I get asked all the time for a list of “tech reporters / bloggers” to contact around an announcement. A few weeks ago, I was pointed to a list on the web by Brownstein & Egusa titled the Tech Reporter Contact List. It’s actually seven lists. Top 100 Tech Blogs Top Tech Blog Reporters Top 100 Newspapers Reporters At Top 100 Newspapers Popular Bloggers Mobile Blogs SEO Blogs As a bonus, there’s also a good Beginners Guide To PR up on the same site.
I just joined the Internet Defense League. Think of it as the cat signal for the Internet. You’ll see a signup at the top of this blog, or just go to the Internet Defense League site . If you are so inclined as I was, please donate to the launch of the cat signal. Our goal is to help protect the Internet forever from bad laws, monopolies, and bad actions. When the internet is in danger and we need millions of people to act, the League will ask its members to broadcast an action. With the combined reach of our websites and social networks, we can be massively more effective than any one organization. ...
Dave Jilk, my partner in Feld Technologies, recently dug up a bunch of old stuff. I blogged one of the documents recently – The Simple Formal Beginnings Of Feld Technologies – and have a few other fun ones coming. Today, let’s look at another example of a contract that we signed in the context of “keeping it simple.” Over the seven years we were in business, we used a very simple form we referred to as a “Professional Services Agreement.” This was the document that we signed with almost all of our clients. Every now and then we had to deal with something more complicated, but even large companies typically were willing to sign this agreement in 1990. ...
I saw an email from a CEO the other day. In it, he said “I” over and over again. There were numerous places where he referred to “my company”, “my team”, “my product”, and “my plan.” It bummed me out. I know the people on “his team” and they are working their asses off. The company is an awesome company and the CEO is a great leader. But there was a huge amount of “we” in the effort and when I read the note, all I could think about was how demotivated I would be if I was on “his team” and heard “I I I.” ...
My first business partner, Dave Jilk, emailed me our original partnership agreement for Feld Technologies. It’s one page. We incorporated a month later as an S-Corp. It cost us $99 to do this – I remember using an organization called The Company Corporation – we called an 800 number, gave them some information, and the documents were automatically generated and filed. A short letter agreement specifying the equity splits and the boilerplate legal docs were the only legal docs we had until we sold the company in 1993. ...
Today’s guest post from Chris Moody , the COO of Gnip , follows on the heels of the amazing Big Boulder event that Gnip put on last Thursday and Friday. To get a feel for some of the speakers, take a look at the following blog posts summarizing talks from leaders of Tumblr, Disqus, Facebook, Klout, LinkedIn, StockTwits, GetGlue, Get Satisfaction, and Twitter. Transition at a Massive Scale with Ken Little of Tumblr From Monologue to Dialogue with Daniel Ha and Ro Gupta of Disqus Measuring Engagement on Facebook with Sean Bruich Measuring Influence Online with Joe Fernandez and Matt Thomson of Klout Data Science at LinkedIn with Yael Garten Industry-Focused Social Networks with Howard Lindzon of StockTwits Distributed vs. Centralized Conversations with Jesse Burros of GetGlue Engaging with Customers Online with Wendy Lea of Get Satisfaction Creating the Social Data Ecosystem with Ryan Sarver and Doug Williams of Twitter The event was fantastic, but Chris sent out a powerful email to everyone at Gnip on Saturday that basically said “awesome job on Big Boulder – our work is just beginning.” For a more detailed version, and some thoughts on why The Work Begins When The Milestone Ends, I now hand off the keyboard to Chris. ...
I love Paul Graham’s Maker vs. Manager schedule concept . At Feld Technologies, we used to call this “programmer time vs. phone/meeting time” and my partner Dave Jilk and I spent a lot of time figuring out how to make it work since we each had programming work throughout the life of the business but an increasing amount of phone/meeting time as our business scaled up. Near the end I was in almost 100% phone/meeting time, which I hated, but at least I knew why. ...
Chris Moody , president and COO of Gnip, is back with a guest post in his Moody on Management series. Following are Chris’ thoughts on negotiating compensation with a prospective employee. Enjoy and comment freely! In my last post, I provided a few tips for job candidates when interviewing at a startup . This week I wanted to cover a simple process for hiring managers to follow when communicating with candidates about salary requirements. ...
I’ve been writing about boards of directors some lately – both changing my behavior as well as thinking out loud as I explore reinventing how boards work for the book “Startup Boards” that I’m working on with Mahendra Ramsinghani. All fit in the context of continuous communications as I believe three things about early stage companies and their boards. 1. Board members should be actively engaged with the company on a continuous / real time basis. ...
Over the past year, I’ve been systematically trying to change the way the board meetings work for the companies that I’m on the boards of. I’ve done a bunch of experiments and continue to learn what works and what doesn’t work. Ever since I started investing in the mid-1990’s I’ve been exposed to a concept called “board observer rights.” When we did investments at Mobius Venture Capital, in addition to a board seat, we always got board observer rights. This was a way for us to bring another person to the board meeting other than the board member (usually an associate or a principal but sometimes another partner), or have someone sit in for the board member if the board member wasn’t available. ...