Thanks to some business law classes that I very much dislike, I’ve decided that the world needs
I’m Not a Lawyer, But….
Idea: Everyone thinks they know stuff about law, mostly because they’ve seen TV and movies and it looks easy. So now, take two people (or teams, not set on this yet) and give them a “case.” They get a day or whatever to study/plan for it, then they argue it against each other in front of a judge and jury. Whoever wins gets like $50,000 or some amount.
Highlights: Frequent shots of judge shaking his head or looking at someone who just said one of the least intelligent things (s)he’s ever heard, very poor uses of “OBJECTION!” and hopefully one or two lawyers getting held in contempt of fake court. Also, real lawyers who are doing commentary on it.
Tie-ins: If you win X number of cases, you can face off against one of the lawyers who does the commentary (who are all sufficiently cocky and abrasive to the American public) for some crazy sum like $1m. Also, celebrity week featuring actors/actresses from lawyer shows/movies. Just imagine Sam Waterston (everyone’s favorite L&O prosecutor) v. Matthew McConaughey (A Time to Kill).
Someone make this happen
More importantly, I leave tomorrow morning to head up to Nashville to meet up with everyone for the Vandy game. Too poor for two nights in a hotel, so this’ll have to do.
So, you’re telling me I can write a paper about something really cool to do with sports statistics, and then if it’s good enough go talk about it in front of people like Mark Cuban, Daryl Morey and Bill Simmons? Sounds like a plan.
Also, unrelated, applied for Startup Riot 2010 today. Not to present anything, but just to attend. So far, this year in conferences has been better than last as Venture Atlanta’s companies were better on the whole I thought, there was a much less crazy lunchtime speaker, Future Media the next day had some cool stuff, and I didn’t piss anyone off in the process of registering. All around successes, imo.
Playoff seeds are written next to the 8 teams that made it.
Freakin tragic that Dallas couldn’t keep their hot streak going for one more game to qualify for the playoffs. They had such an amazing second half, and would’ve been amazingly dangerous to whoever had to play them.
Overall happy with how things turned out. LA gets penalized here for winning close games and going 5-3-2 in their final 10 games. Seattle, on the other hand, gets a big boost by winning their last 3 on the way in, including victories at Columbus and Kansas City. Yes, even when the opponent is bad, wins on the road are impressive.
In a weird twist, possibly the best matchup of the playoffs is going to be in this first round between Seattle and Houston. Unfortunately, it won’t mean as much as if they were to meet later on, but fortunately this is the only playoff round with home and away games, so we’ll get to see them square off twice.
LA/Chivas should be a lot of fun too, just to see the derby as a playoff match. If LA wins, that’ll make for a great Western Conference final as well.
On the East side of things, blech. I would probably rather gouge my eyes out than watch two New England/Fire games, and the Crew is going to patiently dismantle RSL in a way that is awesome if you’re a fan of the technical strategy they can employ but kinda boring when you want to see teams open up play.
I’ll go ahead and pretty much guarantee a Crew/Fire conference final, if only because it may be the soccer equivalent of those old Heat/Knicks playoffs series and I really want to see these two fan bases against each other.
Take a $400M venture fund. In order to get a 20% return in 6 years, they need to triple the fund — or return $1.2B. Add in fees/carry and you now have to return $1.5B. Assuming that the fund owns 20% of their portfolio companies on exit, they need to create $7.5B of market value. So assume that one VC invested in Skype, Myspace and Youtube in the same fund – they would be just halfway to their goal. Seriously? A decade ago, any one of those deals would have been (and should have been) a fundmaker!
Insane stuff.
I think Wale put it best when he said “They say hip-hop’sVC’s dead; I believe it’s just the fansfunds. It’s the plan.”
Granted he’s a pretty big UK basketball homer, which is A.O.K. in my book, but lately he’s all up on Tech’s (Coach) Johnson like a girl with daddy issues on prom night.
