The Smell of Entrepreneurism in the Morning
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Today is a great day for I, Cringely and for me. It is the day we launch the special web site for Cringely’s (NOT in Silicon Valley) Startup Tour. I wrote a column last month announcing the Tour, which you can read here, but today marks the actual start of this summer’s adventure, because it opens nominations.
Visit the new web site here, but please remember to come back and finish reading this column.
This new web site is strictly for readers to nominate startup companies, discuss them, vote for favorites, then see the results as we come up with the top 24 companies in six different categories.
You have to register in order to nominate or vote, though not to just read. Many people won’t have to register if they login with their Facebook or Twitter IDs. Registration is important because that’s how we keep people from stuffing our ballot box. That’s the only reason we have registration. I won’t sell your name to anyone, I promise.
Notice that the site (unlike this one you are reading right now) doesn’t even have ads. I want to keep the new site completely transparent and above-board, because I think this might be one of the most important things I ever do in my career so I want to do it right.
As I am writing this, the new site stands empty. There are no nominated companies. That’s your job, not mine. So here is how to do your job. Click on the nomination form and fill it in for any startup company that you think is doing exciting work and deserves recognition. The very act of being considered and discussed by 500,000 readers will give these companies more publicity than most of them would otherwise ever get. So in this case it is an honor just to be nominated. But having said that, please only nominate really good companies that actually qualify.
After my first column about the Tour I received e-mail from many startups wanting to be considered and one of those was Facebook. I have nothing against Facebook, but I hardly think it qualifies for this project. If the company you are pushing has zillions in the bank and more than, say, 50 employees, it is too darned big. No Facebooks.
Beyond that it is okay to nominate companies that have been around for awhile. It is okay to nominate your own company. This isn’t frigging Wikipedia.
You can add all kinds of supporting information to the nomination including documents and even videos for voters to consider. And remember that not only the nominator can submit such materials, any registered user of the site can do so. This requires registration because there are as my Mom, Mrs. Cringely, would say, assholes out there who will submit all sorts of useless or disruptive crap. This new site is a No-Asshole Zone, so let me know if you come across any nonsense and I’ll take the garbage out myself.
This is an ongoing process that will take at least eight weeks to find our 24 companies. Keep coming back to see the new companies that have been nominated and to discuss them and vote. While the winners won’t be final until the very end, I’ll make sure you have some sense of the deliberations as they go along, so come back for that, too.
Just to recap what I announced last month, my family and I will this summer saddle-up our 1996 Winnebago motor home to visit all 24 finalists, taking with us a TV camera crew. We’ll spend two days at every company, camped in the parking lot or in the CEO’s driveway. Two days is how long it usually takes for my kids to use up all the water and demand a trip to Redbox for new videos.
In addition to two months of ongoing text, audio, and video coverage right here, the 24 finalists will appear in my 12-hour reality TV series which will be on a BIG cable channel, one you have actually heard of that does not include the word “shopping” in its name.
I am also looking for a few good experts to consult on this project and for the TV series. That’s because I want to do more than just publicize the work of these new companies, I want to help them. So if you have been a successful startup CEO, CFO, CTO — anything with a C at the front — and are willing to share a bit of your expertise, please let me know. Experts on startup financing, including venture capitalists and angels, are especially encouraged to apply (bring money — preferably small bills with non-sequential serial numbers).
Some of these experts will come with me to the companies, some will appear only on video, depending on the time they can give to the project.
Not all experts will be accepted. This is my project and I’ll be the one to decide if you get to play or not. Frankly there are plenty of people out there who know a lot but have a hard time being helpful. We’re here to encourage. If any company made the top 24, they are already successful. We aren’t here to tell them how dumb they are and how smart we are.
All decisions are final.
Finally, I want to thank the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City for their support for this project, which they jumped on within minutes of hearing about it. Kauffman is the foundation of entrepreneurism and that’s what this startup tour is all about — helping to make America even greater.
But Kauffman and I can’t do it all by ourselves, so if your organization wants to become involved please get in touch with me because I’d like to make this tour an annual event and to help technology startups become as important to television as Survivor or The Apprentice.
Go to the new site and register now.
Site links don’t work.
why don’t you cry about it, saddlebags.
The submission site is broken
Error in the linked site:
There is an error occoured on Server. The exception Strack Trace is javax.portlet.UnavailableException: No matching handler method found for portlet request: mode ‘view’, phase ‘RENDER_PHASE’, parameters map[[empty]]
http://collaborize.democrasoft.com/portal/portal/default/cringelyslist
I wonder in what country the server is located: “There is an error occoured on Server.” Perhaps they never tried it with IE8. Can you say “tower of babble”?
