January 26th, 2007 by gregr
About a week and a half ago, TechStars launched. Basically, it’s a startup “bootcamp” - 10 teams will get a small amount of seed funding, work in Boulder, CO getting their new companies off the ground, and be mentored by a long list of smart folks. It’s the brainchild of David Cohen, and has some great people involved (including Brad Feld). When David offered me a chance to participate, I jumped at the chance.
Michael Arrington wrote about it yesterday on TechCrunch, and likes the idea. But what blew me away was some of the negative comments to his post. Most of the negatives seem to circle around the investment/equity part; basically, TechStars puts in $5,000 per founder (up to $15,000), and takes a 5% stake. Normally I’d write something clever now about the pre-money valuation of a napkin :-), but that really isn’t the point.
The point is, being mentored through the summer by this group of people is SO worth it. When I started NewsGator, I didn’t know anyone in the business, and really didn’t know a lot of successful entrepreneurs (other than consultants), let alone people in the legal or investment communities. When I saw my first venture term sheet, it was such a shock I’m sure I had some interesting expletives for my attorney (who, incidentally, had to be recommended to be by the same Brad Feld who was doing the investment, because again, I didn’t really know anyone in this community).
If I could go back to the beginning of NewsGator, would I have given up 5% equity for the kind of mentoring and contacts I would have made in a program like this? Yes - in a heartbeat. I can think of specific decisions I made on my own that I may have made differently if I had had a chance to talk to people like the folks on this list…and they could have made a positive impact on the company very early in its life.
Never underestimate the value of your network. And to those poo-pooing the whole concept, I’d remind you that there are a lot of people who don’t live in Silicon Valley, who have never met a VC in their life, but who have great ideas that could turn into the next big thing.
Category: Uncategorized |
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January 16th, 2007 by gregr
If any of you are going to be in Phoenix, AZ Wednesday for the Vista/Office launch event, be sure to go to the “Better Together” event at 11:00am. I will be there with Lane Mohler (our enterprise product architect), and we’ll be doing some demos in the session. Among the things we’re showing are:
- NewsGator Enterprise Server 2.0 - this is a really early build (it’s not even in beta yet), but there’s so much cool stuff in here we can’t help but show it…including the cool new integration with Sharepoint 2007. This will be the first public demo of this product - prior to this, I can count the people on one hand who have seen it.
- and a brand new product, which we’ve never even TALKED about. This one is also super cool, and you’ll not only see it in the demo, but you’ll be able to play with it yourself afterwards if you’re at the show.
So come on up and say hello if you’re there, and let us know what you think!
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January 3rd, 2007 by gregr
As many of you know, when I’m not in the office here at NewsGator I’m usually doing photography. I started out photographing just about anything, but I’ve more recently been focusing on fashion work (and a bit of glamour as well).
I’ve got a lot to say about all of that, and I agonized for a while about where to write about it, whether it should be here on my personal blog or on a new blog. I ended up creating a new blog, Greg Reinacker Photography - Blog, part of the larger Greg Reinacker Photography site, which focuses on my photography work.
So go take a look, and don’t forget to subscribe to my new blog! I have the feed links below…see you there!
Subscribe!
Category: photography |
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January 2nd, 2007 by gregr
As many of you know, enterprise RSS is a big part of NewsGator’s business, and our NewsGator Enterprise Server product has been best-in-class since its release a little over a year ago.
One problem we’ve seen, though, is we didn’t have a product for a) small groups of users who wanted enterprise-class content distribution features but couldn’t justify the cost of an on-premise server product, or b) large groups of users who for some reason are unable to install an on-premise product. Well, today, all that changes, and our hosted enterprise product is going into a much wider beta.
I’m proud to announce the beta 2 release of NewsGator Enterprise On-Demand is now available, and we’re accepting the next 100 customers to sign up for the beta. This will likely be a short beta cycle, as the product is prepared for release, but it’s a chance for you to sign up for a free trial and kick the tires of our new hosted enterprise RSS application. And it’s not just the hosted web application - all of the clients we have (FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, Go!, Inbox, etc.) all work with On-Demand as well.
As Charlie Wood said,
With the right execution, NewsGator Enterprise On-Demand could provide the perfect complement to such services as Salesforce.com and Google Apps for Your Domain.
Sign up here to give it a try!
Category: newsgator |
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