LAUNCH is seeking a Program Director

LAUNCH is looking for a driven and resourceful leader to develop content, curriculum and events for founders in the LAUNCH Incubator, as well as for our alumni and potential investments.

The ideal candidate for this Program Director position is resourceful and a great communicator, who can listen to our founders, determine what speakers, skills and content would be most helpful to them in building their businesses, and quickly build content for them.

Responsibilities

• Develop content for the LAUNCH Incubator, LAUNCH Festival, LAUNCH SCALE, Angel Summit and This Week in Startups that helps founders grow. 
• Manage mentors & speakers for 18 sessions of the LAUNCH Incubator. (Each session has five mentors, so this would be 90 mentors per year.)
• Understand Lean Startup methodology to optimize your efforts. 
• Build and maintain relationships with our network of influencers.
• Identify key topics, events, and issues for influencers to offer input on. 
• Communicate actively with our team & alumni, including reporting directly to our CEO/founder.
• Help in selecting our incubator startups.

Qualifications

• Five years working in and around startups.
• Proven track record of building quality products, content and/or events.
• An extensive network of startup people and a deep grasp of the 'who's who' in areas like growth, sales/bd, saas, hr/ops, engineering, design, etc. 
• Intelligence & the ability to quickly build efficient, repeatable processes for scaling our organization. 
• Technical skills, with the ability to quickly add new ones. 
• Excellent communications and presentation skills. 

Qualities

• Hustle. You need to be able to track down busy, influential people and get them to come to our events. This requires creative communication, research, persistence, and hustle.
• Persistence. We mentioned this above, but it bears reiteration. You might need to email someone six times before you catch their attention. We need someone willing to push hard.
• Communication. This position requires exceptional writing ability for private (email, mailing lists) and public (social media, blog posts) communications.
• Curiosity. To excel in this role, you need to be able to build a deep understanding of each of the verticals we publish in. That means knowing the events, companies, products, and most importantly, people, in each of these verticals and having your finger on the pulse of any changes or developments.
• Time-management & Organization. We have thousands of founders apply for our incubator, and tens of thousands come to our events. We have to manage a deluge of interest that results in a finite amount of deep engagement. This requires organization and time management skills.
• This is a full-time position, splitting time between Burlingame and San Francisco. 

Apply: https://launchevents.typeform.com/to/WpdStG

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http://www.launch.co/careers

On our employment of Drew Spitzer

We have to inform our clients of a possible breach of their contact information today. LAUNCH employed a junior sales executive named Drew Spitzer from July 14th 2014 until November 18th 2014.

During this time we became aware that Mr. Spitzer had taken our sales database and used it to sell for another company. That company, Outreach.io, was also a client of ours. We became aware of the fact that our employee had started working for one of our clients, and used our client database to sell for them, because our clients forwarded his sales emails to us. They were rightfully confused, obviously, that a sales executive for LAUNCH was selling another product from a second company to them. 

Based on the information we have, those emails were sent from Mr. Spitzer’s work computer while he was being paid by us. This was not moonlighting, this was using our resources, time, and intellectual property to sell for another client while simultaneously working for us.

We fired Mr. Spitzer for cause and on November 18th 2014, but on January 1st 2015, he attempted to breach our network again. He was unsuccessful in doing so.

The company which Mr. Spitzer took our contact database to work with has discontinued their relationship with him. They have assured us that they do not have a copy of our database.

We are considering various remedies against Mr. Spitzer at this time, and we do not currently know if he is using our contact information for other purposes. We take stealing of intellectual property seriously, and we will be working to ensure that none of your contact information is further compromised.

How I fell in love with—and invested $250k in—the BETTER App

I never invest in music or healthcare startups. In music, anything that’s interesting to consumers is quickly slaughtered by the rights holders, and in health, anything interesting is brutally murdered by red tape.

At least that was my thinking until I fell in love with a simple little App called BETTER.

[Click to tweet (you can edit before sending): http://ctt.ec/BGFyc]

What is BETTER?

BETTER is an App that pairs you with a PHA (personal health assistant) in a Facebook-like feed. It costs only $20 per month for individuals and $50 per month for families.

Once in the App you can ask your PHA to do something for you. In the last six months I typed in the following questions and got the following actions:

1. “I get motion sickness and my friend gave me a pill called something like macklazine and I’d like to get a prescription for it for my vacation in Nantucket.”

The PHA informed me that the real name was “meclizine,” talked to my primary care doctor and got me a prescription for a patch that my doctor felt was even more effective. I went on a boat for hours around Nantucket and felt like an old sailor with an iron stomach for the first time in my life!

I would have never taken the time to make the phone call, but because I had the App I literally typed in the request while I was vacationing in Italy. BETTER is an awesome name for this App, but it could also have been called EASY!

Oh yeah, my PHA pinged me when the pharmacy had the drug ready.

Time saved: 2–3 hours.

2. “I’ve caught my daughters cold, and I’ve now got a tickle in my throat, a headache, body aches and a cough. Help!”

My PHA got my primary care doctor on the phone, he knew my symptoms already and we got some meds to a brand-new pharmacy in San Francisco (didn’t have one yet since I had just moved up here).

Time saved: 2 hours.

3. “Here is a photo of a mole on my ankle I’ve had since childhood—it just started bleeding! I’m concerned because my uncles all have skin cancer. Can you find me a dermatologist in San Francisco?”

PHA sent me three doctors, their reviews, and the times they had available. I picked the one I liked best, and they set up the appointment.

Time saved: 3–4 hours.

4. “I’m going to the dermatologist you set up, but I don’t want to fill out any paperwork or sit in a waiting room—can you help?”

My PHA did a Docusign for me to fill out on my phone and let the office know I that I needed to get in and out as fast as possible. Got three moles looked at and one removed—in under 30 minutes.

Total time saved: 4–5 hours.

Why this is so great

The health system is a complete mess and is massively time consuming. My family pays $15,000 per year for our health insurance, but we don’t use it much because it takes so long to wait on hold for doctors, get appointments, find out if folks are in our network, fill out paperwork, and generally manage everything.

With our PHA we pay $600 per year—far too cheap in my mind—and we use our healthcare at least 3x more.

For 4% of the cost of our health care we receive 300% of the value! It’s insane!

What do I want next from BETTER?

First, I want to have my doctor in my feed. In fact, I want all my doctors in my feed: my GP, my weight-loss doctor (down 20+ pounds and going for 10 more!), my dermatologist (for the moles), and anyone else my PHA hires for me.

Second, I want all my documents inside of BETTER with all my doctors seeing all of the paperwork—and an audit trail to see if they open them!

Third, I want to use a 3rd-party testing service to take blood, saliva, and other tests for me every six months and put them into my BETTER app—alerting my doctors to them so they can do a review and give me any feedback.

Fourth, I want BETTER to take my weight from my Withings scale and my data from my Basis Watch and give it to my PHA, wife, and doctors.

That’s the thing about an inspiring product, when you find one you just come up with all the things you want to add to it!

