Today I attended the Kauffman Foundation State of Entrepreneurship address in Washington, D.C. at the National Press Club. The event was packed with range of bootstrap entrepreneurs like myself to high ranking government officials. Kauffman President and CEO Carl Schramm addressed the crowd with a wealth of statistics on entrepreneurship which included the following:
36 percent of entrepreneurs reported reductions in head count in the past year; only 8 percent have added employees.
Nearly two-thirds have seen their sales volume and their profitability decrease.
71 percent of entrepreneurs do not expect to add any new jobs in 2010.
61 percent of entrepreneurs think the economy is on the wrong track.
I covered the event on TECH cocktail (here). I also covered the event real-time on Somewhat Frank Tidbits (here).
I just got back from the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, thanks to Intel and my participation in the Intel Insider program. It was a lot of fun and I saw lots of shiny objects and gadgets. I wrote a piece for TECH cocktail sharing the Best 13 at CES 2010. Of the list, I'd take every item on the list but if I had to pick the one I would probably purchase first, I would probably look into the new Sprint Overdrive Mobile 3G/4G hotspot made by Sierra Wireless. It leverages the Clearwire WiMax network to take advantage of the 4G unlimited speeds.I was at the Baltimore WiMax launch so I am looking forward to getting one of these devices to take advantage of it.
If I had to find the coolest gadget, it was probably the Alioscopy 3DTV at the Intel
booth as it did not require 3D glasses to view in 3D. Though it has some restrictions on the content that can be turned into 3D it was a pretty impressive device. It was by far the most interesting 3D TV I saw because it was
the only TV that was in 3D with the use of glasses. Check out this
video of the 3DTV at the Intel booth.
This year my New Year's resolution is to be bold and what better way to do that than to start the year off by leaving the solid paycheck, benefits and comfort of a job at Aol. Today is my last day as an Aol employee as I have decided to move on to pursue some of my own entrepreneurial endeavors. It has been just over 3 years since I joined Aol to help bring some "Web 2.0 & social media" perspective and expertise to the Aol team. In Internet years that is about 10 years. My first task was to join the product development team responsible for the myAOL triple threat including a personalized homepage, a feed reader with bookmarking and an innovate recommendation engine. We then went on to launch it in 28+ countries before it turned one. More recently with the launch of AIM Lifestream I saw about 18 months of planning and strategy come to fruition which included work on AIM buddyupdates and the acquisition of SocialThing. I have racked up a lot of airline miles bouncing between DC and the West Coast. It has been a good run and a great learning experience working in a large organization and I have met so many great people along the way. I am proud of our accomplishments at Aol. As anyone who has ever worked at a large company can attest, it is not easy to launch a product in a big organization and I did it a few times in just three years.
I am excited to share some news about a Shiny Heart Ventures project I have been working on for the last couple months. My partner at Shiny Heart Ventures, Jen "@noreaster" Consalvo comes from a little town near Kennebunkport, Maine. She grew up there and her family still lives there. Her dad, Captain Dave is a retired Merchant Marine and Nuclear Engineer who has returned to his passion of lobstering - something he has been doing for over 45 years.
This summer we visited Captain Dave and his First Mate "@LobstahLady" Frannie in Maine and did some lobstering. While we were there they explained how hard lobstermen work and how they are basically being undercut more and more each day as the price lobsters continues to fall while it stays stable in restaurants around the country. This seemed unfair to all of us. Jen and I saw an opportunity to help them by cutting out the middle men and selling their fresh Maine lobster catch directly to consumers via the Web.
So I am pleased to announce the recent launch of Shiny Maine Lobster an online fresh Maine lobster shop where you can buy fresh Maine lobsters directly from Captain Dave and Lobstah Lady Frannie.
Yesterday I went to see the film Up In The Air with my family for the holidays.You can watch the movie trailer here. Overall I enjoyed the film as it was entertaining and it carries some underlying messages that are worth paying attention to. It's no wonder the film was nominated for six Golden Globes. The movie made me think and so I could not help but write down a few thoughts as certain elements reminded me of myself, especially the references to heavy traveling. It only seems appropriate that I am writing this article while cruising through the air at 36,000 feet.
This past week we had a super showing at TECH cocktail DC 7 which was previewed in the November issue of DC Magazine. It was great to be able to showcase another handful of local start-ups. With the holidays right around the corner it was great to be able to catchup with a crowd of a couple hundred DC area tech enthusiasts and share in a holiday cocktail.
The event was sponsored by Winamp which has been around awhile but is making a resurgence with it's latest offering. I remember using Winamp back in my fraternity house when we hosted events and festivities (think Animal House but in Indiana). It's great to hear it is continuing to improve the media player experience and platform. As an Intel Insider for going on two years I was also excited and thankful for Intel's support as a sponsor. Intel also kicked off a contest to win a HP Envy Beats laptop over on TECH cocktail. Good luck to everyone that enters, contest ends December 17th at midnight EST.
It has been a rather eventful year for TECH cocktail, a community building media startup, that I co-founded in 2006. We are wrapping up another year with two more TECH cocktail events one in DC on Thursday, December 3rd and our final 2009 event in Chicago on Thursday, December 10th. We have some great sponsors like Intel and Winamp and more and about 20+ never before seen start-ups showing off their products or services in an expo style.
