walk into Ralph’s to get a turkey priced well below cost and then walked down to Kroger to get the rest of your grocery list, both stores would be negatively impacted. Is this a bad thing?
Information arbitrage has been a tried and true business model throughout the history of man. If I know something that you don’t there is a good chance I can use my knowledge to create an economic advantage for myself. The internet has been slowing killing businesses based on information arbitrage. Sitting on your home PC you can replace the daily newspaper with the information you want when you want it - no need to soil your fingers with newsprint reading what a local editor decided you might want to read. You can trade stock directly from you laptop without using a broker. The examples are endless. The internet has been very disruptive.
The explosion of mobile applications on the iPhone and Android are quickly changing the game again. The internet has information on every possible subject. Google made it all easily accessible on your desktop. Internet connected mobile devices (we used to call them mobile phones) allow users to access the internet anywhere they happen to be. Mobile applications like ShopSavvy organize this data for the mobile platform, allowing users to have the most perfect information on a particular subject that is available. Of course, ShopSavvy is a pebble dropped into the sea of retail, but it represents a sea change that is coming for retailers. Relying on ‘bait and switch’ tactics won’t work. Marking up products to reduce their price won’t work. Retailers who depend heavily on loss leaders will see that strategy become less and less effective.
The executive suggested that grocery stores may have to prevent users from using their mobile phones to scan items or compare prices. They might install cell jammers. This line of thinking is simply shortsighted. If your business relies on consumers being uninformed you are in big trouble. Consumer will often know more about you, your product and your competitors than you do - embrace this fact, don’t stick your head in the sand and ignore it. I am reminded of a speech that Guy Kawasaki gave to high school students a few years ago. The topical part was when he suggested the students, “Challenge the known and embrace the unknown.”
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in life is to accept the known and resist the unknown. You should, in fact, do exactly the opposite: challenge the known and embrace the unknown.
Let me tell you a short story about ice. In the late 1800s there was a thriving ice industry in the Northeast. Companies would cut blocks of ice from frozen lakes and ponds and sell them around the world. The largest single shipment was 200 tons that was shipped to India. 100 tons got there unmelted, but this was enough to make a profit.
These ice harvesters, however, were put out of business by companies that invented mechanical ice makers. It was no longer necessary to cut and ship ice because companies could make it in any city during any season.
These ice makers, however, were put out of business by refrigerator companies. If it was convenient to make ice at a manufacturing plant, imagine how much better it was to make ice and create cold storage in everyone’s home.
You would think that the ice harvesters would see the advantages of ice making and adopt this technology. However, all they could think about was the known: better saws, better storage, better transportation.
Then you would think that the ice makers would see the advantages of refrigerators and adopt this technology. The truth is that the ice harvesters couldn’t embrace the unknown and jump their curve to the next curve.
Challenge the known and embrace the unknown, or you’ll be like the ice harvester and ice makers.
Written by Alexander Muse ·
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Mark Cannice made an interesting observation about the current economic turmoil: “If there is a silver lining, the large-scale downsizing from major companies will release a lot of new entrepreneurial talent and ideas — scientists, engineers, business folks now looking to do other things,” he said. “There will be a lot of forced entrepreneurship that will lead to innovations.”
Written by Alexander Muse ·
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It is important to set a timetable when raising money. Depending on your situation four weeks might be a reasonable amount of time to spend raising money, while in other cases six months might be just as reasonable. The truth is that most startups never get to yes. Marc Andreessen has an interesting perspective, ‘One “no” doesn’t mean anything — the VC could just be having a bad day, or she had a bad experience with another company in your category, or she had a bad experience with another company with a similar name, or she had a bad experience with another founder who kind of looks like you, or her Mercedes SLR McLaren’s engine could have blown up on the freeway that morning — it could be anything. Go meet with more VCs.’
Marc’s advice:
- Lay the groundwork to go back in later (i.e. don’t burn that bridge, usually ‘no’ means not right now)
- Consider the environment (i.e. no in 1999 means your plan was really bad, no in 2002 means the market was running scared)
- Retool your plan (Marc compares the process to peeling an onion, you have to be willing to ‘peel layers of risk’ off of your deal to get to yes)
Of course there are hundreds of reasons VCs say no including: founder risk, market risk, competition risk, timing risk, financing risk, marketing risk, distribution risk, technology risk, product risk, hiring risk, location risk and so on.
