Feedback is now coming out about Angel list, a new service from the blog Venturehacks. It's a simple concept: get a group of angel investors and promise you will send quality deal flow to them that's been vetted; likewise say to entrepreneurs that all they need to do is fill out a form and they will get access to some of the smartest investors in Silicon Valley. It's so simple that is hurts, and yet only people like Naval Ravikant and Babak "Nivi" Nivi would be able to pull it off as it takes serious credibility to get both groups involved. Venturehacks in my opinion is the number two blog on venture and investment in technology, after Fred Wilson's blog.
Angel list is a special thing that I believe will transform Silicon Valley. Much like how Michael Arrington exploited the market dynamic to make TechCrunch the success it was, Ravikant and Nivi is doing the same thing by connecting entrepreneurs with investors. And not just any investors: the early stage investors that startups really need. Simply put, it's reducing the costs of innovation in Silicon Valley - the 'thing' that has changed the world.
I really hope the industry rallies around this and collaboration opportunities with other high profile angels continue. Jason Calacanis for example is doing something equally impressive with the Open Angel forum, and I sense they both have equal motivations due to their annoyance at how other investor groups have abused their position in the industry. Even though I see them adding different value to the startup scene (they're similar but different - and should stay different for maximum value creation), all I can say is "awesome - I want more".
Hard to believe it's been two months since the event. A lot's happened since then which had me pause this blog series, but I'm now going to restart it and share the lessons during and after the experience.
Pollenizer is an agency that helps startup's grow, run by my good friend Mick Liubinskas and his superstar business partner Phil Morle. They sponsored the bus, with the request an important lesson be shared, which was related to failure.
Below is a short video of Brandon Leonardo - a superstar that I think is going to go very far in his career. He however, had a very unfortunate incident that nearly threw off the entire operation of the bus. The incident revealed an important lesson for Brandon about how you deal with failure. Watch the video the find out what.
With all the hype now on the iPad (and the proposed HP slate), I thought it was timely to mention the personal session with HP's head of innovation a few weeks ago. As part of the Startup Bus, Phil McKinney gave us a one-hour session on innovation, which we are fortunate enough to have recorded and have permission to share to the world.
Hewlett Packard was the company that started Silicon Valley, and Phil is one of the three divisional CTO's at the company, focused on personal systems (meaning a lot of the innovative things that we will see come out are under his watch). So it was a no-brainer to start our experience there. He shared secrets of innovation, including some insight into yet-to-be released products by HP, like it's electronic-ink paper that kills anything else in its class and the proposed Slate device itself (an iPad competitor soon to be released).
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