“They say there are no atheists in foxholes.   Perhaps, then, there are also no libertarians in financial crises.”

Quote of the Day

Were the financial crisis to end today, the costs would be painful but manageable.... Unfortunately, however, the financial crisis is far from over, and it is hard to imagine how the US government is going to succeed in creating a firewall against further contagion without spending five to 10 times more than it has already, that is, an amount closer to $1,000bn to $2,000bn.....

It is hard to predict exactly how and when the mega-bail-out will evolve. At some point, we are likely to see a broadening and deepening of deposit insurance, much as the UK did in the case of Northern Rock. Probably, at some point, the government will aim to have a better established algorithm for making bridge loans and for triggering the effective liquidation of troubled firms and assets, although the task is far more difficult than was the case in the 1980s, when the Resolution Trust Corporation was formed to help clean up the saving and loan mess.

Of course, there also needs to be better regulation. It is incredible that the transparency-challenged credit default swap market was allowed to swell to a notional value of $6,200bn during 2008 even as it became obvious that any collapse of this market could lead to an even bigger mess than the fallout from subprime mortgage debt.

It may prove to be possible to fix the system for far less than $1,000bn- $2,000bn. The tough stance taken by regulators this past weekend with the investment banks Lehman and Merrill Lynch certainly helps.

Yet I fear that the American political system will ultimately drive the cost of saving the financial system well up into that higher territory.

naked capitalism: The Great Unwind Has Begun

START Atlanta Kick-Off Agenda

Date: September 19-21

Friday:

· 6:30pm: Networking

· 7:00pm: Keynote Introduction of START Atlanta and kick off

· Give an overview of the vision and value proposition

· Munchies and refreshments will be provided by Angus McRae & Peak 10

· 7:15pm: Break Outs

· Entrepreneurs (discuss need and functions)

· Investors (discuss need and functions)

· 9pm: Break outs return and present needs assessment to entire group.

· 9:30pm: Open Discussion regarding functions of START Atlanta

· 10:30pm: Select group will meet to begin to design wireframe

Saturday:

· 9 am: Work starts. Munchies and Coffee will be provided by Angus McRae & Peak 10

· 9 am: Business Development – Creating business plan, goals and objectives for year 1

· 9:30 am: Start the process of creating user flows.

· 12 pm: Lunch.

· 1 pm: Coding

· 4 pm: status meeting

· 6 pm: Coding, Coding and Coding

· 9 pm: Close up at the office and a group get-together for drinks and to talk about the products everyone is working on (location TBD).

Sunday

· 9am: Work Starts. Breakfast and coffee will be provided by Angus McRae & Peak 10

· 9:30 am: Quick review of goals and deadlines

· 12pm: Alpha Testing

· 3 pm status meeting

· 6pm: Sink or Swim for Weekend launch

· 9pm: Close of weekend

Its kinda of like a startup commune, kinda.

START Atlanta | Fostering the Atlanta Early-Stage Technology Community

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., whose insurance fund has slipped below the minimum target level set by Congress, could be forced to tap tax dollars through a Treasury Department loan if Washington Mutual Inc., the nation's largest thrift, or another struggling rival fails, economists and industry analysts said Tuesday.

The FDIC needs cash. Fuck.

The Associated Press: Federal bank insurance fund dwindling

Companies that participate in START Atlanta will have to network online and attend various offline events to interact with each other and investors. The companies will have access to online resources, peer knowledge, and tools to help them succeed. Investors will have the ability to invest in small amounts with collaborative results, and the ability to research and track their investments' milestones.
Alan Pinstein, another START Atlanta co-founder added "For any community, you get what you put into it. The goal of this non-profit is to grow and foster the local startup community. We want to show that you can hit home runs in Atlanta if you have an idea, a team, funding and a supportive community."

START Atlanta will begin with a kickoff event the weekend of September 19th to gauge the needs from both entrepreneurs and investors. START Atlanta is anticipating around 45-50 people at the event made up of entrepreneurs, lawyers, developers, designers, investors, and anyone else interested in the success and growth of the Atlanta Startup Community. Please refer to www.startatlanta.org for information, schedules and registration details.

bigPicture: START Atlanta helps to launch new technology businesses - the bigWebApps blog

Why choose A Small Orange?

