Olson’s Observations

I was going back and forth with Carson Conant this morning (President of Mediafly) on e-mail about Joost and this blog when he threw an idea over the fence to me about a new series of posts. The idea was simply to talk to start-ups (most likely via a quick e-mail interview) and ask them about their inflection points.

When did they get funding? Why did they decide to go the route they did for funding (i.e. fam and friends, angel, VC, debt)? Where was the product at when they started to search for and when they obtained funding? How much funding did they take and why that amount? How much equity did they give up? How were board seats assigned?

These are all questions I’d look to have different start-ups and established technology companies answer.

Here’s the challenge. In order to start this up I need to get some people who are willing and able to talk about these kinds of things. I will put out some feelers to start-ups I know but I would love to land someone like Yahoo! or Google to talk about this stuff. If any of you out there know entrepreneurs, are entrepreneurs or know folks at established tech companies that you think would like to talk about this kind of stuff on this blog please send me a note (eric [at] ericjohnolson.com) and make introductions if you can.

I think this could be a fun and very useful ongoing segment for Olson’s Observations and I hope I, along with all of you, can get it together.

Side note: Yes, I realize that Inflection Points sounds like a smooth jazz radio station but I like it.