That's really awesome. Good luck with it - I think you'll positively impact a lot of people and a lot of companies if you can find a model that works.

Brad, I think a large part of the problem is pretty easy to understand. My wife and I both work at different startups; last night we were both at work pretty late. She didn't finish up until around 10:30; I got done an hour or so before her but kept working for a while. We don't have kids, but this lifestyle is not going to be possible when we do. Our highest performing women tend to marry high performing men (in my case I got lucky with my wife...). Since the burden of taking care of kids tends to fall on the woman, and since our best and brightest women are marrying men who have similar hard working lifestyles, something has to give. And it is usually the women's careers.

There has got to be a business model taking top tier women with kids and getting them back into the workforce part time. That may be my next startup, but I'd be happy if someone else beat me to it.

Yes, it is true. You raise money when you can, and there are only a few startups who will have the luxury of picking/turning down VCs.

I'm excited to see the numbers for New England. Please let me know when they come out.

Glad you liked the post. Your blog looks like it is going to be a very good one - keep it up! I'm going to subscribe to your feed.

You are right! Crimson Hexagon's service looked really impressive on CNN. Yet another cool startup located in Cambridge. Although they are in a crowded space...

Wayne,

That is an awesome post. I am going to bookmark it and think about some of your conclusions.

I was speaking with a local VC yesterday at lunch, and he pointed out that the mobile screen is another draw-back to the mobile experience, beyond bandwidth and whatnot. So, I guess mobile experiences will always have to be a bit different than a "big" monitor experience. However, this doesn't mean that the browser can't run the application vs. a downloaded application - it just means that the site will have to be able to detect the browser and adjust appropriately.

I'm not sure the platforms will go away in the "near" term, but in the long term anything is possible.

You've got a great team - I'm sure Volition will be a great platform! Good luck.

I agree with your main point that entrepreneurs may not realize they are giving up a lot when they take angel $ from a venture fund. I saw it work out well a few times, so I'm not as frightened of it. However, my experience was pretty limited to a particular fund, so it is dangerous for me to pretend to know what it's like out there for everyone.

Bill, I'm not sure the take-away here is don't take angel $ from a VC. I think it might be don't take angel $ from a douchebag. When I was at Atlas I saw several angel investments made by the team become fully functional Series A rounds. You do probably give up some of the valuation negotiation leverage, since every single potential co-investor at the A knows who to call right away to cozy up for that co-investor slot, but on the other hand you don't spend 6 months slogging up and down Sand Hill and/or Winter Street begging for cash. And if you are really THAT awesome you still manage to get a big time valuation from an outside investor at the A - I saw that too. And the seed-VC affiliated exec is still with the company. Although you'd probably need a crow-bar to pry him out of there; it's a pretty awesome company.

This is a very cool idea. Random technical question - do the execs/founders exchange common or preferred stock?