The May Report: 11/23/2011: Just in time for Black Friday: Groupon’s goose lays an empty egg as stock closes below strike price of $20 — it dropped 15.5% today alone — two days ago it was at $25; ExactTarget files for IPO; Connolly receives thumbs down in criminal hearing; Lou Calamaras to wed longtime girlfriend Megan Loewe on December 3rd, but not in the Greek church!; Ron Galowich asks job candidates “Are you a nice person?”; Jason Jacobsohn “repositioning” himself — once again – hey just call him Dave Culver 2.0; i.c. stars on 24th cycle with a record sized starting class of 15; searching for Bob Bernard’s death certificate — more detail on all of this to come; My info., unconfirmed, is that two panelists at Funding Feeding Frenzy in May 2011 (Dave Beazley and Les Teichner) invested in Imdorse.com [which is a play on the words Image & endorsements... Brings Social network users and brands together like never before. Companies allow social network users the opportunity to endorse their brand(s) through a unique patent pending branding method developed by Imdorse LLC. Endorsers promote the brands and services they already use and like in the form of embellishing their social network profile photo in exchange for discounts, freebies and rewards]

Editor and publisher: Ron May, ron@themayreport.com, ronaldmay@aol.com, www.themayreport.com , 773-525-3944.

If you missed an article, go here:

www.tmronline.com/A55951/tmrarticles.nsf/vwFullNewsletter

Louis Brandeis: “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Scoop section:

– GROUPON CRASHES THROUGH IPO PRICE — and view the stock price chart

– ExactTarget files for IPO

– Marina McDermott of the University of Illinois at Chicago generously writes up the Entrepreneurial Bash (with alacrity) which is more than one can say for Chris Rollyson who had no time to do it but did have time to go to Belmont Harbor to take pics with his expensive camera very recently

– Moog, Willer, Hand, Henikoff, Tullman and about 30 others said to be discussing formation of a founders’ fund to do early stage angel investing — hey I thought these guys were doing an incubator and is this intended to be a competitor to Lightbank?
– Sarah Press, her brilliant astrophysicist boyfriend who’s doing a post doc at Harvard and CommuniTeach — she presented in May at the MIT-EF WBC

– Phil Tadros says he turned down Fox reality shoe — oops, I mean show — or just call me Ed Sullivan

____________________________

The Scoop section:
____________________

GROUPON CRASHES THROUGH IPO PRICE — and view the stock price chart

www.businessinsider.com/groupon-crashes-through-ipo-price-2011-11

GROUPON CRASHES THROUGH IPO PRICE

Henry Blodget|Nov. 23, 2011, 9:49 AM|3,616|16

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Henry Blodget

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Henry Blodget is CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Business Insider.

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Well, it was fun while it lasted.

For a few weeks after its blockbuster IPO, Groupon’s stock traded comfortably above the $20 IPO price.

No more.

Yesterday, the stock tanked 10%+, and this morning it crashed through the IPO price. As of 9:45, it was down another ~10%, near $18.

Why is the stock crashing? Anyone’s guess. It could be that some investors are hearing bad news about Q4. It could be that the underwriters have stopped aggressively supporting the price. It could be the broader market. Or all of the above. The bottom line is that folks aren’t willing to pay as much for the stock as they were a few days ago.

As I noted before Groupon went public, I think the company has identified a huge new opportunity and will eventually build a large, profitable, and healthy business. At the same time, however, Groupon is now in the midst of a painful transition from hyper-growth to profitable growth. This transition is usually hell on stock prices, and in my opinion, the IPO price was too high to account for that.

This is why I said that, if I were a big institutional investor, I’d have bought as much Groupon stock as possible at the IPO price… and then flipped it immediately in the after-market. And I’d be feeling okay about that decision right now.

In my opinion, given the risk to Groupon’s business over the next few quarters, the valuation won’t start to get interesting unless/until the stock closes in on $10 a share.

This said, it’s worth noting that even $10 would be an enormous valuation for a company created only three years ago. Those who are crowing that Groupon is “toast” and “a Ponzi scheme” because the stock is breaking the IPO price are, in my opinion, as wrong as they have always been.

SEE ALSO: Enjoy The Ride, Groupon Investors, I’m Outta Here!!

