I’ll be a panelist at Potomac Tech Wire’s “Seed and Early Stage Funding Outlook:Raising Capital For Startups” event at the Ritz Carlton in McLean, Virginia on Tuesday, April 12th, 2011.

On of my fellow panelists, Daniel Odio, has a great post about the event and a great offer for entrepreneurs here. You can register for the event here.

Here's the agenda:

Seed Stage Outlook 2011 is part of the Potomac Tech Wire breakfast series that brings together senior executives in the Mid-Atlantic to discuss technology issues in a conversational, roundtable environment moderated by the editor of Potomac Tech Wire. The two panels at this event will focus on seed-stage and early-stage funding from the perspective of both entrepreneurs and funders. In addition, a DC-area entrepreneur who recently raised $1 million from various angel investors through AngelList will give a brief presentation on his successful fundraising.

Funders Roundtable:
Jonathan Aberman, Managing Director, Amplifier Ventures
Kiran Hebbar, Partner, Valhalla Partners
John May, Managing Partner, New Vantage Group
Thomas Weithman, Managing Director, CIT GAP Funds
Moderator: Paul Sherman
Additional speakers to be announced

Entrepreneurial Presentation:
“Cliff Notes on Raising Your First $1 Million Through AngelList” by Daniel Odio, Co-founder, Appmkr
Entrepreneurs Roundtable:
Richard Fawal, Founder, WatchParty.tv
Fahad Hassan, CEO,  Always Prepped
Daniel Odio, Co-Founder, Appmkr and PointAbout
Morris Panner, Co-founder, groupflier
Additional speakers to be announced

Moderator: Paul Sherman

I'm an entrepreneur, a capitalist, and a patriot. And I'm really getting sick of the jackasses who are using fear and lies to advance themselves while stifling entrepreneurship in this country. These asswipes claim immigration is a threat to you and your family, because saying so makes them rich and famous, but in reality immigration is crucial to America's innovative future and our economic vitality.

First, let's dispense with the myth that immigrants take jobs away from American citizens. That's bullshit. There's a huge amount of data that shows it's bullshit. End of debate. Period.

For years the focus of xenophobic rants in this country have been Mexicans, coming to steal our jobs. But things have changed. Scary Mexicans look like bunny rabbits compared to the new foreign threat to the American way of life: Muslims!

Yep, Muslims are coming here to take over America and eat your babies. Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle went so far as to claim that Muslims are replacing municipal law with Sharia law in places like Dearborn, Michigan and Frankford, Texas. Yeah, that's bullshit, too. There hasn't been a town in Texas called Frankford since about 1930. So you can't trust Sharron Angle or anyone who parrots her claims.

Then there are people like Steven Emerson. This guy is an "expert" who tells Americans how scary Muslims are, and how they're infiltrating every aspect of our society to take over our country. His solution? Donate heavily to the non-profit he founded, the Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation, which investigates the "ties" between American Muslims and overseas terrorists. And how does that non-profit do it's research? It pays a company called SAE Production to do it. SAE Productions is a privately held company with only one principle - you guessed it, Steven Emerson. SAE Production raked in nearly $4 million in 2008 doing research work for the non-profit. Nice little racket this guy has going, isn't it? Here's what The Nonprofit Quarterly has to say about it.

Okay, okay, you want to know what all this has to do innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic vitality. Well, I'm gonna tell you:

According to the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), 25% of America’s venture-backed and publicly-traded businesses, including: Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Intel, Pfizer, DuPont and Procter & Gamble, were founded or co-founded by foreign-born residents. In 2005 these companies reported over $52 billion in sales, and employed almost half a million workers. In 2006 24% of all filled patents had foreign-born residents listed as the inventor or co-inventor.

The xenophobia currently running rampant through the USA is making it much harder for foreign-born entrepreneurs succeed. And making it harder for startups to hire and retain great people. Congress is, to be blunt, afraid of addressing these issues - especially during an election year - because any mention of immigration reform gets the xenophobes into a screaming frenzy. So unless you are a politician like Sharron Angle, ready to point fingers and make false claims, you pretty much want to keep your mouth shut.

