Fundraising always demands patience and grit, but passing the hat in the current environment will test your founder’s mettle unlike any time in recent history. Even investors still flush cash that, only weeks ago, they had planned to put to work, now have grown skittish over the frozen credit markets and are knotting their purse strings instead. If you’re looking for financing, be prepared to work very, very hard for it.

This is true even for the most seasoned entrepreneurs, like Scott Painter, whose pedigree boasts 29 companies, including the early web auto retailer, CarsDirect.com, software and services provider, Zag.com, and most recently, TrueCar, the Zillow for car buyers.

Last summer, as the financial markets inched toward collapse, Painter closed a $15 million Series C round for Zag.com. It was harder for him than normal. Painter has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in his career ($350 million for CarsDirect, alone). Zag has a seasoned management team, plays in a space Painter knows well, and it generates over $1 million in monthly revenues.

“All that and I still had to pitch 120 investors to get one to say yes – 120 twenty pitches later!” Painter booms into the phone. “But look, don’t despair either,” he quickly adds. “Fundraising is a numbers game. The biggest thing founders need to hear right now is that it doesn’t matter if it’s a good market or a bad market, there is someone who will fund every quality company that solves a relevant problem in capital efficient manner. You’ll have to be realistic: it is most important that you get the money. Don’t quibble about terms and conditions. Forget valuation. Just meet more people, meet more people, meet more people.”

If getting through 120 pitches daunts you, Painter has help. Over the past 16 years, he has streamlined his pitch method to an art –- even using web tools to automate much of the work for him. He explains how, below, in his 12 steps for short-circuiting “the funding numbers game.”
1. Skip the PowerPoint. ”It’s expected, [but] a waste of time,” says Painter. “I never go into a meeting planning to present a slide deck.”

2. Build a web toolkit instead. Painter means a web-hosted version of everything you would have put in your deck, including your financial models. This screenshot shows such a slide for Tag. The value-add: “Viewers can toggle the metrics up or down if they think my assumptions are wrong, and the whole model adjusts.” Painter finds investors love playing with it.

3. Lock it. Make your tool kit a private site, accessible with a login ID and temporary password of your choosing. When you invite viewers to the site, require that they use a personal email as their login ID.

4. Build your mailing list. Painter starts with up to a thousand VCs and narrows it to “a few hundred” who have investments compatible with his startup. Use sites like The Funded to help you narrow your list.

5. Send the “sexy tease.” By now Painter’s email is written, and it’s short. He introduces himself in a sentence, offers a sexy tease on the company and closes with: “Here’s a link to a site if you’d like to learn more.” Do not ask for a meeting, Painter warns. Do include your site’s password.

6. Wait two weeks. Change the password.

7. Check the logins. Since you’ve required personal emails for the login ID, you’ll see each investor who looked at your plan, what they reviewed, and for how long. “And when a VC says ‘We’re going to pass,’ I can tell if he hasn’t even gone to our site. Expect a 10 percent view rate from your email blast.

8. Now reach out. Your first round of calls goes only to VCs who have already reviewed your plan. The cold call is now a warm call: “We see you went on our site. You looked at X. Do you have other questions?’” Expect two-thirds of your viewers to return your call.

9. Request a meeting. By now you’ve reduced your initial task list of 200 VC-contacts to 20 calls and 12 phone conversations. Be pleased if half of these take a meeting.

10. Meeting one. Smile. Listen. Be responsive. “And get out of there as quickly as possible,” says Painter. “The only goal is to get meeting two.”

11. Meeting two. Make it long. “I always try to see how long I can keep them asking questions.” Talk about your philosophy, your industry. Spring to get employees on the phone with answers.

12. Dinner. “This is about getting personal, because you’ll need a champion, someone who’ll say ‘this is my deal’ in the final partners meeting.”

If you get this far, you’ve done your job. The rest is out of your control. Painter’s method is no guarantee of funding success, but it will cut weeks off the path to a final ‘yes’ or ‘no’, sparing you precious resources and energy.

