My dad just sent me this video made by all the students in my middle school in my hometown. It’s a seven minute, single-take, lip-dub of “Lean On Me” featuring all the students, teachers, and a full tour of the school, and it’s meant to be an anti-bullying campaign.
I particularly love this because one of the leaders of the project was one of my 6th grade teachers, Mr. Switzer - hands down one of the best teachers I’ve ever had. If you watch the Fox Boston coverage, Mr. Switzer talks about how important it was that the students had ownership of the project… something that we really believe in here at Shelby.tv and something I learned from him at an early age.
But there’s more! The project was part of “No Guff Week” which was started by my high school lacrosse coach, Greg Gilbert. “No Guff Week” started 12 years ago and is just a reminder to cut the crap and be positive. So awesome.
So many things to love about this video. Super proud of Falmouth. :)
awesome vid… hackday.tv was so much fun. can’t wait to do this again… thanks again to everyone who came out and participated and stay tuned for the next one!
As part of our ongoing commitment to supporting and celebrating innovation, NASDAQ has hosted a series of hackathons demonstrating what clever developers can create given 24-hours and the latest technological advances. You may have already seen our recap of Photo Hack Day. What you see above is a glimpse at Video Hack Day, hosted by our friends at Shelby.tv. With 80 teams competing, the winner was Terminator Vision, which equips the user with the famous cyborg’s eyesight. Very cool.
If there are two things we love, it’s hacking and video. That’s why we put together hackday.tv this past fall, with the help of our wonderful sponsors, NASDAQ, Pepsi, Vid.ly, Encoding.com, Boxee, and Twilio. We can’t express enough how fantastic it was to work with them. This gorgeous recap was created by our friends at NASDAQ, and only makes us even more excited to plan another video hackathon this spring. Until then, check out this year’s winning app, Terminator Vision.
Protect our internet.
Watch this video.
Get involved.
Who won? Won won?! ;)
Episode 5 was actually kind of a let-down. Demo Day was so intense and we worked so hard leading up to it, it was a bummer to see such condensed footage and not enough coverage of how supportive all the teams were of each other. I loved how we were hootin’ and hollering for one another. Such a great group of people… Anywho, here goes…
- Was that me breakdancing before a pitch?
- Ask Lee about how we all broke him of his habit of slapping his thighs…
- @InternZero gets some love from the camera!!
- Love Brad Feld just calling it like it is…
- Yes… Joe and I were dancing. Just staying loose baby. Yes I really did pushups when I woke up. I was wound up as hell.
- Eli - “I eat pressure for breakfast.” I FUCKING LOVE IT. ELI IS THE MAN.
- So awesome to see Crowdtwist get some love from the camera, but for the record they didn’t “show up out of nowhere.” They were there the whole time and they dominated. Another win for the Brown/TechStars mafia, too. [But what’s with the weird shots of Caren and me waiting in the wings as Irving pitched? I was up in the rafters watching… This whole episode was way out of order in terms of demo day pitches.]
- Red Rover is also freaking awesome. Kevin’s great - best pitch man ever. And yeah… they’ve got legit revenues. Awesome to see them on camera.
- Yup… I had a diva moment and told the cameras to go away. There was so much going on with demo day, I just wanted to be alone for a bit to mentally prep.
- Caren was actually the leadoff for demo day. She did awesome and it really set the tone for the whole day. Thanks Caren! Look at our epic hug!
- For the record, I actually pitched next to last. See that freshly shaved face? I think that was the last day I used a real razor… #notkidding
- The team really did support me a ton on demo day. They were so supportive in getting me in the right frame of mind.
- Yet another sports analogy, but a good one. See… I always loved to play sports, but really, I like any experience when I’m completely immersed in what I’m doing… in flow, if you will. So that really was what sports were like for me in college… I never really remembered the details of the game or all the stats and whatnot, I just liked the all-consuming feeling of throwing myself at something. That was demo-day and that’s entrepreneurship.
- I hate that the narrator says Shelby’s a much bigger vision than HomeField. HomeField is a HUGE vision, it was questionably a small market (and not necessarily given the chance to prove itself).
- “Astonishing.” Thanks Tisch. He really was doubting us for a while and when we finally got the product out the door, he was impressed and he let us know. Appreciate him being hard on us when we needed it and supporting us once we got on the right track.
- “These are people I want to bet on.” - from Brad Feld! Biggest compliment ever? Thanks Brad.
