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Boulder’s Six88 Solutions getting its wine on

March 29, 2006

Six88 Solutions of Boulder markets business automation and compliance software for wineries. I had lunch yesterday with the founder Jason Eckenroth to discuss the company and vision. We were joined by Jeff Carroll, the product manager for one the company’s premier products, ShipCompliant.

Jason started the company while still earning his Masters in Structural Engineering at CU to build customized business automation applications. Over the years, the company developed it’s core “Business Engine” while working on various applications for customers in diverse markets such as photo imaging, aviation marketplace, wineries, and art galleries. After several successes in the winery market and encouragement from early adopters, Jason has focused the company in order to attack what he sees as a unique opportunity.

Most wine is sold through distributors, which eats away at the precious margin of a winery. Recent changes in the law have increased the opportunity for wineries to ship directly to customers, and the demand from consumers is growing. However, many wineries (especially the smaller ones) find the prospect of directly shipping to customers too impractical and inefficient to be worthwhile.

Six88 aims to solve this problem by greatly simplifying the complex compliance and reporting issues that wineries face. The company’s new ShipCompliant portal integrates fully with the already established WineBusinessEngine product to form a complete solution that provides commerce, fulfillment, CRM, wholesale and compliance modules. Basically, these are all the software tools you need to run a winery efficiently and profitably.

“Our winery clients see direct-to-consumer shipping as an increasingly critical element of success,” Jason said. “Our compliance solution provides wineries a mechanism to limit their legal liability while reducing costs associated with maintaining and reporting compliance information.”

Jason went on to explain that “A key aspect of ShipCompliant is that it is a stand alone application able to fully integrate with any order entry system… via its SOAP web services.”

Six88 is working closely with the Boulder Innovation Center and is “hustling to maintain a first mover advantage and may decide to find angel or partner funding in the next 90 days.” Currently Six88 employs nine people on Boulder’s Pearl Street mall.

The company is also seeking software engineers knowledgeable with .NET and an experienced software development manager. Not sure if the company gets free samples or not. ;-)

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

MotherProof - the mother of all consumer plays?

March 27, 2006

Mother Proof is based in Castle Rock and was formed by a young mother and entrepreneur who was fed up with the lack of pertinent information about automobiles available to people like her: Mothers. She wanted to find out real world things about cars like how easily car seats can be installed, how many car seats fit in the car, how much storage the car has, etc. But this real-world “Cheerio testing” was nowhere to be found.

To fill this gap, Mother Proof started using press fleet vehicles for two weeks at a time, and delivering informative (and witty) reports via a syndicated print column and the MotherProof.com web site.

One thing is for certain: Mother Proof’s founder Kristin Varela is a PR natural. The impressive list of Mother Proof sightings makes that obvious. Next Wednesday Kristin is appearing on The View, and has been seen on the likes of the CBS Early Show and CNN Headline News.

In another of my now all-too-familiar Starbucks 30 minute meetings, Kristin told me that she feels that the Mother Proof brand is beginning to grow more valuable. Manufacturers are beginning to approach her to license the Mother Proof “seal of approval”, for example.

According to Varela, “Women purchase 52.5% of new cars and influence 85% of all car sales. This adds up to an 83 billion dollar industry.” Clearly, women want to know. The Mother Proof web site has seen steadily increasing traffic as women everywhere are coming to check it out (if you’re a man, don’t let that stop you. Think of it as counter-intelligence for daddy-mobiles).

If you’re going to spend thirty grand on a new car, perhaps it makes sense to spend a few bucks to see what Mother Proof has to say about it.

Mother Proof is now forming an advisory board and will be seeking angel investment in the near future to ramp up marketing efforts and to continue to improve the web site.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

Denver’s PhotoBucket is a red hot destination

March 23, 2006

Guess what web site I’m referring to:

  • It gets 3 times the unique monthly visitors that Facebook does
  • It serves up 50 billion distinct pieces of content every month
  • It acquires over 65,000 new registered users a day.

MySpace? Flickr? No. Let me give you some more clues.