There are plenty of other web design firms, so why should you go with us? Mastering the art of web design involves worrying about the details. For example, does the website have clear navigation and structure? Does it load quickly for those with slow connections? Does it meet web standards and is it optimized for search engines such as Google? Is it accessible across various browsers, operating systems, and computers?

Those questions might seem a bit overwhelming. After all, you have bigger things to worry about than whether or not your site looks good in Safari on Apple machines. Let us take care of the details. We'll use our expertise to build you a website that exhibits both substance and style... and is sure to make your visitors (a.k.a. potential customers) stick around.

Haven't used these guys, but am thinking about it and I do recommend them as they are local to the ATL and their portfolio is diverse and impressive.

A Small Orange Web Design - Elegant, Effective Websites

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As readers of this Open Forum blog, I want you to be open to another way. I call this Plan B. In this plan, you take very little if any venture capital until you need capital to expand, not create, your product. Here’s how it works:

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Step 1: You dig, scratch, and claw yourself to $100,000 of funds from your friends and family. Maybe you work as a YCombinator company. You take no salary. You live with your parents, and you keep your day job at Microsoft. You hope your spouse doesn’t get laid off. You have no office, but work virtually and meet your co-founders at Starbucks if you have to. Everything you use is Open Source or shareware.
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Step 2: Rather than trying to boil the ocean (”the mobile sector”), you boil a tea kettle. Rather than paying to attend high-end conferences, you hang out in the lobbies of the hotels where the events are and meet the same people for free. Rather than hiring a PR firm, you suck up to bloggers and hope they cover your product. Rather than buying booth space, you get on Twitter and use it to gain a reputation for your product.
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Step 3: You’re late with your product too (because everyone is late), but you’re not burning $250,000/month, and you don’t have to tell increasingly greater lies at monthly board meetings. Finally, you release your prototype. TechCrunch covers your release because you wrote Mike Arrington a compelling one-paragraph message that you sent on a Friday afternoon because you know he reads email on weekends.
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Step 4: This is where the miracle occurs–lo and behold, people like your product. (Truly, miracles have to occur whether you’re bootstrapping or venture-capital funded. It’s just that if you’re bootstrapping, there’s more time for the miracle to happen, and a smaller miracle suffices.) Month to month, you’re showing 10-15% growth, and monetization, praise God, has started.
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Step 5: Now you have options. First, you can contact venture capitalists with a company that’s already shipping to raise capital to expand your business. This is a very different discussion than raising capital to build a product. Second, you can continue to bootstrap and grow by using your cash flow. Three, you can pick up the phone and agree to meet with Google, Yahoo!, Fox Interactive, or any other company that has noticed you.

Plan B for Fund Raising

"Every deal will get seen by an angel investor in that sector and distributed. They won't screen it," says Blake, in the way that some deals are rejected based on the entrepreneur or other cursory judgments. "Every early-stage company will have their day in court."

"This will fundamentally change the way capital is raised in Atlanta," says Blake.

For a long time, the Atlanta Technology Angels kept early stage capital in Atlanta bottled up by serving as a firewall in between Angels and entrepreneurs. What they should have been doing is acting as a facilitator. As they were unwilling to change, Startup Lounge has stepped in to fix this problem.

With this development, the ATA is no longer relevant.

Catalyst: City of Angels by Collette McKenna Parker

The Venture Pipeline is a specific DLA Piper business unit, that is solely focused on helping emerging growth companies raise money. No other law firm has anything like it. Led by business professionals with experience in technology, start-ups and capital markets, the Group actively advises entrepreneurs on the business issues that matter to investors.

DLA Venture Pipeline | DLA Venture Pipeline

After watching #TC50 pitches - our new pitch "It's like taking a dump but for mortgages" ... Tired of the "like Google/Twitter" crap.

Quote of the day!

Twitter / jgombala: After watching #TC50 pitche...