Bulldog Financial’s Bullblog

Just a quick recap of the 2pm Starbucks version of Houston’s OpenCoffee Club.

1) roughly 35 participants - several whom I didn’t personally know - which means that the idea is becoming viral.

2) Of the people that attended the first OCC, many of them made new contacts and were able to follow up further with people they met earlier.

3) There were a lot of new faces for OpenCoffee which keeps the ideas fresh. I believe that Tim Black of the Social Network site developer Intellimar Solutions traveled the furthest to attend - all the way from Dallas. Rakesh Agrawal, the founder and CEO of TV to PC recording software SnapStream gave out T-shirts for his new venture Couchville, an online, real-time TV listing service (I personally use both). Some other dotcoms represented were www.greenlightusa.com - a niche online store for energy efficient light bulbs, www.zcubes.com, a browser-based modular social network development platform, and www.agoric.com a well-known Houston-based business management and collaboration software developer.

4) The spirit of OpenCoffee Club was very obvious - I saw very seasoned VC’s speaking enthusiastically to just-graduated dotcom developers. I witnessed entrepreneurs speaking with “super-connectors” like the Houston Technology Center’s own Robert Brackenridge about availability of programmers. Social Media Community Leaders such as Erica O’Grady learned about newly launched web applications like wiki collaboration site www.openteams.com and subsequently recommended the site to Social Media Club in San Francisco.

5) A handful of people were conspicuously absent - Ed Schipul was speaking at a conference. A handful of people like Reid Pennebaker, Tyson Weihs and Larry Estes had real work to do at the time we held the event. Kelsey Ruger and Daniel Glover - who is working on a stealth Web 2.0 start up both claimed they ‘forgot’ - but I’ll give them a pass since they are both extremely busy.

6) I think that we’ll have to move the time back to early morning since the general consensus was that time worked for more people. There was also a strong desire to morph OpenCoffee to OpenBeer for an after hours bar mixer. We also completely overtook the Starbucks from 2pm to 3:30 much to the chagrin of the other patrons so we’ll have to look for another venue. Attendee Stephen Newman offered his home and the MindOH! crew offered their office as alternatives.

7) Special thanks to Scott Stolz who added OpenCoffee Club to the Meetup calendar for multiple groups and brought a number of new people who weren’t on the original list.

Overall Score = another complete success that will warrant another function next month.

Yesterday I received a personal email for another company that put it up for sale on EBay. Mojungle is a picture and video sharing service for mobile phones. The site’s GUI is top notch and it seems that there aren’t any holes in the service itself. I spoke with the CEO, Ophir Tanz last night and he tells me that there have already been a number of serious bids (and a few tire-kickers). $60K seems like a great value for fully-functioning site with these features. His reason for selling seemed reasonable - he wants to focus on his other company - Cavern, a custom handprinted wallpaper design firm.

Another site for sale also popped up in my feeds yesterday. vBDiscusion is a fully coded discussion board with populated categories and users for the popular discussion board software vBulletin. I think that this counts as a company sale and not simply a domain name sale because it has been run like a business and it’s being sold like one. It doesn’t have the same value as a www.kiko.com, www.huckabuck.com, or www.dropsend.com, but this is a growing trend.

There has been some talk on Dharmensh Shah’s OnStartups.com about creating an EBay for this type of sale and he is even willing to donate the name www.startupauction.com for the cause. I think that it’s a great idea whose time has come. 

Some technology luminaries have been throwing an idea around that hits very close to home for me. Jason Calacanis, Peter Rojas, Dave Winer and Michael Gartenberg have talking about creating a podcast-centric MP3 player. I think that this is an idea whose time is right for the market. Between the four of them, there is enough marketing power to get their target audience buzzing immediately. They also have the wherewithal to make it a device/service that will serve a real need.

I really think that the blogosphere (Make, boingboing, Metafilter – and obviously AOL/Weblogs, Inc.) and “podcastosphere” could drive pre-sales on day one. Retail sales are not out of the question down the road and it would certainly establish a brand that could be built into a real “mini-major” in the industry. The fact that there are so many well known names involved creates the unfair advantage that VC’s and professional angels love.