Meanwhile, Painter offers parting encouragement: “VCs are still sitting on large funds. The biggest financing impact will be on mid- and late-stage companies that aren’t yet self-sufficient. Rounds for startups are still closing. They did last week, as well. True enough, there is panic. But this does not mean entrepreneurs should pack it up and go home. Building companies during a recession is certainly more challenging, but sometimes it’s a better test of what should survive in the first place.”

jam4ar posted this over at the Groundspeak forums:
Saw (and replied to) a post the other day about paperless caching on the Nintendo DS, after thinking about it some more, I decided to write a program for the DS that can read GPX files. So now you can just load your pocket query file or an export from GSAK and away you go. This is a very new (read "has a few bugs") but I think it is very functional even at this early stage.
Sorry for the crummy image - Emulators can't run this program so no pretty screenshots.

Features

-View Description, Hint, Difficulty, Terrain, Owner, Container, and Cache type
-Control with either stylus or buttons (buttons not implemented as I'm posting this but should done by tomorrow)
-See Hint only if you click the button
-Swap windows from top to bottom to control either with the stylus.
-FREE! (Though if you want to send a garmin Colorado or Oregon my way I wouldn't refuse )

A few known (but hopefully fixed soon) limitations.

- Only Geocaches for the moment. child waypoints can't be handled yet. After I add the logic for the parser to tell the difference this should be fixed.
- Scroll Bars in the windows are kinda screwy (dragging with the stylus works great though).
- Limited to about 200 waypoints - This is a hardware issue I believe, but I may try to optimize a bit more for
better efficiency.
- HTML in descriptions is not parsed so some of it looks really ugly. All the text is still there and readable, you just have to sift through the HTML tags to find it.
- I'm sure there are more.

How to get it:
Until I set up a project page somewhere, I will email it to anyone who wants it. Just send me a message here (don't forget to include your email address) and I'll send you the rom along with some more detailed instructions for use. *note you need a flash cart for use, has been tested on R4, should work on others*

A few things to note and give credit where it is due. This was coded up pretty quick and while I've done a good bit of testing I'm sure there are some bugs that need fixing. I can and will in no way be held responsible for any damage or resulting loss from use of this program. It is supplied free of charge and free of warranty, while I plan to develop it a bit more and get the bugs out I can't make any promises of bugfixes or support though I will do my best as time allows.

This was developed using the Woopsi library, a great tool for rapid application development on the DS. XML parsing is done with TinyXML. Compiled using the DevKitARM toolkit along with PALib. Filesystem access is via libFat. This whole thing is made possible by lots of work by lots of people providing great toolkits. Thanks to all of them.if anyone has time to go over to the forum there and request the file and say it will be hosted at dcemu, infact ill stick it up so you can all grab it without being a member.

http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/ind...owtopic=205746

img src="http://c.fsdn.com/fm/screenshots/67561_thumb.png" align="right" alt="Screenshot" hspace="10" vspace="10" Mobius Forensic Toolkit is a forensic framework written in Python/GTK that manages cases and case items, providing an abstract interface for developing extensions. Cases and item categories are defined using XML files for easy integration with other tools. hr / strongLicense:/strong GNU General Public License (GPL) hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / This release features a Category Manager extension. Extensions now run in isolated namespaces. Support for SVG icons has been added. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/-x9eSJXzyzzCX6vYmJAOATrXxdY/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/-x9eSJXzyzzCX6vYmJAOATrXxdY/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-global/~4/S1Vw4fSDjjQ" height="1" width="1"/

