(inspired by MochaMomma)

I woke up after 6 hrs of deep sleep and read Mocha’s post on herself… and when I read “When I’m quiet and it looks like I’m taking your shit, I’m plotting.” I had to write this post.

Before I begin though, a complete compendium to badasses can be found on this website: badassoftheweek

This week’s badasses have included, according to the website, Hector of Troy… and I thought Achilles killed Hector… doesn’t seem too badass to me. Regardless, once again though, the internet proves that everything really is online. Here are a few badasses to add to the list:

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My first badass is Michael Moore. Why? because he’s always stirring up trouble with an activist goal. I like people who see problems and try to fix them… even if I don’t agree with them.

New Kids on the Block is my second group of badasses. Why? Well for starters they recorded the song “The Right Stuff”. If you’ve ever heard it, you’d know how badass it really is.

This list would be incomplete without the smurfs. These fun loving, blue creatures who live somewhere in the woods are totally badass, not to mention they constantly beat up Azarael and Gargamel.
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I was thinking earlier about things I’ve given up to make Photrade.com happen… here’s my list:

* living in Boston and moving to Cincinnati

* spending time with family

* hanging out with friends

* the concept of life outside of work

* health care

Oh and the last one - job stability but hey that’s over-rated.

What’s your list? add it into the comments below.

Recently Andrew Hyde decided to write a post about me on AndrewHyde.net… instead of about the actual non-profit that is “competing” with Startup Weekend.  I was surprised that a guy who seems so into “doing good” would flame me without investigating it (i.e. calling me/emailing me since we’ve met before). I wrote back the response below for him. I don’t understand why:

1. he is focusing on me/photrade.com when he seems upset about InOneWeekend.

2. how he can know whether or not its “copying” his idea or not since he has no idea what InOneWeekend is about (other than some preliminary material thrown up on a website).

I hope that we can come to common ground on this, as I think that both organizations are focused on building and encouraging entrepreneurship and that they should be working together (as I pointed out to him on the phone when I called him). It’s definitely disappointing to be publicly attacked without him first having investigated.

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Andrew,

I was shocked to read your blog post as I have the utmost respect for you and Startup Weekend. Having said that, there are a few things that need to be clarified:

1. The photo used on InOneWeekend.org is a Creative Commons licensed photo, and the CC license selected by the image owner allows use (without requesting permission) but requires attribution - thank you for pointing out the error that the attribution link wasn’t there - that was a mistake. It is unfair to blame me for In One Weekend’s mistake. I’m not running In One Weekend and I think it is particularly unfair that you blame Photrade.com for this.

I have already worked with the InOneWeekend organization to get this resolved and have contacted the photographer with an apology. He said he is perfectly fine with In One Weekend using the photo. Please know that I believe very strongly in respecting the intellectual property rights of photographers and will work my hardest to ensure that all of the organizations that I am involved with respect these rights as I have done with InOneWeekend.

2. I am personally involved with InOneWeekend, but I am not running it. I attended the first evening of the Bloomington Startup Weekend and was excited and energized by the concept. I spoke with Elizabeth Edwards about it and the idea of creating a non-profit to build local entrepreneurship was born, and Elizabeth has been the champion for this locally. Cincinnati in particular is in need of more community in this area, and local organizations have been extremely excited about creating a sustainable community of entrepreneurship built around inoneweekend.

3. Inoneweekend is not a carbon copy of Startup Weekend. Inoneweekend is a non-profit organization aimed at helping communities to build and spread entrepreneurship. It is run with a local chapter model that builds entrepreneurship in the community with an organic continual local focus. Several Venture groups are going to back the companies that come out of it with grants. In addition, all kinds of entities can come out of a weekend - not necessarily a technology startup company. The structure of the weekend is different as well.

4. There are a number of Startup Weekend-like organizations out there already (e.g. ventureweekend.com and others) and at the end of your post you say that you don’t mind other organizations building on the Startup Weekend idea. As I have explained, InOneWeekend is different than Startup Weekend. Based on your comments at the end of the post, I am surprised and truly sorry that you are so upset by this.

As I told you on the phone this morning - I’m sure that IOW would love to have your input as I think that while these organizations are different they do share similar objectives of encouraging entrepreneurship.

5. I do not and would not want to offend you. I have the highest respect for you and Startup Weekend and apologize for any offence that this project has caused you.

Andrew Paradies

We’re live at the new media cincinnati meetup in Cincinnati.

Right now Krista Neher is talking about the break down between personal and professional lives. She wrote a post last week discussing these alternate personas and is talking now about her strategy of balancing what her publishing in different venues to give a better, balanced picture of herself. She views this as more effective than trying to hide who you are and creating different personas in different places (i.e. professional on LinkedIn, personal on Facebook).

Chris Bergman started talking about how we have to think about ourselves as a personal brand which reminds me of a post that QueenOfSpain did last week.

D.JosephDesign just talked about how he is looking at merging his identities.

And Daniel Johnson Jr. just brought up the idea of remaining anonymous.

Overall there seem to be a lot of different thoughts on the topic and the difficulty of maintaining multiple online identities.

Ok, now we’re breaking up to do socializing - see you later!

