Young Southlander Calley Nye has done the flack thing as a social media marketer, has done the hack thing in a brief stint at TechCrunch is now doing the cofounder thing with Dashbuzz, which promises to make it easier for you to promote yourself or your products online. In other words, she's had an "entrepreneurial spirit" revelation. She and fellow wantrepreneur Scott Sullivan are offering favors in return for donating toward their goal of $25,000 to get to prototype. And by "favor" they don't mean "equity." Which, frankly, shows a promisingly cagey business sense. Which lends credence to my theory that if you spend enough time anywhere near Jason Calacanis — even just the same county — you'll grow shrewder through a mysterious form of osmosis. Her emailed plea for your support after the jump.

From: Calley Nye Date: Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 8:35 PM Subject: I could really use your help :) Sorry for the mass email, but I wanted to keep you all informed about something I'm working on, and to ask for your support. Today, I launched a social media fundraising experiment that I'm calling Start Me Up. Most of it is explained here http://calleynye.com/post/52663867/… The accompanying post is pretty self-explanatory, just an explanation of my startup and why I'm raising money. But I wanted to share with you my real intentions. In Jason Calacanis' email the other day, he talked about the startup depression. Several other people have been talking about it as well, and I think it could be a real problem. In a failing economy, it's not hard to lose faith in business and in part, yourself. I hope that this can be a demonstration that there is always another way. The message is that it's not the end of the world if you can't get institutional capital, and that you hold some control in these troubled times. Entrepreneurial spirit is why we all wake up in the morning, and I don't want to see that die or suffer in anyway. I would really appreciate your support in this, anything would help. Donations, tweets, blog posts, Facebook bulletins or forwarding this email. Thank you, and if you have any questions you know how to find me :) Calley Nye Entrepreneur/Blogger/Marketing Consultant

(Photo by Andrew Mager)