Please, please don't. (Photo: screencap)

At this point, it's like shooting very large fish in a very small barrel to mock startup music videos. Everyone keeps doing them, and they're always awful. But this latest installment from 500 Startups is probably--though it strains belief!--the worst yet.

We never thought we'd say this, but shouldn't you guys be working on your pitch decks or something?

It's bad enough that, by covering "Thrift Shop," they have once again gone for the obvious, already exhausted viral hit of the moment. (Of course, we're long past begging Silicon Valley to show some originality.) To make matters worse, no one in this video shows any evidence of excitement, much less musical talent. The chorus is so lifeless we're forced to assume the singers were also swilling entire bottles of Nyquil at the time.

Also, way to rip off Adult Swim's trademark title cards, merely to inform us that "it's 500 motherfucking startups, we swear a lot here."

Good for you, bros. Good for you.

San Quentin. (Photo: Wikipedia)

So the tech world likes incubators. Indeed, even as new players enter the field, there are signs that the incubator model is bursting at the seams. Y Combinator downsized to less than 50 companies in its most recent class, from 84 last summer. When 500 Startups decided to establish a base in New York, it opted for a coworking space instead of an incubator. TechStars keeps growing, but its most recently announced additions have been abroad or in more narrowly-defined niches.

Perhaps the surest sign of the incubator model's ubiquity comes from California's San Quentin State Prison, which just graduated its first class from its so-called Last Mile program, which gathers inmates twice a week to discuss startups (they also answer Quora questions:

The latest batch of startup ideas included a fitness app that would motivate drug addicts to exercise, a cardiovascular health organization, a social network for sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder, a food waste recycling program, and an e-commerce site for artists in prison.

To be fair, Last Mile founder Chris Redlitz told Reuters he's not looking for his next investment as much as he's hoping to teach inmates about entrepreneurship and bridge the gap between Silicon Valley elites and the hoi polloi. To the former, we'd applaud Mr. Redlitz; on the latter... good luck with that.

Mr. Monahan (Photo: Jesse Thomas/Facebook via Tipster

Earlier this afternoon, Gawker republished photos and a video of AlphaBoost CEO Matt Monahan drunk and naked during a vacation to India. The escapades were originally shared by Jesse Thomas founder of JESS3, a social media advertising firm.

Venture-backed startup founders are fond of booze-soaked jaunts to unwind from the pressure of crushing it, celebrating a big milestone, or just because they can afford to. The difference here is that Mr. Thomas graduated from ill-advised Instagram shots of popping bottles to sharing a video and photos of a stark naked Mr. Monahan cavorting on the beach, somewhere approaching blackout drunk.

And that Mr. Monahan got caught on tape at the same time that he's trying to sell his company.

In the video, Mr. Thomas’ girlfriend looks on aghast while Mr. Thomas laughs and shouts, “Matt, you got a small ass dick, yo, what’s going on? If you’re gonna get naked, you gotta have a big ass dick, what’s going on?” The scene ends with a shot of an empty bottle of Johnny Walker Blue.

Gawker says the three arrived at Surya Samudra, a private beach resort, a few days in advance of Dave McClure’s “Geeks On a Plane” (GOAP) tour--"a sort of mega-nerdy season of Real World"--sponsored by the likes of GE, Google, Qualcomm, PayPal and, yes, JESS3. Mr. Monahan also serves as a mentor for GOAP.

Last year, Mr. Monahan raised $1 million in seed funding for AlphaBoost from Mr. McClure’s 500 Startups, as well as Gary Vaynerchuk’s Vayner Media, and About.com founder Scott Kurnit.

The images and video were not only shared on Mr. Thomas' private Facebook and Twitter accounts, but also from the official JESS3 company accounts, reaching tens of thousands of followers and subscribers.

Adding to the potential embarrassment, emails forwarded from a tipster to Betabeat indicate that around the same time Mr. Monahan was partying at the resort, he sent out an email to investors detailing discussions with "stakeholders" at companies like Facebook, Salesforce, Adobe, and more--and promised meetings with Google and Yahoo scheduled for next month.

(The tipster is not an investor. We have reached out to Mr. Monahan and will update the post when we hear back.) [Update 6.24 pm: We received a call from Mr. Monahan, who is still on vacation in India. He asked that the correspondence below be taken down. We have declined that request.]

Despite the fact that a deal hadn't materialized, Mr. Monahan predicted that a "verbal offer we received will likely materialize in mid-March and provide us with leverage we can use to negotiate with others." He also said, "The AlphaBoost entity would be shut down, and the entire team would take positions at the acquiring company." Back in January, Mr. Monahan told investors and advisors, "If we do not sell the company before April 1st, we will start to speak with investors about a Series A to ramp up our products and revenue."

Here is the email that Mr. Monahan sent to investors last week (emphasis Mr. Monahan's):

From: Matt Monahan <REDACTED@alphaboost.com>

Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2013 10:07:37 -0800

Subject: AlphaBoost UPDATE - 2.15.13

To: Matt Monahan <REDACTED@alphaboost.com>

*A quick note to catch you up on the last few weeks and our plan moving forward...

*In the past few weeks, I have had discussions with stakeholders at Facebook, Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle, Acxiom, Rubicon Project, AppNexus, Demand Media, and Experian. Candidly, some of the discussions fell flat.  The feedback I heard was "Not a good fit given corporate strategy...", "too small of a deal for it to be interesting..", "we only want a portion of the team..", etc. I have Google and Yahoo meetings scheduled for early March.  I am also setting up meetings with folks at companies like Science Inc, Intelligent Beauty, The Honest Company, and NastyGal to discuss options.  These types of companies have plenty of cash and are in dire need of our teams' skills

-- customer acquisition efficiencies on Facebook driven by owned and operated marketing technology. The verbal offer we received will likely materialize in mid-March and provide us with leverage we can use to negotiate with others. The deal on the table is taking shape as an exclusive license of our technology wherein we transfer our codebase to the acquirer in exchange for a lump sum of cash to be booked as AlphaBoost revenue.  That profit would then be distributed to equity holders and investors.

The AlphaBoost entity would be shut down, and the entire team would take positions at the acquiring company.  This deal structure was proposed to avoid a lengthy diligence process, and to minimize liability for all parties involved. The amount of cash paid for the exclusive license is still being hammered out but should provide a nice return.  That is all of the information I as of now...

The team is still heads down building product and servicing clients.  I am beginning to set up meetings for mid-march with investors to discuss the prospects of a Series A as a back up.

Have a great weekend, and let me know if you have any questions or ideas.

MM

And here's another email from the same tipster that Mr. Monahan sent to investors and advisors last month:

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 7:01 PM, Matt Monahan <REDACTED@alphaboost.com> wrote:

Dear AlphaBoost Investors and Advisors,

Sorry in advance for the long email, a lot going on, in a really good way...

*As I reflect on AlphaBoost in 2012, some thoughts come to mind:*

- We learnt some valuable lessons that we will carry with us forever.

- We had some major wins with clients, products, and within the team.

- The team has become lean and mean, and is firing on all cylinders.

- The team and business model are maturing.

- We have honed our focus on a product that is meaningful and differentiated.

- We keep getting new media services customers through word of mouth and good work which is exciting

- We are optimistic about the prospects for AlphaBoost's investors and team.

- Startups are hard, but that is the fun part :)

*

*Company Overview as of 1/31:*

- We have 4 months of runway left assuming static incoming revenues (but we are expecting revenues will grow).

- We are aggressively trying to extend our runway with presentations like this<http://www.slideshare.net/mcmonahan/direct-response-on-facebook> targeted at specific customer segments, and up-selling current / past customers.

- We have meetings with our first enterprise subscription clients in the next few weeks, and hope to sign up a few for subscriptions that will cover burn and extend our runway.

- We have 5 full-time people (2 engineers, myself, 1 account service person, 1 product designer)

- We are now tracking +$32M in client media spend, a +60% increase in the last 30 days.

- We have 372 unqiue ads accounts connected to the system.

- We are now open to the public and you can sign up for a trial for free at http://alphaboost.com -- you must have Facebook ads attached to your account for the system to work.

- We have found a sweet spot at Search Marketing Agencies and are pursuing revenue generating partnerships.

*The Plan for 2013 (GOOD NEWS):

* We are at an inflection point at AlphaBoost given the state of our product, scale, traction, expertise, team, and the macro opportunity.  I am currently pursuing a corporate transaction because I think we can make the economics work for everyone involved.  We are talking to several parties, and...

*We received a verbal acquisition offer today from a publicly trade company with a very strategic need for AlphaBoost. I will know more next week. Stay tuned...

* I have attached the collateral we are using to contextualize the acquisition (this is not for distribution).

Cross your fingers for me and the team.  We have worked hard and would love to put a big W on the board and money back in your pocket.

