Please follow our journey here:

–> www.UrbanHikers.com <–

This event is interesting as it brings in leaders from the tech space, with experts in the journalism space, to share knowledge and bring ideas together.  I’ll be on a panel discussing “How to Build Communities for Brands”

Register soon for the Early-Bird Discount and use this coupon code for 10% off: 10smmsf12

Thursday 8th July, 9:00am – 5:30pm

Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason Street, San Francisco, CA 94102

Speakers include: Ben Parr, Co-Editor of Mashable; Richard Jalichandra, CEO Technorati; Chris Heuer, AdHocnium; David Gelles, Reporter at The Financial Times; Kym McNicholas, Anchor/Reporter at Forbes; Jon Swartz, Technology reporter USA Today; Hiten Shah, Co-founder KISSmetrics; Lawrence Coburn, CEO of DoubleDutch; Murray Newlands; and Marissa Louie.  The event is sponsored by Oracle.

Matt Shapiro, a second year MBA student at the Yale School of Management and part time Associate with LaunchCapital, a seed stage venture capital firm, authored the first Entrepreneur’s Census asking a range of questions to co-founders and ceo’s on why they landed in their city and analyzed the behaviors in each city with a series of questions ranging from fundraising to hiring.

As a NYC to Silicon Valley transplant I was very interested in the results of the census and passed it out to the Silicon Valley New Tech Meetup.

The results that most interested me:

• 40% of startups in Palo Alto reached the financing they sought vs. only 24% in NY (graph above)
• The leading reason for why founders picked a city was due to a prior job, university came in 2nd.
• Software-as-a-Service beat out Advertising as a revenue model 2-to-1
• The peak tiers for number of employees were 4-7 for NY and Boston, and 2 for Palo Alto, which would indicate a larger percentage earlier stage companies in Palo Alto, and a larger percentage of more mature companies in NY.
• 42% of startups in NYC don’t pay for rent, vs. 22% in Palo Alto. With an avg. rent of $733/employee in NYC vs. $475/employee in Palo Alto, I can see why there’s a need for free rent!  Also, as a former NY’r, it’s much hader to create the live/work spaces that you have in Silicon Valley, such as our our Meetro house that crammed 8 guys into one apartment for living and working.
• Angel Access – Silicon Valley has the numbers, with 17% of companies speaking to 20 or more angels in Palo Alto, compared to 7% in NYC.  Though the flip side of this could be our crazy west coast ideas sometimes need to land on more ears then those solid business plans in NYC.

Read the full research report below or head to the 2010 Entrepreneur Census website.

The Entrepreneur’s Census –

We’re about to roll pass 5,000 members today!  Every member of this group has contributed to our growth, thank you!  The 5,000th member to join will get his or her website or service tweeted out, so pass this onto your friends.  Also, there’s a 2010 Entrepreneur Census sponsored by Yale, please fill it out and let the world know why Silicon Valley is the #1 place to launch a startup. http://bit.ly/do7A2F

Awesome mix of companies tonight. If you can’t make it in person, check out the Live Stream @ 7pm:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/svnewtech

Apply to demo:
http://demo.newtechmeetup.org

When: Tuesday, Apr 6, 2010 7:00 PM
Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto
More: http://meetup.com/svnewtech

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Lineup:

wepay.com – Helping groups collect and manage money. A great system for that next Tahoe cabin rental with friends. [Bill Clerico]

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helpbubble.com – Your website vistiors are really confused, make it easy for them to find answers to their questions. [Mark Christian & Brian Klug]

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doubledutch.me – White-labeled location-based game for your Community, Brand, or Event. [Lawrence Coburn]

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aws.amazon.com – Amazon is not just for books.  Amazon Web Services is an entire suite of cloud computing resources powering many of the web startups in this group. [Alex McClure]

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Links & Give-aways

• Book Giveaway Tonight! Web 2.0 Fundamentals – 2 copies will be given away by the authors (& active SVNewTech members), Oswald Campesato & Kevin Nilson: http://web2-book.com/ or buy it 40% off: http://bit.ly/b0Yl3d
• Ad Publishers – Can’t make ad:tech SF during the day?  Then come out to the SFAdPub meetup where we’ll be featuring hot Ad Networks w/ free drinks: http://meetup.com/SFAdPub/
• Startup Lessons Learned Conference – Learn from the best on building a successfully *lean* startup.  20% discount code SVNEWTECH: http://bit.ly/bgaTcI
• 5 FREE tickets – Digital Media Law Conference – 1 day forum for legal experts, biz execs, & entrepreneurs to discuss emerging legal issues in the digital media space. http://bit.ly/dglIE2 (5 free tickets given out in newsletter, signup here.  Everybody else 25% off, code SVNewTech25)
• 2010 Entrepreneur’s Census – Tired of the speculative arguments regarding whether it is better to launch a venture in NY vs. Boston vs. Silicon Valley? Fill out this anonymous survey sponsored by Yale: http://bit.ly/do7A2F
• Looking for a new gig? Post on our job boards http://bit.ly/svnt-jobs
• Hiring? Email me for a sponsored listing.

