Archives for 2006

Freemium Memeorandum

Posted on April 26, 2006 ·

Tom Evslin at Fractals of Change discovered “clear evidence from technorati that tech.memeorandum predicts the future”.

He’s dreaming for tech.memeorandum to be able to predict product announcements, earnings releases. Tom, I have news for you: it’s all coming soon, along with a lot more… just think of the effect of some predictions on political Memeorandum. The predictive features will be wrapped into various subscription packages, as part of Gabe’s Freemium business strategy.

Tags: Memeorandum, Freemium, humor

Filed Under: Blogging, Humor ·

SVASE VC Breakfast in San Francisco

Posted on April 25, 2006 ·

I’ll be moderating another SVASE VC Breakfast Club session on Thursday, April 27th in San Francisco, at the Embarcadero Center. It’s an informal round-table where up to 10 entrepreneurs get to deliver a pitch, then answer questions and get critiqued by a VC Partner. We’ve had VC’s from Draper Fisher, Hummer Winblad, Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Mohr Davidow, Emergence Capital …etc.

Thursday’s featured VC is Blake Winchell, Managing General Partner, Fremont Ventures. The Zvents post has all the info and a map, but please remember to click through to register either from zvents or directly here.

These sessions are an incredible opportunity for Entrepreneurs, most of whom would probably have a hard time getting through the door to a VC Partners. Since I’ve been through quite a few of these sessions, both as Entrepreneur and Moderator, let me share a few thoughts:

It’s a pressure-free environment, with no Powerpoint presentations, Business Plans…etc, just casual conversation, but it does not mean you should come unprepared!
Bring an Executive Summary, some VC’s like it, others don’t.
Follow a structure, don’t just talk freely about what you would like to do, or even worse, spend all your time describing the problem, without addressing what your solution is.
Don’t forget “small things” like the Team, Product, Market..etc.
It would not hurt to mention how much you are looking for, and how you would use the funds…
Write down and practice your pitch, be ready to deliver a compelling story in 5 minutes. You will have more time, but believe me, whatever your practice time was, when you are on the spot, you will likely take twice as long to deliver your story.
Last, but not least, please be on time! I am not kidding… some of you know why I have to even bring this up.

See you on Thursday!

P.S. Next week’s session will be in Menlo Park, with Tome Cole, General Partner at Trinity Ventures

Tags: Venture Capital, VC Breakfast, Funding, VC Funding, Startups, Entrepreneurship, SVASE

Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, Social Networking, Startups ·

“Innocent” Trackback Spam Can Knock Your Page Views

Posted on April 25, 2006 ·

I though I’d share this: recently I’ve seen some seemingly pointless trackback spam that appeared to have come from the main sites of Yahoo, MSN, Google ..etc. I could not figure who benefited from these, since there was not even a hidden link to any other site. Still, I went ahead and clicked “delete and block” since, after all these were spam entries.

Today someone told me I came up third on a particular Google search, so of course I went ego-surfing, and voila! there I was – but I clicking through gave an error message. Now, why would Google be an illegal referrer? Then it hit me: when I blocked those seemingly harmless trackbacks, I actually blocked just about all major search engines! Checking my firewall entries, I found Yahoo, MSN, Microsoft, Google blocked. So if you suspect you received such spam, this may be a good time to check your blocked domains.

The good news: despite my stupid act, site traffic in this period not only hasn’t dropped, it actually increased – I don’t even want to know how much more it would be without the bogus blocks…

Tags: spam, trackback spam, spamback, trackspam, comment spam, spomment, page views, search engines, blog search, google juice, google, msn, microsoft, yahoo, blog traffic

Filed Under: Blogging ·

Sinkhole Under Home Swallows Man

Posted on April 24, 2006 ·

No, this is not some Stephen King story – the bizarre accident really happened, a man died and is stuck in 20–feet deep, 30–feet wide hole under what used to be his home.

“At about 9:30 p.m Friday, the 32-year-old man was in a basement apartment in a section of the house that had recently been converted when the foundation suddenly snapped and opened up. He fell into the hole and was covered by debris. Emergency crews reached him but found no sign of life. It appears the sinkhole is getting bigger, and emergency crews said the house was too unstable to let a recovery team in.
“According to geologists in the area, they have determined that there is still movement occurring in the hole,” said Jeff Brand of the California Department of Forestry. “The hole was initially eight to 10 feet deep, 10 feet in diameter and with remote cameras, we have determined the hole [is now] 30 feet in diameter and well over 20 feet deep.” Officials have not yet determined what caused the sinkhole. They are looking into a range of possibilities including whether the recent rains softened the ground under the home or that the house is built over an unknown, abandoned mine shaft.” (via The Sacramento Bee and The San Francisco Chronicle)