Intense Web Media

I am only 50 pages into the book “Founders At Work” and have already found it to be tremendously interesting.

The story of Hotmail in particular was very eye-opening. In that section one of the founders of Hotmail reveals that Tim Draper, of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, now claims that he is the visionary that came up with web-based email while it was actually the founders of Hotmail who were the true visionary.

It is anyone’s guess as to who is telling the truth, but the founders of Hotmail allege some further impropriety on the part of DFJ. I won’t elaborate, but it is an interesting read.

We have been celebrating some great news at Intense Debate.

We were recently selected for TechStars and will be moving to a secret location in Boulder, Colorado to refine and launch our product. The program will involve mentoring from 40+ mentors with varying disciplines and successes within the tech startup community.

I will certainly have a Summer of knowledge to impart through this blog. I will continue to talk about the web and business on this blog, but in the near future I will begin a personal blog to chronicle ID’s journey to launch this Summer and the great experiences we are having.

I will link to that blog here when it begins.

My partner Jon Fox just started a blog and his inaugural post is the story of how our startup, Intense Debate began.

Here is a paragrah:

“Around the end of the summer of ‘06 I met Josh Morgan through the website programmermeetdesigner.com. I was mostly just looking for an interesting project to work on in my spare time and I came across his post which seemed promising. Through a couple emails we built up what the idea is and got to know each other a bit. The next step was creating a proof of concept. The dates get a little fuzzy here, but sometime in Sept. or Oct. I completed the first proof of concept (very ugly, and only the bare bones of what we wanted, but it worked…) . This is the point where we decided we needed to bring in someone else to do the design. I knew I wasn’t exactly a capable designer and Josh wasn’t a design pro either. We looked at a couple different people, but we ended up with a 19 year old from Sweden named Isaac. And that’s how our team was formed…”

You can find the entire post here.

I will sometimes reveal personal tidbits that relate to internet business and business in general. Today, is one of those days.

Two years ago today I was in Haditha, Iraq. I was a machine gunner on top of a humvee and we were running routine patrols. We began the morning with a wake up call from insurgents firing mortars at our position. They were more annoying than anything and forced us to move our position. Then an IED went off about thirty feet away from one of our vehicles. We had our bell rung, but no big deal. Then, after some reconnaissance, we were hit by another IED, this time it was my vehicle. I was the gunner in the turret and was wounded with shrapnel entering my neck.

Later, after being medevac’d, I found out this small piece of shrapnel stopped a half centimeter from my carotid artery and exited the same wound.

I was very lucky and so this day I celebrated my new lease on life that I was granted that day.

What this has done for me, in retrospect, has been amazing. I live everyday feeling grateful for all that I have and capitalizing on all opportunities handed to me.

What I would like to convey is that there is no better day than the present to start living with a purpose and to take action to accomplish dreams. You might be surprised what you can do. I sure am.

Tonight, pour a glass of your favorite beverage and toast to the Marines who are going out on night patrols in Iraq at this very instant. After this exercise, you might begin to understand how urgent it is that we all take action to advance ourselves because no one knows when our time will be up on this earth.

I get tired of people predicting the end of Web 2.0 and the beginning of the semantic web (web 3.0).

First, please acknowledge the problems inherent in things like OpenID:

1) Will require sites to adopt the OpenID function

2) Requires mass adoption to go anywhere

3) Significant privacy issues yet to be determined

OpenID is a great idea, but until the problems that are part and parcel with it are dealt with, the system will not go anywhere.

This is why we have not implemented it into my startup. The waters are simply too muddy.

Web 3.0 can only start if you acknowledge Web 2.0 ever began.

To me the web is similar to the time periods associated with dinosaurs. Think Mesozoic, Cretaceous, etc. Each period had different climate and therefore the animals that lived during those ages were affected. New species were created; some older species adapted, others evolved, and still others simply died off. Tell me how this is different from the web.

Technology changes have dictated the web’s evolution much like weather affected the dinosaurs. Startups have adapted, evolved, or been killed off because of the technology climate.  Some things one just cannot predict.
Predicting the future of the web landscape is potentially very lucrative, but it should be confined to the experts. As for Joe Blogger predicting web 3.0…well, he just looks like an ass.

If you have not heard about Techstars, then take notice.

For those unfamiliar, it is an opportunity for your fledgling startup to work in Boulder, Colorado. Besides the great scenery, the companies accepted will be privy to free office space, legal help, numerous mentoring sessions, and 5k per founder up to 15k. Round one of TechStars will go from late May to the end of August and culminate with an investor day. Because of the people involved, location, and structure of the entire program, TechStars is far superior to Ycombinator. Although, both programs are great in their own right.
The applications have closed for this summer, and I have been recently notified that my startup (Intense Debate) is in the top 30 of 175 applications.

For me, I am just happy people like the direction I am taking my venture. It gives me great confidence going forward. Still, I can’t say my group has been short on confidence.