Jack Dorsey Also Has A FinTech StartUp

Image by Joi via FlickrGreat minds think alike. I have a FinTech startup. Jack Dorsey also has a FinTech startup. Square is a FinTech startup. But my FinTech startup is going to be bigger than Jack Dorsey's. I am giving Jack Dorsey five years to prove otherwise.

I am not making this up, but I thought of something like Twitter about six years before it actually showed up. I was thinking, there has to be a way for celebrities to interact directly with the fans. But I was not thinking 140 characters.

New York Times On General Assembly, The Coworking Space

TechCrunch: General Assemb.ly Scores $200,000 Grant To School Big Apple Entrepreneurs

When I was at the General Assembly on Friday, a team from the New York Times dropped by. They took my pictures too, but apparently pictures of me were meant for their private collection. This is the article they put out as a result.

Rachel Sterne: CDO

A Mind Blowing Party

In Nepal where I grew up that would have meant Chief District Officer, one mean post back in the days of absolute monarchy. You did n-o-t want to ever get noticed by the CDO. Worst case scenario you might simply have disappeared. Some of the most politically vocal people did. They simply disappeared.

250K Or 500K: How Much To Raise?

Image via WikipediaI am in mind to raise 250K from Union Square Ventures. That would be my first choice. I can guarantee you I can get Fred Wilson to give me 15 minutes of his time any day for me to able to pitch him. That much I know. But the deal is up in the air. I am not going to assume it will happen. That part is not in my control. What is in my control is I am going to leave no stone unturned to get him. My part is in my control.

Serenity Prayer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Another idea that is being floated by some people on my team is that I raise 500K, but without giving equity. It would be like I get 500K, and in my next round - which could happen in as little as six months - I give that money a 600K valuation. I would be very open to that.

Founder CEOs And Google

Image via WikipediaThe Chrome OS needed to kill Windows yesterday, five years ago. And Google is still not looking to kill Windows. Google not having a Founder CEO is the reason why. The early venture capitalists who put in the early money messed up. They should have brought in someone like Eric Schmidt as a COO, the Chief Operating Officer. Larry Page should have been CEO all along.

Bill Gates was young and he was CEO. Mark Zuckerberg is still young. He even looks the part. You can't dismiss a Founder CEO just because he or she is young. That is extra true for history making companies. It is a DNA thing. Founder CEOs come with the DNA.

The Stink From The New York Times

Image via CrunchBaseNetflix has a market value of $10 billion. The New York Times has a market value of barely one billion dollars. Articles like this one are the reason why. This feels like a hachet job done by a Vinod Khosla enemy.

The title of the article itself is so out of the whack. The microfinance industry in India is nowhere close to collapsing. Not even close. The article itself talks about how 1% of those who borrowed the money might no longer be able to pay. That is not a collapse. That is an excellent default rate. The default rates at big New York City banks that rich people and companies borrow from are much higher. And I am talking pre Great Recession numbers.
Image via CrunchBase
Just like the default rate remains low, yes, there are borrowers who have committed suicide because they could not pay back. But the article makes it sound like the microfinance industry in India has given rise to a country wide epidemic of suicides. People are committing suicide left and right by the roadside. That would be like taking the news of one Congresswoman in Arizona getting shot and making it sound like now there was a raging civil war in America.

My Tech Partners Sunil Madhu, Marty Monaco

Allen Paltrow: A Most Promising Princeton Freshman

Fast Company: Allen Paltrow: The First Time I Met Steve Jobs

So Marty Monaco got a room at General Assembly for my mock pitch to Brad Hargreaves yesterday. 11:30-12:30 Room 1. I sent a text to Rachel. "Top Guy, running late, 15 minutes."

I had five slides prepared on Google Docs. My machine does not have Microsoft Office, never has had one. The five slides were barebones. White background, ugly black letters.

"You did not talk about the market at all!" Marty later said. How could I have forgotten to mention the market!

