This Is Going To Be Big

I like my weekly email from Medium about what's popular. As a hardware startup, my favourites are the HAXLR8R newsletter and the Bolt/Dragon Innovation blogs. I also like blogs by VCs Gil Dibner http://yankeesabralimey.tumblr.com and Charlie O'Donnell http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com

Great points. VCs (and larger angels) will tell you all day long that there's no such thing as pitching too early (cf. http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2009/10/19/never-too-early-to-t… It's simply not true. As Rand mentions the power dynamics in those talks are entirely one-sided (not your side). This isn't black and white and investors are great at playing the game. Often they'll send an associate your way in the early stages (or send you back down to an associate after a MD intro). If this happens, insist on talking to the MD. If they agree, they're interested and possibly trying to mask that interest. If they don't, they're not interested and just trying to "hang around the rim". Unless you love pitching, don't spend time with investors that don't have partners chasing YOU.

"As I write this, all in all I have received: 266 emails and 96 voicemails. This roughly equates to 12.7 emails and 4.3 voicemails per workday." I just went through this myself and it was nuts. The phone rang from 8 am - 6 pm almost every 30 minutes for a week when I updated my resume on monster. My skills are back-end Ruby and SQL, both seemed to be high in demand in Chicago last month. I didn't capture detailed notes like you, but I wish I had. "For the first week, I actually answered all incoming calls, but this eventually became unmanageable. I used the opportunity to hear them out and also sometimes give them a reverse pitch on GroupTalent for feedback." Ha! I did the same pitching my start-up Vouched ( http://getvouched.com ) and doing impromptu Lean Startup style customer interviews. There is quite a range of talent and process in the recruitment industry. Some are real professionals, others are just playing on volume. I spoke to one recruiter who makes around 70 calls a day to get 3 possible candidates. The reasonable ones called 20 people at most and actually tried to develop relationships instead of dialing for dollars. It's an interesting space, or as Charlie O'Donnell put it... a bad neighborhood. http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2011/3/21/five-reasons-why-the-… Best of luck to you.

What I like most about this service is that I doubt they took an out of the box approach towards this problem. The founders seems to have a consulting background and the case studies (http://www.canopylabs.com/casestudies.php) seem to indicate a service oriented approach towards solving the problem. This is a good approach IMHO instead of overbuilding and solving imaginary problems. Similar to Buddy Media (http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2012/6/19/from-agency-to-enterp… And fits the "Do Things That Don't Scale" way of growing a business (http://mixergy.com/do-things-that-dont-scale-big-idea-series/)

I think it speaks to the support network available for entrepreneurs in NYC. Charlie O'Donnell of First Round kicked it off, from what I recall, with this post advising Diaspora on how to make it through the immediate chaos and get to building. Many people spoke up via blog posts and tweets to suggest simply getting to work as quickly as possible and to not set the vision too high yet. http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2010/5/13/what-diaspora-should-… I saw them shortly after at MongoNYC where they were getting a lot of attention. In spite of that, they just focused on learning what they needed and hearing the talks about people's experiences. This is exactly the kind of focus that's needed to get the job done, so not only should it not be surprising, it should be expected. In spite of that, I'm stoked to see it.

original article http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2010/5/13/what-diaspora-should-…

Depends on your goal. NYTM is the biggest monthly event but is hard to physically attend due to space limitations (there's a simulcast at NWC with a more manageable crowd). Queens Tech Meetup has taken off as well as the Enterprise Tech Meetup. There's a lot of smaller (<100-150 people) meetups organized on specific topics (cloud, languages, industries). This week is @shakeshack 5 (recap of year 3: http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2010/10/4/shakeshack-3-recap.ht… ). Unsure how to get into it. The guys from Harvest have organized a startup walkabout, usually in the Spring. Many startups host office hours as well (with varying degrees of openness to the public). The other thing to do is: if there's something you're interested in and don't see an existing (or upcoming) related event, post to NYTM or NextNY that you want to organize it but could use some help (space is always a pain).

The list ("standout posts" are according to Forbes): 1. On Startups (onstartups.com) 2. For Entrepreneurs (forentrepreneurs.com) 3. Steve Blank (steveblank.com) 4. Startup Lawyer (startuplawyer.com) 5. Rock the Post (rockthepost.com) 6. Venture Hacks (venturehacks.com) 7. Dutiee (dutiee.com) 8. Chris Dixon --> standout post (http://cdixon.org/2013/06/01/some-thoughts-on-mobile/) 9. Quora (I mean, Quora's awesome, but they just phoned this one in) 10. Ladieswholaunch (Ladieswholaunch.com) 11. Angel List (angel.co) 12. First Round Capital (firstround.com/review) 13. Epic Launch (epiclaunch.com) 14. A VC (avc.com) 15. Business Owner's Toolkit --> standout post http://www.bizfilings.com/toolkit/sbg/run-a-business/exiting/tax-aspec… 16. Tom Tunguz's blog (tomtunguz.com) 17. Chic CEO (chic-ceo.com) 18. This is Going to be Big --> standout post: http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2013/7/18/the-hook-the-most-imp… 19. All Business --> standout post: http://experts.allbusiness.com/5-seo-bare-minimums-busy-business-owner… 20. Above the Crowd --> standout post: http://abovethecrowd.com/2009/08/24/what-is-really-happening-to-the-ve… 21. Forte Foundation (fortefoundation.org) 22. PG's blog --> standout post: http://paulgraham.com/ds.html 23. Medium --> standout post: https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/40cf0a8919cb 24. Ben Horowitz's blog --> standout post:…