Whenever I get that feeling I just write a check, and so I gave BETTER $250,000 and I’m planning on giving them another $500,000 with my AngelList Syndicate in a couple of months when they get their next set of features done.

I love the service so much I bought it for all of my employees because so many young people get health care and simply do not use it because it’s too confusing! I’ve had employees come to work sick because they simply don’t have the time or inclination to find a primary care doctor—or even a walk-in clinic! Thousands of dollars in health care that goes unused because young folks don’t know how to use it.

The healthcare system is a mess, that’s why hiring your own PHA—and I call them an advocate NOT an assistant—is so brilliant. Medicine is broken and you NEED an advocate fighting for you and your family.

My main concern right now for the company is they are charging TOO LITTLE. I’ve asked them to add the features I’ve discussed above and charge me $100–150 per month (literally 2–3x as much) because that’s the value I’m getting!

I do hope you try the product out because I think it’s a revolution.

Now, if only I could find a music App to make me change my mind about investing in music startups!

Oh yeah, I asked BETTER to give me a discount code. For 50% off the first paid month, go to www.getbetter.com/app to download the App, and then type jcal in as the referral code on the sign-in screen.

all the best, @jason

PS — I just hosted BETTER’s founder Geoffrey Clapp on This Week in Startups. It’s an amazing discussion about how BETTER works, and the challenges & opportunities of innovating in healthcare. Check it out — http://goo.gl/HYfp7b

PPS — I’ve written two other “Why I invested in…” posts. For Calm.com, which is doing amazingly well http://goo.gl/TdZgWf, and for Swell, which was bought by Apple http://goo.gl/pYPQN0.

PPPS — Are you ready to change your life forever? We’re hiring a Designer in Residence and a Developer in Residence for The Incubator! http://goo.gl/GiseZU

Are you ready to change your life forever?

Are you ready to quit & change your destiny?

Here at LAUNCH our mission is “to support founders & inspire innovation,” and today we’re thrilled to announce our “In Residence” program — a chance for you to change your destiny in this life!

[Click to tweet (you can edit before posting): http://ctt.ec/yO9tA ]

This Thursday we are starting the LAUNCH Incubator, as you may have read. We have seven (perhaps eight if they sign their contract today!) of the most promising startups I’ve ever seen in eight years of hosting the Launch Festival and across 80 investments (Uber and Thumbtack.com are in those 80, so that’s saying something).

Each of these startups represent another 30+ qualified applicants we didn’t take (so, they are the top 3% of the class).

We will be accepting a “Designer in Residence” and a “Developer in Residence” — DIRs for short — for the Incubator starting next Thursday.

The goal for the DIRs will be one of the following:

a) join one of the seven startups as a founder
b) start their own startup during the Incubator (which we will fund with $25,000)
c) learn a ton & get automatically accepted into the spring LAUNCH Incubator class

Here are some other particulars:

1. You don’t have to quit your job right now, you simply need to be able to get to the Thursday night incubator classes by 5PM.
2. The worst-case scenario is that you sit in on 12 of the most informative three-hour classes taking place in the Valley — for free!
3. You need to be world class, not up-and-coming. If you think you’ll be great only after coming out of this experience you’re not the right person. You need to be an elite developer or designer coming into the program — that’s why we’re giving you the slot!
4. Designers: we need to see exceptional work.
5. Developers: we need to see exceptional code.
6. Your participation will be kept 100% confidential — or I will tweet to 200k+ folks that you got the slot. Your choice!
7. You’ll give feedback to each team, each week. So, only free if you feel like helping out. The concept is for you to get a feel for the other teams and decide if you want to jump on their rocket ships.

If you think you have what it takes: apply!

Designer In Residence, LAUNCH Incubator 2015 Winter Session:https://launch.submittable.com/submit/37334

Developer In Residence, LAUNCH Incubator 2015 Winter Session:https://launch.submittable.com/submit/37250

In other LAUNCH Festival news:

Amazing speakers:
Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn
Joanne Wilson, Gotham Gal Ventures
Halle Tecco, Rock Health
Yancey Strickler, Kickstarter
Angela Benton, NewME Accelerator
Chris Sacca, Lowercase Capital
Gigi Brisson, Attractor Ventures
Gary Vaynerchuk, VaynerMedia
Cyan Banister, Banister Capital

Amazing partners:
Connect.com (http://connect.com); IceHouse (http://www.icehousecorp.com); Sequoia Capital (https://www.sequoiacap.com); InvisionApp (http://www.invisionapp.com); Javelin Venture Partners (http://www.javelinventurepartners.com); Macys (http://www.macys.com); Expedia (http://www.expedia.com); Nordstrom (www.nordstrom.com); .Me (http://domain.me); .CO (http://www.go.co); DFJ (http://dfj.com); Get Invited (https://getinvited.to); Modulus (https://modulus.io/); Message Bus (https://messagebus.com); Sinch (https://www.sinch.com); Firebase (https://www.firebase.com); FullContact (https://www.fullcontact.com)

Apply to LAUNCH on stage: https://launch.submittable.com/submit/36488

A complimentary ticket just for you & your best friend, register here:
http://goo.gl/M1Ev6x

all the best, @jason & the amazing LAUNCH Team

PS — I had Jimmy Chamberlin of Smashing Pumpkins fame on This Week in Startups: it’s one of my personal top five interviews of all time:http://goo.gl/Igs0n5. Thanks to our partners FreshBooks and Citrix Sharefile for sponsoring this episode.

PPS — We are looking for a contract- or full-time writer to do startup profiles for our new product “The LAUNCH Ticker Pro.” The LAUNCH Ticker Pro (LTP) is $1,000/year and publishes 150 in-depth profiles of emerging startups my team is considering for the Festival, investment, or the podcast. We are thinking this elite product will only have 100 subscribers and we’ve already signed up five of them in the first week. Apply at http://goo.gl/hzZVry & to signup for LTP visit:http://launchticker.com/plans

PPPS — The LAUNCH Festival costs us $1.4m to put on and we make $0.000 running it. We do it to help founders. As such, we rely on sponsors to help us break even. Everyone who buys a $14,000 sponsorship gets us 1% of the way there, and they help subsidize the 9,500 people who come to the event on scholarship (for free!). PLEASE BE A HERO AND HELP US! Email me personally jason@launch.co and let’s do it!

How to Launch your startup in 100 days — at LAUNCH Festival!

In 109 days we will host the 8th annual LAUNCH Festival…

… and you’re launching your startup at it!

[ Click to tweet this email (you can edit first): http://ctt.ec/lH0g9 ]

Over the eight years, I personally selected and coached startups including: Dropbox ($10B+ valuation), Mint (sold to Intuit for $170M), Yammer (sold to Microsoft for $1.2B), Red Beacon (sold to Home Depot for $70M+), Clicker (sold to CBS for $100m), FitBit ($300M+ valuation), Swype & TrueCar (IPOed this year, $1B valuation) for their six monumental minutes on stage.

