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Amazon Web Services - Meetup Tuesday am with Mike Culver

May 30, 2008

Mike Culver is a technology evangelist for Amazon Web Services. This includes S3, EC2, SimpleDB, and more. These services have been so important for so many startups - they’re great because they scale along with your business, and are very affordable for startups.

Mike will be in town visiting TechStars on Tuesday, June 3rd. While he’s here, and since he’s such a nice guy, he’s also holding a get-together at The Cup in Boulder for anyone interested in Amazon Web Services. This will be at 10am on Tuesday. This is the guy to talk to if you want to learn more

To attend, please email evangelists@amazon.com. There’s no charge.

Thanks Mike!

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

ID345: Denver’s New Coworking Space

May 26, 2008

ID345 is located next door to Danny Newman’s Pocketfuzz offices. It’s got a very industrial feel to it and according to Christy Kruzick, has the potential to go the direction of the Pixar “cubicles.” That is, arty self-expressions of the inhabitants. David covered ID345’s launch last month. Here’s a quick video tour of ID345.

I toured The Hive last year and found it to be spacious and very well-stocked. It’s served the Denver community well for coworking for some time now. David wrote about The Hive last year.

If you are in Denver and are looking for space to work and/or hang out with like-minded folks, you should definitely check these places out. Happy co-working!

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

Brad Feld on vator.tv - how to raise funding

May 22, 2008

Here’s a good video with Brad Feld of The Foundry Group talking about raising early-stage funding. While generally interesting, it’s also of specific interest to those who would like to understand how the Foundry Group thinks about their “thematic” investment approach. Brad describes how their defined themes are the primary filter, and the team is the secondary filter.

After having just spent some time on vacation in the same great spots as Brad, I had to quickly readjust to “business Brad” when I first watched this. It was a little like coming out of the twilight zone, I would imagine. Could this really be the same guy you see below?

brad-nose-sticks.jpg

Sorry Brad, had to do it.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

Things to do in Denver when you’re #2

May 18, 2008

I’m sitting on a couch in Italy, and Brad Feld is lying on an adjacent and perpendicular couch. We just had a thrilling conversation about what you should do to beat your closest competitor when you’re number one in a market. This (d)evolved into what I thought was a much more interesting conversation about what what to do when you’re #2 in a market but want to be #1.

The premise here is that if you can’t become #1 or #2 in your market, then think about getting out of the market or find a different market position. #1 wins big, #2 generally wins or does OK and everybody else loses.

I took some quick notes.

Things that work when you’re #2

1. Make a big deal about stupid things to distract #1 to make #1 spend time on them.
2. Go hard after areas that #1 isn’t (yet) dominant in. Make yourself very relevant in areas where #1 isn’t yet playing.
3. Increase transparency in areas where you know #1 is weak.
4. Develop a reputation for pleasing customers more than #1.
5. Don’t just follow #1, provide real innovation/market leadership and behave as if you were already #1.
6. ignore #3, #4, and #5, et al - don’t take their bait

Things that work when you’re #1

1. Don’t react to the ploys of #2. Completely ignore them and don’t react to them. Just don’t take the bait.
2. Give #2 your worst customers, but make them chase the price down to zero for those customers. Make sure they take your worst customers for no money.

Have these things worked for you? What else has worked or not worked in these situations?

Now the girls have joined us and we are talking about underarm hair. I am not taking notes.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

On focused investing

May 17, 2008

Bill Flagg (who recently sold his company, RegOnline) wrote a great post called Focused Investing on his blog. In it, Bill tries to reconcile his historical mode of investing (full speed on one thing at a time) with what the rest of the world seems to do (diversified asset portfolio theory).

His conclusion: “Wait for the big fat pitches and then focus my energy on hitting them out of the park when they appear.”

In contrast, I’ve been reading Taleb lately, which has (to some extent) validated my own thinking about being “very safe” with the bulk of my investments (that would *not* include startups), and betting on potential black swans with a small portion of my portfolio. If you hear your local angel investor say that she is only looking for deals that have the potential to generate a huge (not just a 10x) return on investment, she may be an idea investor who is a subscriber to this same theory.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Venture Capital |  

Podcast: A Conversation with Jared Polis

May 16, 2008

Jared Polis

Jared Polis doesn’t need an introduction. The entrepreneur, technologist, philanthropist and visionary has founded and sold numerous startups for great sums over the past decade. A well-known Boulderite, he’s been featured by national media and countless other outlets for his work in technology and business. His Jared Polis Foundation is leading the charge for better education here in Colorado and America. He’s even running for congress. What isn’t Polis doing these days? It seems everything.