Written by Alexander Muse ·
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January 27, 2009
Evan Williams, the guy behind twitter, had a great post a couple of years ago titled, “ten rules for web startups” that every entrepreneur should read so I will reprint here:
#1: Be Narrow
Focus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful. Most companies start out trying to do too many things, which makes life difficult and turns you into a me-too. Focusing on a small niche has so many advantages: With much less work, you can be the best at what you do. Small things, like a microscopic world, almost always turn out to be bigger than you think when you zoom in. You can much more easily position and market yourself when more focused. And when it comes to partnering, or being acquired, there’s less chance for conflict. This is all so logical and, yet, there’s a resistance to focusing. I think it comes from a fear of being trivial. Just remember: If you get to be #1 in your category, but your category is too small, then you can broaden your scope—and you can do so with leverage.
#2: Be Different
Ideas are in the air. There are lots of people thinking about—and probably working on—the same thing you are. And one of them is Google. Deal with it. How? First of all, realize that no sufficiently interesting space will be limited to one player. In a sense, competition actually is good—especially to legitimize new markets. Second, see #1—the specialist will almost always kick the generalist’s ass. Third, consider doing something that’s not so cutting edge. Many highly successful companies—the aforementioned big G being one—have thrived by taking on areas that everyone thought were done and redoing them right. Also? Get a good, non-generic name. Easier said than done, granted. But the most common mistake in naming is trying to be too descriptive, which leads to lots of hard-to-distinguish names. How many blogging companies have “blog” in their name, RSS companies “feed,” or podcasting companies “pod” or “cast”? Rarely are they the ones that stand out.
#3: Be Casual
We’re moving into what I call the era of the “Casual Web” (and casual content creation). This is much bigger than the hobbyist web or the professional web. Why? Because people have lives. And now, people with lives also have broadband. If you want to hit the really big home runs, create services that fit in with—and, indeed, help—people’s everyday lives without requiring lots of commitment or identity change. Flickr enables personal publishing among millions of folks who would never consider themselves personal publishers—they’re just sharing pictures with friends and family, a casual activity. Casual games are huge. Skype enables casual conversations.
#4: Be Picky
Another perennial business rule, and it applies to everything you do: features, employees, investors, partners, press opportunities. Startups are often too eager to accept people or ideas into their world. You can almost always afford to wait if something doesn’t feel just right, and false negatives are usually better than false positives. One of Google’s biggest strengths—and sources of frustration for outsiders—was their willingness to say no to opportunities, easy money, potential employees, and deals.
#5: Be User-Centric
User experience is everything. It always has been, but it’s still undervalued and under-invested in. If you don’t know user-centered design, study it. Hire people who know it. Obsess over it. Live and breathe it. Get your whole company on board. Better to iterate a hundred times to get the right feature right than to add a hundred more. The point of Ajax is that it can make a site more responsive, not that it’s sexy. Tags can make things easier to find and classify, but maybe not in your application. The point of an API is so developers can add value for users, not to impress the geeks. Don’t get sidetracked by technologies or the blog-worthiness of your next feature. Always focus on the user and all will be well.
#6: Be Self-Centered
Great products almost always come from someone scratching their own itch. Create something you want to exist in the world. Be a user of your own product. Hire people who are users of your product. Make it better based on your own desires. (But don’t trick yourself into thinking you are your user, when it comes to usability.) Another aspect of this is to not get seduced into doing deals with big companies at the expense or your users or at the expense of making your product better. When you’re small and they’re big, it’s hard to say no, but see #4.
#7: Be Greedy
It’s always good to have options. One of the best ways to do that is to have income. While it’s true that traffic is now again actually worth something, the give-everything-away-and-make-it-up-on-volume strategy stamps an expiration date on your company’s ass. In other words, design something to charge for into your product and start taking money within 6 months (and do it with PayPal). Done right, charging money can actually accelerate growth, not impede it, because then you have something to fuel marketing costs with. More importantly, having money coming in the door puts you in a much more powerful position when it comes to your next round of funding or acquisition talks. In fact, consider whether you need to have a free version at all. The TypePad approach—taking the high-end position in the market—makes for a great business model in the right market. Less support. Less scalability concerns. Less abuse. And much higher margins.
