Inventing for the Rest of Us » angels

Selling My Company 2.0

Bryan Daigle — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:50:02 +0000

After weeks of negotiation hoopla, legal paperwork, and minutae, I can finally get something off my chest. My first company (and one true love), IdeaTango, was recently bought by another industry player, InventBay.com. Here is today’s press release.

I’m taking a cue from Norm Brodsky, who wrote about his highly publicized acquisition in Inc Magazine while it was still taking place (and falling through and then taking place again). Because of its public nature, I can’t get too much into the details, but I’d still like to share my experience with some of you who might find yourself in the same position one day.

After two years of not knowing what would happen the day-after-tomorrow, it’s finally good to know that my partners and I have had a successful exit. That doesn’t mean that we won’t continue to work for the acquiring company, we will, it just means that our few years of doubt and hard work, have had their first payoff. The second payoff will be in working with InventBay (a publicly traded pink sheet company) to maximizing their value to shareholders and owners.

It’s funny though, because there were definitely days that I didn’t know how much longer IdeaTango would be around. Usually it had to do with cash. Sometimes I had to reach into my own pockets. Later, I had to ask for help from my inner circle of friends and family. As you can see my earlier posts, we even thought about approaching professional investors.

We made the decision to sell the company for three reasons. First, we realized we needed more resources ($$) to take IdeaTango to its full potential. Second, we realized that we were running low on both the time and energy needed to pitch, get rejected by, and then acquire some investors. The time horizon for selling a company like ours would save 75% of the time. Third, my partners and I sacrificed for two years (no salary, no benefits) and needed a shot in financial arm to rejuvenate us.

It was not an easy decision to make, and of course I would have liked IdeaTango be sustained and grow using its own internal cash flow. But with a model like ours, which requires a long time horizon, that just wasn’t possible. Perhaps that’s a lesson learned for my next startup.

Overall though, my partners and investors were happy with the deal. Myself, Pablo, and maybe even Lisa will continue in some capacity with the acquiring company.

Feel free to ask me questions about how my experience might apply to your situation.

- Bryan Daigle

IdeaTango Earns Award at Rice Alliance Web 2.0 Investor Forum

Bryan Daigle — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 07:28:03 +0000

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

Moving IdeaTango Blog

Bryan Daigle — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:28:30 +0000

Because we now have blogging capability on the NEW IdeaTango.com, we’re moving the IdeaTango.com blog here. Not only will I continue writing the blog, but now famous inventor of the French Twister, and partner of IdeaTango.com, Lisa Lloyd will be sharing her wisdom on the new blog.
This blog at bryandaigle.com will become my personal blog (less corporate) to share my thoughts with inventors, entrepreneurs, and to anyone else who will listen. Let me know what y’all think of our new site, we’re super excited!

Bryan Daigle

Where is my laser pointer?

Bryan Daigle — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 19:41:32 +0000

We recently pitched our company and business model to a group in Houston. The main purpose of the venue was to practice our presentation as we’re thinking more about getting investors later this year and to get feedback about how we can improve the presentation. Overall, the reviews were very positive, and the feedback very helpful. We’ve posted the audio file on our site, but restrict access (so our competitors won’t know our secret weapons). If you’d like to listen to it, send me an email. Investors, if you’d like to write us a check, paypal me!

Bryan Daigle

90 second elevator pitch to venture capitalists & angels

Bryan Daigle — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 02:23:00 +0000

Last week IdeaTango.com presented a 90 second elevator pitch at the Rice Alliance Information Technology Forum to 350 venture capitalists, investors, entrepreneurs, and others. According to the Rice Alliance blog, out of 40 companies, IdeaTango was a “notable standout” which was very exciting. We greatly enjoyed the opportunity to spread the word about our unique community where ideas are the currency, and everyone benefits. Several people came up to us after the event and expressed their interest in our idea . . . no pun intended.
Although the main purpose for the event was to garner interest from venture capitalists and investors, that was not our purpose. Although we will eventually need funding to spread the word about our innovative website and inventive members, this was more of an “hello, my name is” affair. We were also happy to speak with other thriving startups such as Tenant Market, OurTrueHome, and De Nova Labs, all of which have very cool products to be released in the next year.
We also had a booth at the event, which gave us an excellent opportunity to give some site demos, explain our vision in more detail, and hand out some of our marketing materials. The notable standout was the “100% Organic Innovation” bumper magnet. Speaking of which, if anyone wants to spread the word about ideatango.com through a bumper magnet, email us and we’ll mail you one, free of charge. All in all it was a great event to introduce ourselves, communicate our vision, and meet other startups.

Bryan Daigle

Good news for ideatango.com

Bryan Daigle — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 22:57:00 +0000

This week I found out I’ll be presenting at the Rice Alliance Information Technology Venture forum on December 6th & 7th. I’ll be one of the 50 companies that gives a 90 second “elevator” pitch. 90 seconds is a long elevator ride, so I’m calling it my stairwell pitch. So I’m really excited about that opportunity to practice. And I’m really excited about our new message for IdeaTango.com. We’re taking more of a online creative solution approach to our model. We always had the tools in development, it was just a matter of communicating the power. And I had an epiphany the other day that we’ll be almost the same as an online graphics outsourcing firm that bands together graphic artists, except we’ll band together creative & practical folks to provide companies with invention, product, and business ideas. We’ve been getting a really good response with our new message so expect to hear more.
I hope everyone is going to have a nice, peaceful Thanksgiving with the fam. I’ll be flying to Singapore with my girlfriend to visit my parents. We’re also taking a side trip to Myanmar (previously Burma) and that should be incredibly interesting considering they only opened up to the outside world a couple years ago. Maybe North Korea will do the same thing China, Myanmar, and Vietnam have all done? Or maybe Kim Jong Il will be as crazy as usual and build his nuclear toy arsenal. I’ll see everyone again in December.

Bryan Daigle

Monks in Burma