AnyClip’s Open Letter to Hollywood

At startups, strategies evolve.  So do their entrepreneurs
Only 6 months ago, I became the CEO of a startup called PopTok, a company that had some interesting insights about the film business, but a strategy that would not work.  AnyClip was born from the vestiges of this company and we swiftly adopted the idea that we [...]

Why the World (Including Hollywood) Needs AnyClip

Movies are the world’s most influential communication medium.   They catalyze conversation in countries all over the world.  Films teach history, tell stories, and make people laugh until their bellies and faces ache.  Moving pictures are for the young, old, rich, poor, educated, and the illiterate.
Etched in each moviegoer’s memory is a panoply of great scenes [...]

Entrepreneurial Lessons from David Ben Gurion

Three weeks ago, I visited David Ben Gurion’s grave.  Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, chose to be buried near his retirement home on S’de Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev  — a beautiful, desolate endless stretch of rocky hills and sand.  His final resting place overlooks a Grand Canyonesque valley facing a great expanse [...]

The AnyClip Plot

Imagine a web service where you can find every moment of every film in pristine quality.  You can search by dialogue, tag, actor, or any possible data source you can name.  You can cut any moment of less than 2 minutes and post it, send it, tweet it to anybody anywhere in the world.
You can [...]

Welcoming Nate Westheimer

I’m excited to announce that Nate has joined our new company AnyClip as the VP of Product.  He has posted a great account of how he and I have come to work together and you should definitely read it here.  Nate is one of the NY tech scene’s favorite people, but I’m making a big [...]

Thoughts on the StockTwits Deal

Full disclosure:  I’m not a user of stocktwits and spend very little of my personal energy thinking about stocks.  I do spend a considerable time with twiiter and even more time with some of stocktwit’s investors.  I think about startups quite a bit.
Stocktwits is interesting to me because they put together a Series A financing [...]

Scott Rafer and Rafernomics

Sunday morning and I’m on my third cup of coffee and finally ready to make sense of my hour and a half with Scott Rafer.  Rafery and I have many intersecting paths.  His current partner David Cancel and I worked together 12 years ago.  Many of his investors (First Round, Betaworks etc) have been my [...]

Venture Capital Notes 12/08

All week I’ve met with different investors (angel and institutional), entrepreneurs, and bankers and wanted to summarize my notes for the community.  Much of the information is hearsay from reliable sources, none of whom can be named.
1.  Companies are finding very little success with venture firms and are trying to appeal to large angel syndicates [...]

50 angels in a room

I am sitting in a room listening to high powered startups present to a room full of angel Investors. Standing room only. This is the second time this week when I’ve witnessed positive energy in the early stage market. I don’t have data on how people are investin capital. Maybe all [...]

Coolest Company in the World

This week, Better Place cut a $1bn dollar deal to bring electric car charging stations to the San Francisco area.  Better Place is without question, the most ambitious startup to ever come out of Israel and perhaps the company that has the best chance of restructuring the automobile industry in the next 5 years.

Better Place [...]