• Review your NDA prior to our conversation (I need at least 12 hours to review prior to our meeting); term must not exceed 36 months.
• Execute, in duplicate, the NDA.
• Forward your NDA to our office manager who will a) copy your NDA and file in our contract system and b) send a copy to our lawyer who will also keep the NDA on file.

In exchange for entering into an NDA with you and/or your company I am charging what I call my NDA fee to offset the handling costs I will incur over the next 1-3 years of handling the contract you have requested I enter into.  Currently the fee is $1,000 per NDA.  Of course, I prefer that we skip the NDA entirely thus saving you the $1,000 and me the headache of dealing with ‘yet another contract’ with someone I have likely never met and won’t meet again.

My advice:

• Stop asking for NDAs and start sharing your idea widely, here is why.
• Don’t hire a CFO (you won’t need one for quite some time).
• Don’t hire a CTO (at least don’t hire anyone who has ever been CTO of anything but a startup).
• Attend Local Events like Startup Happy Hour, Refresh Dallas, Ruby Brigade, Barcamp and Democamp.
• Find a young, passionate developer with an above average EQ to join the team as a founder (he will be at the events listed above) and make him a full partner in your deal.
• Outsource the major development to U.S. based freelancers (don’t worry if they augment their team with offshore resources as long as you don’t have to deal with them).

The right person:

• Some early stage startup experience (as a founder or employee).
• Passionate about software development (hopefully agile methods, LAMP, Rails, etc).
• Someone who has read more than one book about development (Don’t Make Me Think - Krug, Bulletproof Web Design - Cederholm, Designing with Web Standards - Zeldman, Defensive Design - 37Signals, Agile Web Development - DHH)
• Someone who writes about his work on a blog (regularly)
• Someone who has a LinkedIn profile with more than a few recommendations
• Someone who attends events like Barcamp, Web 2.0, RailsCon and Gnomedex.
• Someone who can sit on a panel at a conference and talk about your service.
• Someone who is well respected and has at least 300 followers on Twitter.
• Find the coolest startups in your area and ask them about the person you are thinking of hiring.  If he is respected they will tell you how great he is, if he is a chump they won’t say much…

One last thought.  Everyone assumes building a website or a web service is easy (I know I did).  Anyone with an idea can simply hire a few coders and presto they are on their way to kicking Google’s ass.  It is hard to explain, but an anology I use is: “I have an amazing idea for a new kind of shopping mall.  All I need is to raise the money (Around $500MM), buy the land and find a contractor to build it.”  Of course, it might be easy to design and build a mall (I doubt it), but if you haven’t done it before I suspect there are a number of important lessons you might not be up-to speed on.  Have you ever been to North Park?  That was the first attempt at an indoor mall, they didn’t get it right until a few years ago.  Building a successful web application really requires a little know how and experience ~ they days of Craigslist are over (i.e. you can’t build a rudamentary website and expect to be successful, it is just too late).  Your site needs to be MUCH better…

Q: Why did you start GameWager?

A: It did not exist, so we decided to create it. Plus, we’re gamers and thought it’d be lots of fun. Does that answer work? :)

Q: Give us the namd and URLs of three blogs you read regularly and let us know why you like them.

A: wsj.com - not technically a blog, but a great site for general business news. startup-review.com - great blog that covers successful internet companies and explains why they were successful in a case-study format.  Feld.com - Brad gives a great behind the scenes look at the VC world. Great resources for current and aspiring entrepreneurs. Austinstartup.com - great for keeping tabs on what’s happening in Austin. Startuphouston.com - great for keeping up-to-date on my start-up family back in Htown! We miss you guys!

Q: What was your least favorite job?

A: Honestly, I’ve never had a job that was not stimulating. All my previous work experiences were for hedge funds/Private Equity shops or my family, which were totally cool gigs. Ultimately, the goal has always been to be in control of my life/destiny so I decided to take the plunge while I’m young and have fewer responsibilities.

Q: What is unique about your company’s culture? Do you have any interesting rituals?

A: Our company started around a bet. Thomas and I decided to settle an argument (well, lets call it a discussion ;)) on a game of Counter-Strike. That turned into the best of 3, then 5, then 7. Before long, a few dollars were riding on the line. That adrenaline pumping experiencing lead us to the concept behind GameWager. Today, any hard to decide decisions are now made simple - lets just play some games and see who wins (ok, maybe not ALL decisions :p). But to answer your question, here are just some of the perks of working at GW:

• Free sodas and yes, beer!
• Gaming at 2:30PM at work is considering, well, work (with-in reason of course).
• A very chill and relexed working environement (gotta hit those deadlines, though!)
• Lots of opportunity for growth
• Did I mention playing games is considered work?
• Open environment

Q: What are your 1/3/5 year goals for the company? Is your business a ‘lifestyle’ company or do you plan on some sort of exit?

A: 1 Year Goal - 250,000+ users, 3 Year Goal - Millions of users, 5 Year Goal - Sitting on a beach, with some hot blonde, and a Corona in hand..? J/k. Thomas and I see ourselves as serial/parallel entrepreneurs. An exit is definitely the end-goal.