So I Had A Shake Shack Burger

The Most Popular Dish In New York: Shake Shack Burger, Madison Square Park

The Stink From India

Image via Wikipedia

New York Times: November 2010: India Microcredit Faces Collapse From Defaults: India’s rapidly growing private microcredit industry faces imminent collapse as almost all borrowers in one of India’s largest states have stopped repaying their loans, egged on by politicians who accuse the industry of earning outsize profits on the backs of the poor. ........ Indian banks, which put up about 80 percent of the money that the companies lent to poor consumers, are increasingly worried that after surviving the global financial crisis mostly unscathed, they could now face serious losses. Indian banks have about $4 billion tied up in the industry ........ for-profit “social enterprises” that seek to make money while filling a social need ...... microfinance in pursuit of profits has led some microcredit companies around the world to extend loans to poor villagers at exorbitant interest rates and without enough regard for their ability to repay ...... microfinance could become India’s version of the United States’ subprime mortgage debacle, in which the seemingly noble idea of extending home ownership to low-income households threatened to collapse the global banking system because of a reckless, grow-at-any-cost strategy. ...... legislators in the state of Andhra Pradesh last month passed a stringent new law restricting how the companies can lend and collect money. ..... local leaders urged people to renege on their loans, and repayments on nearly $2 billion in loans in the state have virtually ceased. Lenders say that less than 10 percent of borrowers have made payments in the past couple of weeks. ..... the industry faces collapse in a state where more than a third of its borrowers live. Lenders are also having trouble making new loans in other states, because banks have slowed lending to them as fears about defaults have grown. ..... “They aren’t looking at sustainability or ensuring the money is going to income-generating activities. They are just making money.” ...... the industry had become no better than the widely despised village loan sharks it was intended to replace. ...... SKS and its shareholders raised more than $350 million on the stock market in August. Its revenue and profits have grown around 100 percent annually in recent years. This year, Vikram Akula, chairman of SKS Microfinance, privately sold shares worth about $13 million. ...... a few rogue operators may have given improper loans, but that the industry was too important to fail. “Microfinance has made a tremendous contribution to inclusive growth,” he said. Destroying microfinance, he said, would result in “nothing less than financial apartheid.” ...... Indian microfinance companies have some of the world’s lowest interest rates for small loans. Mr. Akula said that his company had reduced its interest rate by six percentage points, to 24 percent, in the past several years as volume had brought down expenses. ..... many lenders grew too fast and lent too aggressively. Investments by private equity firms and the prospect of a stock market listing drove firms to increase lending as fast as they could ..... the number of borrowers who are struggling to pay off their debts is much smaller than officials have asserted. He estimates that 20 percent have borrowed more than they can afford and that just 1 percent are in serious trouble ...... microfinance firms had lost sight of the fact that the poor needed more than loans to be successful entrepreneurs. They need business and financial advice as well ..... the industry was now planning to create a fund to help restructure the loans of the 20 percent of borrowers in Andhra Pradesh who were struggling. ..... The television, the mobile phone and the two buffaloes she bought with one loan were sold long ago.

Home ownership by the poor is not what caused the global financial meltdown. It was bad behavior on the part of bankers. This crisis in India can also be attributed to bad behavior on the part of bankers. But this crisis is overblown. Before I ever came to America I thought New York City was all about crimes and crimes alone.

Yunus On Loan Sharks

Image by amioascension via Flickr

Muhammad Yunus: The New York Times: Sacrificing Microcredit for Megaprofits: one of my goals was to eliminate the presence of loan sharks who grow rich by preying on the poor. In 1983, I founded Grameen Bank to provide small loans that people, especially poor women, could use to bring themselves out of poverty. At that time, I never imagined that one day microcredit would give rise to its own breed of loan sharks...... India’s crisis points to a clear need to get microcredit back on track. ..... Troubles with microcredit began around 2005, when many lenders started looking for ways to make a profit on the loans by shifting from their status as nonprofit organizations to commercial enterprises. In 2007, Compartamos, a Mexican bank, became Latin America’s first microcredit bank to go public. And this past August, SKS Microfinance, the largest bank of its kind in India, raised $358 million in an initial public offering. ...... Commercialization has been a terrible wrong turn for microfinance, and it indicates a worrying “mission drift” in the motivation of those lending to the poor. Poverty should be eradicated, not seen as a money-making opportunity. ..... these commercial organizations raise larger sums in volatile international financial markets, and then transmit financial risks to the poor. ..... commercial microcredit institutions are subject to demands for ever-increasing profits, which can only come in the form of higher interest rates charged to the poor, defeating the very purpose of the loans. ...... Grameen Bank .... has 2,500 branches in Bangladesh. It lends out more than $100 million a month, from loans of less than $10 for beggars in our “Struggling Members” program, to micro-enterprise loans of about $1,000. Most branches are financially self-reliant, dependent only on deposits from ordinary Bangladeshis. When borrowers join the bank, they open a savings account. All borrowers have savings accounts at the bank, many with balances larger than their loans. And every year, the bank’s profits are returned to the borrowers — 97 percent of them poor women — in the form of dividends. ..... we charge 20 percent to the borrowers. .... every country where microloans are made needs a microcredit regulatory authority

