We’re halfway through the selection process for the Cringely (NOT in Silicon Valley) Startup Tour with more than 300 companies nominated including half a dozen still in stealth mode. I love to sign NDAs and welcome more stealth mode nominations because they tend to be interesting companies that are fresher. With a major PR push about to begin I am still hopeful we’ll get 500 companies from which to select the final 24.

If you have a startup and are discouraged about the competition for those 24 slots, I urge you to try anyway for two important reasons: 1) The nomination process alone offers real publicity for your company and has already produced unexpected […]

Thinking about Ed Roberts, who died last week, reminded me of the best story he ever told me about Bill Gates and Paul Allen, explaining why Gates was always richer than Allen and why that differential may not have been fair. Here’s the short version:

There was a time when Paul Allen, not Bill Gates, was the boss at Microsoft. When it came time to visit Albuquerque to demonstrate that first BASIC interpreter to the folks at MiTS, Allen made the trip, not Gates. It was Paul Allen, not Gates, who was later offered the job as head of software for MiTS — a job I have in the past characterized as the single most expensive […]