Open source developer objects to news hackathon’s 11-page contract

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Seattle developer Jeff Reifman was looking forward to participating in this weekend’s Hacking Seattle News contest, a three-day hackathon sponsored by Seattle TV station KING 5 in which geeks, news junkies and designers look to transform the way people consume and distribute local news. But Reifman, a former Microsoft employee who operates the open source… Read More…

Practical Nerd: Survival tips for Startup Weekend EDU

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I was a first-time mentor at a Startup Weekend recently and, appropriate to my day job, it was focused on education technology. This Startup Weekend Seattle EDU was only the third time a Startup Weekend was dedicated to turning entrepreneurs loose for an entire 54 hours to innovate in education (the first two were in… Read More…

Mitch Kapor: It’s a great time to start a company, but still really tough to reach ‘high altitudes’

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It may be easier than ever to build a new startup company. But it is still exceptionally hard to reach the upper altitudes of success. That was the advice from Mitch Kapor, the New York-born entrepreneur and venture capitalist who addressed attendees as part of the closing session of Startup Weekend EDU last night in… Read More…

Vinod Khosla on failure, thinking big and why the best entrepreneurs are under 25

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Don’t call Vinod Khosla a venture capitalist. After all, the venerable Silicon Valley investor, entrepreneur and philanthropist doesn’t really have the best opinion of those who invest other people’s money in startups. “I refuse to call myself a venture capitalist, and it pisses off most venture capitalists,” said Khosla, speaking at the kick-off event for… Read More…

Vinod Khosla invests in Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund

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At a talk this evening on the University of Washington campus, it didn’t take long for Michael Arrington to break some news about his newly-formed venture capital fund, CrunchFund. Arrington was interviewing notable venture capitalist Vinod Khosla as the kick off for Startup Weekend EDU when the outspoken TechCrunch founder — wearing his green Unpaid… Read More…

Seattle animation startup launches with first project, a Startup Foundation animation

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A new startup specializing in explanatory animated videos is launching in Seattle this week — and for a group of people taking the entrepreneurial plunge, it would be hard to imagine a more appropriate first project than this video. The startup, called What Now? Exactly! made this animation for the formal debut this week of… Read More…

Greg Gottesman, Brad Feld and others join board of Startup Weekend

Greg Gottesman at Startup Weekend

Startup Weekend, the Seattle-based non profit which coordinates 54-hour startup marathons at locations across the globe, has formed a new board with leading venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and execs from the Kauffman Foundation. New members include Carl Schramm, CEO of The Kauffman Foundation;  Steve Blank, an entrepreneur and professor at Stanford and Berkeley;  Greg Gottesman, managing director… Read More…

Practical Nerd: Irresistible startups, immovable education

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I’ve advised a number of startups over the years and have been directly part of at least two. I discovered what many entrepreneurs know: it’s a maddening, exhausting, adrenaline-filled, glorious existence in which there’s never enough time, resources, sleep or toilet paper (when I was at iCopyright we brought our own). So when I heard there… Read More…

How do we make the Seattle startup ecosystem stronger?

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Leaders from the Seattle technology community gathered in the basement of TechStars on Tuesday night to discuss ways to strengthen the startup ecosystem and make it easier for entrepreneurs to build their companies here. Organized by Startup Weekend’s Jennifer Cabala, the brainstorming session was one of the first steps in an effort backed by the… Read More…

Startup Labs to bankroll best and brightest from Startup Weekend

Clint Nelsen

It can be downright inspiring watching ideas percolate at Startup Weekend – the 54-hour coding marathon where developers, artists, attorneys, VCs and startup geeks from around the world try to build new companies at hyperspeed. But, oftentimes, come Sunday night after the final presentations are made and the last cans of soda pop are consumed,… Read More…