From highschooler to retiree, everyone is wondering what is happening to the US economy. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the writing on the wall in certain sectors, with the sub-prime mortgage industry probably being the most obvious. Now with the loss of confidence moving from the sub-prime market to the wider financial markets, auction rate securities are failing as nervous investors refuse to bid in the auctions and as a result the auctions fail. As a consumer and participant in the economy, albeit in a small way, I’m sitting here wondering what is going on.

As an entrepreneur, the headlines today are making me down right nervous. The strangest part is that I’m not worried about the fundamentals but that there is a growing lack of worldwide confidence in the US economy. I think, however, that the state of the US economy has to be broken apart and examined by sector in order to be understood in the broader context of market growth which is what we entrepreneurs worry about the most. After all, it’s much easier to build a new company when you don’t have to steal market share from entrenched businesses.

With that being said, let’s talk about specific industries:

Financial

Well we already know these guys are screwed… but let’s talk about some sub-sectors. Private equity is having a tough time as deal after deal is being put into a death hold (isn’t that what boa constrictors do to their prey?). The boa in this case is the debt financing from the world’s largest banks. Around the world, once trusty banks are finding out that they have higher sub-prime mortgage exposure than they thought and now auction rate securities are also failing. The irony of auction rate securities is that they were historically sold “as good as cash”. The claim being that any investor with auction rate securities could trade it weekly to get liquidity. We’re obviously seeing that this claim is not true as these securities are defaulting to their much higher interest rates of as much as 20% when the auctions to trade the securities fail.

So Private Equity is not in a good way, because without access to cheap debt, the industry is seriously hamstrung to close profitable acquisitions. Fancy talk for they can’t buy companies without big banks to give them tons of cheap debt. The debt is where private equity firms historically have made their margin on the buying and selling of companies.

Venture is arguably in a better position as these financiers solely use equity to conduct their transactions. The downside with this one of course is that venture capitalists invest in new ideas/companies that are financially instable and need new sales (which are hard to get in a recession). So the question remains up in the air as to whether or not this will affect venture capitalists through higher portfolio company defaults.

Mortgage companies - obviously these guys aren’t doing too well. Enough said. If you want a good synopsis of this mess see here

Investment banks are hurting as they need private equity companies and venture companies to give them businesses to sell.

Accounting - I think this is relatively “recession proof” if there is such a thing.  On to internet companies, the area close to my heart.

Internet/Web 2.0 Companies

I chose this first because I know the most about this space. I think companies in this space are lucky to be involved in the current “gold-rush” for internet advertising dollars. As DVR penetration continues and newspapers/magazines fold, massive amounts of offline/traditional media advertising are moving to spend online.

According to an IBM study, “Overall, 19% of respondents said they spend six or more hours a day on the Internet, versus 9% for TV. More telling, 60% reported that they spend one to four hours using the Internet, versus 66% who spend the time watching TV.” So this sounds promising.While the TV guys might be looking at a world of pain in the next few years, the Internet is finally seeing the great advertising gold rush that was supposed to happen in the 90’s and never did. On the other hand we have Bain&Co who says that TV is going to grow more than the internet over the next 5 years - yeah right, like I buy that one Bain

Well either way, we’ll find out the answer to this one over the next few years. I’m betting on the internet, but hey, I’m biased.

Tourism

As the dollar weakens, all kinds of foreign tourists will feel like now is the right time to visit the US. So at least these guys should do well.

Life Sciences

Drugs… well drugs are always needed… whether or not people can afford them. Now hospitals on the other hand, might have some problems as non-paying patients are apparently rocketing.

Manufacturing

Does this even exist in the US anymore?

What do you guys think, where is the fallout going to occur? Definitely interested to hear your thoughts…

What would you give to be in Kevin Rose’s Shoes?

Chris Bergman, the newest addition to the photrade.com team, recently traded digg.com founder, Kevin Rose, for his shoes.

See more below!

The Shoes

Pic of Digg.com Founder, Kevin Rose

The Trade Itself!

Hanging out with Digg.com Founder, Kevin Rose 

Leave me a comment with what you’d trade to be in Kevin Rose’s Shoes and I’ll let Chris know!

I never thought Obama would be at a cheesy mid-western bar with a mechanical bull but I guess he really is a man of the people

The thing is, this means I have to put on my shoes, and get my butt down there to take pictures. I wonder if he’ll ride the bull.

This is living proof to all entrepreneurs out there in Ohio that you’re not alone (although many of these people are really more of the VC type ).

Dov Rosenberg and me.

Mike Halloran and Sameer.

Dave, Jon, and me.

Elizabeth Edwards, Tom Neyer, David.

David, Brad and Jon.

Rob Daly, John McIlwraith, Chris Fister.

Jon, Elizabeth Edwards and Dov Rosenberg.

Mike Venerable and me.

I only was able to label some of the photos - so shoot me an email if you see someone you know that I didn’t label.

I love making financial models of potential futures. The irony is that I’m trying to model a company that doesn’t exist yet - is just a vision - and a figment of one’s imagination. After a solid 100+ input boxes, I’m ready to see what the model will churn out. The result may or may not look good - but not to worry, I can always tweak it.

Tweaking - this is the art of changing the variables in subtle ways to go from a bad outcome to a positive one.

Almost done and I’ll see the first incoherent babble in the form of a 5 year revenue forecast. The reality of the model is that its a good tool to help give me some kind of false security about the future, when after all, no one really knows, it’s all just guess work.