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Wichita Angel Group

Sun, 29 May 2016 09:13:40 -0500

Wichita Angel Group:

Official announcement

Local Coverage -

http://www.kansas.com/news/business/article78841292.html

http://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/blog/2016/05/local-investment-club-adds-high-net-worth.html

"Or is it your reputation that’s bothering you? But look at how soon we’re all forgotten. The abyss..."

Wed, 16 Sep 2015 16:25:15 -0500

“Or is it your reputation that’s bothering you? But look at how soon we’re all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of all those applauding hands. The people who praise us — how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region in which it all takes place. The whole earth a point in space — and most of it uninhabited. How many people there will be to admire you, and who they are.”

- Marcus Aurelius, iv.3

"How much does it matter what message a city sends? Empirically, the answer seems to be: a lot. You..."

Mon, 22 Jun 2015 13:50:44 -0500

“

How much does it matter what message a city sends? Empirically, the answer seems to be: a lot. You might think that if you had enough strength of mind to do great things, you’d be able to transcend your environment. Where you live should make at most a couple percent difference. But if you look at the historical evidence, it seems to matter more than that. Most people who did great things were clumped together in a few places where that sort of thing was done at the time.

You can see how powerful cities are from something I wrote about earlier: the case of the Milanese Leonardo. Practically every fifteenth century Italian painter you’ve heard of was from Florence, even though Milan was just as big. People in Florence weren’t genetically different, so you have to assume there was someone born in Milan with as much natural ability as Leonardo. What happened to him?

If even someone with the same natural ability as Leonardo couldn’t beat the force of environment, do you suppose you can?

[…]

No matter how determined you are, it’s hard not to be influenced by the people around you. It’s not so much that you do whatever a city expects of you, but that you get discouraged when no one around you cares about the same things you do.

[…]

You don’t have to live in a great city your whole life to benefit from it. The critical years seem to be the early and middle ones of your career. Clearly you don’t have to grow up in a great city. Nor does it seem to matter if you go to college in one. To most college students a world of a few thousand people seems big enough. Plus in college you don’t yet have to face the hardest kind of work—discovering new problems to solve.

It’s when you move on to the next and much harder step that it helps most to be in a place where you can find peers and encouragement. You seem to be able to leave, if you want, once you’ve found both. The Impressionists show the typical pattern: they were born all over France (Pissarro was born in the Carribbean) and died all over France, but what defined them were the years they spent together in Paris.

”

- http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html

"Parkinson shows how you can go in to the board of directors and get approval for building a..."

Thu, 18 Jun 2015 13:05:50 -0500

“

Parkinson shows how you can go in to the board of directors and
get approval for building a multi-million or even billion dollar
atomic power plant, but if you want to build a bike shed you will
be tangled up in endless discussions.

Parkinson explains that this is because an atomic plant is so vast,
so expensive and so complicated that people cannot grasp it, and
rather than try, they fall back on the assumption that somebody
else checked all the details before it got this far. Richard P.
Feynmann gives a couple of interesting, and very much to the point,
examples relating to Los Alamos in his books.

A bike shed on the other hand. Anyone can build one of those over
a weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV. So no
matter how well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with
your proposal, somebody will seize the chance to show that he is
doing his job, that he is paying attention, that he is *here*.

In Denmark we call it “setting your fingerprint”. It is about
personal pride and prestige, it is about being able to point
somewhere and say “There! *I* did that.” It is a strong trait in
politicians, but present in most people given the chance. Just
think about footsteps in wet cement.

”

- http://green.bikeshed.org/

Defining your childhood

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 21:31:47 -0500

5th Grade. Winning the Presidential Academic Fitness Award for 5 years of straight A’s. “Signed” by President Bill Clinton.
6th Grade. Being told by my Social Studies teacher that I wasn’t smart enough to be part of the “gifted” program.

"Working with him isn’t a comfortable experience, he is never satisfied with himself so he is never..."

Fri, 08 May 2015 11:54:42 -0500

“Working with him isn’t a comfortable experience, he is never satisfied with himself so he is never really satisfied with anyone around him…the challenge is that he is a machine and the rest of us aren’t.”

- http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-man.html

"But Goldberg’s death was a reminder, at least to me, that we are writing our legacy every day. And..."

Fri, 08 May 2015 10:17:45 -0500

“But Goldberg’s death was a reminder, at least to me, that we are writing our legacy every day. And we never know when, unexpectedly, there will be an accounting of how we lived and how we were regarded by others. I just thought it was a nice reminder to see someone do it right.”

- SFGate, “After his death, David Goldberg’s name keeps coming up. There’s a reason”

A bag of nails

Wed, 06 May 2015 11:25:28 -0500

Once upon a time there was a little boy with a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he should hammer a nail in the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. But gradually, the number of daily nails dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.

Finally the first day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He proudly told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence.

“You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out, it won’t matter how many times you say ‘I’m sorry’, the wound is still there.”

Source: A View on Buddhism

Photo

Wed, 15 Apr 2015 11:23:52 -0500

Photo

Sun, 12 Apr 2015 11:51:58 -0500

LAUNCH 2015.

Sun, 12 Apr 2015 00:20:48 -0500

LAUNCH 2015.

Startups and Local Politics

Mon, 06 Apr 2015 10:17:47 -0500

I’m voting for Sam Williams on April 7th, and you should too.

