Open Source Bridge, a success

June 21, 2009 at 4:45 pm | Posted in Sofware Startup | 3 Comments
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The Open Source Bridge Conference made its debut last week at the Oregon Convention Center.  Over 450 attendees gathered to share ideas, learn from each other and strengthen open source communities.  The conference itself was an all volunteer effort that included dozens of organizers and volunteers that worked countless hours to make the event such a success.

Much has been written about the actual conference by better writers than myself so I will leave that level of detail to them.  I suggest you check out the article on ReadWriteWeb titled “Open Source Bridge is a Huge Success“.  Doug Coleman does a great job summarizing the conference and providing more resources to satisfy your information curiosity.

As for this blog post, I wanted to give you a little more flavor from the perspective of the people involved in the event.  On Friday I wandered the halls and spoke to several folks to get an attendee take on the event.  The response from the random group I spoke to was a resounding thumbs up for the conference.

One person in particular summed up the event for him rather eloquently.  He said  “It is refreshing to come to Portland and be around a group of smart people that want to share ideas and collaborate.”  He explained to me that where he came from the tech community was large and fiercely competitive to the point where people  didn’t share great ideas.  He said “Portland has been so refreshing, I’m jealous of this tech community.”  When speaking of conference highlights he said that the hallway time between sessions and table discussions with open source luminaries, community leaders and “the good people of Portland” made the conference memorable.

Another person I met was astounded that people weren’t in the halls during sessions.  He said that typically people spend a lot of time mulling around and not attending sessions.  He was amazed that at this conference the talks were so enticing and the content so compelling that the hallways were ghost towns and the sessions were full of participation.  The phrase he used was “What a breath of fresh air that so many people really just want to learn.”

What else can I say?  Not much, those two examples pretty much speaks volumes for the conference.

On the organizers side I’d like to congratulate the entire team for a job well done. Selena, Jake, Audrey, Rick, Reid, Igal and the dozens more – your dedication is admirable!   Although this was an all volunteer run conference, it came off as a professionally coordinated event.  O’Reilly has nothing on you guys!  Starting with a terrific web site, transparent proposal system, easy registration all the way to the hot coffee in the session areas and coordinated events like Beer & Blog and Strange Love Live the event was first class.

If you missed the conference this year, then start saving now so you can attend next year.  My prediction is that this conference will grow by leaps and bounds because it’s truly about the content, it’s about the attendee  and about the experience.

Greenlight Greater Portland, no place for start-ups

June 15, 2009 at 6:08 am | Posted in Sofware Startup | 4 Comments
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Every heard of GreenLight Greater Portland?  Don’t worry, I hadn’t really known of it until Rick Turoczy at Silicon Florist graciously invited me to hang out with a few other start-up types and invade the suit and tie world of economic development.  The annual meeting was held on June 11th at the Portland Art Museum.  The Greenlight organization is a private sector led economic development initiative.  According to their website:

Greenlight’s mission is to promote the greater Portland-Vancouver MSA to bring good companies and jobs to the region and to support and grow the diverse businesses that have made their home here.

As I descended the grand stairs to the ballroom I knew I was going to be out of my element all day long.  Black suits, power skirts and lapel pins filled the overlapping chairs wall to wall.  Several hundred people were in attendance for this second annual gathering to discuss regional economics and the city of Portland’s new economic development strategy.

The main attraction of the morning discussion was the introduction of the City’s new economic development strategy by Mayor Sam Adams.  Sam opened by getting the room to pledge that Portland would not be the last city to exit the recession.  He then boldly announced that the new economic development strategy would yield 10,000 new jobs to the Portland area over the next 5 years.  Rightly the Mayor explained that unless the city’s economy was strong and thriving, we would not be able to fund the quality of life that has come to be expected here.  He explained how 5 years worth of projects have been fast tracked to be completed  over the next 24 months.  He discussed the dismal 30% unemployment rate in the construction trade and explained how the city has helped to streamline the permitting process and how they are extending building permits to help companies get back to work once the funds started moving again.