And that’s just through yesterday…

Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.
Follow Henry Blodget on Twitter.
Ask Henry A Question >

Read more: www.businessinsider.com/groupon-crashes-through-ipo-price-2011-11#ixzz1eZU99cGr
________________________________

ExactTarget files for IPO

ExactTarget IPO
X
ronaldmay@aol.com
X
Reply
from Sonny Cohen scohen@duoconsulting.com
to Ronald May
date Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 2:58 PM
subject ExactTarget IPO
Important mainly because of the people in the conversation.
hide details 2:58 PM (1 hour ago)
fyi. Your service provider is going to the public trough.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Sonny

Sonny Cohen
Director of Internet Marketing Strategy

Office: 312.529.3000
Direct: 312.529.3003
Mobile: 847.971.1101

DUO CONSULTING
Content. Leads. Clients.

Drupal training classes now forming.
Marketers. Project Managers. Developers.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Scott Dorsey
Date: Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 1:08 PM
Subject: Exciting news from ExactTarget!
To: scohen@duoconsulting.com

To view this email as a web page, go here.

Sonny,

I am delighted to share that we filed our registration statement for an initial public offering of our common stock with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier today. Since 2009, we have implemented an aggressive investment strategy focused on delivering new innovations like the Interactive Marketing Hub and expanding into new markets around the world including the United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil.

As a member of the ExactTarget family, I wanted to take this opportunity to personally share with you this exciting news and thank you for your partnership over the years. Through our collaboration, ExactTarget has emerged as the leading provider of cross-channel interactive marketing SaaS solutions delivering results for clients around the globe.

The IPO process requires us to refrain from any public comment leading up to the IPO to preserve the integrity of the process and prevent unintended disclosures that could affect our filing. Thanks for your understanding and continued partnership.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!

Best regards,
Scott Dorsey
CEO & Co-Founder
ExactTarget

________________________________

Marina McDermott of the University of Illinois at Chicago generously writes up the Entrepreneurial Bash (with alacrity) which is more than one can say for Chris Rollyson who had no time to do it but did have time to go to Belmont Harbor to take pics with his expensive camera very recently

_

Subject: Re: Entrepreneurship bash
Date: 11/18/2011 5:26:47 P.M. Central Standard Time
From: marlinchik@gmail.com
To: ron@themayreport.com, ronaldmay@aol.com

Hi Ron,

Attached is the summary. I hope this is what you are looking for.

I took notes about things that appeared interesting to me and fascinated me the most. Feel free to edit this report as you please.

Regards,
Marina

On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 12:40 PM, wrote:

Hello Ron,

It was nice to meet you yesterday.

I got your voicemail. I will write a summary of the yesterday’s event and will send you what I have.

Regards,
Marina

Sent from my iPhone

–

Marina McDermott
University of Illinois at Chicago
Liautaud Graduate School of Business
MBA Candidate 2012
E: marlinchik@gmail.com
P: 206.661.3191

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Great Lakes Entrepreneurial Bash was an event intended to educate, inspire and promote networking for executives and entrepreneurs with either a successful track record or those looking to develop one. The experience followed a strict timetable: 45 minutes allocated for panelists to present, 15 minutes for Q&A from the audience and an hour for networking and hors d’oeurvres.

The entrepreneur and writer Robert Jordan facilitated the panel. At the very beginning he asked all four panelists; Mike Domek, Ron Galowich, Jim Gray and Dane Miller to talk in short about what their successful ventures were. The information they shared was a close reiteration of what the Entrepreneurship Bash program brochure described.

Robert Jordan then went on with a few follow-up questions. This helped disclose some helpful, interesting insights and approaches the panelists had used to get where they were now.

Most of all, I was personally swayed by a success story of Mike Domek, the founder of TicketsNow. All his life he had loved going to live sporting events: going to a game in Wrigley Field was everything for him. With this passion for live entertainment, he started the business with only $100 in his pocket in 1992. His Aha! moment was when he found a guy from whom he could purchase 6 tickets at $30 and a guy to whom he could sell the same tickets for $35. He enjoyed the free money in the transaction and realized that he could do it again.

