Entries from the 'Seattle' category
Seattle nPost meeting to have huge turnout
Nathan Kaiser at nPost is running a startup event in Seattle today. At this point over 170 people have signed up to come with more signing up as I type. You can find details on the NPost Wiki.
There will be 5 companies that will be demo’ing the work that they are doing. They are new startups that are reaching out to the marketplace:
TalentSpring is looking to use the startup community as a way to build an example to use when talking to other groups. Take a look at the website and see if your startup activities could help with the process of exploring their system.
It seems like a great show is planned.
NW DrupalCamps all coming up fast, Seattle avoids the crush
This weekend SixHourStartup is working on building another website in an afternoon. In preparation for this, a small group gathered at SaturdayHouse last weekend to get a tour of Drupal. Drupal is a content management system that is trying some new and exciting things.
On May 10th, the Portland Drupal Users Group will gather to talk about all things group in a fest called DrupalCampPDX. At the same time, the Vancouver BC Drupal users group will also gather for Vancouver DrupalCamp. June 26th and 27th, the Seattle Drupal Users Group will gather for a DrupalCamp Seattle.
The BarCamp process of bringing together interesting people and cooperating to come up with a good plan works well and is generating a lot of buzz. It makes for lots of opportunity to find people who are interested in similar things.
It is too bad that the time frames were not more distributed, so that Portland, Seattle and Vancouver Drupalites could visit each other more directly. I have learned a lot when I have gone to BarCamps in other cities.
Perhaps the issue is a organizational. when you go to the main BarCamp site, the first thing you see is a time ordered list of the BarCamp events across the world. I wonder what it would take to get a list of all the DrupalCamp events across the world?
Farecast couldn’t have predicted this
Seattle’s John Cook is reporting that Microsoft is the mystery buyer of airline fare predictor Farecast. Microsoft issued this statement after Cook’s paper inquired:
We are pleased to announce that we have acquired Farecast, a Seattle-based smart travel search engine, and we welcome them to the Microsoft family. Farecast has been a partner of ours on MSN Travel and we look forward to working closely with the Farecast team to incorporate and apply its technology in new and interesting ways.
The purchase price has not been confirmed but it sounds like it will be in the $75 - $125 million range. Since being founded in 2006, Farecast has received $20 million in funding from Madrona Venture Group, Par Capital Management, Greylock Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures.
Seattle Start-Ups - 277 and Counting
Marcelo Calbucci’s Seattle 2.0 Start-up Index was updated today for March and there are now 277 Washington State start-ups on the list. This month’s index includes a new start-up that everyone will notice as it debuts at #3 - CarDomain.com. Calbucci notes that CarDomain is now considered a start-up as it recently re-launched as a social network for car lovers thereby resetting it’s odometer to zero.
John Cook of the Seattle Post Intelligencer asks aloud if anyone else finds it comical that a start-up that features photos and dialogue of cats - I Can Has Cheezburger? - is among the top Web properties in the State.
On a side note, Calbucci’s own start-up Sampa raised $1 Million last week.
Reachd visits Seattle’s Zillow.com
Vancouver-based Reachd is taking their SEO and Adwords Training Bootcamps on the road down to Seattle and have partnered with Zillow.com. On April 17th, real estate agents in the Seattle area can take in Reachd’s Google AdWords Training session at Zillow’s downtown office. The session runs from 9am to 12 pm and you can register online.
In addition to Google AdWords training, Zillow’s David Gibbons will provide tips on how to make the most out of Zillow’s EZ Ads. Since Zillow.com is one of the most-visited real estate sites on the Web, they have created their own self-service advertising platform - EZ Ads. The system allows everyone from real estate agents to homeowners to advertise on Zillow and it’s ultra-targeted as it’s based on ZIP codes rather that keywords.
Starbucks Social Network
John Cook of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer just reported some big news from Starbucks annual general meeting today. The coffee retailer announcing a slew of news including the acquisition the the company responsible for the Clover brewing system, a new customer rewards program, and a new social networking site.
It looks like Howard Schultz is serious about turning around the fortunes of the ailing coffee giant. The Clover brewing system is widely recognized as delivering the best cup of brewed coffee around and Schultz has committed to putting a Clover machine in every Starbucks location.
With regards to social networking, Starbucks hopes to extend the community created in-store online through the launch of a site called MyStarbucksIdea.com. The goal of this new site is to allow customers to share their ideas, engage in conversations and play a role in shaping Starbucks future.
This may not be such a bad idea considering there are currently 500+ Groups on Facebook with Starbucks in their name.
Dow Jones on Web 2.0
Earlier today Rick Turoczy mentioned a report from Dow Jones VentureSource that concluded that investment in Web 2.0 start-ups may be peaking. Rick reported that investment in Pacific Northwest Web 2.0 ventures was strong, growing from $35M in 2006 to $140M in 2007 with the total number of deals doubling. VentureBeat breaks down the report further and lists the 25 Largest Web 2.0 Deals in 2007.
