Well, the title says it all. Today we walked away with the top honor given at the Rice Alliance Information Technology & Web 2.0 Investor Forum. Essentially the investor audience voted us one of the “Most Promising” companies.
Our award is largely in part to Lisa Lloyd, who gave a fantastic elevator pitch to a crowd of 300 at Rice University, in Houston, TX.
Not to put all the spotlight on ourselves, several other innovative companies also walked away with the award. Notable standouts were opmom.com, a social networking website that connects and organizes Moms. Another good presenter was podcastready.com, a service that simplifies creating, listening, and subscribing to podcasts. Typically Apple has dominated this space, but podcastready is hoping to simplify the podcast process even further.
The headline speaker was Jeff Henley, Chairman of Oracle. Here are some notes from the talk (we’ll have an audio link up here tomorrow).
- Worked with successful entrepreneurs i.e. Larry Ellison
- Oracle has $5B cash flow
- Larry didn’t want to dilute, wanted control
- Software can do it with little capital.
Steps for successful startup
-Need a good idea
-Need smart people, don’t forget to look overseas
-Work hard & fast
- Google monetized existing technology
- Bill Gates bought IP
- Larry Ellison borrowed (legally) ideas
- Oracle wants niches or way to scale up
- No VC Oracle fund anymore
Here are some other semi-legible notes from speakers, presenters, and the Venture Capitalist feedback panel. We’ll have audio files & photos posted here in a few days.
New Venture Presentations worth noting:
Tritaur, creators of Opmom.com
Social networking site that help moms interact, communicate, & organize their day. Helps brands get word of mouth awareness. The rest of the info can be pulled from the program.
PodcastReady – great speaker, already have VC money
Player that integrates & makes podcasting easier.
Whiteboard Labs
Created MotionNotes, kind of widget that allows user to attach a personal message to a video or widget. Say you have a youtube video of you doing something stupid. You could preface the video with a motion note that says “don’t try this at home” or “I was drunk”.
VC Feedback panel to New Venture Presentations – see program for panel members
OpMom
How get users? – Oprah, book club
Get online advertising guru
Get 75-100k users before going to VC
Need to figure out how generate big audience with little $.
Risk types – market risk, technology risk, execution risk. Mitigate those.
PodcastReady
How get user adoption?
Go for mass consumers or enterprise users?
Whiteboard
Focus on consumers or enterprise?
What’s the product roadmap for future products
How to integrate into ecosystems – facebook, shutterfly, flikr
Use focus groups for user interface improvement, huge issue since going up against apple
Cool elevator pitch companiest:
IdeaTango OF COURSE!!
Fluid innovation - site that helps big companies license their patents
m@keido - sync your cell phone data
openteams - my buddy Tory Gattis, wiki-like software to make big companies more entrepreneurial
Qtags - keyword-based text messaging programs
Sk*rt - women’s site for what’s cool
Tipdish - connecting advertisers & PR w/ social media influencers
Youdesignit kinda like threadless.com
Afternoon Keynote speaker from DataCert. DataCert is an IT solution that helps companies reduce, track, & analyze legal expenditures. Read program for more info.
Started in .com boom
Bootstrapped because had to
Investors currently like vertical plays, didn’t like that in 90s.
Founder must
Articulate a message & communicate it
Build team
Convince everyone around him that the business will succeed
To get noticed, make noise in market.
Form partnerships w/ competitors.
Make a “good enough product” and then improve it.
Always takes longer than expected.
Turned down investors when previous investors would lose share value.
Watch out for strategic investor with “first offer and right of refusal” built into contract
Blair Garrou – DFJ Mercury, closing speaker
Likes capital efficient deals
Invested in Podcastready, unwired nation
Consumers want: personalized info, stay in touch with others, entertainment
Merger & acquisition best exit strategy right now w/ IPO tough due to Sarbanes and Private Equity in the tubes from the last few months.
What’s hot: ad network tools & platforms, central communications, foreign knockoffs of youtube/myspace/etc
Facebook ecosystem big, but won’t last forever
Likes community in a box – i.e. Ning
Is Web 2.0 a fad?
Too much capital w/ too few good deals
How to monetize
100k users not much anymore
Adolescent fickleness
What is Web 2.0 about?
Communication, self expression, shared knowledge & opinion, honesty, not reinventing the wheel
Big 5 acquirers – AOL, Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo, Microsoft
Google in league of its own
Get 100k users before talking to VC
You can listen to some of the recordings on IdeaTango.com. For more information, check out the Houston Startup Blog at www.startuphouston.com.
Happy Startup-ing!
Bryan Daigle
Tags: angel investor, rice alliance, rice university, venture capitalist
November 9, 2007 at 9:35 am
Great wrap-up, Bryan - and thanks for the OpMom mention! It really was a fantastic event and showcases not only the entrepreneurial IT groundswell in Houston, but also the growing recognition of Houston as a hub for these types of ventures. And well done on your company presentation, I enjoyed learning about IdeaTango and seeing you all in action in front of the audience. Cheers!
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