Tony Tsieh Could Have Been Richard Branson

New York Times: Why Is This Man Smiling?: In his book, Mr. Hsieh implies that the company’s investors forced him to make the Amazon deal

I have not read Tony's book, and this is the first time I am seeing somewhere he is hinting the sale was forced upon him, but I guessed that on my own a long time ago, and I strongly disapproved of it.

Zappos deserved an IPO. Zappos deserved an airline. The forced sale was an act of racism. Don't act surprised. I have made that statement before.

No, it was not about money. Those VCs would have made more money if Zappos had gone IPO.

The First Walmart Store

So Sam Walton decides he wants to take his company public. Although the company was in debt, its fundamentals were looking really strong. Besides he figured he could use the money generated from the IPO for the company's future growth.

So he shows up in New York, shows up at an investment bank.

"Hi. I am Sam Walton from Arkansas. I need to take my company public. Who do I talk to?"

The receptionist takes her to see that lone soul from Arkansas who happens to be working at that bank.

New York Times Paywall Sucks

Image via WikipediaSo yesterday the New York Times website kept bombarding me with pop ups saying I had only two more articles left for the month, two out of 20.

They should have warned me at 10 left. I would not have read all those travel articles I read: vicarious living.

Pop ups are bad. Period. Don't do pop ups. Firefox climbed up by simply helping you fight pop ups. What is the New York Times thinking?

Tear Down This Paywall

I thought I read somewhere that if you show up at a New York Times article from some social media destination like Twitter or Facebook, that does not count against your monthly limit. Well, I did.

Dave McClure's Incubator

Dave McClure is a dude to watch, sure. The guy is a major mover and shaker in the early stage game. You might not do business with him, you might not agree with him, but his insights are hard to ignore.

FoodSpotting's Dish As Starting Point

Image via CrunchBaseOkay, so I am breaking my April Fool promise of restraining from blogging about FoodSpotting.

Yesterday, or the day before, I read that both inDinero and FoodSpotting are Dave McClure companies. I kind of, sort of knew that. But it was one of those flash moments. I also have known FoodSpotting is an Angel List company.

But then I expect FoodSpotting's next round of funding to come from one of the major VC firms in the range of 10 to 20 million dollars, whenever that might be. In a year or less perhaps?

This reinforces my point that it is not either or. Old school VCs still matter, actually they matter big. But The Angel List, Y Combinator, TechStars, 500 Startups, they have changed the early stage game fundamentally, irrevocably. In short, they have innovated.

And FoodSpotting is proof. (Twitter ---> Instagram ---> FoodSpotting)

How Wal-Mart Got Started

Image via Wikipedia"In 1962, four new retailers were born. One called Kmart was started in Garden City, Michigan, another called Target was started in Minneapolis, another from Woolworth, the big name in retailing at the time, called Woolco was started, and the final one in rural Rogers, Arkansas, called Wal-Mart. Thirty years later, Woolco had met its demise and one of the other two was the largest retailer in the country. Surprisingly, the top retailer was the one from Arkansas."

The Guardian: It all began in a small store in Arkansas...: Four of the world's top 15 billionaires are from one family. ..... retail is a good place to be. Of the top 15 billionaires, nine made their money the old-fashioned way, by selling us clothes, food and furniture ..... together, the clan are nearly as rich as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates (the top two on the list) combined. ....... Sam Walton began his conquest of the world in 1945, with a loan of $20,000 from his father-in-law and a small variety store in Newport, Arkansas, where he established the practices that define present-day Wal-Mart: he kept prices as low as possible, stocked a wide range of goods, and stayed open longer than anyone else. His margins were small, but he sold large quantities, which meant he could bargain for even lower prices from wholesalers - policies that still drive smaller local stores out of business. ....... Even in his later years, when he was worth $24bn, he was famously frugal, opting for $5 haircuts (no tip), and cheap food at his local Wal-Mart. He drove an old pick-up and often borrowed money from his employees. And he was ruthless. "Some people try to turn it into this 'Save the Small-Town Merchants' deal, like they were whales or something that have a right to be protected," he wrote in his autobiography. But he was having none of it. "What happened was as inevitable as the replacement of the buggy by the car." When he died, in 1992, the state got almost nothing in taxes, because he had divided his wealth between his wife Helen, who died in 2007, and his children. ....... Wal-Mart employs more than 2 million people worldwide, meaning it has twice as many men and women in uniform than the US army. ...... A reporter for Fortune, strolling round Bentonville, Arkansas, was hard put to even find the offices from which their fortunes are run. ....... Rob Walton, company chairman (the CEO is a non-Walton, Mike Duke), worked in a small windowless room,
Image via Wikipedia 10ft by 10ft square ..... in fact, anyone who lives in Bentonville probably shops in Wal-mart for food, clothes, furniture and electronics, banks at Arvest, and, until recently, read a Walton-owned paper. They can drive down Walton Boulevard to watch sport at the Walton Arena. They can wander around the Walton Arts Centre, or go to the Wal-Mart Museum, where old Sam's office and pick-up are preserved exactly as they were the day he died. They can study at the Sam Walton business school, or fly from the Alice L Walton terminal of the airport.

