davemc500hats

nothing like DropBox or AirBnB as yet, however hopefully a few Herokus on the way;)

looking good so far: Twilio, SendGrid (TechStars), Wildfire (fbFund), MakerBot, TaskRabbit (fbFund), Smule/Khush, Viki, Medialets, Zozi, ElaCarte (YC), 9Gag (500), ReadyForZero (YC), several others @ Series A/B/C doing pretty solid.

smaller but growing well: MindSnacks (DreamIt), 955 Dreams (500), PicCollage (500), Kiwi Crate, Visually (500), AppStack, MyGengo, Erply (SeedCamp), GinzaMetrics (YC), Farmeron (SeedCamp), ZenCoder (YC), Fitocracy (500), StyleSeat.

10+ modest early exits to Google, Twitter, LinkedIn (x3), Amazon, Groupon, Cisco, Facebook, ReturnPath, DemandForce, etc.

(apologies to any juggernauts or others i left out!)

DMC

PrivacyPig would have been SO much more awesome.

(and i still have it btw)

agreed. sage advice.

actually, both LaunchBit and Curebit got the logo from istockphotos. both are in process of changing I believe.

thanks. think you meant "when an angel investor with a big mouth and no taste like 500 Startups puts money into..."

regardless, we don't shy away from helping our founders, even should they go astray. not proud right now, but we hope to be helpful where possible.

live & learn.

yeah, sure as hell hope we don't flame out... not planning on it anytime soon ;)

and i think the conditions / methods have improved substantially since 10 years ago. there may be a lot of folks who fail, but there will be successes (already have been with YC, a few others). kudos to PG :)

maybe i'm mistaken, but i think the comment was made by Jonathan Nelson, who runs the Hackers & Founders meetup, not by anyone at Vidcaster (a 500 company).

also to clarify: 500 Startup is an investor in many YC companies (close to 20 at current count), so altho we may occasionally compete at the incubator level we have tremendous respect for PG & team, as well as their companies, and we would go out of our way to not talk shit about them, as well as taking issue with people who do.

kisses,

dmc

it's a headline, not a business plan.

don't take everything you read too seriously.

neither does it mean they're awesome if they use perfect punctuation and grammar.

some optimize for speed & utility... others optimize for look & feel. neither is necessarily correct, just different.

yeah, that's exactly why we spent a year and a half drafting legislation, traveling to DC, promoting it on websites, blogging, etc. it's all a vast geek conspiracy to get Votizen a couple thousand users.

excellent use of time, don't you think?

we are planning to revise & expand the rqmts, prob lower the amounts as well... however, we still want to have a bill that will pass, and will not be subject to "gaming" for people that really aren't doing startups.

thanks for the feedback. will try not to swear unnecessarily, but it does serve as useful / unintentional emphasis sometimes... guess that's the hillbilly talking.

yeah, guess i'm intentionally taking on the "spray & pray" haters, but to me more specific -- i'm combining that strategy with other filters, domain-specific expertise, selective follow-on investment. the combination of all of these is more like an index fund for initial selection, then active management and time-weighted averaging of future funds into the winners.

little bit complex to describe, adn we're still developing it so even i'm not final on which parts add most value.

but we are trying some new shit. some of it hopefully works ;)

best way to start on angel list is: 1) get at least one notable angel to introduce it / submit it 2) ideally have them introduce you to a few others (privately) 3) once you have some visibility / traction with a few folks, then set your listing public and open it up to the rest (if you want)

this should probably be a separate thread here or on Quora to discuss best techniques for marketing a deal on Angel List. i'll try and write a blog post on this or a Quora question in the future. it's worth diving into more.

i didn't say "anything else must be as good or better".

what i meant was that blind trust in traditional VC strategy doesn't make any sense, since on average they suck.

my strategy is still new (<12 months old), so there's no historical performance to compare, outside my investing at Founders Fund (which looks pretty good so far) and my own angel investing (which also looks pretty good).

sorry i can't share #'s here on those, but as a personal investor i was in early on Mint, SlideShare, Simply Hired, & Mashery. as a professional investor at Founders Fund i was in early on Twilio, CrowdFlower, CreditKarma, Bitly, and several others which are doing pretty well.

still, it's too early to say whether i'm any good or not.

my point was simply that arguing status quo doesn't make sense when status quo is sucking pretty hard.

that is my writing style. i was also in a hurry because i needed to get my kid to basketball practice at 10am, and i started at 7am.

usually it takes me about 5-6 hours to include the "full insanity" version with fonts, pictures, etc.

(anyway, i'm obviously an acquired taste... i won't be offended if you think i'm offensive.)

much of vivek's criticism focuses on how to optimize the Startup Visa bill. however, left unspoken is how to construct a bill such that opponents will allow it to pass. we spent over a year consulting a variety of folks on this issue (including vivek, who at the time offered much less feedback and a lot more support than recently when he appears to have had a change of heart).

while his feedback may be relevant, unfortunately it's not very helpful AFTER we have spent so much time getting bipartisan support for the current bill. in fact his rather late critiques may actually reduce the chance for ANY kind of bill to pass.

any bill we put together is best constructed with awareness of opponents, and an eye to compromise on getting SOMETHING done quickly, rather than nothing. we can always modify & improve, but if we miss the chance to pass a bill, thousands of startups will again he stuck waiting to create their businesses and jobs.

again I'm extremely frustrated vivek waited a year to voice his opinions, well after we asked for his input (and actually got it) and support (which he gave, and now is withdrawing).

if not for his "fixing", we might already be able to get the bill to the floor for a vote.

it's not a guarantee, but it's very often a correllated indicator.