img src="http://c.fsdn.com/fm/screenshots/67561_thumb.png" align="right" alt="Screenshot" hspace="10" vspace="10" Mobius Forensic Toolkit is a forensic framework written in Python/GTK that manages cases and case items, providing an abstract interface for developing extensions. Cases and item categories are defined using XML files for easy integration with other tools. hr / strongLicense:/strong GNU General Public License (GPL) hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / This release features a Category Manager extension. Extensions now run in isolated namespaces. Support for SVG icons has been added. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/XFI2fE3nU5YacvvwMihIrD1T5Q0/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/XFI2fE3nU5YacvvwMihIrD1T5Q0/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-unix/~4/S1Vw4fSDjjQ" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/rww_preso_mar08.jpg" /As the world financial crisis has gotten gradually worse over the past few weeks, I've been pondering what this means for the Web. ReadWriteWeb as a publication focuses on emstrongtechnology/strong/em - web products and trends - rather than business and VC happenings. So with the exception of one of our feature writers a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/about_bernardlunn.php"Bernard Lunn/a, who has written a number of great posts on how a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/web_20_gritty_entrepreneur.php"entrepreneurs/a can a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/entrepreneurs_credit_crisis.php"survive/a this period, we've generally kept out of the Credit Crisis discussion thus far. /p pBut we're clearly now at a point where the financial problems of the world will have stronga big impact on where Web Technology is headed/strong. Indeed, it looks like we've arrived at one of those giant inflexion points - where one Web era is usurped by another. /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12136amp;cb=12136' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12136amp;n=12136' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pOf course this last happened when Web 2.0 was coined by O'Reilly Media in about 2004. Luckily not long before that ReadWriteWeb was born (early 2003). So ReadWriteWeb has been documenting Web 2.0 ever since. Over the past couple of years, we've been focusing on other, perhaps more meaningful, trends - Semantic Web, recommendation technologies, web sites becoming web services, Mobile Web and more. We've documented these meta trends in a number of big posts, some of which are in our a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/bestof.php"Best of ReadWriteWeb/a page and copied here:/p ul lia href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/web_technology_trends_for_2008_1.php"Web Technology Trends for 2008 and Beyond/a/li lia href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/toolkit-08.php"What's Next on the Web: a ReadWriteWeb Toolkit for 2008/a/li lia href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/2008_web_predictions.php"2008 Web Predictions/a/li lia href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_future_web_trends.php"10 Future Web Trends/a/li lia href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_more_future_web_trends.php"10 More Future Web Trends/a/li /ul h2The Welcome Return of Innovation/h2 pAlthough we'll continue to see the success stories of web 2.0 grow and perhaps prosper - social networking, mashups, user generated content, etc - strongnow is the time for innovation/strong. I'm not stating anything revolutionary there, because it's an old cliche that tech innovation thrives in times of recession. a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/10/effect-of-the-depression-on-te.html"Nat Torkington of O'Reilly Radar/a put this into the context of web 2.0 recently:/p blockquote pquot;During boom times, companies direct development and occupy great talent with at best evolutionary improvements over the state of the art. Companies are great chasers of new things, but aren't great at making new things. A recession means technologists cease to be paid vast amounts to duplicate the work of others. The Great Tech Bust of Ought Two gave us 37Signals, Flickr, and del.icio.us and there's a strong argument to be made that many companies spent the next six years chasing what they created.quot;/p /blockquote pSo we can expect to see a welcome return to web innovation in 2008/09, along the lines of what Flickr and 37Signals created back in the early days of web 2.0. However web entrepreneurs will need to make adjustments due to the economic climate. Many people have already noted that a re-focus on the bottom line of your business is key, which we discuss below. But perhaps just as importantly, as Nat pointed out, there is an opportunity to take more advantage of open source technologies and cheaper cloud computing infrastructure. /p h2Yes Tighten Your Belts, But Open Your Minds Too.../h2 pIn the past week some a href="http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/10/the-sequoia-rip-good-times-presentation-get-your-copy-here/"high profile/a a href="http://gigaom.com/2008/10/09/what-startups-can-learn-from-sequoias-doomsday-warning/"VCs/a have been preaching belt tightening as the primary response to the economy. More than a few