Category: music startup

2002: Hella Kool

How much cynicism is too much cynicism? What do you find, rather than think? These are the questions.

(updated: 18 February 2025)

Pre and post clubbing photos in early 2002 in front of the new webcam.

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So I spoke to Ella Hooper briefly when she sat down in front of me at the Saint Hotel.

Killing Heidi - Live Without It (House of Hits, 2000)

That was most probably in 2002 and most likely on a Sunday, I think.

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At that moment, I was probably by myself – a sign of strength, I would say.

In 1997, Jack Alan liked The Saint too, and everyone would see whoever walked in due to the open plan and elevated corner entry. Good for people who worked out.

So Hooper was wearing a small “one star” badge with her all-male crew around her.  I said something vaguely like “that looks like an unfinished American flag” and she responded like “I don’t know what it means, I see it as representing one world.”

I would’ve kept speaking but her friends all took off and she left too… because I was about to hit it off with her, non?

Initially, perhaps she missed her own dark brown, wavy hair and was aligned with the whole “one-world/age-of-enlightenment” thing too.

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I still am, but it needs to be balanced with a big, hard dose of conspiracy theory/fact – saints versus sinners.

Interestingly, Tania Doko was sitting at a table with her female friend – she smiled and looked over at me a few times. Wait, maybe it was only a lookalike and she was gazing at someone behind me.

So perhaps I should have gone over and said “well done on escaping from the television!” Richard Gere once said the only pickup lines that work are the ones created in the moment. So she would’ve responded “lucky me!”

Anyway, “Lightworkers” are known to commit suicide all too easily, because when the darkness hits them, they can’t handle it. And Bonnie, who I remember from school presumably did just that in July, 2020 during covid lockdown.

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But I don’t know enough about her individual case to make a concise comment, but it is so very sad nevertheless. In fact, according to these snippets the cause of death is unknown, and no Will was left either.

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Anyway, best wishes and long life to her friends and family. Paul Havea mentioned further down died in December, 2007.

Interestingly, as mentioned in this post, no cause of death was given to Patrick Timpone and Fentanyl was blamed in the comments.

Also, “Prince had ‘exceedingly high’ level of fentanyl in body when he died.” [src] Good thing they actually tested for it – was Patrick actually tested for Fentanyl? Was Bonnie? Michael Jackson could’ve been targeted while his doctor was waiting around outside his room, is one theory I’ve read. Do assassins come armed with syringes these days? Are drones used?

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So as Morgs told me at the 2021 reunion something like “life isn’t smooth sailing for everyone, and not everyone makes it.”

They crop themselves (or others) out. The last time I had spoken to Bonnie was at the Chevron in 1997 and I was too tipsy and too distracted (and it was too loud) to have any meaningful interaction. In 2019 I drove through the Tweed Coast and probably should have reached out, but I thought, what’s the point?

[ Tweed Coast – 21 October 2019 ]

So The Saint had a good vibe and is still running to this day, albeit heavily renovated. There’s a good chance that I saw the late Paul “Pauly” Havea singing on the same night that Hooper came through. He was in Eden‘s K for Kool band and instead of clapping my hands, I clicked both my fingers and Pauly started grooving all the same. I’d only spoken to him on two occasions.

Eden essentially asked me if I wanted to drum for his new band at one point, but I turned it down and said there’d be better drummers for it – professionals. In hindsight, I probably should’ve switched to percussion at that point. But that would mean less money for the rest of the band.

[ 30 May 2017 ]

It’s very easy for bands to overlook percussionists, but in Israel two decades later, whenever I hooked up with street players, they’d always invite me back and got waaay more money and crowds whenever I was around. But that could’ve been due to my unique playing style rather than percussionists in general. In fact, one guy Chemy asked me to join his touring band in the USA, but I said my hearing’s too f##### to join any band. He said I had “tasty” rhythms. Moreover, by 1970, Miles Davis was playing with percussionists in Bitches Brew but the numerous Israeli Jazz players I knew weren’t interested in percussionists, or so it seemed, and perhaps even less in their audience.

So back to the Saint, on another Sunday, the DJ came over to me and kindly put me onto Mark Farina and I bought the CD afterwards.

It might’ve been the last CD I ever purchased. My favourite track is at 32.48 and the one after is alright. The rest of it I can pass on.

I saw Simon Grey there once around that period too. He wasn’t playing but he was with his pals and his plans for eternity. I had already recorded some drums at his studio (or was about to) and he played me a track pre-release through the monitors – I think it was this one but am not sure.

Abby died a few years later too due to liver issues, I think. Very sad loss too.

It’s also worth noting that during Grey’s 2018 Pledge Music appeal, on the forum I suggested that he do more “Jazz House” with a swing feel and some months later a Crackazat remix appeared which I included in Ormus King.

Simon Grey - The Galáctica Suite (Crackazat Remix)

Incredible breakdown at 3.25 — Simon Grey – The Galáctica Suite (Crackazat Remix)

So there was another chap of African-descent who, like me, was a regular at James Ash‘s 2-Step night at Salt Nightclub in the sideroom in 1998. I saw him at The Saint at that time and mentioned something about having a girlfriend and he said, “well, if there’s a girl around, then’s there’s one around, and if there isn’t, then there isn’t. It doesn’t bother me that much.”

I was vegan at that point and was going through what was almost certainly the early stages of a Kundalini awakening, which is considered a feminine energy anyway, so his sentiment was (and is) aligned with my own basically.

Moreover, in Tsfat, Israel 2005 along with other students reading ancient Kabbalistic texts, I learned that a wife is ultimately about enabling a man to find his own inner feminine.

[above left and middle – Ascent Hostel]

How easy. But it made sense. I told Hart about Kundalini and he said something like “we think we’re humans but we’re really just monkeys thinking we’re human.” Yet Kundalini doesn’t mean much to people in Tsfat, but Shekhinah (שכינה) or Ruach HaKodesh (רוח הקודש) does. When I did mention something at  Shalom Rav shule about Kundalini (a Sanskrit word,) someone pointed me to a chapter about Abraham’s gifts going to the east.

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And so it should be noted that Solomon was already prepared for to this.

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But with myself still locked into Baal, and without Solomon as my wingman, I wasn’t sure I had found my wife-to-be as yet and even donated my copy of Bahir to another student while I waited to be illuminated and shown the way.

Anyhow, back in January, 2002, I wrote this in one of my essays.

“The Kundalini-type energy engulfed my whole brain. The sensation was like standing up against a tidal wave without moving an inch! When I made the effort not to resist or judge the energy, BAM! A hit of power went to my central brain and my whole being shuddered. My typical mundane awareness had crashed into an ocean of dense consciousness that seemed to underlie the physical universe. A consciousness wave splashed out from my body and passed through the bedroom walls. It looked like an animation strip. Soon a flashback came to my mind. I saw the empty chamber which exists in the centre of the Death Star as seen in the film ‘The Return of the Jedi.’ This was symbolic for my head – an empty space enclosing a God powered fusion reactor in the middle. In this space the ‘light side’ of the force had just attacked my concept of death in order to bring about immortality. However, the attack was not complete because the death star was not fully destroyed! (film scene below)”

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It’s worth noting that I had a very dramatic internal experience like the one above after going quad biking in New Zealand that year on the north island (Paihia). And that’s 2000 years of pain, unworthiness, misery and torture from Jewish exile being cleared. I struggled on the bike and even lost the group in the forest but by the end was trailing the instructor and was winning (if that’s the right word.) It was also the first year of Heartcarving as done on Ruapehu and there were people attempting to copy my style without poles. So NZ, it seems, was the emotional precursor for me to leave Australia and eventually go to Israel but I didn’t know it at the time.