  • The number of new users it acquires each month is about the size of a Flickr. So you might say it’s growing at a Flickr per month.
  • It placed above MySpace, Wikipedia, and the like as the fastest growing brand on the net, according to Neilsen NetRatings.
  • It was founded and is primarily operated here in Colorado.
  • It accounts for about 2% of all U.S. Intenet traffic (wow!)
  • It’s had very little venture investment, and is starting to show a profit.

Still no guess? Well, it’s PhotoBucket. Thanks for playing along and pretending you didn’t read the title of this post for a while.

And those 50 billion pieces of content a month are photos belonging to more than 12 million registered users.

PhotoBucket is a tool that allows users to host images for use on social networking, e-commerce, gaming, enthusiast, and blogging sites. Recently, PhotoBucket has also added video hosting for it’s premium subscribers.

This morning, I spoke with PhotoBucket’s VP of Marketing, Sergio Monsalve. Sergio spent 5 years with eBay as Director of New Ventures, so he’s used to being in “a natural state of hypergrowth.” He compares the organic growth of PhotoBucket to both eBay and Skype. Sergio told me that the company was essentially forced out of stealth mode by its users, and “hasn’t spent a dime on PR.”

“Very few companies have this true organic and viral nature. It’s a very exciting and dynamic place to be.” Sergio told me.

Founded in 2003, PhotoBucket now has about 25 folks here in Colorado in technical operations, development, content moderation, and support. The brand new Palo Alto business offices house an additional handful of employees. Pretty amazing what they’ve done with very little outside investment. The founders are Alex Welch and Darren Crystal (formerly of Level 3 Communications).

Sergio told me that Coloradans should keep an eye on PhotoBucket for at least two reasons. First, they’re agresssively hiring talented developers, techs, product managers, and the like and are forecasting “dramatic needs for hiring” in the future. Second, PhotoBucket is very “partner friendly” in that the site is a tool more so than a destination, and offers a very effective channel for its partner companies.

While the company is not currently seeking funding and has turned the corner to profitability, Sergio told me that they will continue to evaluate their capital needs over time. The company aims to be a complete platform for hosting visual content, and it certainly seems that they are well on the way.

I can’t wait to see what happens when Sergio ramps up the PR machine with that first dime or two.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

GetLisa Information Services, Inc.

March 20, 2006

I ran into George Woodward, CEO of GetLisa today. We had a nice (long!) chat about what they’re up to. The company’s primary product is Micro.Local, which is “connects users to relevant, personalized and timely information that keeps them up to date on their community.”

“Who the heck is Lisa?”, I asked. Not something related to this, I hoped. Perhaps a long lost aunt? No, Lisa stands for Local Information Service Assistant, of course!

The idea is interesting. Wireless carriers get a fully functional mobile content publishing and delivery platform pre-populated with local schools, churches, businesses, and other community information. Users can use the web or their mobile phone to publish or subscribe to content that is very specific. For example, a user could subscribe to something as detailed as a particular bus route at a particular school. When new information is published, subscribers receive alerts. Want to get a feel for it? Here’s the best place to check it out.

Still don’t get it? Imagine students at a Texas high-school football game publishing information on each play. Yes, the actually do that, this stuff is serious down there. Subscribers can receive mobile alerts when somebody scores (the players, not the students - well, I suppose either).

Or take as another example the Katrina Network, a sample site published by GetLisa’s “socially conscious” employees in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The company was founded by George, Kelly Corkill, and two others. It’s origins go back to 2001, but George told me that this incarnation of the company is really only about a year old. The company has several rural cellular carriers as customers including Alaska Digitel, and Plateau Wireless of New Mexico and Texas, so it’s (how you say?) “post revenue.”

George told me that the real play for the future is the “direct to consumer play” and that the company is preparing an updated product in support of that goal. He says that the company exists to “go big quick” and that the consumer is the ultimate path to success for them.

So far, the company is operating from founders capital, but George told me that the company will likely seek venture funding in the not-so-distant future in support of a wider marketing effort.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

VentureVoice podcasts

March 20, 2006

I was tipped off by a friend (Kevin Cawley of SmartFeed and now Newsgator) about VentureVoice, an interesting podcast series on entrepreneurship from Greg Galant. I especially enjoyed the recent piece on Demo 06.
You can subscribe on iTunes, or visit the VentureVoice site for other subscription options.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups | 1 Comment 

Boulder’s smartFeed acquired by NewsGator

March 18, 2006

You’re probably heard about this by now, but SmartFeed has been acquired by NewsGator. SmartFeed allows you to receive podcasts on pocketpc or windows mobile devices.

