Three Important Ideas from Real Time CrunchUp

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published November 20, 2009 @ 10:37AM PT

I'm at the TechCrunch sponsored Real Time CrunchUp. The event is all about the real time stream of information and sharing that is increasingly what the internet is about. There are a few key conversations.

1. Determining What's Important. Facebook product bro Chris Cox was just sharing some background on how FB is thinking about the difference between Live Feed and News Feed. Basically, they want to be able to use better information about context to help figure out which parts of the stream of information and friend updates you might actually care about. Angel Investor supreme-o Ron Conway suggested that 2010 will be all about filtering.

2. Social Context (or Not). The speakers today have spent a lot of time discussing the social context of information, or to put it less wonkily, being able to see what your friends care about as you're interacting with news, music, or social causes. The former CEO of FriendFeed (who is now at Facebook) and Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur suggested that the "private" context - being able to see what specifically your "offline relationships" think about different things is going to be supremely important. Others pointed out that only being able to see what your friends like and care about can be a constraint - particularly if you care about something niche - like hardcore metal like me - that not that many of your "offline" friends know about. I think this is important, because who you've been around physically is only one sort of context. One of the great powers I've seen in social media is the ability to discover peers who I wouldn't have met otherwise.

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What a Startup Ecosystem Looks Like

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published November 19, 2009 @ 07:11PM PT

I'm a recent transplant to San Francisco. Before that, I was working just outside of Chicago, and before that, I was growing up in Maine. After even just a few months here, the difference in the nature of the startup ecosystem is unbelievable.

So what does that mean?

The first element of an ecosystem - perhaps the most important - is a critical mass of people who are in the same position. San Francisco and the larger Bay Area is sort of ground zero for startups - social and technology based particularly. In about a month, Assetmap will be hosting a mixer for startup-type people just based in our one neighborhood of the city and we've been able to find about 125 names to invite. This sort of surrounding means that the people around can commiserate, share, and collaborate.

To put a point on this...Last night I wrote about Supercool School, a very interesting new startup. Turns out their office is a block and half from mine and one of their founders lives one street away. This happens all the time.

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Failing With Humility

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published November 19, 2009 @ 10:04AM PT

One of the things that is inherent in risky endeavors like venture capital is a tolerance for (or at least familiarity with) failure. Sometimes it's not graceful, but it's a part of the game, and learning to succeed often means learning to fail fast, and fail well.

Yesterday, VC Fred Destin of Atlas Ventures wrote a post on Silicon Alley Insider called "Why I Sent You A One-Sentence VC Rejection." The point of the post was basically to say that most deals get sourced because of trusted connections who introduce investors to new projects. Cold emailing a business plan doesn't create the sort of context that's going to help a potential investor move beyond their gut instincts.

While it seems harsh in some ways, the post is also about a sort of inner serenity with gut checking and the knowledge that you're going to miss sometimes. Destin suggests that everyone in the equation - investors and startups - need to be okay with the inherent volatility of the process, and not let failure or rejection get to their hearts.

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The Most Interesting Startups in the World

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published November 18, 2009 @ 01:11PM PT

Of all of the fun lists that BusinessWeek puts together, their recent "World's Most Intriguing Startups" is my favorite. The idea of being intriguing is less about whether a startup is a hit yet, and more about what it understands intuitively about changing economies. While their list is pretty good, there are a few more I might include.

Their list is, perhaps unsurprisingly, filled with green companies. BioFuel Box reuses waste products to create fuel, BrightSource Energy is trying to do solar on a massive scale. ChargePoint is a network of electric car rechargers rolled out in a couple cities now and trying for more. If I were to add some of the most interesting startups in the environmental space, I would look to the Pop!Tech Fellows class of 2009. Lebônê generates electricity from microbes in soil to power basic LEDs and other basic electric needs in the developing world. re:char converts agricultural waste into renewable energy. Ecovative Design is working on a styrofoam replacement built using mushrooms.

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Supercool School Is, Well, Supercool

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published November 17, 2009 @ 09:00PM PT

Education is one of the areas I think is most ripe for tech-minded social entrepreneurs to democratize learning and unleash talent. With the launch of the new platform Supercool School, anyone can set up a school, recruit teachers and students, and organize live classes.

The idea is pretty basic. Sign up for an account, plan classes, visit the education marketplace to see what is already available and what people are looking for, and go to it. Starting a school is a monthly cost, but the classes themselves are free for users. Everything is connected via video and text based chat.

The guys behind the project have a serious passion for education, and are clearly focused on enabling more people to learn. I wonder what type of people are going to want to pay for the ability to give classes without the ability to recoup the cost. I could possibly see companies like consulting firms using it as a tool for brand building, but it will be interested to see who else joins. It seems like part of the plan is to offset the costs of the general consumer facing tool with an enterprise service for internal corporate use.

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The Need For Multigenerational Partnerships

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published November 17, 2009 @ 12:52PM PT

Regular readers know that I'm pretty big on the potential for the Millennial generation to make a serious difference. For those interested, two conversations in the blogosphere provide a great place for people to share whether they agree, disagree (and why) about Gen-Y's capacity to change the world.

Kari Dunn Saratovsky, who works with the Case Foundation as well as blogging at Social Citizen, writes a post reflecting on a recent study that suggests a number of trends that will reshape the nonprofit world, including demographic shifts, use of technology and more. More important than the trends the report identifies (which are pretty self-evident to those of us living it) is Kari's concluding question of whether there is space for better intergenerational partnerships?

Over on Social Edge, the founder of ThinkImpact, Saul Garlick, is hosting a conversation called "Gen-Y: The Social Innovation Generation." His basic thesis is that we want to do - and we want to do now - and we want to do real - things. We're actors who want to get our hands dirty solving problems.

One of the most important questions he asks at the end is about career development. How do we as a society help people who want to have lives in which their careers integrate their values find the right type of companies? How do we help companies be more responsive to those desires?

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Applications Open for Unreasonable Institute (w/ Founder Interview)

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published November 16, 2009 @ 11:59AM PT

One of the more buzzed about new organizations in the social entrepreneurship space is the Unreasonable Institute, a ten week, Boulder, CO-based summer program for global entrepreneurs that includes mentorship, training, and a chance at part of a $150,000 seed fund, sponsored by First Light Ventures.

The program has a few distinct components that make it attractive for aspiring entrepreneurs:

• A curriculum based off of the raved about Transformative Action Institute program
• Mentorship with experienced entrepreneurs (or good fakers, like me)
• An experimental and super interesting approach to funding that gets entrepreneurs making decisions together about who gets what

The Institute is open for both non-profits and for-profits, although they are looking for organizations that can quickly pay for their own operating costs through sustainable revenue. They are targeting 20-30 somethings, although that's not a hard rule. Finally, they want big thinkers.

I asked Teju Ravilochan, one of the founders, three questions about the institute. Here were his answers

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