Browse > Home / Archive by tag 'clickcaster'

Overheard

October 16, 2006

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

The view from Room 214

October 5, 2006

James Clark is now working on his fourth startup, a web marketing agency called Room 214 in Boulder.

It’s a great story. The founders of Room 214 (James Clark and Jason Cormier) have a strong PR and web development background. Three years ago, they had a friend who was helping to source manufacturing in China, and so together they set up a company called VitalSourcing. As you can imagine, this is fairly competitive space and VitalSourcing soon realized that search engine optimization would play a large role in any success they would have. Faced with the challenge of marketing their business over the web, James confessed that at that time “we didn’t know what the hell we were doing”. He gathered bids from PR firms that were all over the board in terms of price. Instead of hiring a firm, James dove head first into the mysterious world of web search marketing.

It must have worked. A search today for “china manufacturing” returns VitalSourcing in the first position followed by page after page of competitors.

James explained how Room214 got started: “In normal public relations, there are huge inefficiencies. For many companies, traditional PR is a waste. That’s why we decided to start Room 214 - we wanted to take our expertise and focus in on small growing companies to help them to really leverage the web for marketing purposes.”

On September 24th, Room 214 announced itself to the world. Already, they’re making a difference for some not-so-small customers like Coors, Centura Health, and ViaWest. They provide a range of Internet marketing services such as web site and search optimization, reputation management, and helping companies take advantage of social media. Clients like Alltel are even using Room 214 to get their message out utilizing NFL and Nascar podcasts. Clearly, Room 214 is using their own expertise to get their message out effectively.

Room 214 can act as a consultant, teaching a web savvy team how to best leverage the web. However, the company is finding that most of their customers want to completely outsource these functions.

One of the products offered by Room 214 is really compelling for startups that may not be completely in touch with new media and the related technologies (not you, you’re reading this blog by RSS, right?). It’s called RSSready, and out of the box it allows organizations to monitor and join the conversations about them that are already taking place on the edge of the web (I’m sure their copy will turn up this article, for example). Many young companies may not realize that their customers are already talking on blogs, Myspace, or in specialized forums that simple Google searches will not turn up.

Room 214 also publishes a site called Capture the Conversation which provides some useful free resources on these topics. There are video tutorials on creating online press rooms, using RSS readers to monitor what conversations are occurring, working with PR firms (or not), and more.

“Listen, you can learn how to set up an RSS reader yourself and track what people are saying about you. It’s not that hard.” - Founder James Clark on why Room 214 created CaptureTheConversation.com

It’s a smart strategy. Room 214 provides white papers and valuable free information to get companies started monitoring new media sources, and RSSready to help you take your first step. Once their customers realize the potential of such sources, they’ll start to “get it” and end up as a Room 214 client pretty fast.

“You don’t just walk into a crowded bar and start yelling. It’s much easier to join a conversation than to start a new one.” - Founder James Clark on how to communicate on the web

In case you haven’t noticed, there is some great work going on in the RSS space here in Colorado. Room 214 and Umbria both play in the services market, while companies like NewsGator and ClickCaster are creating software solutions. It’s been really interesting to watch these companies help transition RSS from a geeks-only technology into a mainstream tool.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups | 3 Comments 

Boulder New Tech Meetup recap

October 4, 2006

Kevin Cawley wrote a great summary of the New Tech Meetup last night on his blog. I would like to thank Robert Reich (of Medium) for organizing this event. I think it’s a great resource for Boulder.

You can watch the video of the event here (less than an hour) thanks to ClickCaster (covered previously). It features Joe Pezzillo showing off the Metify Anthricite web mining desktop toolkit, Alek O. Komarnitsky showing off his grass growing and crazy Christmas light coolness, and Jean McAuliffe talking about Agile (well, let’s say fighting about it with the always interesting and opinionated Dave Taylor).

In addition, I was there showing off one of my (several) pet projects last night called earFeeder. earFeeder generates a customized RSS newsfeed based on your favorite musical artists that it finds on your machine. The feed informs you about new releases on iTunes, upcoming concerts, and other news.

I built earFeeder for a couple of reasons. Primarily, I wanted it for myself. Secondarily, I wanted to keep my programming skills sharp and learn more about RSS. People seem to like it, so I’ve opened it up to the world in “perpetual beta” (for now). Give it a try and let me know what you think. I also have the obligatory earFeeder blog if you’re really interested in the product and want to keep up with the latest news, comical bugs, and generally help to improve it.

Next next meetup is November 7th. Show off your cool stuff by contacting Robert.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

Oct 3, New Technology meetup in Boulder

September 19, 2006

The Boulder Denver New Technology Meetup is having it’s second meeting on Tuesday, October 3rd at 6pm in Boulder. There will be six five-minute presentations about “something cool” with question and answer periods.

The first meeting had about 40 attendees and it seemed to go off well, according to the comments. If you have 45 minutes to kill you can listen to the video (you can’t really see the presentations well enough in the video) from the first Boulder meetup (thanks to Scott at ClickCaster for the video). Presenters at the first meetup included Veripal (privacy solutions) and WellcomeMat (YouTube for real estate). After watching the video, the gist of the event feels to me like “fast pitch, demo, then get your business model challenged.” There were also a few people demoing mashups that they built out of need or for just for fun.

Thanks to Medium and founder Robert Reich for organizing this. Robert was a part of the New York New Tech Meetup which used the same format and has a few thousand attendees these days.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups | 3 Comments 

ClickCaster update

September 15, 2006

News of ClickCaster’s completed Series A funding round is spreading. Mashable has this coverage today, and Fund-o-rama chimed in as well.

I got an update from Scott Converse, ClickCaster’s CEO this morning. Scott told me that his investors are “an outstanding group of local Colorado based investors including Brad Feld of Mobius VC who will also be Chairman of the board, Niel Robertson, Serial Entrepreneur and founder/CTO of NewMerix and east and west coast investors such as Jerry Colonna, one of the founders of Flatiron Partners we well as several prominent angel investors out of Silicon Valley. ClickCaster will use the proceeds of this investment round to upgrade it’s datacenter architecture and equipment as well as expand it’s engineering and business development staff to take advantage of it’s leading position as the premier private label podcasting platform available today.”

In the spirit of full disclosure, I invested in ClickCaster as a part of this round. I invested because I believe in Scott and loved his energy from the first time I met him. Also, I think that his team has put together some impressive technology rather quickly. I also like that ClickCaster is the first to explore the viability of several new revenue models for podcasting. Smart guys, new media, and a business plan other than “eyeballs galore.” What more could an investor ask for? ;-)

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |