BarCamp recap
August 26, 2006
Barcamp is winding down in Denver as I write this post. It’s been a fun event and I met several cool and interesting people among the attendees. I also met many people in person that I previously had only known online. Even had there been no sessions, it was worth attending for the chance to meet and interact with some great people.
But of course there were lots of great sessions. The highlights for me personally were the following moments.
Stan James did a great job of showing off Lijit.com. Following his presentation, there was a very lively discussion about trust and how trust based systems can be “gamed”. Dave Taylor and Alex King made some very interesting and constructive comments about how users might perceive Lijit. They raised questions about how trust might be compromised for the benefit of “evil corporations.” I think Lijit is a well intentioned system and has the potential to be a truly useful service. I think Stan was listening.
There was also a great discussion about viral marketing. Quickly, the discussion turned to viral videos as a marketing tool. We got to see a preview of a new video for id345’s PocketFuzz service, which I posted about previously. It was made by a new Denver firm called ViralNewMedia. The group spent some time thinking about successful viral videos like Smirnoff TeaPartay which has been viewed nearly a million times on YouTube, and trying to grock just what the factors that lead to success might actually be. Basically, it boils down to giving people something interesting to talk about, and hoping they’re bored enough to share it in hopes of being “in the know” early on something cool and different.
I also enjoyed the smaller break out sessions about the state of mobile technology and getting the latest info on JavaScript/AJAX toolkits.
Thanks to everyone who attended and contributed to the discussions. And thanks to all of the sponsors who helped make this happen. It was a good day.
SharedPlan looks to tap communal project knowledge
August 25, 2006
Boulder’s SharedPlan has an interesting twist on project planning software. Rather than provide tools to simply document, track, and manage projects, SharedPlan is attempting to actually improve the performance of projects.
I spoke with CEO Tracy Earles and asked him to explain the market SharedPlan is going after.
Tracy said “We’re targeting professional services firms: engineering and architecture firms, IT consultants, etc. These are companies who do projects and share, or sell, expertise. Our tools enable them to capture and use that expertise to improve project success.”
Tracy continued by explaining that “We’re really focused on improving project performance. What current tools don’t provide are a way to create better plans. Plans that comprehend what has worked in the past, or has worked for others. Better plans come from tapping the communal knowledge of project participants, or from historical data of the firm or the industry.”
SharedPlan’s current product set includes OpenPlanning, a free project community application suite that was released in July. It consists of a project management application, an online public repository for plans, and a public forum for discussing those plans. OpenPlanning is generally intended for the consumer community. Anyone can save a plan in the repository at SharedPlan.net, and anyone can view and use anyone else’s. We already have hundreds of plans in there, including some for building a house, planning and planting a garden, starting a business, even preparing for shooting documentaries in Afghanistan. The next planned release is a business version of this toolset with a private repository that will enable communities within the firm to share expertise in the same way.
One thing that I immediately noticed is that SharedPlan is desktop software (yes, I am very sharp!). However, the knowledge repository is web based. It made me wonder about the distribution strategy - perhaps SharedPlan would be most powerful delivered as a fully integrated web based application.
Tracy countered by saying that “everybody in the world does projects, so useful project tools should be on every computer desktop. We are working to make that happen, and help improve the way the world plans.”
SharedPlan is positioned as a more advanced offering than products such as the popular site BaseCamp. Interestingly, it seems to be closer in terms of target market to Colorado’s own PositiveWare, which I discussed earlier.
SharedPlan is desktop software for project management
that sits at the intersection of social collaboration and knowledge management. It’s for everyone who works on a project, not just for those that manage them. Neat concept, I’ll be curious to see what sort of progress they can make here.
BarCamp Denver is this Saturday
August 24, 2006
I’ll be attending BarCamp on Saturday in Denver (yes, Kevin, I did find a babysitter). This will be my first time as an attendee, but from what I’ve seen on YouTube from other BarCamp’s, I’m looking forward to it. These events happen all over the country (and the world) and are basically ad-hoc un-conferences for demos, discussions, and interaction centered around web development. You can learn more here.
I’m hoping to demo an discuss a new pet project related to music and RSS that I’ve developed.
I hope to see you there. If you want to attend and participate, sign up here.
netFactor’s VisitorTrack is like caller id for web site visitors
August 22, 2006
When I first heard the elevator pitch that VisitorTrack from Denver’s netFactor gives a web site operator a report that acts like “caller id for your web site” I was pretty skeptical. I figured, OK, here’s some random guy taking on Google Analytics.
My previous company (ZOLL Data Systems) had tried to hire netFactor founder Chris Jeffers many years ago as a marketing VP. I remembered interviewing Chris and really liking him, but for some reason or another we could not come to terms on employment.
Chris let me toy around with VisitorTrack so I installed it on a production web server at a SaaS company that I’m advising here in Boulder. It worked easily; I just had to paste a small snippet of code into a standard header for the product. I only put this in “logged out” marketing type pages so that we’d avoid capturing data on existing customers.
I waited about a week, and then went to look at the results. You could clearly see many of the company’s key prospects poking around. You could also see competitors and which pages interested them most. Most importantly, it was pretty obvious that there were some previously unknown prospective customers coming back again and again to see what was new.
The real differentiator that VisitorTrack is offering is that it actually identifies the companies that are looking at your web site. You get the company name, address, and other metadata such as their search phrase used, number of pages viewed, number of repeat visits, etc. That’s right, actual company names and addresses, and the beauty of this is - it really works.
Click for detailed sample image
The company that tested VisitorTrack for me operates in a niche market. After looking at the data provided by the system, the founder asked simply “How the hell do they do that?” He was looking at a report of people who were anonymously visiting his product web site and seeing the full details of these visitors, including their company name and contact information. Of course, VisitorTrack can’t tell you exactly who inside that organization is looking at your site (not that it would surprise me if it could) but because this company operates in a market made up of mostly small suppliers, this still turns out to be very useful data.
I asked Chris about the secret sauce that makes this work so well. Chris told me that “We utilize many different databases from which to distill a detailed view of the business visitors to a web site. Importantly, this all occurs in real time allowing access to web-based reporting and automatic email alerts.”
I asked Chris where the idea for VisitorTrack came from and he said that it was born of his own experiences. “For business to business web sites, less than 2% of web site visitors will volunteer contact information to learn more about a product. With the prices for internet marketing soaring, and emerging evidence that the effectiveness of this channel is diminishing, business managers are seeking new efficiencies from their internet marketing investment.” Chris was clear that this isn’t just another aggregate tracking tool such as WebTrends. “We’ve tried to create an application set that creates opportunities and provides tools to develop relationships from the insight into individual visitors.”
Another interesting feature of VisitorTrack is accomplished through a strategic relationship with Jigsaw (I know, I know, boo, hiss). With a simple click, users can see detailed contact information for executives within each company that has visited their site. Chris commented that “our users can direct their sales and marketing outreach to companies who are already searching for their products, and exposed to their brand.”
With VisitorTrack, netFactor provides a few interesting new twists on web tracking. This isn’t just another web visitor tracking and statistics package. For the right type of company, VisitorTrack can provide valuable business intelligence and can improve sales efficiencies in a very tangible way.
Currently, netFactor charges a monthly license fee for the use of VisitorTrack. I’m hopeful that it may reach a wider audience in the future but I think this might require a change in the pricing model. This is the type of service that might do well to work out a freemium model of some kind - for example they could give away up to 25 (basic) leads per month and offer premium services that help users to sort the leads, figure out which leads are hottest, do executive contact searches, etc.
For more information on VisitorTrack, visit www.netFactor.com.
Podcast Episode #3: Lijit.com interview (Stan James & Todd Vernon)
August 20, 2006
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Interview with Founder Stan James and CEO Todd Vernon of Lijit.com as well as a recap of recent blog posts on ColoradoStartups.com. 00:00 Recaps. 07:45 Interview with Lijit.com.Subscribe to the podcast here or just listen to Episode #3 below. |
BCBR 7th Annual IQ awards recap
August 17, 2006
I attended the Boulder Country Business Report’s IQ Awards tonight as a guest of one of the finalists, Solidware Technologies.
IQ stands (in this case) for Innovation Quotient. The idea is to honor the most innovative companies in Boulder county and Broomfield in ten categories. About eighty companies were nominated and there were thirty finalists who were featured tonight.
Solidware, which I have covered previously, won in the software category for their analytical software testing product. Group Systems won the Internet category for their ThinkTank workgroup collaboration tools.
Overall the event was pretty well received this year. There were about 300 people in attendance and the Stadium Club at Folsom Field was fairly packed. Near the end, we watched perhaps one of the cheesiest videos on record featuring the sponsors (and I’ve made a few cheesy videos in my time, mind you). Overall, a good time.