As Mayor Adams began to introduce the strategic economic development plan he said that the city must focus on the opportunities for the greatest growth.  Then he made a back handed comment that I’m sure won’t be much appreciated by the likes of Stumptown, Widmer or Bridgeport.  He said “We can’t all buy and sell beer and coffee to each other and maintain our quality of life.”  Mr. Mayor, I know you were trying to be funny – but these companies actually employ people, they pay mortgages and they put kids through school.  Please show a little respect for companies who call Portland home.

The mayor then introduced Erin Flynn who discussed the strategic development plan.  She talked about the focus on four industries: Cleantech, Advanced Manufacturing, Software and Activewear.  As the discussion continued it was apparent that the focus was on trying to convince big companies to bring jobs to Portland.  There were two offshoots to the plan that talked about Urban Innovation and Neighborhood Business Vitality discussing green building initiatives and “20 minute neighborhoods” where residents can have reliable access to goods and services.

Erin then showed a video about why Portland is such a great place to locate a company or to re-invest in existing companies.  Throughout these discussions a common theme emerged.  In the marketing materials that hype up Portland, the economic development teams are not shy to use Portland’s creative community as a draw.  The materials and videos talk about how creatives like software developers, graphic artists and open source communities all have gravitated to Portland because of it’s “cool” factor.

As the rest of the plan was revealed and the city talked about building a “living” building, investing in workforce development and expanding exports, there was no discussion of helping the cottage industry of creative types or entrepreneurs and start ups.

When the floor was opened for Q&A, Eva Schweber asked a very pointed question about the lack of discussion around the tech community and support for building on that community.   As the speaker on stage looked into the sky for help, Mayor Adams stood up and took the microphone to respond.  His response was short and to the point.  The plan did not provide for the strengthening or incubation of the Portland indie tech community.  I’m sure that as Eva walked back to her seat she was a bit disappointed because of the expectations that were set during a meeting with Mayor back on May 18th. During that meeting the group was very positive that the Mayor understood the opportunity and they felt that they had gained the support from the city to help bolster the tech community.

The rest of the day continued on discussing clean tech and the future impact of stronger higher education system.  The day was then summarized with a luncheon that introduced the 2009 Greater Portland Prosperity Index which provides a plethora of statistics and information on the Portland regional area.   The report was informative and helped to put Portland in perspective to the rest of the country.

Overall the day was informational for this entrepreneur to experience how the city & the suits view their best opportunities for growth.  From the strategic plan and discussions there is great emphasis on enticing companies to expand or relocate to the Portland region.  They are looking to re-train the workforce to fit the needs of those they are pursuing. And there is a desire to attempt to make Portland a centerpiece in the world’s green technology movement.    Some of these goals are tangible and others are just theory.  All in all, I wasn’t moved by the overall plan.

For me it seems the Portland city strategists are missing an obvious opportunity to incubate and encourage the tech community.  Portland already has a substantial base of information workers.  In that group there are entrepreneurs and leaders that have the potential to build the next $100M software company or dozens of $10M software companies.

Even the smallest of software companies create an ecosystem by not only employing workers at higher than average wages, but they also use services from providers like the independent graphic artists or the specialized iPhone programmers.  By fostering a tightly knit tech community the city could effectily help to keep money moving throughout the veins of the Portland region on an ongoing basis.

As the strategic plans progresses to the execution stage my hope is that the city decides to re-align some of their activities to foster growth in the indie tech scene.  As an entrepreneur creating a started called MioWorks, I know it’s up to me to build a business, drive revenue and become profitable quickly.  I would hope that the city can see that they have the opportunity to help foster the tech community so that startups and creatives can easily connect to one another, have access to other businesses to help generate revenue quicker and that they have a fair chance at attracting angel or venture capital financing.

