Fwd: pacer and lollapalooza

[Carl Malamud <xxxx@media.org>]

P.S. ... he's the rainmaker, so don't be surprised if he does an  
initial call but quickly hands you to a nonprofit lawyer in his firm.   
Let me know if you need help on this process.
My biggest advice: choose your board *really* carefully so that you  
can keep control of  your vision.  You don't want a paper board, but  
you almost never want your funders on the board as they have a  
different vision than you do.  There are exceptions, but not many.  :)
Begin forwarded message:

> From: Carl Malamud <xxxxxxx@media.org>
> Date: July 25, 2008 4:18:59 PM PDT
> To: Rhett Millsaps II <xxxxxxx@gmail.com>
> Cc: Aaron Swartz <me@aaronsw.com>
> Subject: Re: pacer and lollapalooza
>
> Hi Rhett -
>
> I'm David Halperin's friend.  I used to be Podesta's Chief  
> Technology Officer at the Center, am now running a c(3) nonprofit  
> out of California that puts primary legal materials (e.g., court  
> cases) on the net called Public.Resource.Org.
> I'd like to introduce you to Aaron Swartz who has created  
> Watchdog.Net.  The advice they received from their first funder, the  
> Sunlight Foundation, was that they should be a c(4).  I believe this  
> is Aaron's first nonprofit, but he has accumulated a distinguished  
> record in a variety of Internet enterprises.  He wrote the "RSS"  
> standard which is what newsfeeds are based on.
> He was also a founder of Reddit, a popular social networking site  
> that was sold to Conde Naste.  And, perhaps most importantly, he's  
> been the technical smarts behind a lot of impressive operations for  
> Internet veterans such as Brewster Kahle and Lawrence Lessig (a name  
> you may remember from your recent Harry Potter suit. :)
> Watchdog has some funding, but because they are early stage they are  
> definitely not flush, so I know Aaron would appreciate any reduced  
> fees or perhaps even pro bono representation for the initial C(4)  
> application.  If it is helpful, I am happy to provide advice during  
> the process, but this is Aaron's gig and I'm not directly involved.
> I'll let you two arrange a phone call with each other and you can  
> decide if this is worth taking the next step.
> Best regards,
>
> Carl
>
> P.S. Aaron ... Rhett's URL, which you no doubt found already, is 
> http://web.omm.com/rhettmillsapsii/