I share Yunus' aversion to "loan sharks." I grew up in the Third World. I know what loan sharks are. I saw too many of them in action while growing up. It is not a pretty sight.

Microfinance

No Alzheimer’s For Me
Pinging Hussein Kanji (2)
Pinging Hussein Kanji
Liking Is For Cowards
The Internet And The Emperors
The Music Tag On Tumblr
PayCheckr: Not Dead Yet
Mark Pincus Is Really Something
The Dong Rule
Video Blogging Would Beat Panels And Ignite
Wow Technorati
Southern Hospitality
My 50 Strong Tech Team Ranked 17 Globally On Vworker
Internet Week Fail Whale
Social Concentric Circles
Microfinance: Post Obama Race Talk
Fuck Yeah Africa
My BusiCopy Cofounder Anuj Bikram Thapa
The UN, The US, The Internet
Slow Down The Blogging
The Long March Of Democracy
Born In The USA
Someone From Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Now Followng Me On Tumblr
Live Nation And GroupOn: That Offline Component
Social Media And StartUps: Striking The Right Balance
Mafia Politics In Nepal
Mobile Banking For The Unbanked
Twitter Gangs Of New York (2)
18 Months Ago GroupOn Did Not Exist
Gender And The Wilson Household
Tequila
Patti Smith's Dancing Barefoot: One Powerful Song
Chris Dixon Kind Of Person
Superfluidity
Is Location The Fifth Dimension?
Jazz And Rock Fusion From Nepal
Me In The New York Times
Having Momo: Do Not Disturb
Doing Two Tech Startups
Subscription Business Models For Mindfood
Adaptive Text: The Book Deserves To Come Alive
Apple Does Hardware In Asia
That 10X Return Thing
Jessica Wilson Hearts Mahatma Gandhi
Mike Arrington And I: Close
Teamwork
Swiss Machine
Water Changes Everything
Kristina Hoke
Google Earth Builder
Your Local Library On Kindle
Indian Invasion Comedy
Way To Go Christina
Brooklyn Loves Bollywood
My Non Personhood Of 2009, 2010
SMS Power
Great To Meet Craig Newmark
This Week In Venture Capital: Gotham Gal
The Proverbial White Male
GroupOn's Legacy: Cute Email?
Two Upheavals Already
Having Mango Lassi: Do Not Disturb
Kiva Is In Nepal
Just Became A Cofounder
Tony Tsieh Could Have Been Richard Branson
How Wal-Mart Got Started
A Boulder Invitation From Brad Feld Himself
Played Farmville After Long Months
Getting To Meet Mark Suster In Person
Having Mango Lassi
2,000 Squats
A Social Graph For When Everyone Is Connected
Mike Yavonditte: An Hour Of Video
Technology And Social Justice
Owning Equity, Owning House
Grameen Miracles
Grameen Under Attack At Home
Is Square A Microfinance Company?
To You I Offer Buddhism And Yoga
To Catch A Dollar
Barack's Positivity
Rudiments Of A Corporate Culture
The Arab Revolutions And My Rethinks On Britain And France
Minority Majority Nation?
New York City
Is It A Bubble?
Gender Talk And Pragmatism
Caroline McCarthy On Gender
Autobiography
How To Pitch: The Rachel Sequoia Way
Jagdish Bhagwati: Misplaced Criticism Of Yunus
Multidisciplinary Approaches
Africa's Internet Strides
Alexis Ohanian: Angel Investor
The Institutions Of Globalization Will Be Built On The Internet
My Chrome Notebook Never Arrived
Happy World Water Day
Yunus Should Launch A Political Party
One Step Behind
Me @ CNN
The Two Poles Of My Social Reality
A Little Bit Of Untidyness, A Little Bit Of Randomness, A Little Bit of Chaos
Immigration Limbo
More Sam Walton Than Bill Gates
Rich Kids
Sean Parker, Billionaire, Was Really Poor Once
Blogging Works Wonders: Here's An Example
GroupOn, Zappos, And The Non Tech Components
GroupOn Did Not Launch At South By South West
A Life Of Poverty
Bundling Investors
Mobile Phone Banking: Major Boon To The Last Mile Of Microfinance
Very Much Would Like To Go Into Bihar
Passion For Microfinance, Passion For Social Media
Walking/Running: Putting One Foot After The Other
