AsAble.com, empowering startups

Chris McCann, Founder of StartupDigest is visiting LA next week and, together with CoLoft, is hosting a different type of meetup next Tuesday morning. The tasty type. Startup Waffles.

You now have several good reasons to turn up: to mingle with other entrepreneurs, to check out the cool & fun CoLoft space, to learn what Startup Digest is about, AND to have all-you-can-eat waffles.  To quote Cameron Kashani, Founder of CoLoft: “The last one they did up north had hundreds of people show up, including startups, angels, and VCs! Spread the word, and let’s show Chris how strong our startup community is down here!”

To sign up for this event, RSVP here.

You should say hi to Chris on Twitter: @mccannatron

Kelly Fallis is the Founder of RemoteStylist, an online interior design & home decor company. In her interview, Kelly talks about her experience with RemoteStylist.com (her second entrepreneurial venture), provides important insights to aspiring entrepreneurs, and discusses the challenges that she’s had to overcome to build RemoteStylist.com.

Kelly has been featured in the New York Times, National Post, Toronto Star, Asian Women, Microsoft, Dubai’s Gulf News, About.com, Canada.com, the Examiner, Philly.com, the Metro, Wish Magazine and on both Marriage Under Construction and Rogers Daytime. She has spoken at the Canadian Association of Women Entrepreneurs& Executives, Telus Small Business Week, the Enterprise Council on Small Business summit 2010, RIM’s Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES2010) and will be speaking on the Verizon tour in June 2010.

Kelly currently sits on the Blackberry Small Business Advisory Board, is a member of TIE, in the Communitech mentoring program and attends Sprouter, League of Kick Ass People, Tech Cocktail, Media Leaders, NYEW, Internet Week, Ad Tech, Boston ENET, the Hatchery among others. Follow her on Twitter @kellyfallis.

Here is the interview:

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This interview was conducted by Justing Hong, AsAble.com new Associate Producer. Justin is also currently the Chief Operating Officer of Highly Relevant, an Internet marketing company that specializes in converting web traffic into revenue. Justin has also been involved in various Internet start-ups, ranging from an eCommerce website to audioblogging technology. Prior to embarking on his entrepreneurial ventures, Justin was a consultant with IBM in its Business Consulting Services division. Justin has a BS from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.

Phil Michaelson, the founder of KartMe, started working on KartMe when he became tired of e-mailing himself recommendations of books, movies, hotels, and restaurants. Prior to founding KartMe, Phil worked at Dun & Bradstreet (owner of Hoovers.com) and IBM. He has a BA in Politics from Princeton University, where he minored in Computer Science, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Phil’s company, KartMe, helps people save and share expertise. In one spot you can keep travel tips, recipes, reading lists, wishlists, bookmarks and more. Members have organized over 12,000 links, products, recipes and places in over 2,000 lists. Unlike other sites, KartMe helps foodies, shoppers, travelers, and wedding planners take action by putting deals, maps and pictures at their fingertips. KartMe has won a “Staff Pick” from Apple and been covered in The Washington Post and TechRadar.

Browse Phil’s Karts (i.e., online lists) at http://kartme.com/phil.

Here is the interview:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Enjoy the interview!

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This interview was conducted by Justing Hong, AsAble.com new Associate Producer. Justin is also currently the Chief Operating Officer of Highly Relevant, an Internet marketing company that specializes in converting web traffic into revenue. Justin has also been involved in various Internet start-ups, ranging from an eCommerce website to audioblogging technology. Prior to embarking on his entrepreneurial ventures, Justin was a consultant with IBM in its Business Consulting Services division. Justin has a BS from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.

Since it’s the weekend, something light hearted today.  Does my cartoon avatar looks like me?  What do you think?

We really had a lot of fun doing the live interview with Scott Thorpe, Founder of Mogotix. If you missed the live event, we will be posting the recording soon. Be on the look out for our future live interview. Hope you will join us.

Simon Sinek teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people. This event is brought to you by a partnership between the CoLoft and AsAble.com. For more information on this event, see here.

We are going to try to do live webcast of this event. This will be the first time we do this, so please be patient while we figure out all the technical nuances. Click the red “Join Event” button to join us. Once you are in the event, if you have any questions for Simon, please click the red “Ask a Question” on the right of your screen and submit a text question. (We will not be taking video or voice question during this event.)

Looking forward to having you there. Stay wonderful!