- “Practicing 1000 times…” you bet your ass I did. The clip of practice they show has to be from at least a few days prior to demo day. But we really did work our asses off. By demo day, Joe knew every fucking click in our presentation deck without looking at any notes - just by my speech. We’d ride the subway home and I’d just say the pitch out loud while Joe said “click… click.”
- Btw… the part that I screwed up here just kept getting me. It was my Achilles Heel and I was so relieved to get through it on Demo Day… of course, Dan later told me that as I approached that line he was warning Nevin “this is where Reece better not f*** up!”
- Another F - bomb. More money to Charity : Water.
- Note: Yes, my t-shirt is kinda tight. We ordered the wrong sizes and Henry was left with a medium that looked ridiculous on him, so I swapped and it looked only slightly less ridiculous on me. You’re welcome, Henry.
- How could they not show even a little of Fred Wilson intro’ing us?!
- 8 minute pitch condensed into 20 seconds… haha. So incoherent…
- Playoffs! Sports analogy!
- Awesome how Immersive stuck it out for Demo Day. They’ve had it tough, but they’re all good guys at heart.
- I used to play against/with one of the greatest lacrosse players ever. He allegedly never trained and was just really gifted, but the truth was he trained off campus, by himself and apparently worked harder than everyone. I feel like that’s Jason Baptiste. He seemed like a slacker before demo day, but I bet he had his pitch down well before, behind closed doors.
- Veri - love them. Lee nailed it.
- Post-pitch… that was nuts. So many people and it was crazy talking to that many investors that quickly. It is impossible to replicate that kind of heat as an entrepreneur. When I raised money for HomeField, it took me over a year. Shelby - less than two months from demo day to close. Insane. Thank you TechStars.
- Micah - great comment re: personalized channels and the future of TV. Smart dude.
- Katie Rae’s comment about our team sticking together… means so much to me. Katie’s great. So is our team.
- I really was so sweaty.
- No joke - we had an email from an investor as soon as we walked off stage that said “I’m in.” It was amazing.
- I can only imagine what Tobal was thinking while speaking with investors… but you did do your mom proud, Tobal. I promise.
- Stylman! Dude’s awesome…
- Cohen “this was the easy part.” It wasn’t easy, but it certainly was structured and is only just a step on the path to building a real company.
So that’s it! The last recorded episode before tonight’s live show. I honestly have no idea what to expect tonight, other than it’s live TV, I’ll probably be sweating and will be thinking “don’t swear on live TV, don’t swear on live TV, don’t swear…”
I’m at Demo Day now for the new class of NYC TechStars, but I’ll see y’all live tonight at 9.
Guess who has two thumbs and made an accurate prediction about the TechStars TV show last week?
That’s right… it’s THIS guy.
When Mark Suster said “this team has gone backwards,” he was talking about us. Let’s see how much further back we can go…
- Nice haircut, Tisch.
- Pitch practice was great. I mean… I dreaded it early-on when our product wasn’t fully baked and I was pitching vaporware, but once things came together, it was a blast. Really fun to see all of my friends get better every week, too, which made us all step our game up. That being said, I hate that they show Eli and Eduardo being crapped on by Mark. Those guys are great entrepreneurs.
- Mark Suster - I’m lucky to have known Mark for a while now and he’s been supportive of us, particularly when it came to getting into TechStars. To hear him say we’re succumbing to “group think” is tough to swallow… worse to have Cohen nodding in agreement. And not great to suggest that we’d only get funded by dumb-money. “I live in LA, I see these every ******* month.” Well… clearly there’s a problem and no one’s solved it. As Mark himself encouraged me to say in my pitch, we’ve been working in web video for “over 3 years,” so you can call it group-think, but this is a trend we’d been considering for a while and we’re leaders in the space. At the end of the day, Mark comes off as the Simon Cowell character this week. Was he a harsh critic? You bet. Does he do it because he cares? Definitely. Hell… he even emailed me after this episode aired to more or less say ‘sorry I come off so harsh… I love you and your team… but I still think I’m right. hope you prove me wrong.’ We’ll see, Mark. We’ll see… ;)
- Tisch - ‘hit the lottery and Shelby is a Twitter.’ Appreciate that, but aren’t all of us startups supposed to go for high risk, high reward, binary outcomes like that anyway?
- “I loved their first business. It was a great idea. There’s a huge market.” Thanks Mark, though it was a bit late at that point and there are a lot of people who disagree.
- EPIC DISASTER DEMO FAIL - I hadn’t used notes once throughout TechStars… the one day I planned to use them… #fail. haha. Had nothing to do with the notes. I built a brand new deck and Joe and I were out of sync. It looks like Joe’s fault the way they edit it, but it was probably mine. Love the shot of Henry watching me fuck up. No pressure from my team or anything…
- SPORTS ANALOGY + FORESHADOWING! Maybe we’ll win the next game?
- Veri - “deprioritizing everything and working on the pitch,” that’s exactly what happens at the end of TechStars. You want to work on your business, but demo day is too important. It’s the beauty and the beast of the program and if you play your cards right, you’ll end up with great investors. Anyway, Veri killed it and I’m psyched for those guys.
- Ha… “$200k already raised” - [notice the red cut on my nose? That’s from Joe and I trying to kill each other wrestling in a conference room one night just for fun. Good times.] More importantly, you really should try to get as much investor traction going into a fundraising event. Good advice from Tisch.
- “Building a luxury retail company is fucking hard.” No Melanie, “Building any company is fucking hard.” ;)
- Hiring advice from Tisch to OnSwipe. Serious wisdom there. Be honest when recruiting and ‘scare away’ the people who aren’t right for your team.
- I have no idea what Baptiste is talking about… buying Facebook buildings…
- Sosa and his family… so tough. I know Jason went through a lot of stress during TechStars, but I didn’t know about any of this going down at the time, which says a lot about the professionalism of that team. Alessio and Chris are great guys and it’s impressive how they tried to work through all this. Sosa’s right about the pressure you feel as the CEO raising money with demo day approaching. The teams’ counting on you. So intense…
- I swore again. That’s another $25 to Charity:Water.
- A comment from a friend re: OnSwipe and Tim Armstrong, “did those guys really plop their ipads down on Tim Armstrong’s desk?!” Haha… yes. Yes they did.
- Subtitling Andreas.. ha. So silly.
- Brad Feld! I love the guy. Seriously… I always feel better after hanging with him.
- Another F-bomb, another $25 to Charity:Water. I think I screwed up in the first 3 words that time.
- Caren got so much better throughout pitch practice. It was awesome to see.
- Suster’s acting lesson… so dramatic, but he’s absolutely right.
- Is that knock-off music from Mission Impossible in the background? Don’t think I didn’t notice, Bloomberg…
- DEAR BLOOMBERG, THERE WAS NO FUCKING COMPETITION. THEY ARE NOT NEW ENTRANTS. THEY ARE OUR FELLOW TECHSTARS - CROWDTWIST AND RED ROVER, THEY ARE AWESOME AND THEY WENT THROUGH EVERYTHING WE DID AT THE SAME TIME AND NONE OF US COMPETED FOR A $5M CHECK. STOP MAKING IT LOOK LIKE A FUCKING CONTEST. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.***
Ok… I vented. I’ve said before, overall, I think the show is solid, but the “competition” theme Bloomberg has run through it is overblown and as a result, 99% of the show is about us CEO’s and our fundraising process. But we wouldn’t be anywhere without our teams. If we - Dan, Joe, Henry and Myles - hadn’t worked well together, I’d have nothing to pitch. And towards the end of the program, everyone stepped up big time to help me practice again and again and again before demo day.
Well… let’s see who “wins” in episode 5 tonight @ 10:30pm.
*** - I don’t usually swear this badly on my blog. Certainly not in caps-lock. I’ll fine myself another $25 donation to Charity:Water.
Ok here’s episode 2 from last week. We got a little more meat as the show starts digging into the teams… let’s just get into it…
- The weekly 10:10’s were definitely a lot of fun. Was awesome to have that as a way of checking up on everyone. Amazingly, despite the fact that we were all stacked on top of each other in the office, there was so much going on with every company it was hard to keep up.
- What internet legend would we want to meet? Dan: “I said, Al Gore… because he invented the thing.” Classic.
- Jason/OnSwipe saying “hide your developers, hide your designers, ‘cause we’re hiring everybody.” I think Tisch was over-sensitive there. I didn’t think for a second that they were coming after my team… and even if they did, my guys wouldn’t jump ship. We’re too tight and we love the stuff we’re building. Sorry Jason. ;)
- “We ARE awesome.” Ahhh Joe… simultaneously a really humble, hard working guy and yet here he is quoted as his alter ego, Bro-voli. Too funny. Were we cocky going into TechStars? Not at all. Every team was SO stacked - how the hell did we get in? Furthermore, one of the best pieces of advice we got before starting was from a good friend and mentor, Mike Duda, who said “don’t try to win TechStars.” He knew how competitive we are and it was the right advice for us to go in with open arms, not a cocky “we’re-here-to-win” attitude. Thanks Mike.
- Were we sure that HomeField itself is a winner? No. But were we the right team to attack the problem? Absolutely. Did we “know exactly what we’re doing?” Ehhhh… ;)
- “Athletes. Athletes. Athletes.” Nice editing, Bloomberg.
- That panel with Howard Lindzon, Howard Morgan and Roger Ehrenberg was awesome! Those guys really are ballers. Roger’s points about relationships are so dead on. That is huge advice for young entreps.
- “That’s super-fucking nerd.” Gotta love Gary V soundbites. For the record, while they did pick a great quote, they neglected to show the part where Gary touched Henry’s leg. #truestory
- Those walking interviews are so weird.
- Tisch’s comment - “Reece - definite leader… I don’t know that he’s an internet visionary.” According to Tisch, he went on to say that what I am is a hustler etc, but it got cut out. I’m not insulted by it anyway - I know Tisch was speaking from a caring, if concerned, position and not maliciously. And at that point in TechStars, we were admittedly struggling a bit - did we figure it out? Yep… and that’s all that matters.
- I’m on a bike!
- Roger - WTF? I thought you said I was “laser-focused?” Haha… such is mentor whiplash. We were groping around a bit. We had one 3/4 baked product that had evolved over a couple years and we had a 2nd idea for which we hadn’t figured out the recipe yet. Such is the life of product development.
- Pitching to Jeff Clavier… tough criticism, but it was great to hear it. Tisch.. thanks for acting out Jeff’s point about investors turning to their phones. Jerk. ;)
- “The Hurricane.” Amazing nickname.
- Speaking of nicknames. We started calling Cohen “The Oracle,” because his advice and feedback was amazing. He never told us what to do, just told us what we needed to hear.
- Were we all really that arrogant? WTF Bloomberg… I mean, yeah we were excited and optimistic, but I think deep down we all stayed pretty grounded.
- Even the announcer is swearing now!
- Me: “It’s a constant rollercoaster.” Fucking A it is… I think that word still pops in my head every 6 hours.
- Ok.. we saw a bit more Veri, but no Tobal?! And where’s Raoul?
- Gary V’s lying about not liking to learn, but talk about really, really, really, really, really, really driving home a point… annnnnd “I”m completely right.” Love it.
- “OnSwipe says fuck all these meetings.” Who knows if Jason was kidding when he said that or not, but the sad part is there are a lot of teams/entrepreneurs out there (578 teams to be exact) who would’ve killed for some of the meetings they skipped.
- Melanie’s line about investors investing in an entrepreneur with a failed startup. Yes, true, but don’t forget kids - getting an investment is not a measure of success, it’s just another step on the road to success.
- Wiji’s epic Times Square hero shots! haha… so staged, so funny.
- We need a “tech superhero?” But we’ve got Dan!
- I swore. Sorry mom (and sorry to my mom’s friends who emailed her about me swearing… yes, really)! In apology, I am going to donate $25 to Charity : Water for every time I swear on the show… but I still really fucking hated being on the fence.**
- Fred Wilson! He’s the man. I’m very lucky to have known Fred for a few years prior to TechStars and he was supportive of us getting into the program. To then formalize our friendship with him as our mentor was phenomenal for us. He encouraged us to chase some of our bigger ideas that we were maybe wary of pursuing given our current path with HomeField.
- Pivot! Everyone drink!
- I hope we don’t go “splat.”
So that was episode 2. Seems the show is catching on, as I keep getting messages saying “I saw you on TV!” Pretty fun to see the reaction as most people didn’t even know about the show… hell most of my friends don’t even know what TechStars is or what the hell Dan and I do on a day to day basis. Guess it takes a TV show to get through. ;)
Episode 3 tonight @9pm on Bloomberg, or online sometime tomorrow…
**Swearing on my blog is still permitted. ;)
So last Tuesday we got to see the first episode of TechStars on Bloomberg TV. The reaction to the show has been really positive so far (thank you to everyone who tuned in!). I thought I’d just chime in with a few notes on the show itself…
- Tisch really does swear that much.
- He is also really that dedicated to helping TechStars teams. He was around all the time during the program. Though I only saw him in a button-down shirt 3 times, and all of them were on camera. Still, to quote my dad, “does that guy really wear a hoodie everyday?”
- My beard… the video you see of me with an epic beard is from our application video. Never thought that video would see the light of day, let alone be on TV. It was my ‘playoff beard’ - not to be shaved until we got into TechStars or raised our angel round. Thank goodness both happened in January, but now that it’s out… fuck it… you can see the whole thing here.
