Startup Weekend Recap

For those interested in how last weekend went, it went well.

When the decision was made to try to hold something like a Startup Weekend it was meant to be a dry run. Recruitment for the weekend was done through blogging alone and a few direct email inquiries of those who had mentioned an interest in the past.

The location was great, given Suite133's experience in hosting the earlier technology based "unconference" called barcampTacoma.

There were two outcomes on the attendance side that concerned me. If we had less than 12 participants I was going to be disappointed, if we had more than 30 I am not sure how I would have handled the logistics.

On Friday night, we had 16 people participate. A few of them made it clear that they were unable to come for the full weekend and just wanted to join in on the first night of discussion. I am glad they came. Given the size of the crowd, everyone was able to introduce themselves and talk a little bit about what they could contribute.

By 7:00pm we were suggesting potential business ideas, with an understanding that there had to be the chance that it could be launched over the next two days. Ten ideas were discussed, which was a good amount. We then voted on the favorites form that ten. Of those five were pretty even in the voting so we held a second vote. One idea which was pretty popular had a second idea, which was more of a feature than a product or a business was folded under another that was a broader solution.

Critical to the final selection was feasibility for completing at least a prototype, so though one idea was popular, another made a great deal more sense.

Here is where we were very lucky. In order to successfully create anything, the talent to do so had to be in the room and ready to work. We had marketing, business planning, design and development experience represented at the Suite. There were four people with ties to the Institute of Technology at UWT, not counting myself. Two alumni of the Computer Science program and two current students.

David Hazel, alumni of the program and veteran of three official Startup Weekends was key to making things work. Not only was he able to give us guidance on how we were doing and what to expect in the next couple of days, but he was well versed in Drupal, a web content management system with enough open source elements that we could create a web site with much of the functionality we were looking for.

Another thing that David prepared us for was the drop off in attendance, which given those who had already mentioned their lack of availability was not a surprise.

On Saturday we spent our time discussion the build out of the idea as a business, how they a Startup Weekend generally handled ideas such as ownership and went to work building the site.

A total of 12 people participated in the second day, with the nice folks from Spryng came by to talk about there entrepreneurial support efforts and to discuss their upcoming conference.

David trained several of the other participants in how to build with Drupal, and on Sunday, six folks worked to get it done.

At the end of the weekend, a working prototype was completed, including some Flash animation in a subsection of the site. Was it launched? No. It needs to complete the remaining implementation of a couple of the features and needs to be given a facelift to better represent the target audience it is aimed at.

The team set up a Wave thread to keep it moving forward, and there is a hope to bring it into the public eye when that is done. It needs to be populated with data and then it is ready to go.

It was a rewarding opportunity to meet and work with great people, to learn about new tools and technology and to gain the experience of what a Startup Weekend is like. Hopefully Clint Nelson and the folks from the official Startup Weekend organization can help us pull off an even bigger event in the late Summer.

Seasonal View - Company Profile Number Four

Many people know Derek Young from one of the companies that he has founded or co-founded. He founded Exit133 which, launched in 2005, is a web publication and online community focusing on Tacoma, which covers real estate, politics, the arts and urban development. He also co-founded Suite133, a shared office for telecommuters, start-up entrepreneurs and creative professionals. It was from within the Suite133 offices that his latest venture was born.

In January of 2009 he partnered with Dave Stockwell (COO and also a co-owner of Suite133) and Whitney Rhodes (former writer for Exit133 and co-owner of Suite133) to create Seasonal View, which provides solutions in IT project management, service management operations and information security.

As they put it on their about page:

Seasonal View is an agile organization encompassing decades of experience and success supporting IT in big business. Our consultants comprise of specialists in many areas who are hand selected for each assignment to ensure they address the project’s specific needs. Combining passions for design, process and business strategy, we pursue the areas of business where interaction with the customer is the most critical. Small enough to be approachable but with far reaching ties, we can provide the guidance your project requires to be a success.

The information security side of the business is interesting to me because it falls into the information assurance and cybersecurity cluster of companies that I have been highlighting over the last several years.

Specifically, they assist in determining and implementing "the appropriate controls based on the value of your organization’s information assets, threats to those assets, and management’s tolerance of risk." They work directly alongside the companies IT staff as team members or act as consultants to guide the process.

Services in the information security category may include internal security assessments, external security exposure, control implementations, process development and project management for starters.

Seasonal View also provides to the Service Management and Tech Support industry through process creation, tools, and knowledge management.

Their clients to date have ranged from small local to Fortune 500 ranked companies. Given the nature of the work, they are not able to simply list them off of their site.

Currently under employment opportunities they list

Information Security Assessor (Contract)

Seasonal View’s Information Security Assessors independently manage all phases of third party assessments for our clients including planning, execution and reporting. Assessors execute, oversee, guide and evaluate the work of other auditors culminating in a successful presentation of the results to Senior Leadership. Audits will primarily focus on areas of general controls, but could include applications, pre-implementation review, and complex areas of the business and technologies.

In particular I like the comment made at the end of the paragraph under their Career Opportunities page. "Brilliant Jerks need not apply." Also of note, the informational card which reads "James Bond" in the graphic at the top.

They do not have a Twitter account or blog as yet, but you can follow Suite133 at Twitter in the meantime.