Those startups combined, and the 390 others that launched on the stage, are now worth well over 20 billion dollars.

You’re next!

Over 10,000 people are coming this year (more: jc.is/Festival15), and 3,000 will be in the room when you launch.

There is nothing that says your journey can’t start right now. You can launch a killer idea on that stage! Everyone in our industry is, with few exceptions, 1st generation. No one running a unicorn right now is 3rd generation Silicon Valley. Doesn’t exist. It’s not like the people who ran HP let their kids start Microsoft and their kids built Netscape before their kids created Twitter.

99%+ of the folks here in the Bay Area are *imported*, and most are from much humbler beginnings.

Just. Like. You.

Here is all you need to do:

1. Find a problem in the world that you think needs to be solved.

2. Build a team of three people including at least one awesome designer and two developers. If you’re a business person, get three partners.

3. Commit to working 40 hours a week on the idea: that’s only 6 hours a day.

4. You actually don’t have to quit your job—you just have to commit to not wasting time watching TV.
5. Do interviews with actual customers, ask them the basic questions like: “how likely would you be to use this product?,” “how much would you pay for this product per month?” and “how would you solve this problem if the product didn’t exist in the world?”
6. Release an MVP on stage that does at least two or three cool things in a simple fashion, explain how you’ll make money and what five things you are considering doing next (showing designs of those five things—mock ups are ok!).

That’s it.

All of you can do this, but few of you will.

50 of you will get on stage.

40 of those companies will get funded.

25 of those companies will make it to year two.

10 of those companies will have awesome exits.

Two or three of them will change the world.

My good friend Phil Kaplan told me once that an average person has a million-dollar idea every day. I told him that means a stupid person has a million-dollar idea every month and a smart person has a billion-dollar idea every week.

He agreed.

The ideas are out there. The problems are out there.

But folks would rather binge-watch Homeland and Orange is the New Black (both excellent by the way), rather than tackle the hard problems.

Will you “catch up on your shows” or change the world? That’s the question you need to ask yourself.

The LAUNCH Festival is for the folks who are willing to give up their TV and Xbox and focus their lives—even for a brief 120 days—on building a kick ass product.

If that’s you here’s what you need to do:

1. Sign up for this mailing list for updates from me: jc.is/1xdD5Cm

2. Follow twitter.com/launchfestival and twitter.com/jason

3. Watch This Week in Startups when you need a break: jc.is/1qs6BOP

4. Buy the Lean Startups Books

5. Study great product designs at Dribbble.com and Behance.net

6. Learn how to conduct user interviews & contextual interviews:
jc.is/1qs6vXx
jc.is/1u49rye

7. Make a plan to build the top three things — not all the things — that will build credibility with angel investors and early adopters.

8. Anything that doesn’t fit into the plan goes into the “not right now bucket” or “mock it up bucket.”

9. Refine your skills: go to TreeHouse, Lynda or YouTube and f@#$ing figure it out. Be resourceful because the Universe doesn’t care that no one taught you how to do it—it’s your job to do it!

10. Watch Startup Basics here: jc.is/1saU4yT

Credibility comes from how elegant and simple your product is, not how loud you talk.

You demonstrate your worth in this industry by building product and you build product based on your skills. Talk is cheap, ideas are easy and no one gives a s@#$t about your deck.

SHOW. ME. YOUR. PRODUCT!

Product speaks. Don’t overthink this.

Apply here to launch at the Festival: jc.is/1u2xfRV

There are four competitions:

1.0 competition: No screenshots, no press, no AngelList profile, no nothing! You are hidden and people see your product for the first time on stage. You don’t pre-brief the press, you don’t do a demo day before the Festival. You’re on lockdown!

2.0 competition: Whatever is released to the public, press and angellist is your 1.0 and we judge you on the new stuff the world has not seen. This means you have a MASSIVELY compelling new product.

Crowdfunding competition: You have an ACTIVE kickstarter, indiegogo, tilt, etc. campaign going.

LAUNCH Incubator: Six companies hand-selected to spend the next 12 weeks with us here in San Francisco: jc.is/1xzkxwk

Bottom line: you miss 100% of shots you don’t take. The LAUNCH Festival is the most open event in the world:

Free for founders to come: jc.is/1xl9swW
Free for founders to be on stage.
Free for founders to have a demo table (if your product is awesome).

It’s free because we have awesome partners like:

IceHouse (http://www.icehousecorp.com)
DFJ (http://dfj.com)
.CO (http://www.go.co)
Sinch (https://www.sinch.com)
Macys.com (http://www.macys.com)
Expedia (http://www.expedia.com)
.ME (http://domain.me)

IF you care about innovation, founders and startups help us put on the Festival: partners@launch.co. You’ll feel great about doing so, and you will sell into an audience of 10,000 folks who share these stats:

70% spend over $1,000 on personal technology annually
35% are going to buy hosting services this year
40% are founders
of those founders, 35% have raised money for their startup

The 200 companies on stage and in the demo pit, plus the hundreds more in the audience, will be the next Dropbox, Yammer and Mint. Sponsoring the event is how you meet them.

all the best, jason

Welcome to The Incubator

Here’s a little surprise: starting Dec 1st and ending at the LAUNCH Festival on March 2nd I will be hosting a six-startup incubator called: “The Incubator.”

[ You can refer to it as “The LAUNCH Incubator” if you like. ]

Two of the companies have been selected. One is founded by my former partner on Weblogs Inc, Brian Alvey; the other is by former LAUNCH CEO Jason Demant — I like to keep it all in the family!

That leaves four more slots, one of which I hope to be a team willing to take on thetruthaboutcars.com (based on this request for prototype: http://goo.gl/sxYoJz ). I’d also be interested in most of the Y Combinator list of requests here: http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/

[ Click to tweet this email (you can edit first): http://ctt.ec/27133 ]

"The Incubator” is going to follow the basic Y Combinator model of 12 weeks and 12 dinners with speakers, but with a few twists:

1. The first half of those talks will all be part of This Week in Startups, the second half will be off the record.

2. Speakers will come from the top 20 ranked speakers at our SCALE event. We tracked the scores of 50+ speakers, after considering 250+ folks seriously for the event. This means the 12 speakers will be giving “field-tested” advice that was ranked highly by the 900 folks who came to SCALE last month.

3. Those six startups will launch in front of 3,000 people at the 10,000+ person LAUNCH Festival compared to 200-300 people at a typical demo day.

4. Each company will be getting $25,000 for 6% (similar to the original Techstars and Y Combinator deals) from the LAUNCH Fund.

5. ALSO: each company will be syndicated for another $25,000 from the LAUNCH Fund and $200k (minimum) to $1m+ from my AngelList Syndicate (depending on how much the founders and the syndicate members want to raise) at a $2-4m pre-money valuation (your call). The largest syndicate we’ve done to date is $750k, but I think these incubator companies will do even better.