I’m still optimistic that the Portland tech community and the independent creatives will figure out a way to band together and leverage our collective talents.  It’s just unfortunate that the City and Economic Development teams don’t see that potential. So my final report on GreenLight Greater Portland, is that they just don’t see a place for start-ups in their overall plan.

Funding & revenue = chicken & egg

May 15, 2009 at 7:07 pm | Posted in Sofware Startup | 1 Comment
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Over the past quarter I have been investigating different types of financing that may be available for today’s technology entrepreneur.  I looked at this challenge from the perspective of a brand new software company ready with their first product and preparing to enter the marketplace.   Here is the summary of my research:

You are on your own until you are earning money.

I’m sure that this is no surprise, but many of the entrepreneurs I meet have their hopes set on raising an Angel round to get over the start up hump. Traditionally Angel investors believed in teams of people and their ideas.  They invested small amounts frequently and spread their risk over many opportunities.  This environment is changing.  Angels are congregating into groups and those groups are aggregating money and looking for the one big win.  According to several senior advisers I met during my research, the investment flow into pre-revenue companies has nearly stopped.

We all know that getting a business off the ground is expensive and time consuming.  It’s difficult to be a part time entrepreneur and being full time means you have $100k of your own money in the bank to pay the mortgage & expenses.  Unfortunately that’s not the case for most entrepreneurs.  So you have to be creative. You have to set your expectations properly and you have to do what it takes in the short run to get to the goal you set.

What are the alternatives you may ask?   I think that you have a couple choices.  If you already have a job, then you should keep that job to maintain an income.  You’ll spend your weekends and after work hours on your start up and you’ll build the business to a point where you can extract enough revenue to pay the bills.  You may also borrow money from friends and family to pay for the big start up expenses and marketing expenses so that you can turn the corner and build revenue.

The second option is to be a part time consultant while you are a part time entrepreneur.  This option seems more attractive, but in reality is very difficult.  As a consultant you have to go out and find business, and there may not be any business for the services your provide.  You also have to manage all the aspects of that business like marketing, time keeping, billing, etc. This puts you in the position where you are building two businesses.  Not impossible, but difficult for sure.

There is a bright side to all of this, ownership.  By going at it alone you and your team own 100% of your business.  You will retain control over the vision and direction of the company.

Thus, just like Joe the Plumber, Mike’s Pizza shop and Sally’s Beauty Salon, we as technology entrepreneurs are now forced to learn how to make it on our own.

Sponsors – support them or pay up!

April 7, 2009 at 2:26 am | Posted in Sofware Startup | 1 Comment
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Everyone loves a free event.  We take up space and kibitz with our friends, colleagues & associates.  We eat the free food.  We drink the free coffee or adult beverages.  When it comes to the time of the day where the sponsors get their 10 minutes, we turn off. We quickly pull out our iPhones, laptops or anything else that can distract us from the “pitch”.  Then we toss the brochures in the nearest recycling bin and don’t give another moment of thought to the sponsor.

This is a dilemma especially now when things are getting really tight on the financial side. Events cost money, it’s plain and simple.  I overheard that BarcampPDX costs about $10,000 to put on.  Events like Ignite Portland cost a few thousand smackers and even the small events and group meetings have costs associated to them.   As I volunteer  on the sponsorship committee for a few organizations here in Portland I’m hearing a backlash from those that were once loose with the dollars.  The sponsors need return on their investment and they aren’t getting it from us.  Yes it would be nice if the whole world ran like public television, but it doesn’t.  Commercial sponsors want your attention.  With competition rising for every dollar spent, the free events must now compete with Google Adword Campaigns, direct mail campaigns and other ways that companies can find a return.

So what can the Portland technology community learn from this. It’s simple. When you attend a free event that was paid for by sponsors, please keep the good karma flowing.  Here are five suggestions that will keep the money rolling into our projects and keep our tech community thriving:

1.  Visit each of the sponsors web sites and read at least the front page to see what they offer

2. If the sponsor offers something interesting, try it out.  Take advantage of any special offers they gave to your group.