Company: GameWager, Inc.
President: George Giannukos
Phone: (713) 725-6796
Email: george@gamewager.net
Blog: http://blog.gamewager.net
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=4015864&trk=tab_pro
Twitter: http://twitter.com/gamewager
Website: http://www.gamewager.net
Founded: August 2007
Employees: 7
Est. 2008 Revenue: 500,000
Est. 2009 Revenue: 20,000,000

When: Thursday, July 3rd 6-9PM
Where: The Tasting Room @ River Oaks
2409 W. Alabama 7213.526.2242

Click here for more info.  The July Houston Startup Happy Hour features a live presentation of SnapStream’s latest release of their TV search software. SnapStream’s consumer product was showcased by Bill Gates in his keynote at the Windows XP Launch in 2001 and since then it’s received lots of industry awards and recognition, including PC Magazine Editor’s Choice. Snapstream’s newest product, SnapStream Enterprise, allows organizations to record and search within thousands of hours of TV recordings. It’s used by 1) presidential campaigns, 2) city/state/federal governments, 3) TV shows (like E!’s The Soup), 4) K-12 schools and universities, and many more. Come meet the founders and see a demo of their TV search software in action at Thursday’s Houston Startup Happy Hour!

Micah explains why he started ROOV.com, “Stemming from several personal experiences…we all saw a huge deficiency for community amongst like-minded people of faith. Helping to create this community has become a passion of ours.”  Micah isn’t just building his own community, he already participates in massive online conversations going on at places like TechCrunch, 37Signals, and Red Eye VC.  The guys at Roov.com have a little tradition, the goal is to create a very specific culture, Micah explains, “We strive to be a place where anybody can present new ideas and challenge existing ones…rather than just having a few decision makers. We also allocate the 1st 30 minutes of every work week to time spent reflecting on “the why” behind what we do.”

Company Name: C3 Media Group
Website: http://www.roov.com
Blog: http://blog.roov.com
FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Micah_Davis/79100126
Funding: $500K Angel
Employees: 9
Est. Revenue 2008: 30,000
Est. Revenue 2009: 300,000

The company was founded as a newsletter in 1973 and launched as Entrepreneur magazine in 1977. It also has a biggish online presence and operates book publishing unit Entrepreneur Press. Entrepreneur.com was launched in 1996, and has been popular and very profitable, a big part of the appeal to the buyers, our sources say.

Level 10 Design

2929 Carlisle Street Suite 375
Dallas, TX, 75204

I decided to post our SimpleTicket position and a few readers posted jobs including:

Other in Box (Austin) Ruby on Rails Programmer

HiveLive (Boulder) Director of Product Management

LearnItFirst.com (Dallas) Web Presence Manager

The ads are $5 for 60 days (the lowest amount Jobamatic would allow).  I have been really impressed with Job-a-matic:

Fully hosted, nothing to install. Totally Customizable! Custom domain names, headers and footers, colors, and categories give your users a seamless experience. If you have a blog site www.yourblog.com, we can give you the domain name http://jobs.yourblog.com. Once you have a domain name that looks just like your blog, you’ll probably want it to share the same look and feel. No problem: Job-a-matic allows you to insert your own graphics and HTML to make the Job-a-matic header and footer match your blog. Spiffy, no? And of course we can also take your blog’s color scheme and pretty up your job board in those exact same hues. Custom job categories will help you look relevant to your chosen area, since jobs.dogwalker.com will doubtless need different occupation categories than jobs.sysadminblog.com.

You know, if you don’t look good, we don’t look good… Backfill! Simply Hired can populate your jobs section with listings from our gi-normous database, so your job board never has to look like a ghost town. We first try to find relevant sponsored listings, and if there are none, we will open up our big ol’ box of jobs. And yes, you will get paid for clicks on sponsored back-fill listings.

We Do the Dirty Work! Simply Hired handles all credit card and payment processing. Email receipts? That’s all us. Reminders? Ditto. No security worries, no handling the moolah - except when we send you a check. Not bad, right?

You’re Not a Customer Service Professional… And you don’t have to be. Simply Hired has your back with a responsive customer service team to handle emails from the peanut gallery. Plus we have a big old pile of helpful literature like FAQ and Learn More pages. Give us your tired, your technically challenged, your huddled masses yearning to… well, you get the picture. We’ll deal with it.

We track the details… And give you a handy dashboard so you can monitor the performance of your job board. See how many job listings you have, who’s posting them, when they’re expiring and how much money you’ve earned.

But Wait, There’s More. You also get… Our handy job board promoting WIDGETS! Drop these handy-dandy little boxes on your blog’s sidebar and they’ll advertise jobs in your job board (not to mention the fact that you have a job board). We have special widgets for easy 1-click installation into Blogger, Typepad and Wordpress powered blogs. And, if you use feedburner’s FeedFlare product on your blog, you can add a “flare” that links to your job board, and advertises the number of new posts.

We also provide some sexy little code snippets that insert simple text links or button graphics onto your main website, promoting and linking to your job board.
Visibility! Did you know that sites like LinkedIn and MySpace use our job search engine to power their jobs sections? It’s true! And when an employer posts to a Job-a-matic-powered job board, it automatically ends up in our database of 5 million jobs. Long story short, when you use Job-a-matic it drives traffic to your site.
Instant Gratification! Job-A-Matic is up and running in less time than it takes you to make a latte.

First, I don’t drink coffee (literally never had a cup in my entire life).  Second, lunch might be the perfect venue for our meeting and sometimes I will suggest it, but in general it doesn’t work for me.  Usually I go to lunch with CEOs from our companies to talk about what is going on and what we need to do.  This is REALLY valuable time for us and if we bring you along we won’t be able to get anything done.

The best way to meet is for you to come by our office.  We have a Starbucks and a cafeteria downstairs so you can pick up your or lunch if you must and hang out with us.  The best thing is to touch base with me a week before and we can pencil in a date and then give me a call an hour or so before you come to make sure nothing crazy has come up.  Lets keep it casual.  You can always just drop by, but don’t be offended if I can’t meet (assuming you didn’t schedule it before hand).  Our new space is almost finished so there should be plenty of ‘hang-out’ space.

Where:

1950 Stemmons Freeway, Suite 2022 (I-35 and Oak Lawn)
Dallas, Texas 75207
214.550.2000 Main