BingeBooks launches a promising book discovery site
A new platform for book discovery called BingeBooks (tagline: “Find your next great read”) just launched fills a gap in the book marketplace.
Startups
‘Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups’ (book review)
Title: “Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups—Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000″ Author: Jason Calacanis My rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ Release date: July 18, 2017 on Amazon (hardcover & Kindle), in bookstores and at angelthebook With Silicon Valley at the center of tech culture – and much of pop culture these days – you might be tempted to get in on the startup action. Not founding a startup but investing in one … or a dozen … or, as Jason Calacanis advises in his new book “Angel,” investing $1.5 million in 50 startups over a three-year span. Now that’s a bold and provocative set of marching orders. Which is what we have come to expect from Calacanis, the Brooklyn-bred journalist turned entrepreneur turned podcast impresario—and one
Takeaways from Launch Scale 2016
Solid advice for startup founders, from startup founders I’ve been lucky in that I’ve attended every Launch conference and every TechCrunch Disrupt conference since the very first one back in 2007. And the past couple of years, I’ve attended Launch Scale, a free invitation-only event put on by Jason Calacanis to provide startup founders with insights from industry leaders and fellow founders. (I’m the co-founder and CEO of Cruiseable.)
Outtakes from the first Social Sharing Angels Lunch
Bringing together angels & 4 startups trying to revolutionize next-generation travel We didn’t know quite what to expect when we came up with the idea, two months ago, to hold the first Social Sharing Angels Lunch. But we did know that the current way of connecting promising startups with angel investors is pretty lame. Feastly is a social dining startup that lets you share a meal or organize private lunches and dinners (Photo by JD Lasica). So it was a bit of a surprise that the unanimous verdict from participants was that yesterday’s event was, in the words of George Arabian of Steelhead Ventures, “a superb idea that’s so much better than the usual speed dating events” that fill the calendars
Photos of Traction conference in Vancouver
I‘m just back from one of the best inaugural tech events on the West Coast: the two-day Traction conference, which drew some 800 entrepreneurs, startup team members, marketers and angels to Vancouver last week. Speakers included marketing superstar Neil Patel, Lynda Weinman (whose Lynda.com was purchased by LinkedIn for $1.5 billion), Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite, Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez, SurveyMonkey president Selina Tobaccowala, Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio, and a host of others.
Photos of Launch Festival 2015
There were lots of remarkable moments at the eighth Launch Festival, which ended a three-day run Wednesday at Fort Mason in San Francisco: Investor legend Peter Thiel exhorting entrepreneurs to find a space and “create a monopoly.” Pundit Glenn Beck declaring, “We don’t need the media. I trust my neighbors.” Forty or so founders taking to the stage to launch interesting new startups. I wrote about it over at Socialmedia.biz. And above is a gallery of some of my favorite shots.
Photos from Startup Grind 2015
I’m in the middle of launching my own startup, so when I’m not heads down working 80-100 hours a week on that I’m rubbing shoulders with other startup founders and tech luminaries. Above is a sampling of photos from the just-ended Startup Grind 2015, and here’s my writeup: • Startup Grind: ‘Find your golden purpose’ (Socialmedia.biz)
Photos from Startup Grind 2014
Here are some of the photos I shot this week at Startup Grind, the startup conference that drew 1,000 attendees and speakers — including tech investor MC Hammer, above — to the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. For a complete look, see my Flickr set. Here’s the my photo gallery, displayed with the Envira plug-in:
Photos of Krakow & a startup conference
I‘m just back from Poland, where I gave a talk on The Social Startup to the Bitspiration startup conference in Krakow. This was my first trip to Poland, so naturally I did some sightseeing in Krakow. And I spent a day traveling in the Polish countryside to Spie, where my grandfather came from.
Requiem to a Dot-Gone
Amid the dot-com carnage, some promising startups are going under The following article appeared as the main story in the Sunday Business section of the San Jose Mercury News on Jan. 7, 2001. For me, the public’s weariness with Internet companies hit home when I filed my claim for unemployment. “What do you know,” the state worker on the phone said tartly, “another dot-gone.” Call it Revenge of the Dot-Nots. One can hardly pick up a newspaper, turn on the TV or fire up the PC without encountering an army’s worth of slings and arrows raining down on the Internet industry. The new conventional wisdom, spouted by everyone from the media punditocracy to the cubicle dwellers at the state unemployment