#8: Be Tiny
It’s standard web startup wisdom by now that with the substantially lower costs to starting something on the web, the difficulty of IPOs, and the willingness of the big guys to shell out for small teams doing innovative stuff, the most likely end game if you’re successful is acquisition. Acquisitions are much easier if they’re small. And small acquisitions are possible if valuations are kept low from the get go. And keeping valuations low is possible because it doesn’t cost much to start something anymore (especially if you keep the scope narrow). Besides the obvious techniques, one way to do this is to use turnkey services to lower your overhead—Administaff, ServerBeach, web apps, maybe even Elance.
#9: Be Agile
You know that old saw about a plane flying from California to Hawaii being off course 99% of the time—but constantly correcting? The same is true of successful startups—except they may start out heading toward Alaska. Many dot-com bubble companies that died could have eventually been successful had they been able to adjust and change their plans instead of running as fast as they could until they burned out, based on their initial assumptions. Pyra was started to build a project-management app, not Blogger. Flickr’s company was building a game. Ebay was going to sell auction software. Initial assumptions are almost always wrong. That’s why the waterfall approach to building software is obsolete in favor agile techniques. The same philosophy should be applied to building a company.
#10: Be Balanced
What is a startup without bleary-eyed, junk-food-fueled, balls-to-the-wall days and sleepless, caffeine-fueled, relationship-stressing nights? Answer?: A lot more enjoyable place to work. Yes, high levels of commitment are crucial. And yes, crunch times come and sometimes require an inordinate, painful, apologies-to-the-SO amount of work. But it can’t be all the time. Nature requires balance for health—as do the bodies and minds who work for you and, without which, your company will be worthless. There is no better way to maintain balance and lower your stress that I’ve found than David Allen’s GTD process. Learn it. Live it. Make it a part of your company, and you’ll have a secret weapon.
#11 (bonus!): Be Wary
Overgeneralized lists of business “rules” are not to be taken too literally. There are exceptions to everything.
Written by Alexander Muse ·
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January 25, 2009
When I talk to entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs I often get the impression that they believe raising venture capital is the objective. While it may not seem like it, raising capital is often the easiest part of starting a business. It certainly isn’t time to have a party. In most respects once you begin using other people’s money the party is over. The laid back startup atmosphere really needs to end.
Sadly, a wake would be more appropriate than a party. In most cases once an entrepreneur, especially a first time entrepreneur, raises capital from professional investors it is the beginning of the end. Some studies show that 50% of venture backed startups fire their CEO/founder within the first year. In some cases there is nothing you can do about it, but in most if you get serious and start acting like the money you raised is your parent’s retirement you might have a chance.
Entrepreneurs without a pedigree or degree often have an advantage over their better educated or connected peers. Often these ‘lesser qualified’ entrepreneurs can’t find willing investors, especially early on and as a result they must bootstrap their ideas into reality. They may have no idea what a discounted cash flow or internal rate of return is, but they often create real businesses. By the time investors are willing to take a look at their businesses these ‘lesser qualified’ entrepreneurs turn their noses up at professional investors. Better educated and connected entrepreneurs often get professional investors involved earlier and despite their pedigrees they meet the fate of most founders - without much of anything to show for their effort.
I am all for raising capital from investors, but I caution entrepreneurs to think long and hard before doing so. And once you decide to sign on the dotted line - don’t throw a party, get to work…
Written by Alexander Muse ·
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January 24, 2009
According to the NVCA, seed stage investments were WAY up in 2008. The otherwise dismal year for investing, saw seed stage investments at a level not seen since 2000 (and 2000 was a very good year). Holy Cow! Can we party like its 1999?. More than 440 startups raised $1.5 billion in seed funds, with 62 companies raising $199 million in the last quarter of the year. Software investments are on top with biotech a close second. Stacey Higginbotham, our Austin based Gigaom reporter, has the full scoop in a generally depressing look at VC funding in 2008 (thanks for putting some good news in there for me!).