I moved to Wichita in 2006. Ever since then I’ve been working on building the startup community here. I’ve helped organize multiple Startup Weekends, have built multiple tech companies and am working on multiple community projects with the Chamber of Commerce. 9 years later, I’ve yet to ever meet the mayor of Wichita, nor has he ever attended any of the events the Wichita startup community has put together.

I’ve known Sam Williams for almost a year now, thanks to the work we’ve done together with the Chamber of Commerce. When I first heard Sam was running for mayor, I approached him one morning asking how I could help. For the first time ever, I wanted to be involved in local politics. Why? Because I knew with that with Sam’s entrepreneurship background, he would run on a platform of disruption.

We need that here in Wichita. Desperately. Startups are all about disrupting the establishment; that’s a core component of Sam’s platform. When the State of Kansas is trying to legislate startups like Uber out of business, we need a voice of reason from the largest city in the state. We need someone willing to fight for our generation; the disruption generation. That’s what Sam is going to do.

I know this for a fact. Sam is the first local politician willing to actually listen to the generation that matters: our generation, the millennials. Rather than just words though, Sam is putting concrete action steps behind his promises. When Sam is elected as Mayor of Wichita, myself and Kenton Hansen will be meeting with Sam on a regular, bi-weekly basis. That will give us an opportunity to be the voice for our generation, for the Wichita startup community. We will have a direct connection to the City of Wichita, enabling Sam to better serve his constituents – and for our generation and community to be heard.

Vote for Sam on Tuesday. It’s time to disrupt Wichita.

"A: Having ADD is like having a race car for a brain, A Ferrari engine for a brain. It will propel..."

Sun, 05 Apr 2015 17:45:08 -0500

“A: Having ADD is like having a race car for a brain, A Ferrari engine for a brain. It will propel you to win many races in your lifetime. However, there is one problem. You have bicycle brakes! So, you need to see a brake specialist, someone like me. Once you get your brakes strengthened, then the race car can win races instead of spinning out on on turns.”

- http://www.drhallowell.com/add-adhd/top-10-newest-findings-about-addadhd/

The end of birthday week! @

Sat, 21 Mar 2015 08:36:25 -0500

The end of birthday week! @

The Scorpion and the Frog

Wed, 18 Mar 2015 21:14:41 -0500

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will die too.”

The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp “Why?”

Replies the scorpion: “Its my nature…”

The Little Boy and The Rattlesnake

Wed, 18 Mar 2015 14:55:53 -0500

The little boy was walking down a path and he came across a rattlesnake. The rattlesnake was getting old. He asked, “Please little boy, can you take me to the top of the mountain? I hope to see the sunset one last time before I die.” The little boy answered “No Mr. Rattlesnake. If I pick you up, you’ll bite me and I’ll die.” The rattlesnake said, “No, I promise. I won’t bite you. Just please take me up to the mountain.” The little boy thought about it and finally picked up that rattlesnake and took it close to his chest and carried it up to the top of the mountain.

They sat there and watched the sunset together. It was so beautiful. Then after sunset the rattlesnake turned to the little boy and asked, “Can I go home now? I am tired, and I am old.” The little boy picked up the rattlesnake and again took it to his chest and held it tightly and safely. He came all the way down the mountain holding the snake carefully and took it to his home to give him some food and a place to sleep. The next day the rattlesnake turned to the boy and asked, “Please little boy, will you take me back to my home now? It is time for me to leave this world, and I would like to be at my home now.” The little boy felt he had been safe all this time and the snake had kept his word, so he would take it home as asked.

He carefully picked up the snake, took it close to his chest, and carried him back to the woods, to his home to die. Just before he laid the rattlesnake down, the rattlesnake turned and bit him in the chest. The little boy cried out and threw the snake upon the ground. “Mr. Snake, why did you do that? Now I will surely die!” The rattlesnake looked up at him and grinned, “You knew what I was when you picked me up.”

(Source: http://www.indigenouspeople.net/snake.htm)

The LAUNCH Incubator, Batch 1. What an opportunity. Thankful.

Sun, 15 Mar 2015 23:42:49 -0500

The LAUNCH Incubator, Batch 1. What an opportunity. Thankful.

The LAUNCH Incubator

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 17:36:56 -0500

If you want to be a lawyer, you go to law school. If you want to get your masters in entrepreneurship, where do you go? Jason Calacanis’s LAUNCH Incubator.

12 weeks of feedback, access and camaraderie with fellow founders, coached by the best in our industry. Without any doubt, The LAUNCH Incubator is easily the best thing that happened to Recurrency in late November of 2014.

It all starts with something very simple: a Thursday night meeting. It’s a forcing function. Every Thursday, all 7 companies would meet and stand up in front of each other to give our 7 minute pitch. One or two incredibly well-known individuals in our industry would then give feedback on each pitch. You’re forced to show up and step up your game every. single. week.

That alone is worth it.

What else? Access. Attention. Capital. A huge crowd to help launch your startup. You can’t buy this stuff. Only a few will ever be a part of it.

Go be part of the next “Magnificent Seven”. Apply for the Spring 2015 LAUNCH Incubator right here.

Incubator Winner - yes!

Sat, 07 Mar 2015 15:21:26 -0600

Incubator Winner - yes!

Welcome to Recurrency.Incredibly happy to have the opportunity...

Sat, 07 Mar 2015 12:10:20 -0600

Welcome to Recurrency.

Incredibly happy to have the opportunity to build a dream team. Lucky to having an amazing co-founder.

Can’t wait to show you what we have on deck next.