Josh Kerr - serial entrepreneur and angel investor

March 8, 2010

Learn to be a Demo God like me

You have six minutes to summarize the product you’ve been working on for the past three years. There are 500 journalists and venture capitalists in the audience that you need to impress in order for your business to have a fighting chance. The spot lights are glaring, the room is silent and the red LED…

May 10, 2013

I met the President of the United States today

Obama visited Capital Factory today and I got to meet with him. This was a once in a lifetime experience for me. I feel very grateful to be part of Capital Factory, it is an amazing organization one that is now getting recognition from the President. Hopefully other cities will be able to replicate its…

August 3, 2009

I almost invented Napster

I almost invented Napster in 1996, more than a year before Napster was created. I was in the right space at the right time, but when it was all said and done, I missed the opportunity. People often say “think outside the box” but inventing a new disruptive technology takes a lot more than expanding…

September 7, 2012

App.net: or why you shouldn’t copy a successful company

Early Reports indicate that App.net is not generating very much user engagement. In fact, most of their 10,000 daily posts come from about 250 users, a far shot from Twitter’s 150 million users and 350 million tweets. Dalton Caldwell built App.net on the idea that a developer ecosystem on a social platform should be paid for by developers and not advertisers. Doing this would create products that in the end would be better for customers. Its a good theory and one that I absolutely support, but he chose to compete with Twitter who already has massive lead. I often hear startups pitch ideas that remind me of existing already successful companies.…

Featured April 1, 2013

Some great demo day pitch tips

In March 2010 at Demo Conference I won a Demo God award for my Zosh pitch. I wrote an article about the experience which included many insights into my success. Pitching your company on stage in front of investors, press and your peers is no easy task and I’m one to know, I’ve done it. Even the best public speakers fall apart under the increased pressure of the do or die situation: make your company look good and receive investment capital, make your company look bad and look for another job. I’ve been in this situation on many ocassions and with the help of other experienced speakers put together this…

August 9, 2012

Why you should NEVER rewrite your code

If there is one lesson to learn from this article it is that old code isn’t bad. Its been tested, lots of bugs have been found and fixed, and it is a lot harder to read code than it is to write it. If you take a look at the long list of companies that have tried to rewrite their code base, almost all of them ended in failure. Going all the way back to the early 2000’s, Netscape decided to rewrite the entire 4.0 codebase for 6.0. It took them 3 years and in that time, Microsoft swooped in with Internet explorer and took away their marketshare. Netscape ended…