If we do not sell the company before April 1st, we will start to speak with investors about a Series A to ramp up our products and revenue.

Feel free to call me if you have any questions or just want to talk about the weather.

Thanks for your continued support, over and out,

Matt Monahan

CEO // AlphaBoost

That's the thing about verbal offers. You should really wait until the deal is sealed before hanging out with friends like Mr. Thomas.

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

First things first: Stop reading this and go watch "House of Cards" on Netflix. Yup, it's that good. You're welcome!

Back? Okay! Hope y'all survived the weekend #snow-pocalypse (a.k.a. Nemo) and had a blast sledding in the park, hurling snowballs at each other and making elaborate snow sculptures. Here's an awesome Vine mashup of the storm that my friends Kelsey and Steve made.

Now that you've had your winter fun, it's time to get ready for spring. And that can only mean one thing: internships! That's right. It's that time of the year again, when bright-eyed young kids will be running around your offices eager to learn the ropes, change the world, and...err... get you your early-morning fix of decaf-grande-mocha-soy lattes.  So, who's looking for interns? Everybody, that's who! Squarespace, Metamorphic Ventures, UrbanDaddy, HowAboutWe, ff Ventures, MoviePass, Birchbox, Artsicle, Learnvest and many, many more.

Want $40,000, four months of free office space and access to Esther Dyson, Jeff Stewart, David Pakman and John Frankel? Well, duh. You, my friend, need to apply to the awesome ERA Accelerator, pronto! Deadline is March 7.

Speaking of accelerators, DreamIt is holding a meet-and-greet event next Wednesday, where you'll get to meet some of their partners, alumni and heavy hitters. In more accelerator news, west coast pirate Dave McClure and his merry band of 500 Startuppers will be coming ashore this Friday to give us all a little taste of what they've been building at their Demo Day. And in still more accelerator news, The New York Times Company  is launching timeSpace, a new incubator initiative to bring entrepreneurs to their HQ for four months to refine and grow their businesses. They're looking for three to five early-stage companies focused on the media space with a product launched. Deadline is February 19.

Applications to the 2013 TechCrunch NYC Disrupt Startup Battlefield are open. Deadline is February 22. TechCrunch is also holding a pitch-off competition + meetup tomorrow.

Congrats to the Drobe team for winning the Hearst Fashion Hackathon yesterday!

Don't forget, if you wanna help the city reinvent the payphone, submit your prototype idea by February 18. And if you wanna hang with Zac Posen 'n Dennis Crowley at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, I have an extra pass. Email me if interested.

AIPAC Technology Division is having its launch event on February 27 at Bloomberg HQ, featuring Dan Senor (co-author of Start-Up Nation: Story of Israel's Economic Miracle). AIPAC Tech's host committee includes Alan Patricof (Greycroft), Avi Fogel (NY Angels), Jordan Levy (SoftBank) and others.

Startup Bus (where you get on a bus with 30 strangers and hack your way across America) is going to SXSW. Here's your invite code. Got questions? Email Jon Gottfried, your StartupBus East Coast Conductor!

As you all know, red is my favorite color (gasp, surprise). And lately it's been everywhere, from the red carpet at the Grammys last night to the red roses many of you are getting on Valentine's Day and, of course, red is the color for Chinese New Year. To all my friends who celebrate, Gong Xi Fa Cai! (and hope you get lots of Red envelopes ;-))

And now let's see what's going down in the Alley this week...

On Deck Sports and Technology Conference
With rockstar list of speakers including Bob Bowman (MLB Advanced Media), Tiki Barber (former NFL), Alexis Ohanian (cofounder, Reddit), Ben Lerer (Lerer Ventures), Ryan Spoon (ESPN Digital Media) and others.
Tuesday (Feb. 12), 8 a.m. @ Bohemian National Hall, 321 E. 73rd Street

Cocktails & Conversation
85 Broads invites you for cocktails and conversation with Joanne Wilson (angel investor) & Rohini Dey (restaurateur).
Tuesday (Feb. 12), 6 p.m. @ Vermilion, 480 Lexington Avenue

TechCrunch NYC Meetup
60-second pitch-off competition for entrepreneurs looking to launch their product at the Disrupt conference in May. Plus there's beer. Enough said.
Tuesday (Feb. 12), 6 p.m. @ Santos Party House, 96 Lafayette Street

NY Enterprise Technology Meetup
Demos by Aerohive Networks, DataSift, MapR Technologies, Datadog and Videolicious.
Tuesday (Feb. 12), 6:30 p.m. @ Cooley, 1114 Avenue of the Americas

Startup Weekend Strategic Partnership Series
With Nancy Jo (VP Strategy & Biz Dev, Bravo Digital Media), Leora Schacter (VP Digital Strategy and Planning, Food Network) and Ryan Osbourne (VP Digital Innovations, NBC News).
Tuesday (Feb. 12), 7 p.m. @ General Assembly East, 902 Broadway, 4th Fl.

