One of the benefits of being at StartPad, is getting the opportunity to exchange ideas and get help from other startup developers and entrepreneurs. We've had a standing lunch each Thursday where tenants can come and talk about their week, maybe do a product demo, and get feedback. Some weeks we just chat and shoot the bull.
I thought it would be nice to open this up to others who are nearby, and would like to join us. If you're interested send mail or call us (206-388-3466) to tell us you're coming.
What: Brown-Bag lunch for startup developers and entrepreneurs
When: Each Thurday at 12:15pm
Where: StartPad's Conference Room
Bring: Your lunch(!) - we have soda and water here - help yourself
Last week I attended the Google IO conference, so I can share some info about what I saw there (new Android phone, new App Engine features, Google Wave, Google 3D plugin, etc.)
I attended the STS meeting at UW tonight. They had two speakers, both of whom were really excellent. I happened to have my netbook with me so I recorded these UStream videos (the quality is actually not too bad - I sat close enough that the mic is picking up the speakers pretty well).
I'm a Google AppEngine developer (Go2.me), as well as a user of a friend's AppEngine application (puzzazz.com). On Saturday morning, I noticed that I could not Sign In to any AppEngine application - I was greeted with a very opaque "Server Error". This looked like a very serious problem - so I waited a few hours thinking that Google would be "on it", and tried again ... still broken.
Now I start looking for the official Google report on this bug. There are several ways that Google uses to communicate with developers on AppEngine:
By all accounts, the Seattle 2.0 Awards last night was a huge success:
The reception was still going strong, with lots of interesting people to talk to, when the Pacific Science Center had to kick us out around 10pm.
I think the event was invigorating for the broad Seattle startup community. Talking to Marcelo at the reception, I think he was very pleased with the event (as he should be). But his ambitions are still higher - he has plans to get even more potential entrepreneurs to test the "startup waters" and join the community than we already have.
While he said in his intro speech that Seattle will always be behind Silicon Valley, Marcelo is very motivated to help make Seattle the clear #2 Best City to start a technology company.
Seattle 2.0 Awards - Glenn Kelman's inspiring speech from Seattle20 on Vimeo.
After attending last nights Seattle Tech Statups meeting, I was left with the impression that:
Sergei Sokolenko has built a solution to the information overload problem in a world where we are bombarded by numerous twitter streams, facebook status updates, and news feeds. Beyond building an interesting product, his presentation focused on how he was building his company. He had a great set starting points for how to start to build a companies initial audience of early adopters by taking advantage of company/service directories, and finding other online communities that are amenable to trying a new product like his.
Emmanuel Marot and his co-founder are self funded (having sold a prior company to Microsoft). He's building a company around the idea that sellers do not have the tools to establish the optimal price for goods and services they are selling. He claims there is billions in lost revenue opportunity across numerous markets, simply because sellers do not know how to optimally price their goods. His pricing engine, can bring the tools to revenue management and dynamic pricing to small businesses and even individuals.
Not immediately concerned about revenue (they have a ready source - in the form of commissions on each sale, once they are established), Marot outlined his strategy to demonstrate his technology in the Used Video Game market - it's one with a high volume, lots of buyers and sellers, and a very standardized product. Once established there, they will tackle Used Consumer Electronics, and move on to more precious transactions.
I particularly liked the savvy he displayed in using tools like Google Base. By organizing his product listings and pushing them to Google, he's taking advantage of a ready source of buyers who use the Google search engine to begin their product purchase decision (and most of them don't have a strong allegience to a particular seller, giving him a good chance to complete transactions).
Nimrod Hoofien's company emerged from a UW Business school operations simulation study group. He noticed, that, beyond the education value, he and his peers were become obsessed with the game dynamics of running a simulated plant. While in the very early stages, he's been desiging what could be called the first Casual MMORPG - a game that would appeal to 25 to 55 year olds by engaging them in a goal-based game that they can play in just a few minutes per day.
The important observation I had was that creating the illusion of
solving and managing a live problem and competing with other people,
some of whom you actually know, is a very powerful motivator. econome
is the natural extension of this observation.
We, at Six Slice Studios, are building an entire economy where players
create and run companies, buy and sell products to each other and to
the game, and experience many aspects of business. This is not a simple
task, mind you, but I believe that our players will enjoy it and keep
coming back for more. Distilling the fun and challenging parts of
business and leaving the tedious work behind is the core of our
challenge.
Kushal Chakrabarti demonstrated the diversity of the startup community. Here we have a passionate founder, who is building a 501(c)3 - non profit - in order to realize the dream of giving working poor around the world the chance to better the lives of themselves and their children by giving them educational loans. Their unique twist is that the partner with microfinance banks by giving them 0% loans, in exchange for their work in identifying and qualifying the student recipients. For lenders, they provide a highly transparent platform for "giving", where each donor can select to whom their loan is made, track what impact it had, and get repaid (in about 18-24 months).
In Vittana's model, someone may lend $25 to a student (which gets bundled with money from other lenders), allowing the student to enroll in a vocational school for welding, say. Once he/she graduates, the now skilled welder is able to repay the $25 they borrowed for their education from their earnings, allowing the lender to loan that money to further students.
Kushal impressed on us, that even though they are a non-profit, all the same energy and passion for building a sustainable business is involved in their venture just as it would be in a for-profit startup.
Marcelo Calbucci just announced a new (annual) award competition for Seattle area technology startups - the Seattle 2.0 awards. They are accepting nominations until March 25th, with the final awards ceremony to be held on May 7th at the Pacific Science Center. Categories include best Startup, best CEO, etc.
What most impressed me is the all-star lineup of panelists that are helping judge the awards. It's a veritable who's who in the Seattle startup community (many of whom would be the top picks for honors themselves - I couldn't help but nominate one of them, even though they are on the panel).
Seattle's startup community is pretty tight knit - but we've lacked this kind of larger more-visible event to focus the whole community. I'm looking forward to seeing the nominations and especially a fun evening hanging out with everyone at the award ceremony. Thanks for pulling this together, Marcelo!
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:
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:
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 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
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.