6. We will meet for dinner at my house, The Battery, or our offices and talk about product and listen to a speaker.

7. Every year we will do an alumni episode of This Week in Startups with these six startups.
We have four slots open and here is what we are looking for:

a) Stage: 1-18 months old with either no funding, some funding (friends and family), or an angel round. If you have a raised a $3-5m A round I’m not sure it’s a fit.

b) Product: at a minimum you should have impressive mockups or wireframes. Ideally you have an MVP or a released product with some customers. We are NOT looking for a business plan, metrics, or other irrelevant s@#$t. Product speaks in our world. We need to see some product chops to make the right decision.

c) Team: At least two members, but three or four is OK. Optimally we would like a world-class designer and three developers (best chance of success), but we would take a business person with a designer and a developer. We will not accept three business people and no designers or technical folks (because that results in a lot of talk and not a lot of product).

d) Corporation: basically a clean slate is best. So think: a clean cap table, no pending lawsuits, agreement to standard vesting between founders (in case someone bails or things break down). If you’re not incorporated you can do that as you start “the incubator.”

e) Design: I’m a design freak.

f) Pedigree: We don’t give a s@#$t who you are, what your parents did, or what school you went to. We care about your skills, your resiliency, your leadership ability, and how badly you want to win.

The application process is here: https://launch.submittable.com/submit/36533

You will meet with two or three members of my team in November.

Important: If you apply and don’t get into the incubator you may qualify for “early acceptance” to the LAUNCH Festival! So, this is a way to “jump the line” of 1,000 startups competing for the 50 slots at the LAUNCH Festival.

Also, if you apply this time you will be given priority access if we do a summer incubator (which we will do if the majority of these startups get outside funding -- a major proof point).

Note: If a power angel or VC firms wants to put up $25k in investment to each of these firms now, we would love to have one or two partners helping grow these startups.

We will keep you updated at: https://twitter.com/launchincubator

all the best, @jason

PS - If you want to come to the LAUNCH Festival as my guest, click this secret link for a “Builder Pass”: jc.is/1xl9swW

PPS - If you want to start a 60-day free trial to our research service, the LAUNCH Ticker, click here: http://www.launchticker.com/

PPPS - If you are an accredited investor (which means you can afford to lose money angel investing), you can invest in my deals at angel.co/jason/syndicate — of my last 14 deals 13 of them were also syndicated.

AngelList is the future of investing, and I’ve got 450+ investors representing $1.9m in capital in my syndicate. it’s doubling every three months, and our first deal was for $250k and our last deal was for $1m. We ain’t f@$king around! Note: If you’re not an accredited investor you don’t get to play because our government thinks you’re not smart enough to lose your own hard-earned money (talk to them, not me!). Disclaimer: if you want to get in the angel investing game read this first:http://goo.gl/V7kEan

It's that time of year. Hiring for LAUNCH Festival!

We love all things startups. And need help running the best and biggest startup conference, LAUNCH Festival (http://festival.launch.co)!

We're currently looking for awesome candidates to join our hard-working, energetic team at our office in mid-Market San Francisco:

1) LAUNCH Festival, Conference Producer 
2) Partnership Relations Coordinator (Temporary)
3) LAUNCH Festival, General Manager 

More information about LAUNCH events, This Week in Startups, and LAUNCH Ticker: http://launch.co 

Apple knocks it out of the park -- will be first trillion dollar company

Apple crushed it today.

Bottom Line: Apple will be the first company to hit a trillion dollar market cap.

Six Point Recap

[ Click to tweet: http://ctt.ec/m06k_]

1. Apple Pay will add $100B in market cap.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Tap your phone or watch to a base station and pay with one click. You sign with your fingerprint reader. There are no credit card numbers stored into the phone so the person at the counter can't steal them.

People were doing this five years ago in Tokyo and Seoul when I was rolling with Masa Son and the Naver crew. Why the frack did this take so long to make here? Doesn’t matter. Apple gets credit for taking something ordinary in Asia and making it “extraordinary” in the U.S.

Losers: Google Wallet, PayPal (toast if they don’t get a product CEO — FAST!), Square (seriously at risk).

Winners: @jack at SQUARE, as Google and PayPal need to buy it NOW. Bidding war, goes for $4B.

2. Apple Watch will add $100B in market cap.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The Apple Watch will cost $75, maybe $100, to build. It’s got a $349 price tag — to start. Apple will make at least $250 for the base model. 20% of iPhone users will buy it in year one. 25-50M sold in year one, easily. $10B in cash money. Profit. Bank it, baby.

Oh yeah, they got one made of gold and you know they will launch partnerships with brands like Gucci, Prada & Jay Z. Those will be blinged out in diamonds and precious metals and have $1k-5k in profit. They’ll sell a couple of million of those per year as well. And you’ll be able to replace the chips on the inside (a first for Apple), so you can feel fine about your 50-year investment in a watch that you’ll give your kids.

[ “and now I give this watch to you…”]

3. iPhone 6 Plus catches Apple up

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

We’ve all been dogging Apple for not getting this product out two years ago, when Samsung started taking high end users from their ecosystem with the Note. That absurdly sized phone, or phablet, is LOVED by geeks who gave up their iPhone for it.

They love to torture Apple users with it and now they’ll all come back to the iOS ecosystem with their tails between their legs — and the rest of us can’t wait to bust their chops!

Samsung’s biggest advantage over Apple was the larger screens and that just went “poof!”

Apple was religious about sizes because a) Steve Jobs and b) they didn’t want to torture iOS app developers with adapting their apps for multiple sizes.

Steve would have changed his position on sizes, and convinced us all that he supported the idea early on. Man, do I miss Steve. I mean, not personally — we weren’t taking long walks around Palo Alto like Walt did — but professionally.

He’s smiling right now knowing that he built a kick-ass team that is “doing it their way,” not his way. They’re crushing it on their terms with swagger. Not worrying that someone leapfrogged them, but rather that they hit their internal standard.

Apple is not over.

Apple is as strong as ever. Today proves it.

4. U2’s free album is Beats By Dre teaser — more to come.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Tim Cook is our charming uncle who we can’t wait to spend time with, and Bono fawned over him as such. Tim was so proud of U2 and excited to help them get their album to the rest of the world and capture the record for the largest distributed album of all time.

How?

I’m guessing Apple paid $10-30M to get the exclusive rights to give every iTunes user a copy of U2’s new album. I mean, U2 sold 1.1M copies of their album “No Line on the Horizon” from 2009, so at $8 net (not retail) price that’s $8.8M.

Why not reach 727x your audience and get one check from Apple?

Oh wait, that’s a new f-ing business model. Apple could simply buy the exclusive rights to the top five albums every month for $20M each. That’s $1.2B a year for 60 albums — or the cost of selling 4.8M watches with a $250 profit margin.

So, why not do that? That’s probably what the Beats by Dre model is all about: Apple as a label. Just buy the albums and promote the fuck out of them. Everyone wins: free music for us, another selling point for Apple & artists get absurd exposure through sampling.

Ticket sales will certainly pop, as folks don’t want to go to the concert without knowing the lyrics right?

