Some Plugs for my Friends

September 27, 2013

One of my favorite things to do is to hear about different people’s projects or hobbies. For the past year or so I have been posting on Fred Wilson’s blog and meeting interesting people there. Some people call this networking, but I think the term networking sounds too awkward. It conjures up forced interactions at career services events where you chat with people and then get disappointed when they don’t have jobs for you. Fred’s analogy for his blog is that it’s like a bar, and I have to agree. It’s one of the most welcoming online communities I’ve participated in.

In the past month I have had the chance to chat with Joe Wallin, a startup attorney in Seattle. He has a great blog you should check out and gave me good advice on some of my career options and some insights on working with startups. Yesterday I skyped with Jorge Torres. Jorge went to school in New Haven so we found some common ground, and as an IP attorney he too is interested in finding ways of reducing the risk of startups being crushed by patent litigation. Check out his legal defense crowdfunding startup.

I also caught up with Ryan McKeen about his new law firm and how he is using technology to save money. He told me that tools like Expensify save him from having to pay a professional bookkeeper. I too am a fan of Expensify and use it to keep track of expenses for my political consulting business. My friend Raymond, who I met when I took a trip to Washington D.C. in high school, is now working on a start-up in Hartford selling reusable coffee sleeves. Check out the tree sleeve. They are already available in local Hartford coffee shops.

If you’re working on something, share it in the comments.

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This work by Matt Zagaja is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.