Going High Tech: Selfish Reasons
Microfinance Alone Can't Cure Poverty
Focus, Focus, Focus
This Guy Jack Dorsey
The Kiva Story
Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn
Me: Author
Carpet Bombing Angels
My Failures
Indian Hurdle
Brooklyn And Santogold/Santigold
Bihar, Darbhanga
Twitter Is Amazing For Networking
In Foley Square A Libya Feeling
Incredible India
A Tweet From Someone Running For Congress
Hackers And Founders MeetUp: Amazing
Not Rich Yet
Like David Noel?
Michael Yavonditte: An Exemplary Entrepreneur/Investor
Just Because My Name Ends With An A
Black Buddhas: The Madhesis Of Nepal: Documentary
Social Media Is For Real
Advantage India, Disadvantage India
Top Discussion At A Top LinkedIn Microfinance Group
Raising Money, Building Teams
Rootlessness And The City
Microfinance: No Substitute For Good Governance
Aggressive Fundraising, Aggressive Recruiting
Microfinance, Not Just Microcredit
Having Kenya And Chinatown Thoughts
Revolutionary Poverty Alleviation
Microfinance: The Basics
When Zuck's Facebook Account Got Hacked
The Google/Facebook Of Microfinance
Leave Yunus Alone
Immigration Mess/Humiliation And Window Shopped Tech Entrepreneurship
Normal People Easy To Get Along With
Validation From Fred Wilson: Froth
Arab Focus, Microfinance Focus
50 Hours Into One Five Minute Pitch
Tweet Pitches To First World Women
2015: A Mobile Tech Company Will Storm The Room
Could You Have Predicted A Google In 1990?
The Entrepreneur Does Have A Boss
Who Owns The Company?
You Have To Be A Little Wild
Mark Zuckerberg Loves Union Square Ventures
Non Profit Microfinance Vs For Profit Microfinance: The Stupid Debate
Three Syllables
10,000 People In 10 Years
Immensely Excited
A Mini Bubble Burst In Three Years
Union Square Ventures: You Love Me, You Love Me Not
A Moment Of Despair
Slumdog Millionaire: A Movie About My People
The Early Stages
Third World Guy
Jack Dorsey Also Has A FinTech StartUp
250K Or 500K: How Much To Raise?
The Stink From The New York Times
My Tech Partners Sunil Madhu, Marty Monaco
Allen Paltrow: A Most Promising Princeton Freshman
So I Had A Shake Shack Burger
The Stink From India
Yunus On Loan Sharks
Nazrul Islam Chunnu: Motherfucker
Not Going Into Any Accelerator Program
My Third World Advantage
Who Hired You?
We Are Not Trying To Solve All The World's Problems
A FinTech StartUp With An Edge
Mock Pitching Brad
The Best Way To Deal With Venture Capitalists
Kiva And My Outfit: Three Major Departure Points
Going For Profit
Catchafire
Intrepid Woman Rachel Cook
Union Square Ventures: A Real Choice
The Gotham Gal
MLK Day Brunch With Jack In Philly
Chris, Come In At 50K
Hola Charlie, A 50K Opportunity
FinTech: I Am Loving The Term
General Assembly: Singing Praises
Fred, How About Some Money?
Microlending Film At Kickstarter
Whining Is Not The Word
Going To Kickstarter For My Microfinance StartUp
Microfinance: Cutting Edge Like Clean Tech, Bio Tech, Nano Tech
Wearing Black
Eric Schmidt's Cloud Computing And My IC Vision
You Don't Need Billions To Take Care Of Your Family
Microfinance: A Zero Trillion Dollar Industry
$160 Smartphone From India: No Contract, No Subsidy
The Day I Got Called Sean Parker
Brazil
Number 52 In New York
Racism Caused Recession
Vinod Khosla's Entry Into New York City
Event At Hunch: Gender Talk (4)
Vinod Khosla: For Profit Poverty Alleviation
Google, Please Don't Be Evil
Leave Costa Rica Alone
The Microfinance Fishing Net
Engineering, Creativity, Sector Reform, Sector Revolution
I Am In Finance, Microfinance
Microfinance: The Next Big Thing?
Blog Carnival: Microfinance
Microfinance, Nanotech, Biotech, Software/Hardware/Connectivity
Seed Money