It was heavy-going stuff, and in the West it was very left-field and prior to that I wrote to the Datre channel in late 2000 and got some answers about Kundalini, specifically directed to me.

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I summarised that answer (above right) in October 2002 as follows:

“Datre are said to exist as a collective of souls whose messages are spoken by ‘human channels’. They view the fully-fledged Kundalini experience as a “crash course in trying to understand what physicality is all about” but with someone not necessarily becoming “a grander person if they have gone through the Kundalini.” Kundalini causes a “re-alignment of the physical construct” and “when that alignment is finished, you will see things differently.” The difficulty is that after a re-alignment it may take “a long time to be able to assimilate the information from that point on” because often the Kundalini can cause “an opening of a flood gate of information” whereby one might have to “grab a hold of themselves and stop it [the information], because if they didn’t they would have gone mad.”

Good to know. That summary was part of my research that I was doing into spirituality where I came up with 3 essays in 2002 and for them, composed some diagrams.

But the “Wisdom Cycle” diagram has gone missing. Looking back now, a transformation did indeed take place. For example, I would lie in bed awake and think in only English words and generally only about the future. That sort of changed and my inner-space deepened. “English words” doesn’t mean hearing voices, it just means normal, day-to-day thinking.

So continuing, another person I spoke to at The Saint was Mieke (below far left.) I actually spoke to her outside while we were leaving (but not together) and ended up saying something like “there are good and bad people wherever you go.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Mieke Baxter (@miekejade)


It was an accident that I saw her outside and I had already spoken to her a few times at Saratoga nightclub prior to that where she was working behind the bar, and we both knew the owner there Goofyfoot/Brett who was on Groovetip. Brett was also there that night at Saint and I think there was a function going on at the time. There was also another chap that night that really liked her (one of her co-workers) it seemed and it was an awkward situation for me. Having Jack around would’ve helped but I’ve always enjoyed talking to Brett, though. In fact, I met Cadell and helped get Best of my Love remixed a number of months after that – a song Brett penned.

Olivia Newton-John - Best Of My Love (Ashley Cadell Club Mix)

I never saw Mieke again except on a modelling agency website along with a couple of other people I knew. There was such a strong resonance between us (at least that’s what I felt) that it blew my mind. Sometimes the fuse just blows and it is never reconnected as was the case there. She may not remember me of course, but I’d be curious as to when (and why) she left ‘Toga where she said something like “I saw you burning up the dancefloor” –  I wish.

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I remember first meeting Helen and her guy friend at ‘Toga around that time but I didn’t speak to her for long and I’d be curious if she remembers that night too – but it was likely 2001, though. I even gave them a lift to Greville Street station in the Hyundai Excel and let them use my Nokia 3310 which I disliked due to how much EMF it produced and felt tingly as a result.

[ 2000 ]

Helen dressed like Aaliyah and was so hot I paid her a compliment saying she must “stick out like a sore thumb” at her school and there was a brief interaction about age: I presume the two weren’t underage for the niteclub but I didn’t ask for their IDs – she mentioned something about a birthday. I don’t know her surname but remember the school the pair went to and it wasn’t mine.

By chance, I saw her again at Mink Bar a few weeks later standing at the bar with some other fellow, but much older, he may have been Greek (I’d never seen him before or after) and yet she appeared excited to see me at which point he placed his hand on her jeans just to rock the boat. It looked like she was trying to dress-down rather than up and maybe she was in overalls yet was naturally blonde. I never saw her again – even upstairs at the Prince Bandroom that was in the same building. Wasn’t stuck-up at all.

It’s crazy how a girl can be with a guy and completely ignore him if there’s another guy she likes or is interested in more. Something like that happened in Byron Bay at La La Land with Anoushka and her boyfriend, both from France at around that time. I’ve also seen girls get with guys just to get close to one of the guy’s friends and project that like onto him. Only a theory. But a lot of girls would flick their hair when I looked at them at ‘Toga. My guess is that it was hard to find younger guys that liked and danced to House music, with a fashion sense and outside of a pub (or rave) context.

[2002 – at a birthday funktion]

I mainly bobbed my head to the off-beat.. so simple… who would’ve thought? I only taught myself actual dance steps over a decade later because I wanted to learn the Melbourne Shuffle. But the best place for me to go on a date was a nightclub… for sure.

A guitarist buddy Kiran told me on MSN messenger that the key there is having detachment. Good guy too and amazing player with some type of Shakti thing happening.

Eclectic Ladyland.wmv

That Eclectic Ladyland show was in 2004 at Dizzy’s and was a follow-up to the Human Interest album launch there.

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The venue had a Friday jam session and it was easy to meet people. I also met keyboardist Adam Rudegeair who spins Black Wax on PBS and Harry before The Cat Empire became an empire. I actually took a guest spot on Rasta Radio on PBS in 1997 with Sinatro. Oddly enough, I found myself starting a reggae band after playing in Skaface, and the promoter shuffled me upstairs to meet him.

A couple of other Rasta guys also came in for an interview and I didn’t understand a word they were saying as they sat across from me. There was an interesting scent around too.

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I was answering the phone to ascended listeners and playing my Songs of Freedom box set as well. Then, almost 20 years later I was playing reggae on the streets of Zion with Yoha and listening to his songs of freedom.

Sophian Guitar/Singing - Redemption Song

I got into RnB by listening to PBS every Tuesday and Saturday and 1994 was just Da Bomb in terms of tasty beats but I didn’t know anyone that was into it as well.

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Taste Your Love- Horace Brown

Eventually, I wound up at an RnB night at the Warehouse/Salt to see it all for myself. It was so gnarly. I got so much female attention. I was probably the only white guy there.

Intro to WKD 97-98

Anyway, I had posted pics of Kiran on Groovetip with a female companion and I ended up having to take them down because I’m pretty sure it caused a female ex of his a lot of stress, and subsequently him. I’d have to double check. Anyway, best of luck to Mieke and her family. Having Facebook around back then and much cheaper digital cameras would’ve helped.

I read in the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle some years after its release in 1997 that females have a very active “pain body” from millennia of rape and abuse by men, and it’s very difficult for them (and their men) to work through, but they should.

“Apart from her personal pain-body, every woman has her share in what could be described as the collective female pain-body — unless she is fully conscious. This consists of accumulated pain suffered by women partly through male subjugation of the female, through slavery, exploitation, rape, childbirth, child loss, and so on, over thousands of years. The emotional or physical pain that for many women precedes and coincides with the menstrual flow is the pain-body in its collective aspect that awakens from its dormancy at that time, although it can be triggered at other times too. It restricts the free flow of life energy through the body, of which menstruation is a physical expression. Let’s dwell on this for a moment and see how it can become an opportunity for enlightenment.” – P158

So a year or two later after speaking with Hooper, by chance she walked passed me by herself on the footpath and looked at me, smiling away. I was living and working in that area at the time.

I think she had a boyfriend at that point, so live without it… like the rest of Australia! Lucky her!
✓ 6 months ago

Launchpad Israel: The Aftermath – 2006 and Beyond

– part 1 of 5: Beyond Blacklists: EXPOSURE!

updated: 13 June 2023

In Israel, I believe or rather know that I was “downranked” within that society in late 2006 via extensive personal observation. This continued for many years. It is a conscious effort to neutralize someone’s influence in society… and quite possibly much, much worse within an “orange-ray emotional blockage” context.

This was done utterly unfairly, I feel, and corresponding to my experience street-drumming where gangs could “start on me,” I think it was a way to assert dominance. This “downranking” was done from the top-down and of course unbeknownst to me. The judge, jury and executioner never knew me, or barely, with lies probably making up for solid information – if they even had any.

