LAUNCH Festival 2014: And the winners are...

It’s been a whirlwind three days. Over 9,000 people registered for the 2014 LAUNCH Festival, dozens of companies pitched their products in the Demo Pit, speakers went deep on their strategies at the Startup Stage. We saw 3D printed heart tissue on stage. LAUNCH Founder Jason Calacanis danced to Gangnam Style for a product demo. A pocket drone buzzed the audience (no one was harmed, thankfully). And 40 companies launched on stage. 

We’re so proud of everyone who participated in our competition and Hackathon, and thankful to our keynote speakers: Travis Kalanick of Uber, Paul Graham of Y Combinator, Yves Béhar of fuseproject, and Mark Cuban.

Everything you need to know to catch up on LAUNCH Festival 2014 is here.

• List of all 40 Presenting Companies

• Watch all the videos

• Check out all the photos

• Press coverage

• Audio interviews of Mark Cuban, Paul Graham, Kanishk Parashar and more!

 Something we need to add? Email team@launch.co

LAUNCH Festival 2014 Winners

Hackathon Winners ($33k prize, each):

• Vue | @getVUE

• Blush | @blushmessenger

• Ripple | @tryripple

Best Overall ($200k investment prize)
Connect | @connectsanfran

Additional winners ($25k investment prize, each)

• Best 2.0 - Credible | @crediblelabs

• Best Alpha - The Pocket Drone | @airdroids

• Best Design - Dattch | @dattchapp

• Best Consumer Hardware - Drop | @AdapticsHQ

• Best Enterprise Hardware - Density | @roundedco

• Technical Achievement - CSTM | @cstmglobal

• Best Benefit Corporation - HandUp | @handup

• Best Enterprise - Knox | @knoxpayments

Ice House #DreamApp contest winners ($50k investment prize)

• AdStage | @getadstage

• Flyr | @flyrapp

Barracuda Hackathon Investment Grand Prize ($25k)

• Blush | @blushmessenger

Did we miss you on this list? Email team@launch.co.

** All investment prizes are still pending due diligence.

Five rules I learned from 7 years of coaching Launch Festival & TechCrunch50

I’ve been coaching companies like Yammer, Dropbox, SpaceMonkey, Brilliant.org and Mint for the past seven years for the LAUNCH Festival and previously TechCrunch50 (RIP!). 

 
Over 350 startups have been on the stage, including the 40 who will join us on Feb 24-26th at this year’s LAUNCH Festival. Our event has grown from 400 folks packed into the Palace hotel to 9,000+ at the Design Center Concourse.

 
9,000 people, wow. Might even hit 10,000!  

 
In this time I’ve defined five things about what makes for a great presentation at a conference:
=====================
1. Start showing the product within 15 seconds
2. “Show don’t tell”
3. Examples matter
4. Synchronicity
5. “Wow!” moments

 
I’ll get into those five in detail below. 

Note: you can still join us for the Festival here: http://festival.launch.co -- as well as the four intimate 100-person dinners we host.

1. Show product in 15 seconds
===========================
The strongest product demos start with strong products. If you have the next Uber, Dropbox, Path, Secret, Angry Birds or Yammer, show it to us. Don’t make us wait. In product pitches you have two types of folks: those with gorgeous, high-quality products and those with, well, “not.” 

The longer you take to show your product the more we believe you are a talker, not a walker. When you describe the market size, your degree and how much your competitors suck, we become certain that you will not show us the goods. 

2. Show don’t tell: do not talk about what your product does--show us!
===========================
Every founder I’ve worked with has started by saying something like “Dropbox allows you to share files between two computers as easily as dragging or dropping them. Installation takes only a minute, and you get 5 gigs free when you sign up.”

This is not as strong as showing us these three facts by presenting: 

“My partner John is on the Dropbox website.” 
“My partner John puts in his name, email and selects a password.”
“John clicks on ‘Install the Dropbox client’ and sees the Dropbox icon in his tray.”
“He double clicks it, and drags his Hawaii family photos into it, and it tells him he is using 500 megs of his 5 gig free limit.” 
“John now opens his laptop and logins into Dropbox and sees his files are syncing.”
“Now let me open my iPhone and you see these same photos in the Dropbox app.”
“Now John right clicks on the photo and says share and enters his mom’s email address.” 
“Here is mom’s AOL email account, where she gets prompted to click on the link.”
“She sees the photos and is prompted to add this to her Dropbox account--and we have viral growth.” 

That’s a world-class demo right there. Coming out and explaining “Dropbox is cloud storage so simple your mom can use it, it has five gigs free, works on iPhone and sharing is as easy as a click of a button” is not as powerful.

Why? 

Because screens want to move--and people want to see them move. 


3. Examples matter
===========================
Ask yourself, “Have I selected the most memorable and demonstrative examples of your product at work?” Here is an example:

“With Uber you can order a car on your phone.” 

“John is a 39-year old enterprise-software sales executive for IBM who visits San Diego, San Francisco, Arizona and Los Angeles at least twice a month each. He typically has to wait in cab lines for 20 minutes in each city, or spend three times as much money on a black car.

“Now, once his plane lands we see him open Uber and order a car. He is moving his pin to the departures level because there is less madness there. He sees the car is seven minutes away and now he clicks text and sends a message that he is wearing a blue suit and will be at departures--not arrivals. He saved $50 and 20 minutes already.” 

Between those two stories you’re going to remember much more about the second one, and you’re going to be able to empathize with a road warrior like John. 

Make a list of the top ten “user stories” you can think of-- the more illustrative the better. That is, the more you think the audience will visualize and connect with this story, the better. Tell those ten stories to people on your team and see which ones they like and remember the most from. 

The more humor, drama and details the better. We remember things with a lot of details MORE than we remember things with fewer details. 


4. Synchronicity
===========================
Every year, someone wants to have one founder do the first minute of a presentation, then switch to the second for two minutes and back and forth. It’s wildly confusing and distracting for the audience. 

It’s a huge no-no as far as signaling goes. It shows that even in a five minute presentation the two founders can’t divide the labor--or worse, maybe there is an ego conflict! 

So, always have the best speaker speak and the best driver drive. If you’re both amazing, world-class speakers then switch on and off at each event you demo your product at. 

[ Note: in a 15 or 20 minute presentation, switching is not only fine, it’s advisable. As you can spend one minute setting up the second speaker, and it shows you have some depth. A 3rd or 4th speaker in a 15-20 minute VC pitch doesn’t help in my mind. Save them for Q&A. ] 

5. “Wow!” moments
===========================
What are the two or three moments that judges and the audience will say “wow!” when viewing your demo? Ask yourself that, and test it. 

Easy test: demo to 10 folks and have someone in the room covertly watch them. At what points do they check their phones, smile or nod in approval? Write them down and study them. If you don’t have a “wow” moment, you’re not going to win a demo competition in all likelihood. Folks like a “wow” in their startup. 

Here’s an easy way to manufacture a wow or two if you don’t have one: 

a) imagine what your product will look like in five years if successful.
b) imagine what your product would look like if a major technological or behavioral breakthrough occurs.

In test (a) if we were talking about Uber four years ago, the look might be a map of 1,000 taxis in each of 70 cities in real time, with the a graph of average wait time running from 20 minutes down to two. 

In test (b) let’s imagine you were demoing Vine this year. You showed a mock up of the iWatch and had it send short videos by shaking your wrist, a countdown timer starting (3, 2 and 1) and a six second video was taken as you waved your opposite hand palm up and down to stop and start the video (assuming the iWatch let you use the gesture of the second hand). 

That would be wildly memorable and give a huge wow. I post a Vine in under 10 seconds without ever touching a screen or key! 

In other words, play out your future if everything and more goes according to plan. 

What if there was a Tesla Supercharger every 100 miles in the USA? How about every two miles? 

Here are some additional best practices that are smaller but can be important: 

Use a Mac & Chrome Browser if you can. They tend to work best with projectors. 
If using a Mac desktop: hide the dock (system preferences), turn off your screen saver, turn off alerts/iMessage
Browser: remove your bookmark bar (shift-command-B) and enter presentation mode (shift-command-F in Chrome)
Have a canned demo prepared in case you have no internet connectivity.
No switching presenters during the pitch.
Technical issues: In case you have a technical issue, have a “let me tell you about our market / team / inspiration” anecdote ready. When the technical issue starts, say “While Jason restarts the presentation, let me tell you how we came up with the idea for Inside.com.” Hopefully you don’t have to use this, but it’s good to have one in the chamber if shit hits the fan. 
Answer questions quickly and concisely so you can get another question in from the judges. If someone asks how you make money, say “advertising.” If they ask you to expand on that, you can say “native advertising like Twitter or Instagram.” Short answers project confidence. If you don’t know the answer to the question simply say, “That’s a good question Robert, we don’t have an answer for that yet, but we’re going to try and figure that out during our beta by studying the data.” Again, short answers are the best answers.

Hope these are helpful to everyone, and I look forward to seeing you at the event. Some notes on the program below. 

--> New angels speaking: Naval Ravikant, Matt Ocko & Gil Penchina

--> Join the Hackathon on Feb 21-23rd: http://hackathon.launch.co
--> Register for the Festival: http://festival.launch.co 

--> Live stream: http://launch.co/live
--> Live audio: http://launch.co/liveaudio 

--> Huge thanks to our new partners making it happen:
 * AnchorFree (http://anchorfree.com)
 * AngelHack (http://angelhack.com)
 * Barracuda (http://barracuda.com)
 * Chargify (http://chargify.com)
 * Cisco (http://cisco.com)
 * Continuuity (http://continuuity.com)
 * Ebay (http://ebay.com)
 * Elevate Ventures (http://elevateventures.com)
 * Esri (http://esri.com)
 * Freestyle VC (http://freetsyle.vc)
 * Gunderson Dettmer (http://gunder.com)
 * Macy’s (http://macys.com)
 * Maven Ventures (http://mavenventures.com)
 * Paypal Developer (http://developer.paypal.com)
 * Rackspace (http://rackspace.com)
 * Salesforce AppExchange (https://appexchange.salesforce.com/)
 * Venture51 (http://venture51.com)
 * Verizon Ventures (http://verizon.com/ventures)

best,
@jason 

LAUNCH Festival Build Your Dream App Competition

We’ve partnered with Ice House, a mobile app development firm, during the 2014 LAUNCH Festival to give you an opportunity to build your dream app. 

Have you had a killer idea for a mobile app? Do you have an existing project that absolutely needs a mobile app?

Answer a few easy questions by 8am, February 26 and you’ll be entered to win $50k of investment to build your dream app! 

The winner will be announced on stage at the end of the final day of the LAUNCH Festival.

Bonus: after the app is built, the winner will come on LAUNCH Founder Jason Calacanis’s podcast, This Week in Startups, to talk about it. 

Read the guidelines & enter to win here: http://launch.icehousecorp.com/.

Google Wins Everything Part Two: How to be a Partner

Susan Wojcicki took over YouTube, Wednesday, from my pal Salar Kamangar.

Salar did an amazing job growing YouTube and everyone is thankful for his efforts; he’s a class act who quietly built the product into the most important asset at Google.

Literally, the most important thing at Google--the land of important things.

Heck, that is coming from me, a person who walked away from YouTube funding and massive growth in viewership because it was clear that there is no room given the current split (55/45) for anyone but Google to make a living. More on that in a bit.

In this piece I want to talk about three things:

1. Why YouTube is the most important product at Google--by far

2. Why Google is blowing it

3. A simple solution for Susan to fix the problem

[ The New York Times actually caught up to my “Ain’t gonna work on YouTube’s farm no more” piece (http://goo.gl/em2VfN) eight months later (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/business/chasing-their-star-on-youtube.html). NYT is on it! :-p ]

1. Why YouTube is the most important product at Google
---------------------------

YouTube is the most important asset in Google’s collection of brands and services. It has 1b+ users a month.

Over the coming years, the number of people using the service will be 110%+ of the people who have internet connections.

Wait, what?!? How?

Yes, more people will use YouTube then use the Internet itself.

Two reasons:

a. people taking their mobile devices out and saying “watch this video!” to people who don’t have the Internet (aka a smartphone) yet.

b. people with smart televisions will increasingly hit the “YouTube” button on their remote controls--and every TV will have YouTube on their remote in 10 years--pulling the rest of the world in.

YouTube is a more valuable asset than Facebook and Twitter--combined!

Humans love watching video and advertisers covet video ads most.

YouTube revenue will eclipse Google search revenue in the next 10 years. I’m certain.

Given that Google paid $1.7b for YouTube, and it would be worth at least $100b if it was public today, YouTube was the M&A deal of the century.

Google paid for a pony and got a unicorn--with Pegasus wings!

[Click to tweet this editorial -- can edit before sending: http://ctt.ec/a9B56]

2. Why Google is blowing it
------------------------------------

YouTube has unfortunately inherited Google’s odd--some say passive-aggressive or controlling--”we don't have partners!” position.

By treating everyone the same, Google shuts down any negotiation on price or features. It’s take-it-or-leave-it, and with Google’s search and video monopolies--and they are monopolies--it’s hit the bricks for a few and bite your lip for the rest.

Matt Cutts, Google’s long term public face, was fairly clear saying "Google doesn't have partners," recently at an event we both spoke at.

Ouch!

He actually believes this, and he is the most visible person at Google--1,000x more visible than Larry or Sergey (by design).

For 15 years, however, I had the advertising side of the business--Susan’s side--telling my companies what great partners we were!

How valued we were as a partner, how they wanted to deepen the relationship with Engadget/WeblogsInc/Mahalo/Inside/etc.

Heck, even after the Panda update destroyed all of our traffic at my last company, Mahalo, the ad side of the business was calling me saying “why aren’t you publishing more pages to Google’s search index?” and “how can we help you, we value you as a partner!”

Uhh… we stopped publishing because you destroyed our company!

Then YouTube backed Mahalo with seven figures to make content, and they offered us, and others, use of their studio space as *partners*. They host partner conferences constantly, which we have all attended.

But when it came to discussing the revenue split or getting help to make the business sustainable, you are faced with the “Google Death Glare.”

It’s a blank stare Google executives give you when you express a concern, as if you’re talking to someone who doesn’t speak one word of your language.

Anyone who has Google as a partner knows this stare.

It’s just weird, and very Silicon Valley--in the worst way.

Google only sees you as a partner when they need you to run their ads or they need your content to draw in advertisers. When you need help, Google says “we don’t have partners!”

That’s why folks are so frustrated with Google, and I see that tipping over into hate more and more often. The people I meet who run Machinima, Maker and other major YouTube partners exhibit outright hate for YouTube.

That’s bad news for Google.

In fact, it’s fairly clear to this executive, who has been working with Google since Day One, that Google thinks of content creators--artists--as this necessary evil to put their ads next to.

They don’t really respect us since they won everything. If they did, they would listen to our needs and think about making their platform sustainable.

They don’t listen any more really (that is, unless you need help implementing their advertising technology).

Have a question on how to optimize your ads? They’re all ears!

Have a question about the revenue split, making your business sustainable or why you were replaced in search results by their service (see Yelp v. Zagat)? Google Death Glare!

This gives people, inevitably, the message that Google doesn’t care about them, and it builds massive resentment.

That resentment is coming from protesters in the streets (directed at Google buses) and at conferences at $600-a-night hotels packed with media executives.

Resentment of Google has never been higher, which is what happens when #googlewinseverything.

But it could be easily reversed!

3. How Susan can solve the problem

----------------------------------------

Susan: why not create an objective system where not everyone is treated the same. Where you are more loyal to the folks who are most loyal to you?

This was my suggestion to Salar on how to keep YouTube from becoming the most loved/loathed platform in the world--which it now is.

Here is a simple example of how to implement it: create four levels of YouTube publishers.

Level one: Everyone! (i.e. you upload a cat video 1x in your life)

- 50 / 50 revenue split
- standard YouTube feature set

Level two: prosumers with < 100k subscribers

-- 60 / 40 revenue split
-- standard YouTube feature set

Level three: professionals 100-500k subscribers who publish regularly

-- 70 / 30 revenue split
-- ability to collect email addresses from consumers
-- advances of up to six months of revenue to fund production

Level four: elite publishers 500k+ subscribers who publish regularly

-- 80 / 20 revenue split
-- ability to collect email addresses from consumers
-- ability to control 25% of their channel page (as long as they don’t break it)
-- advances of up to one year of revenue to fund production

If YouTube had given me this deal, I would not have launched Inside.com and would not have shut down Mahalo’s video operation.

In fact, I had $15m in venture capital ready to go if Google gave us the features I describe above.

Instead, they gave me the Google Death Glare, as if the idea that they might actually give me or Ellen or Maker or Machinima or iJustine a different deal based on merit would rip a hole in the universe.

I wish Susan and Google the best.

I hope, at some point, Google will look back at what got them to this point: their hard work and their partners.

No one wins alone; we all get there together in life.

Winning everything is awesome, but when it is at the expense of the partners who got you there it becomes a real, real shallow victory.

There is no reason everyone can’t win at YouTube and with Google.

Google doesn’t have to win everything, they can give their “partners” a taste.

[[ SPECIAL: A legend who worked actively with YouTube, but doesn’t want to damage the relationship, comments on my article below! ]]

best @jason

PS -- LAUNCH Hackathon filling up, get in there! http://hackathon.launch.co  Feb 21-23rd. I’m investing $100k in the winners!

PPS -- Had an awesome This Week in Startups interview with Stewart Alsop: http://thisweekinstartups.com/stewart-alsop-history-of-tech  

PPPS -- Inside.com has three openings for folks who love the news business: Android, iOS and design. Work from anywhere, change the world: http://jobs.inside.com   

PPPPS -- LAUNCH Festival is happening Feb 24-26 in San Francisco (http://festival.launch.co).

Tickets here: http://events.launch.co/festival/#tickets. Want to reach 10k entrepreneurs/startups? partners@launch.co. Thanks to these partners for making the event happen: BitPay (http://bitpay.com), Capital One Labs (https://capitalonelabs.com/), Carvoyant (http://carvoyant.com), Cater2.me (http://cater2.me), CoTap (http://cotap.com), Draper University (http://draperuniversity.com), Pivotal Labs (http://pivotallabs.com), Samsung (http://samsungaccelerator.com/).

From someone deep in the YouTube community for seven years:

================================

“I’d say this reflects a lot of the sentiment out there among YouTubers fairly accurately, though they lack your ability to actually get away and change up their businesses approach to community. If you are Toby Turner or SeaNanners, you really don’t have the option to pivot or pick up and move your content elsewhere -- your army of loyal 12-year-olds are on YouTube, and that’s where they want to see your stuff. Which is why Google thinks it can get away with this stuff -- what are you going to do, post on DailyMotion? You do speak a bit about this -- the notion of YouTube as a video monopoly -- but it’s really on people’s minds a lot these days, particularly as companies like Maker, FullScreen and Machinima have started toying with the idea of breaking off their own domains and video players.

“Some major issues that are also of concern to the creator community that you could also touch on, in this or a future piece:

- Google+ Integration: Essentially, YT content creators are community managers with no control at all over their community and no tools to work with, and the way everyone was forced to switch over to Google+ was just highlighting this larger issue

- Non-Existent Customer Support: Having problems uploading a particular video? Videos not syncing with Facebook properly? You’ve swapped out a thumbnail but it isn’t updating? It’s EXTREMELY hard to get any help with that from Google themselves, and a lot of people’s upload schedules are extremely time sensitive. For the amount of ad revenue creators are sharing with Google, shouldn’t they at least be guaranteed the platform itself will work smoothly?

- No Prep or Consultation Before Sweeping Rule Changes: No one who makes video game-related YouTube content was unaffected by the sudden, massive changes to how “copywritten” game content was being treated. Creators whose livelihoods depend on their deep back catalog of “Let’s Play” videos suddenly saw their content vanish, and others were left confused about what exactly was and was not permissible moving forward.

- Inconsistent Community Outreach: Sometimes it feels like Google is everyone’s best friend and just wants to help their creators blow up and find an audience. But Google also sends a lot of mixed messages. I had one creator who makes almost exclusively comedy videos tell me that he was always being invited to “Comedy Nights” at the YouTube Space, only to find out he was invited to be in the audience while more mainstream celebrities actually performed comedy. Which is insulting -- why won’t Google embrace its own community, the ones who made their streaming site the leader in online entertainment? Look also to events like the YouTube Music Awards, which ignored almost all of the extremely talented musicians who are personally active on YouTube in favor of honoring celebrities who couldn’t be bothered to show up, like Eminem and Taylor Swift.”

Building the world's greatest news product

For the past year I’ve been working with my team to conceive of what would be the best news product in the world. It’s a huge mission and with the launch of Inside we take the first step. 

We decided that the best news product in the world today would have the following characteristics:

1. It would be mobile — specifically for smartphones
2. It would be real-time
3. It would be fact-filled 
4. It would connect folks to the world’s best journalism
5. It would respect the reader’s time 

When we researched the space we found a ton of great journalism in the world, but it was being drowned out by a lot of “other” stuff. Mainly link-baiting, reblogging and generally low-quality content. 

Readers need help navigating this new world filled with social media, blogging and stories breaking in real time — be it on Reddit, Twitter or blogs. 

Inside is an app that’s available today on your iPhone, Blackberry and mobile web browser. An Android version will be coming soon. 

[ Click here to tweet this editorial. You can modify before sending: http://ctt.ec/5fizZ ]

Here’s how it works:

1,000 Updates a Day
Every day a team of curators find the 1,000 most important and fascinating stories in the world and the journalists who did the best job telling those stories. They write a 300-character “update” on the story and link directly to the source. These updates have a short “embedded headline,” generally contain 10 facts and are categorized in up to three topics. 

What they don’t contain is fluff, bias or deceptive headlines. 

They are designed, like our entire product, to save you time. 

Your Personalized Feed 
You can vote any update up or down, which will customize your “My Feed.” The /myfeed is where you get the stories you care most about. There are two other feeds in the app: /allupdates(where you can see all updates to the system in real-time) and /topnews (where you can see the 25 stories of the day as selected by our curators). 

We’re sort of like Pandora for news. 

Swiping The Deck
We decided to use the metaphor of a feed for our app with one very important difference: the hidden deck of cards. When you’re on an update about the /stateoftheunion or the/grammys, you can use your thumb to slide the update to the left (grab the image!) and reveal the previous update in that topic. 

With over 20,000 updates a month you’ll be able scroll and slide the deck to your heart’s delight without ever using anything other than your thumb.

[ Note: We are not responsible for any thumb fatigue or injury you may incur. ] 

In Summary
We’re not sure exactly where this journey will lead, but we know that news is critically important to our society and we want to showcase the amazing journalism occurring today by doing the best curation in the world. 

We take our responsibility for selecting stories and sources extremely seriously, and we hope you challenge us and let us know how we are doing often. You can post your comment under any update or email the team@inside.com any time with your thoughts. 

all the best, @jason, @GabrielSnyder & the Inside team 

@inside || iTunes App Store || Join Inside mailing list ||Blackberry || Mobile Web
 

Paul Graham fireside at LAUNCH Festival + our judges!

Really excited to announce that Y Combinator founder Paul Graham will be joining me for a fireside chat at the LAUNCH Festival this year. Paul has been one of the greatest supporters of founders and startups in the past decade, with over 500 startups coming out of YC in the past 8+ years. You’ve heard of a couple of them, including Dropbox (which launched in the first year of our event) and Airbnb.

He’s also a great blogger and thinker, and I’ve been waiting seven years to interview him. It’s going to be an awesome discussion.

The LAUNCH Festival runs Feb. 24-26th, with the LAUNCH Hackathon occurring Feb. 21-23 (http://hackathon.launch.co/). The festival takes place at the San Francisco Design Center Concourse.

Over 6,000 folks have registered for the event, and we’re going to close registration at 8,000. You can register today for $49, $495, $1,000 or $5,000 depending on what dinners/events you want to attend (we try to make it available to all levels, from broke founders to flush VCs!):

http://festival.launch.co

We’re thrilled to announce our seven latest judges for the event:

 * Katie Rae, Techstars Boston
 * Dana Settle, Greycroft Partners
 * Kara Swisher, Re/Code
 * Gina Bianchini, Mightybell
 * Sarah Lacy, PandoDaily
 * Aileen Lee, Cowboy Ventures
 * Tina Sharkey, Sherpa Foundry

Finally, we have a second stage this year called the “Startup Stage” where more established companies will do deep dives into their performance and strategy. This stage is based on the demand that investors had to see more mature companies, and from founders who had goals of showcasing their performance to the press – recruiting new team members and updating investors. If you want to do a deep dive into your company you can find out more here: http://events.launch.co/startup-stage/

Special thanks to our new partners that make this event happen:
 * Fertl (http://www.fer.tl/)
 * Ice House (http://icehousecorp.com)
 * North Bridge (http://northbridge.com)
 * Pearson (http://pearson.com)
 * Swell (http://swell.am)
 * Twitter (http://twitter.com)

Mark Cuban to keynote LAUNCH Festival 2014

I’m super excited that Mark Cuban will be sitting down with me for a fireside chat at this year’s LAUNCH Festival.

Entrepreneur, blogger, angel investor, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, the best part of ABC’s Shark Tank – there are a ton of different ways to describe Mark – but our conversations are always great fun and brutally honest. And he always has interesting insights into things.

We’re going to have 8,000+ participants in this year’s Festival, making it the world’s largest startup conference, Feb 24-26 in San Francisco: http://festival.launch.co

If you missed my “gift to the industry”, there’s still time to claim your complimentary pass. However, I expect we’ll be sold-out by next week, so please register now:

UPDATE: "Gift to the industry" tickets are sold out!

Passes can still be purchased here: http://launch.ticketleap.com/launch-festival-2014/dates
Details: http://festival.launch.co

Some other highlights below, I really hope you can make it!

best, @jason

=====

More from LAUNCH Festival:  

Fireside Demos with the founders of some awesome products

• Kanishk Parashar, Coin - the incredibly viral “one credit card to rule them all"
• Rob Rhinehart, Soylent - the meal replacement sludge of the future
• Paul Eremenko, Project Ara -  former DARPA, now modular phones at Motorol
• Christian Sanz, Skycatch - they code drones!
• Chris Anderson, 3D Robotics - they make personal drones, you can buy
• Simon Tian, Neptune - they are reinventing the smart watch with Pine
• Stephane Marceau, OMSignal - bio-sensing clothin
• Thejo Kote, Automatic - FitBit for your ca
• Stuart Williams, Cardiovascular Innovation Institute - 3D printed heart!
• Stacy Stephens, Knightscope - robots that patrol your neighborhood & schools

Startup Stage - Brand new stage!

On the Startup Stage, companies will give 20-minute presentations that go in-depth on their products, strategies, staffing, fundraising, and the markets they are pursuing. These are the deep dives that investors typically ask for, where founders will have the opportunity to show their products, detail the markets they're operating within, share their fundraising history and plans, profile their executive team, and explain what positions they have open.

Presenters include:

• Glenn Martin, Martin Jetpack - It’s a jetpack!
• Kishan Shah, Downsize Fitness - plus-size gyms sweeping the nation!
• Edouard de La Jonquière, Mention - powerful social notifications
• Kristoph Matthews, Boxbee - simple urban storage *LAUNCH 2013 Winner*

Verticals to include: Enterprise, Sales & CRM, Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency, Hardware, Robotics & Drones, Education, Mobile Gaming, On-Demand, Social, Wearable Tech, Health & Fitness, Food & Drink, the Maker Space & DIY, Internet of Things, Parenting & Families, Smart Homes, Art & Design, 3D Printing, Travel, and Green Transportation.

Have a topic or company to suggest? Email team@launch.co

Grand Jury

These folks watch every demo and help us pick the best of the best startups. One or two more additions coming (yes, we have a ton of invites out to women as well – we value diversity and always have it).

• Mark Pesce - Moore's Cloud
• Steve Chen - The Bradley Group
• Brian Alvey - Ceros
• Don Dodge - Google
• Jonathon Triest - Ludlow Ventures<

Special thanks to our new partners that make this event happen:

• DYN (http://dyn.com)
• Amazon Web Services (http://aws.amazon.com)
• Bizzabo (http://bizzabo.com)
• Heroku (http://heroku.com)
• Tagged (http://tagged.com)
• 845a (http://845a.com)

Also, a quick thank you to our media partners, helping us get out the word: Women Who Code (http://www.meetup.com/Women-Who-Code-SF/), CoFounders Lab (http://www.cofounderslab.com/), Beta Li.st (http://betali.st/), Founder Dating (http://founderdating.com), and many others: http://events.launch.co/festival/#partners

There’s still time to reach the 8,000+ entrepreneurs/developers/startups that are going to be there. Email: partners@launch.co.

Techbrats Goldberg, Shih and Gopman Do Not Represent Technology

Image credit: PandoDaily.

In 20 or 30 years, what will we look back on and say “That was the issue of our time?"

I ask hyper-intelligent people this question from time to time, and the answers are frequently similar: environment, equality, employment and wage disparity are common.

I believe employment and wage disparity are the critical issues of our time.

Nowhere can this be seen more clearly and glaringly than in San Francisco. Rents in the city have skyrocketed and social unrest between the haves and have-nots has reached a boiling point. (Most recently, we saw protesters throwing a rock through the window of one of Google’s luxurious private buses.)

It’s hard for people not to hate technologists when faced with the absolute loathsomeness of three now-infamous industry executives: Peter Shih, Greg Gopman and Bryan Goldberg.

In three separate blog posts over the past year, these spoiled techbrats have shown the absolute worst qualities of the elite: a lack of empathy and class, combined with horrible entitlement -- and the absolute inability to write.

Peter Shih, a startup founder, wrote that San Francisco is a city with a “pathetic excuse for a public transportation system,” where 'I pay 80% of my salary to live down the street from crackheads and meth addicts" and which is home to “some of the craziest homeless people I have ever seen in my life” (his solution: “just hand them a handle of vodka and a pack of cigarettes, it'll save everyone some trouble.”)

Link: http://goo.gl/nT5yJC

His bile was followed by Gopman’s post which claimed:

“The difference [between SF and elsewhere] is in other cosmopolitan cities, the lower part of society keep to themselves. They sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and generally stay out of your way. They realize it's a privilege to be in the civilized part of town and view themselves as guests. And that's okay…

You can preach compassion, equality, and be the biggest lover in the world, but there is an area of town for degenerates and an area of town for the working class. There is nothing positive gained from having them so close to us. It's a burden and a liability having them so close to us. Believe me, if they added the smallest iota of value I'd consider thinking different…”

Link: http://goo.gl/kEHAcj

Not to be outdone, millionaire Goldberg -- the most successful of all these executives, having sold the widely-regarded-as-spam site Bleacher Report -- did a ‘satirical piece’ that showed a complete lack of awareness, intelligence or ability to compose satire. Salon dubbed it “rock bottom” in “tech’s culture war.”

Link: http://goo.gl/j18NDq

Where to begin.

First, all three of these executives should be thankful they were born in a time when the ability to write code and understand technology was so absurdly rewarded as compared to the other crucial work of the world. Important things like teaching children to be productive citizens, running into burning buildings, protecting citizens from crime, doing CPR on people in cardiac arrest, and going to war and risking having your legs blown off by an IED.

In another age, say one where the ability to use a sword was the most in demand skill, these specimens wouldn’t have had the resolve to make it out of adolescence alive.

Second, if you are lucky enough to be absurdly rewarded as compared to the rest of society, a solid default position is to shut up and enjoy your epic rewards -- not to taunt and abuse those less fortunate than yourself.

Third, if you have been delightfully rewarded for building websites -- websites!!! -- as opposed to digging ditches 10 hours a day, six days a week, perhaps you should look at those less fortunate than yourself with compassion and -- gasp! -- do something to help them?

Fourth, if your ability to write tops out at the Christmas card level, perhaps it would be wise for you to hone your skills before tackling the most sensitive and pressing issues of our time?

As my Tae Kwon Do teacher told me in me in my developing years, when I was prone to speak first and think second, “an empty can makes the most noise.”

These noisy individuals do not represent the technology industry within which I’ve built my career. No, the technologists of true success and merit develop and execute strategies to make society more just, fair and joyful for all.

Bill Gates gave up three or four delightful decades of working on building one of the great technology empires of all time to do things like eradicate malaria, provide clean drinking water and reinvent the condom so people would use them more often.

Mark Cuban dedicates his time to investing in startups that will never return even a small fraction of his wealth, while silently helping wounded soldiers and the poor (the details of which are largely unreported).

Elon Musk risked his entire fortune -- and pushed himself personally to the brink -- to get us off carbon and he’s still driving himself at an inhuman pace to “back up Earth” on another planet. (I’ve encouraged him to pace himself many times, but it’s just not how he is wired.)

Jeff Skoll has produced media -- at great loss and risk at times -- in order to expand people’s consciousness about important issues. Fast Food Nation, An Inconvenient Truth, Food Inc, Darfur Now, and his new TV network, Pivot, which aims to package up serious issues for millennials.

The list of technologists doing great things for humanity is endless, but the media is obsessing over these pathetic, visionless grandstanders-- and I don’t blame them. This level of stupidity and vileness is editorial manna from above. How could the media not focus in on it?

A society can best be judged by how the most privileged regard and treat the most vulnerable and weak.

I have a challenge for these three individuals: invest in HandUp, a wonderful startup trying to actually help the homeless and distraught individuals in San francisco (and eventually beyond, I’m sure). If you each invest $10,000 in Handup I will match each of you. (Note: I’m already an investor, having invested on the spot during my talk with Rose: http://youtu.be/h9PSGHg2Vl0).

more: http://angel.co/handup

[ Sidenote: It’s a B (as in ‘benefit)’ corporation similar to stuff like Tom’s Shoes or Ben & Jerry’s, which aims to build a sustainable business by making a platform to help organizations focused on the homeless and poor. It’s “kickstarter for the homeless” and I say that with pride, not as a joke. Note: any profit I make from this investment I will donate to the homeless. ]

It takes only a cursory amount of reading -- start with the mayor’s offices multiyear study on the cities ~6,000 homeless -- to understand that a large percentage of the homeless are suffering from depression, mental illness, substance abuse and/or the elimination of their jobs.

And keep in mind that the “disruption” that is so lauded in our industry is largely one that removes inefficiencies, frequently defined as a “humans” working in “jobs.”

I’d argue that society’s issues around job loss are largely attributable to the massive change brought on by the technology we are building, and the wealth we are creating for a small subset of society.

This fact is indisputable and I believe it puts the responsibility for the weakest in our society on us -- the technologists and investors -- who not by happenstance are benefiting from this change.

On a strictly pragmatic basis, if you’re rich and privileged in our violently changing society, ask yourself if the last couple of bitcoins or homes you own are worth having a brick thrown through the window of bus you’re riding on.

It is completely possible that in the next 10 years, the streets of San Francisco and Manhattan will be filled with riots and protests by disenfranchised individuals--oh wait, that was the last three years: http://youtu.be/8yXSC0U9M6c

What is the point of this ever expanding “long boom” if we leave so many behind?

What a shallow victory we will have wrought if so many suffer so greatly while we benefit so exorbitantly.

all the best, @jason

http://www.twitter.com/jason

PS - Sorry to have not written the followup piece to #googlewinseverything, but I felt that this piece needed to come now--before another ‘techbro’ decides the world needs to know how stupid and insensitive they are. Second, I’m on deadline for the Jan. 23rd launch of www.inside.com, as well as the LAUNCH Hackathon (Feb 21-23) & LAUNCH Festival on Feb. 24-26th (http://festival.launch.co).

PPS - If I get a moment I’ll follow up on this piece by expanding the final two points--or perhaps someone with the ability to write like @paulcarr, @lons, @jasonpontin, @karaswisher, @hblodget, etc. could take on these two concepts:

a) What responsibility does the Tech Industry specifically have to the people it has made redundant?

b) Wouldn’t it be a better world for everyone if we used just a small portion of the massive profits being made to ensure that everyone had a place to live and eat, so our cities weren’t overrun with poverty, hunger and desperation, making American cities like Los Angeles essentially Third World nations?

Click here to tweet this editorial: http://ctt.ec/e2Juq

Wanted: LAUNCH Festival Operations Temp Assistant

We're looking for a self-motivated, detail-oriented individual to help with operations for our largest event, the LAUNCH Festival.

This is a temporary full-time position that will last through Friday, February 28. You will work with us in our office located at 6th & Market.

The LAUNCH Festival (San Francisco, February 24-26) is THE best place to launch a technology company and learn about building great startups. Dropbox, Mint, Yammer, Fitbit, Room77 and hundreds of others have debuted on the LAUNCH stage.

For more info on the event: http://festival.launch.co

Responsibilities:

• Customer Service & Outreach (answering registrant emails, processing tickets) 
• Coordinating & running a critical part of the conference (Hackathon, Startup Stage, Demo Pit, etc..)
• Coordinating volunteers
• Evaluating applicants to the Hackathon
• Updating our website (Squarespace) & our event app (Bizzabo)
• Additional ad-hoc projects 

 Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree (or proof of high fluid intelligence)
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Impeccable organizational skills and attention to detail
• Passion for tech startups and entrepreneurial culture
• Desire to work in a team-based, entrepreneurial company
• Practical knowledge of Excel, Google Spreadsheets, Numbers or similar. 
• Experience in online publishing platforms and HTML experience a plus 

Compensation: $100 / day

We value diversity in the workplace and are an EOE/AA employer.

To apply please use this form: https://docs.google.com/a/launch.co/spreadsheet/viewform?usp=drive_web&formkey=dEw3RFdJSnc1cmlURkpObEJxSHJjV0E6MA#gid=0

A gift to the industry (be my guest at LAUNCH Festival)

I’ve been hosting my Launch Festival for six years now, with the goal of making the most supportive and joyful startup event in the world for fellow founders.

We’ve had amazing startups launch, including Yammer, Powerset, Mint, Space Monkey, Dropbox, Docstoc, Brilliant.org, Boxbee, FitBit, RedBeacon, AdStage and Swipe.

In this, our seventh year, I’d like to offer a free pass to the event:

UPDATE: "Gift to the industry" tickets are sold out!

Passes can still be purchased here: http://launch.ticketleap.com/launch-festival-2014/dates

Details: http://festival.launch.co

Why?

---------------------------

When I started in the industry in my 20s, I didn’t have a pot to piss in and was a ‘little rough around the edges’ – I was so lucky to have folks like Esther Dyson, Kara Swisher, John Battelle, Tim O'Reilly and (most of all) John Brockman include me in their events.

These events led to me rubbing elbows with Evan Williams, Yossi Vardi, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, Ted Leonsis, Steve Case, Mark Cuban and countless other luminaries. Some of them became good friends and/or critical business contacts.

Now I’m trying to pay it forward for the 40+ startups that will launch onstage, the 150 that will be at demo tables, and the thousands of founders and technologists who maybe don’t have the budget yet to come to a world-class conference.

LAUNCH Festival is my legacy and I want as many folks to experience it as possible.

We had 6,000 people sign up last year and this year we hope to have 8,000 (stretch goal FTW!). This makes us the largest startup conference in the world – by far.

