ajenks@sf

Mar
26th

Thu

Netbook

Just got a HP netbook Mini 1120NR, wiped the HP Ubuntu and running Ubuntu 8.10, so far so good and totally great form factor

Mar
23rd

Mon

Now this is cool

Mar
16th

Mon

Just finished reading Tech Startups Don’t Need the Valley over at GigaOM, seem’d to get a bunch of tweets from people who liked it. While it brought up the point that the VC model may be broken, the cracks are there, that does not equal the Bay Area Startup culture. I totally agree that you don’t need to be in the Valley to be successful, you do need some of the support that it offers. If that support is other places so-be-it, but VC does not equal success nor does it equal the death of the valley’s great track record for turning out amazing companies.

I say find the people first and the money can follow. As someone who did a decent exit of a non-VC backed company it goes to show that just because you’re in the valley doesn’t mean you need VC. I would however argue that you can’t discount the value of the Venture community in this ecosystem. Remember that the Venture Funds are there to make money, I’ve yet to see someone have a gun to their head before signing the term sheet. I think that like everything the market will correct some of the wild things that VC’s have done in the past, but remember that location isn’t as important as the team you put together and the goto market strategy.

Mar
12th

Thu

LA Tomorrow

Not super psyched to do a one day trip to LA for meetings, down on the first flight back on the rush hour one.

Mar
10th

Tue

Last Year this fish, this year baby! 2010 Montana’s Smith River is calling.

Mar
7th

Sat

TickerGraph

My friend over at TickerMine has a derivative project, TickerGraph which seems to be a real slam dunk. Imagine using some cool semantic web type technology in the actual news/reports of publicly traded companies mixed with quant type data on raw data. They can generate multiple pairs of stocks which move or are related to each other in a scary accurate way. Essentially they generate pairs, so if you have an idea about a company you can see multiple companies related to it through pure fundamental or statistical or a hybrid lens.

Thinking of investing to get the project up faster….

Mar
6th

Fri

Great wine store I must say the email updates from K&L really make it easy to get great wine at good prices. They will give you the best wine under $10 or you can pickup a 1945 Mouton-Rothschild for $10,000

Mar
5th

Thu

Guess I was wrong about the Dems and recovery

I thought the stimulus would have some impact, but it seems they are having a hard time keeping the story straight. The stock market doesn’t like it.

Dec
16th

Tue

This is awesome, Happy 19th Birthday

Dec
12th

Fri

Are Democrats the new party for economic growth?

Is it possible that the Democrats could pull the US Economy out from the depths of the last 2 recessions? As I watch the to and fro on the whole bail out measure it seems that the ‘party of business’ is not a friend of the big business practices they traditionally support.