It’s also worth noting that:

“Absent a basic document protecting human rights (Israel has no written Constitution), the Supreme Court is considered by many as the last bastion protecting the civil rights of citizens (and non-citizens, including Palestinians) against government actions and laws.” – src, 2023

The country is in the Middle East after all. So the key to assert power over someone is to keep them blindsided of hostile intent so they can’t bring it to court. And those courts are in the process of being weakened anyway.

The place can easily resort to Jew-on-Jew thug life based on social and economic violence. I have even said elsewhere:

“I have a hypothesis that the only character trait that Israelis have that extends beyond their toughness is their idiocy.”

So shouldn’t those protesters be yearning for a bill-of-rights? Wouldn’t that garner more positive international attention? How does a brute un-brute him/herself? The God of the Torah can be very vicious too, unless someone is reaching deeply into the Kabbalah. Those secular protesters probably have a lot of self-righteous indignation and they’ll lose that fight. It could be a good time to start a new political party – The Judges Party, People First or Reversal.

Regardless, I suspect this downranking came after a series of 3 blog posts (from late 2006) I wrote about interactions with VCs that I had had at the time. They weren’t critical blogposts I feel, more “matter-of-fact here’s how my experience went that day.” The posts might’ve been something like you’d find on thefunded.com (launched early 2007) – but in reality much less innocuous.

I don’t even think they were critical at all – but people can believe what they want to believe. The main, or rather only reason the posts went up was to create new content and to write something from a boots-on-the-ground, fresh perspective. The Launchpad Israel (LPI) blog was unpopulated at the time. If I visited or spoke to a VC about my startup, why not write about it?

Moreover, the blog posts came in context with the work I had already started in Melbourne in 2003, for which I had even previously met a VC firm there – Momentum VC. I met 3 individuals at that firm at the time, with the main contact being Tim Ingram. I also met Ron Finkel very briefly and also saw Doron Ben-Meir who many years prior was my tennis coach.

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And I retained this vision into my Israeli VC meetings a few years later, and below are screenshots of the VC-specific vision I was working toward in 2003: Awarenex.

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Phase 1: Awarenex is a venture capital brokerage firm utilising the Web to match opportunities with investors. Essentially, AwareNex aggregates startup investment opportunities and matches each one to its network of angel investors. Startups companies pay AwareNex a commision for each investment made by any angel in its network. 

Phase 2: Awarenex creates and manages a venture capital fund that pools its investors' money over the web from a cartel consisting of high net-worth individuals who are clients of Awarenex's alliance partner banks. The fund partners with top-tier, venture capital firms to co-invest in their syndicate deals.
 
~ source

Part of the problem in Melbourne was that the VC scene was practically non-existent, perhaps Awarenex could’ve changed that. Also, perhaps it was a mistake to mention Awarenex in Israel with VCs as that would invoke rivalry – I was meant to be an entrepreneur and not coming in from a financier’s perspective. Often I wasn’t sure if I should be pitching GrooveTip, Awarenex, LPI or simply for a job. I pitched both GrooveTip and Awarenex to Tim Ingram and his suggestion for Awarenex was to start with a newsletter and with GrooveTip to first find revenues.

Launpad Israel wasn’t Awarenex, but it was aimed at adopting this vision specifically for the Israeli VC scene after funding and customized software development. LPI had multiple functions with a blog being only one. It was also meant to become a database of companies, people and events.

Another site, StartupIsrael.com started very soon after LPI launched. However, according to this post (and shown below), StartupIsrael launched first – in November 2006 – but I dispute that. LPI launched in October as already mentioned here and shown below [see post]. I also don’t consider it a competitor.

TechAviv, a still-running startup community which I joined, even began during LPI’s operation.

I listed one angel investor on LPI who was based in Monterey, California and he said he received multiple leads after being on it. I think he made two investments because of his listing, I am not sure. My concern was that after seeing MySpace take-off, I realized I missed that opportunity because GrooveTip used off-the-shelf software and really needed proper custom development to integrate its components – which I was looking to do anyway, but I wasn’t a hardcore programmer.

Continuing on, I even removed the most controversial post – the one about Mr Dibner (with its one sentence about being rejected)  after I was queried on the post by Jon Aizen (JA) who later said in an email “The issue was dropped when you removed the post.” However, it turns out it wasn’t the case. Removing the post and even taking down the blog in hindsight was really the mistake. It was never about the post… I think it was about me.

So once I took my LPI blog and twitter down, I was much more open to slander and misinformation. And even if this is an unjustifiably paranoid statement (I don’t think it is,) it’s still true regardless, whereby if  one removes their online presence, and others don’t like your presence as a whole, then alternative narratives can more easily arise without proper information to counter those narratives – especially if one doesn’t know about what’s happening.

After this, JA and his CEO Eran Shir uninvited me (and someone else) to his startup’s (Dapper) NYE party and I had been providing solid feedback to them up until that point. Perhaps JA was even interested in having me as an early employee. Over email, JA asked me for an apology for Mr Dibner, but instead I just removed the post about him (and the other 2 VCs) about 4 days later. I didn’t apologize on that day because I didn’t believe I did any harm to Mr Dibner, nor did I intend harm. And whatever I apparently did to him (ie nothing,) over 15 years later it has never stopped him from launching 2 VC funds.

To this day, I have never met JA in person, or even spoken to him verbally and lost contact soon after. I know nothing about who was involved in this “request for apology” and the merit or consequences that it entailed. I also felt it was strange to have JA used as a messenger boy for victim consciousness. I didn’t even know what JA looked like… he had no online profile picture. Yet more importantly I don’t think I did either (or videos of myself,) and did that make me somehow less credible as a person and rather more as a potential target-for-life?

Straight from victim to villain-by-proxy!

Must one be in the corridors-of-power to have any power?

Being uninvited to Dapper’s NYE party was the watershed moment for me. My blog even received around 80 visitors in the space of a few minutes while the VC posts were up – Israeli visitors. The posts had caught the attention of people – negative attention I suspect.

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And when I finally left Israel in late November 2018 with my belongings, I received many visitors in a very short period of time at the beginning of the month.

Those photos were posted on the 5th of November and taken at the Dizengoff center. The influx of visitors probably had nothing to do with me leaving. Or was it because the Ormus King was escaping with his life?… nahh.

Continuing, Dapper was acquired by Yahoo in 2010. And as with Yedda and Moshtix that were also acquired in those years, with all 3 I had been providing solid feedback and help to those firms in their startup period only to be eventually ignored – or worse. But if nothing’s in writing, that’s part of business I suppose… to a certain extent.

Interestingly, my twitter account @bitrific (since renamed @adrianboron1) I feel was instrumental in promoting Bitcoin in its earlier years, with content drawn from Hacker News.

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Hackers and other users were using this account to chime in on conversations about Bitcoin on Hacker News.

Also, my other @btcprice account linked every tweet to the following price page that I created especially for that account (although the first June 2011 tweet did not.)

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I was in contact with Meni Rosenfeld and Vibhu Mohindra back then too.

At the same time, a couple of years earlier in 2009 I had setup some very pro-Israeli (and US) unofficial twitter feeds including the all important debkafile and a number of others including israelnatnews,  israelnatbriefs, israelnatopin, investisrael, lpijobs, globesbiz, stratforintel, globesec and amthinker. I still run these to this day.

In 2009 I also wrote an interesting piece on regime change in Iran (and also on the Two State Solution.)

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I was in contact with the editor at American Thinker for the Iranian essay, but for some reason it was never published there after some emails. Perhaps my heart was in the right place, but my vision was not. Maybe I was “checked out” beforehand. Today, in 2021, with barely any real changes to each of these wars, I am more of the view that they are staged for political gain or armament sales – aren’t many wars?

