Roundup Reads for the Week:

•If you were wondering who was going to get rich off this IPO, here is a quick rundown by Fortune: Facebook IPO – Who got Rich(er)

•One of those getting rich is Eduardo Saverin, the man made famous in the movie, “The Social Network.” He also is getting famous for allegedly evading the taxes by renouncing his US citizenship.  Well, now that he’s getting rich, he sent his thank you to Mark, via Facebook of course.

•Facebook had a hackathon to keep true to its roots before going public.  I think it is just one more way that Zuck is showing he is willing to ‘stick it to the man’ and wall street.  Mostly according to Wall Streeters.  VentureBeat got the inside line on what went down: The Facebook Hackathon

•Because of the famous hoodie, the New York Times went deeper into the fashion and style of Silicon Valley (and the Alley here in NYC indirectly).  Startups are know for flip flops and t-shirts, but in reality, they are bespoke jeans and hoodies according to this article: Reticent Rich: Preferred Style in Silicon Valley (or as their meta data says, “At Facebook, Peer Pressure to Spend those Millions Quietly”)

•Couldn’t leave this one out either.  Just in and hot off the presses at Business Insider: Groupon is Under Investigation for a Sketchy Stock Spike.  Looks like Mr. Mason’s days may be numbered.

Quote of the Week:

“People for years were asking me why aren’t we trying to make more money. I would say I’m trying to build a business for the long term and it was clearly the right strategy. I think the same is true now. Maybe there will come a time down the road when most of the industries we think should be social are already social and the primary thing we can do is optimize the amount of money we can make.” [Wall Street Journal, October 2011]

- Mark Zuckerberg

Videos that inspire:
To all the entrepreneurs and people that told Mark Zuckerberg he could never make it. He just created a whole new breed of millionaires, and hopefully investors:

Just a fun Instagram image from my rainy walk home from a lunch meeting today.  Be sure to follow my images through @scottpony on Instagram.

I just found this picture again and it reminded me of my time spent staying with the Changpa nomadic group in Ladakh, India.  They move around seasonally near the Tsomoiriri Lake region that straddles India and Tibet.  I spent quite a bit of time living with them and helping care for their pashmina goats.

The weekend is here, the weather is here, and tomorrow morning should be a great run through Central Park.  Two weeks until the Madison Marathon.  Off we go!

Roundup Reads for the Week:

•Is it a tech boom, or a tech bubble?  Depending on the week, or the press, it is both.  According to a recent research report by the Center for an Urban Future, it is a boom.  I’ll take it.  The Wall Street Journal dissected it on the front page of the New York section earlier this week and highlighted the growth in VC investing, as well as job creation: New York City Tech Boom Sets Pace (WSJ).

•I don’t really want to talk too much about the Facebook IPO, because if you’re anything like me, you were over the hype  few months back.  Yes, it is the biggest tech IPO we’ll probably see in the next decade, but this week has had Zuck’s hoodie on an investor roadshow (Bloomberg), the introduction of their own Facebook App Store (Bloomberg), and the announcement of the more controversial “paid personal posts” (Techcrunch). Seriously? Who thought this was a good idea? I shouldn’t have to pay for the ability to reach out to my friends.

•I take care of my health and run a lot.  I am also quite productive.  However, I am tethered to my email via phone, laptop, and any other technology device possible.  I know I’m not the only one.  Turns out we’d all be much better off if we took a hiatus from our emails according to a recent US Army Study.  Doctor’s orders, tell your boss you’re taking the week off from email and watch your stress level go down and productivity go up: Taking E-Mail Vacations Can Reduce Stress, Study Says (NYT)

•Speaking of Betabeat and their tech coverage, it seems that they are either turning into big time nymphos or trying to capitalize on the SEO of porn.  With that being said, I’ll take a lesson from them and round up the week of ‘tech porn.’ they have been covering.  So out of hand, and so ridiculous, but someone needs to call them out:

• Here, Have some Nekkid Pictures With Your Internets (Betabeat)
• Will Work For Porn: XXX Site Partners with Crowdsourcing Platform So You Can Earn Credits for Porn (Betabeat)
• New York State Appeals Court Rules That Looking at Child Porn is Now Legal (Betabeat)
• Perfect 10 Sues Tumblr For Copyright Infringement Over Nude Photos (Betabeat)

Quote of the Week:

This is timely, as I’ve been working through a couple of great Stanford Computer Science courses that at times feel above my head via Coursera.

“Accept that it’s impossible to know everything you’d like to know, but don’t stop trying.”

- Jay Goltz
Videos that inspire:

 Everyone knows, you can’t knock the hustle.  Take Jay-Z’s word for it:

Thanks to my Dibsie co-founder, I was tipped off to this set of prints by Douglas Coupland.  It really brings out some thought provoking ideas about our modern, digital society.  Remember when the internet was slightly unattainable?  Now it seems to be a right.