Apple saved the album today!

5. Startups Killed: Pebble, FitBit, Voxer & …

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Pebble and Fitbit I love you. I love all founders who innovate and create amazing products, but when Apple comes into your market like they did today, well, even Nike gets out of the way!

[ Nike shut down their health band last April ]

Apple or Google/Nest should buy both companies now. Get those teams and step up the fight with Apple.

6. Dave Morin of Path.com in front row? Sold!

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Dave Morin was chilling in the first row of the event two seats from Johnny Ive and — I think — next to Dr Dre. That means one thing and one thing only: Path and the team are going to Apple. You don’t get that first row seat by accident. Path would jump from an exclusive club to jumpstart Apple’s non-existing social presence, which has been well-documented from Color to Ping.  

Apple’s new iMessage, which does what Voxer, Snapchat and others do, is super clever, so why not leverage Path as a better name and interface? Or at the very least a second platform.

No reason that every Apple user couldn’t automatically have a Path account and opt out in the iCloud settings. This would be a master stroke by Tim Cook, who desperately needs a social mind in his brain trust. Dave Morin, Cue, Cook, Dre, Iovine, Schiller and Ive? Boom!

Alright, that’s all I got.

Big day for Apple.

Google & Samsung, what’s up? What you got?!

best @jason

PS - The LAUNCH Scale event is coming up [http://events.launch.co/scale] and we are giving 10% of the tickets to women and minorities so we can help change the ratio in the industry. My team is awesome that way. Apply here for a scholarship: [http://events.launch.co/scalescholarship]

PPS - LAUNCH Festival is March 2-4 in San Francisco: [http://festival.launch.co]

PPPS - This Week in Startups is blazing like a bonfire! Subscribe in iTunes here [http://bit.ly/TwiStA] for Audio and here [http://bit.ly/TwiStV] for Video. And follow us for updates and behind-the-scenes sneak peeks on Twitter & Instagram: @twistartups  

PPPPS - Download the [ Inside.com ] app to get the best curated journalism in real time. https://appsto.re/us/WwA3Q.i

RFP (Request for Prototype): Brutal Real Estate Reviews

I’ve invested in 70 companies.

To do this I have a secret process that involves nine full-time staffers that I’m not going to reveal right now. Perhaps when I hit 250 investments and I’m “done” (as in, 50 years old) I’ll write a book about it.

Here’s a little peek into the process: I generally meet with 10 startups a week during lunch and for coffee. This is absurdly efficient, as I need to eat lunch, I like to drink coffee and I don’t like being alone.

Given that, I wind up investing in 30 of the 500+ companies I meet with per year -- however, those 500 meetings are chosen from a pool of literally 5,000+ possible startups.

My team and my network narrow the 5,000 to 500 and I narrow it to 30. That means 10% of folks my team look at get to meet me in person and ~5% of those get funded.

Or, about 1 in 200 startups my team looks at gets funded.

Wildly efficient, yet I still find that some markets are not being addressed.

[Click to tweet: http://ctt.ec/6puHP]

Given that, I’m going to start a new email feature: “RFP: Request for Prototype.”

The rules are simple: build a prototype based on a business we think should exist in the world and if it’s exceptional -- and you’re exceptional -- we fund it. *

* Exceptional as defined by me.

The Big Market the Crash Killed

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I’m shocked that more folks don’t want to take on one of the biggest markets in the world: real estate.

I hardly ever hear about anyone with an innovative idea these days. I guess the market was so hot, that after the RE bubble burst folks were scared to wade back in.

Zillow, Trulia and RedFin were awesome innovations and since then, well, the well is dry it seems.

However, having just moved this month to San Francisco, I’m in the middle of selling, as well as buying (renting), a home.

It’s brutal.

Los Angeles homes stay on the market for 3-6 months and San Francisco ones for 3-6 hours.

Literally, I called to make an offer on a house in Glen Park -- an up and coming neighborhood that is a full 7% as fancy and delightful as my current home in Brentwood -- an hour after seeing it on the first day it was being shown.

It was sold an hour earlier -- while we were touring the house!

So we tried to put an offer on a house BEFORE it went on the market and they wouldn’t take our money. The offer was all cash and 15% over the asking price (I feel like an absolute idiot for even sharing that).

Anyway, the market is red hot, but that’s not the point.

I can handle a hot market and frankly I don’t see a startup being able to change supply and demand (or maybe I do … but we’ll save that for another email).

My Big Aha! Moment:

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

No one is fighting for the people buying houses. Everyone in the business is driven by one thing and one thing only: closing sales.

If houses get sold, brokers on both sides get paid and the world keeps spinning. Ads flow to listing sites, inspectors get paid, mortgage brokers get commissions and home improvements continue.

No one is incentivized to STOP you from buying a home.

No one is trying to PROTECT the buyer from making a bad decision (I know, brokers are supposed to … but they don’t get paid unless you buy!).

This becomes super apparent when you look at the descriptions of homes.

Everything is “charming” and a “compound” and “gorgeous” in the descriptions, but when you go see them they are “depressing” and “dark” and “small”!

So here’s a super simple idea: reviews that tell you, in brutally honest fashion, if you should move into this house or not.

If it’s a fair price.

If it’s a horrible block, if it has a bad landlord, or if the methadone clinic is hopping at 3pm when your daughter gets home from school!

But How Will it Make Money?!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I honestly never worry about this. If a product solves a small problem for a large number of people, a major problem for a small number of people, or a medium-sized problem for a medium-to-large-sized audience it will make money.

As an angel, job one is just knowing that a product will be loved.

Well, this angel would have LOVED to get an honest review of a house I had looked at. In fact, I would have wanted this 10x in my life, long before I was an angel.

You’ve wanted it too, unless you haven’t moved out of your mom’s house (mom’s gets a great review, hands down).

In cities like New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco these reviews would kill. The nastier and more bitter, the better. I want someone to just crush these shitty homes and bullshit artist realtors trying to sell them.

I want an angry journalist or reviewer to just take these places out, because if there were checks and balances two things would happen:

1. the listings would get cleaned up because people would fear getting ripped to shreds in my new app
2. some listings wouldn’t get cleaned up and we would protect those buyers

A huge win on both fronts.

Who Wants to Build this?
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I tweeted about this last week and got some folks putting up designs, and some of them are a solid start. Most are coming at it from a bells and whistles format, which is kind of a mistake when building a product.

The first thing you want to do is to perfect one simple function. In Uber’s case, that was getting a car to you fast. In Thumbtack.com’s case, it’s getting you a really detailed quote from a high-quality service provider. In the case of Calm.com, it’s getting you to meditate and reduce stress.

Simple.

Here, we simply want to review a home for people.

You hire someone to review homes and let folks comment on those reviews.

If you want to do this business and you build a sick prototype I will invest in it. If you are a writer who wants to start it here in San Francisco but you don’t have technical chops, well, just write me a couple of samples and I’ll try and find you a technical co-founder.