How are we able to do this?

---------------------------

First, we have premium tickets for sale that we upsell folks on. Second, we have the massive support of so many friends in the industry who sponsor the $1M+ budget of the event.  

Also, sometimes I lose money on the event.

We couldn’t do these sorts of crazy things without the support of our partners – whom I thank from the bottom of my heart:

* wsgr | SOMA (http://wsgr.com)

* Ludlow Ventures (http://ludlowventures.com)

* DFJ (http://dfj.com)

* MailChimp (http://mailchimp.com)

* Microsoft Ventures (http://microsoftventures.com)

* MicroVentures (http://microventures.com)

* Sequoia (http://sequoiacap.com)

* Yammer (http://yammer.com)

* Autodesk (http://autodesk.com)

* .CO (http://go.co)

* Expedia (http://expedia.com)

* Hotwire PR (http://hotwirepr.com)

* Instaradio (http://instaradio.com)

* Sourcebits (http://sourcebits.com)

* Ticketleap (http://ticketleap.com)

* Traklight (http://traklight.com)

* Zelkova Ventures (http://zelkovavc.com)

If you would like to add your name to the growing list of folks supporting the LAUNCH Festival, just email me at jason@launch.co.

We’re 35% of the way to budget, and with the support of the industry we’ll get there together.

It’s going to be an amazing week (three days for the Hackathon, three days for the Festival) - please join me.

Gift guide: Books for Techies & Founders

If you've ever checked out This Week in Startups, you know that LAUNCH Founder @jason is obsessed with audiobooks. 

A little bit business, a little bit pleasure, and a taste of the classics. Don't know what to give your cofounder or entrepreneur friend this year?

What about a subscription to Audible? You can try it out for free. Consider one of these for your first audiobook (use this link so they know we sent you! audible.com/twist).

1. Flourish by Martin Seligman

2. Wheat Belly by William Davis

3. Native Son by Richard Wright

4. Salinger by David Shields & Shane Salerno

 

5. The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal

6. David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

7. Choose Yourself! by James Altucher

8. Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

 9. The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin

 10. Emotional Equations by Chip Conley

 

Why I invested $250,000 in Swell

I thought you guys might be interested in hearing how I’m tackling the absurdly hard task of trying to pick winners as an angel investor. My goal in talking about my bets—uhhh, I mean investments—isn’t to promote myself or the startup, but rather get your insights into my process.

Also, writing is clarity of thought. If I set the benchmark that I’m going to write out my thinking on every investment I make, that should force me to think deeply about each one. Not that I don’t already do that, but there is something about the forcing function of writing that just works for me.

Swell is an App that my friend Josh from DFJ showed me at a poker game. When he handed me his phone and said ‘it’s Pandora for talk radio’ I got it immediately.

Get it - http://swell.am

Here are the signals that made write a check:

1. Trusted referral / respected early investors: my friend Josh showed me the product, and Google Ventures was also involved. I’ve got deep respect for Josh (early investor in Box), and for the GV team, which include my old friend Kevin Rose (who just did a fireside chat for the LAUNCH Hackathon: catch the podcast 12/10 - on Swell, too). I also have a bunch of other friends/people at those two firms including Tim Draper, Steve Jurvetson (who I had on the program recently http://youtu.be/O2tK0Wl2F8w), MG Siegler (who pisses off more people than me when he writes—always a good thing), Daniel Burka (who gave me solid advice on Inside.com design) and Joe Kraus (who I always respected deeply on a product level).

2. Clarity of mission and a singular focus: Swell is doing something very simple, but very hard, getting people to the best talk radio out there. This could be a TED talk, a public radio show or a podcast.

3. My Knowledge of the Space: I’ve been podcasting for two decades, since before it was called podcasting in fact. I did the Silicon Alley Reporter radio show on Pseudo back in the ‘90s, CalacanisCast in 2007, This Week in Tech, Gillmor Gang and then This Week in Startups (just past 400 episodes!). I’ve done at least 600+ podcasts as a host or guest. The biggest problem in podcasting is discovery, as in getting the right people to your podcast. Apple has done some fine work in this space, but the fact is only 5% of the potential audience for Leo Laporte’s This Week in Tech actually know about the show—and he’s been doing it for almost a decade!

4. Stunning design and UX: Swell uses ‘cards’ as their user experience and it works brilliantly. Imagine playing cards on your phone in a stack that you can swipe through quickly and that’s how Swell works. Similar to Tinder, the dating app, but very different than a feed like Twitter and Facebook, where you scroll up and down a bunch of tiles (which you could call ‘cards’ but I won't for reasons of clarity).

5. Audible Addiction: I’ve been addicted to talk via podcasting for years, but before that I was a huge fan of a tiny startup in NJ called Audible. They eventually got bought by Amazon, and I’ve been a Platinum Subscriber for years. That means I spend ~$200 a year for 20 titles a year. I do this because I travel and drive a lot, and I feel like that time is wasted. If I listen to audiobooks I feel like I’m getting smarter and more worldly, whether it’s something in business, pop culture or a biography. I find myself splitting my time between Audible’s awesome titles and Swell’s excellent curation now. In fact, Swell helped me discover a bunch of new programs I didn’t know existed.

6. Great founder. When I met the founder I could tell he was capable of building a big, lasting company immediately because his concerns were around two important people in his ecosystem: the listeners and the content producers. Too often Silicon Valley companies are obsessed with the former and not the latter. Having been through a lot of struggles with Google, both the Search Group and YouTube, where I felt they were not supportive enough of me as a content producer, I found this refreshing and on point. Right now YouTubers feel like YouTube doesn’t care about them as much as they care about their own growth. I believe this is what will limit YouTube’s and Google’s future. Netflix, Amazon, Yahoo and AOL might have a small fraction of the usage of YouTube, but they care more for their creators.

Over time I think YouTube’s position will erode as someone like Twitter, Amazon or Yahoo makes a bold move to support the YouTube creators on a much deeper level. Swell has that potential for podcasters and talk products. Having a founder who groks this made me feel like their heart was in the right place.

7. TuneIn and Stitcher: I’m big fans of these other startups in the space, but I wasn’t able to invest in them (too late!). So, being able to bet on a new entrant who I think has the edge in the curation and interface space was a welcome opportunity for me.

8. I think I can be of service to the team: One of my big roles as an angel investor is helping with branding, marketing, positioning and product design—at least that’s what my fellow founders tell me. In this case, my domain expertise in talk radio as a creator and metaconsumer should help me act as a great resource to the founder.

There is a long way to go for Swell, but I’m really excited to be an early supporter. I think it’s a potential unicorn.