Also, while I was developing Cleanzap.com in 2007/08 as a business directory for the CleanTech space to run alongside its own blog, Crunchbase was also launched as a directory to run alongside the Techcrunch blog, with both acquired in 2010.

CleanZap started as the next iteration of LPI to be a database alongside its blog – just as Crunchbase became to Techcrunch.

pic 1: 23 July 2008

So it was like I was doing R&D for Michael Arrington:

Who got crunched?

Also, in March 2009 I built and launched Twitya.com – a twitter browser and client.


Twitya was a “Better Twitter than Twitter” for me to read news as I disliked the “river of feeds” on Twitter home. I think amongst other things spammers used it to discover meaningful interactions of any given user.

I may well have been first to invent the “show more” drop-down list.. soon after used by YT for their video comment sections. I should’ve patented it. This evolved into Infinite Scroll. Twitya also used a client-side 3-pane floating interface Web 2.0-style. Perhaps I should’ve patented that too. I strongly suspect this was emulated in September 2010 by Twitter itself with its client-side driven floating 2-pane floating interface:

[ pic 1 | 2 | 5 ]

further info here

In view of all this copying, I am not surprised Disney used Ormus King as a starting point for The Rise of Skywalker which I elaborate upon here. That film had a box office of $1 Billion, and I suppose it could’ve been much worse without its emulated vision.

Interestingly, I don’t think I was the only one that experienced such a “downranking” thing. It must be part of Israeli life. At a tech conference, a fellow sitting next to me pointed out another person literally following him around and talking – ie spooking – everyone he spoke to almost immediately afterward to turn them off him. He described some sort of bizarre situation that led him to that one, and I quizzed him, “but why don’t you confront him on it?” and he said “then there’d really be trouble.”

During another situation, at Entrepreneur Perspective as a VC (7 October 2010,) the speaker (Eden Shochat) asked if there was anyone that preferred English, and I raised my hand, yet Mr Shochat  still ran his talk in Hebrew. The slides were in English. There was another person that only spoke English at the front of the room. Someone (from Intentia.co.il) gave me a lift home and said it was really odd.

My blog (Launchpad Israel) was removed from the blogrolls of Daniel Cohen (Dec 2008 -> Jan 2009) and Roi Carthy (Feb 2009 -> July 2009.) But by that time, my blog wasn’t in the same form as it was when originally launched.

By mid-2007 I was back in Melbourne living with my mum (after ~1.5 years in Israel) and helping Jeremy Rich and his solar startup with SugarCRM customization. We also went to Mount Buller together.

[pic 4: business process diagram: 17 Jul 2007]

Rich’s firm (Energy Matters) was eventually acquired in 2014.

Interestingly, during this period I also worked for a small Israel/Europe VC firm for 3 days but the spreadsheet work wasn’t at all creative. I covered the firm’s launch on LPI and this led me to the job – which I tried so hard to like – but at least I did it though. By the end of the year I had started a new site, “Adrian Wajsbrem Blog” that covered similar topics to LPI but with more music and hobbies.

[pic 3]

During this period in Melbourne I was always thinking about returning to Israel. I started reading Torah everyday. I also held Skype conversations (one recorded) with a couple of Israeli entrepreneurs including Nir Kouris (eCampIsrael) who I later met in Tel Aviv with his co-founder, and the other with Dudu Mimran for his blog-search site (strategicboard.com.)

I eventually returned to Israel in early 2008 after going through Canada for further Heartcarve research, which continued at Mount Buller in 2007 and started in 2002.

Carving Blackcomb 2008

Lastly, my trouble could well have been related to non-conformity whereby I documented here “Price Tag” activism sprayed on a wall near to where I played drums in 2016. In decrypting it years later, I realized I could have (and could still??) “DISAPPER.”

Playlist: Different ones

One reason this whole drama is pertinent today is related to the Trump de-platforming:

"I think there has been lots of deplatforming of conservatives and I always think that the actual censorship that people talk about is just the tip of the iceberg and the real problem is the downranking. One of the top Google executives used to always say 5 or 6 years ago we never sensor anybody we just downrank people and the downranking was the far more insidious way to sort of tilt the playing field of the discourse. But there has been outright censorship, outright deplatforming and when you do it with the President of the United States, that does feel like you really crossed some kind of rubicon where you know I’m not sure you declare war on half the country but maybe a third, forty percent of the country and that seems really crazy. When you have Angela Merkle and Obrador from Mexico saying that the tech platforms have been too anti Trump, too mean to Mr. Trump that tells you you have probably really overreached.

Peter Thiel - vid here

So with my 2006 “Israeli downranking” (or worse) – and I have vast notes* on what took place with those starting off as unpleasant memories – the problem is that a sort of war on liberty is declared with everyone who once knew me, or wants to know me. Someone is telling them: you can’t freely associate with that person, you might have to deplatform yourself or even go into hiding in order to elicit a response from the target that we can then ideally prosecute. That is, legal prosecution; or alternately execution. And even if you disagree with all this, do it anyway.

* The notes were first taken in Australia and based on memories from Israel and I jotted them down because I had trouble sleeping and not out of vindictiveness – just like this set of articles.

Mossad is responsible for intelligence collection, covert operations, and counter-terrorism. It is separate from the democratic institutions of Israel; because no law defines its purpose, objectives, roles, missions, powers or budget, and because it is exempt from the constitutional laws of the State of Israel, Mossad has been described as a deep state. Its director answers directly and only to the Prime Minister. ~ Wikipedia

 

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And so then that person becomes submissive (or faces the same fate.) So the question becomes, is all this top-down fear justified, is it healthy? Will a society like that even survive long-term? Why do it?

Perhaps it was because I was Australian and I could be used as a whipping boy (hurt me to hurt an untouchable other) or just as some type of scapegoat. For example, during the British mandate period, 1917-1948, members of the Jewish underground were imprisoned in Jerusalem in the Russian compound (below center and right, Ormus King 2) and then executed in Akko.

In this way, the Union Jack could (sometimes) be seen as a blessing to Israelis, but also a curse – due to the Balfour Declaration. However, if I were to resent something, it would be that Israel is referred to as a State (מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל‎) and not a Country, and this reinforces my view that Israel could be renamed to “The State of Israel-2B” – but to eventually be called “The Kingdom of Israel.” And to assist with this, I created an epic tale (documented here) that takes Israel in its current form to this idealized Kingdom which Jews around the world yearn for in their daily prayers, as enabled by a black messiah with his sidekick Adrian Boron.

So the reason for the downranking in 2006 could’ve been anything – or nothing. It was likely used for self-gain or sick sport. In the end, I started my startup BopGig in 2010 with American talent. “Too Bad” – and that’s the key phrase that no one seems to know how to use within this situation. And perhaps ironically, Indiana Jones actually saved me.

 

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✓ 2 years ago

Israel Tech Scene 2006-2011

– part 3 of 5: Beyond Blacklists: EXPOSURE!

I attended a number of tech events in Israel – really I could have gone to Israel straight after uni, 4 years earlier… or not at all!

last updated: 27 October 2022

The first event I attended was the IVA Annual Conference 2006 – press release (now removed, April 17):

src | 2 | 3

This was a great conference and Shimon Peres even accepted an award. Amazing days just before mass use of smartphones!

I had a few meetings in Herzliya Pituach after that event in order to raise finance for GrooveTip or whatever came next.

In June 2008 whilst living in Tel Aviv, I went to MashBash and in July 2008, I went to TWS2008.

In August 2008 I attended iDrink #9 at Beach Bar in Herzliya Pituach.

