Founder Seattle Angel Conference, Lean Startup Seattle co-organizer,Startup Weekend Global Facilitator, Entrepreneur, Open Coffee connector, mentor, and freelance economic developer enhancing the startup ecosystem.
At the Seattle Angel Conference, we grow new Angel Investors by walking through the details of an Angel Investment. At the same time, we help entrepreneurs understand the path to early seed round financing
One of the best ways for Startups to reduce execution risk is to put customer development ahead of production. As the co-organizer of the Lean Startup Seattle meetup group, I have been coaching startups on Lean Methodology
As people are suggesting, you should do good due diligence. This would talk a long time to answer well. Finding others who have invested before and getting perspective can be helpful. One place to start besides local startup groups is the book by David Rose called "Angel Investing"
it outlines some of the process of due diligence at an early stage Startup
I had the privilege of working alongside John at the pioneering and visionary Internet company he founded in mid-Oregon, PEAK. John is justly famous as a leader in our field, via contributions to Usenix and system administration professionalism, as well as his involvement as a catalyst in technology startup ventures.
In a crowded room where many were vying for his attention, John took a few minutes to intensely listen to my idea. He looked me hard in the eye and told me what needed to be done. A few minutes to him was a time-absent epiphany for me. A short while later, John was a mentor at SocEnt Weekend, to which my idea was a contestant. He kept reiterating the same idea, clearly trying to get through to me. He knew that I had something, but I was going about it in the wrong way. With his words in mind, I've learned to craft a plan that will accomplish my goals, one very realistic step at a time. John is a patient and persistent teacher of the lean startup methodology.
John has an extraordinary amount of start-up experience which he has been able to cultivate into a unique and valuable skill set. John’s approach is refreshingly pragmatic – he pulls no punches in his quest to help your company achieve success. I also found John to be a thoughtful strategist and forthright with his network base. In summary, I strongly recommend John as a start-up advisor.
As a student I took upper-division courses in Networking and Systems Administration from John when he was an instructor at Oregon State. At the time I didn't know that my career would take me into the IT Services industry and those two classes were among the most valuable and applicable right up to today. John taught from an industry perspective and in a very "real-world" way that made the content easy to put to work. If you have the opportunity to work with John or take a course from him, I would definitely recommend that you do.
John has been a game changer for the start-up community in Norway. His focus on lean start-up, smart tools and his energy as a process leader for Startup Weekend in Oslo and Trondheim, have been of tremendous value for the people involved. I am looking forward to do more business with John in the future.
I have worked with John for several years and have found him to be highly motivated, organized, and helpful. I would highly recommend him.
John has a tremendous ability to "think outside the box" and come up with unique solutions that are perfectly tailored for his clients. He's also one of my favorite people to work with, because he constantly causes me to stretch my own capabilities.
I've known and respected John since 2002, both in his current position and in his former position as president of Peak Internet. John is both extremely competent and highly intelligent. In addition, he is a consummate team player; his efforts to foster collaborative efforts within the local high technology community have been nothing short of visionary.
I've known John since the 80s. During that time, he's been a successful and effective leader in bringing people and technology together, particularly regarding access to information.
John is always aiming for ideas and solutions to problems that help others. One can see this through his educational background, his work with PEAK Internet and other community work over the years.
John was the primary contact at Alpha Omega for Gene Tools.
John worked as part of a small team to develop and deploy a sophisticated order processing and management system for Gene Tools. He was instrumental in configuration of a complex multi-server, dual-router network environment. He led setup of Linux-based mail servers, firewalls, and virtual machines.
