Entrepreneurial Connections Conference 2007 (EntConnect 2007) scheduled for March 29, 2007 through April 1, 2007

Every year there is a small but loyal group of former readers of the former Midnight Engineering magazine and other entrepreneurially-minded souls who gather in the Denver, Colorado area for a conference known as Entrepreneurial Connections, or EntConnect for short. These are mostly people who have a background or interest in technology and are either running their own businesses or would like to be running their own businesses. Some attendees don't have quite the depth of technical background, but are simply interested in the special angle on business that the conference offers.

This year's conference was just held on March 23-26, 2006. Next year's conference is scheduled for Thursday, March 29, 2007 through Sunday, April 1, 2007.

The conference is run by John Gaudio. Details on the conference can be found on his official conference web site at www.EntConnect.org, or you can check out descriptions of past conferences at my Enrepreneurial Engineers web site.

So, if you'll be in the Denver, Colorado area, or you live in a galaxy that is within teleportation range, and you're a technical entrepreneur or have entrepreneurial aspirations, consider checking out EntConnect next year. Even if it sounds as if you might not fit the profile of a typical attendee, you might consider the conference anyway. Sure, a lot of technology gets discussed, but the focus is running your own business and thinking like an entrepreneur.

Tell John that I sent you. [Really -- I get a commission!]

-- Jack Krupansky

Now available for software consulting - Me - April 15 (or earlier)

I'll be finishing up with my current client by the middle of April and working half-time until then, so I am now available to consider new engagements.

I am open to considering software development work, but I'd prefer to do some work related to blogging or venture capital (e.g., due diligence), possibly helping technology startups get off the ground.

My resume can be found here: http://basetechnology.com/resume.htm
Or, just Google my name.

-- Jack Krupansky

Now available - Me

I'll be finishing up with my current client by the middle of February and working half-time until then, so I am now available to consider new engagements.

I am open to considering software development work, but I'd prefer to do some work related to blogging or venture capital (e.g., due diligence), possibly helping technology startups get off the ground.

My resume can be found here: http://basetechnology.com/resume.htm
Or, just Google my name.

-- Jack Krupansky

Financial Fitness for Entrepreneurs

This isn't recent, but still seems relevant. Back on July 26, 2004 venture capitalist Brad Feld wrote a post entitled "Financial Fitness for Entrepreneurs". It is well worth reading. The main points are:

• Cash is king
• Put in real financial systems from day one
• Measure everything
• Build an annual operating plan
• Use your vendors to fund your business
• Use your customers to fund your business
• Be careful of personal guarantees
• If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is
• Finance your business appropriately for what you are trying to create
• Choose professionals carefully
• Don’t take anything for granted
• Pay your taxes on time

Brad puts a fair amount of meat on those bones, so read his post carefully for the details.

-- Jack Krupansky

Questions for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists - Rev 1.1

I left one question off my list of questions for entrepreneurs and venture investors:

2.  Do you have a solid, easy to understand, transparent, and credible business model?

Here's my revised post...

I'll be attending the VentureOne Summit venture capital conference on March 22-23, 2006 in San Francisco, which is focuses on dozens of entrepreneurs giving presentations on their companies and a fair number of venture capitalists whose attention the entrepreneurs would like to get. I'll be attending as "press" for my finance and economics commentary, Finaxyz.com. Here are the questions which I intend to ask as many attendees as possible, both entrepreneurs and investors:

1. What is your target market space and demographics?
2. Do you have a solid, easy to understand, transparent, and credible business model?
3. Are you building the company for the long term or building to "flip" within a couple of years?
4. Are you committed to shooting for an IPO?
5. If you decide to sell the company, who would be an ideal acquirer?
6. What is your vision of where your company will be in 5 to 10 years?
7. How many jobs will your company have created here in the U.S. over the next 5 to 10 years?
8. What will be the most positive contribution of your venture to society?

I don't intend to do a scientific survey, but at least I do hope to start some very stimulating conversations.