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A special thank you to:

• The New York Times
• DLA Piper for hosting us each and every month
• FutureWorks PR for providing wine & beer at tonight’s event

I just attended a breakfast hosted by Next Step, The Brenner Group and K&L Gates on how to position your startup for acquisition.  There’s a lot of common sense that goes into it.  I picked two halves of a pb&j because I think that’s what best represents a merger or acquisition – when the additive results tastes great and keeps the customers coming back to buy more.  Here are a few meaningful points I took away:

• Position your self for an acquisition, such as partnerships with potential acquirers.  Think about this in your product strategy.
• Think of your competition from your acquirer’s perspective.  You may not necessarily compete for the same customers, but maybe there’s similar technology/services out there that you would be similar to from an acquirer’s perspective.
• Be mindful of your intrinsic low value customers vs. your high value and strategic customers.  Low value may be online sales customers, ad revenue customers, etc.  High Value and Strategic customers will usually be of the highest interest from a potential buyer
• Accounting / GAAP / Tax compliance – make sure this is all legit.  I repeat, make sure you are fully compliance here. 1, it can really delay due diligence not to have all your paperwork or be out of compliance.  2, it can slow down the due diligence and you may not have the resources to sit through it. 3, it could be used against you during negotiations as the price can lower with increased risk.  4, if a public company is acquiring you, they will have to do a full audit with the SEC w/in 75 days of purchase. Finally, as you are positioning yourself for acquisition, you may want to have your company audited – your company will look stronger for it, and you’ll also avoid any delays during due diligence.
• Make sure all your other ducks are in order, cap table, previous employees, founders that left, board seats, etc.  You (and your acquirer) don’t want any puppies coming out of the closet during or after acquisition.
• Global acquirers?  They’ve seen a lot of global investment, and think the market might be opening up to more global acquisitions with companies looking for a presence here in the valley.

Hey all, just a quick reminder on our meetup tonight, Feb 9th. In March, Google AdSense will be sending a rep or two to answer your questions, so we’ll use some time tonight to prepare some questions I can send them before hand.

Tonight, Feb 9th, 7pm.
Zebulon, 2nd Floor, above the bar (83 Natoma St)

Please make sure you’ve RSVP’d Free appetizers will be provided.

Please forward this email to any friends/colleagues that run a web property and make real revenues from ads. The more people that join the group, the more influence we’ll have at getting ad networks out to answer your questions.

Also note, I may have to limit the RSVP count in March to 30 ppl, priority will be given to people who have attended this meetup at least once.

Look forward to seeing you tonight,
Vinnie
917-612-0051

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What is SFAdPub?
SFAdPub is a monthly meetup for ad publishers & web startups looking to learn from each other and share advice. Each month we’ll focus on a different topic, such as ad placement optimizations, mobile advertising, affilate networks, alternate ad networks, google analytics, etc. The group has been casually meeting over the past few months and started the monthly meetup in January. Come network with other startups and ad publishers and learn how to make more money from your site. Every other month, we’ll feature representatives from major ad networks to answer your questions: http://meetup.com/SFAdPub/

Tuesday, January 11

The meetup will be an informal gathering for ad publishers to share knowledge of ad optimization and ad networks over beers.  As the group grows, we’ll have small roundtables with small and large ad networks, like google adsense.

The first one is tomorrow night.  Whether you’re interested in joining us tomorrow or in the future, please be sure to join the group to be informed of updates and free tips.

We have 15+ RSVP’s for tomorrow night, that’s great! I’m looking forward to getting 8-10 of us together for our first event.  I’ve spoken to people at Google and they’d love to come out to a future event in February or March – which would allow us to ask them direct questions about Adsense.