3. Provide feedback.  Many of the sponsors just want to hear from you about your experience, about what you liked and didn’t like.  It doesn’t cost you a penny, yet it provides very valuable feedback to the sponsor.  This may be more than enough for them to feel great about the money they spent on you.

4. If you like something, tell people about it.  Twitter it, blog it, tell it to your friend over beers.  Creating a buzz for sponsors is a great way to help out their cause.  It may be a little tiny 140 characters to you, but to a sponsor – seeing that someone listened and shared is a big boost.   If all the people at the event did this, then the power of the group would compound the return.

5. If you purchase something from a sponsor make sure you let them know that their generosity is what brought you in the door.  Simple, yet I know that I haven’t done it.  I have bought several items from MacForce which I learned about at Ignite Portland.  I have taken friends to the Green Dragon over and over again because they are so friendly to Beer & Blog.  For me the list goes on and just like you I need to let the owners/managers know why they got my business.

If we collectively keep in our shells and don’t enhance the environment for the sponsors, your free events may just dry up.  You’ll see tickets being sold to cover the costs of venues, rentals and minimal amenities.  You’ll see cover charges for drinking venues where we gather.  You’ll see increased costs and you might as well forget about free t-shirts, pizzas and kegs of beers.  Those will be things of the past….unless of course you bring it along yourself.  So what do you say my techie friends?  Get the sponsorship mojo flowing and make your next event a big win for every sponsor that gives you their hard earned money.

Portland Web Innovators – Demolicious April 1, 2009

April 3, 2009 at 4:38 pm | Posted in Sofware Startup | 2 Comments
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No it wasn’t an April fool joke.  The Portland Web Innovators really held their quarterly Demolicious meetup on April 1st.   It seemed that nearly 100 people gathered at gracious host Jive Software to see demonstrations of some of the latest projects here in Portland.

Kicking things off was Benjamin Stover & Jason Grlicky with I need to read this They sum up their application with a rather easy to remember phrase – bookmarks meet to do lists.  The problem they are solving revolves around the multitude of information that we read every day on the Internet.  Blog posts, articles, web pages – through out the course of the day we literally stumble upon too much material to read in the moment.  INTRT solves this problem by allowing you to single click a bookmarklet in your browsers bookmark toolbar.  That quick action will save a link to a post, article or information you found.  I just started using it and I find it very handy.

Next, I had the opportunity to present my current project MioWorks.com. The business problem that drove the development of MioWorks revolves around the challenges of synchronizing & collaborating with clients in the small business.  MioWorks is delivered as a SaaS application and provides a small business with several applications rolled into one.  The business gets an on-line contact manager or simplified CRM that centrally manages information and helps the team stay in sync.  On the other hand, MioWorks provides a customer portal where every contact in the CRM can now collaborate with the company in a one-on-one manner.  From asking questions to making requests and even downloading/uploading files.

Following me was Richard Fobes with Vote Fair Ranking The problem being solved by VoteFairRanking is related to surveys, polls and voting.  According to Richard, VoteFairRanking analyzes not just the top choice but the second, third fourth choices.  This allows VoteFairRanking to provide a better picture of not only the top preference but also second, third, fourth and so on.

Next up was Sam Grover who introduced Avatari, an application that allows you to quickly change your avatar on Friendfeed and Twitter.  Sam started the project as a way to learn how to write a Cocoa application.  Sam would like to extend the application to other services like Facebook but he must wait until they publish an API to allow his application to communicate with it.

