For the first time ever, the North American Venture
Capital Assn. (NAVCA) has presented its
top award to…..an angel group?
Speaking from the podium during the champagne and caviar toast at the Rainbow Room,
NAVCA President Jacob Marley recognized the Lake Wobegon Angels, “where all the women are
strong, all the men are good looking, and all their investment returns are
above the median. I hear their franks, beans, and brown bread angel dinners in
the church basement are a very great success. We can all learn a lot from these
angels,” he said, before digging into his soufflé.
---
The History Channel series on the Bible sparked a
vigorous exchange at Angel & Demon Capital Assn. (ADCA) dinner last month. Asking “why aren’t there more women angels,” Seamus G. of the Uncommon Angels stated “because
most angels trace back to Moses, they see the Promised Land, but they never
really get there.” Jeannie H. of Garden
Seeds opined that women trace back a generation further than Moses. “During the
recent recession, angels more closely resembled the Pharaoh’s daughter, who
managed to save a little prophet from the rushes on the bank.”
---
Micro
housing developments for young technologists are now planned
for San Francisco, with Boston, New York, and Seattle following. In an effort to help high tech entrepreneurs to find
affordable housing downtown, these cities are planning to allow micro unit
housing, with units consisting of 300 sq. feet or less. In San Francisco, they call
them the Alcatraz Apartments. “People
ask me if they chose the name because the units will have a view of the island
of Alcatraz,” said Chronicle Columnist Herb Caen. “I reply that it will show
them the view from inside Alcatraz.”
“We’ll name ours
the ‘Sacco and Vanzetti Apartments,’” said a Boston Mayoral spokesperson. “They spent seven years in similar housing
not far from here (before going off to visit ‘Old Sparky’).” Young entrepreneurs can rent one now for only
$2K to $3K per month.” New York will name its units after tenement reformer
Jacob Riis.
“They don’t really need to put kitchens in those
units," says T. Row Row, founder
of the Cambridge Inn Ovation Center, noting that the ribs of his lean startup tenants
were starting to show, so he added a soup kitchen to his Venture Cafe.
"They were having a hard time living on just the free coffee and
beer", said Row Row, "Plus, we were tired of losing all the engineers
to Google, just for the free food. We expect them to be lean, but not
that lean. Maybe the Salvation Army
could locate a soup kitchen in the Innovation District. We would applaud that.”
(Note to
our readers: the Ovation Center was designed
as a safe place for politicians and public officials to announce expensive new
programs to rounds of ringing applause. The
Ovation Center is located near the TechMoons Excelerator, an organization founded to drill
young entrepreneurs in the excessive use of Excel spreadsheets.)
---
Sic
Transit in Cambridge/Boston. America’s Technology
Subway, Boston’s Red Line, is about to undergo some face lifting to support the
Innovation Economy. Here is the revised lineup
of stops heading outbound from Boston to Cambridge.
Whitey
Bulger (formerly Broadway). New landscaping will include an equestrian
statue of the man himself.
Innovation
District. Rumor has it that this will be renamed
Thomas Menino once the mayor for life actually leaves office in favor of startup guru Matt Lauzon.
Filene’s
Basement (formerly Downtown Crossing).
Park
Street.
Charles
Street.
Central
Square.
Haavard
Yaahd.
Porter
Square.
No
Barneys (in
Somerville).
Alewife.
Smith
College/U. Mass.
Lake
Woebegon
Santa
Clara
Los
Gatos
Larry
Ellison (Hawaiian Islands)
Note that one popular stop is missing. MIT and the City of Cambridge have requested
the removal of the Kendall Square stop. “We want to encourage alternative
transportation,” says MIT President Olivier Smoot. First, we got the cars out of the square, now
we’ll remove the pedestrians.”
Presumably remaining will be Segways, unicycles, and pogo sticks. An alternative would be to name the stop
after the F&T Diner, the place where all the real innovation took place 50 years
ago.
“Originally we were going to repair the track and
order new trains, but that costs money, so we starting this rebranding instead,”
says MBTA senior system planner Maurits
C. Escher.
---
In the interest of promoting even greater
cooperation between the Angel and Venture Capital communities, the Coughingman
Foundation is requiring both groups to participate in a new musical production to open on Broadway in the Fall.
The
Angel and the VC Should be Friends
(Tune from Oklahoma: “The Farmer and the Cowman
Should be Friends.” To view the video of
the tune, the costumes, the dance steps, and the brawl click right here.)
The Angel and
the VC should be friends,
Oh, the Angel
and the VC should be friends,
One guy helps a
firm to grow, the other tries to grab the dough,
But that’s no
reason why they can’t be friends.
Funding folks
should stick together,
Funding folks
should all be pals,
Angels dance
with the VC’s daughters,
VCs dance with
the Angel gals.
The Angel is a
good and thrifty citizen,
No matter what
the VC says or thinks,
You’ll seldom
see her drinking in a barroom,
--Unless
somebody else is buying drinks.
But the Angel
and the VC should be friends,
Oh, the Angel
and the VC should be friends,
The Angel
spreads his funds about,
The VC might
dilute him out,
But that’s no
reason why they can’t be friends.
I’d like to say
a word for the VC,
Investing
other’s money is his skill,
He could have
left a small bit on the table,
But thinks if he
don’t grab it, Judd Fry will.
Funding folks
should stick together,
Funding folks
should all be pals,
Angels dance
with the VC’s daughters,
VCs dance with
the Angel’s pals.
I’d like to say
a word for the Angel,
Negotiating
deals has made her canny,
That VC talking
with her in the corner,
Will find out quick
that she’s no Ado Annie.
Funding folks
should stick together
Funding folks
should all be pals
Angels dance
with the VC’s daughters
VCs dance with
the Angel gals.
Funding folks
will stick together,
Funding folks
will all be friends,
Everyone will
dance together,
That’s the way
this story ends.
-----
------
We modestly describe this effort as after composer Richard
Rogers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II, but we suspect that they’ll be after
us once they learn about it.
Prima Aprilis. To the delight of our editors,
this publication circulates worldwide, and rapidly. Here in New England, April 1 is celebrated as
April Fools’ Day, a day when people play practical
jokes and hoaxes
on one another. We wish a very merry April Fools Day to you, our readers, wherever ye
may be.
 |
| Kendall Square in the Golden Age of Innovation, 1961
- 1973 |
-----
