2012 February Archive - The May Report

Archive for February, 2012

The May Report: 2/29/2012: Leap of faith: I guess I’m no longer a Technori vestal since I attended the after party and surveyed about 50 people — the results were that the #1 presentation, partly because of the usefulness of the idea, and partly because of the clear, concrete, and crisp presentation was 5degrees.us/ founded by Jeb Ory (I’m not sure if 5degrees is just a new name for The App House); tied for 2nd but much further down on the list would be Jason Goodrich’s ShortList (fka A Space Apart) and Jarrett Colby and Andre Marques who “just came out of the development cave” have a contract product called It’s Agreed — itsagreed.com; Mole detective and Viewpoints got a few votes and in Matt Moog’s case, it appeared to be from people who already knew him and the biz; I went to Matt Lamb’s memorial service Sunday on a spy mission, and found it to be very invigorating and uplifting — a true Irish wake with the New Orleans style marching band (members of the Cerqua Rivera jazz orchestra) playing When the Saints Go Marchin’ In and in the video montage they played two of Matt’s favorite songs: The Wall by Pink Floyd and Losing My Religion by R. E. M. — the event was a true celebration of Matt Lamb’s expansive life and spirit and as Cardinal Joseph Bernardin told Matt on his death bed, “Matt, the time for posturing is over.” As the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus wrote in his elegiac poem, ave atque vale, Hail and Farewell — the tone of the entire service reflected Matt Lamb’s lifelong commitment to art as a vehicle toward world peace as illustrated by his umbrella initiative; there were priests, reverends, rabbis and imams in attendance along with hundreds of mourners; btw, the food catered by Blue Plate was great, and did you know that Chicago has 57 sister cities worldwide, including Galway (Giallimh), on the west coast of Ireland and the country’s fastest growing city; and yes Doug Stukel of Affluence.org was there and as he darted away from me he said he can’t talk to me but later on, one of his associates who would not give me his name and who struck me as though he was out of central casting for The Sapranos told me I had no idea what they were doing with Matt Lamb and I was not showing enough respect for the occasion

The May Report February 29th, 2012

The May Report: 2/29/2012: Leap of faith: I guess I’m no longer a Technori vestal since I attended the after party and surveyed about 50 people — the results were that the #1 presentation, partly because of the usefulness of the idea, and partly because of the clear, concrete, and crisp presentation was 5degrees.us/ founded…

The May Report: 2/24/2012: What a week! Jeff Norgle, the patent lawyer in Nancy Sullivan’s OTM at UIC resigns — presumably in disgust even though the last time he quit, she coaxed him back with a $15K raise; Wheaton-based TouchSensor lays off R&D dep’t.; Skokie-based NanoInk stable w/85 employees and two counterfeit drug deals; Threadless and its charitable t-shirts featured on the national program Nightly Business Report; btw, Why did the compliance department tell Seema Ackerman, Vice President at Goldman Sachs, that she could not appear on a panel with Federal Reserve economist Bill Testa?; Steve Kaplan interviewed on Dylan Ratigan’s show Fri. afternoon which is being aired from Chicago Booth, and so was Matt Segal who founded Our Time, but the geniuses who helped behind the scenes had Ratigan talk to one student who’s going into consulting, one into investment banking, and one into venture capital — where were the students who want to be entrepreneurs Linda Darragh, Ellen Rudnick, Steve Kaplan, Scott Meadow, Waverly Deutsch?; What are the odds that two of the biggest scammers TMR has covered should both be trying to scam the same person at the same time? We need an APB on Chris Tomes (Chicago, Chelsea, MI, and now Toronto) along with his buddy Scott Goodrich; Tomes is still plying his trade through ICTV, a customized monitor used for live video streaming of events; Tomes tried to get Irene Michaels, (a well known Chicagoan who knows just about everyone in the entertainment field and who owns ionthescene.com) involved in a project with Spiderman; Quite unrelated, Tomes owes the Commercial Music Group of Sony Music Entertainment $20K so they can pay the artist’s fee to Augustana for the use of her songs in a CD that Tomes told Sony would be given to all buyers of Dodge cars; and he owes developer Ben Blake $50K to $100K, Jenna Levine, Kendra and others; his MO is that he meets young women and then tries to entice them to work with him — meanwhile, he tries to impress them with the people he knows and there is plenty of coke and ecstasy in the mix; The other scam artist back on the scene is Doug Stukel (Affluence.org) who tried to get Irene Michaels to help with a brand and site, and Affluence is now claiming to be merged with Matt Lamb Studios (it’s actually Matt’s daughter Sheila they are trying to scam since Matt died last Saturday); it’s the usual routine, Doug Stukel was supposed to wire $25K to Irene — guess whether that happened — and they were offering $50K to $100K in stock options — gee, I wonder what that’s worth? When Irene told Doug she was looking into Affluence, he made up an excuse and bowed out rather than pay the $ — it’s turning into a potboiler since Sheila’s not sophisticated in biz and was spending $2,500 a day on a security firm to escort her; Randy Shipley may be getting paid but that’s because the $30K he’s owed by Affluence is going through the Attorney General’s office for the State of Illinois