Lastly Jason Glaspey gave us a demonstration of BlackTonic App.  The problem being solved by BlackTonic is the ability to remotely present to a client and control the pace of the presentation.  They are focusing their efforts on the vertical they know best – creatives and designers.   We have all used the cumbersome web presentation software in the market today and it looks like the BlackTonic team has found some secret sauce.  The presenter can control the presentation via the web and it doesn’t require any software download or installations for the remote users.  As a matter of fact the remote users can be on desktops, laptops or even iPhones.  All the remote screen change at the same time and screen size is automatically adjusted.  It’s a slick application.  The guys from Blacktonic have left the demo up for a few more days so you can see it.  Go quickly or it will be gone!

If you are interested in how to join Portland Web Innovators visit the web site or look for the next meeting on Upcoming.  You can also look for #PDXWI on Twitter.

HEY STATE: Invest in Oregon Startups NOW!

March 20, 2009 at 7:35 pm | Posted in Sofware Startup | 5 Comments
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Last night over a hundred entrepreneurs crowded into Ned Space to help kick off an effort to develop funding for start-ups in Oregon. The message was clear.  The state should take a small portion of investment dollars and funnel them not into one time projects, but into entrepreneurs that can make a difference.

The brain trust behind the push is Harvey Mathews, Wayne Embree, Josh Friedman and Mark Grimes.  They aim to build a 100 million dollar investment fund that funnels much needed start-up capital into the Oregon communities.

The event started out with Harvey discussing the difficulties that start-ups face obtaining funding in Oregon.  The proposed solution is a fund that helps entrepreneurs make the leap and take their business to the next level.   With all of the talk of the Obama Stimulus Plan it just makes sense that some of the money is directed towards the people that want to create new companies.   The case is simple.  Small businesses employ a hell of a lot of people and could employ a lot more.  It doesn’t take millions of dollars to get a smart entrepreneur down the path to success.   This meeting was all about showing the state of Oregon that there is talent, there are ideas, there are businesses to invest in.

The meeting continued with an open mic night approach allowing entrepreneurs two minutes to discuss what a $250k investment would do for them.  Everyone of the speakers talked about adding jobs here in Oregon.  They averaged 5 new employees per company at an average salary of about $50,000.  (which is typically half salary based upon market rates).  But hey, entrepreneurs are willing to take risk and that’s the beauty of it.    Not only would this infusion of capital help these companies immediately hire out of work Oregonians, it would get them well down the path to building a sustainable company which would have a much wider economic impact in the community.

So you think to yourself, what would be the result of such an investment?  Let’s look at pure numbers.  Let’s say they carve out $30million of the fund to invest in 2009.  That would be roughly 120 start up ideas getting funded at the $250k level.  Based upon the feedback of the entrepreneurs, that would directly put to work 600 local people – immediately.  Now we can put this into perspective.  ODOT is using $234m in stimulus to do transit projects.  They claim it will create 3300 new jobs.  That’s roughly 71k per head.  It’s actually more cost effective to fund start-ups from a pure dollar standpoint, but here is the big difference.  The investment in ODOT projects doesn’t stimulate the economy beyond spending.  When the money runs out, it’s gone.  But with start-ups – there is a big opportunity.  Each of these companies has a chance to create a business that brings much needed tax revenue to the state on an ongoing basis.  If successful, each start-up could expand to employ more and more people over time.

Personally I know that an investment of $250k into the MioWorks.com team would change the dynamics of our business plan.  We would be able to accelerate hiring by at least 6 months and reach profitability much sooner than anticipated.  This would result in employees paying taxes, buying coffees, eating lunch near the office and kick starting out own little part of the economy.

NOTE: If you missed the event yesterday and want your voice heard, go to the Silicon Florist blog and fill out the form.  Hurry up, the info is needed by the team in the next few days.

Startup Exchange – the best two hours of the year

March 18, 2009 at 4:54 pm | Posted in Sofware Startup | 1 Comment
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Last night I attended my first Startup Exchange meetup organized by the Software Association of Oregon.  The meeting was held at the offices of Chime Software hidden away in Portland’s East side warehouse district.  The Startup Exchange is for entrepreneurs only, no service providers allowed.  It’s a chance for peers to get together, ask questions and share their knowledge.  The group consisted of both technical and business folks representing start ups ranging from one man ventures to several year old thriving multi-million dollar businesses.