Some Valuations

A Boulder Invitation From Brad Feld Himself

This is deeply touching.

Brad Feld:"It was great to finally meet you in person. Come visit us in Boulder anytime - we'll make sure you really feel like you are at home!"

Now I get to plot a trip to Boulder.

Meeting Brad Feld

Richard Branson

Played Farmville After Long Months

Image via CrunchBaseI think it has been almost a year. I stopped after the game started acting funny. It simply would not load for me. Anu Shukla could not understand. She thought maybe my blogging stole me from Farmville. My conspiracy theory was that Mark Pincus was personally punishing me for having taken credit for an idea.

I tried the game on a Mac at an Apple store. Last year. Still not loading. Was that a Flash/Apple thing? I don't know.

Anyways, my Chrome Notebook did not arrive, and recently I bought myself a new computer, a PC, after having tried a Mac for a few weeks: I liked it. But if all you need is a browser almost all the time, the PC works just fine. And costs matter. Sam Walton is my hero.

TV On The Radio: Will Do

(Via Fred Wilson)

Battle: Los Angeles

Warren Buffet, Jay-Z On Luck

StartUp Week: Job Fair: Fish Market

Meeting Brad Feld
Getting To Meet Mark Suster In Person
2,000 Squats
StartUp Week At NYU April 6-15

It said 2:30 to 5:00 PM. 770 Broadway, AOL Headquarters. So I am going up and down the street. This is 752 Broadway. Wait a minute, this is now 780 Broadway. What did I miss? Finally I gave up and walked into Bank Of America. It looked like they were at the address where AOL should have been. Ends up 770 Broadway is not on Broadway proper. Take a left at the street corner, the clerk said.

One of the first people I met was Amanda Moritz of Brainscape. I first met her at a party during Social Media Week. Facebook said we had two mutual friends.

Meeting Brad Feld

I got to meet Mark Suster yesterday, and Brad Feld today, and I get to meet Vin Vacanti next week. In Vacanti's case it will not be my first time, but still. What do you think is going on? StartUp Week, that's what.

TechStars' Geographical Advantage Over Y Combinator
Brad Feld
StartUp Week At NYU April 6-15
To: Brad Feld, Subject: Iran And Me (Digital Ninja/Commando)
Happy July 4 Fred Wilson, Brad Feld
An Immigrant Story For Brad Feld
Paul Graham, Brad Feld, Me, BBC
To Iran, With Love (3)
To Iran, With Love (1)
To Iran, With Love (2)

Both Mark and Brad recognized me right away. We have interacted online. I have interacted more with Brad than with Mark. At one point I was trying to get Brad to fund my work into Iran democracy.

"Oh, hey," Brad said when it was my turn to greet him.

Coachella (3)

Coachella (2)

Coachella (1)

