New entrepreneurs are often paranoid that someone is going to steal their idea. With time and experience, most come to around to Howard Aiken's point of view, "Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down…
TechStars is a Boulder, Colorado based clone of Y Combinator. They are doing their first round of companies this summer. They provide $5k/founder, plus office space, servers, classes and some pretty serious contacts. They take 5% of the company. They have received 175 applications so…
Most micro-ISVs have a single founder who works in his spare time until there is enough revenue to quit. While safe, that violates several of Paul Graham's 18 mistakes that kill startups. I'm almost done reading Founders at Work, which reinforces his points; many of the founders warn…
I wrote about a proposed change in the accredited investor definition a few days ago. From talking with Steve Murchie at the Keiretsu Forum, I learned that, ...there is an even more progressive measure in Congress with bi-partisan support that would give a 25% tax…
The SEC is considering changing the accredited investor definition from $1M including your primary residence to $2.5M excluding your residence. Most of the protests center around excluding investors from higher risk/higher rewards opportunities. It will also reduce the pool of eligible Angel investors, which hurts startups that need…
http://tools.google.com/gapminder displays the changes in per capita GDP and life expectancy across countries over the last 20 years. Having just read And the Band Played On, watching the life expectancy in South Africa fall is especially tragic. The default income scale is logarithmic, changing it to…