Scott Poniewaz

Entrepreneur, globetrotter, foodie, and the Silicon Alley Roundup

Category Archives: Tuesday Tech Gripe

A look back on Valentine’s Day in the startup world

It was a happy Monday and a productive one at that. Valentine’s Day always brings out the best and worst. Either the couples not wanting to deal with the crowds, the singles that are bitter, or the love birds that love nothing else than their roses and chocolates. Either way, I noticed a few tech posts that had some humor, some insight, and revolved around the day of Cupid.

Fortunately Charlie O’Donnell’s post on the “Top 10 reasons to Date an Entrepreneur” gave us single entrepreneurs some reinforcement and glimmering rays of hope. My favorites:
3.) We’ll pay for all our dates the old fashioned way. (Old fashioned=Circa 1999…with worthless stock options)
5.) Some of us have millions of dollars in the bank. Of course, it belongs to our investors, but still…it’s in the bank.
8.) We’re not afraid of commitment. In fact, let’s move in together… you know, economies of scale and all. (Check out the rest here at his site)

For the ladies, I saw this one floating around among my NYC area lady friends from the Village Voice, “Dear Single Women of NYC: It’s Not Them, It’s You.” It’s a well written piece, whether you agree with it or not and a lot of interesting stats.

Lisa Barone passed along the Entrepreneur Magazine article on the Dating sites for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. Could be a good resource someday.

And on that topic of internet dating, OkCupid, recently acquired by Match.com, has one of the most interesting sets of data on dating out there. Their OkTrends blog featured “The Best Questions For a First Date.” Like, why you should ask if your date likes beer if you really just want to ask to get in their pants on the first date. I’m scratching my head too, don’t worry.

Last, but not least, I got a kick out of the Ken and Barbie saga on NPR and how they’re trying to make one of America’s most famous couples more tech savvy and modern. They updated their status on Facebook, have been tweeting and FourSquaring.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentines Day whether it was filled with romance, Celebration of Singles Day, or just a regular old Monday. I’m starting to think CoSD really may be more fun than Valentine’s Day itself. And it’s much less expensive.

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Tuesday Tech Gripe: Journalism is the black hole of innovation

Liquid paper, the display of the future


Perhaps I am still bitter about the poor grade I received on my senior thesis from the University of Montana School of Journalism, where I essentially stood on my soapbox in 2006 pontificating on the future of social media (Facebook) breeding with peer recommendations (Reddit and Twitter), and mixed in with a portable, digital newspaper that is personalized to your tastes and interests (iPad and ITRI’s AMOLED flexible digital display). When I called this out originally, I was looking at E-Ink as the company to make highly functional digital paper. Today, ITRI is looking like they will make my predictions become reality and I am left again saying, why did my professors dismiss this theory as outlandish and crazy? Now that same professor bounces around Facebook and we are connected despite the fact that I am miles from Montana in New York’s Silicon Alley. The school has since developed a digital media curriculum, but no matter how fast Journalism moves, it is still at a snail’s pace when you look at the rest of the tech world.
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Tuesday Tech Gripe: NY Entrepreneur Week, $875 an entrepreneur can’t afford

Many of us working on startup projects can barely afford our rent, much less a week of opportunities to see people present, perhaps mingle with a few VC’s and for this ‘non-profit’ event to charge $875 (plus $36.20 in fees) for this year’s NY Entrepreneur Week. I better be walking out of there with a new business idea, a group of supporting VC’s and a chunk of an MBA. I enjoy speakers, I enjoy seeing people present their ideas, but often times, their ideas are regurgitated across so many different platforms these days that my $50 per month internet connection and a few Google searches can serve me just fine even though it is sans human interaction. Toss in the Meetup networks and you’ve got something going. Now I understand being able to cover your costs to put on an event, but when I try to volunteer to gain access and instead receive a blanket 65% off offer from the organizer instead, there is obviously some disconnect.

I bootstrap a company paired alongside New York living expenses, the organizer should understand these predicaments and whether its $250 or $875 isn’t going to really enable me to go as an entrepreneur. You can fool some of the people, some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. It doesn’t even include all of the food, in fact, the Startup waffles, they request a $5 donation. The $875 obviously can’t cover a few waffles and Aunt Jemima it seems. I had to laugh a bit more when I saw the event being sold on Groupon and every tech newsletter in the city offering their own discount codes. I’m not bitter, I am just realistic, its no wonder the organizer is attempting to fire sale the rest of these tickets.

Fortunately there are probably some well-funded startups out there that can enjoy their country club NYEW event next week with VC’s that are paying $1600 from their side. I’ll be sipping my Stella in the Sullivan Room after the $10 NY Tech Meetup tonight.

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