Well, there's an election next week, and by all accounts there will be some changes in Washington. Maybe good, maybe bad, but for the sake of startups and entrepreneurs all across America, stand up for reform of EB-5 and H1 visas. The best way to do that is to support StartUpVisa.com. Go now.

Last week I read a blog post by Steve Blank, entitled Too Young to Know it Can't be Done, and it's been bugging me ever since. I can agree in principle with his premise, "Accumulated experience can at times become an obstacle in thinking creatively," but I strongly disagree with his conclusion that young people are superior in entrepreneurship because, as Pearl S. Buck says (and Steve quotes), "The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible."

I'm 43 years old and just abandoned a successful career in public affairs consulting to start a consumer web service for TV audiences because I had a great idea and I know it solves a real problem no one else is addressing.

If I had a dime for every time someone told me I was too old to do this, the company would have three years of operating capital before we had to start generating revenue.

What's ironic is that I look much younger than my age, so for 20+ years in politics I had to fight age discrimination from people who assumed I was too young to know what I was doing. Now I have to fight age discrimination from people who assume I'm too old.

It's also ironic that Steve and others essentially attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophesy by telling older entrepreneurs that success for them is impossible (or at least improbable).

I will handle this new age discrimination the same way I handled it before. I'm simply going to prove wrong everyone who says I can't do this.

So, Steve, I respect you immensely but you are wrong. If you, or anyone else in VC, angel investing, or entrepreneurship thinks someone over 40 doesn't have the stamina or creativity to change the world, then it is you who are dinosaurs and not those of us who don't know - or refuse to believe - our success is impossible.

As I've said before, I read a lot of books and blogs when I first started my adventure with WatchParty (which was called "WatchWord" back then). Guy Kawasaki was an early favorite, and of course the brilliant gents at Venture Hacks, and many more. One of the great things I learned from all my reading was how to be prepared for failure, since they all stressed repeatedly that the vast majority of startups do fail, often through no fault of their own.

This knowledge helped me considerably in the first couple of months. Knowing that my idea would most likely fail, I lived by the mantra "Not today." I had a ritual every morning when I woke up: I acknowledged that WatchWord would most likely fail and listed in my mind the things that could kill it (too much competition, a bad business model, no investment, poorly-chosen co-founders). Then I would say to myself, "Not today. WatchWord will not die today." I wouldn't let myself think about the next month or the next year - just what I needed to do to keep WatchWord alive that day.

It worked. WatchWord became WatchParty, then WatchParty, Inc.  We bootstrapped development of a product, got some investment, decided our first product wasn't viable and killed it, and started again from scratch. WatchParty won't die today, or tomorrow, or even in a few months. And that's a really exciting - and scary - prospect.

You see, the daily recognition that I would probably fail was incredibly stressful. Failure was almost inevitable, so the only way to go on was to find hope in the future. "When we get investors, things will be easier. When we have a product, it'll be more fun. When we have customers, things won't be so stressful."

Today WatchParty isn't an idea, it's a company. We've reached important milestones. We have investors, and bills, and developers who are actually the writing code that really is a product. I'm constantly thinking two, three, four months into the future. Failure now couldn't be written off with "Oh, well, we tried." Failure now means we've squandered other people's money - and our own. Failure now won't be determined by things beyond my control, it will be determined by things entirely within my control.

So now there are no silver linings. Every day is so stressful that the stress I experienced three months ago looks like bliss in retrospect. And it's only going to get worse. Now I cannot imagine any time in the future that might be less stressful than today. I have come to understand that success can be much more stressful than failure.

But I love it. I wouldn't have it any other way. Nothing I have ever done in my life, except fatherhood, has been more exciting, more challenging, or more rewarding than starting WatchParty and building it to where it is today (which isn't really anywhere, I know, but it's a long way from where it started). I know tomorrow will be more stressful than today, but it will also be more invigorating and thrilling. I can't wait.