Ephman's a lover of startups. And for good reason he's been involved with a few... remember Unicast (CTO was cool), or Ringleader Digital (CEO is a dickhead). Just being there at the early stages was exciting and being part of their growth. Sort of sad he's now slugging it out at a Wall Street company (making a lot more money... but still (and he still has is ad agency)). One day he'll go back to the startup world... he still gets the call now and then.

 

Here's a decent list of startups that might actually make it. One item they all have in common is that they solve a problem. Making it one step closer to success.

 

This is such a new startup it's still got placenta all over it. You can ask the community any question you want... and you should get a well thought out answer. The better the answer the higher it goes up the list... and bad answers get vetted out pretty quickly. See people can endorse answers to improve its visibility. Right now a lot of very well known CEO's, industry professionals, and smart people use it. Hopefully it doesn't become a victim of its own success and these visionaries voices don't get drowned out by ignorant slobs voting on idiot answers and spamming the forum promoting themselves. But for now it's a really cool place to hang out online and learn.

 

So let's say you want to own stock from... Facebook, or Twitter... Unless you're some like friend of the family or HUGE investor, or employee going to be pretty hard to just call 'em up and buy some. secondmarket solves that problem by offering an exchange for everything from restricted securities to limited partnership interests. Still something feels like getting your hands on some Facebook stock might be hard. Anyhow it's good to see an alternative exchange that you can invest on. Just so that you feel save they're memebers of FINRA

 

NO NO NO this is not some sit on the face of a geek fetish website. It looks like being a ticket scalper is socially acceptable these days. And so born out of that is this site. This company will go and search for the best price for whatever even you want on the "Scalper Market". It checks eBay, StubHub, etc... and the also tells you if the price of tickets are going up or down. This is like right out of the book from the airline ticket travel industry. Why go to a million billion sites when only one will do. Also it has a pretty cool way of telling you if the ticket you're buying is a good seat or not.

 

Who doesn't love art? And who doesn't love affordable art? Nothing better then walking into your home and seeing something beautiful up on the wall reminding you that life is beautiful. And this is where 20x200 comes in. The site provides a way for artists to sell limited edition prints. $20 for an 8x11 print? There is so much great art on this website it's almost impossible to choose. Seriously. That's the one problem, what do you choose? They issue 2 editions per week. One photograph, and one item on paper. Jen Bekman has such a wonderful eye for simple yet complicated pieces that make you feel warm inside. This website is a great addition to any bookmark collection. :)

 

Ephman's always thought the problem with social online is that it's online. Meetup gets you meeting people online, and then in real life. And what brings all these people together all over the world is commonality. Meetup has all these groups. You name the interest, there's a Meetup group for that. Ephman's a member of Rock & Ice (his climbing buddies). But if you're into Boozing during Brunch... you can find a ton of people into that too. Meetup is great if you're new to a city and don't have many friend. Unless you're a jerkoff you should have no problemo making friends with Meetup. It's the ultimate in social interactive.