Alex White

May 20th, 2012 I’m going to be in Las Vegas for the...

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:53:37 -0500

May 20th, 2012

I’m going to be in Las Vegas for the Billboard Music Awards but there is an extreme astrological event that has Boulder in a tizzy:

We are fast approaching an important astrological event on Sunday May 20, 2012. A south node solar eclipse which aligns the Earth, Sun and Moon with the Pleiadian Star System. The Mayans have said they are the direct descendants of the Plaedian Star People. The last time this alignment occurred was 26,000 years ago. Eclipses open energetic doorways to bring dramatic shifts in consciousness very suddenly. This solar eclipse will bring tremendous light into the dark depths of the Unconscious Mind which often remains locked up and inaccessible. This energy will force you to face and release the long buried greebly emotions – anger, hatred, jealousy, greed, lust, grief, sadness and fear. This energy will also bring into light the beliefs that you hold dear - the ones you have never dared to question – to see in truth how they have stopped you from the realization of your True Spiritual Nature. This is a time of major awakening.

"These measurements are tracked year-round by Billboard and its data partners, including Nielsen..."

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:21:40 -0500

“These measurements are tracked year-round by Billboard and its data partners, including Nielsen Entertainment and Next Big Sound.”

- 2012 Billboard Music Awards (via davidhoffman)

Thank you, Boulder.

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:30:57 -0500

Thank you, Boulder.

Next Big Sound is moving to New York City June 1^st, but not without first saying a very sincere thank you. We literally could not have gotten Next Big Sound off the ground anywhere else in the country besides Boulder, Colorado.

David, Samir and I are from Reno, Florida, and upstate NY, respectively. We had no ties to Boulder, Colorado other than my aunt who happened to move to town a year before we got here. I was the only member of the founding team that had been to the vibrant city nestled under the foothills of the Rockies before the summer of 2009.

We started the company in Chicago, IL right after graduating and were willing to live anywhere, and do almost anything, to get Next Big Sound started. We spent a summer down in Champaign, IL. We set up an office in David’s apartment and I slept there for a month. We tried to raise money in the valley, from the east coast and from wealthy individuals and venture firms throughout Chicagoland. We raised $25,000 that we stretched to last 9 months. That was when we were completely out of money and about to shut the company down. That’s when we got accepted into TechStars. That’s when we packed everything we had into David’s Volkswagon Rabbit and drove 1000 miles overnight to Boulder, Colorado. That’s when our company’s trajectory, and all of our lives, changed completely.

I could list out the people that I remember from the first week – David, Nicole, Jason, Brad, Tom, Micah, Howard, Jud, Eric, Matt, all the TechStars Boulder teams from 2009 – but I would need the rest of the page.

I could list out all the people that I remember from that whole summer but I would need five more pages.

And if I listed every local person we’ve talked to at BDNTs, shared coffee with at Atlas or the Cup, responded promptly to an email I sent, saw us present at various stages of development, wore our t-shirts around town, talked us up at cocktail hours, joined us for beers at the office, danced at our parties, or helped Next Big Sound in some immeasurable way – I’d spend the rest of the week writing names.

Boulder was a special place when we got here. Boulder is even more special 3 years later. Not just for me, my co-founders, and our team, but for thousands of entrepreneurs, developers, designers, investors and companies large and small. I couldn’t recommend a better place to get the company off the ground.

While the realities of our business dictate our move to NYC, we will never disappear. We’ve got three board meetings in Boulder this year, will be here for demo day and we will be back as much as we can. We wanted to rename the corporation Next Big Boulder but our lawyers advised against that.

But in all seriousness, we didn’t want to move on to the next chapter of Next Big Sound without first pausing to thank the city, and all of the people, that helped get us here.

Thank you Boulder, we love you.

If you want to read...

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:21:04 -0500

Pick up the book.

If you want to run, take off your sandals and put on your running shoes.

If you want to cook, preheat the oven.

If you want to write, open the blank Word document.

If you want to talk, pick up the phone.

We all play procrastination games with ourselves but at the end of the day, it’s really quite simple to get started.

Don’t check facebook and twitter. Don’t turn on the TV. Don’t open the fridge. Just take the first small step towards what you want to do.

(that’s it for my seth godin inspired post)

12 ways school can be rethought and re-imagined

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 20:08:07 -0500

From Seth Godin’s Stop Stealing Dreams:

Homework during the day, lectures at night
Open book, open note, all the time
Access to any course, anywhere in the world
Precise, focused instruction instead of mass, generalized instruction
The end of multiple-choice exams
Experience instead of test scores as a measure of achievement
The end of compliance as an outcome
Cooperation instead of isolation
Amplification of outlying students, teachers, and ideas
Transformation of the role of the teacher
Lifelong learning, earlier work
Death of the nearly famous college

Some more I would add off the top of my head:

Ability to choose electives starting in elementary school.
Taking exams as a group instead of individually.
Annual externships - day long shadowing sessions of relevant professionals.

1000 Days

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:26:46 -0600

When starting a company time is measured in days. How many days until launch? How many days until the big presentation? How many days until we are completely out of cash?

David, Samir and I moved to Boulder, Colorado to be part of Techstars in 2009 on a hail mary pass.

We had no money, no previous success and the idea that we applied with, we no longer wanted to pursue. For some reason David Cohen, Nicole Glaros, Jason Mendelson, Micah Baldwin and the Techstars family at large took a chance on us.

