We still love startups

I've always liked looking at new ideas and companies early (or way too early, as this blog's title notes). And I'm pleased to say that the economic turmoil has not dampened my enthusiasm, nor that of my partners at First Round Capital, nor that of other early stage players such as New York's Betaworks.

I attended a wonderful afternoon of presentations by 16 Betaworks companies, some, such as Twitter (which bought the Betawork's backed Summize, now search.twitter.com ), that are well known, and others just appearing for the first time. Some that First Round had passed on, though we loved the product, e.g, Someecards.com - a great site.

And now, I'm pleased to let you know that our San Francisco based folks (Rob Hayes, Christine Herron and Kent Goldman), are going to hold "office hours" at the University Cafe in Palo Alto on Tuesday, October 21st from 11-1. They'll listen to new ideas and talk about the economic climate.  More details from the creator at Kent Goldman's Cornice blog, and an RSVP link on Christine's blog.

Comments

[Esfandiar]

I hear about good VC's holding more casual office hours such as this. IMHO for a good reason to,

http://downturnandstartups.blogspot.com/

It'd be nice to know the degree of follow up and effectiveness of this approach.

[Khamphan]

After becoming adceitdd to Cohuman, convincing several of my company co-workers to use it, and instructing my employees to use it I was very disappointed when the plans were to sell and discontinue. I tried the export features into Manymoon and found them unsuccessful as they carried very little information forward. After hours and hours of copying tasks into Manymoon, I am now reluctant to come back to Cohuman (even though I loved the program much more than MM) because I do not want to have to spend more hours transferring data only to have some announcement come out again that CoHuman is discontinuing. Is there any assurance you can give us this time that our loyalty (and hours spent transferring tasks) in coming back and continuing to hail your program will not be all in vain this time?