Directors chosen for state’s new venture capital fund

Enterprise Florida’s board has appointed five directors to head Florida Opportunity Fund

ORLANDO, FL (November 26, 2007) – The Enterprise Florida Board of Directors has announced its selection of five business leaders to serve as board members of the Florida Opportunity Fund, an outcome of this year’s Florida Capital Formation Act, which creates a platform for generating early stage capital and technology commercialization in Florida.

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A nonprofit corporation, Florida Opportunity Fund Inc. aims to grow the bank of venture capital statewide. “The intent is to get more venture capitalists to invest in Florida,” explained Louis Laubscher, senior vice president and COO of Enterprise Florida, which will provide administrative support to the Opportunity Fund. “The Fund will increase the availability of seed capital and early stage venture equity capital for investing in up-and-coming businesses. Not only will these organizations be key to the creation of new, high-value jobs, they’ll also enable a pool of funding for investments in seed capital and early stage venture capital funds that agree to invest in Florida.”

Here’s how:

* Venture capital funds will be able to request an investment from the Opportunity Fund.
* However, these firms must agree to match dollars the Opportunity Fund raises with private investment dollars as a minimum investment in Florida.
* Any venture capital firm receiving Opportunity Fund dollars must agree to invest that money plus its match into Florida businesses.
* Eligible venture capital firms must be based in Florida, have full time Florida staffing, and/or demonstrate a history of prior investment into Florida companies.

What this fund means: a 50/50 match by the state, when a Florida VC raises money for a Florida company.

Nice.

Florida :: Directors chosen for state’s new venture capital fund

Charlie Paparelli drew a huge huge crowd recently at ATDC where he spoke on how to get to a second investor meeting. Charlie entertained and spoke plainly about the most critical aspects to building a successful and fundable business. Charlie also shared his deep passion for entrepreneurship, quoting Shakespeare “to thine own self be-true.” He shared how Richard Brock brought him out of the boring world of being a CPA doing paid management work to his true passion of entrepreneurship. He encouraged all entrepreneurs in the group and applauded their efforts.

Peach Seedz: Hot Tips from an Angel

The book jacket of Colin MacKinnon’s Morning Spy, Evening Spy says the novel “holds its own with the best of John le Carré.” Lots of espionage thrillers are promoted as being like le Carré’s. And yes, MacKinnon’s novel is full of spies and foreign intrigue. But MacKinnon is no le Carré. And that’s just fine.

While le Carré’s novels are crammed with the atmospherics and tactics of British intelligence services, MacKinnon provides a good window into how the CIA operates. (In his author’s note, he thanks Gene Poteat and John Waller of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers “for our conversations about how spies live their lives.”) While le Carré’s best novels focus on the West’s war with the Soviet Union before 1991, MacKinnon—former director of the American Institute of Iranian Studies in Tehran—takes us from Washington into the center of today’s conflict in the Middle East, providing interesting insights into how and why 9/11 happened. And while le Carré’s novels can be dense and sometimes slow and hard to follow, MacKinnon’s writing is sharp and fast-moving.

I can't recommend this book enough - a spy novel from someone that can actually write.

Book Review - Morning Spy, Evening Spy By Colin MacKinnon (washingtonian.com)

The plot of "Morning Spy, Evening Spy" is incredibly complex, and the book's large cast is, at times, a bit unwieldy. However, the strength of the story lies in the MacKinnon's insightful exploration of several key themes: Why did America's intelligence community fail to thwart the 9/11 hijackers? Does the CIA's penchant for secrecy go so far that its policies actually harm the people whom they are sworn to protect? How does a CIA officer, who is forced to lie frequently and keep secrets from his colleagues and family, survive emotionally?

There is a telling passage in which Paul chats with his friend, a Pakistani journalist named Amjad Afridi. Afridi tells Paul what is wrong with the CIA: "I sometimes think that you cannot see the living, breathing reality in front of your faces or the dangers that lurk just off to the side..." Afridi believes that the American intelligence community is in a state of denial. Furthermore, Afridi insists, the failure of America's leaders to come to terms with the truth about Islam, terrorism, and their own mistakes and shortcomings will hurt them badly someday. These words prove to be eerily prescient. Colin Mackinnon's "Morning Spy, Evening Spy" is a powerful and stunning indictment of a bureaucracy that has outlived its usefulness and has not kept pace with a geopolitical climate that is irrevocably different from the one that prevailed during the cold war years.

I picked this up expecting a crap spy novel. It is so much more. A powerful book that will piss you off.