What to expect Tuesday night – A very informal gathering of fellow ad publishers sharing tips. I’ve spoken to the manager at Zebulon and she’s gonna give us our own room above the bar. And as an added incentive to join us, I’ll grab a drink for anybody who brings a fellow ad publisher along or gets them to join the group (honor system, i’ll trust you)

Another great lineup and more free tickets in our monthly newsletter.  Demos featuring: custom TV, recruiting software you’ll need with the economy picking up, people powered car traffic info, and how businesses do twitter.

If you can’t make tonight, 7pm Live Stream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/svnewtech

Find a ride share -> http://bit.ly/svnt-ride

Demos

————————

watchuwant.tv – It’s like last.fm for video, create your own channel. [Adam Bossy]

newtonsoftware.com – Simple to use recruiting software to make your life easier when bringing on new hires.  [Joel Passen]

waze.com – Crowd sourced traffic information.  Something I’ve been asking for since 2003.  [Anselm Hook]

coTweet.com – ‘How Business does Twitter.’ From Ford Motors to Starbucks, co-tweet will help your company engage customers using Twitter. [Jesse Engle]

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Links & Free Tickets

* Subscribe to my emailings on the meetup.com website to receive links to free tickets – meetup.com/svnewtech

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They’re hiring:

• Ning is looking for a Site Reliability Engineer, Product Managers, Designers, Oracle (11g) DBA and Database Architect. http://about.ning.com/openings.php Contact priya@ning.com and mention this svnewtech.
• Meetup is looking for superstar engineers to move to New York City http://meetup.com/jobs

You won’t want to miss tonight’s lineup, 4 companies with solid ideas, each in a different market.  And for a clear indicator that this recession is turning around, the ‘We’re Hiring’ list at the bottom of this email is longer then the ‘Job Board’ for the first time since starting the job board this year.   And if you subscribe to my emails via the group, you’ll be privy to $2,400 in free ticket giveaway’s this month.

If you can’t make tonight, 7pm Live Stream:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/svnewtech

trekaroo.com – A travel site focusing on a large interested community – families with kids.  Find activities, share advice, and travel to all corners of the world. [Brennan Pang & LiLing Pang]

uShow.com – Turn your twitter fans into a video channel.  Login to create a video channel with the videos your friends are sharing. [Joe Shapiro]

workingpoint.com – Simple invoicing and bookkeeping.  There in prime territory after Mint’s acquisition. [Tate Holt]

plurchase.com – A secret y-combinator company that’s going to give you a sneak-peak before anyone else. [Tom Saffell]

Reminder – the newsletter has $2,400 worth of free ticket giveaways to the first to act!  I work hard to sneak in free giveaways to the group each month.

Looking forward to tonight’s lineup, I’ll keep this brief with the addition of the Job Board below – for people who are hiring or looking to be hired.  You may have noticed I’ve put a hard cap on the 150 this month, we’ll see how that goes and if there’s a better approach.  If you didn’t make it into tonight’s RSVP, you might be interested in another event today, http://laidoffcamp.pbwiki.com/SanFrancisco

With stocks dipping into 1996, it’s interesting to look back and see how much the internet has changed (and the companies).  Here’s a clip to lift your spirits, Everything’s amazing, nobody’s happy – http://tr.im/gYmn

On Deck for tonight

manymoon.com – Simplify your worklife by bringing in your google documents, tasked based emails, and team into one convenient project on the web. [Amit Kulkarni]

cellguided.com – Your own outsourced tour guide. Create or participate in a walking tour or a treasure hunt that can be accessed from any mobile phone.  [Rajiv Aggarwal]

expensify.com - Your very own accounting department.  Simplify business expenses for everybody – the spender and the finance manager. [Witold Stankiewicz & David Barrett]

icandy.ricohinnovations.com – Link your online world with your real one.  Very cool application of 3d barcodes. [Jamey Graham & Matt Stewart]

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When: Tuesday, Mar 3, 2009 7:00 PM
Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto
More: http://newtechmeetup.org

