TheMikeWalsh.com

Dave McClure was on a panel at MIT last night organized by Simeon Simeonov (FastIgnite) and the MIT Enterprise Forum.

Also on the panel were Hemant Taneja of General Catalyst and David Cohen of TechStars.

Now Dave McClure is obviously very bright and tremendously successful with his FoundersFund. And he was making some interesting points last night but I was getting a little concerned that Simeon or Hemant would have to beat Dave senseless with his microphone to get him to stop interrupting last night.

Most of what McClure said applies to Web 2.0 startups.

My big takeaway from the event and actually a confirmation of a theme that I’ve heard percolating through the Boston Web 2.0 startup scene for sometime now is that the “Business Plan as holy grail” approach to starting a venture, especially a web based venture, is dead. Very dead!!!

If you are a young geek in Boston thinking about a web based startup, concentrate on getting an alpha or beta version of your website up and running. Then apply to one of the seed accelerator programs e.g. TechStars Boston (Springtime), BetaSpring Providence (summer), TechStars Boulder (Summer), Ycombinator SF (Summer), on and on. Code your ass off and see whether your site gets any traction.

Don’t waste your time trying to raise funds from VC’s and Angels who want to see a 30 page business plan as the necessary prerequisite for a sit down. These “VC’s” simply don’t get the new paradigm for startups in the web based world.

And if the “Businees Plan” is dead for the web based startup world, the god forsaken “Business Plan Competitions” that you see at colleges throughtout New England are as useless as wings on a penguin.

I and approx. 1023 of my closest friends (no, seriously I estimated this) will be attending #WebInno25 on Mon. March 1st at the Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge.

Such a crowd is both good (the person you really want to meet is probably there) and bad (you don’t have a snow ball’s chance in hell of finding him/her).

Here are some tips for increasing your networking efficiency at the event.

1. Wear a branded T-shirt. If your a hopeless business dweeb who just couldn’t be seen without your a shirt and tie…. wear the T-shirt over the shirt and tie. I’ve seen this done before, quite effectively.

2. Don’t bunch up. If you’re coming as a team, wear T-shirts *and* split the team up. It stands to reason, that if your team clusters in the corner, no one will know your there.

3. Prearrange. Contact the person you want to meet *before* the event. Now I realize this is a totally radical idea and I don’t know whether you noticed but the Eventbrite registration page has contact information for most attendees. So drop that person an email, DM or “mention” them on Twitter. Prearrange a meeting point. Some of my favorite meeting points at WebInno are 1) the bar… don’t know exactly where it will be but I do know there will be one 2) near the registration table… once again, I don’t know where it will be but it will be there and finally 3) near one of the “side dish” presenters that you are really interested in.

Get there early and stand by the SideDish just after they have gotten everything setup. Volunteer to be their first guinea pig for their pitch. This allows you to hear their pitch while they are still fresh. By the end of the night the SideDish will have given their pitch 63 times and are so fed up they willing to chuck this whole startup thing and get a gig coding Cobal HR apps for the DMV.

4. Human Signpost If you’re into serious promotion mode, hire, rent or borrow a human sign that can act as an “attractor,” “filter” and/or “redirector.” Have the human sign post (person wearing the oversized branded T-Shirt) stand in a high flow area. He/she can redirect interested parties to the appropriate members of your team that can be scattered throughout the event in branded or unbranded outfits.

5. Be your Icon (and have your Icon be you). If you want to do some serious networking at this or any other event, it helps if people are able to recognize you. So for a couple of days prior to the event, lose that cute avatar. Lose the grade school photo. Women, lose those “real estate agent” glam photos. Guys, ditch that great shot of you with you Red Sox hat and sun glasses.

7. Business Cards. Do I even have to explain this one.

That’s all for now folks. Hope to see you at #Webinno25. I will be one of the folks wearing a BarCampBoston T-Shirt and/or a FounderDating Boston T-shirt #FDBOS. For this event, I’ve decided to leave the feather Boa at home.

The Saturday after the WinterCane of 2010, I decided to visit the seawall at Nantasket Beach and enjoy one well deserved cup of coffee. The winds had shifted on shore and were kicking up these enormous waves. When a lull occurred, I peeked over the wall only to see an overturned aluminum rowboat about 100 yds offshore. I was standing on the elevated observation platform 300 yds North of the beach parking lot entrance and 300 yds South of the Jeanette Murray Bathhouse.

As I’m standing there thinking “now this can’t be good” a power walking woman came up behind me and said “I think I saw a man in the water next to that thing out there. We gotta do something.” Hero that I am, I whip out a device called “a mobile telephone” and place a 911 call to the local constabulary.

“You have reached Hull 911, what is the nature of your emergency… police, fire or medical.” I didn’t want to select who would respond so I just gave the most accurate description of my location and what I saw… an overturned boat 100 yards off shore and that another bystander believes she saw a man in the water.

“Sir would you like the Police, Fire or an Ambulance.” I now realize that in the interest of getting a speedy response I will have pick one, so I say “Fire.” I remember occasionally seeing a zodiac on a trailer parked next to the Fire Station

“I will put you right through. May I have your name and the telephone number you are calling from in case we are cut off.” I give both.