Basically, look at this as an RFP: “request for prototype.”

You build it and if it’s awesome I’ll put in the first $25-100k.

If it is really awesome I will syndicate it to AngelList and get you another $200-500k.

Couple of notes:

1. this is not a contest

2. since this is a not a contest there are no rules

3. if you make something awesome you’re under no obligation to have me fund it -- go ahead and steal this idea

4. if you make something awesome and tweet it and someone else does your idea and I fund them, well, tough luck. Ideas are not important, execution is. If you don’t want to respond to my “RFP” then don’t.

Bottom line: it’s a free-for-all. This is some Lord of the Flies, Battle Royale gauntlet I’m throwing down (the movie The Hunger Games was stolen from).

best @jason

P.S. - The LAUNCH Scale event is coming up [http://events.launch.co/scale] and we are giving 10% of the tickets to women and minorities so we can help change the ratio in the industry. My team is awesome that way. Apply here for a scholarship: [http://events.launch.co/scalescholarship]

P.P.S. - LAUNCH Festival is March 2-4 in San Francisco: [http://festival.launch.co]

P.P.P.S. - This Week in Startups is on fire. Recent fan and statistical favorites include Eric Hippeau, former HuffPo CEO and media mastermind [http://goo.gl/xSiLxs]; Daniel Kim, Lit Motors CEO and inventor of a new class of vehicle that is part car, motorcycle, and spacecraft [http://goo.gl/bCG0WV]; and Kathryn Minshew, CEO of The Muse, who gives job seekers behind-the-scenes access to companies and their cultures, and shares her experiences as a female founder and entrepreneur. [http://goo.gl/l2fc4q] Subscribe in iTunes here [http://bit.ly/TwiStA] for Audio and here [http://bit.ly/TwiStV] for Video.

An update on my angel investing & AngelList Syndicates

Angel investing is a brutally hard job ...

… said no one ever!

[ 1,600 words on the topic below. Click to tweet: http://ctt.ec/_G49d ]

I’m absolutely loving being an angel investor. It’s a blast to meet smart folks with killer ideas who want to change the world -- and then I get to write a check and give one out of every 250 of those ideas a try!

In the past year I’ve invested $1.95m in 30 startups from the LAUNCH Fund (from my $10m angel fund). We are now 19.5% invested in 13.5 months. We’ll invest another $4.05m in the next 24 months for a total of $6M/60% invested, keeping back the last $4m to keep our pro rata in the winners.

I’m told this is a savvy plan by my much, much savvier friends.

You may remember that I wrote a blog post 6 months ago about how excited I was to invest in Swell. [http://goo.gl/wwdEGL] Recently there were some reports in the news about Swell and that technology company we all love soooooo much in Cupertino. [ http://goo.gl/nlyYqE]

A company which, I might add, is performing at an absurdly high-level while evolving their strategy ( <---- shameless suck up).

Anyway, we got a “quick win” for my fund and I’m super happy for the founders of Swell. Great things to come from Apple+Swell combo I’m certain.
 

Syndicate Power
-----------------------
During the past four months we syndicated nine of the LAUNCH Fund’s deals to our AngelList Syndicate for a total of $3.18m invested. In those deals the LAUNCH Fund did a total of $550k, while the Syndicate came in for 4.78 times that amount for $2.63m.

Our average Syndicated deal was $353k, with $61k on average coming from the LAUNCH Fund and $292k come from our Syndicates.

Two out of nine deals are closing as I write this, so that $2.63m will be slightly higher if we continue to be vastly oversubscribed.

The LAUNCH Fund will do three deals a month and ~30 a year. If we syndicate 20 of those deals, we are on pace to put $7.67m a year to work.


This is the revolution and no one in the mainstream press seems to have caught on yet  (despite me telling them: “hey, you might want to look over here … something is brewing.”).

A couple of years ago my level of angel investing would be significant on a number-of-deals basis (two or three per month), but not very important or significant on a dollar basis.

Today?

Well, I’m able to lead a round of funding, set the price with the founder, and perhaps even take a board seat. (In most cases we get the option of a board seat, even though I really don’t have the time to sit on that many boards.)

Bottom line: when I wrote about AngelList 11 months ago, and said a bunch of ‘outlandish’ things [http://goo.gl/N7cDa8]; this was all very speculative. Most folks thought that AngelList wouldn’t be able to attract real fund managers, and that those fund managers wouldn’t be able to get access to A+ deals.

Those questions have been answered, and folks like Gil Penchina (serious angel), and Tim Ferriss (serious thinker, author and personality, and developing into a VERY SERIOUS angel investor), have proven that they can bring real deal flow to the platform.

What AngelList Syndicates has done for me most of all is to make me more helpful to founders. Instead of having to manage another dozen angels, they can just manage a relationship with me. Not only that, they get 99 folks on their team who have a literal, vested interest in their success (the members of the Syndicate).

That’s 100 folks for one mention on your cap table. One hundred affluent and connected folks who might tweet out a job posting, or hopefully refer someone to you. Or intro you to a partner or possible client. Or another investor. It’s a big deal.

Moreover, AngelList has given many ‘civilians’ (folks who don’t typically have access to these types of deals), the ability to put $1,000 to $10,000 into deals they would never even hear about until they were well-funded.

There is no guarantee of success, but this is a huge step in the right direction.
 

99 Limit Throttles Everything
--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The crazy thing about the massive performance to date of syndicates, is that it has all been done even though only 99 people can invest in a syndicate. This is an SEC limit, I believe intended to protect the rich (only accredited investors can participate in this type of deal flow), in some aggregate way.

Brad Feld talks about it here: http://goo.gl/xNqt7Z

I get that the SEC wants to throttle the potential fallout from a deal going belly up, but the entire point of angel investing -- at least the way I do it -- is for 7 out of 10 deals to go belly up! We want deals that are so risky that there’s only a 1-5% chance that the startup will have an absurdly big outcome.

For example, if you invest in 50 quality Silicon Valley startups (real deal flow, not second- or third-tier deal flow) you might have 30-40 return little to nothing. Big zero.

You might have 10-15 return a small amount and have one or two have 50x+ outcomes -- with the lottery ticket chance that you catch a unicorn like Facebook, Uber, Twitter, Airbnb, Dropbox or Box that could return 100-3,000x.

[ Lottery ticket is the key phrase in that paragraph above. Expect one in every three or four lifetimes. ]

In truth, 500 folks investing $1,000 each is safer than 100 folks investing $5,000 each. For me, well, I think people should be able to invest and spend their hard-earned money however they want. I don’t think there should be a category of “accredited investors” vs. “non.” I think that is actually a very class-based system where the rich get richer and the “poor schlubs” (as which I spent 80% of my life being classified) need to be protected from investing in the next Facebook or Twitter.

Poor folk should be allowed to place a $1,000 bet on LinkedIn or Facebook if they think it’s the next big thing -- just like they can place it on a roulette wheel in Vegas.