- No, Spinosa did not do the entire program in his Terminator voice.
- TeamHomeField.com - yeah… that’s us. We applied to TechStars as HomeField, though in the process of applying, we’d been synthesizing a more broad idea around video. Kudos to the Davids for accepting us as a team first and letting us figure out our ideas.
- Thank you to Roger Ehrenberg. Such kind words. Will be interesting to see more of the mentor feedback after the fact… can’t wait to hear Suster.
- There were 11 teams in our TechStars class. Unfortunately, only 6 of us are being featured in the show. Why? Totally a TV choice and nothing to do with the people or the success of the companies in the program. ThinkNear, Crowdtwist, Red Rover, Foursquare And Seven Years Ago (formerly Friendslist), ShuttleCloud (formerly MigrationBox) are all awesome companies with great people who are doing really well and we learned a lot from all of them.
- 5 Hour Energy - are you listening? I’m not kidding, I still want a sponsorship. I’m running the NYC Marathon in a couple months… feel free to send me a jersey and I’ll rep it. Hell… I’ll wear it to meetings.
- Thank you to Tisch for defending our personality to Cohen… I know you didn’t mean anything by it Cohen. ;)
- The hilarity of Bloomberg choosing to subtitle Alessio… He is hands-down one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, speaks great English and there he is with subtitles… so ridiculous.
- Hoping for lots of Raoul (though don’t be fooled by his stylish tie. he only wore it once - nice try, Raoul.)
- Hoping for more Tobal, too.
- Preseason Rankings… haha, there were no “rankings” in TechStars until we started doing pitch practice and were ranked on our presentations leading up to demo day.
- A note on the element of “drama.” Every startup has drama - it’s just a fact. Throw a startup in an accelerator and there’s even greater intensity. Pretty obvious for the TV show to pick that up and run with it, but we couldn’t really expect them to show hours of engineers coding product the whole time.
- Jeff Bussgang - an amazing entrepreneur and investor - wrote a post about the “tone” of the show, critiquing it for catering to an edgier, stylized audience… and he’s not wrong. The first episode does move really fast as there is a TON of information to get across - intro TechStars, the Davids, the teams, etc. - but I think we’ll see more meat in the next episodes.
Overall, I think she show is solid and as I’ve said before, if it exposes new people to startups, teaches current startups to avoid our mistakes or inspires someone to go do it themselves, the show is a win.
Next episode is tonight at 9pm on Bloomberg and online (I think) and available online the next day here.
wrote this for the Shelby blog…
“Reality TV.” Some of us love it. Some of us hate it. 10 months ago, if you’d asked me if I’d ever participate in a reality TV show, I’d say “no f***ing way.”
And yet, tonight is the premier of TechStars - a 6 part series on Bloomberg showcasing our team and our fellow TechStars from the winter class.
So what changed my mind?
Most importantly, the TechStars program DID NOT change for the TV show. The Davids guaranteed us that their primary goal was to help us build our companies - that meant excellent access, advice and mentorship from great people like all the entrepreneurs and investors featured in the new trailer above.
Also, I knew TV production well enough to know that anything seen on camera can and will be used to craft a compelling story. So how did that change our behavior?
Not at all.
I’m really proud of the team we’ve assembled and the company we’re building. I believe in what we’re doing and I don’t fear any sort of press that may show us in one light or another. Will the footage be edited to make us look like former jocks? Probably. Will there be goofy scenes of us drinking beers? Definitely. Will we let any weird opinions form about us bother us? Nope.
On the flip side, will the show be a great way for other entrepreneurs to learn what mistakes NOT to make? I think so. Will it inspire others to say “hey, I have an idea… I can do that.” I really hope so.
We can make all sorts of guesses as to the potential impact of the show, but at the end of the day, TechStars is about helping great companies build amazing products. I’m really proud and I consider myself very lucky, to be a part of that.
If you have thoughts or questions about the show, hit me up @reecepacheco
Series starts tonight at 9PM on Bloomberg.
Some people in the tech scene have been questioning a few things about 1. TechStars and 2. the fact that TechStars will be on TV. I think this new trailer demonstrates some of the amazing learning and mentorship that happened during the program.
Series starts tonight at 9PM on Bloomberg.
happy birthday @charitywater - love everything you do
*my mom has been known to give gifts on her birthday and it’s something i’ve picked up as well. i think that makes much more sense - don’t you?