-- Jack Krupansky

Internet startups snub VC dollars

There was an interesting article by Adrienne Sanders in the March 10, 2006 issue of San Francisco Business Times entitled "Internet startups snub VC dollars" which was mostly about smaller Internet startups which have been able to sell out to established, larger companies without the need to raise money from the professional venture capital funds.

I would simply make the point that there are a wide variety of funding needs and that it has never been true that one size fits all. Some startups can completely fund themselves. That's great. Some really do need some angel funding and guidance. That's fine too. And, some startups really can do better with serious, deep-pocket, professional venture capital funding. Sure, some startups will do better by selling out to established companies as quickly as possible (known as "flipping"), but some (e.g., Microsoft and Google) really will do better as "built to last" ventures.

The point is that the entrepreneur should be cognizant of where they are really trying to go with their venture. In other words, Entrepreneur, know thyself.

Note: The article also appeared on March 12, 2006 on MSNBC.com.

-- Jack Krupansky

More notes on Marc Hedlund's tuturial: From Coder to Co-Founder: How to Move from Engineering to Entrepreneuring

In addition to Robert Kay's excellent notes on Marc Hedlund's tuturial at the O'Reilly ETech 2006 conference entitled "From Coder to Co-Founder: How to Move from Engineering to Entrepreneuring" which I've summarized in a recent post, Marc himself has a detailed post along with excellent reader comments.

See Entrepreneurial Proverbs on the O'Reilly radar blog.

-- Jack Krupansky

Notes on Marc Hedlund's tuturial: From Coder to Co-Founder: How to Move from Engineering to Entrepreneuring

Robert Kaye took some excellent notes on Marc Hedlund's tuturial at the O'Reilly ETech 2006 conference entitled "From Coder to Co-Founder: How to Move from Engineering to Entrepreneuring". Here are just a few of the topics Marc discussed:

1. On average, entrepreneurs fail three times before they succeed.
2. Building to flip is building to flop.
3. Be prudent and talk to people, but don't go so far as to put off starting your business.
4. Momentum builds on itself.
5. Pay attention to the idea that wont leave you alone.
6. If you keep your secrets from the market, the market will keeps it's secrets from you.
7. Give people what they need, not what they say what they need.
8. Your ideas will get better the more you know about business.
9. 2 or 3 founders should get along and share a vision. 4 founders can't make a decision to save their lives.
10. Work only with people you like and believe in you, naturally. If you're going to work with people for a few years, make sure to do it with people that mutually believe in and like each other.
11. Great things are made by people who share a passion, not by those who have been talked into a vision.
12. If they are not ready, don't push people.
13. Cool ideas are useless unless people are willing to pay for them.
14. Build the simplest thing possible (race to a working product) -- let people start using it NOW. This is great for getting feedback and convincing VCs that you have a real product and not just a shaky idea.
15. Solve problems, not potential problems.
16. Test everything with real people -- watching users is torture and it will motivate you.
17. The best pitches are plainspoken and entertaining (not in that order).
18. For investors, the product is nothing. If your pitch has 11 slides on the product, 1 on the business/team, you'll be shown the door. You need to talk about the company and the overall vision.

Please read Robert's notes for his more-detailed commentary as well.

-- Jack Krupansky

Virtually attend the 2006 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference on The Attention Economy

Back on February 10th I wrote about wishing that I could attend the 2006 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (ETech) held March 6-9, 2006 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego, California, which was to focus on what is called the Attention Economy. Well, as expected, I was not able to attend the conference, but we can all now attend it retrospectively in a virtual manner by reading and viewing a lot of the commentary about the conference, which just ended two days ago. See O'Reilly's ETech Conference News.

Alas, I can still claim that I personally don't know anybody who attended the conference. It's a whole different world from the one that I live in.

