Startup Presentations at STS
Submitted by zzelinski on Thu, 12/11/2008 - 10:16.
This past Tuesday evening I attended the Seattle Tech Startups monthly meeting -- STS generally meets once a month on the 2nd Tuesday or Wednesday of the month -- and had the opportunity to film the talks. The subject matter on this particular occasion was a "present your startup" layout, with four different companies presenting. I've cut up the video and posted links to the video and more information below:
The best laid plans of startups...
Submitted by zzelinski on Wed, 12/03/2008 - 15:54.
10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1...
*Note: There is NO December Countdown*
It's easy (and perhaps necessary) for a new entrepreneur to be very optimistic about the business opportunity before them. But not every great idea translates to business success.
Mohit Srivastava and Mikhail Seregine, previously of Faves.com and ClayValet.com respectively, discuss the rise and fall of tech startups. We will hear from these two experienced entrepreneurs who have learned the hard way how difficult it can be to achieve a successful outcome.
The goal of this talk is to arm you with knowledge of potential pitfalls and to help you recognize realistic and achievable goals for your own project.
What: StartPad Countdown 1 -- The best laid plans of startups...
Who: Mohit Srivastava (Faves.com) and Mikhail Seregine (ClayValet.com)
When: 6:00 pm, Tuesday January 27th, 2009
Where: StartPad offices -- 811 First Avenue, Suite 480, Seattle, WA 98104
Cost: Free!
Pizza and drinks will be served.
About the presenters: Mohit Srivastava helped found Bluedot (Faves) in 2004 and worked with the company until late 2008, when it was placed in "low-burn mode." He currently works on the Azure team at Microsoft. Mikhail Seregine founded ClayValet in January 2007 and closed the doors in October 2008. He currently works for Jambool.
The Startpad Countdown series is sponsored by:
My First Visit to Seattle's Open Coffee
Submitted by mckoss on Tue, 12/02/2008 - 10:59.
Every Tuesday morning at 8:30 you can find about a dozen local Seattle startup entrepreneurs at Louisa's Cafe who get together for an Open Coffee. This morning was my first time to attend, though we've been promoting the event on StartPad.org all year (the time has generally not worked for me).
But I have to say it was a great experience. I got to personally chat with 3 or 4 people that I had not met before, and saw a couple of familiar faces (I didn't get a chance to talk with Andy Sack, who started the tradition, and attends 90% of them himself).
Among the interesting people I met:
- Quinlan Miller - He's a local teacher and writer who is a new entrepreneur. He's passionate about building a service to help people put together photography and writing to create printed books. This was his first coffee as well, and he's looking for potential partners and general advice on how to move his business along.
- Stephen Huson - Just recently in town from Boston, I was happy to meet a fellow MIT alum (we graduated just one year apart!). He's currently President of Autotegrity - an automotive lead generation business. It was really fascinating to hear about this business - and the sophistication needed to manage 100's of thousands of search terms to generate qualified leads for their automotive networks (new, used, financing, etc.). He's looking to get connected in town and find opportunites to join a going concern that could use his business development expertise.
Seattle "fixtures" - Josh Meyer (Seattle Lunch 2.0), Buzz Bruggeman (Active Words), and Andy Sack (Founders Co-op) were there as well.
I will definitely be returning to Open Coffee. From my sample, it's an interesting group of people and a great casual networking event.
The Museum of Flight Gets a New Web Site
Submitted by zzelinski on Tue, 12/02/2008 - 10:36.
The Seattle Drupal Users' Group (SeaDUG) has been holding their monthly group meetings in our offices. Last month we invited Bart Clarkson from The Garrigan Lyman Group to discuss the work his team did on the Museum of Flight's website. This project was a complete redesign from the Museum's former proprietary system, with the main requirement to move to an open CMS system. Drupal fit the bill.
Bart discusses the challenges and design decisions behind making a site that works well for users, and makes it accessible and usable by the group of Museum staff who regularly update and maintain the site.
MuseumofFlight.org on Drupal 5
Bart Clarkson, The Garrigan Lyman Group
November 20th, 2008
Project Management Software for your Team
Submitted by mckoss on Fri, 11/07/2008 - 16:56.
As a benefit to StartPad tenants, we're now offering a 5-seat license to the online project management software provided by Liquid Planner.
We're a big fan on online services, especially for small teams. There's not much point in setting up your own infrastructure for things like email, document management, or project management while startups are trying to be as efficient as possible with their own time.
So we're really excited to have Seattle-based Liquid Planner partnering with us to provide this offer to the tenants of StartPad. So, whether you're a "day desker" or have a suite of offices here, you can now get your team together on the same page using this really powerful online scheduling and task management system.
Bruce Henry announced our partnership at the October 2008 Countdown lecture. See his 5 minute demo of Liquid Planner.
