Month: February 2010
After spending the last seven hours in front of my computer, a phrase came to mind that my brother Daniel recently said to me in response to reading The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Daniel said:
“What if we we are already working for the computers?”
While The Matrix and Horton Hears a Who! come immediately to mind, his comment was subtler than that. What if we turn the entire paradigm on its side? In our biological realm we “evolve”; in our computing realm we “innovate.” What if the computers are actually evolving and have figured out that the best way for them to evolve more quickly is to convince us to “innovate” for them.
I had to stop and scrunch my eyes together after typing that paragraph. The first draft I wrote was way weirder and more out there – basically a rant about how computers were having a conversation in a parallel universe that we don’t actually understand and, as part of this, had figured out how to manipulate human beings.
At Ted yesterday, my long time friend John Underkoffler, the co-founder of Oblong stated “Technology is capable of expressing generosity. And we need to demand that.”
While he meant something totally different, I think this is consistent with the parallel universe I’m pondering. As humans (at least most Americans), we regularly envision ourselves at the top of the pyramid of existence, unless you are not an atheist, in which case god factors in somewhere on your hierarchy. But – let’s leave god (or the lack of god) out and think about “humans as a species” vs. “computers as a species”. I started with constructs like collective consciousness and communication hierarchy and was able to quickly come up with a straightforward analogy for each one between the human species and the computer species.
And yet, I still type. All in the name of sharing and contributing my thoughts via this very interesting mechanism. I’m going to run for three hours this afternoon. I’ll have my Garmin 305 on my wrist (with its GPS) and my iPhone in my pack (listening to the end of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I’ll be contributing a lot of data to both devices, which will then record them and upload them to “the computer”. The amount of data I’m generating is enormous; I’m not quite sure what the computers are using all of this data for, but what if it was actually something specific?
Before you discard these thoughts as the ravings of a lunatic, just think about them for a minute. This is a common construct in so much contemporary science fiction. Maybe the “collective compute infrastructure” of the world has already passed us by and now have us working for them / it. Wouldn’t that be something to discover 100 years from now.
Well – the 2010 marathon season is upon us. As I prepare to head out for a three hour run, I decided to finalize my 2010 calendar.
2009 sucked for me – I didn’t complete any marathons on my way to doing a marathon in every state by the time I’m 50. Mild injuries, several colds, fatigue from work and travel, and general lack of rhythm are my excuses while a temporary failing of my iron will is the real reason.
Out with the 2009 lameness – it’s a new year and we’ll try again. My best year was 2008 when I did five marathons so let’s up that by one and do six this year. Here are the one’s I’m currently planning to do.
- 02/28/10 – New Orleans, LA: Rock ‘n’ Roll Mardi Gras Marathon
- 04/11/10 – St Louis, MO: GO! St. Louis Marathon
- 06/12/10 – Marathon, IA: Marathon to Marathon
- 08/21/10 – Rachel, NV: E.T. Full Moon Midnight Marathon
- 10/17/10 – Detroit, MI: Detroit Free Press / Flagstar Marathon
- 12/11/10 – Kiawah, SC: Kiawah Island Golf Resort Marathon
I’m always game to have friends tag along and run with me so feel free to reach out if you are so inclined. And – I’m trying to figure out what kind of new special 2010 charity thing to add on to my existing sponsors Return Path and Pixie Mate so I’m open to suggestions. And – as always – a super huge thanks to my amazing coach Gary Ditsch at Endurance Base Camp for putting up with me.
See you in a few weeks New Orleans!
I’m doing another Beers with Brad – this time in Boulder on next Thursday, February 18th from 6pm to 8pm at Twisted Pine Brewery (3201 Walnut Street). Lest you think this will be one of those boring events where a bunch of smart, interesting people stand around and drink beer and talk for a few hours, I promise I’ll spice this one up.