Digital Disruption: Media in Non-Profits
With William Baker (President Emeritus WNET / Channel 13 PBS), Don Undeen (Media Lab, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Suzy Gooch (Director, Metropolitan Opera).
Wednesday (Feb. 13), 6 p.m. @ McMahon Hall, 155 W. 60th Street, #109

NYC Real Estate Technology Startups Demos
With Efrem Weiss (PivotDesk), Oisin Hanrahan (Handybook) and Nate Friedman (Living There).
Wednesday (Feb 13), 6:30 p.m. @ TechStars NYC, 36 Cooper Square, 6th Fl.

Visas for Startups: A Panel on Immigration Policy and Entrepreneurship
With Jeremy Robbins (Director, Office of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg), Michael Wildes (Wildes & Weinberg), Owen Davis (NYC Seed), Cyrus Mehta and moderated by Professor Jonathan Askin (Brooklyn Law).
Wednesday (Feb. 13), 7 p.m. @ Geraldo's Cafe at Brooklyn Law, 205 State St, 1st Fl., Feil Hall, Brooklyn

One Of A Kind Party
Open Bar / Clothes Donation by StartupThreads, Amicus, AlleyNYC & Coalition for Queens.
Wednesday (Feb. 13), 8 p.m. @ 1Oak, 453 W. 17th Street

Decoded Fashion - Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week
Keynotes by Zac Posen (fashion designer) and Dennis Crowley (Founder & CEO, Foursquare), as well as the fashion hackathon finale. The top three ideas will be presented on the runway and the winning app will be launched by the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
Thursday (Feb. 14), 9 a.m. @ Lincoln Center, 33 W. 60th Street

Columbia Business School 19th Annual PE/VC Conference
Keynote by Steve Case (chairman & CEO, Revolution and cofounder, America Online)
Friday (Feb. 15), 9 a.m. @ Alfred Lerner Hall at Columbia University, 2920 Broadway

HackInteractive
An education-themed, code-for-a-cause hackathon. Amazing prizes, access to awesome APIs, and delicious food. Hack the weekend to benefit CampInteractive’s programming. Hosted by Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian.
Saturday (Feb. 16), 9 a.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Fl.

More events on the horizon...
Social Media Week NY 2013 on Feb. 18 @ Metropolitan Pavilion
NY Tech for Local Business Meetups Social Media Week event: SoLoCo on Feb. 18 @ Wix Lounge
NYTECH Presents: Killer Strategies from the Worlds Greatest Innovators on Feb. 19 @ Morgan Stanley
Business Design & Tech Transforming The World on Feb. 19 @ Centre For Social Innovation Pop-Up Space
Funding the Best in Global Innovation II on Feb. 20 @ SNR Denton
Get To Know DreamIt - NYC on Feb 20. @ Bulls Head Tavern
NJ Tech Meetup 33 on Feb. 21 @ Howe Center
Unleash the Beast: How to Hack a Hackathon Save the World and Make Your Parents Proud on Feb. 21 @ Internet Media Labs
Fireside Chat with Kickstarter Cofounder Charles Adler on Feb. 21 @ Meetup HQ
Analytics Roundtable on Feb. 26 @ SNR Denton
AIPAC Technology Division: Launch Event w/ Dan Senor on Feb. 27 @ Bloomberg Tower
2nd Annual NYU Entrepreneurs Festival on Mar. 1 @ Tisch Hall
NYC EDU Startup Weekend on Mar. 1 @ Alley NYC

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! ;)

Mr. Goldman

Shai Goldman, a venture partner at 500 Startups, recently announced another sign of the seed stage fund's growing interest in New York City--besides poaching a Silicon Alley stalwart like Mr. Goldman, of course. This February, the firm plans on opening a coworking office at 28th Street and Park Avenue in the Flatiron, not far from General Assembly.

