awesome. that’s how i’d describe two weeks ago — both the fi session on wednesday and the showcase the night after.
we got back from fi daygo at 3am wednesday morning. i ended up doing laundry until 5am. we left town at 10, ran some errands, then really hit the road around 11:30. it was a long and uneventful drive (thank god i wasn’t driving the Q); we hit san jose at around 4:30. we lazed around for 15 minutes then drove to WSGR’s offices in Palo Alto (nice place, btw). we met some bay area founders, adeo made fun of our name (in front of the whole class, no less), and aaron patzer, phil libin of Evernote, and GD ramkumar (formerly of A9, now at Amazon) all gave awesome talks (i really liked phil). i was sitting in the front row, shaking from all the caffeine i had consumed before showing up. i don’t think i’m ever going to do that again.
we grabbed drinks that night at a place with the word “nuthouse” in its name, which i thought was hilarious. maybe i just have a juvenile mind. there are some interesting cats in the program, all with great ideas.
rich and i attended the founder showcase the next day, held at sun’s campus in santa clara. the venue was cool, as were the pitches, but some of the companies lacked a clear monetization strategy — maybe i’m spoiled by receet having one. hung out with some more people that night after, then hit the hay.
i swung by hacker dojo the next day and did some work. i checked out micromobs and trendero when i was there — both interesting products with cool teams behind them.
we ended up having a bbq on saturday in honor of my friend john’s birthday, then drove home on sunday.
it was an awesome but tiring week. looks like we’ll be doing it again soon…
rebrand!
we’ve made the decision — we’re changing Receet’s name to MelonStand. while it’s quirky, it’s easier to spell and gives people a happy feeling, which is always a good thing. it also gives us great branding opportunities; don’t be surprised if you see us at your favorite TechCrunch event in a future chopping up cantaloupes.
anyway, other than rebranding and redoing all of the graphic styles, this week has been slow. Apple’s iPad announcement last week sent everybody in a tizzy. i’d like to see a higher resolution display though — if it were a 10″ or 12″ device with 1280×800 resolution i would rush out to buy one today. it looks like i’ll end up waiting for version 2, which is a lesson i learned on both my 1st-gen Macbook Pro and iPhone.
we’re thinking of making another trip up to norcal soon. i wonder if there are any good events going on this month…?