Invite: LAUNCH Hackathon, This Week in Startups Live! Boston

1. We're hosting the world's largest Hackathon, November 8th-10th in San Francisco. Over 1,000 verified developers will be there (600 have been confirmed already, 400 left).

Apply: http://hackathon.launch.co

2. The LAUNCH Fund will be investing $50k in each of two of the top 10 projects. Those two projects will also be shared with my AngelList Syndicate, making the investment $800k in each. So, we now have the world's largest investment prize (by a factor of 20x+) at $1.6M!

3. I'll also be interviewing Kevin Rose (Digg, Google Ventures), and two other awesome visionaries (suggestions welcome).

best
@jason

PS - A quick recap of the LAUNCH Mobile & Wearables event last week (300+ founders & investors came): http://blog.launch.co/blog/launch-mobile-wearables-wrap-up.html

PPS - Had a great interview with Steve Jurvetson last week: http://youtu.be/O2tK0Wl2F8w

PPPS - My new startup Inside.com will launch in November and I'm looking for 500 beta testers now: http://inside.com.

PPPPS - Will be in Boston this Friday to interview Bill Warner: http://twistliveboston.eventbrite.com

PPPPPS - LAUNCH Festival has a stretch goal of 8k attendees (we hit 6k last year!), and you need to be there.  Visit http://events.launch.co/builder for a free founder ticket. They will run out quickly!

LAUNCH Mobile & Wearables Wrap-Up

 Jason Calacanis in conversation with Sean Rad (Tinder). Photo: Mark Rahmani

Thank you for attending LAUNCH Mobile & Wearables. Your energy and enthusiasm made it a success and we have some information for you:

1. Company Demos

9 companies debuted their new products on the Mobile & Wearables stage, for an opportunity at a $100k investment prize from The LAUNCH Fund.  The 10 judges voted on their favorites (and to keep the playing ground level, @jason did not vote). The winners are:

1. MyTime

2. SoundHound

3. Zepp Labs

In addition, judge and TenOneTen Managing Partner David Waxman selected 3 companies with debuts, and an additional presenting company, for consideration to receive an additional $50k investment.  They are (in no particular order):

• Zepp Labs

• MyTime

• Beddit

• Tile (presenting company)

The remaining 6 companies that launched products were:

• SoundHound

• Fatigue Science

• bassAware

• Promptly

• Kindred

• Impressed

Click to read more ...

The Great Venture Capital Rotation

[ You can tweet this piece here: http://clicktotweet.com/p4v25 ] 

A couple of years ago, I was chatting with a guy named Naval, who had a site called AngelList. He had a fiery passion for helping founders and an outsider’s chip on his shoulder.

He wasn’t taken very seriously in the industry, and the venture capitalists I spoke to dismissed him as somewhere between a loon and a jerk.

I literally heard a dozen VCs dismiss AngelList and Naval. They hated it. Some hated him. 

That’s when I knew he was going to change everything.

One VC you’ve never heard of famously deleted his AngelList account in a huff (http://jc.is/16JrZnC). 

[I wonder if that VC – who turns out to be a nice guy – will ever do a follow up post?] 

Naval wasn’t a loon or a jerk; he was just three years ahead of everyone in seeing the power of decentralized funding – and it scared the living sh@#$t out of VCs.

So the petty VCs – especially the ones taking 12 weeks vacation while collecting 3% management fees and showing up late for board meetings – did everything they could to deride him. 

Last week he opened up a radical new platform called “AngelList Syndicates.” 

It’s basically a “pop-up” VC fund. 

Here’s how it works:

1. A “power angel” with a solid track record, who provides massive value, invites other angels to piggyback on his or her deals. 

2. AngelList manages that process and takes a 5% ‘carry’ for doing so. 

3. The “power angel” then gets a 15% carry. 

[Note: a carry is a percentage of the upside. So, if you invested $10k as a syndicate and it turned into $100k, there would be a $90k gain. So, 5% of that gain ($4.5k) would go to AngelList and 15% of that gain ($13.5k) to the super angel. This is fairly standard, with the top firms / fund managers getting 30-35% carry after years of proving themselves.] 

Click to read more ...

LAUNCH's first fund, AngelList Syndicates & $100k prize for LAUNCH Mobile & Wearables

I’m super excited that I’ve closed my first formal angel investing fund: The LAUNCH Fund I. Additionally, I’ve started one of the first AngelList ‘Syndicates’ (more on that below).

The fund started when David Sacks and I each committed $250k over five years to the winners of the LAUNCH Festival, but it quickly grew to include a list of my good friends. On average, I’ve got 10-year (or longer) relationships with each of the members of the fund (we are leaving it up to the LPs to disclose that they’re in the fund, if they want to).

Over the next five years, we will invest $100-250k in 50-100 startups.

Next week, at the LAUNCH Mobile & Wearables event there will be a $100,000 ‘investment prize.’

