the program was really awesome. there are still some kinks to be worked out, but i’d say it was extremely helpful, especially to first-time founders like richard and myself.

we’re planning on attending some of the LA sessions; hopefully we get to meet more interesting people!

just to keep you updated on progress, we changed our name from Receet to MelonStand a few weeks ago, and we’ve been working through a rebranding process. adeo, FI founder + TheFunded guy, told us we were one of the more stubborn groups in the class wrt changing our name, but i’m really glad we did. the branding and marketing possibilities are endless, and people smile when they hear our name. awesome.

anyway, i think i might be attending an ixda meeting tonight. hope that goes well.

until next time!

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…?

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…

there’s been some consternation in the program about the difficult (both in terms of time and monetary outlay) terms of incorporation being foisted upon founders. hopefully everybody in the program will find a reasonable balance between incorporating and graduating — for everybody stuck in this situation, allow me to wish you the best of luck.

anyway, i’m looking forward to tuesday’s meeting. the drive is another matter…

It’s absolutely mind-boggling to me that in this day and age, companies are still storing passwords in plain text. It’s also mind-boggling to me that RockYou’s database was pwnt by SQL injection — that’s a basic thing every web developer worth their salt should be protecting against. I just can’t believe that a venture funded company (by Sequoia and Lightspeed, no less) fails so hard.

the presentation was meh. the investor session wasn’t terribly constructive, i thought. the presentations were ok, but i was so out of it that i wasn’t really listening. the real highlight of the session was the discussion we had at the bar after — that’s almost more interesting and helpful than the actual in-class session.

anyway, i’m looking forward to my group meeting on saturday and then class again on tuesday!

we got into new groups. hopefully this one is more interactive than the previous one (i had a good time, but i think we could’ve had more debate). anyway, i’m looking forward to the first group meeting tomorrow. yatta!

we also have an investor pitch session coming up on monday. i was thinking we should pitch, but apparently neither rich nor i had our names tossed into the ring, so we’re just going to pitch the investors informally after. we’ve been working diligently on our slide deck and pitch. if you’re interested in seeing it, please drop me a line!

we ended up breaking a side skirt on the car. check out my other blog KOF ‘98 for photos. that was the major event. the FI meeting, on the other hand, wasn’t as good as the others have been so far. it seemed like there wasn’t very much energy in the room (energy that is usually supplied by adeo, who wasn’t in attendance this session), and the presenters seemed unprepared.

we had a very interesting chat (rather, i would say we all “shot the shit”) with bryan thatcher after the meeting. he told us crazy stories about his trips to vegas, getting pwnt by a bouncer at a bar, and other shenanigans (some involving dr. werner vogels, who you wouldn’t expect to be involved in such crazy things). he bought us all drinks after. thanks!

we have an investor session coming up on 7 december. hopefully richard and i are prepared (and hopefully we’ll be able to pitch). our fingers are crossed that we get some sort of funding by the end of the program!

one of the presenters was Joe Betts-Lacroix, who was the former CTO at OQO, which made cool stuff like the OQO 02 UMPC. they fell into the deadpool back in may, but i always wanted one of their UMPCs. too bad.

after the session, we swung by the bar at the hyatt (michael’s, if i’m not mistaken) and had some drinks with everybody else and the mentors.

anyway, like last week, i’m looking forward to next week’s session.