That being said, the 99 limit should be something like 500 so that we can keep the American economy moving. Rich people are simply NOT investing their money, and getting them to take it out of bonds, second homes, and JetSuite memberships -- and into angel investing -- is critical to our sustained growth as a nation.

Other countries have fewer rules and they will benefit from them. Let’s stop trying to protect the rich from investing their money in startups, and start trying to build more startups -- because startups create jobs. Most of them, in fact.


Should you Angel Invest?
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I get this question a lot. As far as I’m concerned if you keep angel investing down to 1-5% of your net worth, well, you’ve controlled the risk.

If you put that modest percentage to work in 50 deals, that means, in the most aggressive 5% model, each investment is 10 basis points of your net worth. If you were worth $5m in this example, 5% of your net worth would be $250k. In 50 deals that’s $5k per deal. If you did 2.5% of your net worth, it would be $2,500 in 50 deals.

Well, that’s sort of the sweet spot for angel investing through a syndicate on AngelList, or some of the emerging competitors. That list includes MicroVentures, Crowdfounder, FundersClub, and CircleUp, among a growing list of options.

Again, if you are not an “accredited investor” as defined by the government then you’re too simple or too irresponsible, I guess, to invest your own hard-earned money. #sarcasm
 

More to Come
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I’m going to keep updating folks on my education as an angel investor and Syndicate. I’m in a unique station in life, in that I’ve put 25 years into being a journalist and entrepreneur in technology, so I’ve got a heck of a network and a ton of experience.

It’s making angel investing really pleasurable so far, but of course in a market this hot everyone looks like a genius. I’ve been through two brutal, brutal tech corrections in my career and I’m guessing there will be a third some day -- perhaps in the middle of my first fund.

I can’t control that, but I can control the checks I write, and I’m writing them based on big, crazy ideas by passionate people who are executing at a very high level.

If that’s you, well, you know how to find me (and if you watch This Week in Startups, you’ll know what impresses me).

best @jason

P.S. - If you want to join the Syndicate, angel.co/jason
P.P.S. - This Week in Startups is my podcast: www.thisweekinstartups.com
P.P.P.S. - The LAUNCH Festival is March 2-4 at Fort Mason. 12,000 folks will be there, save the date.
P.P.P.P.S. - LAUNCH Scale is an intimate event taking place on October 23-24, more at LAUNCHSCALE.NET & read: Startups are about Scale [http://goo.gl/jhUC16]

Startups are about SCALE

Startups today are about one thing: scale.

As in getting big and doing it fast, like: Uber, Airbnb, Dropbox, Snapchat and a couple dozen others.

In this email I want to accomplish two things:

1. Explain why SCALE is so critical today.
2. Get ideas from you on topics and speakers for the LAUNCH SCALE event I’m hosting.

[ LAUNCH SCALE: Oct 23-24, San Francisco -- http://events.launch.co/scale ]

“But wait Jason,” I can hear one of you tweeting me, “didn’t you say just two years ago that we are living in the ‘age of excellence’ and all that matters is how good the product is?” [The Age of Excellence: /blog/the-age-of-excellence.html ]

That was 27 months ago. Things have changed radically in that time, and what has changed most is that “startup alchemy” has given way to “startup science.” If you look at all the aspects of building your company, it has become productized:

-- We have MailChimp teaching us -- heck, forcing us -- to do email perfectly. Ten years ago we had to spend entire days per month sending emails. Now it’s minutes.

-- Amazon Web Services, Dyn, and Rackspace are letting folks build their infrastructure perfectly and quickly. Years ago it tooks months to get your stack up and running.

-- InVision is letting us build flawless mock-ups, and HipChat is letting us communicate 24/7 across mobile and desktops.

-- Marketing is as easy to implement as buying books from Amazon was ten years ago. Non-technical folks can launch campaigns on Twitter and Facebook’s marketplaces in hours, without ever needing to hire an agency. With AdStage it gets even easier.

-- You can go on Dribbble or Behance and sort and surf through killer designs -- made by people in South America, Asia, and Eastern Europe -- that are indistinguishable from folks in the United States!

-- Finally, the accelerators are filling in a ton of the gaps in building your product.

What’s left if every aspect of a startup is being perfected and productized?

SCALE!

The Questions to Ask Yourself
--------------------------

Given a year or so of capital/time you should be able to build a solid product that some group of users find value in. If you can’t, there are two reasons:

1. You’re probably trying to do something wildly complex or far out there in terms of even being possible (think an electric car, artificial intelligence).

2. You suck and shouldn’t be an entrepreneur.

If your problem is #1, well, then just pivot to the “next best manifestation of your vision based on what you learned.”

If your problem is #2, simply go work for someone brilliant for two to five years and take a LOT OF NOTES.

If you have built a great product, but it’s not growing, ask yourself the following:

I. “How much time and money are we spending in total as a company each month?”
II. “How much of that time and money is going directly toward the growth of this product?”
III. “Is our team aligned around the goal of growth or not?”

In my case, I told our team that we would build Inside.com to the point of having a core group of thousands of daily users who love the app, and if we succeeded then we would focus on growth.

We are in the process of looking at our budgets and time, and literally putting as much behind the SCALE of our product as we can.

There are two primary growth types:

a) Adding new users
b) Getting existing users to use your product more

So we are pursuing both of these with content, social, targeted ads, PR, and most importantly, product design.

It’s HARD to make a news product viral, but we’re trying!

Help Me Help You!
--------------------------------

Now that I’m in the middle of trying to SCALE Inside.com, it’s the perfect time for me to bring 250 of y’all to learn together.

That’s LAUNCH SCALE, and I could use your help with the following:

-- Speakers: We are looking for executives who specialize in growing startups, and have had great success in doing so. Think backwards from high-growth startups (Uber, Airbnb, Box, Dropbox, etc.), as well as from the function areas (PR, viral loops, UX, paid, social, street teams, community, content marketing, etc.).

-- Join us: You can buy a ticket with the 30% FOJ discount code (“friend of Jason”) that is good for the next week.

-- Diversity: All of our events, in addition to my podcast and investing, are working hard to present tremendous diversity on the stage and in the audience. Our team believes that our events and products benefit greatly from lots of different perspectives. With that in mind, please help us find speakers and submit them here: http://events.launch.co/speakerformscale. Also, if you know of anyone who would benefit from a scholarship, we reserve 10% of our seating for folks striving to take it to the next level (like many of us did in web 1.0!).

