I spent a couple of days last week out in the Twin Cities at the RAIN Makers Conference. I have to say I was pretty impressed (and surprised) by the strength of the entrepreneurial community in Minneapolis/St. Paul. I’ve known a few of the key guys from that community for a few years through Defrag and Glue but it was great to see how many people are really involved (there were something like 250 people at the conference). I shot an interview with Jeff from Tech[dot]MN that I thought I’d repost here. Seth Levine – RAIN Makers Conference from TECHdotMN on Vimeo.
Archives / September, 2010
Preparing an effective executive summary
Today’s guest post comes from Ted Rosen, a partner at the law firm Fox Rothschild. How to write an effective company “teaser” is one of the most common topics I’m asked about by entrepreneurs and I think Ted has some excellent thoughts on how to prepare a company summary that hits the right points but isn’t so long that you’ll lose your reader’s attention (or make them abandon the summary before reading the important parts). Ted really nails it in the piece below. I’d especially call out “jargon free” and “keeping it simple” – the inverse of which are probably the two most common traits of poorly formed executive summaries. As always, I welcome comments, ideas, suggestions, etc. You can…
There Is No VC Seed Investing Signaling Problem
My partner Brad recently wrote a great post entitled “Addressing the VC Seed Investor Signaling Problem“. This, along with several larger funds reaching out to me to ask for advice about starting their own seed investing programs got me thinking about the hype surrounding the VC Seed Investor Signaling Problem. My conclustion: THERE IS NO VC SEED INVESTING SIGNALING PROBLEM As Mark Suster points out in two fantastic posts on the subject (here and here) signals abound in the investment world. And frankly, as signals go, this isn’t a particularly major one. I’m serious. There are a million reasons that an investor group may or may not be able to continue to support an investment, some of which relate to…
My AdExchanger Interview
AdExchanger just posed an interview that I did with them that touched on some of our ad-tech investments as well as our overall investment philosophy. I’ve cross posted an unedited version of that interview below. 1. Why get into the venture capital side of the business? Do you ever get the entrepreneurial "itch"? I first got into venture capital about 10 years ago and I love my job. I was running a few business units for a small public company and while I enjoyed the operational side of my job, I was also responsible for M&A and partnerships and had a particular affinity for the transactional side of my job. While I consistently have the entrepreneurial itch, I actually think…
My Big Mac
So after much teasing by friends and in a vain attempt to solidify my geek creds, I finally took the plunge and ordered a MacBook Pro. I’m dumping my Microsoft infrastructure and am going to switch over cold turkey once I get the thing set up. I’m anticipating a difficult few weeks transitioning. And here’s where I need your help. For readers that have made the switch, what advice do you have to make it go smoothly? For all Mac users, what programs, add-ons, short-cuts, Mac resources (particularly a directory of short-cut codes) do I need? Also, very specifically, I’m looking for something that will let me sync a network share locally so that all files are available off-line. This…
TechStars Loves NY!
This morning we announced that TechStars is opening it’s 4th (and final) program in New York. As readers of this blog know, I’m a huge fan and supporter of TechStars (and, along with my Foundry partners, an individual investor each of the TechStars programs in Boulder, Boston, Seattle and now New York City). For those unfamiliar with the program, TechStars is a mentor driven accelerator for start-ups. Founded in Boulder and now running programs in Boston and Seattle, New York will be the final US city to which we take the program (we feel the model of having non-overlapping terms is the best way to maximize the success of each city program). Working with TechStars companies for me has been…