Toluu : austinpreneur

austinpreneur

Joshua Baer, an entrepreneur in Austin, TX

The penny gap between foundersJanuary 25

For a founder, it's common to start by splitting things 50/50 (or 33/33/33, depending on the number of founders). This makes sense if two people think up an idea together, are both committing to it full time, neither one is taking a salary, and they both can contribute in a significant way to the business.

There are a lot of reasons why you might not split it 50/50.

If one founder is much more seasoned than the other founder. ie. If I've sold 5 companies and you're right out of college, you should expect less than 5% of the company even if we're both founders.
If one person is taking a small salary and the other isn't
If one person is putting in cash and the other isn't (it's usually better to handle that separately as an investment or convertible note)
If one person has been working on the company for a year or two already and the other is just starting
Many more - every situation is different

In the end, the actual number you come up with is fairly arbitrary. It's whatever you can agree to. Some people just go 50/50 and others come up with a justification for some other number.

Kind of like Josh Kopelman's "penny gap", there is a huge difference between 50/50 and one partner with 50.1% and the other with 49.9%. One clearly says, "We're partners" and the other clearly says "I'm in charge." Act

How I use iPhoto to publish to FacebookJanuary 23

I have a pretty good routine down now for uploading and sharing my photos and videos on my Mac and in the cloud. Good because I'm able to do it frequently (a few times a week) and don't spend too much time on it (usually about 15 minutes). This system is actually based on a similar method for managing music songs and playlists that I use for iTunes.

I manage them in iPhoto, edit them in iMovie, and share them online via Facebook, Flickr and YouTube and also through devices such as my iPhone, screensavers and digital picture frames. I'm able to upload a lot of content with minimal time.

Here is what I do after returning from a trip or event where I took pictures and video.

First, I organize the photos:

Connect USB cable to camera, videocamera, and iPhone. iPhoto automatically launches and goes directly to the Import screen.
Click Import in iPhoto to copy photos from camera to computer
Hygiene - delete bad photos and duplicate photos in iPhoto
Tagging - Add tags to photos in iPhoto
Ratings - Rate all photos 3 stars in iPhoto
Ratings - Upgrade individual photos to 4 or 5 stars in iPhoto
Events - Break into Events if needed and name events in iPhoto
Smart Albums - Update MobileMe galleries by dragging and dropping new photos from Smart Albums in iPhoto

Next, I publish them to various physical devices and online:

Screensaver on m

@TexasVentures gets executive directorJanuary 21

Tonight I attended a Texas Ventures panel discussion talking about the future of the Texas entrepreneurial economy. It was well attended with more than 100 students and many other members of the entrepreneurial community.

As usual, Austin Ventures was a headline sponsor. As the 800 lb gorilla in town, sometimes they get a bad rap. After all - it would make sense to assume that they have said "No" to a lot more people than they have said "Yes" to. But if you are trying to do something to support entrepreneurs, Austin, or world catastrophes like Haiti, Austin Ventures is the first one to step up and write a check to help out. They have supported projects I care about personally such as Ignite Austin, Capital Factory, and Austin City Limits.

Texas Ventures has gotten more juice in the past few months, bringing on a full time executive director Scott Kammerman. I'm not quite sure what to expect over the next year but I think its got to be a good thing that there is more focus and experience on their team. The University of Texas undergrads and computer science department seems strangely disconnected from the rest of the booming entrepreneurial scene in Austin. I hope Scott and Texas Ventures can help to bridge that gap.

Tom Serres from Piryx talked to the group about th

Listening but not paying attentionDecember 28 2009

I've been presenting a talk titled, "Complainers into Champions" lately that gives examples of why many companies can benefit from using social media to engage with customers and talk about their problems in public. I'm usually pushing companies to engage more, listen more, respond more.

However, I recently had a personal experience where a company was listening to social media, but wasn't really paying attention - and it cost them. A tweet that I sent was taken out of context and a big company spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars investigating it. Bryan Menell also talked about my experience on the Dachis Group Blog.

It all started with a phone call to my cell phone. This was strange to begin with, because I use Google Voice and I don't give out my cell phone number to anyone. I was immediately suspicious and figured that it was some kind of strange solicitation. Here my best recollection of the conversation:

Caller: "Is this Joshua Baer?"

Me: "Who's calling?"

Caller: "Enrico XXXX"

Me: "Who are you with?"