In this podcast conversation, we caught up with Polis to discuss his history in business, his run for congress, a recent visit to Iraq, healthcare reform, and much more. Have a listen!

Download this podcast.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Politics, Startups |  

Boulder/Denver New Tech Meetup: Location, Location, Location

May 9, 2008

handshake.jpg

The Boulder/Denver New Tech Meetup got started with a little healthy competition this month. A dozen or so youngish men pitched paper airplanes and Patrick Cameron won by a slim margin (against anonymous). If they have a cupcake eating competition next month, I will dominate.

If you’re currently looking for a new job, you might consider a move to Boulder if you’re not here already. Iggli, Public Earth, Slice of Lime, Raspberry Marketing and TrackVia were just a few companies that announced Tuesday night that they’re hiring. Check the jobs board if you’re looking.

Test Common was first to the podium promising the least sexy demo of the night. It may not have been terribly sexy, but it was promising. It’s essentially on demand quality assurance services - a “global community for testers”. Need your software or website tested on demand? Test Common might be a solution for you. When someone from the audience shouted out that they are a dating service the presenters reluctantly concurred, adding, “”we’re match.com—we’re not responsible for what goes on during the date.” Cool idea…if you need some testing done for a short period of time (say two weeks or less) while you’re still in the early stages of a startup, for instance.

Next to the podium was Trackvia, an online database. They’re also hiring, and they are announcing funding soon, too…bonus. TrackVia delivered a powerful presentation that had the audience riveted. The presenter Matt McAdams said, “”anything i want to do with my data… Trackvia is a better way to do it.” He then demonstrated the product by showing how easy it is to search, update records and track changes using the software. Really intriguing. The pricing structure seems competitive, too. At this rate, I think Trackvia will have a strong and growing following very soon. Even TechStars used Trackvia to manage its application process this year.

Yallery.com is the first Social Art Management product and was recently soft-launched. Yallery’s driving purpose is to extend the real-world relationships people form through actual art creation and possession. Yallery’s freemium membership enables artists and collectors to share all of the artworks they have created or possess. Paid subscription memberships are available for artists and collectors who wish to access an additional level of site functionality, or for galleries that host their inventories through the site. I like the look and feel of Yallery. Like many of these companies, Yallery is hiring.

As we’ve been talking about recently, there’s a fair bit of buzz around Brightkite, a location-based social networking site. The founders led us through a demo of the site. It’s live and open to a group of enthusiastic beta testers which are talking a lot about it this week on Twitter. Brightkite allows you to see where people are in your vicinity, to post photos of your current location and to connect with people you know online in real life. The biggest question was about security issues and Brady and Martin demonstrated the privacy policies on the site, which they believe are robust. I’m a daily user of Brightkite (and a bit obsessive about privacy) and so far I have found that it is both feature-rich and safe. David discussed the security features in more detail recently.

A big thank you to Robert Reich of Me.dium for organizing this meetup. He presented on Me.dium’s new search technology which is still in pre-alpha (Colorado Startups covered Me.dium in 2006). The idea has a lot of potential–it essentially conducts searches that are based on “freshness” of a topic rather than the usual criteria. It looks like they’ll be able to use their current product, which monitors what sites its users are visiting (and which links they’re clicking,) to develop the search function. Robert emphasized that the product is still in its very early stages, but the potential is great for this new philosophy on search.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

Brightkite: A Colorful Addition to the Downtown Denver Startup Scene

May 9, 2008

Brightkite, a 2007 Techstars company, has been getting a bit of time in the spotlight recently. Just this week, Colorado Startups did an in-depth profile of the company, too.

In this video, Brady and Martin give us some insight into the company (and its brief visit to Salt Lake City) as well as their ambitious plans for their new back porch. The company is located in downtown Denver, and they are hiring developers to keep up with demand.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |