One of the challenges of entrepreneurship is that it requires a deep understanding of single area to have a game-changing innovation - yet once the entrepreneur actually launches their idea into a new company they have to go from being the ultimate specialist to the ultimate generalist!
So we're setting out to create a suite of courses specifically for entrepreneurs - and aimed at rapidly moving them up the learning curve in new areas to them - be they financial, product, strategic, m&a, or a wide range of other topics.
I'm going to teach the launch course, New Venture Economics and Financial Modeling. A participant in this course will leave with a working financial model -and the confidence to present it!
Vator has a growing group of very cool startup companies using the "company updates" feature (Kosmix has over 1,000 followers, Digger over 400, etc.).
It's a Twitter-like micro-blogging feature (in fact, you can configure it to automatically update your Twitter account).
What's cool about the Vator service is that Vator will often recommend companies to follow - so if you're active with your updates you will find that your follower base grows quickly. In addition, the quality of the community and followers is extremely high. So you'll find you're gaining awareness with VCs, angel investors, investment bankers, strategics, partners and other entrepreneurs.
Vator then packages up your updates and sends them out in daily email blasts. So your name and brand is (unobstrusivly) staying in front of key influencers in the industry.
I have more followers on Vator now than Twitter - and the quality of the followers isn't even comparable.
You can see my profile here. Click to follow STRATEGYfx/me from that site.
To set up your company, and learn what others have to say about Vator, visit this summary page.
I keep getting the same email from mylife.com - which I've never been to and somehow penetrates my spam filter on a regular basis.
Not that I'm looking for anyone to be searching for me - but thinking that a 79 year old male from NJ is somehow going to entice me to their site is rather, well, creepy.
Plus, I'm pretty easy to find on the web as it is - so I'm thinking if my secret 79 year old male admirer wants to find me - he can figure out how to outside of mylife.com ;-)
Just launched my STRATEGYfx profile on Vator - am going to use that as the dashboard for posting my analysis and commentary. Follow the action by following STRATEGYfx below:
Follow STRATEGYfx on Vator.tv
The AO Global 250 represents the best of emerging
innovators and disrupters from all the technology sectors we cover, and
therefore is our most distinguished annual competition.
The innovation community has long
prided itself as being the purveyor of creative destruction. The
ability to package an innovation as “massively disruptive” has become
almost a prerequisite for access to significant investment capital.
In the past year, however, Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction”
has reached a rolling boil. Full-blown destruction has toppled
incumbent industries, turning them on their heads and leaving them
reeling from dizzying changes in landscape and opportunity.
This raises a question: In a fully disrupted world, do the
opportunities lay in further destruction? Or has the pendulum swung
back to creative creation? We think it’s the latter.
To that end, as we stand here in the summer of 2009, looking upon a
world economy that appears to have only just regained its footing, with
great anticipation, we present the 2009 AlwaysOn Global 250.
With the 2009 AO 250, we sought to find the companies upon which new
industries, jobs, and economies will be built. Yes, each company in
its own way brings enhanced efficiencies (the gentler form of creative
destruction). But more importantly, the companies represented in this
list bring hope. No industry can produce jobs, wealth, and economic
momentum like the technology industry. Both directly and indirectly
what propels the global economy are new ideas and approaches. The AO
250 is the epicenter of the future.
With this list, we launch the coverage of a new category: Digital
Education. In an economic landscape where industries are constantly
morphing, and where social safety nets are becoming increasingly
porous, we need new and innovative approaches to education. People
will have longer and more eclectic professional lives, and as such,
will need an entirely new mental toolsets. From companies like Knewton
and Grockit, which are developing new models for test preparation, to
Lumos Labs, which is working to keep minds fit, brains must last longer
and do more than ever before.
No category embodies creative creation more than Greentech. The
companies on the AO 250 are building a brighter and cleaner future.
AbTech Industries is providing cleaner water by filtering the toxins
from drains, airports, and development projects. Range Fuels is
turning nothing into something by producing fuels like ethanol from the
stalks of corn and sawdust, which is, in turn, cleaner than its
substitutes.
On the digital end of things, Digger is developing a semantic engine
that can read and interpret online publishers’ Web sites, letting them
create entirely new views of their content, and in some cases, create
entirely new sites and experiences. Jigsaw is building the world’s
first self-updating Rolodex, while Gist is helping you get more out of
the relationships you already have.
