The Art of Living

Last night, Dart and Greenhorn teamed up to organize a #flashparty to try to get all the young entrepreneurs out for a night of socializing.  About 20 young entrepreneurs and friends came by Clery’s to share a few drinks and catch up.

A few random thoughts:

1) Strengthening connections:

I had the chance to catch up with quite a few friends I hadn’t seen in a while, which was great.  It was also really fun to spend a few minutes talking to friends in the community and not have it be entrepreneur related.  Things like Wingman’s straws puzzle, talking about sports and beers was a welcome break from the daily entrepreneur game.

2) Making new connections:

I met Matt Lauzon from what was Paragon Lake, but is now Gemvara. It was really interesting to talk to him about some of the things they’re doing with their designer community and the Highland Capital program he went through.  Quite a few of the others that came out met people they didn’t know very well.

3) Can’t help but be productive:

I walked away with a number of solid entrepreneur-related business items that are going to be very helpful in the next few weeks.  As Laura Fitton said at her birthday party and Jennie White reported on at BostInnovation, Boston needs to have more parties. As relaxing and fun as last night was, everybody was still talking about business at times and making some valuable, actionable connections.

4) Lessons Learned:

1. Being the broke, bootstrapping entrepreneurs we are, we got some pitchers thinking it would save us some money. Of course, when the end of the night came, sorting out who drank what and a few people had left was a bit of a pain to coordinate. Definitely going to have everyone get and pay for drinks individually next time.
2. Much like the general community, except for a couple girlfriends and wives, it was a very male-dominated gathering. Future iterations will work harder to address this.
3. Most people didn’t come out until 9pm…we thought we’d start hanging out earlier with GreenhornTV, but that didn’t really come together.

5) There will be a next time…

There were definitely plenty of good results from the event last night and so we’ll definitely try to continue to do these likely about once a month. If you have any ideas or feedback on how to make the next one better, let us know. Until then…stay tuned to dartboston.com, @greenhornboston and @dartboston for announcements of future events like this.

January 18th, 2010 5:27am

That’s the time I got the most random, huge inspiration to ever hit Greenhorn Connect. That’s the timestamp on the email to Ashkan, my cofounder. It’s amazing, because I wasn’t working on Greenhorn at the time, but I lost my train of thought on what I was working on and this explosion of ideas just suddenly took over. Very cool moment. I’m glad I’ve got the time marked.

I can’t tell you yet what it was I thought of at that moment, but hopefully soon enough you will all be as excited by it as I was/am/will be.

Stay tuned.

The name of your business is everything.  It’s the first impression of your business. It tells people what you’re about and sets the expectations.  You only name your business once, so you have to love the idea. And yet…in the world of domain camping, millions of social media accounts to reserve and a never ending battle for customer mind-space, there’s a lot of factors to satisfy.

Naming Greenhorn Connect took many weeks of thinking about what the name should be and then suddenly just came to mind and we ran with it. We’re now in that “nothing sounds right and we can’t think of anything good” phase for Doodlebugging.  Much like with Greenhorn, bounties offered to others isn’t yielding anything great either (if you’d like to suggest a name, and we use it…we’ll give you $50.)  Still, I’m sure we’ll end up with something…it’s just annoying and feels like a waste of mind space and productive time to think about it.

I’ve read all the tips about making it memorable, getting the dot com of your name and what makes the best choice from a trademark perspective, but does anyone have any real tips for coming up with a name after you remember those basics?

As we move through the toughest part of Boston’s annual weather cycle, I’ve noticed that the colors of people’s wardrobes have gotten increasingly dark and muted. It creates an interesting sea of similar looking people and crowds. I feel like this wardrobe boredom is probably for a few reasons: dark colors are slimming (holiday/winter gain from inactivity), reflection of attitude (winter can be depressing) and it’s easy (black goes with everything!).   This provides a unique opportunity for anyone willing to buck the trend.

If you’re a high energy person, this creates a fantastic opportunity. Wear some color. No really, put on that red sweater, that shiny blue vest or that…bright green shirt.  You will stand out and your energy can draw people in.  It’s a great tool for networking, for going out or whatever you’re doing.  If nothing else, people will notice your lack of black/grey/blue-ness and wonder a bit about you (in a good way).  At best, they want to come over and talk to the interesting person that was bold enough to wear something different.

Clothing is one of the best ways for your personality to show through. Let’s get a little more color out there and turn the energy level up a notch or two.

Just a quick note to anyone looking for this week’s or any future GreenhornTV episodes. We’ve moved them to the site, www.greenhornconnect.com.  Look for new episodes every Sunday night.  You can find this week’s episode here.

RD7GBZHVBXH8