Caller: "Bose Security"

Me: "What's this regarding?"

Caller: "It's a personal matter."

Me: "You're going to have to give me more information than that."

Caller: "Is this Josh? It's regarding your business selling stolen Bose headphones."

Me: "This is Josh. I'm not

Mission: Austinpreneur on assignment in Puerto RicoDecember 22 2009

Earlier this month I was fortunate and flattered to be invited to keynote the Puerto Rico Venture Forum in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This was my first trip to Puerto Rico but it definitely won't be my last. My wife Amy came along for the trip and we got to spend a day exploring through the forts of Old San Juan. It was such an easy trip - no passport, everyone speaks English, and they use dollars for money. Gowalla was already there too - most of the places I visited were already listed and one of the old forts even has a custom stamp! On our next trip we want to explore the bio-illuminescent algae, caves, mountains, beaches.

I want to thank Grupo Guayacan and all of the great people we met - everyone was so welcoming! Special thanks to Francisco, Bob, Eva, Joanna, Paul many others. And of course thank you to Manuel Rosso for introducing me!

The Puerto Rico Venture Forum is the culmination of the EnterPRize competition - a business plan competition that on its face looks very similar to Capital Factory. They have a longer process that starts with a business plan competition and extends over the course of a year or more. There are five finalists each year and the top 3 receive $25k, $15k, and $10k in addition to other free services and mentorship.

I was very impressed with the Puerto Rico startup scene. The community is highly educated, with expertise in biotech, aerospace, manufacturing, and more. I met a dozen young entrepreneurs and many of the elders of the community as well. The energy and enthusiasm was infectious!

The five finalists that presented were:

Adiestrate.com - Online Learning Classes
Edunarium - Online Learning Store
EMM - Simulations for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
NanoEssentials - Nanoparticle production
Sonar Sending Technologies - Medical device for improving catheters

Unfortunately, none of the five really got my juices flowing. All of them had interesting ideas and viable businesses, they just weren't in my areas of expertise or interest. I wish there had been an email marketing company! Still i was impressed by what I saw and wish all of the companies the best in their entrepreneurial journey.

Angel Investor Panel moderated by Frank Peters

Frank Peters of the Tech Coast Angels led a fun and informative panel of angel investors with Mic Williams of the Boston Harbor Angels and Christian Meade from a Mexican angel investor group. Here are some of the best quotes from Twitter:

"Don't tell me what the rate of return will be, tell me who your potential acquirers are" - Frank Peters

"Investors want NO risk, high return" - Mic Williams

"Investors want to give you money once you don't need the investment anymore." - Frank Peters

"New angel investors should 'just watch' for 6 months before investing. At the start, every deal looks good!" - Frank Peters

I definitely plan on checking out the Frank Peters Show podcast about startups and angel investing.

Corporate Venture Capital with Blake Modersitski

Next we heard Blake Modersitski speak about corporate venture capital. For a while he ran the venture capital group at Novell (reporting to Eric Schmidt, who is now CEO of Google) and now he's with UV Partners.

Blake warned to "be careful about taking a high valuation early on [from a strategic investor who might be less valuation focused], it can make it harder to raise more money later."

He also cautioned that "if you're taking venture capital from a company, cut your business deal first because it can be harder to do it after."

From Bootstrapping to Venture Capital with Brian Halligan

My favorite talk of the day was probably Brian Halligan from Hubspot. He had great content but also a fun and engaging delivery. Many of his points resonated well with the Startup Lessons portion of my keynote that followed.

Brian presented an interesting equation to illustrate just how hard it is to get funded by a VC. Most VC's require up to 8 meetings to a termsheet, and at each step of the way it just takes one "No" to eject you out of the process. He gave most people a 50/50 shot at each step, which leads to the following formula:

F(VC) = 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2
F(VC) = about 1 in 200 = 1/2 of one percent

I don't think he was trying to be exact, but more just to show how the process works and how easy it is to get a "No" somewhere along the way.

Some of my favorite quotes from Brian's talk:

"Syndication is bad for founders - it's better to make the VC's compete"
"Build it or sell it: you only need 2 founders for your startup"
"Series A is about founders, Series B is about market, Series C is about business model"
"don't bootstrap by just writing checks from your bank account, instead you should invest with a convertible note"

Keynote - Mission: Austinpreneur by Joshua Baer