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Chirbit Rap - Country Style (no really!)
This should be a lively topic for discussion around ATDC… :)
Entrepreneurship is often depicted as the solution to society’s problems, the sure path to higher economic growth for nations. Countless journal articles and books have glorified entrepreneurs, turning the Gateses and Zuckerbergs of the world into celebrities and icons. In this concert of praises, casting a critical eye onto entrepreneurship has become a taboo. Yet Madoff was an entrepreneur, too.
Permalight - Rogue Wave - Permalight
the title track of the new Rogue Wave record. i’ve only listened a couple times so far but i like it.
They have a great sound. Thank for sharing this!
UPDATE: Like my pitch, this blog post has iterated due to feedback.
I’ve had the great fortune of being able to pitch my company OtherNumber in front of large audiences three times in the past 3 weeks. First there was Startup Riot, then Startup Atlanta #OnStage and then there was This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis.
It was, in a word, fantastic.
I was not a stranger to public speaking but until recently I had only spoken at conferences and in academic situations. I had never had as much at stake as I did when when pitching OtherNumber.
StartupRiot
Was I nervous at StartupRiot? Hell Yes. There were 400 people in the audience and bright lights shining on the stage. Robert Scoble and Bo Peabody were there! CNN was milling around. It was the first big exposure for my company. I was properly freaked out.
I came up with a 4 slide deck. I wrote some copy. I practiced it. It sucked. I talked to people, I got some feedback. I ignored it for a while. I picked it up again.
It still sucked.
It was 2 days to StartupRiot. Too late to change the slides. That’s when I saw a reminder that Startup Gauntlet was happening the day before StartupRiot. I signed up immediately.
That was a tremendous help to me. Keith McGreggor, Paul Freet and Jeff McConnell gave me great feedback on the content of my pitch and my delivery. They all said I came off flat, probably due to nerves but they knew I was passionate about my company. Jeff told me “Be the Twitter Guy!” because my tweets were so much more passionate than the pitch I gave.
That night I stayed up way too late and re-tooled my pitch again, focused on the specific points they gave me at the gauntlet and it was a huge improvement. I focused on the the major advantage my solution had over hardware PBX platforms (something I had almost completely neglected to mention before) and avoided saying the phrase “Asterisk in the Cloud” because even now I can’t say that without tripping over my tongue.
The morning of the event I kept re-working the text. I put it in a Google Doc and sat there staring at it on my phone while pacing around the Fox Theater complex. I knew what I had to do. I just still wasn’t sure if I could do it.
Then Jeff McConnell gave me some words of encouragement before the event got started.
“Of the 50 pitches there will be a bottom 5. You won’t be in that group.”
That helped me quite a bit because I realized that was what I had really been afraid of. Nobody wants to be the pitch everyone remembers for all the wrong reasons. Once he told me I wasn’t going to be one of those I relaxed a bit. And you know what? He was right! OtherNumber finished 4th in the voting!
I highly recommend that any entrepreneur in the Atlanta area take their pitch to Startup Gauntlet to get feedback. The “Dungeon Masters” are incredibly helpful, smart and experienced.
I’ll cover StartupAtlanta #OnStage and #Twist in a series of posts later.
In the earliest days of a startup, the assignment for the company is straightforward. Most, if not all, of the resources of the company are devoted to building the product and getting traction with early users.
In a world of constrained resources and limited funding, the focus is clear, decisions…
I’ve seen this happen. It’s especially hard if some of your key differentiators are being more flexible or cheaper than your entrenched competitor. You can’t do that forever.
there must be something wrong with me today. I have the lights on in my office. that can’t be a good sign….
Wow, first a post from @jc about focus and now one from @bijan… I think somebody is trying to tell me something…
Focus is something so easy to say but difficult to do.
It’s hard for everyone. I have a hard time with it as my friends and colleagues can verify. I’m grateful that my job allows for a reasonable amount of ADD.
Focus in startups can be quite difficult as well. Everything is unproven and plenty…