As far as the device itself, there has already been a small amount of discussion about power, and I agree that rechargeable is the only way to go. Compatibility with existing alkaline batteries is a must. I think that www.usbcell.com would fit the bill nicely. For screens, any current standard cell phone screen would work for the form factor, and if the costs can be kept low – I’d look into OLED’s. The trick is to have an always on/connected RSS-based podcatcher - exactly what my friend Russell Holliman (http://www.mobilepodcast.org/) who Dave obviously knows http://scripting.wordpress.com/2006/11/29/scripting-news-for-11292006/#comment-20579 has been working on at www.podcastready.com
This is my somewhat flippant response I made on Jason Calacanis’ blog post:

This is a lay down easy idea for you to execute and sell. I love the functionality coming from users, instead of the sellers telling us what we’re going to have to trade off. If this is more than a passing idea, I’d be happy to talk to you further about how to make it happen. I should get a pretty good report from Peter if you want to check me out. In the meantime, take a look at these sites that may be able to help shape your ideas:

1) The hardware itself is trivial - This is one of the most well known http://web.media.mit.edu/~ladyada/make/minty/index.html and MAKE is even selling a DIY kit on their site: http://store.makezine.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MKMP3KIT. For bigger production runs you can check out the 100’s of OEM’s in the Asian pavilions at CES in January. You may know a few people who will be covering the show, so they can ask around about this.

2) Audio is inexpensive and universal, but even if the user experience isn’t there yet, video is clearly the new kid on the block. What about a HD-player for downloading HD content from kiosks in movie theaters. I think you may personally know someone who’s talked about this on his blog before. Hint: He probably likes watching basketball in high def in his own theater. Here’s a brand new site with content designed specifically for the mobile/office audience - www.alamoheightssa.com.

3) I have the Podcast preloader and automatic downloader solution ready to go: www.podcastready.com (full disclosure: I’m an investor)

4) Removable media is a must and I happen to like SD because is has relatively ubiquitous, has a small form factor and it’s cheap (my local Microcenter is selling a 2gig card for $14.99 after rebate)

5) Don’t forget Bluetooth - you’ll be slightly ahead of the technology curve that Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and Toshiba haven’t gotten to yet, but also it can be used for receiving data automatically when WiFi isn’t present.

6) I like the celebrity angle, it’s certainly worked for the cell phone industry, especially the Sidekick. Between yourself, Peter, Dave, and Michael I believe that you can generate enough buzz to get your pre-sales to pay for your first production run just like you mentioned in your post. The real money comes in when you think about who wouldn’t want to get their bands music or their own podcast pre-loaded on your initial signature devices? That means sponsorship opportunities abound. I’m pretty sure you know a thing or two about advertising and corporate sponsorship so I know you’ve already thought of this as well.

7) www.crowdspirit.org - they just launched an idea crowdsourcing site to create consumer products exactly as you describe.

Google’s CEO has recently stated publicly (http://money.cnn.com/2006/11/11/technology/bc.tech.google2.reut/index.htm?postversion=2006111122) that cell phones should be free by subsidizing them with advertising. You know all about their localization initiatives, but you may have overlooked the just over $100 million they spent on an audio ad insertion company called dMarc (http://www.dmarc.net/) last year.

It’s about 1pm on the day after the 2006 mid-term election. A couple of Senate races have yet to be called, but there is absolutely no doubt that the Democrats have given the Republicans what Tom Delay called “a Texas whipping”. When I went to sleep last night around 1am, I was dismayed but took some small comfort in the fact that Jim Talent of MO was in place to win. He’s one of the smartest politicians I’ve ever met, and it’s sad that we don’t have a guy like him representing us in government anymore. I’m not shocked, but I am disappointed in the outcome of that race and that fairly describes my opinion about the entire campaign.