Armdroid

Image via Wikipedia

Harvard Business Review: The Fall of Wintel and the Rise of Armdroid: incumbents find it immensely hard to disrupt themselves..... They tried jamming a PC into a smaller form factor, which entirely missed the point. Their tablet should have been about disrupting the PC market with something light, cheap and simple. Instead, Microsoft tried to make it do everything. ...... the only line of business that is barely growing is the Atom, Intel's mobile processor. ..... Microsoft's point of view: now that Windows 7 has been developed, to sell another copy, they don't have to do a single thing. Because of this, it becomes very hard for any executive to advocate the complete development of a low cost OS that will run on tablets: not only would it cost Microsoft a lot to develop, but it would result in cannibalization of its core product sales ...... ARM processors are perfect for powering these handheld devices. Manufacturers can customize to their heart's content. And Android is on track to dominate the operating system space .... ARM and Android — Armdroid — are providing everything that tablet manufacturers need, and doing it more effectively and at a lower cost than Microsoft and Intel are able to.

I am still betting on the Chrome OS Notebook to kill Windows. Tablets and smartphones are all good, but for the power user there is still a need for a bigger screen and a full fledged keyboard.

An Eric Schmidt Traffic Spike

The massive spike in traffic was due to this blog post: I Will Not Miss Eric.

12 Digit Global, Mobile Smartphone Numbers

Image via WikipediaJust like every website has a unique web address, every smartphone needs to come with a unique 12 digit number straight from the manufacturer. As soon as it can tap into wifi, that is the number the phone responds to, it rings when you call that number. There is no phone company involved anywhere in the equation. There is no monthly fee.

Because it is web based, it is global. The web is a country on its own. As long as you can come online is all that matters. The phone calls are free.

We would have to agree on industry standards so that numbers don't get duplicated anywhere. If we could do this, voice would overtake video as the fastest growing segment of internet traffic. People want to talk to each other. That would be a contribution to world peace. I thought it was Chatroulette, I was wrong. It's the smartphone, the kind that makes and receives free phone calls globally.

Voice is just data. There is no reason whatsoever why phone calls need to be any different from emails. You send and receive as many as you want. Email addresses don't have area codes, country codes, none of that nonsense.

2011-2015: A Mobile Stretch

Image via WikipediaI have been talking in terms of five broad categories in tech: web tech, clean tech, bio tech, nano tech, fin tech. In web tech, the momentum clearly is with mobile. The next five years belong to mobile. Thanks to the mobile web the rest of the world does not have to wait. It is through the mobile web that the world finally gets to become one. The sizzle is amazing to watch. Like I say, the child is not a mini adult, not that there is anything childish about the mobile web.

ReadWriteWeb: Eric Schmidt: All of Google's Strategic Initiatives in 2011 are Mobile

A $50 Smartphone Running On Free WiFi
Steve Jobs: Android Rant
Fred Wilson On Android And HTML5
Twitter, FourSquare: Mobile Web Thingies
Is The Mobile Web In A Category Of Its Own?

I Will Not Miss Eric

Image via CrunchBaseI am a big believer in the idea of the Founder CEO, and I will not miss Eric.