On to our Silicon Alley Roundup for the week… (And apologies for any editing errors, it is a busy week and I wanted to make sure this got out).

Roundup Reads for the Week:

•Aside from all the hoopla around Instagram being bought by Facebook for $1B (missed that news?), I just heard that InstagramNYC got it’s first official gallery show at the W Hotel in Times Square.  It will kick off May 1, 2012 and feature Instagrammers around the city.  Cool Hunting has more details here: Instagram NYC Gallery Show.  While most people also tend to avoid Times Square on a Saturday, only Instagram can pull you back in.  That same group will be doing a cool photowalk through Times Square and the Theater District on Saturday: http://www.meetup.com/Instagram/New-York-NY/676332/.  Okay, enough Instagram talk for one week (or a lifetime).

•Need to toot my own horn, and mention that Dibsie.com is officially out of beta and launched.  VentureBeat and DailyDeal Media both did their own versions of the same story, then I also wrote about my co-founders and I being the “Three Amigos.”

•Speaking of Dibsie, my co-founder Garren Givens, wrote an insightful piece about what to expect when doing an accelerator and how to prepare yourself.  Here is the VentureBeat piece: “Founders Beware: Accelerators offer upside, but only if you’re ready.”  With that being said, I can’t encourage aspiring and growing startups enough to apply for Entrepreneur Roundtable Accelerator, which is approaching their April 29 deadline for their Summer 2012 class.  You can apply here through their website.  We’re just heading into Demo Day next week, and I definitely recommend applying.

•The hype of Instagram selling to Facebook, the “overnight” success of Pinterest, the upcoming IPO of Facebook, and the supposedly free money floating around for startups, has created a feeding frenzy.  I hear more comments now about quitting a day job and building the next $1B+ company.  The fact is, there is a disconnect and 70% or more companies will fail.  Welcome to reality, and Fast Company tries to point this out with their story, “The Dirty Little Secret of Overnight Successes.”  The other must read is “Have startups jumped the Shark?”  A word of caution, look before you leap!

•These are tools that I’ve used to identify market needs and trends, not to mention, vital for your SEM.  Here is a very useful article about creating demand for your business and identifying opportunities using free tools from Google: “Want to Generate Explosive Demand for your Business? … Start Here.” (via Under30CEO)

A new chapter begins as another closes.

•I’m a big fan of Elon Musk and what he has done with both Tesla and SpaceX.  With that being said, congrats to him on this bit of news, “NASA Green-Lights First Commercial Space Launch.” 

•I don’t have an iPhone, but rather an Android.  My brother, on the other hand, does.  After accidentally leaving his iPhone in his parked car at the Princeton train station last weekend while rushing to catch the train, he couldn’t go back and get it.  Left in plain view, it was only his luck to get the phone stolen.  Using the same “track my iPhone” app (and realizing he hadn’t watched “Chucky’s Revenge” on Netflix), he found that his phone was no longer in Princeton, but rather Trenton.  He filed the police report and now has the police on the case, but we did have the idea of chasing a phone down, until we realized it was Trenton and probably wouldn’t be a safe adventure.  With that being said, this is a story of success and warning.  Make sure you can track your phone if it gets stolen, as Betabeat reports in “Chasing an iPhone through the Big City.”

Quote of the Week:

“Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice”

- Peter Drucker
Videos that inspire:

•Levon Helms, the famous drummer of The Band, passed away at the age of 71 yesterday.  It is only fitting that the song that hooked me in at a young age be this week’s video of the week.  Straight off of the classic “The Last Waltz,” RIP Levon:

Bob Dylan, one of my other favorite musicians and great friend of Levon’s responds to his passing:

Introducing the “Three Amigos”

In our small, shared Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator office behind a large Times Square billboard, a conversation was happening.  It was based around revising the team slides within our deck for next week’s demo day.   Fast forward a couple of hours when the Dibsie Google alert popped up for an article from Daily Deal Media (E-commerce Player Dibsie.com Ready to Emerge from Beta) about Dibsie referring to my co-founders and I as the “Three Amigos.”

While we probably won’t pull the references to the Three Amigos into our deck, it has definitely crossed my mind to keep running with it.  Entrepreneurship is like a long-term relationship and a marriage among investors and founders.  At this early stage, it often becomes more about the team than the business.  There are always ups and downs, there are financial strains, and there are heated debates about the right way to run the business, even with everyone aiming for the same bullseye.  Fortunately we have the team and the business, with many of those initial growing pains behind us, where we’re ready to scale.

Dibsie grew out of an earlier version of itself after shedding it’s premature features that equate to emerging out of your teens with a little bit deeper voice, a few more inches in height, and a scruffy beard on the verge of maturity.  We educated ourselves while we navigated CampusDibs, as the “Groupon for College” as TechCrunch covered, and this last week we just went “Public” as VentureBeat broke Monday afternoon.  It is fair to say we’re now open for business and the clock is ticking to prove ourselves and the growth of our company.