Robert: how do programming talent & costs in Japan compare with US / other locations?

I totally get downside, but it's somewhat limited if FB is making $500m on $2b in 2010, and 100%+ growth in ann revenue, along with likely biz model improvements & increase in per-user economics.

reasonable floor is prob $20-30B, whereas upside could be $100-250b if growth & profits hold up.

downside at .5x vs upside at 2-5x seems like a reasonable bet to me.

DHH seems to ignore most of these metrics, except for saying that 100 P/E ratio is high. however that doesn't really acknowledge growth or biz model changes that will bring down P/E ratio over next few years.

to say it's high is perhaps reasonable. but to ignore that they are dominant, that multiple market participants have set a value (not just GS), and finally to call Rushkoff's recent article about Facebook "fading" a "thoughtful"... all of these strike me as more biased than not.

of course my opinions are biased as well -- I've worked with Facebook running their incubator program in 2009, and I used to work for Founders Fund, one of their early investors.

anyway I thought it was fun back & forth, given the limitations of the medium.

altho I'm primarily an investor now, I was also a programmer from around 1980 thru 1995.

that said, I'm sure DHH can/could code rings around my sorry ass.

still, that has limited bearing on our respective positions.

LOL +1

(but strangely, I would choose them not, in diff situations...)

btw, u do realize this post had no crazy fonts in it as an A/B test for u Haterz out there, right? ;)

good point.

but I'm probably not the only one that didn't realize what I was doing by being "too friendly".

the clarion call for revolution is not written in a soothing voice. distraction is the goal, not an impediment.

just to clarify: we aren't planning to compete with YC on our program (in fact we've invested in 8 YC companies out of the recent batch, and think Paul & team are doing awesome job there).

to differentiate a bit: 500 startups is a little more focused on design/ux issues, also platform distribution opportunities.

not that YC doesn't also cover some of these topics, but we might be a little more downstream from where YC starts working with companies, and we are also doing seed and some series A deals that are likely after YC gets involved.

Regardless we have a ton of respect for what YC does to help startups, and we aim to be complementary more than competitive... you might check with some of our companies that are both YC and 500 for more perspectives.

both meetings were aboveboard... period. the discussions at the second dinner meeting were similar in nature to the first, altho Chris wasn't at the 2nd dinner.

we also discussed ways to reduce legal costs, increase exit opportunities by using services like Second Market, how other services like Angel List were innovating & bringing access to more investors / entrepreneurs, how convertible notes were becoming more popular (which i use most of the time, and both PG & Mark Suster have written about lately), and a number of related topics -- again, many of which i mentioned on my blog post in response to Arrington's initial post.

altho some folks were bitching about startup valuations being higher lately, THERE WERE NO conversations about "price-fixing" or other BS mike reported... which is why i got so pissed when mike made such accusations, even though he wasn't there for any conversation & only reported based on anonymous sources.

while some people might suggest Mike's reporting as "hard-hitting", i'd characterize it as more inflammatory and not very well sourced. if he'd bothered to talk in more detail with any of us who were there before rushing to print, he might have gotten a lot more information about the discussions, instead of just printing one anonymous source's perspective... and perhaps less criticism from those who think he's just creating controversy to drive attention prior to the Disrupt conference.

mike has a right to report what he thinks is news, but that doesn't mean it's ok to go to print with only anonymous sources perspectives on that matter, particularly when others (like me) are willing to publicly state otherwise.

in any case, i guess we'll hear more about this in the morning on the panel. i'm tired and i'm going to bed.

believe what you will.

to clarify: i was speaking up here in Seattle for Startup Day, and i was asked to do a talk on "Why Do a Startup".

i wasn't feeling in a particularly positive mood, and in fact i hate when people do the duplicitous inspirational talk about startups & entrepreneurship... which is usually hard & full of fail.

i thought a more realistic look at the downside of entrepreneurship would be useful, so i offered some experiences from my own early startup consulting business in the late 90's, which was a lot of stress & hassle for not much return (small exit, <$1M).

i think people who realistically look at the downside of entrepreneurship are more prepared for the journey, and if they still choose the path they at least know the risks.

(note: there are many lightweight forms of prototyping and startup entrepreneurship that don't have these risks, but in this case i was emphasizing the typical experience).

yes, that was the point.

people who shouldn't be entrepreneurs get way too excited for the wrong reasons. a reality check is likely very useful for many folks to re-consider the probabilities involved.

folks who decide they still want to choose the entrepeneurial path are then at least forewarned, if not forearmed.

unless automated, not a scalable response pattern.