I want to state for the record, that I really enjoy blogging. Though I can’t claim a huge readership base, I can claim that writing on this blog has done a whole lot of good for my clarity of writing. In fact, I haven’t felt that my writing has been as concise since my journal writing days traveling through Europe. So, to those who don’t blog-the reason I blog is to be a better writer in my everyday life.

Anyway, things have been extraordinarily busy and will remain so for the foreseeable future as I work through a bunch of different things in business and in life. I will post when I can, so definitely grab my RSS feed or email if you are one of my 30-40 average visitors.

Last week, we pitched NY Angels, which was pretty intense. While I would love to say that we knocked their socks off, I must admit that the outcome of that meeting is very unclear. I’ll obviously let you know if something comes of it. We have also been admitted into the Investors Circle newsletter and company database. Investors Circle is a group of about 400 angel investors who seek to make socially conscious angel investments, so we are hopeful on that front.

I have also been spending some time brainstorming with a buddy of mine from a past job, Steve Martocci. Steve is an incredibly vivid and innovative thinker and developer, who is using these skills to develop some exciting things with his company Sympact Technologies. Spending time with him, working to develop his strategy has had a terrific cross-pollinating effect on how I think about PlansForUs. You will see the fruits of that pollination in 2008.

Moving on-Do you read Dy/Dan yet? Are you an educator? Than you must have a look. Are you interested in the debate around technology in the classroom? Than you should be reading. Dan provides an incredibly honest assessment of teaching. His latest post talks of the benefits of a well designed worksheet, a skill which I see on a regularly honed by my wife. The honesty of Dan’s discourse and the clarity of thought is really powerful. Check it out.

Finally, What’s my worldview? I know, you are all fascinated to find out and that’s why I kept it for last. Lucky for you, I am going to share my worldview as analyzed by QuizFarm and Oxygen Media. Leave a comment and tell me what your worldview diagnosis.

What is Your World View? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Postmodernist Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis. Postmodernist 94% Cultural Creative 81% Existentialist 75% Idealist 50% Modernist 31% Fundamentalist 25% Materialist 25% Romanticist 19%

This is your brain on fundraising

I am looking forward to moving past the crushing stage.

Last week I posted a presentation that I had been working on for awhile and asked for your feedback on how it might be improved. Thanks to my partner Steve, friends, family and the vibrant NextNY Community, I got that feedback. This presentation is still kicking around among a few friends and colleagues and I look forward to integrating their feedback, but in the meantime I wanted to show you the improved presentation. I am thinking of adding my notes into the comments section for each slide, but I am not too keen on adding an audio track. If you have any opinion on either the notes or the audio track, please let me know.

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I look forward to your comments.

Back in August a guy named Charlie O’Donnell tested an interesting tactic for garnering attention and feedback on a business that he was starting called Path101. At the time I wrote a quick blog entry admiring the tactic. The tactic, defined as Anti-Stealth, has been an unqualified success for Charlie as he generated significant interest in his business, found a technical partner, refined his presentation and successfully raised an angel round of funding. A consequence of this tactic has been an ongoing discussion within the NYC entrepreneur community about the business effect of this tactic.

Steve and I have always maintained an anti-stealth bias due to our shared belief in the effectiveness of agile development. Our first act of anti-stealth was launching PlansForUs as soon as we had a working set of tools, exposing ourselves as quickly as possible to feedback. Given that our target market, K12 teachers, has a reputation for a lack of tech awareness this was a risk…but it has paid dividends as we embark on our second iteration with a much better understanding of how teachers might interact and use a tool like PlansForUs. With our second iteration underway, a growing user base and a need to increase our development cycles we need to find our seed-stage financing. This leads us to our second act of Anti-Stealth; revealing our investor presentation to readers of this blog…I know the anticipation is building.

By revealing our investor presentation, we also want to better understand a fundamental question of the anti-stealth tactic, if you do not have 1,000+ readers on your blog would it still work as well?

I have 13 subscribers to my blog, went to Colgate, New Trier HS (Winnetka, IL) and play hoops at Stuy Town. Those are a few of my primary networks, so lets find out if this blog can spread the word on PlansForUs beyond these networks. I promise to give full disclosure on how this plays out. So with the lead of Charlie’s anti-stealth movement and our own agile leanings we offer you our investor presentation (slightly modified).

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As for anti-stealth, we will continue to play around with this concept as an outgrowth of our convictions that agile development is the most efficient path towards success.