The May Report February 24th, 2012

The May Report: 2/24/2012: What a week! Jeff Norgle, the patent lawyer in Nancy Sullivan’s OTM at UIC resigns – presumably in disgust even though the last time he quit, she coaxed him back with a $15K raise; Wheaton-based TouchSensor lays off R&D dep’t.; Skokie-based NanoInk stable w/85 employees and two counterfeit drug deals; Threadless…

The May Report: 2/20/2012: A Sima sighting: An hour ago, at 4:30pm Monday, according to Foursquare, a somewhat zoftig, yenta-ish woman named Sima Dahl was hanging out at Viewpoints. Now, why would Matt Moog be asking Sima for advice? He has to re-launch his site which may be, like his firm, getting long in the tooth, or it could just be that today is his 42nd birthday, so Happy birthday Matt!; Sittercity today, GrubHub, tomorrow, and Bill Lederer the next day. Did Genevieve get the boot? Does Sittercity have a viable long-term biz model? And why on earth is the new CEO, Martin Clifford, living in Boston while the firm is here?

The May Report February 20th, 2012

The May Report: 2/20/2012: A Sima sighting: An hour ago, at 4:30pm Monday, according to Foursquare, a somewhat zoftig, yenta-ish woman named Sima Dahl was hanging out at Viewpoints. Now, why would Matt Moog be asking Sima for advice? He has to re-launch his site which may be, like his firm, getting long in the…

The May Report: 2/17/2012: Scott Starbuck was interviewed on Channel 5 News this evening by Natalie Martinez about the increase in crime in Wicker Park — he presented CitySoles.com at Funding Feeding Frenzy last May; The report was set to go at 7:20pm and then the phone rang — I live for days like this!: Scoot F. Upp, Sr. is being brought up on criminal misdemeanor charges for assault and battery in DuPage County court and the hearing is this coming Thursday; Paul Flig is the complaining witness — Scott threw a water bottle at Paul; that turned out to be Flig’s last day of employment at Upp’s firm (it was mutual); and there are claims and counter-claims in Federal court having to do with monies owed to Flig; the mishigas is very sad really, since Scott Sr. is suing Scott, Jr. who left and went off to start his own firm; Scott, Sr. was accusing Paul Flig of spying –channeling client information to Scott, Jr.; Chief Judge James F. Holderman has ruled that he wants no part of the case and has referred it to Magistrate Judge Young B. Kim — Upp owes Flig about $25K in commissions; I’ve known Scottie (Scott, Jr.) since 1982 when he was probably under ten years’ old and I even spent Thanksgiving at the Upp family house that year — what do they do for Thanksgiving now?, so it’s very sad that a father should be suing his own son, but as Paul Flig told me, “Scott’s a grumpy old man who likes to bully people”; I wonder what people like Greg Laka, Jay Kleinow, Joe Brzoska, Bob Jarosz, Joe Parizak, Mark Jeske, Mike O’Brien, Bernie Rivkin, Pete Cobb, Hal Klegman, Denise Fetrow and others have to say about this, and I can only imagine that Gerry Rynearson and Harvey Browning are turning over in their graves

The May Report February 17th, 2012

The May Report: 2/17/2012: Scott Starbuck was interviewed on Channel 5 News this evening by Natalie Martinez about the increase in crime in Wicker Park — he presented CitySoles.com at Funding Feeding Frenzy last May; The report was set to go at 7:20pm and then the phone rang — I live for days like this!:…

The May Report: 2/15/2012: An anonymous caller left me a VM (St. Valentine’s Day) telling me that Bugs Moran (George Clarence Moran) took quite a hit to his liquor biz — yeah, 83 years ago yesterday right here on Clark Street, but while seven of his guys got it that day, Bugs lived to see 65 and died in 1957; Anything else you wanna know? Read on…

