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CTEK Angels Live! (The Podcast)

November 13, 2006

Podcast episode #7 is a six part podcast covering the CTEK Angels Live event from October 17th. About 400 people attended and three companies pitched to about 25 angel investors. As far as anybody knows, this is the first time an event like this has been done in public and been podcasted.

Since the event was two hours long, I’ve broken it up into six parts so you can focus in on what you’re most interested in. Here’s the deal:

I applaud CTEK for exposing their process to the public so folks can get a sense of what it’s like to pitch and how the process works. Of course, these pitches typically only get a company noticed (or not) and the real work comes later during one-on-ones between the investors and entrepreneurs. It’s nowhere near this easy for the entrepreneurs - nobody writes a check after a first pitch like this. But it gives you a sense of how investors think, so if you’re seeking angel investment or will be in the future, it’s probably worth listening to each of the three pitches at a minimum.

Sorry that this took nearly a month to get out. I just got the audio from DU a few days ago, and it took me a few nights to mix it all. I am now officially sick of editing podcasts, and am going to bed.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

Six things I learned at BarCamp today

November 11, 2006

snipshot_iwkjbk9cl.jpgToday was the second Denver area BarCamp (previous coverage here), and I found this one to be really interesting. Thanks to the sponsors and organizers for a great event. Let’s do more!

Here are six interesting things I learned today at BarCamp:

6. Single sign on and identity management still sucks. There were several people in attendance who were struggling to figure out if they should adopt some type of identity management standard, just build their own sign on, or both. Sxip and OpenID are two interesting solutions that were discussed. I was wishing that Andre Durand or someone from Ping Identity was here to join the conversation. We had an interesting discussion about the laws of identity and how they relate to these platforms. Many people in the room seemed to think that the issues associated with managed identity and the trust required to make it work may be a bigger headache than the advantages that would otherwise be gained.

5. “Flash vs Ajax” lives. First a quick rant. This was a bit of a sales pitch from Adobe, and was more one way than you would expect at BarCamp. I’d encourage the presenter (Kevin Hoyt) to make the discussion more interactive in the spirit of BarCamp in the future. Anyhoo, it was still pretty damn interesting. This debate has been raging for a while, but it was good to get an update from one of Adobe’s own Flash specialists, Kevin Hoyt. Kevin showed a little Ajaxy web demo that grabbed 1,000 rows from a database, which took about 3 seconds to execute. Kevin talked about scaling of Ajax apps and the problem associated with the fact that in the end Javascript is handling the work. He showed the same demo using the Flex Ajax Bridge (presumably with the same back end database, etc.) which executed in about a tenth of a second. Basically, while Flash still uses the browser stack, it doesn’t have to depend on Javascript to parse and handle the resulting XML. He also showed that with 6,000 rows, the Ajax app really started to break down with browser timeouts, etc. after about 30 to 45 seconds. The Flash demo, of course, returned 20,000 records in about half a second. Cool little demo that makes it pretty clear that Flash is something to consider if scale is an issue for your Ajax app.

4. Some new web sites. At any conference (ok, unconference) like this, I always seem to learn about some cool web sites out there that I didn’t know about before. My favorites from today were Delicious Monster, Steep And Cheap, Motion Based, Swarm, and Getting Real (book).

3. Using Me.dium is pretty cool at a setting like BarCamp. Half a dozen people in the room at Barcamp where Me.dium users, and it was neat to be able to see what they were looking at as the conversation in the room meandered. I could see flocks of people looking at related articles that I would not have otherwise found. This isn’t necessarily the reason behind Me.dium (that’s here) but it’s a neat one none the less. It’s also really fun to “tailgate” people you know around the web while you’re bored between sessions.

2. Functionality is the new beauty. Andrew Hyde led a discussion of web design trends. He cycled through a bunch of sites asking how we felt about the look of each site. People booed at the MySpace design, cheered for the Google design, and generally dug Digg. What I think the room really missed was that that there are two types of responses to web site design. The creative types in the room (designers, Mac freaks, etc) were really looking at the graphic design to make their judgement and they focus in on things like rounded corners and shadows. But I would argue that most people in the room (and certainly most people on the web) don’t focus in on that. It’s secondary to the emotions and overall experience that the site provides. Really, functionality is the new beauty. How else do you explain the runaway success of dead simple sites like CraigsList and Google, or sites with hideous and overbearing designs like MySpace?

1. It’s dead simple to make up a web 2.0 business plan. Ari Newman and Team Hyper pitched a fictional new company, HOTT (Home of Tomorrow’s Technology) and it’s new product Knife Robot. Given just a few keywords to work from, Team Hyper came up with the company, business plan, revenue model, and investor pitch just moments before as part of the “Half Baked” competition. The company provides RaaS (Robots as a Service) and delivers Google Adwords on the robotic knife LCD. But wait, there’s more! HOTT is also introducing an affiliate program with local grocery stores. “How do we make money?” Ari asked out loud, and then followed immediately by saying “Next Slide Please” which of course detailed an amazing hockey stick effect. Fantastic! The Hypersites guys then figured they’d show off and threw up a pretty snazzy KnifeRobot web site (including a blog, online store, etc.) in about 45 minutes in front of the room. There were a total of 5 such spoofs including MilitaryViolin.com (including RAIV, a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Violins), Daily Trace (”no need for a chip in your ass” to track your wife), AirOil (A bottled spray to help start that awkward web 2.0 conversation - “one bottle lasts a full funding cycle”), and FarmStory (RFID for food - “See where all that shit you’re eating has been before it got on your table”). These Web 2.0 business models showed that we get some pretty damn funny and creative people at Barcamp. I’m sure you could license one of these ideas on the cheap if you want to implement it for real.

It was a fun and worthwhile event today. Thanks again to everyone who sponsored it or participated.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups | 9 Comments 

CTEK Angels Live recap

October 17, 2006

Despite the bad weather, the CTEK Angels Live event was still packed. About 25 angel investors took the stage and opened up their regular meeting to a live audience of nearly 400 people. Three companies pitched (including Hypersites and Chaperon, both covered here previously), and each of them did a great job under stressful conditions. It’s hard enough to pitch to angel investors and try to explain your business in eight minutes and it’s even harder to do it in front of 400 additional strangers.

After each company made their pitch, the panel of angel investors took turns asking probing questions and seeking clarification or further details. The questions came in rapid-fire fashion, and often related to business model or market size. The presenters did a great job, often pulling up backup slides to address the question more directly. The presenting company then left the room and the “angels only” (+400 listening in) discussion continued. Audience members would later tell me that this was the most interesting part of each segment, because they got to hear the normally private thoughts and concerns that the angels expressed to each other.

“We own a small business and we’re thinking about going after angel funding. It gave us a great look at the kind of questions that investors asked. They were legitimate and fair questions“: Entrepreneur in the audience.

“It was really interesting to see the different perspective of the investors who were looking at opportunities from a very high level. There was so much experience on that panel, it was amazing to watch them dig in.“: Internet entrepreneur with a successful exit looking to build a new startup.

Nobody at CTEK knows of any other highly organized angel group that has ever exposed their process to the public in this way. I applaud CTEK for doing this, and I also think the angels who attended should be thanked personally. Many of them are very private people and obviously worry about everyone knowing their identity. But this was good for entrepreneurs to see, there is no doubt about that.

I’ll follow up in a day or two with a full end-to-end podcast of the event (it takes some time to produce) as well as some post-event reaction from some of the angel investors, presenters, and audience members.

Other bloggers on this event:

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups | 2 Comments