Livepitch and Networking event

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Apr 24

You all know that I am a huge fan of the Speed Pitching events put on by Funding Universe.  Well, next week is a great opportunity for all of you to do more than just read about how cool these events are.  Funding Universe is putting on their first ever Livepitch and Networking event.  What is this?  Well, for starters it is a great place to come meet local investors and entrepreneurs in a social setting.  Each person attending will get a certain amount of “funny money.”  Like an entrepreneur’s pitch?  Vote with your dollars (or funny dollar int his case.)  Additionally, a panel of investors will be judging all of the pitches.  At the end, the two winners will be chosen: one by the investor judges, and one by you, the audience based on your contributions of “funny money.”

This is an amazing chance to see what is going on in Utah, and meet the people who are making it happen!  Don’t miss it!!!

When:  Friday May 2, 2008
Venue: Miller Business Innovation Center
Building: Karen Gale Conference Center
Rooms: Wasatch and Cottonwood
Time:  9 am - 10:30 am
Cost:  FREE! ($10 to apply to present)
Go to http://www.fundinguniverse.com/services/339/420/utah-livepitch-and-networking.html for more information or to register.

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• Posted in Events

Utah Entrepreneurial Challenge

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Apr 14

One of the programs that I really love here in Utah is the Utah Entrepreneurial challenge.  I was really pleased and blessed this year to have been given the opportunity to be a mentor to one of the teams.  The team I was working with is called Qgia.  Qgia’s product is pretty slick.  It’s a very inexpensive solution for companies (and even individuals in the case of yahoo or ebay stores) to be able to either upload video they have produced, or even point at video hosted somewhere else, and then have it played on their site/online store.  What makes it cooler though, is that you can upload images to be used as “buttons”, and tell how many seconds into the video there popup, where, and what url they should direct to.  So imagine a Convention/visitor’s bureau video that hi-lights Utah destinations, and then as each one is show there is a button right on the video for a call to action for that section of the video.  Further, this can be directly integrated into a shopping cart… so if the image is someone boarding at Brighton, the “buy now” button might jump right to a cart with a pass in it already.  I know their website is still under construction, but if you want to talk to these guys sooner, just let me know and I’ll help.  I know that Mark and his team are headed for grea things (Heck, I’m ready to star using it!)

Another company that I have written about several times is Klymit.  These guys have got a really neat product that uses Argo, among other gasses inside of a jacket liner.  Combine this with a small pressurized canister (the size of a  CO2 can that might be used ina  BB gun), a adjuster dial, andSHAZAM!  What you have is an unbelievably lightjacket (so they tell me… I am still waiting in line to buy one) that let’s you literally “dial-in” the appropriate level of insulation.  Dial it up while riding the lift up, dial it down when you’re carving moguls.  Cool stuff. (as a note: Nick Sorenson’s presentation was very polished.  Nice job.)

The winner this year was Amwell (not sure if they have a website… anyone know of one?)  Amwell is one of those companies that really makes you feel good to be a human bieng.  They have developed a product with innovative technology for vaginal application of medecines.  They use case they are headed into trials for is supposed to prevent pregnancy, HIV, and other STD’s.  I apologize that I don’t know more about it… but I’ll see what I can find out as far as web resources to point you to.

The winner this year walked away with $50,000.  Second and Third took $10,000 each, and the rest of the top ten walked with $2,000 each.  Not a bad jump to your business.  Good job to everyone involved, and a shout out to Qgia, good job for making the top ten!!

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• Posted in Events

Local Review: Utah First Friday (Guest Post by Jason Alba)

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Feb 07

As I have often said in reviewing local events, it is hard to really say that an event is good or bad in some respects, as it really comes down to rather or not you are really the target audience or not.  As such, I asked a great friend of mine, Jason Alba from Jibber Jobber to help me out a bit.  I know Jason often attends and has spoken highly of the Utah First Friday events.  As such, here is a review of Utah First Fridays from Jason (Thanks much Jason!!):

I went to the Utah First Friday meeting at the Miller Center last week.  The featured guest was John Arnold, flown in from Denver.  John works for Constant Contact, wrote E-Mail Marketing or Dummies, and regularly gives seminars in Salt Lake to help businesses get more out of their e-mail marketing campaign.

Regarding the people, I didn’t actually get to do much networking.  The roads were horrible and I ended up quite late.  I recognized a buddy, who introduced me to Carl Baumeister, CEO of Fruition Consultants.  This was all the networking I did

I would actually like to hear about e-mail marketing from Twelve Horses, seriously.  John is going to be more at the beginner, small business level, the Dummies.  Twelve Horses is doing stuff at the huge company, very interesting stuff that goes beyond the basics.  Not that I’m as big as those companies, but I want more leading edge information.

If you come next month, March 7th, you’ll see me present on LinkedIn.  I’ll even have a few books with me, if you haven’t picked one up yet.  Hope to see you there!

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• Posted in Events

Speed Pitching this week. A bit you may not know…

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Feb 05

Just a reminder to everyone that there will be another investor speed pitching event tomorrow.  For those that are not yet aware of what these are, just real quick:

It’s like speed dating, but between investors and local entrepreneurs.  You have 5 minutes each to pitch your idea to a table of investors.  Then you move on to the next table and pitch again. If you would like to participate head on over to Funding Universe to learn more.

For those that have heard me gush a bit about these in the past, I wanted to pull together a bit of info to make sure I was being entirely objective on these… so here’s to scoop:  Of the last 150 ideas pitched, 147 of them got at least one of the investors to request a followup meeting to learn more.  Additionally, I have spoken to a couple of different companies who have received funding through the event, and asked them to tell me the good, bad and even the ugly.  The only negative vibe I got back at all is that Funding Universe decides what ideas to include in the event based solely on reading the business plans, rather than hearing all of the presentations (I am guessing due to time constraints,) so make sure your plan reads well if you want to make it in!