Then in September I made it to Mobile Monday.

Forum Nokia at Mobile Monday TLV, Sept 2008

On 14 Feb 2009 while building Twitya.com, I attended the tech workshop Eurekamp.

Pic 3 Yossi Vardi can be seen sitting.

פרק 31 – Eurekamp 2009 from Yosi Taguri on Vimeo.

..see me at timecodes 3.14, 3.22, 6:03, 10:38, 12:20:

I have no personal photos of me at Eurekamp except for the video stills above, but I can be seen wearing the same Industrie jacket below. My name is also on the attendees list (source) and I did give a talk called Web Conglomerate.

CV 2008 | Extra WebC info: 1 2 3

Further notes on my Eurekamp 2009 experience, please see here.

So after building Twitya.com during this period, I attended the TechAviv Town Hall Meeting on 2 Sep ’09 having already begun work on Bopgig.

Then I submitted a business plan on 17 Nov ’09 into the TechAviv Angels group for judgement regarding Bopgig (then GigPop.)

[pic 2: 16 Nov 2009 | pic 3: 17 Nov 2009]

It got into the top 10 out of ~45 entries, which was considered a very good result especially because there was no working product at that stage. I ended up sending that business plan to Michael Eisenberg, but he did not reply – that really raised a red flag with me. When I asked if I could send the business plan, he replied “Send Away!” I suppose I should’ve called as well. I had never actually met Mr Eisenberg before but we did exchange a few emails prior to this although I am not 100% sure – I am locked out of a gmail account.

As an aside, I met Ariel Finkelstein at his office for a job at Kampyle in ~2007 and was rejected – that rejection may have been related to all this.. or not. Pity, I could have really assisted him. I enjoyed meeting Jacob Ner-David around this time – nice guy – many vegans are! I also had a job interview at Kontera in ~2008 and was also rejected… but perhaps my rough sketches were a little too… rough, or was it something else!?! I got a call from a woman at Wix at one point when it was just starting for an employment opportunity but I waxed and waned. I was in contact with Ori Soen from MuseStorm, and if they had only raised a new funding round, I may have ended up working there.. or nipped in the bud.. or were they nipped in the bud?! I met with the late Alon Hochberg (SeeToo) and Vitaly Sirota (FoxyTunes) together but that was more for brainstorming. I remember sending suggestions to FoxyTunes back then and they were acquired by Yahoo in 2008. I also met David Kariv from Copenda for a Yogo ice-cream in Neve Tzedek and suggested to keep the site as simple as possible to emulate Plenty Of Fish. This led to a redesign. But the only date I was seeking was a date with destiny!

Continuing, I also spoke to Sequoia and they were interested, but ultimately said there was overlap. Randy Ditzler spoke to his partners about it after speaking to me. Did they call up the “Israelis” to see if I was “legit?”

I was irked when I saw that EventBrite obtained Sequoia as a new investor.

This announcement came prior to my conversation with Mr Ditzler because I remember mentioning Roelof Botha in the call. I am confident (but not certain as yet) that the announcement came after I submitted my business plan to the firm. I am presently attempting (unsusccesfully so far) to enter a Gmail account that should clarify this. Also, my startup was called Gigpop at the time and I switched to Bopgig because I liked the reference to Bebop or a “Bebop gig.” Today I’d use Gigpop with ‘pop’ referring to a father that’s into gigs or just “the father of gigs”.

source

Interestingly, before my discussion with Sequoia I listened to a long interview with Rupert Murdoch, and in my conversation I think I was channeling his style which left a good impression.

Platonix weren’t interested in working with me although the emails with Yishai Beeri were fun. In the last minute, it stayed platonic.

Continuing, I proceeded with Bopgig using US-based developers after the TechAviv comp.

In April 2011, I went to TheMarker Com.Vention while still working on Bopgig.

And that was my final tech conference attended in Israel… for now.

* NB: I also attended OpenCoffee Club and GarageGeeks meetups. In addition, I went to a few one-off events, some even in the CleanTech space as I was interested in wave energy and I was working on an idea called WaveTrific.

Note: Izhar Shay is shown here because I came across him more than any other person out of all the tech events I went to in Israel (except for Shai Tsur.) He even spoke at the IVA Annual Conference 2006 – its press release was removed some months ago (shown at top.)

I even met with Mr Shay after that event with regards to GrooveTip and an internship. In that meeting I suggested that he start a blog, but he said he was interested in keeping a low-profile. It is surprising to see how that self-image has changed over the years. He moved into politics in 2019 alongside Benny Gantz at the time I was working on Ormus King 5.

At the 2006 IVA event, I remember Shay saying on stage something like “the enemies of Israel are not with us anymore” – what did he mean by that? Who can speak for Israel as a whole? What was he talking about? People found to be enemies already residing within Israel? Was that going to be me? Did he mean the enemies of the Jews or the enemies of Israel …am I not remembering correctly? At Aish HaTorah Essentials in 2005, Rabbi Ken Spiro mentioned the enemies of the Jews all eventually disappearing in his WorldPerfect talk.

Also, I don’t necessarily agree with Shay, Iran has been a nuclear threat to Israel since the early 2000s. In 2021, to me going after Iran (as has been done) is like someone chasing their own shadow. Why haven’t they disappeared yet?

At TWS2008 (Prime Sagol), Shay walked up to me outside the hall and acted entitled to hear a pitch of mine. I think he saw me speaking to his friend Ofer Wald and that demonstrated some sort of social proof, yet at the time I was already speaking to many entrepreneurs over email, and had even met a few in person. I even covered TWS on my blog.

– Mr Eisenberg second from left, Mr Shay second from the right | source

Before he left, he asked about who my relatives were in Israel, to which I replied an aunt. Perhaps I told him her name as well, or I told him her name at our initial meeting at Aroma (Herzliya Pituach.) I did not end up pitching to him and I think that irritated him. He also blatantly inspected the top of my head, I presume to see if I was wearing a yarmulka. So I was “off the derech,” but was I ever on it ?!?

From 3 days to around a week later an IDF officer thumped 3 times very loudly on my door at the Great Twitya Pad.

I was sweating after having been rollerblading. He spoke in very loud Hebrew but I could only reply in English. He kept speaking, but I didn’t understand. He walked off in a huff. At the time I was over 26 – the usual conscript age-limit.

I think I was geolocated using my phone and was to have “rank pulled” on me. Then again, this officer may have just been lost or looking for directions. Many people did knock on my door, but I’ll never know – I doubt it though because he was very directed in the way he walked off and the knocking and tone of voice was abnormal.

At the TechAviv Town Hall Meeting on 2 Sep 2009, Mr Shay came and sat two seats away with his new associate (I think it was Adi Pundak-Mintz) right next to me. Shai Tsur (who I had first met before at the 2006 IVA Conference) sat down a chair or two away at about the same time. Scott Tobin (and his associate David Sokolic) sat behind me who I even said a few words to when he forgot something mid public intro. The only thing Mr Shay said to me was “you can stay” while looking at Gil Dibner who was sitting on the riser – and that’s the last thing I heard him say directly to me. Also, when I introduced myself to the room (I remained seated) and announced my idea for BopGig to sell downloads and tickets, he leaned over in full view of everyone and tried to disrupt me – or at least signal to the room something about me – something bad I presume. I got the impression that he was smug about his new associate also seated next to me – a position I may have taken when I was interested in an internship back in 2006.