The format of the meeting is loose.  We started out enjoying an adult beverage in a green glass (well it was St. Patrick’s day!!) while meeting and networking. The organizers made a few announcements and clued us into an event on Thursday 3/19/2009 at 5pm called STARTUP NOW: What would you do with $250,000.

Then after a round of introductions we split off into two groups, one focused on business issues and one focused on technical issues.  Mentors split themselves between the groups and off we went.  I went with the business group since my start up MioWorks.com is just about to enter beta phase and we have most of our technical aspects covered.

For the next hour we went around the room.  Each entrepreneur had the opportunity to ask the group a question, or ask for advice on any topic.  It was really good to see how so many others are challenged every day with identical issues.  As the discussion progressed and the group offered advice it was clear to see how valuable this session was starting to become.  Even though I only asked one question, the issues plaguing the other entrepreneurs were issues that I deal with too.  As a matter of fact, it was a reminder of the old adage “you don’t know what you don’t know”.   For me, this was one of the best meetings of the year for one simple reason.  It made me challenge my existing assumptions on a few topics and apply a new filter to my logic.

After the session there was a little more time for networking and then out the door to get to the next meeting on my agenda.   If you are an entrepreneur in Portland building a business, you should put the Startup Exchange on your calendar.  Without giving up any of your stock or hard saved money you will have an opportunity to gain insight from people who have already been down your path.

To join the Startup Exchange group you don’t need to be a member of SAO.  You can request access to the online networking group or contact Bryce Yonker of SAO with any questions.

Lunch 2.0 Portland Style March 11, 2009

March 11, 2009 at 11:38 pm | Posted in Sofware Startup | 4 Comments
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Today was the eleventh twelfth installment of the Portland version of Lunch 2.0 and it just keeps getting better.  Although not an official count, I would say that approximately 150 people filled the offices of today’s gracious sponsor Opensourcery to enjoy a tasty feast of Mexican goodness.   Attendees had plenty of space to move around and chat with one another.  In between bites of food, I managed to meet at least a dozen new people, all of which had something interesting to share.   During the short presentation time a few interesting items were discussed that I’d like to share with you:

* OpenSourceBridge.org is putting on an open source conference July 17-19 right here in Portland, Oregon.   They are looking for volunteers, sponsors, talk proposals and registrants.  You can visit their web site for more details (disclosure: I am a volunteer on the Marketing/Sponsorship team)

* Opensourcery (our excellent hosts for today’s event – a big thank you to them) told us about a new application they wrote called “CLOVE”.  This application is planned to be made available under the GPL open source license.  From the really short demo, it appears that the application helps you understand if you are giving your clients the love they deserve. (that was a paraphrase from the demo-dude)  Although not ready just yet, Opensourcery will provide links to the application once it is out there for everyone to use.  I’ll make an update when that information becomes available.  It does however look like a rather interesting way to keep track of all that pesky email that it takes to keep a business relationship moving forward.

*Software Association of Oregon gave us a heads up about their new health care plans that have been able to arrange for even the smallest of organizations.  Visit their website for more information.

For those of you not familiar with Lunch 2.0 – it’s basically a free geek event where you can get out of the office at lunch time and go mingle with others in your industry.   The event was started in Silicon Valley and has spread to other cities.  Here in Portland it was started on February 27th of 2008.  You can follow the location of the next Lunch 2.0 on the Silicon Florist Blog and make sure if you are coming you RSVP on Upcoming.  The next installment of Lunch 2.0 will be on April 8th at the Green Dragon, hosted by my  startup project MioWorks.com

Ignite Portland 5 – Lots of fun…

February 20, 2009 at 3:47 pm | Posted in Sofware Startup | 1 Comment
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Last night I attended Ignite Portland 5 along with about 700 of my new closest friends. Sponsored by Legion of Tech, this free event was paid for through donations of about twenty five sponsors and held at the awesome Baghdad Theater in South East Portland.