“Hull Fire Dept., what is the nature of your emergency.” I relay the same story updating the fact that now the boat is 150 yards offshore because it is apparently caught in an outbound rip current.

“We will dispatch emergency vehicles immediately. Thank you for your report.”

Minutes pass. I can hear sirens put can’t see the fire trucks. Then I spy Hull Ladder One but it’s 500 yards North of where I am. I call 911 again and I tell the dispatcher the Fire Dept is to far North. They thank me and after a three minute delay two fire trucks, an advanced life support ambulance and a cop car go roaring past me and wind up 300 yards to the south by the Ocean Club.

So I’m thinking successive iterations of this process will take all day so I jump in my car and race to where the ten or so fire men are standing with binoculars trained out to sea. As I approach the group on foot, I get a cell call from the duty officer at the Allerton Coast Guard station.

“We hear there’s a report of an overturned watercraft off Nantasket Beach, should we dispatch a rescue craft.” I explain that I am merely a citizen observer and the decision to launch rescue craft is way above my pay grade. Furthermore the Hull FD is on scene they appear to be handling the situation.

By now I’ve caught the attention of one of the firemen and I try to explain that I’m the guy who made the 911 call and that they are looking in the wrong place.

( oh shit, this is turning into a frigg’n novel…. I will finish this in a bit. Now I have to get some real work done.)

Could you pls, pls, pls, list 10 (Ok maybe 5) concrete accomplishments that Boston World Partnerships has achieved in the last year.

Could you pls, pls, pls, put some real Bostonians on your Website like maybe Dr. Paul Farmer or maybe Bob Metcalf instead of the fake models.

This website is an insult to the real Boston I know and love. It’s all wine sipping yuppies in their “oh so fashionable settings.” In fact, it’s an insult to the real Boston that Tom Menino knows and loves.

If you want ethnic diversity… just get a photo of the crowd getting off at the Charles/MGH T stop as they head to work. That’s ethnic diversity. That’s the real Boston as they head to work at MGH.

Also, you should have full transparency on the finances of Boston World Partnerships. How much is the city of Boston paying for this operation.

You may have accomplished great things in your one year of existence but the only thing I see are pretty pictures of people drinking wine. Reminds me of the style section of the NY Times.

- Mike Walsh

#1 – Decreased probability of getting randomly laid. The male/female ratio in geeky circles around SF is probably at best 3 to 1 and probably more like 4 to 1. So that cute little thing you saw at Starbucks has many more options than you.

Drawback #1 only applies to young unmarried heterosexual geeks. It doesn’t apply for Gay Geeks, Girl Geeks and Married and/or Monogamous Geeks. As a matter of fact, if you fit into anyone of these categories, you should seriously consider moving to the West Coast pronto.

In Boston, the female to male ratio in the 18 to 30 age bracket is trending towards 1.5 to 1. There are approximately 425,328 college students in Boston and 63% are women. Each year a new batch shows up. This means every year approximately 53,568 young freshmen woman flow into Boston and they don’t know you’re somewhat of a jerk and/or sleep with your socks on. For the Young Heterosexual Male Geek (hereinafter YHMG) this is called hope.

Drawback #2 You pretty much need to have a car to have any kind of a life in SF. (more on this later).

Drawback #3 High cost of real estate means you won’t own any unless you score big. (more on this latter).

Drawback #4 A major earthquake fault runs through San Fran. See my related article Why Smart People Do Really Stupid Things or… Yo, Schmidt!! Why are you parking Google’s assets on the San Andreas fault.

Drawback #5 New England has seasons; San Francisco does not. More to come on this along the lines of Mark Twain’s famous quote that the coldest winter he ever experienced was the summer he spent in San Francisco.

Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank Michael Kuznetsov (@MichaelKuz), a Boston based YHMG who asked me at OpenCoffee Boston whether he should move to San Fran upon graduation. I’m also inspired by tweets from Dan Grover (@DanGrover), a former Boston YHMG who recently moved to the Bay Area and Rod Begbie (@RodBegbie), a happily married former Boston/Glasgow geek currently living in SF.

When I’m in Boston for the day, I like to use Andala Coffee House as my base of operations. I get there insanely early and grab my favorite seat right by the service counter. This gives me access to a super secret power outlet that only long time regulars know about. It also allows me to avoid some of the “loud talkers” who start to populate the place around 9ish.

Andala is mostly populated with youngish urban hipsters and geeks trying to get some work done. There are lot’s of apparent job interviews and the occasional awkward “breakfast date” generated from Match.com or Jdate.

So I’m sitting there last Friday minding my own business when I guy comes up to my table around 8:45 and asks whether I’m Rob Go. I’m a little confused because I really don’t look Asian. Oddly, the most famous Mike Walsh is a somewhat hunky Asian guy who is a new media guru working out of Australia and Hong Kong.

In any case, the guy apologizes for distrubing me and as he is walking away he says “I just thought you were the most interesting guy in the world.”

Ok, I’m thinking it’s time to queue the theme from “Twilight Zone.”