Maybe Bob can find a startup to fix it.
The site works fine in Firefox 3.5, fails miserably in Chrome 4.0, but works fine in Chrome 4.1.249.1021 beta (40167).
To add to dave-ilsw’s comment: it also fails in Chrome 5.0.355.1 (dev build as of 2 March 2010).
There is an error occoured on Server. The exception Strack Trace is javax.portlet.UnavailableException: No matching handler method found for portlet request: mode ‘view’, phase ‘RENDER_PHASE’, parameters map[[empty]]
Site does not work in Chrome 4.1.249.1021 beta (40167), Firefox 3.6, IE 8, Safari 4.0.4 (531.21.10). However, I seem to be able to see it fine in Opera 10.10.
I’m in Canada if that’s makes any difference :s
Also fails in Safari, FWIW.
Does anyone care if it also fails in IE 8?
There is an error occoured on Server. The exception Strack Trace is javax.portlet.UnavailableException: No matching handler method found for portlet request: mode ‘view’, phase ‘RENDER_PHASE’, parameters map[[empty]]
At least the 4 min video about the platform works in IE8: http://www.democrasoft.com/solutions/how-it-works.html
This is a server-side failure. Browser does not matter. (And it’s interesting to see someone out there using JSR-168-based portlet technology for something like this. You don’t see much of that on the public internet these days, seems to be more of an intranet thing.)
Probably using open source Liferay portal because it has all of the community (voting, rating etc) pieces OOTB.
I’m hoping for NerdTV Season 2 this year if that makes a difference.
Works on chrome for mac but not safari or firefox.
Works on Windows XP w/ Firefox, but not Chrome, IE8, or Safari.
Works on the Mac with Safari, but not Chrome or Firefox.
Works on Linux (Fedora Distro) in Chrome and Firefox.
Main thing is that it works on the iPhone.
Question: how old should a start-up be before it isn’t considered a start-up? Some companies I know have been around for some time, mostly doing contractual work, until their particular “big idea” (usually involving productizing a particular subset of their contract work to date) came along.
Note to self: Read Before Posting.
“Beyond that it is okay to nominate companies that have been around for awhile.”
Good luck getting this off the ground Bob. But the dodgy website ain’t a great advertisement for the project. With me it failed on firefox 3.5.8 opened fine in IE8 (on XP sp3).
Is anyone getting consistent fails? Otherwise it looks to me as though there’s a java applet on the server that crashes when too many people use the thing (or at random ..)
Tried again ten min later – got in with firefox. Definitely a server issue, nothing to do with the browser platform.
This isn’t twitter, so what’s with obscuring one of the links behind tinyurl? Ick!
Also, when that site produces results instead of crashing, it is completely useless without JavaScript. But maybe I’m the crazy guy on the corner holding up a “The End is Near” sign for considering that a problem.
The site is going to give you problems unless you get it sorted.
There is still time to yank it and come back later.
I also got the delightful server failure message (There is an error occoured on Server. The exception Strack Trace is javax.portlet.UnavailableException: No matching handler method found for portlet request: mode ‘view’, phase ‘RENDER_PHASE’, parameters map[[empty]] ) Come on that’s misspelled!
A good idea. (8.5/10)
Execution (0/10)
http://www.unreasonableinstitute.org/finalists/index.php?action=about_pro&proId=149 is an awesome entrepeneurial project; a cheap, ruggedized DNA amplifier for field diagnostics. The entrepeneur is in Venezuela; is he eligible for the competition?
Sorry, only U.S. companies.
PS: Site works fine in Chrome 5.0.307.11 beta under Ubuntu’s Lucid Lynx Alpha 3.
I look forward to this. One question though: since you are driving, it implies that you are constrained to startups just in the US? While I was reading I was thinking about one in the UK…
PS: The web platform that you are using is not working
This season the U.S. Next season the world.
Stupid URL to someone else’s site. Can’t you fork out $8 to register your own domain?
I’ve been hoping you’d be back on TV soon and this sounds pretty sweet, good luck with it. Although I have to agree with others in that the site needs work, if not just on functionality on overall presentation. I’m glad you’re keeping ads out of it but it looks half-assed. In all your years with technology haven’t you buddied up with a decent web designer?
It’s from, logically enough, a startup and I am their first customer. We’ll get it sorted soon.
