David Dalka attends and reports business events and conferences to discover the future of business where technology, organizations and customer exeperience meet. Also serves as emcee, moderator and motivational business keynote speaker.
Entrepreneurship
Chicagoland’s very own eComXpo is October 9,10,11, 2007. You can join the fun and learning from anywhere in the world though!
eComXpo is the premier virtual Internet Marketing conference that is FREE to attend. I’ve also had the honor of speaking there previously. It’s a great resource for learning Internet marketing concepts and networking. Register now.
Moderator:
Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence
Marketing Speakers:
Ian White, CEO, Urban Mapping
Shawn Riegsecker, Chairman & CEO, Centro
Justin Sanger, CEO, LocalLaunch
Alfred Chow, Head, Yellowbook
Justin Sanger, Local Launch
I can’t help but get caught up in some of the hype. “Context galactic scale” – thanks Google. He then said, “Talking about local search in 10 minutes is like spitting into the grand canyon.” Then said a few words to get Greg Sterling to actually blush! Really funny stuff.
Tremendous opportunities in the IYPs. Local and vertical are merging. Social networking is also converging with local. What is the differentiation of these local search sites? Even within Yahoo! you have a multitude of options. SMEs are overwhelmed and confused. The mission of marketplace consolidations – our goal is to remove the complexity not only for our small businesses but for our sales forces as well. The traditional relationships
$ Cost of Traffic $$$
Content>>Proprietary>>Organic/SEO>>Paid Placement>>Paid Search / SEM
Silos and advertisers don/t mix in local search!!!
You need to be inventory agnostic…
Shawn Riegsecker, CEO, Centro
Brand marketing increases future clicks. Newspaper growth is slowing in terms of rates of growth, national advertisers are exploding this year. Next will be the regional advertisers, which now comprise less than 3% of advertising.
Ian White, CEO, Urbanmapping
? Where the hell is the money?
7FTE, San Francisco based, geo-spacial data to enable advertisers
Why and what?
Technical limitations
User behavior
Search Engine “Keyword Lockdown”
GEO IP lookup “geotargeting” SUCKS
99% accuracy country level
95% accuracy state level
There are still a few seats left! TiE puts on amazingly high quality events, I greatly look forward to seeing you there! Sign up now, don’t delay!
TiECon Midwest is the premier event organized by TiE-Midwest held every two years. Join us in Chicago this October 5th for TiECon ’07 Mentorship: Boosting Tomorrow’s Business Leaders, a half-day event for leading Midwest entrepreneurs to share thoughts and ideas on business and innovation.
Over 400 attendees will hear a keynote address by local, successful, serial entrepreneurs Glen Tullman and Howard Tullman. Following the keynote, distinguished panelists will present topics aimed to increase Entrepreneurial IQ through a series of sessions. Panels topics are: Right Dollars at the Right Time, Business Model Refinement, Attracting and Retaining Talent and Executive Coach for the Entrepreneur. The event will conclude with a cocktail reception designed to foster networking.
TiE stands for Talent, Ideas and Enterprise and is a not-for-profit global network of entrepreneurs and professionals. Founded in Silicon Valley in 1992, TiE is an open and inclusive organization that has rapidly grown to more than forty chapters in nine countries. TIE Global is the world leader in cultivating and nurturing entrepreneurship.
Aza Raskin chatted me up a few minutes ago and shared with me that they are launching four new beta products Monday. These will complement the existing Humanized offerings of Enso Launcher and Enso Words which I’ve been using since shortly after I met Aza at Barcamp Chicago earlier this Summer. Enso is a useful tool, but you need to have an open mind to fully appreciate what it can do for it to be effective at it’s full potential. Just remember that these are beta products so they may have some unique bugs, but I like they way they’ve set up transparent feedback for each offering so that they can live the quotes of Peter Drucker and others in their actions.
I had a few brief moments to download it and bang on them a bit. So without further delay here is a quick and dirty rundown of the four new Enso beta products, you can download them here in a nice little bundle, I’ve ranked them in the order that they interest me and my typical readership:
Enso Web Search Anywhere v0.1 – Simply select your document text, hold the caps lock, type goo and presto a new browser with that query executed in Google appears! After doing that only three times, I kind of find manual entry or cutting and pasting to be kind of ancient and stone tablet like. A distant memory. Maybe even downright lame!
Enso Translate Anywhere v0.1 – Translate languages on the fly in Enso. With a little refinement, I think the last reason I ever visit Alta Vista will meet it’s ultimate demise!
Enso Media Controller v0.1 – Now you are getting it. It controls your media with ease.
Enso TeX Anywhere v0.1 – Nothing to do with the lone star state, I think they state the value proposition quite well, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a way of creating stunning equations quickly and simply?”
Again, this is just a brief overview, be sure to visit the Enso micro pages above for vivid detail and screen prints.
Tim Courtney sent me the following note late last week, I hope to see you there….
When: Thursday, September 20, 2007 from 6:30-10:00pm
Where: Mullen’s Bar & Grill 3080 Warrenville Rd., Lisle, IL 60532
An opportunity to connect in an informal setting with like-minded people in technology; whether you’re an upwardly mobile professional, a job seeker, an entrepreneur, or a VC. We welcome everyone, including IT workers, e-commerce companies, Internet and Web 2.0 startups, mobile and mobile marketing, and B2B services.
The event is free to attend, free drinks and food will be provided. RSVP is required at http://siliconprairiesocial.eventbrite.com.
