Of all the business and technology writers out there, including bloggers, I think the best one, at this moment, is Matt Levine. He’s the only person currently writing on Planet Earth that I find myself reading every word of everything he writes.
For the last few months, he has been mostly writing about three topics:
For a flavor of his writing, read the following 11 chapters of Matt’s writing (listed in chronological order). Then, subscribe to his newsletter and get a magnificent medium-form article in your inbox every other day or so.
Matt – thank you for making me snort or laugh out loud several times on the days you write.
Before we invested in MakerBot, we bought and assembled a Thing-O-Matic. When I say we, I mean me, Jason, and Ross. It took us about 20 hours (Jason and I did the first half; Jason and Ross did the second half) and was a blast – think of it as an adult lego project. Our Thing-O-Matic has been steadily printing stuff – you can play a game of chess with our Thing-O-Matic pieces. the next time you are in my office.
As part of the endless series of Amazing Deals I bring you from my deal site, today’s offer is a fully assembled Thing-O-Matic. If you want your own 3D printer, but you don’t want to assemble it, you can buy it fully assembled for $2,500. But, through the magic of daily deals, there are 20 available for a 20% discount ($2,000). This is a one time offer from my friends at MakerBot so grab ’em while they are available.
In additional TechStars Cloud launched today along with the first episode of TechStars on Bloomberg TV.
And finally, for all of you that have written asking for a “Convertible Debt Series” like our term sheet series, we’ve just started one on AsktheVC.com. The first post is up and introduces the series – we’ll be working through all of the terms in a convertible debt deal over the next few weeks.
On September 13th the Bloomberg TV Show TechStars launches.
TechStars will be having launch parties in Boulder, New York, Boston, and Seattle. If you are an entrepreneur, or part of the entrepreneurial community in any of these cities, sign up now to participate.
I’ll be in Boulder and am really looking forward to an evening celebrating entrepreneurship and hanging out with a bunch of my favorite people.
David Cohen, the CEO of TechStars, is doing a weekly show called ThisWeekIn TechStars. Episode 3 – which is now up – is the story of the making of the Bloomberg show “TechStars” which premiers on September 13th.
David interviews Elizabeth Gould, the Bloomberg Executive Producer for the show. I’ve gotten to know Elizabeth over the past few years and she’s really incredible. While I’ve been interviewed for TV plenty of times, I’ve never participated in a long form show. In this case, the TechStars show will be seven episodes that are each 30 minutes long. While I play a small part, watching the process unfold, the work required to put together a show like this, and the effort that Elizabeth and her team put into this was remarkable and really cool to see and experience.
The interview with Elizabeth is a chance for David to turn the camera on her for once. Watching the interview makes me even more excited to see the series when it comes out. As a bonus, David also interviews David Tisch, the TechStars New York Managing Director, for his feelings on the experience of being filmed 24 hours a day for three months. While it’s all it a little meta, it’s good meta.
Ever since David Cohen and I started talking about TechStars in 2006, one of our goals was to be open about everything we did in the program. We viewed TechStars as an experiment in building companies, creating entrepreneurial communities, teaching people (and learning ourselves) about entrepreneurship and what’s required to create a high growth company, and working hard at perfecting a vision David had which we now call a “mentor-driven accelerator”.
Several years ago we started getting approached to do a documentary, TV show, or reality series around TechStars. We’ve done lots of video that’s up on the web, including the awesome Founders Series (2010 and 2009) that our friend Megan Sweeney did with us.
Last year we decided to work with Bloomberg on a six episode project documenting the first TechStars New York program. Rather than describe it, I encourage you to watch the trailer.
TechStars Trailer 8/01 from Vortex Media on Vimeo.
David Cohen talks more about it on the TechStars blog titled TechStars on Bloomberg TV. The first episode is launching on 9/13 at 9:30 EST on Bloomberg TV (and the web). We are going to have a bunch of events around the launch – look for more info on them in the coming days.
This was an amazingly fun project to be involved in. Our goal with it was to give a deeper view into the experience of creating a company from scratch. Having spent a lot of time with the Bloomberg folks who worked incredibly hard on this, I’m optimistic about the outcome.