Written on
December 13, 2011 by
Steve
Monday Dec 12, 2011 I was scheduled to play a bit of Golf with Tony Perkins’ crew and attendees, to his “AlwaysOn Venture Summit” at the Ritz Carlton “Ocean” Golf Course in Half Moon Bay, CA – 30 miles Southwest of San Francisco.
That was my last chance to “breath” before diving into two days of intense panel sessionns, finance, and founder presentations.
So the hard part was out of the way, by 7PM Monday evening:) Now… on to a series of photos and posts about what I see over the next two days of the conference. Posted below, in reverse chronological order… so the newest posts are on top.
I’m disappointed with my photos from this conference… i was shooting using an Android phone, and an iPhone. As I recently blogged, my almost-new Nikon camera gear was stolen recently in downtown San Francisco. You can’t buy one to replace it, even if you want to — because the flooding in Thailand shut down the production lines at Nikon.
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Written on
December 12, 2011 by
Steve
From this post forward, I will continue to interview and blog about technology startups; but StartupTrek.net now becomes the official “blog voice” for Kinesis, Inc — the disruptive internet firm that I’ve been putting together since June.
Here’s the story on it — wish us luck…
-steve bell
december 12, 2011
Investor Database Submission: Kinesis, Inc.
A Delaware Corporation was formed Oct 12, 2011: Kinesis, Inc.
Executive Summary:
Kinesis, Inc. was formed to bring the full power of the internet to small and medium scale businesses worldwide.
Today, in late 2011, the internet is serving large enterprises, those with typically over 500 employees, rather well. But… smaller companies are having difficulty leveraging the power of the internet to bring in new customers (sales). Kinesis has architected, tested, and is now deploying a powerful HTML5 network of machines, called “SIMA’s” (Smart Internet Marketing Agents) to solve this problem. The company’s mission is “To bring new customers (money) to small and medium scale businesses in North America, Western Europe, Asia, and the developing countries… by more efficiently delivering the power of the internet.”.
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Written on
December 21, 2010 by
Steve
What’s the point of railing about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Groupon?
Do we once again have a “bubble” in dot-com? Do we have a “pre-IPO dot com valuation mania” underway, centered around companies with questionable business models? That question is being asked a lot.
Now here is an example of a truly solid “dot com”: Google
In contrast to today’s social-media firms, Google has an insanely great business model. The made a fundamental invention which is changing the world, and delivers immense economic value.
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Written on
June 15, 2010 by
Steve
The War on Reg D – Redux
Chris Dodd, an outgoing US Senator due to taking loans from Mortgage firms he helped, is pushing a bill which will strangle startups
There’s been a LOT of complaining recently about the terms which negatively impact the $26B annual world of “Angel” investing, which have been slipped into Senator Chris Dodd’s Financial Reform bill (“FINREG”). The Wall Street Journal railed about it under the banner “Angels Out of America“:
- Regulation D, also known as “Reg D” among securities types (along with Rules 504, and 505, and 506) is an area of US Securities law in which the SEC exempts certain qualified securities offerings – those made into very small start-up companies by private investors – from the requirements of “registration” for public offerings, with State and Federal Securities regulators.
- Under Reg D and the associated Rules, a start-up company can take investments from individuals without involving the investment banks, filing for an initial public offering (IPO). and complying with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) requirements – among other horrors.
- A key aspect of these Federal legal codes, is the concept of an “Accredited investor” being involved in these “exempt” (from public registration) investments. Accredited investors have to date been able to factor in their primary residence into the net worth calculation, a central tenant of Reg D.
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Written on
June 11, 2010 by
Steve
How many U.S. Angel investing groups are there? How are they organized? How do they conduct due diligence?
In this 4 minute “part 2″ video segment from our educational interview series with Prof Rob Wiltbank of Willamette University, we explore how U.S. Angel investing groups are formed,
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Written on
June 6, 2010 by
Steve
Rob has been studying, analyzing, publishing papers, and speaking about Angel investments, focusing on investment outcomes, for the past ten years.
In addition to teaching entrepreneurship, Rob is a Venture Partner with Seattle venture capital firm Montlake Capital. He has recently raised a $300k Angel investment fund which his business school students are in the process of
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Written on
April 16, 2010 by
Steve
This 6-minute video, part 4/4 of our interview with software-internet venture capitalist Brad Feld covers how
the Techstars 90 day venture incubation program works. Techstars currently has programs running in Boulder, Boston, and Seattle.
We also asked Brad what advice he would give young entrepreneurs just getting started today and he came back with several specific, detailed suggestions.
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Written on
April 16, 2010 by
Steve
Part 3 of our interview with software-internet venture capitalist Brad Feld covers how Foundry Group looks at and thinks about putting venture capital into startup companies. That is, their strategic framework for looking at opportunities. Our 7 minute part 3 video interview follows:
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Written on
June 3, 2009 by
Steve
I am attending Henry Blodget ‘s “Startup 09″ conference in lower Manhattan today. Business Insider has done a great job of orchestrating the debut of a first-rate, high level technology industry business conference.
Thanks to Henry Blodget (CEO of Business Insider, Julie Hansen (COO) and the rest of the team at Alley Insider for inviting me to this debut tech event.
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