That’s when we started counting days. 79 days until demo day. 65 days until our sublease ends. 7 days until the first mentor presentation.

We just crossed 1000 days since moving to Boulder. It’s incredible to think of everything that has happened in that time. Hiring employees, signing six figure global contracts, moving into our own office space, two global major label deals, licensing two charts to Billboard magazine, winning accolades throughout the music industry and just announcing a $6.5m Series A financing with our dream investor syndicate.

David Cohen just did a great deconstruction of our pitch on demo day at the end of Techstars and published it on This Week In Techstars. It’s true that we didn’t have any real investor interest going into that pitch. It was the most important 8 minutes of my life. I haven’t thought of that presentation in many months but realize that without that day, none of the subsequent story of Next Big Sound unfolds in quite the same way.

We are still counting days. It’s a snowy Friday in February and David, Samir and I (and the rest of our awesome team) are at the office. David and Samir are leaned over a computer reviewing designs and discussing user flows while I catch up on email and the projects I don’t have time to tackle during the week. So much has changed since those first days in Boulder, but the day to day hasn’t changed much at all. A very sincere thank you to Techstars for making it all possible and wishing everyone a productive today, tomorrow and the next thousand days.

Apply to Techstars Boulder

nextbigsound.com/jobs

Alex White is the Co-founder & CEO of Next Big Sound. Follow him on Twitter.

This movie can’t come out soon enough. If you...

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:12:46 -0500

This movie can’t come out soon enough. If you haven’t seen this show go to hulu and watch every single episode right now.

thecool: davidhoffman: thenextbigsound: Merch! We’ve got a...

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:53:06 -0500

thecool:

davidhoffman:

thenextbigsound:

Merch! We’ve got a batch of Unsigned Music Doesn’t Suck tshirts for sale in the store. They’re $15.00, come in all sizes, and are printed on American Apparel. Have a great monday.

we made some tees

oh yes we did

Rock

"Today’s stock market crash is nothing. I was there for the Great Stock Market Crash of Last..."

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:47:19 -0500

“

Today’s stock market crash is nothing. I was there for the Great Stock Market Crash of Last Thursday.

…

Then again, I also lived through the Great Recovery of Two Days Ago. So it’s important to keep a long-term view.

”

- Tim Siedell, If you follow one person one twitter. Follow this guy

From the Spam Folder #2

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:46:12 -0500

Hi, my name is Paul and I’m one of those “Internet” guys …

Photo

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 18:14:11 -0500

personal web presence

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:55:27 -0500

kevintwohy:

Personal web presence, increasingly, is created and mediated by third-parties outside of individuals’ control. Many people don’t know (or care) what Google returns when you search for “their name,” but this stuff matters. Your potential employer will look at it when you apply for a job, and the admissions office will look when you apply to college.

If people haven’t yet abandoned their notions of privacy on the web, they ought’ve a long time ago: your Facebook photos from that night your Freshman year are out there forever — your hasty Twitter comments, too. Pretty soon it’s going to become really important for people to play an active role in maintaining their web presence — you can’t erase the pictures of yourself doing keg-stands, but make sure people find your website or blog first.

I think there’s a chance for someone to get this right early on and build some tools to give people the opportunity to put their best foot forward on the web…

Photo

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 22:38:24 -0500

"People make decisions based on information they find on the Web. So companies that are in-between..."

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 16:40:44 -0500

“People make decisions based on information they find on the Web. So companies that are in-between people and their information are in a very powerful position.”

- Google Co-Founder in 1998. This is more significant now with Google’s dominant market position.

On Personal Growth

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:18:47 -0500

Genuine personal growth is honest. You can’t take shortcuts through the land of make-believe. Your first commitment must be to discover and accept new truths, no matter how difficult or unpleasant the consequences may be. You can’t solve problems if you don’t admit they exist.

How can you achieve a fulfilling career if you won’t admit that your current job is wrong for you?
How can you improve your relationship situation if you refuse to accept that you’ve been feeling empty and alone?
How can you better your health if you won’t accept that your current habits don’t serve you?

-From Steve Pavlina’s Personal Productivity Book

"If you had a choice between receiving $1,000 right now or $4,000 ten years from now, which would you..."

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:19:35 -0500

“If you had a choice between receiving $1,000 right now or $4,000 ten years from now, which would you pick?”

From the Spam Folder #1

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:40:54 -0500

Stay in bed with your woman 3-5 hours instead 3-5 min like now

On Iraq: “It seems to me so gratuitous that after all the...

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:50:15 -0500

On Iraq:

“It seems to me so gratuitous that after all the struggles of war, just when we want to get together our slender military resources and re-establish our finances and have a little in hand in case of danger here or there, we should be compelled to go on pouring armies and treasure into these thankless deserts.”

-Winston Churchill on Iraq, 1920 (link to NYTimes article)

Trendwatching: Merging the online and offline world

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 23:15:00 -0500

Trendwatching: Merging the online and offline world:

Kevin Kelly video finishes off this insightful report. He compares the internet to a brain and explores the blending of the atomic and the digital:

100 billion clicks per day/firings
55 trillion links/synapses
1 quintillion transistors/neurons

How Finding a Job is like Being Single

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:34:27 -0500

When you are single you want everyone to know you are single because they are more likely to set you up with friends and you are more prone to come up in relevant conversations.

When you are looking for a job you want everyone to know you are looking for a job because they are more likely to offer introductions and you are more prone to come up in relevant conversations.