500 Startups is known for its global focus. The only physical space the firm had up until New York was a corporate office in Mountain View, "which is where we run our accelerator throughout the year," Mr. Goldman told Betabeat by phone. But 500 Startups opted for a different route here. 

"We didn’t want to do an accelerator in New York at this time," he said, "We don’t really see a gap in the market." If you classify accelerators as a three-t0-four month program with some equity or cash component, Mr. Goldman explained, "There’s actually more accelerators in New York than there are in the Bay Area."  He estimated that there are six in Bay Area and eight or nine in New York.

Considering the expected shake out in the accelerator market, coworking seems like a safe choice. 500 Startups will charge $500 per desk per month with room 40 people. He estimated that the space will house four to five existing portfolio companies and another five or so outside startups.

The intent of the office is to bolster an offline community to go with its online platform called Dashboard.io. Paul Singh, one of 500 Startups cofounders, also happens to be a hacker and built the forum where 1,000 portfolio founders and 200 mentors communicate daily. Mr. Goldman described it as a cross between Quora and Facebook, with conversation threads and a place to ask questions outside one's area of expertise. Mentors also use the scheduling function to book virtual office hours.

"The heart of our organization is really this community where they’re actively engaged in a daily basis," said Mr. Goldman. "It’s pretty unique. I don't really know of any VC fund that has the same dashboard function, as we call it. I know First Round Capital has more of a Wiki style, but there are no mentors that are part of that. It’s part of our value add."

He hopes a physical space will augment that. "We just feel that New York is really a landing spot for folks, for example, from Toronto, Montreal, through Europe, from the Middle East and Israel. If they’re gonna open an office in the U.S., it’s most likely gonna be in New York," he said. "We want to do more in those regions I mentioned," he added. So as companies mature and want to set up operations or a salesforce in New York, they can pick up a desk or two. Same goes for the firm's 200 mentors around the globe. "They'll have a place to come and do their work and also hold office hours."

Mr. Goldman, who moved to 500 Startups from Silicon Valley Bank last fall, said the VC firm functions more like a startup in terms of increasing head count in different geographies and establishing structure as you grow. "We’re moving quickly and doing a lot of new things and testing different ideas. I’ve never actually worked for a startup," he said.

Mr. McClure (Screencap: BravoTV)

The moment you've all been waiting for is briskly approaching. Though the much-maligned Start-Ups: Silicon Valley reality show doesn't premiere until Monday November 5th at 10 p.m., Bravo has begun publishing clips to its website in order to sate our boundless curiosity. AllThingsD picked up on the two drama-filled scenes, one of which features 500 Startups cofounder and noted giver of zero fucks Dave McClure.

In the clip, Mr. McClure has taken time out of his busy schedule to go through the pitch deck of brother-sister duo Ben and Hermione Way for their "health and lifestyle startup" called Ignite. Mr. McClure quickly asks to take over the laptop and flip through the pitch deck himself, which Mr. Way immediately classifies as "annoying."

"It was slightly disrespectful, him going through the whole thing and making his own judgments," he tells the camera in a cut-away confessional. As AllThingsD notes, that is, of course, why Mr. McClure was even looking at the deck in the first place. We can't believe he spends his off-time browsing through poorly-designed PowerPoints just for fun.

Mr. Way, it seems, is definitely not here to make friends.

Cash monies.

Got a bunch of stuff hanging in your closet you're no longer thrilled with? Well, the Los Angeles-based marketplace Tradesy wants to help you out--and the company has just raised a $1.5 million round to do just that. Participants include Rincon Venture Partners, 500 Startups' Dave McClure, DailyCandy founder Dany Levy, Daher Capital, Bee Partners, Double M Capital and Launchpad LA.

The site is the second project from Tracy DiNunzio, who previously started RecycledBride, a marketplace for wedding-related resale. But she wanted to do something broader all along, she told Betabeat. 

About three years ago, Ms. DiNunzio explained, she looked at her and her friends' closets and thought what a waste it was everyone was wearing just a slice of their wardrobe and shelling out too much money for new clothing, when someone else would likely be happy to take it off their hands.

Nowadays, Tradesy isn't the only marketplace attempting to crack fashion resale. Here in New York, for example, there's Material World and The Cools, just to name two. But at the time, she didn't find her resale options particularly exciting. "Ebay was very complicated and confusing," she said, noting that women make 85 percent of consumer purchases online and yet constitute only 47 percent of Ebay users. (Her team has since done studies suggesting it takes the average woman something like 35 minutes to create an Ebay account and post their first listing on the auction site.) Hauling one’s unwanted clothing to a consignment shop is even less appealing, especially given the minuscule payout.