I’m going to tell three entrepreneurial stories I haven’t told in public before in Boulder. I haven’t decided which ones yet but they’ll be doozies. I promise a mix of success and failure to go with some very good beer. All in support of a good cause and some fun.
There might even be an after party.
My long time friend Warren Katz pointed me out to an event on March 3, 2010 called EO Boston Accelerator Shark Bowl 2010. It’s a competition for entrepreneurs under 40 with businesses between $100k / year and $1m / year in revenue. You present to a group of judges including Warren (MAK Technologies), Rich Farrell (Full Armor), Clark Waterfall (Boston Search Group), and Michael Hackel (DiningIN) who are all EO Boston members.
In 1993 I was the founder of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization Boston Chapter and member #1. My forum group, “Forum Group 1” is apparently still meeting monthly. And while YEO changed its name to EO, my friend Warren who has been a member from the very beginning tells me the group is still going very strong (the stats look like 88 members with total sales of $427m and 2,231 employees across all of the companies.)
If you fit the qualifications, I’d encourage you to participate. It’s free, you’ll get some great practice and advice, and meet a bunch of new entrepreneurial peers. To participate, you must register and to present you must sent your presentation to Caryn Saitz by March 1st.
Go Boston (and Cambridge) – you are making me proud these days!
Standing Cloud, one of the Boulder-based companies we seed funded last year, is hiring a Java Developer. They are a provider of software and services that facilitate deployment and management of application software, using on-demand cloud servers from providers such as Amazon Web Services, Rackspace Cloud, GoGrid, and others.
The role is to build, maintain, and support client code that interacts with third party cloud services and virtualization APIs. You’ll be deep in the weeds with the various emerging cloud services and part of a young team of eight other people.
If you are interested, send a resume to jobs@standingcloud.com.
Scott Kirsner had a fun article in Boston.com today titled The Red Line Tour of Innovation in Boston. Several of the stops were regularly hang outs of mine between 1983 and 1995 most notably #10 (Miracle of Science) and #11 (Toscanini’s) but also including #5 (MIT Media Lab), #6 (Muddy Charles Pub), #7 (MIT Lobby 7), and #8 (Central Square and the Necco Factory – back when they made Necco wafers.)
I lived at ADP at 351 Massachusetts Avenue for four years as an undergraduate at MIT. It was the first frat I went to when the freshman picnic ended (Mark Dodson grabbed me, shoved me in a white van, and said “you are coming with me.”) I stayed the first night and never left. Yes – it was a fraternity.
But we were also nerds. There was something in the water and a lot of companies were created. Scott got a few of them such as Colin Angle of iRobot, Jeet Singh and Joe Chung of ATG, and Frank van Mierlo of Bluefin Robotics, but I thought I’d add a few more. While the founders of Harmonix (the guys that brought us Rock Band and Guitar Hero) came from the Media Lab, one of them (Eran Egozy) also lived at ADP. As did my first business partner Dave Jilk, who is now CEO of Standing Cloud. And two of the founders of Oblong – John Underkoffler and Kevin Parent. Let’s not forget two well known VCs – Sameer Gandhi (Accel) and Mark Siegel (Menlo). Oh – and Carl Dietrich’s flying car from Terrafugia. We also lived next door (WILG – 355 Mass Ave) to some other impressive entrepreneurs including Megan Smith (Google and PlanetOut). There have been plenty of others through the years – these are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. If you should be on the ADP entrepreneur list, please comment on this blog and add your name for posterity (and Google searches).
My first company (Feld Technologies) used 351 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139 as my office address for the first few years of its life (I officially started the company as a sophomore, although my partner Dave Jilk joined me shortly after I got my undergraduate degree.) But Feld Technologies wasn’t the first company I started at 351 Massachusetts Avenue – that honor went to Martingale Software and my partners Dave Jilk, Sameer Gandhi, Andy Mina, and Jeff Pierick. We raised $10k, bought a Lisa and a Compaq luggable, earned about $7k, and eventually folded the company and sent the $7k back to our investors.