New York Times: Shake-Up at Google as Co-Founder Takes Over: Mr. Schmidt said Mr. Page would “merge Google’s technology and business vision,” while he would focus on external issues, like “deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships.” .... “I don’t think he was pushed aside, but he may have been nudged,” he said, adding that between the two founders, Mr. Page always appeared more interested in eventually becoming chief executive. ..... In the unusual management “troika,” Mr. Auletta said, Mr. Page’s voice always carried the most weight.

Also, the cofounder thing is a myth. Larry Page was always the senior among the two founders. I admire Sergey plenty, but credit is where credit is due.

The Chrome OS Could Kill Windows

Image via WikipediaIt could. It should. The idea of an operating system being the court clown is so pre-internet. The browser is the new court clown, it's not the operating system. The browser should have been the new operating system, and perhaps would have been if Microsoft had not killed Netscape.

I have watched in pain as Google has dragged its feet on the Chrome Operating System. Google is so obviously not a hardware company. Look at how they "released" their Chrome OS laptop. They released it like it were Gmail. They have released an early beta version to a limited number of users. I think they will give out a million of the machines for free. And based on the feedback they get, they will rework the machine. How lame!

Nazrul Islam Chunnu: Motherfucker

The Times Of India: Nobel Winner Yunus In Court For Defamation Suit, Gets Bail: DHAKA: Nobel Laureate Muhamad Yunus appeared in a court in Bangladesh on Tuesday in connection with a defamation suit dating back to 2007, and was granted bail.

Social Media Week Is Back

Image by That Other Paper via FlickrI was just looking at the Social Media Week site for the first time after spotting a mass email from Toby Daniels. I got lost on first try.

I remember having a lot of fun last year during Social Media Week.

Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever

Not Going Into Any Accelerator Program

Image via WikipediaThere is no accelerator program anywhere that will help me tackle the last mile in microfinance, the most important mile in my line of work. I have a FinTech startup, but it does not revolve around coding, it revolves around the last mile of microfinance.

Also, I can't think of one iconic tech company that came out of some accelerator program. You could argue accelerator programs are a new phenomenon, they have not had the time to spit out iconic companies yet, but accelerator programs are more for purely web tech companies. Mine is not one.

My Third World Advantage

Image via CrunchBaseThere are five broad categories in tech: web tech, clean tech, bio tech, nano tech, fin tech. Each of those five categories are broad. Each has sub categories, and sub sub categories.

There is no next Google in web tech, there is no next Facebook in web tech. Google is the next Google. Facebook is the next Facebook. But the Googles and Facebooks of clean tech, bio tech and nano tech are still out there. They are still small. If you can locate them and put some money into them, you are going to end up uber rich. But it is not easy to locate them, not easy at all. Even the Google of today was not easy to locate when it was small. Yahoo could have had the Google search engine for a few tens of millions, but they passed up on the offer.

Who Hired You?

Image via WikipediaSam Walton is an inspiration of mine. I find Walmart, Dell and the dollar pizza places fascinating. I admire those who can keep the costs down.

Sam Walton had plastic chairs at his Arkansas headquarters. And this was after Walmart had gone public, and Sam Walton was a billionaire already. His logic was obvious. If we buy expensive chairs, the costs get passed on to the customers. It made perfect sense to buy plastic chairs. When he traveled for business, he made a point to stay in cheap motels.

I read his autobiography a long time ago. It is a slim book, a great read.

We Are Not Trying To Solve All The World's Problems

People talked of me as a future Prime Minister of Nepal when I was at high school. They were perhaps not off the mark, because a guy who was junior to me politically before I came to America - I was too young to be running for office legally, but I was Vice General Secretary to a political party with two MPs - has been a cabinet minister in Nepal for years now. I have sharp political instincts, as sharp as anyone on the planet. Like Marlon Brando says, I could have been somebody.



My point being, what I have is not a political organization. We are not in the good governance business. Good governance is basic to poverty elimination. But if a people have an illegitimate, shady, corrupt, oppressive government, it is their responsibility to rise up and throw that government out. My company is not in the political revolution business, although I don't see how I can stay away from Iran myself personally.

A FinTech StartUp With An Edge

Image via WikipediaWhat I have is a FinTech startup. It is a tech startup. But it is not a tech startup that is trying to come up with the next big thing in tech. That we will leave to the companies that are first and foremost web tech companies.