Facebook Location

Image via Wikipedia

New York Times: A Corporate Campus Made to Mirror Facebook: Facebook, which started out in a dormitory at Harvard, transferred to a rented house in Silicon Valley and now occupies a cluster of office buildings in Palo Alto, Calif., is about to make its biggest move yet: to a 57-acre campus in this small city about 30 miles south of San Francisco. ...... a series of stucco-covered low-rise buildings occupied by Sun Microsystems until Sun was bought ...... s. The campus will resemble an urban streetscape, with cafeterias .... if the campus will be a microcosm of a city, it’s not clear that the real city around the campus — including the largely Mexican-American neighborhood of Belle Haven ....... the Facebook site is surrounded on three sides by water, and separated from the rest of Menlo Park by railroad tracks and a divided highway. ..... The site is so insular that in the two decades it was occupied by Sun Microsystems it was nicknamed Sun Quentin (a reference to San Quentin prison, about 40 miles north). And because Facebook provides its employees with three meals a day in its own cafeterias, there may be little reason for them to venture off the property. ..... the city, which has a population of about 30,000 ..... Sun had 3,600 employees on site; Facebook, with a work force that is growing by 50 percent a year, could exceed that number ...... because Sun’s engineers had private offices, while most Facebook employees work in unpartitioned spaces ...... they can’t have more than 3,600 employees until they get City Council approval. ..... leasing with an option to buy .... walking and biking paths and greater access to public transportation and the wetlands alongside the Facebook site. ..... One team, charged with connecting the Facebook site to the rest of Menlo Park, devised an elevated ringlike walkway that links the campus to the Belle Haven neighborhood, a proposed transit station and the San Francisco Bay waterfront. The architects named it Friends Circle. (Though Belle Haven is a tidy neighborhood, many of the homes are small and flimsy-looking.) ...... Contractors have already replaced rows of small offices in one of the Sun buildings with a loftlike space where desks will be pushed together in groups of four. “We like that you can sit at one end and see all the way to the other,” said Mr. Tenanes, showing off a section of building that had been stripped to concrete and ductwork .... “protecting Facebook’s extraordinary company culture.” ...... he liked the “casual eclectic” look of the firm’s Ace Hotel ..... (The Ace crowd, which tends toward 20somethings with laptops, mirrors the Facebook employees’ demographic.) Unlike the Sun campus, with color-coordinated buildings reminiscent of an upscale resort, Facebook is looking for “an urban streetscape where no one architect or designer” dominates, Mr. Tenanes said. “Random is good” ....... Facebook wanted there to be "life and soul and some idiosyncrasy to the campus.” ...... “They don’t want to buy into that corporate structure,” she said. “They want to continue to feel hungry." ..... Currently, about 40 percent of Facebook employees commute to work on foot or bicycle or by bus (including some provided by the company), Mr. Tenanes said. For those employees, the remote location of the new site will pose a challenge. But he is already planning bus routes and considering opening a pedestrian tunnel that was dug but never used under the Bayfront Expressway, the highway that separates the campus from the rest of Menlo Park. (In case it outgrows the Sun property, Facebook bought a 22-acre site across the road.)

The key phrase here is urban streetscape. Facebook wants its campus to look and feel like New York City. My bias for the city just got stronger. New York City is the place to be.

The other key phrase is unpartitioned spaces.

Getting To Meet Mark Suster In Person

So I got to meet Mark. Suster. In person. It was a great feeling. I had read enough of his blog posts that I really wanted to meet in person and make it real.

Mark is the most visible VC in Los Angeles. One time years ago I happened to be in downtown Los Angeles. I made a point to go see the bank where the bank robbery scene in the movie Heat was shot. Heat is one of my favorite movies.

Having Mango Lassi

Nihal Mehta: Being Mysterious About Local Response

Image via CrunchBase
Buzzd
Buzzd Party Thursday
Mark Suster: The Social Network: Facebook To Fragmentation: December 2010: Social Chaos Will Create New Business Opportunities: Klout, Sprout Social, CoTweet, awe.sm, (next gen) Buzzd ..... one of the cooler new products that will emerge in 2011 is being created by Nihal Mehta, who has pivoted from his previous company Buzzd ..... will address the world of what happens when businesses and consumers are increasingly mobile and social.
Blip.TV: How Do They Ever Get Anything Done?
Reshma Saujani

48 Hours

It was two days before Demo Day at Y Combinator and Daniel Gross had moved from product to product like I had changed majors at college. The guy had nothing for Demo Day. The textbook thing to do for Paul Graham was to say, you know what, you had your 12 weeks, tough, you are out. But Paul Graham took the road not taken, and that made all the difference.

Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited

Greplin happened during the final 48 hours.

2Pac

Music Charts: Top 20

World Music Potpourri (2)

World Music Potpourri (1)

Five Books

Image via WikipediaAutobiography
Me: Author

I have talked about writing a 50-100 page autobiography, and I am going to do it, I have already started work on it. But I have come to realize I would not want that to be my first book to go public.

Instead I have decided on putting out five volumes of Topics In Tech based on my posts at this blog. Going to Amazon Kindle Self Publishing. Price $2.99. I think I get two bucks, Amazon keeps the other buck.

This is tempting. I already got the material ready.

This is tempting. The question you find asking yourself is, will the books sell? If they do, I could take bootstrapping to a whole new level.

