Southeast VC

Want to Get Plugged into RTP? Join CED.

Here is my quick pitch:

If you're really looking to get plugged in with VCs, entrepreneurs, seasoned executives and service providers in North Carolina, I would strongly recommend joining the Council for Entrepreneurial Development. CED is known as the largest support organization in the country for entrepreneurs and its based in Research Triangle Park, NC.

Dozens of VCs are members - all of the local firms and so are a lot of out of state firms like Kodiak, Battery, ATV, Charles River, etc. 

Membership is dirt cheap - $125 for individuals or smaller entreprenurial companies and just $500 for firms like mine.

They put on lots of great events throughout the year with conferences and programs.

They have their annual fall membership drive going on now - so this is the perfect time to sign up. Email me if you decide to join so I can make sure you get a lot of attention from CED.

I have gotten real involved with CED over the past few years and joined their board. I've gotten a ton back and met a lot of great people.

Silicon Valley Leadership Group Ranks RTP #1

The Silicon Valley Leadership Group reviewed and ranked major tech hubs (Silicon Valley; RTP; Boston; Seattle; Austin; Portland and San Diego). Of course Silicon Valley is the largest tech center, but it was great to see RTP recognized #1 overall in the study which included:

- unemployment rates

- housing affordability

- traffic congestion costs

- eighth grade math achievement

- electricity costs

- percentage of population with health insurance

- state tax rates

Here is a good article in today's News & Observer which talks more about it.

Google WiFi

Wow, Google is planning to offer WiFi service... right now called "Google Secure Access."

Use IM? Check out Meebo

I really enjoyed recently meeting over breakfast in San Jose with Seth Sternberg one of the founders of Meebo. They formally launched this week. I know Seth from his days at Plaxo.

Meebo's AJAX IM client aggregates all your IM accounts in a single window. It is compatible with AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and MSN. They are now testing with IE and Firefox. I know they are all up late working on adding a ton of features.  Sign up with them and suggest improvements.

Barry Diller's Keynote

I am in Vegas for Shop.org and listened to Barry Diller give the keynote this morning. I thought he did a fantastic job - very smart. I jotted down a few notes that are worth sharing:

- On blogging - there are 75,000 blogs created everyday. He said that 74,900 of them are absolutely useless and no one reads them. This got a laugh from everyone there.

- He definitely looks at the Ask Jeeves acquisition as the glue for all their businesses. I mentioned this in an earlier post when the deal was announced.

- Told the crowd that if people rely on search marketing only, they will go out of business. He urged people to be different in their strategies and don't always follow the "hot ideas."

- He said that they looked at all the comparison shopping sites for potential acquisiton opportunities, but found them all "boring" with "insane valuations."

- Barry also praised the core eBay business, but doesn't really understand the recent acquisition of Skype. Why do they need to buy a phone company?

Entrepreneur Blogs

Nice mention of this blog by Scott Allen in his column about "new" entrepreneur-related blogs. All 5 blogs he mentions were launched sometime in the last year.