[ Note: LAUNCH Mobile & Wearables is on Sept 30 & Oct 1st in San Francisco at the Metreon City View. A couple of tickets are left, use FOJ to get 20% off here: http://mobile.launch.co ]

What is an investment prize, you ask? Well, it’s a commitment from me to invest $100k in one of the startups there.

Of course, it’s not binding, as the startups need to want me as an investor, and we have to be able to come to terms, but I’m happy to say we came to terms with three of the winners from the LAUNCH Festival back in March 2013 (Wizzywig, AdStage and Boxbee).

At the LAUNCH Hackathon on November 8-10, I will be putting up another $100,000 ‘investment prize’ (at least). The hackathon is brought to you by the fine folks at Capital One, Yammer, Facebook, Parse, Pearson, Amazon & Google.

We already have over 300 developers signed up (we check their code on github – so no spectators!), and we think we’ll hit 1,000. If you want to help buy pizza or put up a prize for these fine folks hit reply and say ‘How can I help Jason?’

Also, our Hackathon will feature none of the offensive stuff that other hackathon recently had (read the gory details here: http://goo.gl/ZS7fxH).

Finally, I’m going to start syndicating my deals on AngelList.

So, if you missed being part of the LAUNCH Fund, you can simply follow me on AngelList and commit to putting $10k, or $25k, or whatever you want, alongside my investments. Of course, you (currently) have to be accredited and understand that investing in startups is a 90%+ exercise in failure, with the hopes of hitting an @uber once every 50 or 100 (which I was lucky enough to do!).

@jason on AngelList
https://angel.co/jason/syndicate  

all the best @jason

PS -- Had a great interview on This Week in Startups with Ben Milne, the founder of Dwolla. Watch it here: http://youtu.be/BFeSgN1cQhg.

PPS - The remaining list of folks we haven’t had on the show: @elonmusk, @mcuban, @marissamayer, @reidhoffman, @markpincus, @billgates, @stevecase, @edyson, @pmarca, @timarmstrongaol, @bhorowitz, @jeffweiner, @tferriss, @sherylsandberg and @finkd among many others. Feel free to encourage them to come on the show here: http://clicktotweet.com/4fe1U [ you can edit the tweet before it goes out ]

PPPS - Special thanks to the following for sponsoring the LAUNCH Mobile & Wearables event: Expedia,  HasOffers, Rackspace and Tandem.

PPPPS - LAUNCH co-working space has room for three more startups.
Please contact cowork@launch.co if you want to sit with me here in Culver City!

LAUNCH Mobile & Wearables is Approaching!

We’re just about two weeks away from the @LAUNCH Mobile & Wearables summit (Sept 30 and Oct 1, at the Metreon in San Francisco), and here’s some of what we have in store... 

1) 67 Incredible Speakers in 2 Awesome Formats:

Fireside Chats on the Main Stage

Here are some of the really great people who will be joining @jason onstage for fireside chats:

Dave Morin | Cofounder, CEO, Path (Oct 1)
Sean Rad | Founder, CEO, Tinder (Sept 30)
Tom Conrad | CTO, Pandora (Oct 1)
Chamath Palihapitiya | Founder, Managing Partner, Social + Capital Partnership (Oct 1)
Eric Migicovsky | Founder, CEO, Pebble (Sept 30)
Manish Jha | General Manager - Mobile, NFL (Oct 1)
Robert Occhialini | VP - Products, NBA Digital (Oct 1)

...and 22 more (see the full list here)

Power Lunches
Focused roundtable discussions, led by visionaries in the mobile space, including:

Jocelyn Mangan | VP, Consumer Product Management, OpenTable (Oct 1)
Dave Enberg | CTO Evernote (Sept 30)
Hicham Ratnani | Founder, CFO, Frank & Oak (Sept 30)

Alisa Gould-Simon | Cofounder, Pose (Sept 30)

Jeremy Wacksman | VP, Marketing & Mobile, Zillow (Oct 1)

Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen | Head of Mobile, Dropbox (Sept 30)
Michael Cerda | SVP, Product & Technology, VEVO (Oct 1)
...and 31 more (see the full list here)

2) Company and Product Debuts
10 companies will be launching brand new products on the main stage, with the opportunity to win a $100k investment prize from The LAUNCH Fund.

3) Continue the Conversation:

Dinner and cocktails, and a nightly poker tournament!

4) Thanks to our gracious partners helping us make this event happen:

* Xtreme Labs (http://xtremelabs.com)

* DYN (http://dyn.com)

* Expedia (http://expedia.com)

* Factual (http://factual.com)

* New Relic (http://newrelic.com)

* Tandem (http://tandemcap.com/)

There are still 2 partner spots remaining -- email partners@launch.co for more info.

There’s still time to get your ticket. Use the code ‘mobilerocks’ and receive a 20% discount on registration. Register here.

More info about the event on our website: http://mobile.launch.co