Author Archives: Brian Alvey

Crowd Fusion needs to add three more solid developers ASAP just to work with our existing customers, but we hire really slowly because these aren’t traditional developer jobs. I mentioned that Craig posted to Authentic Jobs looking for developer talent. That got me thinking about the people we’ve worked with at Weblogs, Inc., Blogsmith, Netscape and Crowd FusionContinue reading “You can’t coach height”

On Thursday night I was a co-host of the first New York Open Angel Forum dinner with Charlie O’Donnell, Jason Calacanis and Tyler Crowley. More than a dozen great local angel investors networked and watched investment pitches over burgers and beer at Dogpatch Labs. I was at the first OAF dinner in Los Angeles three months ago. Since then they’ve had events in SanContinue reading “Open Angel Forum: NYC”

Thursday night while I was waiting for a meeting at the bar at the Four Seasons hotel in L.A. to begin, I had a beer and did some star watching. I wasn’t planning on star watching and maybe it doesn’t always happen like this there, but it was three nights before the Oscars so IContinue reading “Drinking with the stars”

Friday night I flew home from L.A. to make it back in time for the birthday my wife and I share. I landed just after midnight and was wondering if since I was in the air between time zones when March 6 arrived that maybe I hadn’t turned 40. No such luck. I don’t rememberContinue reading “Surprise!”

In December I was lucky to be in town when Jason’s daughter was born. That evening I was in their hospital room holding her and got to see her again later that week. I didn’t make it to his wedding in Hawaii, but that was bigger by far. Last week I was again lucky toContinue reading “Open Angel Forum in L.A.”

We had a great night last night. Niki said she wanted to get tickets for Rob Thomas at the Beacon Theatre in New York City months ago. We didn’t get them when they went on sale and figured we’d either skip the show or buy some on the ticket reselling service StubHub. We’ve had aContinue reading “StubHub Hubbub”

In September at TechCrunch50 Craig and I got up on stage and told a couple thousand of our closest friends — and tens of thousands of our closest friends who couldn’t make it to SF so they watched on ustream — that our Crowd Fusion platform is being released as an open source project. Unlike the hour-and-a-half episode ofContinue reading “Going open”

On the way to school this morning, “Under the Bridge” came on the radio and I asked my boys to tell me who the band was. Usually, they pass these music tests on the first or second attempt. They both love the song “Snow,” so I figured they had a good chance of getting the right bandContinue reading “Bands of color”

My 6-year-old came into my basement office and was fascinated by what I was doing. At first I thought he was amazed by my giant monitor, but it turned out he was digging my wireless mouse. He picked it up and tried using it sideways on the wall by my desk, which was close enoughContinue reading “Law and Awe”

Our kids have had Slinkys a couple of times — metal ones and plastic ones. They love them, but within about an hour they’re usually twisted out of shape and don’t go down stairs anymore (unless you count rolling them on their sides as going down stairs). Watching our kids play with them got me thinkingContinue reading “Slinky thoughts”