Dave McClure was in town to speak at the BlueGlass LA conference.  I grab Dave for a small meeting with a few AsAble.com startup entrepreneurs.  Dave is someone that the startup community refers to as a “super angel” who has invested in many deals that we could only dream of.   You can read more about him here, or say hi to him on Twitter here: @DaveMcClure.

Here was Dave’s response about the event.  Below are some quotes from those who attended the event.  (Thanks Royce Disini for taking the pictures.)

“Having personal time with Dave in a small audience format was terrific.  I’m always interested in seeing an investor’s thoughts on the major topics like founders, seed investment and exits.  Rather than getting some pre-packaged and bundled bullshit, Dave was real and on point.  Everyone seemed to enjoy his game “half baked”, where two people say a single word and the third person has to pitch the consolidation of the two words as a web startup.  In theory a great idea could be stumbled upon but the fun is in the pitching the worst idea ever.” – Ian Hunter

“Great event with Dave McClure setup by Giang from AsAble.com with eight LA-based startup founders. We got to know more about Dave and his perspectives, as well as the founders’ at the event, and had fun playing Dave’s version of the game halfbaked.com.” – Royce Disini, MySpace Music

“It was a high quality, fun meeting where everyone got to talk about their business and ask Dave lots of questions.  I have a better idea about a capital raising process and I have a better plan too.- Thanks to Dave’s No-BS approach! – Anna Islamova, Oceanlist

“It was intimate, casual, and, most of all, informational. Engaging in a candid dialogue like this can have the remarkable effect of humanizing both the investor and the entrepreneur. After a while, you get the feeling that there is no ivory tower. No hidden agenda. We’re all in this together; trying to make the impossible possible – investors and entrepreneurs alike.” – Robert Kiraz, Vokle

“Dave was insightful, personable, and most importantly REAL.  Entrepreneurs will benefit hugely if they have an opportunity to sit down with Dave McClure.  And, I had fun meeting my fellow Socal entrepreneurs.  Thanks for putting this together Giang.  With more inspiration, CK.” – CK Lin

As you probably know, I like to organize small get together with interesting people like Dave for LA early stage startup entrepreneurs. I think smaller events are more intimate. It allows us to get to know each other better.  Here are some of my past events:

• Drinks with Andy Liu
• Startup Coffee with Paige Craig
• Coffee with Micah Baldwin
• Breakfast with David Hauser
• Pancakes & CrashSpace visit with Josh Fraser
• A day out to Getty Museum with David Lifson

If you would like to be included in my distribution list for my events and other info, please let me know.  I am also looking to expand this event series to other areas, and I am looking for volunteers to help.

If you know of interesting people or out-of-town guests that I should organize a get-together for, I would love the introductions.

Stay wonderful!

Simon Sinek teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people.

We are so excited that Simon is coming to LA and will spend some time to talk to us about his work. We started out wanting to organize this as a small events like we normally do with AsAble.com events but the RSVPs have been so enthusiastic, we decided to open this up to a bigger room. So join us this Thursday July 22nd at 7pm at the CoLoft. If you would like to attend this event, please RSVP here: http://simon-sinek-coloft.eventbrite.com/

This event is a partnership between the CoLoft and AsAble.com – thanks to my amazing friends Cameron Kashani and Avesta Rasouli. We are looking for a sponsor to cover for food and drinks at the event.

Here is what Avesta wrote about Simon:
Hello everyone, we are really really excited to announce that Simon Sinek will be speaking at the Coloft this coming Thursday July 22nd at 7PM. Simon is the author of the book Start With Why and teaches leaders and companies how to inspire people.

One of the main reasons why we are so excited about this is because we owe a great deal of Coloft’s branding success to lessons learned from Simon. So if you think we’ve done a good job marketing and branding Coloft, you really want to be here on Thursday!

Here is a bit more info about Simon:
He created a simple model, The Golden Circle, that codifies what makes the most inspiring people and organizations so successful and influential. The concept is so powerful that it is changing the way people think, act and communicate. From the Pentagon, to the United Nations, to Hollywood. Simon has been invited to talk about The Golden Circle across the United States and around the world. He advises a wide of variety of leaders and organizations, including small businesses and entrepreneurs, corporations like Microsoft, non-profits, government and politicians. More and more people are learning to become more effective, more efficient and more inspiring by discovering how to start everything they say and do with WHY.

His book, START WITH WHY is available everywhere.

Stay wonderful!