people have expressed cynicism about this advice, given the hype and party-throwing days of web 2.0. New York VC Fred Wilson a href="http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/10/dont-shoot-the.html"wrote a post today/a, partly in response to a comment Bernard left on his blog, in which he defends the advice he and other VCs have been giving since the financial crisis got going. Basically that advice has been to batten down the hatches, reduce spending and, in Fred's words, quot;acting responsibly and making sure we all survive to fight another dayquot;./p pIt's all common sense advice, especially since web 2.0 has been predominantly about consumer apps. I'm certainly no economist, but it makes sense that in a tight credit market consumer spending will reduce - which will impact heavily on consumer web apps, and trickle through to other parts of the ecosystem./p pBut I'd love to see technologists, entrepreneurs and VCs take a longer term view of this crisis as well. a href="http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/09/mitra-economy-mess-tech-enter-cx_sm_1010economy.html?partner=yahootix"Sramana Mitra wrote a great post at Forbes/a outlining some of the opportunities for innovation. In an quot;Open Letter to the Leaders of Silicon Valleyquot;, Sramana first gave some background on the innovation that led to web 2.0 and followed up with a challenge to create technology for strongEducation, health care, social security/strong. As an example she wrote about these opportunities in healthcare and education:/p blockquote pquot;As the smart-phone movement marches on, led by Steve Jobs' iPhone, can we not create seamless bridges between doctors, patients and insurance providers that can reduce the $250 billion expenditure in health care administration?/p pAnd on the Internet, can we not create a body of standardized content and methodology for teachers all over the U.S.--or the world--that includes parents in the process and engages children via quot;edutainment,quot; the same way MySpace and quot;World of Warcraftquot; engage kids?quot;/p /blockquote pTim O'Reilly has been on a similar mission ever since a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tim_oreilly_keynote_web_20_expo_08.php"his speech at the Web 2.0 Expo/a earlier this year, for startups to tackle 'big challenges'. His a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/10/tim-in-the-la-times-on-getting.html"core message/a is to quot;work on stuff that matters.quot;/p h2What's Next... Let Us Know in the Comments!/h2 pWe at ReadWriteWeb have been covering a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/religion_and_web_technology_lifechurch.php"mainstream/a a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/beijing_olympics_online_video.php"web applications/a and things like a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/practice_fusion.php"health 2.0/a this year. But we've only just scratched the surface, just have most startups and Internet companies. As the troubles in the economy begin to affect the tech world, we'll be re-doubling our efforts to document what we hope is an exciting new era of web innovation. There are tough times ahead, but equally there are opportunities. /p pIn the best spirit of web 2.0, let's start by asking you to comment on what opportunities in web technology you forsee over the next year or so. Please leave a comment and let's get a healthy, optimistic - but realistic - discussion started. To provide a bit of inspiration, I've embedded below our stock presentation a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/web_technology_trends_for_2008_1.php"What's Next on the Web? Web Technology Trends for 2008 and Beyond/a (circa May 08). Indeed it's time we updated this presentation, so your suggestions welcome!/p pobject style="margin:0px" width="425" height="355"param name="movie" value="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=rwwpresentationmay08-1212121566162903-9"/param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/embed src="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=rwwpresentationmay08-1212121566162903-9" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="355"/embed/object/p pNote: a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ricmac/web-technology-trends-for-2008-and-beyond-may-2008-update" target="_blank"click here/a and then click 'full' (bottom right) to view full screen and enable the links inside the presentation./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/whats_next_after_web_20.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/FnmoZscSBAC1yEHHU2Pu9j0vl1s/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/FnmoZscSBAC1yEHHU2Pu9j0vl1s/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=fqO8frLb"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=fqO8frLb" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=A8jpVCm0"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=tBqUkwmY"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=tBqUkwmY" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=nkc9pEtP"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=nkc9pEtP" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=sUY8Nu4A"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=sUY8Nu4A" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/JUWSED60TxU" height="1" width="1"/