But we a-r-e going to stay on a constant lookout for developments in tech to see what new developments we can put to the use of microfinance. So we are going to keep our antenna up. But then that is not true only of web tech. We are also interested in the developments in clean tech, bio tech, nano tech. If there will be developments in those sectors that we can possibly put to the service of our microfinance efforts, we will go in with both hands.

Mock Pitching Brad

Tomorrow, Friday, at noon I will be mock pitching my friend Brad Hargreaves at General Assembly: five slides, five minutes. I am going to conclude by yelling, "Brad, show me the moneeeeeey!" Or maybe I will not yell, he is a friend, but I w-i-l-l deliver the line.



Why did I pick Brad? Well, he is a friend. He is an amazing blogger. He "gets" tech. He is an entrepreneur at heart, although he has worn a few different hats along the way. When I first met him he was an Entrepreneur In Residence at a VC firm.

The Best Way To Deal With Venture Capitalists

Image via WikipediaVCs are money people. And many entrepreneurs fall for that stereotype. VCs are not rich people - well, many are - but my point is VCs are not big money people who are itching to get rid of the money that is, oh, such a burden on them. VCs are entrepreneurs themselves. They go raise money. They raise money promising to grow that money. The good ones do. The best ones grow the money like money were raining from trees. If you put that first 100K into a company like Google, you see a growth that is better than any winning lottery ticket ever.

There are many, many VCs out there. There are many, many, many would be tech entrepreneurs out there. As an entrepreneur you should not need money. You should be able to generate revenues and profits.

Top VC Bloggers: The Numbers Don't Look Right

TechCrunch has an interesting post: The Top 20 VC Power Bloggers Of 2010.

It's good to see Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, Chris Dixon, Charlie O'Donnell, and Albert Wenger on the list. These are people I have met in person or, in Brad Feld's case, interacted online. Of all the people on the list, I personally know Fred Wilson best, either in terms of how often I visit their blog and leave comments at their blog, or in terms of how many times I have met in person.

Kiva And My Outfit: Three Major Departure Points

Image via CrunchBaseI am a huge fan of Kiva. They went from raising $5 million five years ago to raising over $100 million last year and are projected to raise close to a billion dollars in five years. But that would still be a drop in the ocean. Global poverty is no small challenge.

There are more than 10,000 MFIs - microfinance institutions - in the world today. But global poverty is as big as ever. It looks like a virgin terrain to me. There is so much work to do.

Going For Profit

Yunus is the father of non profit microfinance. When the white people in the Arctic Zone of Scandinavia awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize, he made a little over a million dollars.

My FoodSpotting Day Hangover

Image via CrunchBaseFoodSpotting Day was January 15, and granted I celebrated it in two different cities, the celebrations have to stop at some point. But looks like my FoodSpotting Day hangover goes on. It is not like I have a new idea to share, but I do feel the urge to flesh out a few things I have suggested before.

The Most Popular Dish In New York: Shake Shack Burger, Madison Square Park
World FoodSpotting Day 2011: January 15: Photos

I am not the best person to talk about the food recommendations business, but I don't get the impression FoodSpotting is lacking for direction on that front. It is moving full speed ahead there.

Catchafire

My two tech partners and me were at this event earlier in the evening. I got to meet and get to know the entire Catchafire team, it felt like. And this entire time I have been thinking of them as a non profit. They are a for profit like my outfit. And they cater not only to non profits. It felt to me like I could find some part time consultants through them.

Intrepid Woman Rachel Cook

Last night I was at Gizzi's Coffee for a screening of the MicroLending Film by my colleague Rachel Cook. Later we went to a birthday party of a friend to our tech partners Sunil Madhu and Marty Monaco. That was at Draft Bar in Brooklyn. Sunil was at the screening too. He left for the party early.