-- Sponsor: We are doing two types of presentations at LAUNCH SCALE:
1. Startups that have scaled
2. Companies that provide tools that help startups scale. So if you are a company that makes money providing tools for companies to grow, well, you should sponsor the event and show your product/case study. Emailpartners@launch.co

We have the following presentations already lined up:

1. Steve Huffman,  Co-Founder - reddit & Hipmunk
2. Marco Zappacosta, CEO - Thumbtack will explain how thumbtack got 70,000 paying customers without a salesforce, and raised $50M.
3. Andrew Johns, Head of Growth & Revenue -  Wealthfront will talk about how they attracted $1B in assets under management with a tiny marketing budget.
4. Patrick Cheeseman, Head of Customer Experience - HotelTonight will discuss how to use support to drive product innovation.
5. Ryan Mannion, CTO - POLITICO will discuss how to grow from 0 to 100 Million monthly pageviews.
6. Christopher DePatria, VP of Revenue - SignPost will explain how he grew their sales team from 5 to 100 in 2 years, and signed up 93k SMB customers.
7. Aaron Magness, VP of Marketing -  Betabrand will tell us how they use crowd-funded emails to never have unwanted inventory again.
8. Craig Zingerline, Sr. Director of Product - Red Tricycle will tell us how they grew to 750,000 emails without spending a dollar.
9. Arjun Naskar, Growth Manager - Homejoy will discuss how to expand into 31 markets in 2 years.

Any questions, hit reply and ping me AND the team!

best, @jason

Microlocations & the future of retail, events & commerce

GPS changed everything about our lives in the past decade, but an even bigger change is coming in the next decade: micro-location.

We used to have glove compartments filled with maps, we set up elaborate plans to “meet at the fountain at 11:45pm,” not to mention the 15 minute phone calls with cab companies in which we had the pleasure of hearing a salty dog dispatcher scream at a driver over a CB radio.

Delightful stuff that our kids will never understand as they blindly follow Waze’s audio instructions while driving, never once questioning them as they’re told to take 4th Avenue instead of the BQE. They simply “Glympse” each other at Disneyland before UberXing themselves home on their parents’ account--with dad hovering over the driver’s speed while playing poker.

New sensor technology called “beacons” is going to track us all down to the--wait for it--inch. You’re not going to meet “over by the Small World ride” at Disney, you’re going to meet 17 feet from the back of the line.

We’re not going to go to the bar and ordering a drink, we’re going to order another round of greasy grilled cheeses while walking from the pool table to a booth at Antonio’s Nut House, with a waiter trailing behind us -- never needing to ask “Did you move tables?”

None of us know the exact impact of micro-location, but my four-person research team (it’s good to be me!), studied the local space for the past four months and they narrowed down over 400 players to the 70 most
important.

After reviewing those 70 with them, I personally narrowed it down the 30 most important. I met with all of those for an hour each and I can tell you my mind is completely frackin’ blown by the impact of local.

And I’m going to invest a couple of million bucks in this space in the next year. I’m not exaggerating. Why? Because some of my best investments to date are in the local space: Uber, Thumbtack, MyTime, StyleSeat, Boxbee and SignPost are all crushing it for me. In fact, the returns on that “cohort” -- even excluding the super-unicorn-pegasus of Uber--are 10 to 50x already.

Instead of hoarding my research and deal flow, I do something no other angel does: I host an event and let everyone out there come meet the companies I’m *considering* investing in and that I think will change the world.

Why?

1. I’m not in competition with other investors. Startups love to have me along for the journey and I invest for the journey, not the destination. Sure, some VCs have sharp elbows, but after 70 deals, I’ve only had one situation where another investor screwed me. They f@¢ked me badly, but reputation is a long game and I’m not sweating it.

2. Angel investing is a collaborative sport. I need two or three folks to join me on every deal in the first year or two of the startup to support the founder.

Here are some of the folks I’ve been hanging out with, and who will be coming to LAUNCH Beacon on June 16th in New York City.

[ You can buy a ticket here: launchbeacon.co and use JCAL10 to get 10% off ]

Kenny Lauer runs digital for the Golden State Warriors, which is one of the most exciting arenas in sports. He’s working with Aaron Mittman of Sonic Notify to do insane, down-to-the-seat-level promotions, like upgrading your seat, getting discounts for food and player info.

Micro-location in sporting events and concerts will be extraordinary in the coming years. Imagine you’re on the Knicks side of the arena and your tablet shows you close-ups of only the Miami Heat side. Imagine we all get alerts on our smartphones of what play the Giants should call, we vote and the coach calls that play... I know, that would never happen... (except in a pre-season game perhaps!). Can you imagine how many people would go to a preseason game where we got to call the last play of each quarter?

Sold. Out.

Nathan Pettyjohn is the founder of Aisle411, and they are doing “shopper navigation,” so that you can search for “white dress shirts,” and see seven different ones on a map at some big retailer--then browse through them for inventory, sizes and prices before dragging yourself to the third floor back row to only find out that they don’t have your size (or that they want $425 for a crisp white shirt).

Ryan Caldbeck is the founder of CircleUp, which one of my portfolio companies, SmartyPants Vitamins, used to raise a $2M+ round of funding. It’s AngelList but for consumer packaged goods ONLY. They get 100+ deals put into their system a month. They narrow it down to the two or three that they then circulate among the world’s best CPG investors. It’s awesome.

Perch Interactive makes interactive tables and shelves. Imagine coming into the Nike or Apple store, and when you pick up a product a video plays... on the shelf (from a projector). And you can simply click on the table to see price, order and be on your way. This technology and platform will turn shelves into sales associates and keep us from having to look up additional information on our smart phones.

We are not limiting ourselves at LAUNCH Beacon to technology companies, we’re also inviting folks like Ryan Craver, who runs strategy for Hudson's Bay | Lord & Taylor, so we will get to hear from the people selecting these technologies what they really think will drive sales and pull people into stores.

A clever founder named Phillip Bückendorf will share Downtown, an absurdly slick ordering system for restaurants.

Andrew Farah from Density, which launched at the LAUNCH Festival earlier this year, will share his 2.0. It’s a big, big vision that I’m super excited about. In a way, it’s FourSquare turned on it’s head.

Ashley Etling is a dynamic founder from Red Clay, which has reinvented the process of creating new products through a contest format that huge brands are embracing. I’ve really fallen in love with this startup and the two founders. They are going to change the world, I’m certain of it.
 
Stuart Wall was one of my first angel investments, and after a couple of pivots he’s built the most powerful SMB marketing platform in the world: Signpost. It’s amazing, and he’s one of the great founders who have pushed me to back “great people” even when their 1st idea isn’t perfect (smart folks figure it out).

Sam Rosen is a Brooklyn-born founder of MakeSpace, which is doing on-demand storage. Very similar to Boxbee (which launched and won LAUNCH Festival in 2013). He just raised a huge round of venture and is doing great things.

There’s a bunch more, but this post is already way too long. Thanks to my partners on this awesome event, Pivotal Labs.

Grab a ticket here: https://launch.ticketleap.com/launch-beacon/dates
More speakers & attendees: http://launchbeacon.co

all the best, @jason

ps - I wrote a short note to my AngelList Syndicates here
https://medium.com/@jason/private-email-to-my-angel-list-syndicates-dffd624d8539

pps - Amazing episode of This Week in Startups with Science Inc team, Peter Pham and Mike Jones http://youtu.be/icxooH3yjM0

ppps - Inside.com is launching our Android version! Sign up for the beta here: http://goo.gl/miPa8O