The truth of the matter is not that Democrats won - they certainly did and I won’t vilify them for it, but that Republicans lost. I know that there is a rabid “Hate Bush” crowd that is rejoicing today, and I don’t begrudge their day in the sun. Those types one ones that can’t be reasoned with in any case and I don’t even try anymore - just like the “radical islamists” who blow themselves up to kill others. The people I’m concerned the most for is the moderates on both sides who voted the Republicans (not necessarily conservatives) out in favor of “Anti-’s” with no discernible plan for any of the things they’re “anti” about, namely the war and rampant spending. I honestly believe that Americans today are more vulnerable to foreign attacks than we were yesterday and we Republicans only have ourselves to blame at this point. Now the elections are over I hope that we can quiet the vitriolic rhetoric on both sides, but I doubt that will happen. I’m bracing for less focus on our military - a huge mistake in my opinion, higher taxes on the people that make the most money and provide the most jobs, and social programs that are designed to be equal - that is to say equally bad for everyone. We’ll see how things turn out, but I must tell you that I am deeply concerned for our future in the world.

I’m swamped and I feel guilty about it. I spend what seems like 20 hours a day on the net trying to keep up and the fact is, I just can’t seem to do it. At last count, I regularly ”consume” 212 RSS feeds, a bunch of podcasts, probably 2 dozen daily and monthly email newsletters, four or five monthly magazines that I read cover to cover, physical snail mail from both the house and the office, plus the regular phone calls and email we all get - both important and spam/telemarketers. There are all kinds of tricks that I use like, GTD, email filters and feed aggregators like Bloglines, but I have a very real sense of being flooded. I’m struggle daily trying to seperate the signal from the noise, but my real problem is that I have a fear of missing something. I’ll be the first to admit that this is a condition of my own making, but I’m addicted to “new”. I’m a self-diagnosed “neophiliac” - literally “in love with new things” and some other terms that have been used to describe people with this affliction are “Trendspotter” and “Cool Hunter”.  I don’t think I’m cool enough to call myself those things so I’m going to stick with the slightly more clinical, vauguely naughty term. I have a feeling that many tech obsessed geeks feel the same way. Unfortunately for me, no amount of data filters or editors are going to be able to tell me what I should see without me feeling like I haven’t done more that scratched the surface of a topic. With so many good content producers coming online everyday, I think that this problem will only get worse until I decide that I just don’t care as much anymore.

With BarCampEarth coming up this weekend I thought that I’d post about what I learned from my experiences. I recently had both the pleasure and headache of co-hosting BarCampHouston and I’d like to relay a few tips to future “unconference” organizers. First off, Scott Lake of JadedPixel, the creators of Web 2.0 shopping cart Shopify said it best in this blog post:

“An unconference is a conference where the content of the meeting is driven and created by the particpants rather than by a single organizer. The cool thing about BarCamp is that generally all attendees must give a demo, a session, or help with one. In short, BarCamp is a way for those of us in Ottawa’s high-tech community to get together, meet each other, swap stories and experiences, and discuss all the great things that we are doing.”

You will need the following things to successfully create and host an unconference:

• Theme or Idea
• People
• Co-Hosts
• Volunteers
• VIP Attendees
• The “Masses”
• Location
• Time and Date 
• Space
• Seating
• Amenities
• Food
• WiFi
• Projectors and Screens
• Nametags
• Communication and Promotion
• Website
• wiki
• forum
• Logo
• Flyers 
• T-Shirts
• Stickers
• Follow Up

One of the main reasons I haven’t kept up with the blog is that I wasn’t sure exactly where to set the bar. This won’t be a personal diary, although it may end up getting pretty personal. It won’t be a dry list of links or references, but I’ll have those too. It won’t be a snide or snarky commentary of deals I’ve seen, - although that’s sure to come out at some point. It won’t be about salacious gossip and rumors about the people or companies I deal with, that’s bad for business and invites negative karma. I’m not the smartest guy out there and I won’t fall in love with my own words. I may “blog angry” and regert it later. I will not shy away from controversy and, I will take sides, but I will allow my mind to be changed. I will write something that I would want to read today, and not worry about how I will be perceived or judged tomorrow. I will try to make this blog as open and honest of an account of the way I see things, for better or worse.  Above all, I will try to be interesting.

This is my third serious restart of this blog. I’ve tried to blog regularly for the last three years or so, but I always seem to fall short. In the past I have made excuses: I don’t have the time, I deal with sensitive data, I don’t want to offend anyone etc. These are all legitimate reasons NOT to blog - but they’re not good enough for me any more. I want to start the conversation over, and wiping the slate clean is the best way I know how to do that.