Then, when someone spoke to the room and complained about VCs micro-managing entrepreneurs, I saw a few people begin staring at Mr Shay. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did micro-manage entrepreneurs. I also got the impression that he had Anal retentiveness * back at TWS 2008  when he checked to see if I was wearing a yarmulka (mentioned above) because he also blatantly checked my shoes. I was wearing Converse All-Star at the time.  He also exhibited some strange body language where he was looking around to see who was looking at him. ​Anal retentiveness is something that I think can be determined with certain micro-expressions such as leaning onto tiptoes and staring intensely onto people – something Mr Shay did to me.​ It can also be overcome with Yoga. That’s my own theory (I’ve seen someone else with AR tendencies do it to me) and Anal retentiveness also doesn’t need to be taken literally in terms of someone with a tense sphincter and could be used as an adjective of someone’s character.

* I deny being vindictive here although I am passing judgement – as I perceive he and others have done to me. I have no ill will. In practice, it means he is someone I would not actively seek association with in the future – and he probably feels the same! Who needs the stress?!?

When I first met Izhar Shay in late 2006 after 2 thoughtful cold-emails to obtain such a meeting (after hearing him at IVA 2006 – he came across as very smart,) his expression turned to horror when he first saw me – there was no profile pic of me online prior to that. Also, when I first met Mr Dibner at Genesis Partners, he initially shook my hand like he was holding a wet rag that he wanted to let go of as soon as humanly possible. At least they met me, but was there hidden prejudice?

A relevant quote from Dec 31, 2021:

"Rich and proudly unpopular is a whole thing in today's political scene."

...

"Yep, a lot of people who don't like criticisms of capitalism fail to understand that this system is disguised as a meritocracy but in reality it's a game and you win it by shaking off any moral scruples and stepping on everyone else."

- Hacker News comments: Peter Thiel hires disgraced ex-Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz

That said, I should never have setup those meetings and I had a strong feeling not to go to those meetings or get too involved in that scene at all. Those were timelines I was (and am?) steering clear of. However, the rational, business-oriented, western-trained mind is very strong. Rather, I think my role was to simply live in the holy cities, avoid cults and meet whoever I needed to meet. Even my time studying Gemara was really too powerful for comfort. If I was a Torah master in a previous life, why should I become one again? I can just dream up knowledge whenever it’s needed. Sometimes one doesn’t need to learn.. they need to remember.

Continuing, when Mr Shay finally stood to leave the event, the final look in his eye (as he looked at mine) was very strange, like he was on a mission and something had gone very awry. Maybe it was part of a “Tom and Jerry” scene that I mentioned in Israel Revisited because the look corresponded to my previous discussion with him at TWS2008 (mentioned above) that may have resulted in an IDF officer thumping on my door a few days later.

When Mr Dibner introduced himself, I saw Mr Shay on the edge of his seat (to my left) and ready to tackle me to the ground like I was about to pull a gun or throw something at the riser. Then, when Mr Dibner introduced himself, I got the impression that Mr Dibner was very faintly crying for a few moments whereby I heard (and saw) a sniffle or two just as his boss Jonathan Saacks stared at him (from a few meters) to his left in slight embarrassment (possibly anger.) Yet although there might have been guilt, I doubt there was shame whereby despite all odds, I had made it to a sought-after entrepreneurs’ meetup where people were supposed to help each other and not hinder each other. To me, this only signaled to those opposed to me to step up their efforts. “Why is this Adrian guy even here?”

Ofer Wald, Shai Tsur and Yoav Leitersdorf weren’t too keen to speak to me at this event. Interestingly, I spoke to both Wald and Tsur pretty easily at the next TechAviv event and even have a recording of that (see further down). That next event was after TechAviv Angels.

  • pic ref and source below.
  • Mr Saacks in the navy blue top and beige pants (legs crossed) looking directly at the camera.
  • Yaron Samid stands.
  • Mr Dibner is on the far left of the riser (unseen) although that vaguely looks like him with arms-crossed.
  • Myself, Shay, Tsur, Tobin, Sokolic off-screen behind Wald (dark red shirt with laptop looking down.)
  • Uri Levanon – dark gray shirt with left hand at chest level, two seats up from Wald.
  • By the end of that meetup, there were people overflowing into the entry hall unable to find a seat and I vaguely recall seeing David Nordell and also Erez Perlmuter who I chatted with briefly as I did also at Eurekamp sitting at a table.

Two months later I later went to the Nov ’09 Meetup and then straight afterward got a lift to the Tel Aviv Hilton with Boris Nadion and his team to meet up with my mother and grandmother. Initially in the foyer a bunch of guys were staring hard at me with the ‘evil eye’ until I turned my back on them – why?

While I sat near Nadion and his team during the actual talk, at that event I ended up speaking to many people in the foyer and auditorium and I actually recorded those conversations (including with Nadion) along with much of the talk itself. Someone even kindly gave me Yossi Vardi’s mobile number. I was ready to continue interviewing my grandmother that night at her hotel, and I decided to place my recorder in my pocket. This allowed me to later evaluate my pitching style and rapport.

Continuing, I had already spoken to Nadion at iDrink #9 (see pic higher up with him next to Sun Microsystems logo.) I had also met with Nadion and his team prior to iDrink as a team-for-hire. I almost hired them for Bopgig but ended up using the USA guys I found on Hacker News.

Also, I was at a Water Tech event in Tel Aviv (Watec 2009) around a week earlier, and Shai Tsur when he was standing next to me whispered in the ears of a couple of people sitting down close to him and their expressions turned to horror as they stared at me (very similar to Mr Shay above.) What did he say to them? Was it about me? I think they may have been partners at his firm Giza Venture Capital. All I was interested in was wave energy (my WaveTrific bringing SDE to Australia via Energy Matters) and water desalination. It was during the afternoon, outside, and underneath a sun-shade. Interestingly, SDE turned out to be basically ineffective in delivering, so I moved on.

Also, another Israeli firm Eco Wave Power adopted an essentially identical design to SDE in 2011 as founded by an ex staff-member, Inna Braverman.

What if you could charge your Tesla with the power of the waves

I wonder if this design will ever become popular without a massive shift in consciousness – not that the tech isn’t good, but due to “industry resistance” – same with zero-point (free) energy. Eco Wave Power has only seen 2 small-scale installations setup so far. Is society ready to move to wave energy on a large-scale or will it stagnate? However, it is publically listed so that should bring encouragement.

Moreover, I highly doubt their design has defensible IP due to the Prior Art of the SDE system that was launched in 2010.

SDE - sea wave power plant installed at JAffa port

source

That doesn’t mean Eco Wave Power isn’t, can’t and won’t do a great job – it just means competitors could come from anywhere.

“Eco Wave Power holds 17 patents and patents pending, including patents in the United States and Europe, as well as an International PCT on its proprietary technology.” source

… I should hope so. Mr Ovadia has many patents listed on his LinkedIn page.  Wouldn’t Eco Wave Power’s clash with these? Are Mr Ovadia’s patents still valid? Are they in the public domain?

See here and here –  “System for conversion of sea wave energy” (also – 1 2)

Interestingly, Mr Ovadia filed a patent in 2013 that was withdrawn in 2014 suggesting he wasn’t collaborating with EWP at that time… or was he? Maybe Mr Ovadia has a stake in EWP or they have licensed his designs. Maybe not. I also wonder if Ms Braverman signed a non-compete with SDE as I did.

With regards to Braverman, I was in extensive email communications with SDE and I met the CEO Shmuel Ovadia in person twice (first in October 2008 with a family member present.)

At one point, I showed him the sales agreement I received via email and he was shocked to see it. I ended up using that agreement to talk to Energy Matters (via Jeremy Rich) in Australia.

Mr Ovadia spoke English reasonably well but all the emails from SDE were of very high proficiency and were sent from “Shmuel Ovadia” in the footer (unless that was blank.) More than likely it was either Ms Braverman or someone else acting as an intermediary for Mr Ovadia, and even a sole source. I ended up emailing General Electric on SDE’s behalf to request a meeting for finance, to no avail.

