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.
I have a different take on these presenters:
Valu Valu seems to be missing the primary motivator for consumers online: the lowest price. Optimal pricing (i.e. economically efficient pricing) sounds great for sellers but buyers will go elsewhere to sellers offering lower pricing. His example of airlines, with controlled supply and limited players is a very different environment than used video games and electronics. Valu Valu has interesting technology but I would not invest in this idea, because I think ultimately they won't get enough buyers to maintain the sales flow that sellers will want.
Econome's presentation was horrible and underwhelming. My take away here was a management team unprepared to compete, with a marginal idea in a crowded casual games space.
Vittana, a "non profit" startup has noble goals and is something that as a consumer I'd love to participate in. I think that a for-profit alternative could out-compete them by being able to fund innovations more rapidly, but for the time being they are innovators.
Hey Mike,
I'm sorry I missed the event last night, but your summary kept me in the action -- thanks for taking the time to blog the event.
Dave