While telling his story Mike stressed that perception was everything. With the ridiculously low capital investment he even did not have enough money for a computer but he did have a keyboard. When clients called to his office, his bachelor’s apartment at the time, he would be clicking on that keyboard to create the perception of a solid company. As advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, he pointed out that nowadays there are many ways, such as professional phone call forwarding services that would make one’s company appear to be more established than it actually is.

Further, Mike explained that one should not try to follow the “tail” for a successful venture. If you have an innovative technology idea, you do not need to be in the Silicon Valley to make it come true. In his view, “tail follows opportunity”: one of his company’s executives came from the Silicon Valley to work for TicketsNow in Crystal Lake, IL, a city that no one really knows about. Finally, for Mike, good company culture is a very important factor in achieving success.

Ron Galowich, a co-founder of Initiate Systems Inc. and First Health Group Corp. expanded on the significance and the effect of a company’s culture in business. He said that he had never hired and would never hire a jerk, as one wants to work and interact with nice people. When interviewing someone for a job at his company, at the very end of the interview he always asks the question “Are you a nice person?” and interprets the interviewee’s reaction and feedback to it. He further emphasized the importance of relationships and connections one creates and develops throughout life. According to Ron, you never know how important these are until that certain moment when you need knowledge and experience that are beyond your own.

Dane Miller’s approach is to make every employee a shareholder, as owners think different than employees. Both Ron and Dane’s thoughts on the importance and the proper treatment of human capital for the success of any start-up were shared across the panel.

Lastly, the panelists were asked to talk about common mistakes entrepreneurs make and how they can be avoided and corrected. All agreed that the ability to be flexible and to recoup quickly is the key. If your business starts struggling, one needs to be able to identify the reasons why this is happening and adjust the strategy as quickly as possible. At the same time, if something does work, run with it. Jim Gray added that following your passion would help you avoid another mistake that an aspiring entrepreneur could make. If you are passionate about your idea, you have a vision.

______________________________

Moog, Willer, Hand, Henikoff, Tullman and about 30 others said to be discussing formation of a founders’ fund to do early stage angel investing — hey I thought these guys were doing an incubator and is this intended to be a competitor to Lightbank?

Fwd: Next-gen funding: Startup pioneers form angel investment fund
X
ronaldmay@aol.com
X
Reply
from William D. Anthony anthonylawoffice@gmail.com
to Ronald May
date Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 2:45 PM
subject Fwd: Next-gen funding: Startup pioneers form angel investment fund
signed-by gmail.com
Important mainly because of the people in the conversation.
hide details 2:45 PM (2 hours ago)

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: wda
Date: Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 1:45 PM
Subject: Next-gen funding: Startup pioneers form angel investment fund
To: anthonylawoffice@gmail.com

I think you would be interested in reading “Next-gen funding: Startup pioneers form angel investment fund”.

Link to the story: www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20111123/NEWS08/111129934

Best Regards
wda

–
William D. Anthony, Attorney at Law
Anthony Law Office, 20 North Wacker Drive, Suite 2520
Chicago, Illinois 60606, Telephone (312) 332-6405, ext. 267, Cellular (630) 854-0009, Facsimile (312) 332-2657

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Next-gen funding: Startup pioneers form angel investment fund

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By: Lynne MarekNovember 23, 2011

Today’s Headlines
11/23/2011

•Groupon shares tumble 15% below IPO price
•Chicago-area October jobless rate jumps to 9.7%
•Judge pares American Airlines suit against Orbitz
•10 things to do this weekend
•Boeing offers pilots in-flight updates to save fuel
•Abbott rival gets FDA approval for new heart device
.

View All of Today’s News Headlines.

(Crain’s) — Some of Chicago’s best-known technology entrepreneurs, including Viewpoints Network LLC CEO Matt Moog and ShopLocal LLC founder Brian Hand, are coming together to form a new angel investing group called the Founders Fund.

Although details haven’t been finalized, the group is targeting some 30 members, who are being asked to contribute at least $50,000 to $100,000 each to the effort, according to people familiar with the plans. The entrepreneurs have been meeting monthly on an informal basis for some time and have decided to set up a channel for investing together, they said.

The emergence of the group here is a sign that Chicago’s venture-capital ecosystem is expanding beyond the doctors, lawyers and other wealthy individuals who typically back a community’s initial startups. Now, entrepreneurs who have made money on their endeavors, mainly technology-related companies, are in a position to funnel investments into the next generation of business leaders.