CU MBA orientation - Class of ‘08
August 17, 2006
Paul Jerde invited me out to CU yesterday to hang out with their first year MBA students who were going through orientation. I was there to talk about some of the entrepreneurial activity that is happening in and around Boulder. Jim Pollock from CTEK and Eric Gricus from the Boulder Innovation Center were also there for the same purpose.
I was invited after I had a discussion with Paul about how students are just not aware of the entrepreneurial support that is available to them around Boulder. Paul told me that when his students finally find out what a great place for startups Boulder is that they react by telling him “they just had no idea.” The students are simply amazed that there is so much startup activity and funding going on our community.
I had several animated chats with the incoming students on various topics. I look forward to seeing the CU MBA class of ‘08 involved with some of the startups I am profiling here on the blog.
Outfoxed is now Lijit
August 17, 2006
Todd Vernon (CTO) pinged me this morning to tell me that OutFoxed has been renamed to Lijit. Founder Stan James also mentioned this on his blog this morning at about 2 AM (Gotta love startup mode!)
I previously covered OutFoxed here.
Lijit is currently closing an initial angel round in order to develop the social web tools that were the basis of Stan’s master’s thesis.
I was invited into the beta a while back, and have played with the Firefox plug in since then in my daily use. There are some facets of Lijit that I really like, such as being able to easily see web pages on particular topics that are recommended by my social network. The aspect of this that I like best is that it’s just “there”, you don’t have to go and do anything other than what you normally do (e.g. search google).
If you’d like to get on the list for the beta, visit this page.
Solidware’s Sue Kunz discusses software quality in SD Times
August 15, 2006
Sue Kunz, founder of Boulder’s Solidware Technologies (previously covered here) wrote an interesting article called Forget Time-to-Market: It’s all About Time to Money that appeared today in SD Times.
In the article Sue talks about how “time to market” (TTM) is not a reasonable measure for software projects and the fact that “time to money” (TT$) might just be a metric that provides much more incentive to the developers working on a project.
I remember when I first met Sue in March and she shared with me various mind-boggling statistics about the ever-growing cost of software defects, especially as compared with defect rates in other industries. In this article Sue puts it as bluntly as ever, pointing out that there is now data indicating that “half of every dollar spent on software goes down the tubes as cost-of-defects.”
Wow.
Shopping with Pronto
August 14, 2006
Pronto is yet another shopping comparision site - Just what the world needs right?
Pronto is a new division of IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ: IACI) and has recently launched in beta. IAC also has great brands such as CitySearch, Evite, Colorado’s own ServiceMagic, and Match.com. The main office is in New York, but their lead technologist is in Boulder as are some staff members. I first became aware they were operating here because I saw a ton of job ads on Craigslist a few months back. I have an RSS feed with certain keywords in it that helps me find new startups to talk to in Colorado.
I installed Pronto (yes, on a spare machine) and used it a bit while shopping. Pronto’s main feature is a browser plug in which pops up “toast” (like MSN Messenger) when it has shopping comparisons or special offers for you. It usually only does this while you’re already shopping so it’s an easy way to see if the price you’re looking at is high or low.
Once in a while it will pop up (toast me?) with something totally off the wall like this (as a result of one of searches for information about the CEO, which led me to a page about the board of Art.com). Not only useless, but annoying too! (hey guys, consider this a bug report).
Mostly I shop for books and electronics. As you can see in the image above, the price range Pronto has for the book Hackers and Painters is $15-$17. Amazon offered it to me for $14.92 (what, is it Columbus day or something?).
This is often the problem I describe to people doing shopping comparison sites - Amazon and Ebay are already efficient markets. If I want to make sure I’m getting a good deal on something reasonably popular, I can pretty much go to one of those sites (Amazon for books, ebay for anything else) and feel pretty comfortable that I’m not getting totally ripped off. Now if I’m shopping for something more expensive (like a TV or a Kegerator) then I am already going to shop around. It’s not like this is so hard to do that it’s worth it to be “toasted” on every minor purchase I am contemplating just in case I happen to be shopping for something expensive.
My point is you’re going to shop around anyway on those larger items - this is already easy to do and doesn’t feel so intrusive like this browser plug in does. I’m curious to see how the beta goes, and what Pronto can learn from it. As a short-time user my advice would be to kill the “toast” and instead light up a toolbar icon that I can click if I care to do so.
I tried several times to sync up with Dan Marriott (founder and CEO of Pronto) and it never happened so I don’t have much deep information about this company at this point. We did exchange a few emails and I’m hoping that perhaps he (or someone from Pronto) will comment on this post. If you know something more, please chime in.
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