Our Cloud and Infrastructure category winner, Cast Iron Systems, is
building an industrial-strength beanstalk between corporate server
rooms and cloud-based systems, letting enterprises get the best of both
worlds. While Mint.com, our Consumer Internet winner, is preventing
more than a million mini-financial meltdowns, while at the same time,
holding a clinic on how to give away a highly valuable core service by
monetizing the edges. Imagine how much easier it is to sell a new
credit card when you know everything about the one the user already has.
Our overall winner, which joins a prestigious fraternity of previous
top picks that includes companies such as Google, Twitter, and
salesforce.com, is rapidly becoming the new standard in online
measurement. Eschewing traditional “panel” based models in favor of a
directly measured approach, Quantcast is taking the guesswork out of
audience analytics. The company has placed itself on the front lines
of digital media monetization and endeared itself to innumerable
smaller publishers who find themselves off the radar of other
measurement approaches and thereby significantly disadvantaged in an
increasingly quantitative advertising industry. Advertisers now want
to know where both halves of their investments are going—and Quantcast
is telling them.
The companies on the 2009 AO 250 represent the next wave of creation
and economic progress. They’re making the pie bigger for us all.
Ezra Roizen is an AlwaysOn contributing
editor and partner with Ackrell Capital, where he advises emerging
digital media and e-commerce companies on financing, M&A, and
strategy. You can see the full list here.
Passed the FINRA Series 24 this morning. A few thoughts on the test.
It was harder than I thought it was going to be. I actually had to take it twice. The first time around I got a 69% (the nightmare score for a test where the passing score is 70%!). This morning I was able to bump up to 81% - and 90% in the investment banking section (the section most relevant to what I do) - so overall I was pretty happy. I knew the material a lot better the second time around.
I'd say I've been casually studying for the exam for 6 months (bringing the materials with me on flights, flipping through them when I could), and seriously studying for 3 months (highlighting, taking notes, and grinding through practice tests).
Originally I bought two sets of materials: flash cards from FlashCardSecrets.com, and a book and practice test software from The Securities Institute of America (Securities CE). I actually didn't end up using the flash cards all that much. I think I would have used them more if they'd been in "sample question" form similar to the test - but instead they were in an information nugget form that I found a bit tough to follow. My guess is they work for some folks, but they just didn't work for me.
I did use the book and software from Securities CE pretty extensively. I tore the book up into individual chapters and stuffed one or two in my pocket whenever I left the house. The written material is pretty long-form and gave a lot of detail. The software is a bit clunky, and their customer support isn't all that great, but overall they were useful tools.
After a month or so of grinding through the Securities CE test questions I began to find I was too familiar with the questions and decided to buy a different batch. So I bought another book and set of questions from Kaplan Financial. The Kaplan materials were much more polished than the Securities CE stuff. The software was cooler, the book was cleaner and more refined, and the customer support was excellent.
However, and this is hard to explain, in many ways the "funkyness" of the Securities CE information and questions were a closer match to the way the questions on the test were actually written. I had to take the test twice - so I saw 310 questions and they should be written like the Kaplan questions - but they *are* written more like the Securities CE questions.
That said, I think I'd recommend using both sets of materials and question databases to study. Neither set is a perfect match for the questions on the exam, so I think you're better off (safer) using questions from a couple sources, and these were both good for me.
Expect questions on the test that weren't covered in any of the materials. Also, both sets of materials had a few mistakes - so you'll have to be on the look out for those as well.
Lastly, the really tough part of this is that the US financial regulatory system is rather byzantine. You expect things to generally work a certain way, that things of a certain type require basically the same type of notification, or this or that. This is not the case.
You get the sense as you study that the rules were created without anyone reading any of the other rules (and making some effort of consistency)! So you just have to memorize a ton of stuff. I came to realize that FINRA doesn't really expect you to remember this stuff in the long run, but instead wants to be sure that you pounded it into your head at least once so the key points are baked in.
If you're reading this about to start the process, good luck and take a lot of practice tests. But with a few months of effort there's no reason you can't pass. Much of the material will likely start out being a bit foreign - but it will become increasingly familiar as you re-re-re-re-re-read it.
Our good friend Drew Curtis from Fark.com crashed at our
place last night and needed a ride into SF this morning for an interview on Ronn
Owen’s show on KGO 810. Drew, Marcus, Tanner and I piled into the car and rolled over to SF this morning.
