Michael Karnjanaprakorn

I am truly blessed to have been part of the Hot Potato team that was recently acquired by Facebook. It was an amazing experience and I’m excited for the entire team and the amazingness they’ll be building at Facebook. I learned a lot from Justin Shaffer and the rest of the talented team that graced [...]

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“Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” – Thomas Edison Recently, I gave a talk at the Harvest Hobby event about poker, risk taking and decision making. While giving the talk, I slowly realized that no one in the audience really cared about the intricate strategies behind  poker. Terms like “check-raising” and [...]

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“There are no original ideas. There are only original people.” – Barbara Grizzuti Harrison A couple of weeks ago, I met with a passionate entrepreneur who pitched me an idea that he was working on for the past couple of months. He was in the “feedback” stage of his idea, which is when entrepreneurs tell [...]

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Do you have a billion dollar startup idea? Is it going to be the next Facebook, Paypal, or Google? If you’re an entrepreneur looking to raise capital, it’s almost impossible to raise money for a “small” idea that you might find amazing, game-changing, and innovative. And you know what? It’s not the end of the [...]

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“You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with” — Jim Rohn Are entrepreneurs born, or are they made? A recent Tech Crunch article argues that entrepreneurs can be made based on a $50M research project conducted by the Kauffman Foundation. “The key is to provide education at “teachable moments” [...]

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2010 is finally here and I think it’s going to be one of the best years yet.  I have friends traveling around the world, raising money for their startup, and others questioning conventions and the status-quo (hopefully to launch their own startup)!!  As we move into 2010, I thought I would share what I learned in [...]

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“You can tell by my attitude that I’m most definitely from New York Concrete jungle where dreams are made of There’s nothing you can’t do Now you’re in New York These streets will make you feel brand new Big lights will inspire you Let’s hear it for New York, New York, New York!” Just in case you didn’t [...]

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I’ve been thinking a lot about investing into startups (if you couldn’t tell by my last post).  Most entrepreneurs spend the majority of the time thinking about how to get the highest valuation for their startup, and giving the investor the minimum amount of equity.  For the past couple of weeks, I’ve decided to look [...]

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Someday in the distant future, I would love to be an investor.  I’m a huge supporter of nurturing entrepreneurship (tech+social) in New York City, and would love to see more startups launching in that space. Let’s say I started a small $50M fund, I would split my investments over the following: 1) investing in companies; [...]

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Lat week Rafe Furst (my mentor/adviser/poker coach) wrote a blog post on “Investing in Superstars” which spread virally through the startup/investor communities.  The concept is simple but extremely polarizing: Imagine you are in your early twenties, out of college several years and your best friend, who recently came into an inheritance of $300K cash told [...]

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