Mr. Moog and Mr. Hand are spearheading the effort, the people familiar with the plans said. Generally, angel investment groups review entrepreneurs’ business ideas and then decide whether to invest either as a group or as a subset of the individuals in the group. The Founders Fund isn’t expected to have a staff or expenses per se, but rather will simply be a means of putting deals on the table to be considered by the group, the people said.

Mr. Moog, who was also previously CEO of online coupon company CoolSavings Inc., declined to comment. Mr. Hand, chairman of photo-sharing application company Timelines Inc., couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

People who have been approached for membership include SurePayroll Inc. co-founder Troy Henikoff; Tribeca Flashpoint Academy CEO Howard Tullman, who also founded Imagination Pilots Inc. and CCC Information Services Group Inc., among other firms; and Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center CEO Kevin Willer, who co-founded Google Inc.’s Chicago office.

Mr. Tullman and Mr. Willer said they haven’t made a decision yet on whether to join the group, and Mr. Henikoff said he wasn’t ready to discuss the effort yet.

“For them to be organizing an angel effort, it’s bound for success,” said George Deeb, managing partner of Northfield-based Red Rocket Partners LLC, a consulting firm for entrepreneurs. He wasn’t familiar with the new investment group.

The name of the Chicago-based group plays off the fact that the members have generally founded their own companies. Similar groups, such as the Menlo Park, Calif.-based Band of Angels, exist in other parts of the country.

Even more important than the funding, veteran entrepreneurs can offer their experience and network of contacts.

“The most valuable thing they bring is mentorship,” said Jeff Carter, a member of Hyde Park Angels, another investment group in the city that invests mainly in Chicago-based companies. He hadn’t heard of the new group.

Hyde Park Angels, which is affiliated with the University of Chicago, has local company, including the Wildcat Angels in Evanston and Northbrook-based Cornerstone Angels, led by Michael Gruber, co-founder of G4 Capital LLC.

While the groups probably review some of the same investment opportunities, they tend to carve out different niches, producing more collaboration in a network than competition, Mr. Deeb said. That benefits the entrepreneurial community.

“The more resources an entrepreneur has to attract venture capital from, the better,” he said.

(Reporters John Pletz and Shia Kapos contributed to this story.)

Read more: www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20111123/NEWS08/111129934/next-gen-funding-startup-pioneers-form-angel-investment-fund#ixzz1eZh9HqVN
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______________________________

Sarah Press, her brilliant astrophysicist boyfriend who’s doing a post doc at Harvard and CommuniTeach — she presented in May at the MIT-EF WBC

Astronomy introduction
X
Inbox
X
Reply
from Sarah Press sarah@communiteach.com
to ron@themayreport.com
cc “Matthew B. Bayliss”
date Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 11:48 AM
subject Astronomy introduction
Important mainly because of the people in the conversation.
hide details 11:48 AM (17 hours ago)
Hi Ron,

It was good running into you at Tech Bash. As promised, I have cced my boyfriend and astronomer extraordinaire Matt. He is currently observing in Chile but should have some internet access to reply.

Matt, Ron is a tech writer who is also interested in astrophysics. I am pretty sure that last week he was asking me some questions about what exactly you were studying. As I am no good at answering them, I told him that I would connect you two via email in case he wanted to follow up.

Cheers,
Sarah

–
Sarah Press
Co-founder, CommuniTeach
communiteach.com
847-691-2669

Looking to schedule a meeting? Use my Tungle page

CommuniTeach in the Sun Times.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

35°F
Clear
Wednesday, November 23, 2011AAA
Browse:HomesJobs
Matchmaking helps the needy
SANDRA GUY sguy@suntimes.com

15

Jennifer Blackwell, the pre-kindergarten supervisor at St. Vincent de Paul Center, realized her decade-long goal of planting a butterfly garden for the center’s children by using a Chicago web service that fulfills non-profits’ wish lists.

“The garden is filled with cool-looking plants that attract butterflies and bees,” said Blackwell, who oversees the center’s programs for needy children ages 3 to 5. “The kids can see what the insects are doing.”

