Chris Walters

Entrepreneurship getting you down? Listen to Roy Spence talk!

Chris Walters — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:37:11 +0000

It will change your perspective!

EO Texas Round Up – Roy Spence
http://vimeo.com/11899581

About this video:
“EO Texas Round Up – Roy Spence”

Contact me anytime,

Chris

Chris Fagan on Fox 4 News

Chris Walters — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:09:19 +0000

My good friend Chris Fagan talks about his new company MobeStream and their product Key Ring. Chris and his partner Ross Bates received funding from Tech Wildcatters a local technology accelerator. Find out more about Chris and his company at http://www.keyringapp.com

Check out his interview below with Fox 4 News here in Dallas.

Great Job Chris and Ross I’m looking for great things in the years to come!

Is Radio Dead?

Chris Walters — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:32:05 +0000

I’ll be brief – Radio isn’t dead just sounds better when delivered online. Here are some great examples of how a local CNN 1190 AM radio personality Winston Edmondson (http://www. ProjectInnovation.net) utilizes the web to expand his show. It’s hard for me to catch the show each day from 1-2pm but I like to listen to the show at my convenience, I use Justin.tv as my Tivo for radio.

See Winston’s Show here.

When I think of Dallas I think of… Technology?

Chris Walters — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:14:27 +0000

My family I moved to Dallas June 2008, shortly after that I set out to find the Dallas Technology community. So I Google’d and asked and Google’d and asked and I could not find ‘THE’ place where all the technology community lived. Then one day I found CoHabitat.

CoHabitat is a co-working space for hackers, programmers, and genuinely smart people to work and share office space. Its become more than that for me. It’s a place to get inspired, find help, share ideas, and draw a fresh beer from the keg-aerator now and then. There are people who are building companies, programming software applications, writing blogs, and creating digital art. The kind of people I relate too. Quickly after arriving I thought CoHabitat the center of the Dallas technology community. CoHabitat may be the center of the Technology community in Dallas but here are a few other sparks in Cities near by:

Richardson Co-Working space named Company|Dallas
Ft. Worth has a thriving community you can read about on LaunchDFW.com
West Dallas has a group built around The Infomart

So I asked myself, “how can I create more sparks to help fuel the Dallas Tech community, write and create sustainable events!”

Write in my personal Blog ccwalters.com
Event that celebrates Geek Culture called IgniteDallas
Build a company in 54 hours at Dallas Startup Weekend
Write a weekly blog for The Startup Digest Dallas

I’m just getting started, but I am not doing it alone. It takes many dedicated people to keep an ecosystem like Dallas feed with sustainable events and engaging content. Some of those people are:

Mike D Merrill (@mikedmerrill)
Danica Mathes (@danicamathes)
Joey Pomerenke (@joeypomerenke)
Chris Z Bond (@czbond)
Blake Burris (@blakestar)

What sparks have you started? Would you be interested in helping keep our sparks lit?

Brad Feld’s “Do Patents Slow Down Innovation?” – with comments

Chris Walters — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 08:07:44 +0000

I decided to re-post Brad Feld’s latest blog along with a few personal experiences to support his topic.

Speaking with Entrepreneurs every week who are worried if their product will ‘infringe’ on someone’s patent. Better yet they wonder if all or part of their application has to be patentable in order to receive funding. Most don’t have the money to find out either way.

I agree with Brad that software patents slow down innovation. Most entrepreneurs can’t afford to pay the ‘vig’ (explained below) so they soldier on and pray they don’t get noticed by the patent police. Some soldier on and hope they can grow large enough before they get noticed… oh wait, isn’t that a legal strategy?

Example 1: Spoke with an entrepreneur who was interviewed by litigators just to see if they were large enough to bring suit. Good for them, they were found unworthy. It makes me wondered what happens then, does the entrepreneur get placed on the ‘patient no fly list‘ in case they fly above a certain value, or better yet board an unexpecting company willing to purchase?

Example 2: How about the entrepreneur who get’s a letter staing he’s infringing on a patient, then finds out his patient was filed 3 months before. I here the saying, “Patients are only valuable if your willing to defend them” and defending them takes money, a lot of money. Did that company try to bully the entrepreneur out of the market with a lawsuit? I think so, but surprise! the entrepreneur decided to pursue the lawsuit and drown themselves in legal fees because they, “won’t be bullied.” My point is now both companies are spending valuable energy worrying about the lawsuit and not working on their products. — and further innovation.

After reading Brad’s post I would love to hear your comments…

********************************************

Feed: Feld Thoughts
Posted on: Saturday, January 30, 2010 6:26 PM
Author: Brad Feld
Subject: Do Patents Slow Down Innovation?

I had a very interesting meeting yesterday with an MIT Professor who I’ve known for a long time. He is anti-software patent, as am I. However, he suggested something I hadn’t really spent much time thinking about, namely that patents slow down innovation. Some very credible folks have been talking about this for a little while, including James Bessen and Michael Meurer in their excellent book Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk.

In my conversation Friday, I heard a very interesting example. Regularly, patent advocates tell me how important patents are for the biotech and life science industries. However, there apparently is academic research in the works that shows that patents actually slow down innovation in biotech. The specific example we discussed was that there is increasing evidence that when a professor or company gets a patent in the field of genetics research, other researchers simply stop doing work in that specific area. As a result, the number of researchers on a particular topic decreases, especially if the patent is broad. It’s not hard to theorize that this results in less innovation around this area over time.

I’m just starting to read some papers about this stuff, including those by MIT Professor Fiona Murray. If you are interested, Stuart Macdonald’s paper When means become ends: considering the impact of patent strategy on innovation frames the discussion nicely. And Stephan Kinsella’s excellent essay Reducing the Cost of IP Law absolutely nails this.

I’m still obsessed with my mission to “abolish software patents” especially after receiving yet another email from a new startup that claims to be a “Patent Insurance Company.” A number of these have popped up recently in the past few years, including several that are funded by VCs. Their pitch is that you pay them an annual fee, license any patents you have to them, and they will “protect you” against any patent litigation. Whenever I hear this pitch, all I can think about is Al Capone walking the streets of Chicago going door to door offering “protection” to all of the local businessmen if they will pay his vig every week.

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