I used to work with Kevin Cawley, the creator of smartFeed. I hired Kevin early on at one of my startups - Pinpoint Technologies - which is now ZOLL Data Systems of Broomfield. Kevin built our Nomad product and was one of our early “smart guys”. Nomad allows EMS service crews to communicate with dispatch centers wirelessly, and is still a strong part of ZOLL’s RescueNet suite of products for EMS.

Apparantly, Kevin got hooked up with Brad Feld (via his blog) of Mobius and talked about this idea. That’s what I call good networking Kevin! Mobius funded NewsGator, and so there you go. “One degree from everyone” they say about Boulder. Guess so.

Kevin will head NewsGators mobile development group. Good choice.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups | 1 Comment 

Colorado Startups, say what?

March 16, 2006

I’ve been asked “why are you running ColoradoStartups.com?” many times now. In short - it’s because I’m personally interested in startups, I know many of other people who are too, and I love Colorado. I’m not doing it to make a buck. Rather, I hope that it might help out local investors, entrepreneurs, and technologists. But most of all I hope it somehow helps the already vibrant startup environment here in Colorado in some small way. So there you have it, I am pure of heart (well, on this one anyway).

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups | 2 Comments 

5o9 Inc (Boulder) - Discussion with the founder

March 16, 2006

I spoke with one of 5o9’s founders, Liz Coker (President and COO) today. Liz has a strong and varied background in working with large companies and startups, and is also the founder of Aspenwood Consulting. She confirmed that the company is indeed in stealth mode, is “very early stage” and was started in January. Liz confirmed that that the company is working in the mobile space which she says users view as “slow, difficult, and not intuitive” to use. She also told me that the company aims to create “consistency” and to make things “faster, easier, and ultimately cheaper” on the phone. She continued to say that the company will work domestically, but also aims to do well internationally where customers still pay based on the amount of data transmitted and received unlike the typical “all you can eat” plans here in the U.S.

Peter Cranstone (another founder of 5o9) was previously a founder of Secure64 which continues to thrive, as well as Remote Communications (RCI) and other startups. RCI was acquired by Hyperspace Communications, AMEX: HCO in 2001, and I came across some interesting details about that deal if you are interested.

The third founder is Kevin Kiley whose notable contributions in the past include the widely-used mod_gzip compression module for the Apache web server and other data communications tools. Kevin was also involved with RCI previously.

Currently, the company is not seeking any outside investment, but that may or may not change “in the next 90 days” Liz said.

Might be an interesting one to keep an eye on.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

InvestorLoft (Parker, CO)

March 15, 2006

InvestorLoft.com wants to become “your investment real estate source” for “1031 exchanges, residential real estate, commercial real estate.” Currently in beta, this site uses some intelligent algorithms to match an investor profile to specific properties. The theory is that investors can stop wasting time, and immediately identify real estate that suits their investment needs. Similarly, property sellers gain access to qualified real estate investors who know exactly what they want.

I met the founders at a CTEK event recently, and the management team was certainly sharp and experienced in their area. The site has a nice look and feel - they’re doing many things right.

Neat idea, good execution, but the problem these guys will likely face is one of inventory of properties on their site. Untli they either gain some momentum in terms of gathering subscriber listings or take a MLS feed, real estate investors may shy way from the site simply because of content. They may be afraid they’re missing the best listings by not checking out on of the MLS-based sites like realtor.com.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

Boulder’s 5o9 Inc

March 15, 2006

Boulder’s 5o9 Inc. appears to be in stealth mode, but we get a hint form one of the founders on Peter Cranstone’s blog, Peter’s Thoughts. Peter boldly declares that he’s working on Web 3.0 and says “It’s all about improving the mobile experience and blending “content” (king on the desktop) with “contact” (king on the mobile device).” An interesting point, but what’s this all about?

5o9 is a sponsor of the Boulder Software Club and touts itself as “Internet communicatons software designed to improve the mobile experience.” The company’s half-working web site also gives us no clue.

Can somebody fill us in on what this is all about?

Update: I spoke with one of the founders.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

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