Jay Batson - Open Source Dude

Sponsored by Peter Fasse, Patent Attorney at Fish & Richardson: https://www.fr.com/team/j-peter-fasse/

Jay Batson is an angel investor’s angel investor. He’s the kind of guy who people like me, and lots of other people, go to ask really tough questions about angel investing. And, he always has really thoughtful ideas. Whenever I’m puzzling over something, I reach out to Jay. If I can get 10 minutes of his time it’s really precious. I really recommend this relaunch of my first interview with Jay Batson.  

It is rare to hear reports from the frontiers of technology expressed so lucidly and accessibly by a real insider. This gem of an interview rewards the listener with Jay’s sensible and eloquently expressed explanations of the pitfalls of building products and companies. Jay recounts how angel investing taught him things he wishes he had known as a founder. He closes with wise words to recent college grads thinking of founding a startup.

Jay Batson started out as a land man helping oil and gas explorers secure drilling rights. Computerizing part of his work led to his first startup. This made him realize that he loved technology. He would eventually embody this passion for tech in the founding of two venture-backed companies which brought significant innovation by way of the open source movement.

Here are some of the topics included in this podcast:

• Sal Daher’s Intro: “Jay Batson is an angel investor’s angel investor.”
• Jay Batson Bio
• Born to a Family of Entrepreneurs – Land Man Studying Law at Night – Tech Founder
• Jay Batson Exits first Startup – Learns UNIX & C - Heads to Job with BBN in Boston – Massively Parallel Computing
• Jay Batson Goes from Engineering to Product Management
• At Forrester Research, Jay Batson Foresaw some of the Internet’s Potential
• Desktop Internet Phone – Pingtel – SIP – Bits of Code We still Use Today
• The Story of Acquia
• Open Source Primer
• Jay Batson Gets into Angel Investing
• What Jay Batson Looks for In a Startup
• What Jay Batson Has Learned from Being an Angel Investor
• Technique Jay Batson Uses in Mentoring Startups
• What Do Startups Most Frequently Not Do Well?
• Jay Batson Relates the Story of Pingtel’s Pivot
• Jay Batson’s Eloquent Statement of the Value of a Working Board of Directors
• Jay Batson’s Advice to Recent College Grads Thinking of Founding a Company

Topics: software, product, management, exits, boards, discovering entrepreneurship, founding story