Hence, the idea of a peer-to-peer clothing resale marketplace.

That was a bit broad for Ms. DiNunzio's capabilities, however: "I had no background in technology, I had no experience--I was actually an artist," she explained. "The only thing I knew how to do was write an email." Advisors suggested she test the waters by launching a niche vertical first, so she built RecycledBride, which Ms. DiNunzio says is now the world's largest wedding marketplace.

With the site up, she was able to collect the data and feedback to build Tradesy and get it funded.

Asked about the challenges of building the general interest Tradesy versus the niche RecycledBride, Ms. DiNunzio laughed and admitted, "Honestly, it's much easier because I have a team and money now." But she also granted that, "The woman who's selling or buying a wedding dress is willing to invest more time and effort in the process."

"In the fashion space, this is really about creating convenience," she added. Hence her team's biggest challenge is taking what they've build for RecycledBride and "improving upon it for speed, ease and trust and security."

That's far from the team's only challenge, however. Tradesy also aims to provide Zappos-like customer service, including handling all shipping and fulfillment--meaning scaling is likely to be a bit tricky. Perhaps that's why Ms. DiNunzio is so delighted to have the new advisors:

"The money's great, but it's also the value of the experience and the advice that we're getting from all these investors that's really exciting," she said.

Mr. McClure, ringleader. (Photo: flickr.com/joi)

Goodness, the early-stage scene in New York City sure is getting crowded. Pretty soon investors are going to have to start throwing them 'bows if they want to get past their competitors and reach the most promising founding teams for so much as a hi-how-are-you chat.

The news today, via TechCrunch: Dave McClure's 500 Startups has just announced the addition of two "amazing geeks" to the team: Shai Goldman here in New York, and Pankaj Jain in India. They'll be venture partners, focused on making deals in their respective locations. 

The announcement on the company's blog explains the move:

Why India and New York? They’re both teeming with vibrant growth and change, not just in technology and business, but also in culture, fashion, sports, music, and media. This growth has been matched recently by a tremendous burst of innovation in tech startups, and people using this technology to solve real everyday problems.

500 Startups already has "~50-75 investments" here in town, ranging from MakerBot to DailyWorth, as well as a whole passel of mentors.

We hope this means Mr. McClure will be spending more time in New York City, the true spiritual home for anyone who drops so many f-bombs.

Original photo: (flickr.com/niallkennedy)

We've got to hand it to 500 Startups founder Dave McClure: dude sure knows how to make a point. GeekWire reported yesterday that at the GROW business conference in Vancouver, Mr. McClure went on an obscenity-laced tirade against VCs, calling them "insufferable, arrogant, fucking assholes." Whoa, what's the punishment for investor-on-investor crime?

Mr. McClure apparently has quite the vocabulary: he reportedly "dropped the F-bomb and the word asshole more than a dozen times," which makes us think 500 Startups is actually a secret fight club where founders learn to verbally abuse each other until the loser cries. (We hear Regina George is a mentor.)

The colorful Mr. McClure also stressed that wearing a suit is the "stupidest thing," as it scares off engineers, to which we have one reply: "But dudes look sooo good in them!"

"The last 10 to 20 years, you’d think that it has been all about VCs making money, because that’s all we hear about,” Geekwire quotes Mr. McClure as saying. “But really it is all about VCs failing and failing to return capital and being f**king idiots. VCs are stupid."

Mr. McClure then asked anyone to challenge him on that claim, prompting conference attendees to look nervously down at their hands and fumble with the program, fearing the consequences of accidentally making eye contact.

It's tough to argue with the foul-mouthed sailor-turned-incubator founder, though. The data supports his claims, except maybe the "insufferable" part. We just don't have metrics for that yet.

(youtube.com/500startups)

The 500 Startups accelerator program is poised to launch with a new round of early-stage companies hoping for some VC TLC, which is all well and good until you see the YouTube video they shot to announce the beginning of the new program.

It's a Hunger Games parody, called "The Funding Games." There are brightly colored wigs, nerf gun battles and dudes cross-dressing in anime outfits. Do we really need to say any more?

Despite the inherent goofiness (and gimmicky-ness) of the video, it's actually a pretty apt portrayal of the current cutthroat environs of the tech community. Just please don't let this become a thing. We almost prefer dorky startup raps to this. Almost.