Jessica Mah, Mark Zuckerberg

Both Jessica Mah and Mark Zuckerberg were 19 when they launched their respective companies. The difference though is that Mark dropped out of college, Jessica had already finished college.

Jessica Mah: The Most Promising 19 Year Old Tech Entrepreneur In America
Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited
Paul Graham: Disrupt
NYTM Mailing List Continued Controversy
Scott 2.0, MeetUp.com 2.0

2,000 Squats

Image via WikipediaI just did 2,000 squats. Don't get too impressed. I did it 50 at a time. But do get impressed. I think I could have done 1,000 more.

This is my way of getting into the mood for StartUp Week. I did not even know it existed. I was aware of Social Media Week. I was aware of Internet Week. But StartUp Week? Well, it exists. And I am going to all events. I am showing up in my ninja outfit.

StartUp Week At NYU April 6-15

April 6, Wednesday, 6-9 PM, NYU Stern, Kaufman Management Center (44 W 4th St), Room 2-60
April 7, Thursday, 6-8:30 PM, NYU Law School (Vanderbilt Hall), Tishman Auditorium, 40 Washington Square South
April 11, Monday, 5-9 PM, Kaufman Management Center Room M1-100
April 12, Tuesday, 6-8:30 PM, Room M1-100
April 13, Wednesday, 5-7 PM, The Courant Institute 251 Mercer Street, Room 109
April 14, Thursday, 6-8 PM, NYU Tisch Hall, Paulson Auditorium (UC-50), 40 W. 4th Street

A Social Graph For When Everyone Is Connected

Image via WikipediaBill Gates thinks the world population will stabilize around nine billion people. Let's say he is right. Already two out of six billion people are connected to the internet. Say the penetration goes above 90% by the time world population hits seven billion people. Would that have implications for the social graph? You bet.

The Color Social Graph Might Work Better For Books, Movies, Music

There is an old saying that everyone is connected to everyone else through six degrees of separation. Every random person out there knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows you. That magic number - six - might be lesser if the group size were smaller.

The Color Social Graph Might Work Better For Books, Movies, Music

Especially music. I don't think picture taking is overdone at all. Once Fred Wilson dismissed Facebook as "a photo sharing site." It was said at a major conference, and the comment sent a lot of pigeons flying, but he did point out a basic truth, which is that photo sharing is the primary activity on Facebook.

Google Images, Facebook Photos, Twitpic, Instagram, FoodSpotting

India Win

Image via WikipediaAnup Kaphle: Cricket Is Not Baseball, Stop Comparing
India Beats Sri Lanka To Win Cricket World Cup

New York Times: Cricket Victory Brings Relief From Scandal in India: cricket, a sport that permeates life here the way monsoon rains seep into the soil ..... Indians erupted in delirious celebration. Fireworks exploded in city after city and village after village, as throngs of people poured into the streets, beating drums, shouting and cheering. ...... “There is a national kind of mood, or zeitgeist, that cricket brings in,” said Anand Mahindra, managing director of one of India’s largest business conglomerates, Mahindra & Mahindra. “Can it have a disproportionate impact on people’s sense of self and general well-being and confidence? I think yes.” ..... In this country of 1.2 billion people, the national cricket team is treated like a group of rock stars and regarded by some as a metaphor for the country as a whole: young, increasingly confident and slowly moving forward, if sometimes tripping itself in the process. ....... especially gratifying for Indian fans because the national team has failed to win big matches in recent years, even though it was regarded as one of the world’s best teams. On Sunday morning, Indian newspapers carried euphoric headlines. “The World at Our Feet,” shouted The Times of India, the country’s biggest English-language daily. “Windia,” proclaimed The Indian Express. ...... a majority of India’s 138 million television households tuned into the tournament, with many tens of millions watching from elsewhere in the world. ...... In India’s biggest cities, fans congregated around outdoor screens or watched in restaurants and coffee shops. During key Indian matches, pilots on some domestic flights offered midair updates on the score. One 20-year-old model with a flair for self-promotion asked permission to perform a striptease for the team, calling it her patriotic duty. On Sunday, India’s politicians hailed the team, with the chief minister of Delhi announcing cash bonuses for Mr. Dhoni, the team captain, and the four team members from Delhi. ....... Then India was rocked by a telecommunications scandal over the allocation of cellphone licenses, as a government auditor concluded that the government might have lost about $40 billion in fees because officials gave licenses to favored bidders at bargain prices. On Saturday, as the cricket match was under way in Mumbai, the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation filed charges against a former communications minister, his aides and several high-profile business executives in that case. They were accused of cheating, forgery and corruption. ........ In India, cricket is no longer regarded as a leisurely sport of gentlemen in white trousers but has instead become a sexy symbol of the “new” India. The stars of the Indian team are wealthy and ubiquitous. They are covered feverishly in the news media and endorse countless products. India Today, a weekly magazine, recently listed India’s 50 most powerful people, placing the country’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, at the top. But ranked second, ahead of several billionaires, was the country’s most revered cricketer, Sachin Tendulkar. ........ Mr. Dhoni comes from one of India’s poorest regions, and his rags-to-riches story embodies the hopes of many Indians on the margins. After the match, Mr. Dhoni and other players said they were inspired to win for Mr. Tendulkar, a batter who has hit more runs than any player in the sport’s history and is often referred to in India as simply “God.” ...... Even Saturday night, e-mails were making the rounds in India charging that the World Cup match was fixed by bookies. Similar accusations were made after India beat Pakistan in a politically charged semifinal last Wednesday. ..... But as India awoke on Sunday, there was joy, a salve to a bitter political season. Even Sonia Gandhi, the president of the governing Indian National Congress Party, stepped into the streets of New Delhi to celebrate — perhaps not only the victory but the distraction it offered. .... “Sachin Tendulkar and company has done Dr. Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi a huge favor,” said Ramachandra Guha, a historian and authority on cricket, “by redirecting popular sentiment away from corruption and toward cricket.”