Wow, these events will be our 10th and 11th events this year. Hope you can make it to DC or Chicago for one of these events - tis the season to TECH cocktail.
With Thanksgiving and the holiday season fast approaching, it is a time for reflection and gratitude. I thought it would be the perfect time to share with you a product I have been working on which is focused on spreading happiness through gratitude. Personally, this year has been full of change which is sometimes tough to handle, so "feel good" projects have helped me to focus on the good things in life.
With the help of my partner Jen Consalvo and our agile development team I recently launched Thankfulfor.com, a social online gratitude journal providing a forum for expressing gratitude routinely as a foundation for happiness and well-being. People come to the site and post what they are thankful for to their personal journal of thanks. People can also choose to send each Thankfulfor post to their social network on Twitter (each post starts with the #thankfulfor hashtag) extending the good vibes far and wide.
With baseball in it's final series of 2009 I wanted to share some of my thoughts on baseball, branding and social media, thoughts that have been brewing for a while. I currently live in Washington, D.C., a plane ride away from my favorite baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, and within driving distance of the two teams with the worst records in baseball this past season, the Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Nationals respectively. They both lost a lot of games this year (98 and 103) which only makes me miss my hometown Cubbies even more but let's not forget they have been nothing less than disappointing for over a century. Even in 2003, where I was five outs away from doing Wrigley Field victory dance by heading to the World Series they found a way to break my heart. But every season, I still come back with even more resilience that it could be the Cubs year.
That said, due to my social technology and media background (my baseball skills probably didn't hurt either), I was
invited to meet with the Washington Nationals executives last month at Nationals Park. I was honored to do so and in meeting with Stan Kasten, Bob Wolfe and others I realized that they are just a three year old start-up that spun out of what was the Montreal Expos organization. Call me an optimist but I think they have an almost clean slate, branding-wise, that offers them a huge opportunity to create a strong following both online and off.
PayPal is hosting it's first ever developer conference PayPal Innovate 2009 on November 3rd and 4th in San Francisco and I am excited to be heading out to take part in it.
The two day event includes a keynote by Tim O'Reilly keynote on Day 1 and GigaOm's Om Malik is doing a VC panel on Day 2.
The event is sure to be well attended by developers,
startups and entrepreneurs and more.
Today I joined Sudha Jamthe from the PayPalX team on BlogTalkRadio as she talked to Khurram Khan, Product Owner of Adaptive Payments from PayPalX
TwitPay founder Michael Ivey to discuss the upcoming PayPalX Innovate 2009 conference. You can listen to the discussion here.
I am excited to be a finalist in the Panasonic Living in HD Insider program. What this means is that I am only one step away from being the next Panasonic Living in HD Insider! But I am going to need the help of my readers and community to help make this possible. Check out my video entry I submitted for the contest (below).
Help spread the word by copying the message below and set it on your status on Twitter and Facebook:I just voted for @FrankGruber for #LiHDInsider and you should too here: http://bit.ly/3TnfUB
Grab this code (below) and put it one you blog or other sites to help spread the word:
This past year I have attended several demo days and covered Launched Box Digital in DC and Dream It Ventures in Philly among others. Yesterday was the demo day for another local incubator, this time it's in Pittsburgh. Yes the "Steel City" has more than just steel these days, as six new start-up companies showed off their stuff as part of the Alpha Labextensive six-month start-up business incubator program. AlphaLab provides funding, free office space, expert business advisors and services during its biannual program in Pittsburgh. Alpha Lab was created by Innovation Works a seed stage investment firm.
Today is the big day for my friend Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library TV, or GaryVee as many of you know him on Twitter, as he published his first business book Crush It: Why NOW Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion. This is Gary's second book overall, as his first book was about wine. I look forward to reading it. While Gary was writing it I sent him examples to use for various sections and feedback so I am interested to see how it turned out. Congrats and best of luck to Gary, I hope he sells lots of books! I bought it today.
It's great to see Gary come so far so quickly. I first met Gary via email when he wanted to send wine and sponsor our first TECH cocktail DC event, which we are very thankful for. Then we spoke together on a panel discussing social media at the New New Internet Conference in DC. We shared good times and joy by pulling together a flash mob wine party at SXSW in a matter of minutes. I even had Gary visit my hometown to speak in Woodstock, Illinois at the historic Opera House last year. There are many additional memories over the last few years but I don't want to bore you. All I can say is, It's been fun.
At this particular brunch they shared their photography application called Photomarkr. The Photomarkr application offers users the ability to put a custom watermark on any photo on the iPhone. The video above shares a quick demo that I shot with my iPhone (so bear with the less than perfect audio and video quality). The application is available for $2.99 in the apps store. Happy watermarking.
I am excited to be a finalist in the Panasonic Living in HD Insider program. What this means is that I am only one step away from being the next Panasonic Living in HD Insider! But I am going to need the help of my readers and community to help make this possible. Check out my video entry I submitted for the contest (below). 