I’ll be at the event again this week, so be sure to say hi!

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• Posted in Events

Utah Social Media Developer Garage — Dec 11 (tonight)

• Posted by Clint Goudie-Nice

Article posted on Dec 11

The Utah Social Media Developers Garage will be tonight, December 11, at 7pm at our office in Draper. Jesse Stay has lined up Jeff Barr, evangelist for Amazon Web Services, who will speak on how Amazon AWS is being used in Social environments. After Jeff’s talk, there will be a round-table discussion with topics such as Google’s OpenSocial, Facebook, and other Social Media.

We would like to thank Jesse and his consulting company SNAPlic8 for putting this event together and Bungee Labs for providing the food.

We hope to see you there!

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• Posted in Events

Podcast: Jeremy Hanks from Doba

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Dec 04

You know, Jeremy Hanks is a very easy person to get excited about. If he’s not busy making his company of one Inc’s 50 fastest growing companies, then he’s probably busy interviewing with Utah Business Magazine about the fact that his companies is one of the best companies to work for (You can see his smiling face on the cover of this month’s issue), or just generally finding ways to make Utah a better place (such as wit the event where he got Guy Kawasaki here to Utah to speak to 500 people, and then donated all of the proceeds to charity!)

As I read through the article on why people love working at Doba, there were several specifics… renting out theaters for family movie nights, ping pong tables, and more. But one thing that I know is really at the core of it all (and I think you will hear this come through in the podcast) is that Jeremy is just a really nice guy. There are few people I have ever met that are more genuine, and just generally likable.

Please join me during this podcast in learning more about what is not only a successful, and exciting (not to mention fun to work at) company here in Utah, but also in celebrating a person who is a real icon of what an entrepreneur, and a person should be.

Listen Now (34.2 MB, MP3)

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• Posted in Events, Past Events, Podcast

Podcast: Unspam

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Nov 12

For those who were at the event with Unspam, you will know already that this local company does an awful lot more than the Child Protection Registry that got them their initial start. Unspam has got a lot of really interesting products that they are making available to folks (most of them for free) to help put a collar on this beast we call Spam. They have solutions to protect your web servers, and keep an eye on questionable users, and other solutions to track the email address harvesters that are at the head of the Spam food chain. Check it out. Watch for the Doba podcast in a few days, and look for some exciting announcements about upcoming events (we are planning to change things up a bit, to make sure that people get more value from the events.) Let us know what you think, who we should be spotlighting, and if there’s anything we can do better!
Listen Now (34.2 MB, MP3)

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• Posted in Events, Past Events, Podcast

October Tech Spotlight

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Oct 08

• 1 Comment
• Posted in Events

Spotlight Tomorrow: Unspam, 1:00 PM… free drinks.

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Sep 19

We want to make sure none of you forget that tomorrow, September 20th, we will be shining the Utah Tech Spotlight on Unspam.  For those not famailiar with Unspam, they are the technology provider behind the Child Protection Registry which is designed to protect the inboxes of children from inappropriate emails.  They are also leading the charge on some really inventive ways of combating not just spam, and not just spammers, but every step of the canned meat food chain, from the email address harvesters on down.

Based on feedback from attendees, we are holding this month’s meeting at 1:00 PM rather than 3:00.  That way you can grba some lunch, drop by for a bit, and still make it back to work.  Even better, we’ll buy the drinks while you hang out and hear more about this company.

For those who are not familiar with our format, let me tell you what not to expect:   don’t expect a really formal, stody environment; don’t expect a sales pitch, or a long, boring presentation.  What you will find however, is a twenty minute, frank, informative presentation, followed by some very open Q&A.  You should expect people from all sorts of companies, and backgrounds, and you should plan to walk away having learned something and met some interesting folks… for free.

We will be meeting at the Bohemian.

Date: Thursday, September 20th
Time: 1:00 - 2:00
Location: Bohemian Brewery And Grill
(94 East and 7200 South, right off of State Street, SLC)
RSVP

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• Posted in Events

Lots of local events to announce

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Aug 28

Well, I know we have been a bit quiet lately (read: busy as heck), but here we are with stuff to announce, and goodness, we have a mouthful (couldn’t resist )

Funding Universe Speed Pitching Event
This event was brought to my attention by Lindsey Snow (Sorry for not getting ti posted until now Lindsey ). I have never been out to one of the speed pitching events yet, but am planning to try to swing by this event tomorrow… so watch for a full writeup after the fact.

Utah Open Source Conference
I am really excited to have the opportunity to be one of the sponsors of the Open source conference happening on the Novell campus September 6th-8th.

September Spotlight: Unspam technologies

We are changing up to timing a little bit for future events. September 20th, at 1:00 PM we will be meeting at the Bohemian. New to the spotlight? Here’s a peek into our format, and what we do to bring local tech people together, and “shed some light” on cool tech happenings here. Be sure to join us in September to hear more about Unspam, and what they are doing to mail your life, and your email better. (More details to follow on the email list… not on that list? Signup!)

October Spotlight: Doba

October 11th we will be Spotlighting this local superstar. The only Ebay certified Drop Shipper, and growing so fast I actually checked the building for stretch marks!

We’ll be sending you more information on both of these companies, why we chose them to spotlight, and where you can see them.

Have your own cool tech we should be Spotlight? Have a local event we should be reviewing? Be sure to let us know!

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• Posted in Cool Utah Tech, Events