The SVNT JobBoard
These are listing of people within the SV NewTech meetup community looking for new jobs:
* Andy Leeper – Looking for gigs that will let him use his web app development / systems architecture skills.,  <leepfrog@mochaleaf.com>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/andyleeper
* Kieran Chung – CTO / VP of Development, <Kieran_Chung2002@yahoo.com>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/kieranchung
* Auri Biswas – Director/Sr. Manager (Web Product Management or Business Analysis) – MBA (Duke) + Big 4 Consulting Background.,  <Auri.Biswas@Art-of-Innovation.com>, http://Art-of-Innovation.com
* Technical Executive in IT or Engineering,  <sghajar@hotmail.com>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/sghajar
* Paul Wcislo – Strategic marketing programs and communications to enhance image, attract buyers, and increase sales.,  <pwcislo@sbcglobal.net>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/paulwcislo
* human resources/training, <marilyncmesser@comcast.net>
* Mynampati – Product / Technology Management – Integrative & Analytical; launched 2 BI solutions,  <mynampati@yahoo.com>
* Phil Hood – Publisher, consultant,  <phil@drumlink.colm>, http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/86/625
* Debra Evans – Pursuing Software or Web Development Project or Program Manager Opportunities,  <debra_evans00@yahoo.com>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/debraevans
* Parul Raj Lodha – Biz Dev for Internet/ Web 2.0 Startup, http://www.linkedin.com/in/parulrajlodha
* Alicia Lin – Strategic Recruiter,  <aliciasf@yahoo.com>
* Grace Hu-Morley – Product Management / Product Markteting Leadership Position , <SVCatalyst@gmail.com>, http://gracehm.com
* Benjamin Hill – Seeking a Sr. PM role in collective intelligence based company.,  <benjaminhill@gmail.com>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminhill
* product marketing, strategy, business development, business planning, product management, <shellysshells@yahoo.com>
* Bonnie Wang – Helped launched the 1st Chinese edition of Rolling Stone mag.  Seeking a position that draws upon her strengths as a bilingual communicator with marketing/PR and online community-building. <bonnwang@gmail.com>

They’re hiring
Meetup members looking to hire:
* Kym McNicholas <kmcnicholas@forbes.net> – Looking for a producer/videographer/editor for Burlingame Studio.  Tech minded, easy to work with, flexibile, and knowledgeable in new media.
* {stealth project} – 2 roles, iPhone/Web Software Developer & Web Designer/Developer, http://tr.im/gYxf
* More openings [Gravity recruiting], http://tr.im/gYvg

Cheers,
Vinnie

Back in the spring of 2005 I live webcammed a road trip around the southern United States, a blogged a bit of it too.  I started in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and made my way all the way to Texas.  The return trip took me all the way back to nyc.  I snapped a photo every 10sec and placed it on a website (via my phone) for people to watch in real-time.  I also saved a copy of each of these photos.  So if anybody wants to get artistic, I have 32,000 photos for you to work with!  Someday, I’ll lay the photos down to a music track and make a short film.  At SXSW I came across a flyer for some folks who did something similiar, but with better camera.

Roadtrip Technology

How does one go about streaming their roadtrip to the web?

Supplies

• Webcam
• Laptop (any flavor OS that suits you)
• Cell phone with internet access
  • and cable/bluetooth connectivity to computer
• 12V DC -> 120V AC adapter
• Optional: FM Transmitter (so you can listen to some fly tunes)
• Optional: GPS (so that you don’t miss an exit jamming to fly tunes)

Some photos of said supplies:

Webcam	Laptop, GPS, FM Tuner	DC/AC Adapter
Optional FM Transmitter	Car (with Webcam)	Driver
Treo 650 Phone

Let’s get technical:

Webcam
Originally I purchased a Logitech Quickcam Express for $ 29USD from Walmart. However, the express only had a CMOS video chip and the quality was terrible. I broke down and purchased a Logitech QuickCam 4000 Pro for $ 99USD. You can get it from newegg for $ 64USD, but I was pressed for time. I am very impressed with the QuickCam 4000 Pro and recommend it highly. It’s 1.3 mega pixel supporting something like 1024×1068 for still photos. For my stream, I’m only using 640×480 to keep the files small.

I taped the webcam to my dashboard with masking tape. The Logitech cam came with two different ‘mini’ tripods. I taped the heavier stand to my dashboard, right in front of the steering wheel. I kept the cord in place with these niffty removable hooks from 3m (The Mini Hooks.)

Software
I’m using the trial edition of TinCam WebCam software on Windows XP. It’s a neat little app that allows you to do a number of fun things with a webcam. I have the software snapping a 640×480 jpeg every 10 seconds and saving it locally with a timestamp for the file name. The software is also sending each picture to my web server via FTP. The app will allow you to store a history of photos (up to 99) and dynamically rename them picture01 though picture99. The app also generates a basic HTML page for you to display your pics. Nothing flashy, but it works.

