“I am a slacker baby, so why dont you kill me?”

Ok, I am paraphrasing Beck, but I havent written this post in a couple of weeks. Yes, I am a slacker. To make up for it, I got several:

Announcing the iWear Fund - Brad is a funny guy. Sometimes.

Frontier Airlines, The Greyhound of the Sky - My friend Matt wrote this long before Frontier declared bankruptcy. It seems that their customer service backruptcy finally met their financial bankruptcy. I hate that airline with a passion. True story: Met a woman at a club and everything was going extrememly well (read: Micah was going to get some!) until she told me she was a flight attendant for Frontier. After a quick diatribe on why I hate that airline, her interest waned. C’mon, like there is any wonder as to why I am still single?

I drink Mahalo’s Milkshake - Christina, who literally disappears, except for her boobs, when she turns sideways, pounds a milkshake in a clear pander to be considered to be the co-host of Mahalo Daily now that Veronica Belmont is leaving. Personally, her intelligence, energy and humor should make it a slam dunk, but we are talking about Jason Calacanis after all…

Tango Blue - I have had the pleasure to get to know Paul, who is a member of Lijit’s board, and a long time friend and collegue of our CEO, Todd Vernon. So much about whats written on startups is in the kumbyah beginning stages, that its often hard to think about what happens if you are flat out wrong. Paul writes a post here about the thought process behind pulling the plug on the Zenie Bottle. Read it. Its that good.

Australia’s Powerhouse Museum Joins the Flickr Commons Project - Justin helped bring all the Library of Congress pictures into the Flickr fold, and they are awesome. I expect these to be equally amazing. Nice catch, Justin.

Venture Files Joins Technosailor - Aaron and Steve Fisher (who I hope to get to know one day) have pulled Venture Files into Aaron’s Technosailor blog. Some great stuff there, and, of course, completely searchable through the Lijit widget Aaron has installed. Yes, that was a double plug. Learn it. Love it. Live it.

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When I decided to sell my company, I began to think about things I could get involved with in the local tech community. After meeting with my friend Danny Newman, he talked about his involvement with TechStars.

Bet you cant guess which one Danny Newman is (If you guessed raggedy hipster with the bad hair, you would be correct):

So, over the past year, I plotted ways to get involved. I emailed David Cohen. I went to go work for Lijit. I even moved to Boulder. And for all my work, I got a piddly little mention on the TechStars mentor page.

Still not satisfied, I, along with Danny, decided we would apply to TechStars. We spent the better part of a year building out our idea, and crafting our application. We used fake names to not sway David’s decision, becuase clearly, he hates the Jews. (Or at least dont think Danny and I were serious, but hating the Jews sounds so much better). So, here is the application, in its entirity. Trust me, most of its true.

What’s your name?

Gabriel Vincent (Danny and my middle names)

What’s your email address?

vingab81@gmail.com (an actual email address - try it)

What’s your phone number?

720-273-1008 (an actual phone number)

Where is your team based, geographically?

Boulder, CO (an actual city)

What will the name of your company be?

RolLast (an actual name, seriously. The Web 2.0 Name Generator told me so.)

If you have a web site, what’s the URL?

http://N/A (we are actually not working on it.)

What will your company do or make?

We developed a mobile technology for the creating, sending and sharing of video. In essence, we are an aggregator of mobile video, creating multiple distribution channels through enabling mobile publishers. Because of the distribution channel, we are able to generate multiple views of specific videos quickly creating a viral effect lifting most videos to 2-3x of views.

What’s new, interesting, or different about what your company will do?

Because of the viral nature of our application and distribution network, we are able to drive multiple views quickly. For example, we recently worked with Crispin, Porter & Bosteky to drive mobile usage and views of their No Whopper campaign for Burger King, making it one of the most viewed mobile videos ever.

Have you already taken any outside investment? Please describe if so.

No. Everything we have done to date is organic.

Explain how the company will make money.

We can get corporate and agency clients to pay for the creation and distribution of the mobile videos. With 5-6 clients now, we are nearing profitability. We believe we can take our concept to the mass market, and succeed where others have failed.

Tell us about each founder (include their role, skills, education level, schools, past companies, etc

Gabriel Vincent - CEO, Graduated top 5% from MIT in Computer Science. This is really his first project, beyond smaller efforts in other companies.

Heather Stranske - COO, Graduated from CU with a finance degree. She has worked for several large companies, such as IBM and SUN locally in their finance departments.

Ben Greeson - CTO, Bron in Greeley, graduated from Berkeley. Co-wrote two books on Ruby on Rails, considered one of the top open source developers in Colorado.

If you or any of your team members have built cool stuff on the web, please provide the URLs:

Small project Vince and Ben worked on: http://tinyurl.com/229sh5

Can each of the founders come to Boulder, Colorado for the summer of 2008? If not, please elaborate.

yes.

Why should we choose your company?

We are dedicated to being successful. Our feeling is that with the connections and the focus TechStars provides, it will enable us to take our idea to the next level and truly be something special.

And what does all that work get us?

Status:        Rejected

I guess, David is going to miss out on two wild and crazy guys, but have 10 awesome teams that have been truly vetted and screened. Based on last year’s crop, I am expecting this year to blow them out of the water, and more importantly, for TechStars to have improved equally, providing additional value over last year’s program.

After all, if RolLast didnt make it, then someone is doing their job. Good Luck TechStars 2008 teams!

Because thats how important it is.

I started this blog about a year ago. It say dormant for many a month, and then about six months ago, I started to get serious about blogging. What I found as I began to write and got more involved in the social communities created through writing and sharing (such as Twitter), that the people in those communities are pretty amazing.

I watched Fred Wilson, a Venture Capitalist in New York dominate a Donor’s Choose Challenge, where he was able to get a large number of his community to donate to schools all over the country, and provide one person a seat at lunch with Jerry Yang.

And now my friend Erin, who is a big part of the BlogHer community, has brought another effort to the table. The BlogHer community is asking a simple question: How many women’s lives can we save with donations from the BlogHer community, between now and Mother’s Day?

That post tells you how you can get involved. And here is what they are raising money for: BlogHer on GlobalGiving.

Now there are lots of other cool things you can do. You can add a widget to your blog, you can spread the word, and of course, you can give.

Just do something. It certainly doesnt have to be this, but if you dont get involved with some community, you arent really a blogger. A year of doing this has at least taught me that.

Now, I am going to sleep, and I hope the sickness gods decide to leave me be by the time I wake up or I might have to club a baby seal.