Over the next hour or so the same thing happens another three times. A person walks up and asks whether I’m Rob Go or “the most interesting man in the world.” By now the barrista has figured out some of the mystery and redirects these folks to a customer sitting in the far corner with his back towards me.

When I got a couple of spare moments, I decided to google “Rob Go” and try to figure out this confusing behavior. It turns out Rob Go is a VC with Spark Capital in Boston. From his blog, I can see that he is in fact Asian. His twitter icon ( @robgo ) is an old white guy.

OK. I somewhat understand. I’m an old white guy with white hair who sometimes wears black and therefore could possibly be mistaken for Rob Go’s twitter icon.

The rest of the day, I keep asking people if they recognize the guy in Rob’s icon. Finally, my young nephew says … “Why that’s the most interesting guy in the world” as in the star of those quirky Dos Equis beer commercials.

Apparently I don’t watch enough TV.

At the shoutout intros around 9:30 there were about 30 people there.

I had an 8 am mtge scheduled with a quasi geek who was a no show so I got sucked into the early part of OpenCoffee when people gathered around my table. [note to young geeks... if you're "not a morning person," admit it and schedule a lunch meeting. I'd rather have you awake in a 1pm mtge than comatose at a 7am mtge.]

Lot’s of new faces and interesting stories.

Two guys just moved to the area, one from Ann Arbor and the other from Portland Oregon. Marshall Weir, the Michigan guy, writes code for a mobile apps company, Mobiata . Their most visible product is an iPhone App called FlightTrack.

A bunch of Tufts guys showed up to see whether OpenCoffee was worth their time. Artem Efremkin is working an energy startup, FutureEnergy, based in Tarrytown, NY and looking to start an R&D facility in Boston. Michael Kuznetsov (Kuz) is finishing up his senior year and has a startup called Syllaplus that helps college organize their coursework.

When Michael asked me if OpenCoffee was worthwhile, I told him that the productivity of the meeting depended on whether someone conducted a shoutout introduction session at the peak attendance point. I believe this practice was introduced by Karen Rubin (now at Hubspot) when she was an OpenCoffee regular in 2008. So without further ado, Kuz walks to the head of the table and starts a nice peppy shoutout.

Please note, Kuz exhibits four critical attributes of a successful Web 2.0 entrepreneur. He is the son of emigrants. He is bright enough to get admitted to one of the top colleges in the country. It appears that he can code (at least his demo site is functional). And finally, he appears fearless.

I got a chance to meet Evan Morikawa, an Olin College senior, co-founder of an educational software company, Alight, targeting high school and middle school students. He will be interning with Google in Sunnyvale this summer.

Olin is an interesting newish engineering college that sits adjacent to Babson College in Needham/Wellesley, Ma. The student body is small… around 325 but they all get a full 4 yr scholarship. Google recruits heavily from the Olin ranks.

And finally, I met Alex Hornstein who has a startup called Meetlie entered into the TechStars program. I first heard of Alex’s venture when I attended Founder Dating back December. Meetlie was a finalist at Startup Weekend back in November. Alex/Meetlie used Indian outsourcing for the code work during the sprint development at Startup Week. Alex told me he spent quite a bit of time in India and supported himself quite nicely by working for some of the Indian IT outsourcing firms.

All and all, it was one of the better OpenCoffee meetings I’ve been to.

FakeSteveJobs jokingly proposed an operation ChokeHold to protest AT&T’s lack of bandwidth for the Apple’s iPhone. He suggests that iPhone users clobber AT&T with bandwidth intensive apps on Friday at high noon (eastern time).

Operation ChokeHold would constitute a classic Denial of Service (DoS) attack which is highly illegal.

Yes, FakeSteveJobs is a joke but operation chokehold has taken on a life of its own. It could have serious unintended consequences this coming Friday. FakeSteve may not be able to but this genie back in the bottle. He’s yelled fire in a crowded theater and now is standing by the exit door saying “Hey guys, it’s just a joke.”

I hope FakeSteve has a real attorney.

Update… here’s a good story in The Register that provides some additional background.

The MIT Balloon Challenge Team just sent out an email to their “thousands” of team members congratulating them on winning the great DARPA balloon hunt.

Apparently it will take them quite some time to determine how to divide the award. You see, the first person to correctly report the coordinates of a balloon (within .1 of a mile) will get $2,000. The person who referred them will get $1000 and the person who referred the referrer will get $500 and the person who referred the referrer of the referrer will get $250. Mercifully, the final $250 goes to some charity.

Then MIT will have to 1099 the winners of the $2,000 and $1,000 awards and if MIT is like any other educational institution they will probably 1099 all the awardees. Let me see…. collecting social security info on 40 persons, that should take about an elapsed 60 days.

Oh, and mid terms are coming.

Dudes, just tell DARPA to send a trophy.

Per the photo’s of the various balloon sites, it looked like DARPA staffed each of the mooring sites with three geeks. Since the great red balloon hunt was supposed to last up to nine days DARPA actually saved (8 days x 3 geeks) 24 geek days of personnel cost by having the contest completed by 9 pm ET on the first day of the contest.

Assuming a very modest $280 ($35 per hour) geek day rate, DARPA saved $6,720 in personnel cost with the quick finish.