Blackwell’s garden got planted after Barrington landscape company Avant-Gardenscapes (avant-gardenscapes.com) saw the request on Zealous Good (zealousgood.com), a Chicago web-based startup founded by 26-year-old Brittany Martin Graunke of Lincoln Park.

The landscaper donated $400 worth of plants, herbs, ceramic planters and gardening soil, as well as tomato, cucumber, pepper and watermelon plants to start a vegetable garden.

The children at St. Vincent de Paul may now enjoy watering the plants, working in the dirt and grass, and figuring out how and why the plants thrive or struggle, said Blackwell, who credited teacher Suzanne Grissom with leading the garden activities.

Zealous Good matches non-profits’ wish lists with people and companies who want to donate in-kind goods rather than cash.

Non-profits fill out on-line forms detailing their profiles and wish lists. They subscribe to the service for a $15-to-$25 monthly fee, depending on the descriptiveness of their web-profile features.

Donors, who have free website access, likewise submit their information on the website, and the two sets of data are matched according to categories. The non-profits receive an email when a wish looks as though it can be fulfilled, and the two parties arrange the exchanges.

Graunke realized there was a disconnect between non-profits’ needs and in-kind donors when she worked as strategic-engagement manager at the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago.

Zealous Good has created donations as diverse as a flat-screen TV valued at $300 to Friends of the Bessemer Bears, which supports the Bessemer Park Special Olympics team, to a $50 mini-refrigerator donated to the Greenhouse Theater Center.

A second Chicago startup, CommuniTeach (CommuniTeach.com), matches people to build community in a different way. The social enterprise co-founded by Sarah Press, a 25-year-old Wicker Park resident, and Ben Paul, a 25-year-old Northbrook native, lets people who want to learn a skill — anything from playing the guitar to canning tomatoes — find a volunteer teacher.

The company aims to do the same thing in the workforce, and has started a pilot program with Arlington Heights-based Restaurant.com to help its 400 employees share skills.

“Companies spend more than $100 billion each year on corporate training, often by bringing in an outside consultant who stays for a day and leaves. We want to show that employees can benefit by learning from each other and sharing skills,” said Press, who started her first free-learning program while she earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She leveraged her studies in political science with a minor in social entrepreneurship to match student tutors with the children of the university’s residence-hall and other non-faculty workers.

The young entrepreneurs blend their idealism with financial savvy.

Graunke, who earned her bachelor’s in industrial engineering and management sciences at Northwestern University and worked as a management consultant at Bain & Company, spent a year “moonlighting” her Zealous Good idea before launching the website. She is financing the venture with her own savings, keeping her costs low and monitoring her progress toward specific goals. Within six months, Zealous Good has matched more than 165 donations worth about $44,000, and helped 30 non-profits.

“I am far ahead of where I thought I would be,” Graunke said. “I think that during the tough economy, people are becoming more lean with what they own and carry. There is a sense that, ‘I don’t want to have to have all of this stuff, but I know that someone could benefit from it because this is such a hard time.’”

Press worked as a management consultant at Bain & Co. and then as program manager at i.c. stars, a Chicago non-profit that teaches young people to become community leaders and skilled technology professionals, before she decided to run CommuniTeach full-time last July.

CommuniTeach has attracted more than 3,000 members in Chicago, Boston and Pittsburgh, its three launch cities, and has raised $25,000 in seed funding. Press aims to raise another $225,000 and expand to new communities through an ambassadors’ outreach program.

“I love what I’m doing, and I think CommuniTeach has the potential to transform how people learn and interact with each other, and at the same time, expand their networks,” Press said.

________________________________

Phil Tadros says he turned down Fox reality shoe — oops, I mean show — or just call me Ed Sullivan

A reality show on FOX wants to cast Doejo in a new series called “office life”
ronaldmay@aol.com
X
Reply
from philcoextra phil@doejo.com
to ronaldmay
date Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 9:08 AM
subject A reality show on FOX wants to cast Doejo in a new series called “office life”
signed-by gmail.com
hide details 9:08 AM (8 hours ago)
as much as i would love too i was advised to turn them down, who wants drama when everyone is just trying to work, get by and grow.

–
Philip Tadros
708.655.6753
philcoextra.com

Doejo / we fuel ideas that grow
doejo.com

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END OF REPORT