I expected we'd be hanging in the lobby or something - which for M&T and me would have been exciting enough. But instead the KGO folks were totally cool and invited us in and even let us go in and sit in the radio studio while Drew was on air.
Ron Owens gave Marucs and Tanner a shout-out at the end of spot! Here's the archive - shout out is around minute 59 (Windows Media).
Thanks Drew, Ronn and KGO team - you guys rock.
Here's a couple more pics - Tanner & Marcus getting read for mass media. Ron & Drew in the studio.
About a month or so ago Bambi and I did a Vator Box with Marc Pincus the founder of Zynga. In the episode (below) we discussed Smule. Mark *really* liked Smule, and whereas I thought it was a cool idea, I had a few more questions about the business and opportunity than Mark - and I guess I beat them up a teensy-weensy bit.
Then Vator books Smule's founder Jeff Smith to come on our most recent Vator Box!!! Which, upon learning, gave me a slight grimace ;-) Anyway, Jeff was/is a great sport and we had a lot of fun with him really wanting to disagree with my comments on other companies (to demonstrate that my comments on Smule were obviously nonsensical). Here's the first released episode with Jeff on Heyzap (which Jeff kind of beats up!).
We do put our opinions out there on Vator Box, and we're not always right, but I think it's nice when people engage in the dialogue in a positive way.
Another example of this is Dave Gehring's response to the Vator Box feedback Charlene Li, Bambi and I gave him on his company Famplosion - you can see my write up on that here. Dave and his team made some great enhancements to his site based (at least in some tiny part) on Vator Box feedback.
But thanks to Jeff Smith of Smule for being a good sport - he's a great guy - and I'm starting to think Smule has an even bigger opportunity than I originally thought, if for no other reason than they have the right guy at the top.
My friend Dave Gehring's company Famplosion just launched a fantastic new service (one which Bambi, Charlene Li and I thought they should launch in the Vator Box below).
Now you can follow the venues you like to frequent with your kids and Famplosion will send you email updates when something cool is happening.
Some services are great as Web sites and others are really best in tandem with email - I think Famplosion is the latter and this is a great, great enhancement to their offering.
Sign up, check off your favorite places and have your Saturday morning plans roll into your inbox. I love it.
We're wrapping up a great season of little league. This year they had a photographer come out to one of the games and get some action shots - and he got some great shots of Tanner.
Just got back from a few days in Spain. Bambi was there for the Innovate! Europe conference, with Marcus and me tagging along. We spent two days in Madrid and four in Zaragoza. My favorite picture from the trip was this one of Marcus helping Bambi and Chris Caceras of Vator film an interview with Marten Mickos, the former CEO of MySQL. The interviews were filmed in the 2,000 year old ruins of a Roman Theatre - it was a completely cool setting.
Raced in the 2009 Ice Breaker triathlon at Lake Folsom last week. They haven't posted the splits yet, but overall I improved my time from my last Ice Breaker (2007) by a little over 12 minutes, from 1:49:17 to 1:37:07.
Without seeing the splits it's tough to know exactly where the improvements came, but I think I was able to upgrade my swim from pathetic to just quite lame, my bike from clueless to actually pretty decent and my run from pretty good to a bit better than pretty good.
My transitions were a bit slower this year. I arrived late at the setup in the morning and had a very cramped transition spot, and frankly just didn't have it together for my transitions.
A few other thoughts on this race. With all the twists and turns on the road course, I definitely think a road bike is the way to go on this race (over a tri bike). I also bought a Fit2Race wetsuit and it was really, really nice and came right off without any struggle.
It was beautiful day and a really fun race. Bambi was there at every turn with big cheer :-)
I'll post the splits and a bit more data when they're published on the TBF racing site. If I can make it back next year, I'd like to try to fix the swimming, tighten the transitions and see if I can break 1:30:00.
You Wanted More Tonic: Sugar I was watching the movie American Pie for the twentieth time last night on some random cable channel and this song was in the soundtrack - I forgot I liked it.
Where Is Maria? Greg Brown: Further In Great line: "there'll be one corporation selling one little box it'll do what you want and tell you what you want and cost whatever you got"
Unwritten Natasha Bedingfield: Unwritten NB has a great voice and an interesting sound. As a new artist I think she is at a crossroads between becoming more funky or more "pop" - I think her music would be better if she went the funky route - but my guess is that the market will drive more into the pop world.
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