Facebook is far and away the leader with $300M raised but there are some great stories out of Washington and Oregon that deserve a mention. Seattle’s Zillow raised $30M while a couple Oregonian companies made the list as well. Corvallis-based MyStrands raised a total of $49.5M and Portland’s Jive Software brought in $15M.
Speaking of Dow Jones, Victoria’s TeamPages is presenting at VentureWire’s Web Ventures 2008 conference in San Francisco today. President Mike Tan and CEOs from 70 other promising startups are pitching to audience that includes LinkedIn’s Co-Founder Reid Hoffman.
Marchex Committed To Local
Yesterday Seattle-based Marchex released a 23-page report titled 2008 Perspectives on Local Online Advertising and Content and it’s worth a read. Marchex is a local online advertising company and leading publisher of local content.
The Marchex-team written report is an overview of local industry trends with specific tactics for marketers, addressing areas such as local online advertising and localized search engine optimization. The report is available for free here.
In the report, Marchex identifies several trends that they believe will continue to accelerate the growth of the local market in 2008 and beyond:
- The adoption rate of online advertising services by small- to medium- sized businesses (SMBs) will continue to rise, driven by local sales channels such as Yellow Pages providers.
- National advertisers will expand their focus on local online advertising campaigns and will increasingly utilize local geo- targeting and tactics that encourage and measure offline purchases.
- The demand for call-based advertising services, such as call tracking and pay-per-phone call, will grow.
- For consumers, the local search experience will improve, delivering more accurate and actionable results that more effectively connect consumers with local businesses.
- The local market will be less fragmented due to consolidation, innovation, and partnerships.
Techvibes Media Inc. is also committed to Local and see it as the next major consumer-focused mega-trend on the commercial Internet. Techvibes.com has always been city-centric with a focus on local search whether it be tech suppliers, tech jobs, or tech events. The addition of our hyper-local blog takes that one step further and 2008 will see these elements merge into the ultimate local platform for everything Tech-related.
Cleverset: From Corvallis to Seattle and on to Acquisition
Cleverset provides personalized recommendation based on the AI research of Dr. Bruce Dambrosio originally from Oregon State University in Corvallis. The former CEO of Cleverset, Tony Humphrey, gave a talk at the last NWEN meeting. He told the facinating story of how he came to the company and how they had built the company up. He gave a good description of the hard search for funding, visiting dozens of Venture Capital firms. In the end, he went through the analysis of how they decided to take the $10M offer from ATG. Tony was clear about when it makes sense to take outside Venture Capital and when the equation no longer makes sense. It was a fabulous talk. One of the other key points that is still ringing in my ears was to “Hire smart, nice, hardworking people”. In my past hiring experiences, I wish that I had always followed that advise.
As a young company, Cleverset spent some time in the same building that I was in when I started my business. It had been part of the Business Enterprise Center, the local business accelerator. As it grew, it became clear that they needed to have a CEO for the company who could raise some outside funding. Following in the footsteps of John Herlocker at Smart Desktop, they contacted Janis Machala at Paladin Partners. This is a pattern that has worked before for Corvallis companies that are looking for outside funding. First they look locally, then on to the Portland Angel Networks and then often they move on to Seattle looking for funding.
Sometimes principals in companies might have ties into the Bay Area which gives the more direct access to capital from California. However, the natural progression seems to be heading for Seattle.
Seattle Saturday House Experiment
In this day of email, text messaging and twitter, there is a growing set of activities that bring people who met online together. The unconference scene with BarCamps and the IgniteSeattle events are large examples of bringing people together. In May 2007, a group of folks started getting together and visiting each other living rooms every Saturday to visit and chat and to work on projects. Eventually, things got big enough and moving around got to be enough trouble that they found and rented a space. They considered one of the emerging CoWorking sites in Seattle like Office Nomads, but decided to have a space of their own. And so, Saturday House was born.
Saturday House is in the SODO district of Seattle, in one of the re-converted buildings south of downtown. Each week, a group of people gather to visit, work on projects or otherwise hang out. A sibling group called SixHourStartup has started meeting at Saturday House on the second Saturday of each month. SixHourStartup tends to be more focused and more like a code sprint. Starting in November of 2007, there have been several projects trying to go from an idea to a prototype in an afternoon.
This last Saturday, I went to Saturday House to discuss some of the ground work for the next SixHourStartup project. When I was there, close to 20 people came by and visited. Some for a short time, while others worked hard on personal projects for several hours. The corner that I was in worked on how Drupal might be used for the next project. A good deal of planning was able to be done in a short amount of time. As we closed that discussion, the next discussion about Seattle DrupalCamp picked up. There are discussions and planning for a late June Drupal Camp underway. On the heels of that discussion, a group came in to talk about how a BarCamp for Seattle might be put together. A great deal of exciting activity for only a few hours in a reconverted building.
I’m looking forward to the next visit.
