Curious Dale

I’ve always been interested in how things work and how they’re built which usually resulted in thinking up new ways to build things and the internet has channeled a lot of my creativity the last few years partly because building things online requires less physical recsources.  I’ve recently been toying with the idea to get some funding to help me build an idea or two of mine and I’ve been getting lots of my inspiration from This Week in Startups – TWiST.  It’s been running now for 13 episodes and is the brain child of the ultimate fan of the Entrepeneur – Jason Calacanis the Counder of Mahalo.com

It’s a long show, +- 1.5 hours, but it’s really jam packed full of content.  It’s got a loose format centered around interviews with various successful entrepeneurs and it’s got some cool segments:

Ask Jason: where callers ask their relevant questions and get some kickass advice from Jason and his guest.
News: From the business/startup sector which is normally very entertaining and educational.
Dead Pool is the place where companies and startups go to die and we try try to learn something from them.
Interview with Jason’s guest brings up some nitty gritty details of those who are doing it and is also a wealth of information.
A random spattering of insights from Tyler!
Homework is the section where the listeners have to perform a given task like reading particular book that’s pertinent to startups.

Jason is a wheeler and dealer and he’s always helping whoever calls in where he can.   One particular show he offered to buy something like 20% equity for $20k from a caller because he liked the idea!  He normally gives away tickets for techcrunch50, for callers, which are now valued at $3000.  He also really raves about his sponsors: Webspy, DNAmail, Ustream and recently Audible (who I was familiar with through TWiT and Leo Laporte) and then gets the listeners to twitter a thank you to them!  Very cool!  There are many examples of this.

TWiST is fantastic show jampacked with useful info and plenty of laughs! I can recommend it to anyone is interested in this space or who is thinking of starting an internet company (or any company where the internet is going to be a big part of their operation).

Go check it out!

Regards

Dale