LCD Soundsystem: New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

(Via Moshe Koyfman)

Smif-N-Wessun: Wrektime

(Via Whitney McNamara)

The Antlers: Parentheses

(Via Jen Robinson)

World Music Potpourri (1)

Jessica Mah: The Most Promising 19 Year Old Tech Entrepreneur In America

Or maybe she is 20 now. But still. Daniel Gross and Jessica Mah you have you to watch out for. Jessica's InDinero, the Mint.com for businesses, is headed for a hundred million plus kind of exit in a few years. Daniel will be swimming in the billion dollar range, if only because his product, Greplin, is just more fundamental. But Jessica has started by monetizing from day one. Three years from now they will not be by the roadside, a has been. They will be bigger than anything we can imagine right now.

Mike Yavonditte: An Hour Of Video

Okay so it is not an hour of Mike. When you have Jason Calacanis doing the interviewing, the guy feels like he is half the guest himself, and so this is 30 minutes of Jason and 30 minutes of Mike. But it's a good interview. Jason being an entrepreneur himself has really been able to bring out the story from Mike. It was an hour well spent for me.

Anup Kaphle: Cricket Is Not Baseball, Stop Comparing

"Understanding cricket is not that difficult — just stop comparing it to baseball."
- Anup Kaphle



India Beats Sri Lanka To Win Cricket World Cup

Why Raissa Nebie Loves Tumblr

Zaho: Kif'n'dir
P-Square: E No Easy
Technology And Social Justice

Zaho: Kif'n'dir

(Via Raissa B. Nebie)
Technology And Social Justice

P-Square: E No Easy

(Via Raissa B. Nebie)
Technology And Social Justice

Technology And Social Justice

Technology, on its own, ends up magnifying the status quo of social inequality. That was a comment I made to a post by The Gotham Gal a few days back.

Owning Equity, Owning House

Image via CrunchBase

Chris Dixon: Eric Ries: a downturn will come in the next few years (most likely not a true revenue/profit downturn but early stage valuation + coolness downturn) ..... one of the worst things happening now is that companies lie to employees and only tell them the # of shares they own and not the % they own ...... the 21st century will be about convincing people that they should think about owning part of their employer the same way people in the 20th century wanted to own their house ...... the idea of creating a stock exchange where when you bought stocks you were force to hold them 4-5 years ...... he was probably the smartest and most interesting person I've heard in years ...... us "liberals" (me, Eric, Fred Wilson) who believe that hedge fund managers should pay the same tax rate as firefighters who run into burning buildings are in radical agreement about increasing the carried interest tax. Unfortunately every other VC seems to disagree with us. Looks like we lost this one and so need to move on. +1 for aristocrats. ..... ) being more scientific about how to help these companies succeed on less capital

Chris Dixon does not think we are in a bubble. Neither do I. But I was surprised to learn he also thinks we are a few years from a downturn, what I have called a mini bubble burst. It will not be like 2000 when it looked like the entire industry collapsed. But there will be plenty of winnowing out.

