Welcome to Smuggle Me

Today I came across this new website. They sell VC shirts like this one:

I saw it and thought about Mark from YouBeTheVC since his focus has been nanotech.

On the YouBeTheVC note, I’m happy to say that I made it into the Top 100 semifinal round. Now I just need to clean up my business plan.

I must admit that over the past couple days I’d read references to Redeye VC’s post about Microsoft and Yahoo employees leaving. I thought it was an interesting experiment, but like he said it wasn’t scientific at all. It definitely classified solely as the interesting test and nothing more.

Well, it turns out that the experiment turned out to be very useful, but not for its intended purpose. Instead, it teaches a cruel lesson about how various online endeavors in this connected web 2.0 world can go terribly wrong. Take a look at the unintended consequences of what happened.

We’ll have to all keep our eyes open for times when unintended consequences affect someone else on the web. It’s a feature of a connected world and there’s really no turning back in many cases. All we can do is be open and honest about what happened and then move forward.

A couple more good VC readings that I’ve been enjoying of late. This is a pretty interesting blog and here’s a long list of article written by the amazing Paul Graham. I’m sure there are more so if you have any good suggestions, let me know.

A while back I ran across a blog called Credit Card VC. I thought they had an interesting concept on how you could create a business without having to go and get VC funding. I think a lot can be learned from this concept. I still think that the point is partially missed. This guy still needs some sort of funding to scale the business, but the point that for a relatively small amount of money you should be able to create a simplified version of your site and do a serious market test is a great concept. This is what I plan to do with my idea.