I posted the other day about holding an “open office hours” session at AlphaLab, and that happened yesterday and was a great success. I met with three local Pittsburgh entrepreneurs, two of whom I had met but not spent any significant time with, and one whom I had never met before. The interaction was great, [...]
I am a big believer in building the entrepreneurial ecosystem here in Pittsburgh, and of building my people network.
I have to make a trip out to AlphaLab later this week, and I decided to do something fun in conjunction with that trip. I am going to hold some “Open Office Hours” at AlphaLab for anyone [...]
Jon Cavell, aka the famous @BurgherJon, follows up to a post I made yesterday about the difference between accelerators and incubators:
@aveeck a follow up to your post this morning, how does the rise of accelerators impact the VC process? #AskTheVC
I think the proliferation of accelerators is a great boon to the entire startup economy, and hence to [...]
The first Ask The VC question of 2011 comes from fellow Pittsburgh blogger Jon Cavell: “BurgherJon: @aveeck Ask the VC: What role does place/location (city, state, country) play in a VC’s decision processes?”
Short answer: unlike in real estate (location, location, location…) the location of a startup is far from being a large factor (increasingly so [...]
As a VC in Pittsburgh I have gotten to be good at spotting buzzwords that make for bad investments. Here is a short sampling of my current list (believe me, the real list is much longer):
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Neural Networks
Cluster Analysis
Fuzzy Logic
Non-parametric Modeling
Tree Regression
Bayesian Networks
I have an aneurysm anytime I see these words independently, or yikes! – in [...]
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Today is Google Day in Pittsburgh – and I am doing my part by VOTING to bring ultra-broadband to Pittsburgh. I also passed an invitation to Google Voice along to a partner – what the hell are you doing?
So today is the first of two GOO* FRIDAYs – GOOG FRIDAY, next week being [...]
For investors who are brave enough to challenge the conventional wisdom that all of the good ideas are in Silicon Valley, the current supply/demand imbalance of early stage capital may present a window of opportunity in Pittsburgh.
Having likely raised much more equity from angel investors than anyone else in the Pittsburgh region, Mel Pirchesky, President of Eagle Ventures, is a long-time Pittsburgh entrepreneur. He’s raised over $60 million of equity for more than 30 deals from individuals located mostly in the Pittsburgh region. He completed a $9 million financing [...]
I have written a bit before about business accelerators, and I sit on the board of a local accelerator here in Pittsburgh called AlphaLab. There is a pretty significant national trend afoot right now for every town to put up their own accelerator, and you are seeing them pop up everywhere. I think this is [...]
In the past week, I attended two events where I had to evaluate startup pitches delivered to investors: a boot camp for the upcoming 3RVF conference in Pittsburgh, and the interim demo day at AlphaLab. Both events were dry-run practice sessions so that presenting companies could be more polished when they were actually on the [...]