As planned, I’ll be hosting monthly presentations/conversations each month throughout 2009 on different topics for entrepreneurs. These are FREE events, and my goal is to help contribute to the Los Angeles Technology Scene by bringing together various entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists, social media experts, and professionals in the technology field.

These events are put on in conjunction with our friends at DealMaker Media.   TO SIGN UP FOR THIS EVENT, CLICK HERE

This month’s talk will be on “10 Mistakes People Make Before Starting a New Business”. This conversation is an in depth look at the pitfalls that arise both before we start businesses and while they are in the startup phase. I wrote this presentation (purposefully harsh/comical) a year ago to help convey some of the mistakes I’ve most commonly seen and made myself.

The format of the speaking series typically includes a 45 minute presentation followed by 45 minutes of questions and answers. And as usual I’ll make sure to bring out some notable CEOs and Investors as guests who know much more than I do.

The event is free and will hold about 140 folks, both previous events sold out. If you are not one of the first 140 to RSVP and confirm, we will have a waiting list.

Here were the past two events (talk #1, talk #2)

Thursday, January 15, 2008 – 6:30pm – 8:00pm
Cost: FREE
This event is capped at 140 attendees.
Confirmation will be required or your spot will be given up for our waiting list.

Santa Monica Public Library (Auditorium) 601 Santa Monica Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401

TO SIGN UP FOR THIS EVENT, CLICK HERE

I’ve embeded this in my blog before, but here is the presentation on Mistakes People Make Before Starting a New Business

Mistakes People Make Before Starting a New Business – Free Legal Forms

There has been a lot of conjecture about how the Venture community will respond to the economic downturn. My personal opinion is that its going to be bad, really bad. If the limited partners who fund venture firms either a) change the percent of funds they allocate to VCs or b) don’t come through on their capital calls, we’ll all quickly find the venture community becoming drastically constrained. Instead of making as many new investments, VCs will use their cash for inside rounds to fund their top preforming portfolio companies that have the greatest likelihood of success.

Erick Schonfeld writes about the current state of affairs in his TechCrunch post: “The End of Venture Capital as We Know It”

There is a fantastic community post on The Funded that provides an impressively helpful overview of how Venture Capital the relationship limited parters: “The Limited Partner Shuffle”

And Matt Marshall goes into further detail with his post: Cash panic sweeping the VC industry: the capital calls problem.

Last week I hosted a panel of Los Angeles Venture Capitalists with Jim Armstrong (Clearstone Ventures), Mark Suster (GRP), David Travers (Rustic Canyon), and Brian Garrett (Crosscut Ventures). You can see the recap here on the DealMaker Media Blog and here on Nicole Jordan’s new blog KickingSand.com

So what does this mean for internet entrepreneurs?

If you’re about to start a web based business, consider building websites or applications that aren’t going to need a lot of capital before they start making money. Think, “what can I build for 50K or less that I can break even on and still continue to grow the user base“.

For existing internet entrepreneurs who have already raised money, we’re all going to be in the fight of our lives to make sure that our companies/applications stand out from the rest of the pack and have a shot to get some portion of a shrinking pie.

Here is the latest presentation from Adeo Ressi of TheFunded: “The Caranie is Dead: Something is Wrong in Venture Capital Q3 2008″

Venture Capital Trends – the Canary is Dead by Adeo Ressi – Get more Business Plans

Is there a difference between tech startups in Silicon Valley vs. Los Angeles? Most emphatically, Yes!

I’ve spent the last year running a tech company based in Santa Monica, CA and I’ve spent countless weeks in the Bay meeting with hundreds of tech founders. As unreliable as stereotypes may be, these are my generalizations.

Bay area founders are amazing technologists. They build obsessively user focused products, do a fantastic job at virally driving a ton of traffic, but usually have their head up their ass when it comes to making money.

Los Angles founders are hustlers and deal makers. They are more focused on the bottom line and care more about their P&L than their products, which tend to be messy.

At parties in the Bay people talk about Twitter, Friend Feed, what’s being written on Valleywag and Techcrunch, and kickball games between VC’s and entrepreneurs.

At parties in Los Angeles people talk about a media deal they’re “closing”, what TV star is at the party, and some “gray hat” spam-like technique that made them an extra 100K last month.

Folks in the Bay are generally way more obsessive about their products, work harder/longer, can be a bit snobby about their accomplishments and tend to be clique-ish.

Folks in Los Angeles are shrewder business people, have better interpersonal skills, but are more full of shit and two faced, and struggle to build products that get virally adopted.

Some of the Entrepreneurs in the Bay I’ve learned the most from are:
Greg Tseng – smartest person I’ve ever met about user viral marketing and A/B testing
Michael Arrington – undeniably the hardest worker, obsessive about his product and content
Mark Zuckerberg & Reid Hoffman – hands down built the two best consumer internet applications on the web
Raj Kapoor – a hawk about understanding the metrics that drive the growth of online communities

Some of the Entrepreneurs in Los Angeles I’ve learned the most from are:
Kamran Pourzanjani – best deal maker and negotiator in the web space I’ve met
Matt Coffin – guru at scalable revenue models and identifying and exploiting profit centers
Peter Pham – best networker / connector in web 2.0
Jason Calacanis – master promoter of online buzz / controversy
Michael Jones – most intuitively curious and overall talented web entrepreneur in LA

Other than just trying to piss a bunch of people off for hyper-generalizing, there is an important take-away.