-- Jack Krupansky

Web 2.0 business models - a business model called "Hope"

There is a Business 2.0 article entitled "Silicon Valley faces Web startup glut - There is a new profusion of well-funded Internet ventures -- but is this a good or a bad thing?" which reports on their Next Net 25 panel discussion. It's an interesting article. Here are some interesting comments concerning business models:

The absence of tested business models is another challenge for today's startups. JotSpot CEO Joe Kraus, whose company builds online collaborative applications, said he regrets not testing subscription plans when he launched his product.

"We put our product in beta, but we didn't put our business model in beta," says Kraus. "Feedback on a free product doesn't teach you squat about how your business model will work."

But others argued that it's a good idea to test a free product and see how users react to it. "If you are attracting users [inexpensively] you are going to make money," said Michael Robertson, CEO of SipPhone, a voice-over-Internet-protocol startup. "Without 'hope' as a business model, there'd be no Google, there'd be no Yahoo."

In my opinion, "Hope" as a business model is about as reliable as the lottery or a slot machine. Yes, Google and Yahoo have thrived, but given the many dot-com failures, those are not enthusiastic odds for a business model called "Hope".

-- Jack Krupansky

Questions for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists

I'll be attending the VentureOne Summit venture capital conference on March 22-23, 2006 in San Francisco, which is focuses on dozens of entrepreneurs giving presentations on their companies and a fair number of venture capitalists whose attention the entrepreneurs would like to get. I'll be attending as "press" for my finance and economics commentary, Finaxyz.com. Here are the questions which I intend to ask as many attendees as possible, both entrepreneurs and investors:

1. What is your target market space and demographics?
2. Are you building the company for the long term or building to "flip" within a couple of years?
3. Are you committed to shooting for an IPO?
4. If you decide to sell the company, who would be an ideal acquirer?
5. What is your vision of where your company will be in 5 to 10 years?
6. How many jobs will your company have created here in the U.S. over the next 5 to 10 years?
7. What will be the most positive contribution of your venture to society?

I don't intend to do a scientific survey, but at least I do hope to start some very stimulating conversations.

-- Jack Krupansky

Updated Distributed Virtual Personal Computer (DVPC) proposal

I've just posted an updated version of my proposal for a Distributed Virtual Personal Computer (DVPC). Let me know what you think or if you know of competing proposals or products. Thanks.

I still have no intention of personally designing the details of such a product or even developing a business around the concepts, but I would like somebody to do it so that one of these days I can buy a new PC and it will come with DVPC right out of the box.

-- Jack Krupansky

Formatting of a computer science paper

Here's a detailed document, entitled "Lecture Notes in Computer Science: Authors’ Instructions for the Preparation of Camera-Ready Contributions to LNCS/LNAI Proceedings", that describes how you can go about organizing a technical paper, such as for a technical conference.

-- Jack Krupansky

Developing a poster presentation

Here's a PowerPoint presentation, entitled "Developing a Poster Presentation", that describes how you can go about organizing a poster presentation, such as for a technical conference.

-- Jack Krupansky

Venture Capital Economics - Web 2.0

Since I hear all sorts of mindless chatter about the funding and profitability and selling of Web 2.0 businesses, I decided to go right to the horse's mouth and emailed the following query to venture capitalist Brad Feld of Mobius Venture Capital:

Subj: VC Economics - Web 2.0

Do you agree or disagree with the following scenario as a firm basis for Web 2.0 ventures:

Raise $2 to $6 million to be spent over a two to three year period, with an exit of a $20 to $50 million sale to one of the GEMAYANI's.

Would you adjust those numbers significantly, as a general thesis?

 

Is such a venture model an attractive VC proposition, by definition, or maybe merely acceptable in the absence of a more traditional, larger-scale exit (say, raising $4 to $16 million with a $80 to $300 million exit after 4 to 7 years)? What model has the most appeal to you these days.

 

Ultimately, it's a question of what entrepreneurs should be shooting for.

 

Implicit here is the question of whether Web 2.0 is a short-term window which may close in less than two to three years.

 

Thanks.

 

-- Jack Krupansky

You can read his reply as well as reader comments here.

-- Jack Krupansky