Written by Alexander Muse ·
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January 22, 2009
Most of the entrepreneurs I meet never really know who their users are. They have an idea, but it is a rare startup that has actually taken a look. We decided that it might be fun to figure out who was using ShopSavvy. Taking a sample of more than 50,000 users we found some interesting facts:
- Most ShopSavvy users have lived in the same home for more than 11 years
- Almost 90% of ShopSavvy users are homeowners
- More than half of ShopSavvy users have 13+ years of education
- 72% of ShopSavvy users make less than $74K per year
- 75% of ShopSavvy users are married
- Less than 20% of ShopSavvy users are female
- 50% of ShopSavvy users are OLDER than 45
How about your startup? Have you taken a hard look at your customers? Once you get the information what do you do with it? Does it change how you market your product? Does it change how you improve your product? Love some comments on this one.
Written by Alexander Muse ·
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January 14, 2009
This morning Nortel filed Chapter 11 and on first look this might seem like a bad thing. Nortel has a big presence here in North Texas and I am sure it will take a toll on many businesses and people, but I can’t help think there might be a silver lining in the news.
Nortel has been in trouble since 2001 since carriers began moving away from Nortel’s big switches and as Cisco has gobbled up bigger and bigger slices of the lower end of the market. Easy access to credit has meant that Nortel has been able to borrow billions to keep the company afloat as they have tried to right the ship. Since 2005 the company has lost almost $3.5 billion and now has $4.5 billion in debt.
This easy access to credit has allowed Nortel to remain in almost every segment of the telecom market without regard to whether or not their solutions are a) profitable, b) sustainable and c) innovative. Upstarts and leaner competitors have had an uphill battle going toe-to-toe with Nortel simply because Nortel can buy important business and because their legacy and reputation is so strong. Nortel has been one of the most important players in the telecom market since 1895 when the company began selling telephone equipment to businesses throughout Canada. Many Nortel carrier network clients were almost ‘forced’ to buy Nortel’s second teir products such as metro-ethernet in order to keep their preferred pricing on the carrier side. Nortel, buy using its deep penetration into accounts and easy access to debt stiffled the ability of telecom startups to compete.
With the bankruptcy and ultimate breakup of the company, there will be lots of room for innovation from startups and entrepreneurs in the telecom space. So perhaps there will be quite a bit of pain in North Texas for the time being, but where there was one unhealthy company I believe there might be a hundred small, nimble, innovative startups ready to fill the void here in North Texas alone. Tightening credit markets mean that companies need to generate profits and can’t simply use debt to wait out under capitalized startups. Just as forest fires cause great destruction, they are fueled by dead wood and allow new healthier forests to emerge.
Written by Alexander Muse ·
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January 11, 2009
When I began this blog I wrote about everything - startups, politics, venture capital and personal stuff. Starting now I will be moving the majority of my personal and political thoughts to Twitter and Facebook. I wanted an outlet for my non-entrepreneurial thoughts and my blog never seemed like the perfect place. Twitter and Facebook have turned out to be a good place for my rants, complaints and personal news. When we launch the new SpringStage branded themes I will officially cut out the political posts and get rid of most of the personal stuff (i.e. whatever doesn’t seem to fit).
Written by Alexander Muse ·
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Been a long time coming:
What I’ll be watching.
Written by Alexander Muse ·
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January 10, 2009
More than few people suggested early on that JPG’s managers might have set up savejpg.com themselves. Others suggested that JPG never intended to simply shut down. Those rumors are now looking more believable. PDNPulse has an interesting post that JPG’s “closing was a handy way to drastically cut staff in preparation for a fire sale.” He quotes the CEO’s recent letter suggesting that is not believable to shift from shutting down on the 1st and by the 4th having a path to profit:
“[M]any thanks to all our friends in the press who wrote about our demise…it was great of you to jump on the story, and we appreciate and respect the effort you put forth to get the story just right…after all, JPG is a great property, with a large number of loyal members, a growing advertiser base, and a real prospect for profit….not to mention the foundation of what publishing can look like in the very near future. It surely has value.”
