Agora Startup Idol

For several days this week I worked as a volunteer on Agora Startup Idol at the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View. It's a series of four hour live webcasts modeled on "American Idol", except that the contestants are all founders of startup companies and most of the judges are venture capitalists. I worked two days as director and one day as program host. We had lots of technical glitches, especially with the audio and with the video conferencing software, but it's been very interesting nonetheless.

I met some people in the studio from a company called Blueseed, which plans to refurbish a large ship and anchor it outside of San Francisco beyond the twelve mile limit, to serve as a base for foreign entrepreneurs who want to live in Silicon Valley but can't get visas to do so. It may sound like a wacky idea, but they've thought it through pretty thoroughly. When they heard I was a director, they said they were looking for a director to help them put together a fund raising video about their company. We chatted a bit about their company and their proposed video and exchanged business cards. Maybe it will become an opportunity.