Internet
I have cellular service with Sprint PCS. I like Sprint because they don’t rip you off with overage charges. They charge you in blocks of 100 minutes for $ 5USD, it’s a pretty good deal. They also have unlimted internet access for USD/month. I plan on abusing that this month with my always on feed ;) I have a Treo 650 which is a great little toy that I recommend. The Treo does not have support to act as a ‘modem’ out of the box. You have to use 3rd party software. I’m using PdaNet, again it’s the evaluation version. It’s a little app that you install on your treo that dials up to the internet. I wanted to note that the PdaNet software will not reconnect your internet connection if it is dropped. You have to click a ‘Connect’ button on your Treo, which isn’t too hard to do while you are driving. The goodnews is that the connetion only droped twice on my way down to Atlanta, and since I was pumping mp3s though my laptop, I could hear the windows ‘bong’ when the connection was dropped. (I had to reboot my laptop during the trip, and it was funny to hear the Windows Logon sound though my car speakers.)

You can connect to PdaNet though hardwire or Bluetooth. I used both without any problems in the PdaNet software. I think the internet is slow enough that you don’t notice a lag with Bluetooth. However, I always seem to have USB/Bluetooth problems with my laptop. I’m not sure if it’s Windows, my laptop, or the cheap $ 18 usd USB Bluetooth key I purchased. My laptop frequently doesn’t recognize the key, so I used the treo USB cable.

Power
I had to borrow a DC/AC power adapter from my roomate Patrick. Thank you Patrick. The device works well, but the fan sounds like it’s dirty and it hums like a lawnmower. Luckily, my rental car has two DC outlets. My laptop and Treo are plugged into the DC adapter. My Belkin FM Transmitter plugs straight into the other car lighter.

Tunes
I don’t have an iPod, I’ve been using my Treo 650 as an mp3 player. However, it only has a 1 Gig SD card, so that wouldn’t fit all the tunes I needed for a 1.5 week roadtrip. I loaded up my laptop with 12 GB of music before heading out (3,200 songs.) The music is a completly random collection made up of tunes from my days with Brent to CDs I burned for Kristine’s iPod mini. It is an ecletic collection. I kept my mouse pointer right over the next key and would had the mouse button frequently to move on to a kick-ass song. You don’t know how cool it feels to hear the opening track to Starwars as your driving down the highway around bends and under bridges. I can’t wait to put this trip to a soundtrack and make a movie.

Lessons Learned

• Make your laptop screen resolution low so that everything appears big and is easy to read while you’re driving. I’m putting it at 640×480.
• Need to know the keyboard shortcuts for my Windows mp3 player (Winamp) so that I can easily skip to the next song.

Road Trip Wiki

I also created a wiki to go along with my trip.  It quickly became internet graffitti, which I didn’t mind.  I’ll post a copy of it someday, but being that it’s pretty explicit, I figured I should leave it off of vinnie.net for the time being.

This was my reasoning behind it:

I’m experimenting with a wiki based homepage for a few reasons

• I find it a quick way to make updates to my website, no hassle of uploading files, …
• Wikiwig has an amazing WYSIWYG editor.
• I am all about open source, sharing content, remixing, …. This is my way of expressing that.
• Adds some artistic touch to my website
• 2-way mediums are cool

I’m experimenting with the idea of a Wiki/Blog hybrid. One of Todd’s friends, James, had some really good ideas and set off a million new ones in my head. James made a good point to experiment with this first before developing anything. So below are my thoughts on what I want out of this Wiki/Blog and it’s pros and cons. I encourange people to contribute ideas and solutions.

Pros

• Dynamic (non-linear) Information – Information in a Wiki is a lot more dynamic. Blogs are too linear and information is lost into the ‘archives.’ A wiki based structure would help keep a lot of fresh ideas current. For instance, let’s say I write an article about podcasting in February (how it works, why to do it, …) Then in April I write another podcasting article about good sites I’ve found. I think it would be best to combine these two postings into one page on ‘podcasting.’ This way if any new people stumble across my site, they will have much more useful information.
  

Cons

• RSS feeds – The wiki software I’m currently using doesn’t support RSS feeds.  That is a huge feature for me as it allows other people to read my new information in an aggregator.  I have to think of ways to incorporate this.  For instance, maybe my ‘journal’ type postings can have the date as the title.  Any new pages created in my wiki would be added to my RSS feed.  And if I created an informative page, such as a page on ‘podcasting,’ then any new information I update on the page will be sent with RSS.  I think this would work very well.  However, RSS is very limited in that in order for a person to edit my content, they will have to click though to my site.  I wish RSS had better commenting features.
• Displaying New Posts – On my homepage, how can I display new blog posts cleanly?  I need to think of ways of organizing all of this information.