July 14th, 2010 by Jay Levy 
Yesterday I headed up to Boston to judge the 2nd round of the Mass Challenge, which was fun. I’m going to write a future post about judging startup competitions, but this yesterday was one of those days I just need to document.
6:00am – Wakeup to catch an early train, I hate getting up this early.
7:30am – Walk into bathroom at Penn Sation to wash hands, full of homeless people brushing their teeth.
8:00am – Take Acela to boston, nothing exciting here.
11:45am – Walk into bathroom at Boston South Station… Man fully naked taking a shower in the sink, I walk out, but apparently doesn’t phase the other 10 people using the bathroom.
1:00pm – Judge mass challenge (more to come later)
7:00pm – Take train back, delayed about 1.5 hrs, sucks!
12:00am – Arrive at Penn Station.
12:15am – Man falls on escalator and cant get up about a dozen people just stand and watch, I run up the escalator and lift him up.
What has happened to people in this country, you see a person in distress and you don’t do anything?
May 25th, 2010 by Jay Levy
LiveFyre, a San Fran startup, is looking to bring on 2 more kick ass engineers. LiveFyre is all about unifying conversations across the web and wants to rule the talking world!
Qualities You Need to Have:
- Creative Problem Solving Type
- You get and are into the ‘real-time’ web
- You like working with small teams, these roles are the 3rd and 4th tech hir
Stuff You Need to Know:
- JavaScript, JQuery, JSON, AJAX, PHP, Python, MySql, HTML, CSS
- Other acronyms
Bonus if you know:
- Photoshop, Illustrator, SEO, XMPP, Java Server
Other Info:
- The position is in San Francisco
Re-tweet this one so we can help reduce unemployment!
May 24th, 2010 by Jay Levy
We are excited to announce the acquisition of one of our portfolio companies NutshellMail to Constant Contact. Below is a portion of the announcement NutshellMail sent out to their users.
Constant Contact, the premier provider of email marketing, event marketing and online survey products for small businesses, nonprofits and member organizations. Together with Constant Contact, the NutshellMail team will continue its commitment to providing tools and services that make it easy for you to manage your relationships across the social media universe.
NutshellMail will remain a free service and we will continue to improve and extend the product based on the great feedback you have given us over the last two years. In addition, as part of the Constant Contact family, we can’t wait to start developing new and exciting offerings that will empower individuals and small organizations to efficiently and effectively engage with their friends, fans and customers through social media.
Constant Contact has distinguished itself as the leader in small business email marketing through its unparalleled commitment to customer service and by providing effective, affordable, and easy-to-use products and services for some of the busiest people in the world: small business owners.
Constant Contact makes email marketing simple; NutshellMail makes social simple, and together we plan to make small business success simple.
To learn more about the powerful combination of Constant Contact and NutshellMail, we encourage you read the press release and to watch the video interview with Constant Contact’s CEO Gail Goodman and the NutshellMail founders.
May 5th, 2010 by Jay Levy
This past weeken I was fortunate enough to attend my first boxing match, Mayweather vs. Mosley in Las Vegas. It was a once in a lifetime
experience; that I would highly recommend.
There are some interesting commonalities between boxers and startups.
Dedication: In order to be a boxer it takes incredible dedication and restraint. In the months prior to the fight your life is consumed with training and preparation. This same dedication is needed in a startup.
Focus: Throughout the training regiment focus is key, but it’s also key in the ring. Focusing on your abilities, the landscape, the competitor and the goal is important to win in boxing and business.
Strength: It goes without saying a boxer must have strength to go the distance and win. A startup needs the same.
Agility & Speed: Boxing is not only about strength its about having the agility and speed to adapt and ‘roll with the punches’. A startup needs to have the same ability, while being focused.
April 28th, 2010 by Jay Levy
The social web is being built by people and their thoughts. To date most analytics companies in the social sphere have focused on ‘their thoughts’ and few have focused on the people who brought you those thoughts. I don’t want to downplay the value of thoughts, in fact we are investors in Crimson Hexagon, a leading tool analyzing thoughts… but today is about people!
We are very excited to announce our investment in Klout, the leading platform for understanding the ‘who’ behind the ‘what’. Klout is about determining who people are providing data around them that can help people and companies make decisions.
Were excited about Klout because as the social web continues to grow among people and businesses the ability to identify, rank and sort people is going to be more and more important in getting thru the clutter. Klout allows you to do just that determine who is important in what areas and is poised to become standard measurement of influence online.
Klout is arguably the leader in the space with some terrific partners using the platform, these include Co-Tweet, TweetUp and HootSuite, to name a few of the 200+.
We look forward to continuing to work with the team along with our investment partners, ff Asset Management, Bobby Yazdani of Saba, Allen Morgan of Mayfield Fund, of Lucid Ventures, Grape Arbor VC, , , Michael Yavonditte of Quigo Technologies, and Ofer Ronan.
