What recession? More than 10,000 revelers are expected for this year's SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas this week. With no real work at hand, they're hitting the parties hard — especially the unofficial ones.
BricaBox founder Nate Westheimer didn't like it when we called him a "wantrepreneur" in our posts about his various publicity stunts. With BricaBox closing, Westheimer won't have to worry about that anymore! [CenterNetworks]
"You're a dick, Owen. And you run fake stories every day anyway." — Double-crossed April Fools entrepreneur Nate Westheimer demonstrates his Valley CEO potential. And let this be a reminder: People say Valleywag will stab you in the back. That's a lie. Valleywag will stab you in the face.
Nate Westheimer, a New York entrepreneur best known for holding a Silicon Alley popularity contest, attempted to persuade Valleywag to participate in an April Fools' joke. We said we'd cover it, so here's the story: Right about now, if Westheimer's prank goes as he told us, Mashable, CNET blog The Social, and Silicon Alley Insider should be attempting to persuade you of the existence of a new startup called Urlrurl.com. The website converts long Web addresses into shorter ones, as TinyURL does. Unlike TinyURL, its shorter URLs all redirect users to a YouTube page with a Rick Astley video, a silly stunt known as "rickrolling."
Meet wantreprenuer Nate Westheimer and venture capital associate Kristian Hansen. Westheimer founded BricaBox, a publishing platform which you still haven't heard of, despite publicity stunts like the "Silicon Alley 100: People's Choice." Hansen you might know because his boss cofounded Wallstrip, which used to feature Lindsay Campbell, whom you definitely know. Here's the pair's lipdub to Justice's "D.A.N.C.E." As the song goes, fellas,"The way you move is a mystery." The clip is below.
Here in New York's so-called Silicon Alley, we occupy ourselves by filing stories about people setting up meetings to talk about organizing events to increase awareness of necessary preconditions for entrepreneurship. This leaves us with no time to do anything as tiring and complicated as, say, actually writing software. Bricabox founder Nate Westheimer and the Silicon Alley wantrepreneur community have their answer to the old white guys on Silicon Alley Insider's top 100. It's the Silicon Alley 100: People's Choice. Problem is, because its order was decided by nominations and votes, it's full of self-promoters you've never heard of, such as tech "activist" Dana Spiegel. Yes, he's the guy who takes the top spot. Telling that there are more people on this list than there are votes for the winner.