Walking into the event I  didn’t know what to expect.  I had heard that the evening would be a series of rapid fire presentations. This time the subjects ranged from the history of fonts to how to kill three chickens in three years.  Interesting….indeed.

The event opened with Brady Forrest giving us a history lesson on Ignite.  Back in 2006 Brady banded together a group into a small bar in Seattle.  At that time they called it innovation night.  The original idea was a tech variety show that eventually streamlined itself into a more simplified structure of 5 minute talks.  As the night became popular they played with the name.  From Innovation Night they nick named it “inno night”.  As you can tell that really did not roll off the tongue, so they morphed it again to innovation group night.  This lead to the web 2.0 interpretation IG night.  And since funky urls are the failure of many a company, they simplified the url one final time to ignite.

So what is this event?  Ignite is really about sharing ideas.  It’s about giving a dozen or so presenters the stage for five minutes to motivate, energize or entertain the audience.  Each presenter provides 20 slides that randomly advance to fill up 5 minutes.  This makes for interesting presentations from amateur speakers.  Some go with the flow and ham it up while others stumbled at the unpredictability.  All in all it makes for some entertaining moments.

Last nights event was rather entertaining.  The talks began with Bram Pitoyo teaching us the secret history of fonts.  Jim Ayala showed us how a big bang started out the world while Aaron Hockley scared the crap out of everyone by exposing what is really behind that little “accept terms” button we all have to click to use online services.

Damin Tarlow continued with an eye opening discussion on how buildings are the biggest drain on energy and provide the greatest avenue for improvement. Issac Potoczny-Jones gave the geeks an overview of Android while he placated the rest of us with photos of cute kittens.  Jayson Falkner talked about DNA and John Metta entertained the audience with a talk on how to stop working on “free” projects and go make some money.

A.L. Venable showed us that riding the bus is as much about entertainment as it is about transportation while Tara Horn brought the reality of being a refugee to the audience with a well planned, uncomfortable at times, look at the resettlement process. J-P Voilleque continued the talks explaining why Bridge should be the next game of choice in Portland, appealing to the techie crowd with big numbers of possibilities in the randomness.

Russel Senior made a compelling case for public owned fiber to replace the last mile of technology that connects every business and every home to broadband services.  Kate “the great” Folsom got right in our face about bad writing.  Chris Sullivan exposed Ham Radio as a geeks tinker toy set creating an environment of innovation and experimentation, all over 1200 baud.  Sarah Gilbert mesmerized us with her fluid rhythm as she explained that ditching your car for a bike when you have kids is not child abuse.

As the evening began to wind down Jerry Ketel took the stage and use well timed humor along with current events to teach all of us how to know if you are a narcissist.  We knew that there was no way we could go an entire evening of presentations without at least one slam on Mayor Adams.  Kudos Jerry, well played.   Selena Deckelmann shared here experience on how to kill three chickens in three years and wrapping up the evening Pete Grillo gave the most enthusiastic talk about omelettes I’ve ever seen.

Does all this sound strange to you?  Entertaining?   Well then make sure you come out to the next Ignite Portland or an Ignite in your local area.  Ignite Portland 6 is scheduled for July 16th, 2009 and promises to continue the tradition of a great night out.  You can even visit the web site and submit your own proposal for a 5 minute talk.  Go ahead, give it a try you may get your chance to dazzle the audience.

The Ignite movement is spreading and has already grown to 30 community driven events around the world.  If you don’t have an Ignite event in your city then band together your own group and get it started.  You can find assistance and information on the Oreilly web site.