Very quickly JPG began suggesting that certain bidders were not credible. Really? If you really shut down the company ANY offer would have been credible. This post from Devin Poolman seems to support the theory that the savejpg.com process was planned all along. I received hundreds of email from JPG fans thanking me for attempting to save the magazine. Interestingly, the tone from the savejpg.com site was much different than the tone of the emails. If there really were fans behind the savejpg.com site, why would they have shut it down before the magazine was saved. Check out the most recent post:
Thanks for all the support that poured out here. It’s time to close things down as the job has been done. Your words have successfully been used to show the value of the people that make up JPG, and buyers responded to you, not to a business pitch. You saved JPG from the brink of oblivion. Don’t forget that for a minute, and don’t settle for anything less than the community you want to build. Thanks!
Something doesn’t smell right here. The comments seem to concur, this comment says it all:
Was this set up by JPG themselves?
It all seems a little convenient.
Two days until things had to shut down.
Then this.
Then “Oh, we have a bidding war”
Then this goes away
Maybe I’m just cynical…
We’ll see what happens
Why wouldn’t the savejpg.com owners be interested in the future of the magazine in the hands of the new owners? Wouldn’t they want to maintain a voice for the community outside of the magazine? It really smells sour to me. I tried to learn who registered the savejpg.com domain, but whoever it was kept the registration information private. This costs EXTRA!. Why would someone in the community keep their identity secret? Also, ALL of the old posts and more importantly the comments have been deleted. Why? Why remove the voice of the people? of the community? I say ‘astro-turf’, what do you think?
The future of JPG Magazine is anything but certain, but the shareholders seem to be happy. That is fine, but nobody enjoys being played for a fool. I have a feeling I (we) was played. Ironically, based on everything that has happened I think the ONLY way JPG will live on is if the current team is replaced - hopefully the new owners will be able to ressurect the community and our trust. What are your thoughts?
Update: Straun from http://blog.15×100.com/ indicated that he was the author of savejpg.com and I believe him. Additionally, he suggested that he got a ‘thank you’ email from someone in JPG management and as a result he decided to remove the old posts, comments and shut down the site as it was successful in saving the magazine. I have no reason to doubt Straun, but I think Straun might have missed an opportunity to help shepard the future of JPG under new management. But of course, Straun’s objective was to simply save the magazine. Hopefully, this puts to rest the conspiracy theory around the site. Of course, the rest of the conspiracy theories still stand…
Written by Alexander Muse ·
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January 7, 2009
Just to keep it interesting, SpringStage is hosting our First Friday Jelly on the second Friday of January (the 9th). What do you need to do? Come spend the day and work with us. We will give you a desk, free wifi, a phone, lunch if you call ahead and put an order in with Teressa at 214.550.2002 and community. Get to know other entrepreneurs, designers and people who normally work from homw - work with them for the day. Come for half the day, come for the whole day. 9AM to 5PM - drinks to follow at the High Tech Bar downstairs from the office. We call it a Jelly - you are the peanut butter.
This Jelly will be a very special Jelly as it will be Muse and Ryan free. I won’t be there as I will be on my way back from Amsterdam and Scott will be on his way to San Francisco for the Crunchies (vote for us again: http://tinyurl.com/savvyvote. So if you have been staying away because you don’t like me, this is the perfect time to show up. Former employees, old girlfriends, past investors, creditors and plaintiffs - show up and enjoy the Jelly risk free.
Ryan Roberts (the startup lawyer) and Bradley Joyce (Fort Worth Startup Blog) will be your hosts. Come on down to the INFOMART and enjoy a Muse-Free event. Woot!
What is a Jelly? Think casual coworking as Wired described the idea. The idea is very simple: We invite entrepreneurs and developers from around the community to come work at our offices the first Friday of each month. We provide the desks, chairs, sofas, wifi and you provide your laptop and yourself. Our goal is to get people talking, collaborating and forming lasting connections. We have been tinkering with coworking at Big in Japan with varied success. Our hope is that the First Friday Dallas Jelly will offer a low risk way for people to check out the facility and see if they might like to join us on a more regular coworking basis.
PLEASE RSVP HERE: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1418433/
Written by Alexander Muse ·
Filed Under Blog, Startups, [where: 75219] ·
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