For more information see www.siliconprairiesocial.com or call Tim Courtney at 630.983.6064 or tcourtney at xnet.com.
As discussed in my recent post about a TiE event on Chicago start ups, there are many factors to consider when taking in funding and employees. Don Dodge discussed in great detail Paul Graham’s The Equity Equation post.
So I’d like to ask the blogosphere, “How does one judge this inflection point of being better off with this asset, person or money infusion?”I’d say this is an especially tough question when the many startups aren’t focusing on the priorities in the correct order. When I advise a start up or look to join an Internet, Web 2.0, search engine or mobile start ups, I look for the following things:
1) A workable revenue plan either now or that can be communicated in a believable timeline and/or a data model that collects opt-in data that would allow monetization once scaled.
2) An understanding that bringing in a person with strong knowledge of data models and marketing methods early in the process is critical to success and to reducing the revisions to applications later. A CTO without a logical end goal is all too often a wasted resource that could and should wait until there is a clear execution vision.
3) People that have a passion for creating, implementing and executing on an idea first and foremost.
4) A willingness to march into a new direction without limiting beliefs. This is where breakthroughs originate.
Again, in the end it’s all about judgment and knowing the current teams strengths and weaknesses! I wish you well in your start up ventures.
Moderator: Jai Shekhawat, CEO of Fieldglass
Alan Warms, former CEO of Participate and now Publisher of Real Politics (Buzztracker)
Matt Moog, CEO of Viewpoints
James Malackowski, CEO of Ocean Tomo
First up is Alan, founder of Buzztracker. Was part of Freeloader, eShare, Participate Systems, Realclearpolitics.com and now Buzztracker. The opportunity is to build the custom content feeds that can be delivered and used by the entire ecosystem of the Internet domain owners and management companies. I kept waiting for an explanation of how his site(s) added value to the Internet ecosystem from the user’s perspective – I’m still waiting for him to distinguish it significantly from a MFA Splog network.
Matt Moog, CEO and Founder of Viewpoints. Used to work at Q Interactive and Microsoft. We raised $50 Million and then $25 Million in the market and blew through that in 6 months. Recovered to be cashflow positive (2003) and net income (2004). Viewpoints has raised $4.7 Million in series A, currently 7 employees. The business is about reviews in different verticals.
James says that 79.2% of the economy is driven by intangible assets in 2005 and up from 16.2% in 1975. We created Ocean Tomo after we sold our first business. We are the Sotheby’s of intellectual property. People recognize it. Ocean Tomo 300 is now published. Innovation actually outperforms commodities. Ocean Tomo has not taken outside capital at this time.
Throughout the evening one could not help but be impressed by the uniqueness of James Malackowski’s ideas and execution and Matt Moog’s perseverance, transparency and desire to build anew.
What is the best way to become an entrepreneur?
Alan: Live for some period of time without a W-2. Test out a new hypothesis. Go to conferences seeing what people are doing. Start building some things, hire a developer, and try to get a customer or two. How do you decide whether the idea is big enough? Is the market ready for it?
Matt: I was working at Microsoft and was 25 years old. On the side, I took some money and built an application. It was on CD, pre-Internet. Speed up ten years, I wrote the initial plan in 2005 for Viewpoints. Then I left to found it 2006.
James: Unique combination of greed and panic!
Is it about the money?
James: Yes. It’s about sacrificing family and other things.
Alan: You care about the money.
Matt: You have an informal formula. I have not paid myself anything for the past year. I’d be currently willing to do this for up to 3 years.
James: People don’t hedge their bet. There is market space and risk. You can recover your investment.
Matt: With Coolsavings we raised angel money, then got on the hyper growth track of raising more money. A well known investment banker was telling us to raise more money. Then I had $15 Million in debt and $100,000 in cash. I needed to raise some money to hire a staff to do the stuff I couldn’t do. The later you spend the money, the smarter you’ll spend it.
How do you raise too much money?
Matt: I didn’t set out to raise as much as I did at Viewpoints. It’s possible to lose control. Each dollar raised the higher the investor expectation. This is kind of a funny dynamic.
Alan: You’re at point A and you want to get to point F. We try to raise $3 Million and got $13 Million. You get scar tissue.
James, you did it the smart way?
James: Over three years, I was burning up that non-compete, I went to institutional side looking for loans, Harris Bank told us no. Then we asked if they’d lend us $15,000 for a car and there were five of us so we raised $75,000. It’s all about the capital structure and how you communicate a request.
Matt: Always be transparent in everything you do.
Ron May brought up that Moog’s dad had invented the Moog synthesizer. (Matt seems to have a strong desire to stand on his own accomplishments). There was then a question on hiring.
James: The smartest person we hire at Ocean Tomo is the person we hire today.
How do you keep the group in tact?
James: We try to take people outside our industry. That is a huge attraction. You will be richer for the experience even if it doesn’t work. They not only have to believe in the vision, they have to believe in you.
Matt: Lon offered an office out of the blue. Most of the people come from Orbitz. People have to be jazzed about working at our company. I like the people who like to ask questions.
Matt: Lon Chow gave me a book. It’s a “The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executives”. Are people aligned and communicating? In terms of the revenue model figure out how much do ads sell for, what do they look like? On the west coast, build an audience then figure it rules the day. Businesses never grow at the rate that they say they do. Sometimes you’ll grow three times as fast other times not as fast.
Great conversation and event by TiE!!!