Telling your story – episode 1

February 4, 2009 at 10:59 pm | Posted in cloud computing, Software as a Service, Sofware Startup | 2 Comments
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Over the past few months I have been watching new technologies come to life  in the silicon forest of Portland.  Although I see some great new solutions that actually have a fighting chance, it has become clear to me that messaging is something that eludes even the smartest of the entrepreneurs.  It seems to me that there is almost a void when it comes to the concept of marketing with the small teams.  The focus remains on the technology for the duration of the project and only at the very end of the cycle the team spends a morning at a coffee shop trying to figure out how to market what they have built.   In a three part series of posts beginning with this one, I plan to  offer a bit of my assistance to help the young company come to grips with the fact that marketing must be part of the bigger process.  Marketing must be something you think of when you start your project, as your build your project and even past the day you launch the project.  Marketing isn’t just using twitter to tell your peeps about your cool application, it’s a process that takes some thought and process.

Now don’t get me wrong.  Marketing isn’t always about yelling “Sunday Sunday Sunday, big monster trucks in the mud.”  Marketing is as subtle as a simple story that explains what you are doing.  Unfortunately many think that marketing is rather simple and doesn’t really require much thought.  This would be yet another one of those mistakes that the entrepreneur can make.  Creating your story takes a little patience on your part and an understanding of what your target market wants to hear.  Creating the story is more than telling the world why you build something or what it actually does.  Telling the story is explaining why the software will help the user in terms that the USER understands.

Let me offer a scenario to make my point.  You are at a cocktail party and you are mingling around the group.  As you make your way across the room you are approached by the slick salesman wearing his pimped out suit and shiny shoes.  He introduces himself and starts to tell you all the great things about his condo project.  The earth quake proof building and how it took a design team 5 years to architect it.  He talks about the two story glass pool.  He talks about the great access to public transportation and the soundproof walls and the high speed elevators.  He goes on and on about the condo project.  You sip your drink and smile politely waiting for the opportunity to escape.  After he divulges all these great amenities he asks you if you would like to stop by to see the project.  You politely decline, telling him you like your home and aren’t in the market for a new one.    Finally you walk away and think to yourself, wow that’s 5 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

Let’s make the correlation to what I see with software companies.  Many of the companies are just like this sales guy.  They start to spew out feature after feature hoping that something in there will gain interest by someone (I think we call this throwing s*&t against the wall to see what sticks).  They think to themselves “If I show all the features or how many whiz bang buttons I have, the audience will see for themselves that our solution is vastly superior and they will use it instead of the competitor.”   DING DING DING….wake up! This won’t happen.  Success isn’t a magical event.  It’s a planned strategy that takes time, hard work and great timing.

To create your story, the first step is to define your audience.   I won’t harp too much on target market, but if you have read my previous posts you are starting to see a pattern.  Once you know who you are speaking to, you will have the insight to speak to them in the terms that they will understand.  Your story should use words that make sense to the audience. If you are speaking to small business owners, drop the techno-jargon.  If you are speaking to doctors, talk about patients, medical records and insurance forms.    Do a little research about your target markets and find out how they refer to the issues or challenges that you solve.  Create a list of these keywords to use later in the process just like you would create simple functions to use later in your code.

As an example, if your application manages documents then get more specific based upon your audience.  In the case of MioWorks.com, we help to manage documents between companies and their customers across six verticals. But instead of just saying documents we look deeper at our target markets and find out the types of documents they use on a day to day basis.  This allows us to talk to our customers in terms that they will associate with and easily draw conclusions between our software and their business.

Now that you know how to “talk the talk” it’s time to take a walk through your own solution.  Put on your customer hat and view your application as if you were a customer.  Think about a day in the life of that person.  Think about how they would actually use your software.  One ritual I always perform with my applications is to physically set up an instance as each customer type.  I then try to mimic their use of the solution.  I also try to find a few people I know to help me simulate the role of the customer.   Afterward we have a chat about what we thought were the most compelling reasons for using the software.  At the end of this session you should have the foundation to your messaging and this is what we need to move onto the next step of creating your story.

Stay tuned for episode 2.

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