I like Bob.
Bob – how about an rss feed from Cringley’s List (at least I could not find one) – Just to avoid visiting when nothing changes (which you hope will never happen). Then I track with bloglines.com – Thanks – Frank
Bob, great idea. And the site seems to be working FINE to me. Anyway, I imagine that the Winnebago might have trouble getting through some narrow streets in Europe, but would you consider opening the “Location” box for nominating companies to other countries? We’re in Amsterdam, a hot-bed of EU start-ups, and would love to take part. There are probably good reasons to restrict to the US, but can you make a ruling on this? If not, would you franchise this idea? I think it would work well here – it’s at least a good TV idea as The Apprentice. regards, Adam
Picking up on those requesting that you open the competition to the EU, please don’t forget your friendly neighbors to the North…
For logistical reasons I would understand why this might be restricted to the US for the “camping in the driveway of the CEO” part. However for the web portion please seriously consider international section(s). Thanks.
Thanks for the opportunity Bob! I nominated my startup Golcio.com, please come visit us sometime!
Thank you,
Juan
Bob: I have two expert nominations, including myself. Where do they go?
Yes, startups are international. Although we have offices in the US, we are a virtual startup spread over 3 continents.
Third time that I could not login to nominate, same errors Mike Gale got.
The voting algorithm on that site is poorly implemented. A business with 1 5 star vote is more highly rated then a business with 9 5 star votes and 1 4 star vote. This will probably result in late entries almost certainly picking up the 24 slots because they won’t be as likely to be subjected to a single non 5 star vote.
Hi Bob,
Home come there isn’t a category for green companies? My bets are on Green being the next tech tsunami . . .
Hey Bob.
To sweeten the deal, we are 18 minutes to the beach and our rental house has a pool. Oh, and I cook a mean anything on the Big Green Egg. Savannah is the land of opportunity!
And did I mention you are good looking AND powerful?
Rad
That would be me…
Amero-centric. Bob save the world, man! America is not the world
The world is NEXT season…
Yeah I kinda wish the URL of the site was a bit easier to distribute.
I know this again is more of a comment about the platform itself rather than the event, but…. why is it that every single href attribute in the site is to: javascript:void(0).
How about using real URL anchors in case I want to open a link in a new tab?
Thanks.
That site is a very amateur job, I agree with the rest of you.
None of this seems to be what it is presented as. The other site is hosted by a startup called democrasoft which is selling something called collaborize. Cringely seems to be the first customer. Is he associated in other ways, a founding member perhaps? The relationship is not disclosed.
Democrasoft’s pages describe it to do something with selling services for marketing and monitoring of people through their app called “collaborize”: “an affordable way to Reach Out to external groups to get a better understanding of the behaviors, preferences and opinions of your audience”.
Then, to post a comment, you have to pick one of your accounts that has personal private networking information such as contacts list at yahoo, google, facebook, twitter, etc, and sign in to give Cringely’s democrosoft company full access to the private information in that account such as your contacts list and the ability to monitor all of your activity.
Clearly people posting on that board are most likely going to be start up company principals. So this method for each person commenting potentially gets democrosoft a lot of valuable private information about who they are talking to, whether VCs, competitors, or what not, and about what products they are discussing. This information obviously has a high financial value, and the collection of it is not disclosed explicitly at all – it’s just presented as necessary in order to “register” to post a comment there.
[...] Bob Cringely is looking for the best and brightest startup companies in America (Cringely’s List) See also [...]
What about an award for STARTING UPS.
The big effort/sweat/risk is in that bit, not keeping the engine running afterwards, when public and private hangers on want a bit of the limelight.
I’ve lost count of the number of calls and letters, I’ve not had responses to from govt departments and multinationals in response to my proposals…..which I haven’t even enlightened them to before being deafeningly ignored.
i think this is more valuable site for any one,and so there are new idea….
Check out the Startup Bus,
http://thestartupbus.com/
Internet Explorer 8 is very good because it is as stable as Opera. I hate the previous versions of IE like IE6 because it hangs frequently. “
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I am confused about how the trip ended up. This is a page from March of this year. Where is the follow up and winners?
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IE8 has some bugs too although it is more stable than IE7 and IE6.”,
Hello,
I just wanted to say that I have been reading for a while and I would like to sign up for the feed. I’ll give it a try but I might need some assistance. This is a good find and I would hate to lose touch, and maybe never discover it again.
Anyway, thanks again and I look forward to posting again in the future!