Ryminate

CTEK Live

I'm sitting in the audience of CTEK Live, a "live" exchange between entrepreneurs and angel investors,  today held on the campus of the University of Denver.  Here's the format:  The entrepreneurs give a 15 minute presentation on their businesses, the angels do 5 minutes of questioning, afterwhich the entrepreneurs leave the room and the angels have an open discussion on the business. At this meeting there are 16 angels on the panel, 4 entrepreneurial groups, in front of an audience of at least 300.   

One great twist at this "live" event is that the audience is able to text message in their rating of each business, and the results are displayed almost instantaneously in pie chart form and projected on a stage screen. (This cool text messaging service is provided by the company Unwired Appeal).

What a great way to energize the entrepreneurial community on university campuses!  (And to create future deal flow for this particular angel group, and gain access to the "wisdom of crowds").

The companies that presented at this meeting were intriguing:  Hypersites, Chaperon, and Moodseer.

Why less cash means more to tech start-ups

To many of my friends working in startups, this week's announcement of the sale of Youtube to Google for $1.65 billion in some small way validated their decision to take the non-traditional entrepreneurial path.  I suspect that this reaction of "validation" (and increased hope) is not limited to those in my network, but is occurring in entrepreneur and investor minds everywhere. 

Of course the Youtube sale really has not changed anything within the realm of startups (or has it?), but it is  encouraging to see the this type of story, that once in a while a couple of young guys can build an web app and in less than two years sell it for an absolutely ludicrous amount of money.   

For some of my entrepreneur friends it seems the events of this week have created a greater sense of urgency to get their betas to market, to significantly tweak what they already have out there, but in more cases GO RAISE MONEY.

CNET has a good article today written by Carl Showalter of Opus Capital that I would recommend to these entrepreneurs on why less cash means more to tech start-ups.  Carl points out that more money leads to dilution, but perhaps more importantly a loss of that sense of urgency, which is healthy and often critical to success of a startup.

Breathing Earth

I just came across an intriguing map called the Breathing Earth.  It tracks the carbon dioxide consumption around the world, as well as births and deaths in each country. Best of all?  It's in real time.

I found myself mesmerized by this thing.  Two quick observations:  the U.S. pollutes like crazy, and India has babies like crazy, (relatively speaking of course).

What do you think?