Techies, Parties, and Success

Peter Corbett is the founder of DC Tech Meetup – a monthly meeting of the local community of techies and startups – to encourage demonstrations of latest technology and what's up with the entrepreneurial community. It is soundly build on open source principles - sharing and advancing good ideas. DC Tech Meetup attracts over 1,000 people to each meeting.

This month was Social Media Week – a week long collection of speakers, workshops, demonstrations, and parties - anchored by the DC Tech Meetup Keynote session.

Peter interviewed Steve Case of Revolution about lessons learned from leading AOL and Case's current roles of philanthropist and investor. Two items really popped out for me.

Case said that at AOL he learned to reinvent himself each year – shedding activities that someone else could do better and taking on new projects to learn and grow. Shedding the activities freed up time to take on new projects, while delegating activities gave others an opportunity to grow.

There are three levels of investing – each with a different purpose:

• Angel Investing is to take worthy startups from concept to prototype
• Venture Capital Investing is to take early-stage, high potential, high risk, growth startups from prototype to market
• Speed-up Capital Investing is to take viable young organizations that can change the world to a new level of growth.

Speed-up capital investing is what Case favors – several notable winners have resulted, including Living Social, Zipcar, and AddThis.

In DC Tech Meetups, Peter is investing - in community, self, and others. The return is powerful – Forbes ranks DC area #1 Tech Hot Spot!

Become wise in 5 minute increments - Rainmakers