After working together and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each product, mostly while bootstrapping, we have built an innovative solution in social commerce to spice up an otherwise dull world of e-commerce.  If we weren’t the “Three Amigos” that DailyDeal Media labeled us as, we wouldn’t be where we are today.  While the reference offered a few laughs around the office and among outside friends, I think it defines what we’ve built.  Dibsie was built with the mission of making it easier to shop with friends, so I’ll take it if we become defined as the “Three Amigos” of the New York tech community.  It means we’re in it for the long haul.

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Not going to lie, last year was rough. I ended up with stomach issues and vomiting off the bridge at mile 20, and running on a completely empty tank during the part of your marathon where your mind needs to take over and shut down what your body is trying to say. The 5 am (sometimes even 4:30 am) mornings, 20 mile weekend runs, and balancing work and life, the new years resolution is reaching step 1 of 2. My training has been much more regimented, so I am ready. DC this weekend and I’ll do Madison over Memorial Day weekend. DC bound shortly, but ready to run tomorrow. Wish me luck, here comes the three-peat.

Roundup Reads for the Week:

•Being a co-founder is a lot like a marriage goes the old adage.  When the news of Dennis and Naveen of Foursquare going their separate ways made its way across the tech gossip news blogs, the rumors started to fly.  Betabeat/New York Observer dove into it a little deeper this week about what happened.  Or at least what they suspect happened: How to Avoid Being Pushed Out of the Company You Founded

•Speaking of gossip in the tech world, I feel I successfully avoided all the hoopla around SXSW this past week.  The one big announcement I did get excited about though, is that Instagram is FINALLY coming to Android.  Get me on the beta please! Mashable reports here: Instagram Announces Android Version.  Maybe now I can start hanging out with @bridif and @stephenthorpey for their InstagramNYC meetups.

•This is a random, geeky story, but I’m including it anyway.  I’ve always thought of dry cleaning as this modern miracle, but learned in India, what the facts are behind it.  Kerosene.  I was going for a meeting with the American Embassy and my legal team in India, so I needed to wear my suit.  I pulled it out of my bag and it was in desperate need of a press/cleaning, so I sent it away.  It came back smelling like gasoline.  Perfect for going into the high security fortress of the American Embassy in Delhi.  I guess it is a normal thing, they just cover it up better in America.  Here is the lowdown: How does dry cleaning really work?

•I have contributed a piece to Under30CEO, and have been meaning to do another one.  One of the ideas was this one, which discusses, in a 3-part series, why to go do things, rather than spend the time and money just studying them.  I couldn’t agree more.  If you haven’t seen it, check out the three part series by Marc Brodeur:

-Why I chose starting a business over grad school, part 1

-Why I chose starting a business over grad school, part 2

-Why I chose starting a business over grad school, part 3

Quote of the Week:

Fred Wilson stopped into ERA this week and talked about giving investors the view and the vision from the top of the mountain (A big thanks for stopping in).  As someone that has spent a lot of time living in and playing in the mountains from the Rocky’s to the Himalaya of the Tibetan plateau.  It reminded me of a quote one of my mountaineering instructors shared during my NOLS semester in Alaska:
You cannot stay on the mountain forever. You have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
-Rene Daumel, Mont Analogue
Videos that inspire:

•As I mentioned earlier, I’m heading to DC this weekend to run my third DC Marathon. The name has changed from the National Marathon to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon, but the course is the same. I’ve never been as stressed going into a race, but I know the adrenaline will start going when I hit DC. It is only fitting that I share the trailer for “Spirit of the Marathon”:

Every time you move, you end up finding things you have forgotten about.  In this digital age, it often happens as you clean out your hard drive.  While I haven’t forgotten India, I often find it difficult to explain what my life consisted of for four years.

It is often the journey, not the destination that brings you the furthest.  I made this about 2 years ago after my last stint spent working abroad in India.  I spent about 4 years there. Nearly two years ago, I left that job and started my own company.  I think it is about time to reflect on that time.  Expect a post on that soon.

India and Ladakh

FYI: Featured in the video are a few of my favorite places in India.  Bangla Sahib, the primary Sikh temple in Delhi, India.  Then several Buddhist festivals in the high Himalayan state, and former Buddhist kingdom, of Ladakh, India.  Perched on the plateau at 11,000 feet with peaks reaching in excess of 20,000 feet, this is a truly spectacular destination.  

“Amazon’s sales in the past year were $48 billion, compared with Macy’s $26 billion. Last year online sales in America reached $188 billion, about 8% of total retail sales. They are forecast to reach $270 billion by 2015.”

(source: The Economist)