LAUNCH Fund is ~$9m in size, is ~8% invested and has eight investments.

Q1: What do you think of Swell?
Q2: What do you think of my investing signals?
Q3: What’s your big idea for Swell?
Q4: If Swell was offered as an AngelList Syndicate investment would you consider it? (accredited investors only can signup here: https://angel.co/jason/syndicate)

best @jason

PS - LAUNCH Festival is in 80 days! Get a complimentary ‘builder’ ticket here http://launch.ticketleap.com/launch-festival-2014/dates, using the code LAUNCHTIME.  You can buy a conference pass, VIP pass or Super VIP (each has access to different events of note).

PPS - The LAUNCH Ticker is the easiest way to keep up with the technology industry. For $100 a year you can read the “daily briefing” my researchers create for me! It’s 12 hours of daily research in two short emails. Sign up here: http://launch.co/promembership

PPPS - In case you missed it we had Naval on This Week in Startups. It’s a fireside chat we did at the LAUNCH Hackathon (#2). http://launch.wistia.com/medias/8vs30ocul6

PPPPS - If you want to get updates on my podcast This Week in Startups sign up for the email here http://thisweekinstartups.com/email/  

PPPPS - Inside.com is in beta, signup here: www.inside.com

New Hackathon Keynote Speaker added: Naval Ravikant!

[ share this post on Twitter: http://clicktotweet.com/cuMY0 ]

We’re excited to announce that AngelList Founder and CEO @Naval Ravikant will join us at the LAUNCH Hackathon (Nov 8-10, San Francisco).  On the final day of coding, Naval and @Jason Calacanis will take to main stage for what’s sure to be an inspiring conversation!  See their previous “This Week in Startups” interview: http://youtu.be/lWfGw7serN0

The Hackathon will open with a fireside conversation between @Jason and Kevin Rose (Digg, Google Ventures), and is poised to be the largest hackathon in the world with over 1k developers and designers competing for $1.7M+ in investment prizes.  

Spots are going quickly – there are only about 200 left – so register your team now!  All applicants will be screened, but participation is completely free, and includes breakfast, lunch, massages, workshops, and more.  

Learn more and reserve your team’s spot: hackathon.launch.co

Invite: LAUNCH Hackathon, This Week in Startups Live! Boston

1. We're hosting the world's largest Hackathon, November 8th-10th in San Francisco. Over 1,000 verified developers will be there (600 have been confirmed already, 400 left).

Apply: http://hackathon.launch.co

2. The LAUNCH Fund will be investing $50k in each of two of the top 10 projects. Those two projects will also be shared with my AngelList Syndicate, making the investment $800k in each. So, we now have the world's largest investment prize (by a factor of 20x+) at $1.6M!

3. I'll also be interviewing Kevin Rose (Digg, Google Ventures), and two other awesome visionaries (suggestions welcome).

best
@jason

PS - A quick recap of the LAUNCH Mobile & Wearables event last week (300+ founders & investors came): /blog/launch-mobile-wearables-wrap-up.html

PPS - Had a great interview with Steve Jurvetson last week: http://youtu.be/O2tK0Wl2F8w

PPPS - My new startup Inside.com will launch in November and I'm looking for 500 beta testers now: http://inside.com.

PPPPS - Will be in Boston this Friday to interview Bill Warner: http://twistliveboston.eventbrite.com

PPPPPS - LAUNCH Festival has a stretch goal of 8k attendees (we hit 6k last year!), and you need to be there.  Visit http://events.launch.co/builder for a free founder ticket. They will run out quickly!

LAUNCH's first fund, AngelList Syndicates & $100k prize for LAUNCH Mobile & Wearables

I’m super excited that I’ve closed my first formal angel investing fund: The LAUNCH Fund I. Additionally, I’ve started one of the first AngelList ‘Syndicates’ (more on that below).

The fund started when David Sacks and I each committed $250k over five years to the winners of the LAUNCH Festival, but it quickly grew to include a list of my good friends. On average, I’ve got 10-year (or longer) relationships with each of the members of the fund (we are leaving it up to the LPs to disclose that they’re in the fund, if they want to).

Over the next five years, we will invest $100-250k in 50-100 startups.

Next week, at the LAUNCH Mobile & Wearables event there will be a $100,000 ‘investment prize.’

[ Note: LAUNCH Mobile & Wearables is on Sept 30 & Oct 1st in San Francisco at the Metreon City View. A couple of tickets are left, use FOJ to get 20% off here: http://mobile.launch.co ]

What is an investment prize, you ask? Well, it’s a commitment from me to invest $100k in one of the startups there.

Of course, it’s not binding, as the startups need to want me as an investor, and we have to be able to come to terms, but I’m happy to say we came to terms with three of the winners from the LAUNCH Festival back in March 2013 (Wizzywig, AdStage and Boxbee).

At the LAUNCH Hackathon on November 8-10, I will be putting up another $100,000 ‘investment prize’ (at least). The hackathon is brought to you by the fine folks at Capital One, Yammer, Facebook, Parse, Pearson, Amazon & Google.

We already have over 300 developers signed up (we check their code on github – so no spectators!), and we think we’ll hit 1,000. If you want to help buy pizza or put up a prize for these fine folks hit reply and say ‘How can I help Jason?’

Also, our Hackathon will feature none of the offensive stuff that other hackathon recently had (read the gory details here: http://goo.gl/ZS7fxH).

Finally, I’m going to start syndicating my deals on AngelList.

So, if you missed being part of the LAUNCH Fund, you can simply follow me on AngelList and commit to putting $10k, or $25k, or whatever you want, alongside my investments. Of course, you (currently) have to be accredited and understand that investing in startups is a 90%+ exercise in failure, with the hopes of hitting an @uber once every 50 or 100 (which I was lucky enough to do!).

@jason on AngelList
https://angel.co/jason/syndicate  

all the best @jason

PS -- Had a great interview on This Week in Startups with Ben Milne, the founder of Dwolla. Watch it here: http://youtu.be/BFeSgN1cQhg.

PPS - The remaining list of folks we haven’t had on the show: @elonmusk, @mcuban, @marissamayer, @reidhoffman, @markpincus, @billgates, @stevecase, @edyson, @pmarca, @timarmstrongaol, @bhorowitz, @jeffweiner, @tferriss, @sherylsandberg and @finkd among many others. Feel free to encourage them to come on the show here: http://clicktotweet.com/4fe1U [ you can edit the tweet before it goes out ]

PPPS - Special thanks to the following for sponsoring the LAUNCH Mobile & Wearables event: Expedia,  HasOffers, Rackspace and Tandem.

PPPPS - LAUNCH co-working space has room for three more startups.
Please contact cowork@launch.co if you want to sit with me here in Culver City!