A Surprising Blog Post From Fred Wilson

Image via Wikipedia

Fred Wilson: Going Out On Top: Then, at the top of their game, LCD decided to call it quits. They played four shows this past week at Terminal 5, and then played their last show ever at The Garden last night. It's over now. As we watched the band put on a fantastic show last night, I was thinking about going out on top. So few manage to do it. Shaq is warming the bench in Boston. ..... The money and the burning desire to "win another one" drives the great ones to stick around too long. ..... I look at Warren Buffett and Rupert Murdoch and I see individuals still enjoying the work and delivering for their shareholders and investors into their 80s. ..... But I also look around the venture capital business and I see investors who were at the top of their games in the 90s struggling to remain relevant. ...... How do you know when you've done your last great startup? How do you know when you've done your last great investment? How do you know when you don't have the drive, hunger, and insights to keep delivering top performance? ...... Right now, coming off two weeks of totally relaxing vacation with my family, I find myself up early, thinking, writing, and planning. I don't sense it is yet time to hang up my cleats or walk of the stage like James Murphy did last night. But the thought is in my mind and I want it to stay there. The investment business is not easy. You are only as good as your last trade, fund, or year. And the venture capital business is particulary tricky. All the returns in the business accrue to the top ten or, at best, twenty percent of investors. When you lose your edge, your performance suffers, often badly. But it can take a decade for the rest of the world to notice because there is so much latency in the venture capital business.

My favorite solo blogger just surprised me like never before. The thought of "going out on top" seems to have crossed his mind.

LCD SoundSystem: Losing My Edge

(Via Tobias Peggs)

Some Table Tennis

(Via Joe Gebbia)

India Beats Sri Lanka To Win Cricket World Cup

In India everything has a tendency to get mixed up with Bollywood. Sachin was named after a Bollywood musician. That should tell you.

One way you know I grew up in Nepal and not India is I don't "get" cricket. I tend to only watch the highlights. Even then I pay as much attention to the background music as to the game. But I hear cricket has also taken over Nepal since I left. My thing is soccer. Note Sachin's Maradona hair. Sachin wears the number 10 shirt, just like Pele and Maradona.

Cricket is to India what soccer is to Brazil. I grew up watching people glued to their radio sets following audio commentaries of ongoing cricket matches.

StartUp Week At NYU April 6-15

April 6, Wed, Mark Suster (@msuster) NYU 6-9 PM

April 7, Thu, Brad Feld (@bfeld), Adam Rich, and Nate Westheimer (@innonate) 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM NYU Law School (Vanderbilt Hall), Tishman Auditorium, 40 Washington Square South

Monday, 4/11: Develop, Design, Pitch Series mongoDB (@mongodb) Kevin Kearney (@kkearney) and Courtney Lewis of Hard Candy Shell Eric Friedman (@EricFriedman) 5:00 PM - 9:00 PM Kaufman Management Center Room M1-100 44 W 4th St

Tuesday, 4/12: Variety of Tech Entrepreneurs Panel 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM Room M1-100 Spencer Fry (@spencerfry), Carbonmade Hilary Mason (@hmason) bit.ly Vin Vacanti (@vacanti), Yipit Yasser Ansari (@trisomy21), Project Noah Seth Frader-Thompson (@fraderT), EnergyHub Colin Freund (@Swimmingloaf), Agennix AG James McChullouhgh, Exosome Diagnostics

Wednesday, 4/13: Online Communities 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM The Courant Institute 251 Mercer Street, Room 109 Kyle Bragger (@kylebragger), Forrst Chris Maguire (@revolvingdork), Postling Joe Alminawi, OMGPOP Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa), Neighborhoodr Vanessa Bertozzi (@Van_Bertozzi), Etsy Peter Rojas (@peterrojas), gdgt

Thursday, 4/14: Fundraising: VCs, Angels and Accelerators Chris Dixon (@cdixon), Albert Wenger (@albertwenger), Lawrence Lenihan (@lawrencelenihan), Firstmark Capital, Hilary Gosher (@hilbil175), Insite Venture Partners, David Tisch (@davetisch), TechStars

The Organizers of StartUp Week

April Fool?

FoodSpotting Blog: Scratch & Sniff: You asked for it, you got it!

April Fool A Few Weeks Early?
Arugula
Front Facing Camera
Obama Has A Computer
Kassidy Brown: No April Fool Joke