Texas Startup Blog

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In February I was asked to judge a business plan competition for the SMU Cox School of Business.  The winner was a group called LAB802, I wrote about them here.  Alex Bagden, one of guys from LAB802 let me know that out of 230 teams invited to the Rice Business Plan Competition only 36 were invited to compete in the final round.  Alex and his team got to pitch to 70 VC and angel investors.  Way to go guys!  Check out the article about them in CNN Money:

Team name: Lab802

School: Southern Methodist University, Cox School of Business

Team members: Matthew Vroom, Alex Bagden, Chris Irvine, Lauren McGehee, Simon Mak, Alex Wimbush

Concept: A digital imaging device that records visual events 30 seconds before and after a car accident. The goal is to shield drivers from liability by creating a visual record of the accident.

An onboard accelerometer enables the device to detect and record an accident. Drivers can then download the images to their computers via USB.

The box is designed to be easy for drivers to install and use. With no moving parts, it’s also durable and can withstand accidents. The target market includes car buyers and anyone who has suffered financial liability because of a car accident. The company has filed for three provisional patents and hopes to sell 10,000 units in its first year.

Timeline: Product design is nearly complete, according to the management team. Manufacturing is scheduled to begin in August 2008.

Money

First, I am not a lawyer and I don’t play one on TV. Valleywag recently reported that Doubleclickers got screwed by Google when they asked them to sign non-competes and then terminated them a week later. Do no evil, eh? Anyway, Valleywag reported that these Doubleclickers are being ‘forced to find jobs outside their industry’. This isn’t true.

First, the agreement is overly broad and wouldn’t be enforceable in most states (including Texas). Second, Google is so big and broad itself that it would be VERY hard to find a company that wasn’t “a client or customer within the last twelve months of my employment with the Company.” Under this clause I suspect that Doubleclickers wouldn’t be able to work for Valleywag, much less an internet related company. So if I was ‘forced’ to sign such a contract a week before I was fired I would feel VERY comfortable ignoring it.

Politcs

I didn’t pay much attention last week when Congress held hearings into the FAA’s relationship with airlines.  Representative Oberstar (D-Minn) clearly pissed off Robert Sturgell (Administrator of FAA) when he suggested that he had a “cozy relationship with the airlines and lacked an enforcement mindset.”  The biggest loser appeared to be Southwest Airlines who flew planes with cracks in them evidently with the approval of the FAA. The boys at the FAA didn’t like Congress suggesting, “All eyes are on this now. We have a fundamental problem here. It’s time for a giant step back for a top-down strategic review of the FAA.”  Oops!

The FAA, in response, is clamping down on the airlines.  Yesterday the FAA forced American Airlines to shut down half of their flights and today more than 1,000 flights have been canceled.  Today the FAA suggested that they are going to expand their scrutiny of passenger planes resulting in more groundings for American and other carriers including Alaska, Delta, Continental and Southwest.  These ‘audits’ will result in more and more canceled flights through June.

I am not sure what Congress was thinking.  The FAA has an amazing record of safeguarding our skys, the only real problem we have is our air traffic control system.  Our economy is going to lose billions as a result of the FAA’s crackdown, too bad we couldn’t use some of that money improving our air traffic control systems instead.  Our economy is in the tank so Congress decides to screw up an entire industry ~ thanks Representative Oberstar!

aMUSEment

MySQL is the most popular and widely used database on the planet for one reason ~ it is open source.  Sun bought MySQL earlier this year and has now decided to release new features in a closed source version of the database only available to paying customers.  Are you kidding me?  Did Sun forget that the ‘community’ built the damned software in the first place?  Guess what will start to happen?  The MySQL community will simply move to PostgreSQL and soon it will supplant MySQL.