The May Report February 15th, 2012

The May Report: 2/15/2012: An anonymous caller left me a VM (St. Valentine’s Day) telling me that Bugs Moran (George Clarence Moran) took quite a hit to his liquor biz — yeah, 83 years ago yesterday right here on Clark Street, but while seven of his guys got it that day, Bugs lived to see…

The May Report: 2/15/2012: I’m not counting PE and LBO people like Duchossois, Bruce Rauner, John Canning or even Julia Stasch of the MacArthur Foundation who is a friend to the tech community; I’m counting only people who are most heavily identified with the tech industry — and we can count Joe Mansueto and Craig Donohue since their businesses are so closely intertwined with tech — which means that we have 7 people from the tech scene in Chicago Magazine’s list of the 100 most powerful people in Chicago starting at #10 with Eric Lefkofsky, and Andrew Mason is #11; JB is #20 and JB, just so you know, your pic looks like a mug shot; the CCEA and Layton Olson have important information with “call to action” content and upcoming deadlines; How’s Sweis doing in Azerbaijan and Malta? — certainly, you want to know; How many events can the VentureSHOT gang put on? –apparently a lot of them; at least two more reports today

The May Report February 15th, 2012

The May Report: 2/15/2012: I’m not counting PE and LBO people like Duchossois, Bruce Rauner, John Canning or even Julia Stasch of the MacArthur Foundation who is a friend to the tech community; I’m counting only people who are most heavily identified with the tech industry — and we can count Joe Mansueto and Craig…

The May Report: 2/8/2012: Saturday night I found out that Jason Rexilius (whose

The May Report February 8th, 2012

The May Report: 2/8/2012: Saturday night I found out that Jason Rexilius (whose # has been disconnected) got into a big fight at Nowspots and was unceremoniously shown the door; Harper Reed is traveling a lot and is using Square (btw, David Axelrod spotted eating at one of his regular haunts Las Pinatas at North…

The May Report: 2/3/2012: Governor Quinn Announces First Investments from State’s New Venture Capital Fund: Buzz Referrals, Inc. and AuraSense Therapeutics: The state’s $575,000 investment in Chicago-based start-up Buzz Referrals and Evanston-based AuraSense Therapeutics will help the two companies leverage $10.5 million in indirect private investment. Jordan Linville is the CEO and co-founder of Buzz Referrals and NU professor Chad Mirkin is the co-founder of AuraSense Therapeutics; Chicago-based Startup Kauzu Develops 2012 Plans with $250,000 Gigabit Challenge Award; and my Lynne Marek challenge — it’s high time to do some trust or monopoly busting

The May Report February 3rd, 2012

The May Report: 2/3/2012: Governor Quinn Announces First Investments from State’s New Venture Capital Fund: Buzz Referrals, Inc. and AuraSense Therapeutics: The state’s $575,000 investment in Chicago-based start-up Buzz Referrals and Evanston-based AuraSense Therapeutics will help the two companies leverage $10.5 million in indirect private investment. Jordan Linville is the CEO and co-founder of Buzz…

The May Report: 2/2/2012: Yesterday was a palindrome (2/1/12), but I was in tests all day at NMH for what looks like it may become reality in the next 12 mos., a kidney transplant!; unfortunately, donation is downthis last year, but the higher murder rate really helps, so I’m hoping we have a very hot summer with lots of gangland killings (the warm winter helps to increase the murder rate) and motorcycle accidents, and as my transplant coordinator Nicole said to me, “Where do you think the kidneys come from?”; btw, we’re looking at six more weeks of winter says Punxsutawney Phil; and did I forget to tell you how mad I really am at Jeff Willinger who did announce the meeting on Monday, the 6th at Edelman on trust, but in his usual slick Willie way (those are my words Jeff, not Lundin’s), he “forgot” to say at the very good CFA meeting on Jan. 25th that attendance is limited to 100 people, and in 24 hours it’s sold out! with a wait list — thanks a lot Jeff — but look at who’s going if you want to know who is inside the SMCC clique; I’d really rather go to Ignite on Monday night anyway; I have at least 25 more items for the report, ready to go, but I have to do the table of contents; and good job Bruce Montgomery on putting together a February calendar

The May Report February 2nd, 2012

The May Report: 2/2/2012: Yesterday was a palindrome (2/1/12), but I was in tests all day at NMH for what looks like it may become reality in the next 12 mos., a kidney transplant!; unfortunately, donation is downthis last year, but the higher murder rate really helps, so I’m hoping we have a very hot…

Archive for February, 2012

The May Report: 2/8/2012: Saturday night I found out that Jason Rexilius (whose

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