Kicking In, Kicking Off in the New Blog

Keep on rockin' in the free world -- Neil Young

Little brother is watching you. I've registered for that trademark because George Orwell and conventional wisdom had it all wrong.

Big brother isn't going to become all powerful and oppressive. No, the power of the network has enabled anyone with a keyboard or a cellphone to take information and analysis to the world. It's a revolution, people, and the world is becoming ever safer, ever wealthier and ever healthier as a result. Information flow is so easy and so accessible now that even the ancient playing field of Wall Street is more level than ever before.

Oh, there's still so much to do, including fighting genocide in Darfur, but my typing those words and you reading them facilitate the information flow that I'm talking about. And outlets such as RealMoney.com, and this blog, are a big driver of this revolution. Now let's back up and explain a little bit about how I got here.

On Sunday, for the second time this year, I randomly ran into Jim Cramer. My friend and I were walking down the Street in Soho, and as we turned the corner, I bumped right into Jim. And while that might seem like a crazy coincidence, what with 6 million other people in this city whom I could have run into, I figure this almost made sense, especially with this blog launching this week.

I've been writing for TheStreet.com for more than five years, and I often tell people about how Jim told me in a sit-down meeting in 2002 initially set up by David Morrow, "Cody, if you really want to launch a hedge fund, well, get it started. Just get it going."

At the time I was living in Austin, having closed a telecom company on Sept. 4, 2001 and having lost my apartment in Battery Park City a week later. I walked out of that meeting, dropped everything I was doing and focused all my energy and time on becoming a hedge fund manager. And I've been running a hedge fund for the last three and half years.

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Cody Willard is a partner in a buy-side firm and a contributor to TheStreet.com's RealMoney. He also produces a premium product for TheStreet.com called The Telecom Connection and is the founder of Teleconomics.com. The firm in which Willard is a partner may, from time to time, have long or short positions in, or buy or sell the securities, or derivatives thereof, of companies mentioned in his columns.None of the information in this column constitutes, or is intended to constitute, a recommendation by Willard of any particular security or trading strategy or a determination by Willard that any security or trading strategy is suitable for any specific person. Willard appreciates your feedback -- click here to send him an email.