During the four years I lived there and the two years I had an office at 875 Main Street, I ate an enormous amount of ice cream at Toscanini’s. To this day, Cocoa Pudding with chocolate fudge syrup on top rates as the best ice cream choice I’ve ever had on planet Earth.
One fall, after Feld Technologies had moved to Boston, we hired a recent graduate from Brown named Jonathan Lutes. While interviewing him I asked what he had done over the summer. He mumbled something like “screwed around a lot and built a bar called Miracle of Science with my brother Eric.” Yup – same bar – this was 1990-ish – and it was at 321 Massachusetts Avenue.
Sometimes I actually miss the smell of Necco wafers in the morning. It smells like ADP.
Lots of little things go into building a great company over the long term. Rally Software is one that I’m proud to have been involved in from the beginning. I remember when Ryan Martens, the founder, would sit for entire days in a small conference room near my office covering the white boards on the walls with his scribblings.
Today Rally is a 150 person company that plans to add another 75 people in 2010 on the heels of Rally’s $16 million financing led by Greylock. And – since their birth in 2002, Rally has had 17 babies (well – people that work for Rally have had the babies, but you probably figured that out.) Recently, Rally’s leadership team decided to do something about this.
Nicely done Tim, Ryan, and everyone else at Rally. Now you’ve just got to get these kids using software from Kerpoof at an early age. I wonder how Agile Parenthood works?
When I wrote my post titled An Angel Investor Group Move That Makes Me Vomit I expected to write my little rant and be done with it. A month or so later Jason Calacanis picked up the mantle and started a Jihad against the idea of angel groups charging entrepreneurs to pitch to them.
The result is the Open Angel Forum. I participated in the second event last week in Boulder. I thought it was spectacular and the twitter stream from #OAFCO reflected this sentiment. About 20 active (at least four investments in the past year) early stage investors (angels and seed stage VCs) attended. Six entrepreneurs presented their companies in short seven minute pitches. Five sponsors underwrote the food and drink at the event. There was plenty of networking before and after. That was it – small, intimate, and highly relevant to all.
Most of the presenters wrote blog posts about the event which will give you a great feel for what they experienced.
- Odojo – My Experience presenting at The Open Angel Forum
- FaceFile – Open Angel Forum Colorado
- Grogger – OAF: Things Getting Better for Entrepreneurs
- TeamSnap – TeamSnap presents at Open Angel Forum
- Kijubi – Kijubi @ Open Angel Forum in Boulder Colorado
The events continue with Open Angel Forum San Francisco on March 4th and Open Angel Forum New York City on April 8th. If you are an entrepreneur or an angel investor in either city, check them out.
I think Boulder is one of the absolute best places to start a tech company. The depth of talent and overall strength of our tech community here is superb. It turns out that makes it a great place to start a community-based tech nonprofit startup, too. I’ve written before about SnapImpact’s great work in making doing good easy. Having already created the first volunteering app for the iPhone, they’re started taking on some additional challenges.
Specifically, their developers got the attention of All for Good, a Silicon Valley-based project that managed to make data-sharing agreements with all the major volunteer data providers in the US – not an easy feat. Over the past year, they’ve built the US’s biggest database of volunteer opportunities and are the back-end for the serve.gov website. The SnapImpact crew has been given the go-ahead to create All for Good version 2.0.
They’re kicking it off with SnapCamp on Feb 19-21, an intensive weekend event for non-profit stake-holders, developers, designers, marketing gurus, startup geeks, and anyone else who wants to make it easy for volunteers find ways to contribute. Of note to developers, v2.0 will be utilizing Scala/Lift – with full support of the Lift community and Dave Pollak, it’s creator.
SnapCamp is taking place in the TechStars Bunker and is being fully sponsored by All for Good. I encourage you to show up, have some geeky startup fun, and do something really big with your weekend. Sign up at Eventbrite: https://snapcamp.eventbrite.com.