Ron Wiener’s Top Ten Tips for Funding a Start-up Company

I caught an article in the Special Financial Report of INC. last month and there was a nice bit of detial on the VC community and a special highlight for the Atlanta Angel / VC market – always nice to see the South East’s Silicon Valley is still getting good press!  As I am actively involved these days in start-ups and fundraising, I am always on the prowl for tools to make my efforts more successful.  In the article there was mention of Ron Weiner’s post on how to get funding.  A minor bit of Googling took me to his home site here.

Overall I thought he had good tips.  I felt that they were a bit to high level and generic, but definitely great primers to give people something to think about when going through the process.  I personally was looking for my tactical tips – i.e., “when giving a presentation have 10 PPT slides covering XYZ“, or other such specifics.  Having been in the hot seat a number of times I can vouch that passion and the moment can take over and without strict bumpers (think bowling bumpers) one can easily stray and damage their ability to communicate.

Nonetheless – check it out, absorb it, and keep innovating.  Thoughts?  Great additional resources?

James DeLuccia IV

Great cappuccinno in Downtown Atlanta: Octane Coffee!

Headed to see Charles Prince of Oracle and talk about the opportunities in Cloud computing, and found this great coffee shop. I am crazy about coffee and love perfect foam. This place is excellent. Parking is terrible; Atlanta downtown is pretty dodgy with bums and such – but it is worth it.

Best part – everyone is brainstorming and creating – great vibe for thinking through exciting ideas!

If you are in the area check it out.

Octane Coffee Bar & Lounge
www.octanecoffee.com

1009 Marietta St NW
Atlanta, GA 30318
(404) 815-9886
Get directions

Amazon Kindle 2 Good got Better?

Amazon Kindle 2 Review as compared to that of Kindle 1.o

I have used the Amazon Kindle (now officially verrsion 1.o) and loved it.  My major gripes were the lack of definite support for PDF files and the huge buttons caused me to inadvertently move forward and backwards in what I was reading.  So – the new one has smaller buttons, longer battery (presumably), and better screen (presumably).  The facts are this for all those out there:

I read a Kindle for over 20 hours on a necessary road trip dealing with shadows, rain, sun, and a tap-tap-gas-gas-brake-brake driver and never had eye fatigue.  I read hundreds of pages of PDF documents – government documents, whitepapers from colleagues, and the necessary product spec guide.  The idea of sliming down my bag AND being more green is superb.  To top it off – I was about to buy one for $400 online – so a new one for $40 cheaper is a steal.

Let me know your thoughts when you get it hands on.

James DeLuccia

Java SDK 1.6 on OS X

Hell of an adventure I had today with my newest venture. The short story:

My user client is built on Java (1.6) and is compatible with, basically, everything. So, when after I downloaded the client and tried to launch it within Apple’s latest OS creation I was bummed to see it fail. After a bit of banging away I realized that there was an update released in September of 2008. So, I go online and begin the 136 meg download from Starbucks.

I discovered during the download this site.
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/arungupta/archive/2008/04/java_se_6_u5_on.html

The simple solution is the following:

• If you want to have JDK 1.6 on your Mac then go to this directory:
• /Applications/Utilities/Java/Java Preferences.app/Contents/MacOS
  • and run “./Java\ Preferences” (without quotes)
• drag’n'drop JAVA SE 6 to the top of the “Application list”
• Done – that is it.

At the console type “java -version” to confirm.

Happy Javaing…

James DeLuccia