Mr Rich’s (middle below) main concern about the SDE device at first was corrosion from salt and mine was the physical security of the system. I had known Mr Rich since primary school. We could have fairly easily got that wave device setup and even distributed if SDE had been more willing and able –  although I was still a bit hesitant of the final design with hydraulic arms exposed – and still am with EWP. It seems deceiving in the EWP video above that the hydraulic arms aren’t shown. I had already worked at Energy Matters a year or two earlier on their IT and Mr Rich was very enthusiastic about the idea of wave energy – also he probably didn’t want to compete with me.

[from reunion]

I did actually come up with some designs of my own that I mentioned (but didn’t actually show) to SDE over email, including the logo above. As mentioned, I also signed a non-compete agreement with SDE and SDE threatened to sue me at one point. I wonder if that was Ms Braverman who made that threat because she was ready to compete directly with SDE and didn’t want me implementing that indefensible buoy design with Energy Matters exclusively. Or was it actually Mr Ovadia worried I’d work directly with that design without him? I really need to know more about who was working at SDE during those years. There may have been someone else working there and Inna Braverman has never heard of me.

Australia should have a good wave energy sector and the SDE / EWP floating buoy design can be a great starting point for anyone, anywhere. If EWP can use SDE’s design, then anyone can.

I have the idea that pivoting buoys identical to SDE and EWP should be built within (or retrofitted) to the pylons of off-shore windfarms and drive flywheel accumulators rather than
electro-hydraulic accumulators (as with SDE and EWP) kept within each pylon. Then, if wave heights get too high (which can be sensed by windspeed), the buoy should be retracted into the pylon or elevated up the outside of the pylon. Can I do that without legal repercussions? EWP seems only limited to breakwaters at present. Thus, don’t windfarms still have this opportunity to obtain more energy in this way? Finally, couldn’t someone directly copy EWP and then challenge EWP’s patents based on the existence of SDE’s patents and videos?

Unlike the Porsche flywheel, the ocean flywheel would be driven mechanically by the buoy’s oscillation, but similarly it would use a torque-vectoring device on the wheel, offering resistance to its spin and the buoy’s oscillation to create current.

Best of luck to Ms Braverman regardless: perhaps she can start a fashion blog too.

Not just knee deep?

Continuing, later Shay ignored an email I sent to Canaan Partners about Seedcamp (or Startup Stadium) while I was doing Bopgig (around 2012.) Some years later (around 2017) he even befriended my Israeli cousin Dhalia on Facebook after I made my friends list public – I’m still unsure if it was a coincidence or not.

All very odd indeed – and overall that’s how I would describe this person based on experiences interacting with him.

Yet at the same time, one of my VC blog posts in late 2006 was about Mr Shay, and perhaps he found this odd – I don’t know but I did email him a link about it and spoke in the meeting about Awarenex. I said Awarenex would only be open to high net-worth individuals… accredited investors.

On the topic of tickets, I actually worked closely with a startup CEO in 2003-04 which sold tickets (Moshtix) and it was acquired in 2007. I helped it expand from Sydney to Melbourne. Its first signup was Bennetts Lane and I was at the initial sales meeting – one of many I helped setup. In hindsight, I should’ve also invested in Moshtix – and it was a real possibility to do so at the time.

While I don’t have a picture of Mr Dibner at the Town Hall Meeting (2 Sep 2009) – I didn’t take any, he and others mentioned are on the event’s attendees page (marked in red below.) I am currently shown as ‘Former Member.’ I also did comment on the event’s blog post, username Twitya.

Also, Mr Dibner can be found on the TechAviv members page from 1 Sep 2009 and Mr Shay and myself can additionally be found on the members page from 1 October 2009.

As mentioned, Jonathan Saacks was at this event as was Eden Shochat (both Genesis Partners – Mr Dibner’s firm.)

At one point, Saacks stood up and said “we back winners” while looking at me. Saacks is listed on the TechAviv Angels screenshot above, as is someone from Canaan Partners (Daniel Ciporin) – Shay’s firm at the time.

Also, there are additional people who were aware of me at this event to varying degrees. One person was Yoav Leitersdorf, a VC who I had interviewed for Launchpadisrael.com and who I worked for remotely for a few days. Another person was Ofer Wald, an entrepreneur who I had last spoken to at TWS2008 (mentioned above.) Ofer held Shay in high regard. At this meetup I was wearing my long-lost “Tara” cap and would’ve stood-out as I was the only one wearing a cap.

[ pic 2 | pic 3 – Ofer at TWS 2008 | pic 4 – Ofer from inside the actual room – full pic]

I did enjoy the event except for the underlying drama, which made imprints on my mind.

On the topic of Dark Retribution, earlier in the year I was removed from the IVC-Online industry database.

– 3 screenshots directly above taken 2 April 2009. The 3rd pic as linked from Google should’ve shown my full profile page (prior to its deletion.) The 1st pic shows that my name was still in the search index at the time even if the actual page was already deleted.

Regarding this, in the TechAviv forum on 30 August 2009, I created the thread: “IVC-Online a site failure or larger systemic failure”

– screenshot take 9 January 2010

This was created 3 days prior to the Town Hall Meeting and so I was expecting drama, especially since I had already seen what happened at Eurekamp.

A further oddity occurred on 8 June 2010, when I was blocked from viewing the Genesis Partners website after sending them a message through a form. It was around this time Mr Dibner moved from Genesis Partners to another firm in Israel – see his profile (snippet below).

I applied to Seedcamp Europe 2012 after meeting Reshma at TWS2008. I was rejected from that in around September 2012 and stopped working on the site at around the same time and focused on Bitcoin. Philipp (@pmoe) was fired (or quit) Seedcamp in December 2013 who I had been communicating with up until my application for some months.

Regarding Mr Dibner, who I have only met with once and only replied to the first of his two group emails sent to me. The first one was sent regarding leaving Genesis Partners and the second about starting at Gemini – both in mid 2010. My reply was a one sentence trivial response. But why did he even write to me at all? Also with regards to my blog post about Mr Dibner in late 2006 (1 of 3 blog posts regarding VC meetings I was having at the time), the only controversial thing I remember to have written was something akin to: “As such, we did not proceed with further discussions.” So I was saying in my blog post that I was rejected from him and that firm with regards to my ideas and propositions. Going into the meeting I did not sign an NDA and I recall sending a link to that blog post to the person that setup the meeting initially via email. Later I sent a link to the post to Mr Dibner personally, to which he did not reply.

In January 2014, he posted “Towards a VC code of conduct” [archive] which alerted me to the fact that I was potentially dealing with someone consciously hypocritical, and in looking back today I think he was just being silly or else treacherous. Probably hateful (see twitter results below.) That’s just my own opinion because no one with a “Code of Conduct” would ever do anything to harm someone, right? Also, that article had/has an image of the 10 commandments at top, why? Are they interchangeable?

By July 2014, I put up a picture on my FB.

Within a few months (possibly days) he put up a similar picture on his Twitter.

[ 1, 2, 3, 4 (22 March 22) ]
[5,6 – censored (23 March 22), 7 – uncensored (same day); censored again – or is this a bug with twitter’s UI?]

A dangerous chap. But he may not be wholly responsible for his actions if he has been strongly influenced by others and that is a real possibility.

Note: unlike Anakin, actual *baseless* hatred is still real amongst Jews – especially in Israel as sensed by myself and others. It’s the opposite of mateship – it’s hateship. Furthermore, in a documentary on prison life I saw once, an inmate said that many people would love the opportunity to “hate on” someone else – it’s an emotional outlet. Anakin had reasons for his hate even if they were based on complete misapprehensions. Baseless hatred on the other hand is like free-floating anxiety – no real cause.