The next few years will be an economic apocalypse the likes of which most of us have never lived through before. Many are going to get washed away in the storm, while others will show their true colors and rise to the cream of the crop.

In order to succeed in the future, web entrepreneurs will have to learn how to incorporate the DNA of both Silicon Valley and Los Angeles.

The goal is to be monetization masters who are focused on consumers and build viral, capital efficient products, and to leave behind the full of shit, spam artists who are snobby about not making money.

Bestcovery, a new venture by Kamran Pourzanjani the co-founder and former CEO of PriceGrabber, was announced today on TechCrunch.

Kamran is one of the investors in docstoc and I’ve got to know him well and consider him a dear friend. I dig his concept of helping consumers find the best products through experts driven reviews. In this, he’s bucking the trend of “crowd sourcing” and simplifying a complicated process by letting us rely on a single trusted source.

I’m definetly an information junkie, but I like the idea of quickly finding the best products without much hassle. I’ve been looking for a potential TV purchase i may have to go with this Best Plasma TV.

I’ve included his press release here.

Bestcovery Launch Press Release – Get more Docstoc Buzz

In light of all the recent economic events, many investors and venture capital firms have been sending warnings out to their portfolio companies about the difficulties that lie ahead. They have been advising entrepreneurs about the need to conserve cash and start making money as soon as possible. This presentation has been flying around the internet: Sequoia Venture Capital Warning to CEOs and Michael Arrington has been covering the topic at TechCrunch.

Sequoia Venture Capital Warning to CEOs – Get more Business Plans

So of course it didn’t take long for some folks to start lampooning the situation. This morning I was reading Matt Marron’s blog and I saw that he had uploaded a spoof VC presentation to docstoc, and embeded it in his blog, making fun of the presentation above. I think I may have pitched a few firms like “Whiner Jerkins”.

Whiner Jerkins All Hands 10/13/08 – Free Legal Forms

The author of the slidedeck takes a shot at Seesmic which I happen to like a lot and their founder Loic Le Muir. Nonetheless, funny presentation.

I’ve been getting a lot of requests lately from local aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners to get together. Since I’m running my own startup, I haven’t been able to respond as fast as I would like for all the meeting requests. So I’d like to try something new.

I’m inviting you to join me for dinner at our new docstoc office. I’ll provide the location and the food for everyone, and save my evening to help however I can. I’m happy to answer any questions or give feedback related to How to Raise Money, Marketing, Sales, Launching your Product, Writing a Business Plan, Getting Customers/Users, or any other topic where I might be able to provide some value.

I’d like to cap this first dinner at 25 folks. Here are the details:

Monday October 20th

7:30pm at Docstoc.com

1317 5th Street suite 300

Santa Monica CA 90401

If you’d like to attend please leave a comment below, and I’ll save a space for you.

I look forward to seeing you all soon, Jason.

Tonight was the Vice Presidential Debate for the 2008 Presidential Ticket between Senator Joseph Biden and Govenor Sarah Palin. Their performance aside, here are the Top 15 Presidential Debate Moments of the television recording era.

Top 15 Presidential Debate Moments – Get more Docstoc Buzz

A collection of Hollywood A-Listers show up to say Don’t Vote in reverse psychology 101 For my money, the best PSA I’ve ever seen (even slightly beats out “this is your brain on drugs”).

Common Excuses Why People Don’t Vote

Common Excuses Why People Don’t Vote – Get more Docstoc Buzz

Sarah Palin Swimsuit Contest? Yep, this could very well be the next President of the United States of America (oh jee gosh golly well). Here are Sarah Palin Swimsuit Photos.

I recently came across Andy Baio and his blog Waxy. You can see the full video of Sarah Palin in her Ms. Alaska swimsuit contest here.

On a related note, my best friend Ben Gleib recently wrote a letter to Senator Obama on how to handle the financial crisis (oddly enough he was in an orange one piece swimsuit when he wrote it as well). Here were his thoughts on how leadership can get us out of our current crisis.

Senator Obama, Please Lead Us Now – Get more Docstoc Buzz

The financial crisis in the US is going to get worse, much worse. The current crisis is largely due to the fact that there has been too much liquidity in the market. Basically the cost of money has been too cheap for too long, and that has lead to the overvaluing of assets and a mass speculation that perpetual growth is a replacement for sound business principles.

More simply, EVERYONE got greedy because they had access to so much money that didn’t have to get paid back for a long time, and when it did have to get paid back it was at historically low interest rates. This fueled a much larger underlying issue our country has been facing for the last 3 decades, the dollar is not longer tied to the gold standard. This means that the government literally prints more money as it “needs it”.

The largest danger to the US is not terrorism, its our economic policy, and we are all unfortunately in for a rough time ahead. I’ve only heard one public figure speak with any clarity, moral authority, and common sense. Ron Paul may not be on the presidential ticket anymore, but he is a lone voice in a sea of morons, cowards, lemmings, and apathetic bystanders.

I’ll write much more on the issue but for now, this is the most important video I can share and our friend Ron explains it much better than I can.