The Glass Hammer: Intrepid Woman: From Futures Trader to Microfinance Film Maker: I was working as a Futures Trader on the European shift – in the middle of the night, Chicago time – in September 2009 when I first came across an op-ed in The New York Times written by Nick Kristof the month before, “The Women’s Crusade.” I was completely floored by the article – it told the stories of women in the developing world, facing terrifying, seemingly insurmountable odds. And some of these women were able to overcome these odds using a development tool I’d heard little about – microfinance. I was intrigued. Microlending seemed to help women, and it seemed to be a high-return financial investment – both topics of high interest to me...... While maintaining my trading job, the crew and I traveled to South America and filmed in Paraguay in 2010, and we’re only getting started – we’ll continue filming throughout this year...... I love trading. I wasn’t a superstar, but I was profitable over the course of my career when trading a variety of products, including during the financial collapse in 2008. I made more money than I had expected to see at 25 ..... But over the course of my trading career it became increasingly evident that much of the criticism about the trading world was all too true – particularly in its attitude toward women. ...... During my tenure at this first shop, the 2008 presidential elections were happening, and I’d hear these macho frat guy-types yelling at the TV, telling Palin to “go back in the kitchen” after Senator McCain first announced her as his VP pick. ...... we’re planning to shoot in Bangladesh and India in late February, and will also film in Kenya and in New York, in the interest of making this a truly comprehensive project about microfinance and how it impacts women

Rachel's Microlending Film was the best of the three movies shown for the evening. The other clips had too much forced violence. It was like, okay, time to end the 15 minute movie, let's kill a character.

The Most Popular Dish In New York: Shake Shack Burger, Madison Square Park

You have to wonder, how does Charlie O'Donnell figure these things out?

Go Easy On Charlie Now

Happy FoodSpotting Day Soraya Darabi

Image by lizstless via Flickr

Okay, so FoodSpotting Day was yesterday, but I just noticed my Soraya Darabi blog post for the first time has become a top five blog post for the week at this blog. Most of that traffic is, I believe, coming from Google. Looks like a lot of people are doing searches on her name.

Union Square Ventures: A Real Choice

Image by Meetup via CrunchBase

Union Square Ventures: The Opportunity Fund: For entrepreneurs, this means that if you are leveraging the economics of Internet-based networks to transform some aspect of the global economy, Union Square Ventures can be a partner, whether you are just launching your service, funding rapid growth, or spinning your business out of a larger entity. We can work with you if you need $250,000 or $25,000,000. We can invest in New York, San Francisco, London, or Berlin, and most places in between. We hope you'll think of USV as stage-agnostic, highly-focused investors who can add value to your company.

Fred Wilson is my favorite solo blogger. I drop by his blog most days. The days I can't, I drop by the following day and catch up on the missed posts. When I drop by, I leave a short comment. I was here!

FoodSpotting Day: Thoughts

Image via CrunchBaseI have been fascinated by FoodSpotting. I am not exactly a meat and potatoes kind of guy, but I am only slightly above steamed broccoli. I would not describe me a foodie. I come from a country of subsistence farmers. I am sufficiently into food, don't get me wrong. But my fascination with FoodSpotting has been what it has meant as a tech startup, best caputured by a phrase I coined, that FoodSpotting is the next FourSquare. It is the leader in the what after check in space. It inhabits the royal vertical in that space.

World FoodSpotting Day 2011: January 15: Photos

So when I celebrated FoodSpotting Day yesterday - in two separate cities, Philly and NYC - I was on a mental hyper drive of sorts. I kept thinking, what next, what next? What next for FoodSpotting?

World FoodSpotting Day 2011: January 15: Photos

The Gotham Gal

I like Fred Wilson plenty as is, and I have been profuse in my praise for him at my blog and in the comments sections of his blog. But then I got to meet the Gotham Gal, and that is what cemented it for me. That is when I realized I really, really want this guy on my Board. He is a big shot. I might or might not get him. But I am going to leave no stone unturned to get him. I decided.

MLK Day Brunch With Jack In Philly

Chris, Come In At 50K

Fred, How About Some Money?
Future Of The Internet: Easy, Says Dixon
Hola Charlie, A 50K Opportunity
FinTech: I Am Loving The Term

Chris. I want you to come in at 50K. This offer does not come with a Board seat, obviously. But maybe Fred Wilson will keep a good watch over your money as well, don't you think?

You are my favorite Super Angel. You are right up there with Caterina Fake. I have been reading about Super Angels for months now. There is a part of me that wants to know what they are all about, and hence the offer.