Continuing, in his Crunchbase profile above, it mentions him being a team member at Yedda. Was he aware of all the tips I had sent that startup when he was defaming me at Eurekamp in 2009 (my contention) as mentioned in Part 2? Did/would those tips make him jealous?

At that point I blocked his FB. I then unblocked it in September 2015 at which point he almost instantly deactivated his FB. He deactivated his Instagram too, I am almost certain.

His wife (Millia) also deactivated her FB at exactly the same time… why? (*I never had anything to do with her or his family in any way, shape or form*)  I only knew about her due to his mention or reference to her, and I wasn’t following her.

7 years later Mr Dibner’s twitter profile picture still remains (as of 15 Mar 2022) and the aeroplane header picture has been there for almost the same amount of time.

[ pic ]


Very odd indeed.

I suspect he was following my FB for many years due to some similarly-themed posts although I might be wrong. That was a concern of mine. Was I in for more surprises offline? Would that have anything to do with him anyway?

The real crux and importance of this exposé is that people have disappeared in Israel after I have met and become friends with (starting in 2014) … and this should be elaborated upon in the greater specifics of Dark Retribution. In fact, I suspect an entire business that I worked for was shutdown. This was the CU-agency (2nd or 3rd floor, 50 Yitzhak Sadeh street, Tel Aviv) soon after mid-2017 when I mentioned it on FB in my resume and its manager Sharon.

It’s absurd, and I really might be wrong here, and even if I am, there are still many more examples to contend with.

But to me, it’s not about winning some high stakes game, it’s rather about waking up from an epic dream!

Referring to Yogo:

FENDACE: Fendi by Versace Collection | Campaign Film | Versace

Also see Versace:

 

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…from the video: “by connecting to existent man-made structures such as piers, breakwaters, jetties” (0:41) — Has EWP factored security-costs into each setup? Someone could stab or melt the hydraulic hoses and the units could be vandalized. Will owners need to insure against subsequent blackouts? At Jaffa port, acid could be poured over rubber surfaces and local Arabs would be blamed a few days later after failure.

 

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en.wikipedia.og/wiki/Unicorn#/media/File:DomenichinounicornPalFarnese.jpg
✓ 3 years ago

Bob-Iger.com – my new site is now up. It links into this blog and provides Mr Iger, Disney and the wider business community with a focal point for a path into the future.

“This site offers a total strategic solution for The Walt Disney Company allowing it to potentially emulate General Electric, where diversification placed it at the apex of America’s industrial creativity.”

Bob-Iger.com suits an activist investor audience.
✓ 4 years ago

2004: GrooveGuide – where groove meets street!

GrooveTip really should have morphed into a MySpace-type destination for musicians (also founded in 2003) or even CitySearch, iTunes, TicketMaster or Facebook. It didn’t but success still comes in a myriad of ways.

(last updated: 12 November 2024)

In order to launch and promote the GrooveTip website, I distributed a free, pocket-sized, street-press leaflet around Melbourne – only once – GrooveGuide.

Prior to this, in early 2003, I went to the USA and in New York City I picked up a pocket-sized gig guide booklet that inspired me to do GrooveGuide.

[ UC Berkeley | NYC | March 2003]

That guidebook for NYC (and other capital cities) soon shutdown. In hindsight I may have been able to use GrooveTip to consult with that US firm, ie sell the software.

The first artist featured was Snaplock Rhythm. Their music was also sold on the site.

Interestingly, vocalist Paul Havea (1976-2007: pic below left) is on this recording who went on to play with IllZilla – as did the drummer and sax player.

The full PDF download of GrooveGuide is below. After GrooveGuide, Beat Magazine started distributing a full PDF of their magazine via their website.

GrooveGuide June 2004 (PDF download)

To create GrooveGuide, I created filters in TextPipe Pro and scraped websites to rapidly obtain event information to be converted into sql statements for subsequent insertion into a UIPublish database.

From here, the event information was displayed easily on the Xoops Groovetip website using its display blocks and was also reformatted for a single-web page for PDF generation (for printing – see PDF above.)

(original header + logo design: Derren Box)

screenshots: 11 Jul 2004 | 24 Sep 2004

I was then ready to easily create and distribute GrooveGuide every fortnight but that would cost over AUD$500 for each print run – and this wasn’t viable for me at that point without a sponsor.

Eden seen on the GrooveGuide cover is still playing as Eastward and I was playing with Toby at the time.

Of note, during this time in 2004, Moshtix switched from being solely a ticketing provider to also a destination site for event information and still is to this day. It also has a Moshguide.

[ 13 Jun ’04 | 13 Sep ’04 | 3 Jan ’23 ]

As mentioned elsewhere, I had worked alongside Mr Petrie a few times sometime between late ’03 and early ’04 and even drove up to Sydney to do so in the Hyundai Excel. Yet, by the time the Moshtix site had been redesigned in 2004, we had already parted ways. After reading an interview with him, I am confident that it was after the redesign that it became a takeover target as a media destination, not just a ticketing agent.

Incidentally, in that period, I neatened up concert pianist Alan Kogosowski’s site.

The original developer’s name was removed and new “Buy Now” links were added which are not visible in the archive snapshot.

[ 26 Jul ’04 | 6 Dec ’04 | – ]
✓ 7 months ago

2003: Ethereal Dawn

Laying in your sonic hammock…you play amongst the stars…then swim in the waters……and awaken to the Ethereal Dawn.

pics
web.archive.org/web/20040112181934fw_/http://www.halfacow.com.au/label/fun/oct03demo.htm
web.archive.org/web/20031130071215/http://www.tobymendelson.com/
web.archive.org/web/20040411051645/http://www.groovetip.com/download/index.php?cPath=27
pixabay.com/illustrations/snow-suit-space-suit-future-tablet-2749155/
pixabay.com/illustrations/horse-unicorn-animal-horn-creature-3896324/

✓ 1 year ago

Fast and loose race at a slow and steady pace!

The story of Bopgig is a long one –  and not without hiccups. 

(updated: 2 May 2022)

(note: additional information about BopGig in Israel Tech Scene 2006-2011 and GrooveGuide)

2000: The name comes to mind.

GrooveTip in its inception was about tipping artists in the same way people tip street buskers. FairTunes.com (2000) worked on that concept, which had a WinAmp plugin. I took an interest in media metadata at the time as that should’ve contained the information for any funds to travel back to content creators.

I had thought… “once people have downloaded songs from Napster… then what?” … ideally, a voluntary tip by the listener/viewer to the creator!

src

2001: Final-year undergrad student enters MBA competition.

pic 2 | 3

2003: Multiple PHP apps cobbled together. Later GrooveGuide (more info here) is added – a free street-press magazine. 500 copies were printed and distributed around Melbourne. Problem: lack of app integration and hence automated signups.

src | 2

2009: Rethinking the business model and user experience. BopGig or GigPop?

2010: A working prototype launches. A Y-Combinator application occurs.

Overworked and under-utilized. Music + Entertainment industry. (Jerusalem, 20 Oct '10)

John on the left, Sup on the right.

Bopgig from Adrian on Vimeo.

2011: Development moves from USA to Israel.

Bopgig pitch (Jan, 2011)

 

2012: Public launch and then a pivot into indefinite hibernation!

 

2020: Hibernation continues!

2022: Thinking about it again!

source

Gigwell Productivity Suite for Booking Agents & Artists

note: With GrooveTip 2000 in mind, I would instead look at making it easier for listeners to give rather than own. Maybe both.
✓ 3 years ago