Amazon.com: Morning Spy, Evening Spy: Colin MacKinnon: Books

Cornhole, Corn Toss, Bags, Bean Bag Toss, Soft Horseshoes, Indiana Horseshoes, Tailgate Toss, Sacks and Holes, Sack-Hole, or Baggo is a game in which players take turns pitching small bags filled with corn (or sand or beans) at a raised platform with a hole in the far end. These platforms are usually plywood, sometimes plastic, and sometimes decorated. A corn bag in the hole scores 3 points, while one on the platform scores 1 point. Play continues until a player reaches the score of 21.

Regulation platforms measure 4 feet (1.2 m)×2 ft (0.6 m)[1], while standard tailgating platforms can measure 3 feet (0.9 m)×2 ft (0.6 m), but can vary. The height of the back end is 12 inches (30.5 centimeters) from the ground while the height of the front end can vary from 2½ to 4 inches. The Cornhole platforms are set 33ft from the inside edge of each hole (the 6" diameter holes are centered 9" in from the back) while the player can stand anywhere from no further than the back of the platform but not any closer than the front of the platform. Additionally, there must be a 12ft vertical clearance above the playing area.

I played cornhole in East Atlanta today for three hours. In the blazing heat, sucking down PBR. Cornhole is one of the few games where you never have to set down your beer.

This is seriously, hands down... one of the funnest games I have ever played.

Cornhole (game) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Entrepreneurs Foundation of the Southeast, Inc. (EFSE) is a nonprofit organization comprised of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investment bankers, accountants, attorneys, bankers, consultants, corporate leaders and public relations and marketing firms who have come together to encourage entrepreneurs and their companies to support community needs.

The mission of EFSE is to continuously improve the quality of our communities by applying the energy, innovation, resources and wealth of entrepreneurial companies and their employees to support community needs. EFSE addresses the two resource constraints that early-stage companies face when evaluating their community involvement plans: lack of cash and lack of time. We are creating the critical link between entrepreneurial companies and their communities by providing innovative volunteer and fund raising programs.

// EFSE : About Us

Angel Investor Best Practices

I came across this 200-page document today which is a very detailed manual of best practices complete with a glossary written by and for angel investors. It's not only great reading for those who are new to angel investing, but it's must read for any entrepreneur looking to raise angel money. Why? Well it's always helpful to put yourself in other's shoes to see what they're trying to achieve and when it comes to angels, there's no better way to get into their shoes than to read this.

Altgate: Angel Investor Best Practices

How It Works
Faster. Easier. Better.

LenderFlex® puts up-to-the-minute loan pricing at your fingertips, enabling you to quickly respond to your borrowers and close your deals during the first call. Fast, easy and accurate with nothing to install. LenderFlex® is already built into Calyx Point®, so you can price or re-price a borrower right away.

Local ATL startup Lenderflex by David Jones and Jeff Gombala.

LenderFlex - How It Works

To make sense of this large body of research, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) commissioned a review. From 2002 to 2004, each paper was re-read by at least three expert reviewers and critiqued for its applicability to the field of knowledge based on what we consider to be a good study with today's understanding of EM exposures. The results of this literature study netted 1411 publications that were considered to be the best work in the field; these were used to develop the latest edition of the IEEE safety standard: C95.1 -2005: IEEE Standard for Safety Levels with Respect to Human Exposure to Radio Frequency Electromagnetic Fields, 3 kHz to 300 GHz. Human exposure from cell phones and Amateur Radios alike is limited by FCC regulation to be lower than what the safety standard calls Maximum Permissible Exposure (MPE).

After 50 years and 1411 good scientific studies, what additional research could my correspondent and Dr Herberman know about that is vastly different? Certainly it was not research that was peer-reviewed, much less independently replicated. As scientists, they should know better than to base their scientific beliefs on such weak evidence. Granted, they are not experts in the field of electromagnetic bio-effects and are probably not aware of the wealth of knowledge that has been developed on this topic. But that's all the more reason that they should not overreact to anecdotal information that has not been subjected to scientific confirmation. Unfortunately, when the director of a large cancer institute makes such a proclamation, it is widely believed by people who know even less about the science than he does.

You could tell the good doc didn't have a clear understanding of what he was saying once he started warning about the dangers to others, of using cell phones in public places.

Hijacking Science

Raising money is the second hardest part of starting a startup. The hardest part is making something people want: most startups that die, die because they didn't do that. But the second biggest cause of death is probably the difficulty of raising money. Fundraising is brutal.

One reason it's so brutal is simply the brutality of markets. People who've spent most of their lives in schools or big companies may not have been exposed to that. Professors and bosses usually feel some sense of responsibility toward you; if you make a valiant effort and fail, they'll cut you a break. Markets are less forgiving. Customers don't care how hard you worked, only whether you solved their problems.null

A Fundraising Survival Guide