Startup Weekend Tacoma This Friday

SEE YOU THERE TONIGHT AT SUITE133 AT 6:00PM



Here are the logistics to this weekend's get together.

Place: Suite 133 on Pacific Avenue

Derek Young and company are graciously hosting this weekend at their location. There sponsorship for these kinds of grassroots development and business efforts should be fully appreciated. They loaned out their digs for the first barcampTacoma and it worked quite well. Given the loose structure of the upcoming weekend, it is good to have had that experience under out belts.

Time:

Friday at 6:00pm. Arriving to the suite at 5:15pm or so I will have made my way down from my office at the Institute of Technology to the premises. We will hopefully have a critical mass of interested folks by 6:00pm, which is the official start time.

Saturday: We will start at 9:00am, but you are free to come and go as you please.

At 10:00am I will be going over a business plan template. I have started, ran or advised on boards for tech companies in the double digits, so hopefully I can impart some modicum of wisdom on the topic. Other speakers, a la barcampTacoma will be scheduled during the day.

Sunday: We will play it by ear, but at 11:00am, John Dimmer of the Tacoma Angel Network will be giving a talk on financing.

I anticipate Clint Nelson of startupweekend.org one of the organizers of Startup Weekends will be there Saturday or Sunday, if they are back from New York from a similar event.

And that, my friends is about it.

Hopefully, we will launch a company or product at the end of that time.

How many folks will be there, I don't know. I have gotten email responses from at least one dozen folks so far, so that should make for at least two to three teams.

They first year that the 72 Film Festival ran, I remember hoping for at least three teams and even organized one myself. Twelve teams participated with eleven of them submitting films at the end of the weekend. If we managed half that it would be very cool.

What to bring:

Your enthusiasm. Your ideas. Your strengths and your weaknesses.

A laptop if you have one. Paper and pencils if you don't.

I will bring some water and soft drink from Costco for the offset, but we will be going out for meals and drinks on our own dimes. The official events that we will be exploring for late Summer or Fall have entry costs that cover meals and T-Shirts. I am all over the t-shirt idea but they will need to be an individual or group effort on its own as well.

IT WOULD BE EXTREMELY HELPFUL IF YOU COULD REGISTER YOUR INTEREST IN ATTENDING BY EMAILING ME AT droid116@gmail.com.

Vadium Technology - Company Profile Number Three

We in the South Sound almost got to hear from Rod Nicholls, President, Chief Financial Officer and Director of Vadium Technology on an afternoon panel at this years South Sound Technology Conference (SST2010). Unfortunately a company wide issue (mysterious, yes) made his participation impossible. I thought it was a shame not only because I like these guys, but because many of you may have never heard of them.

They provide next generation digital security and privacy solutions utilizing their technology called, AlphaCipher, which is a Digital One-Time Pad (D-OTP) that enables, "secure, dynamic, multi-point communication structures by integrating unbreakable encryption, strong identification and authorization with multi-factor authentication into one easy to use, robust solution". AlphaCipher is part of an application development solution which protects against network and cyber attacks.

Whew!

Given the stories we hear on an ongoing basis regarding digital based attacks whether on financial institutions, governments or Google, you can easily imagine the value here.

They are a privately held company and are headquartered in Tacoma, Washington, where they were founded in 2001.

The founder and Chairman of the company Wolfgang S. Hammersmith invented the AlphaCipher Encryption System, and developed the current product and associated Key Generation Systems over eighteen years prior to founding the Company itself. His bio includes an amazing array of interests outside his expertise in security including including being a licensed Ship's Master, a licensed Armed Private Investigator and Agency Principal in Washington State, and a helicopter pilot.

Their CEO is José Antonio Ríos who has more than 30 years of international experience and worked in senior executive capacities at multi-national corporations such as Global Crossings, Telefonica, S.A., Hughes Electronics and the Cisneros Group.

Their product suite revolves around their encryption solution, Vadium’s AlphaCipher which they provide an SDK (software development kit)for so that security solutions on networks, PCs, laptops, removable media, wireless and handheld devices can be created.

Specifically they provide:

* File and Folder Encryption with Authentication
* Key Creation and Management
* Custom Applications

I had not heard from them for awhile after the conference and just as I had decided to create a profile on them, a press release came out from the company announcing a sales agent and reseller agreement with Grupo Colvista, the largest government systems integrator in Colombia. This makes sense as a lot of their customers are international.

Internet traffic and e-commerce are growing rapidly across Colombia's highly developed broadband infrastructure. As increasing amounts of sensitive information are digitized by Colombian enterprises and government agencies, there is a rapidly growing need to secure sensitive digital data and communications.

Because of the sensitive work they do, they are keenly aware of international ethics and compliance issues that their company and its employees face, even devoting a section of their website to the issue.

In terms of employment, they have several job openings listed including in sales and software development but the majority were posted a while back. However, the company says it is always interested in "visionary, skilled and enthusiastic team oriented professionals".

No sign of a Twitter account but when I searched for Vadium it produced many tweets in regards to their recent reseller agreement, in several different languages.

Ron Kornfeld and the All Important Business Plan

The Entrepreneurship in Technology class got a treat yesterday with the visit and guest lecture by Ron Kornfeld. I met Ron many years ago when he was a fellow board of directors member for the WSA (Now the Washington Technology Industry Association - WTIA). He remained active with new and emerging companies throughout the dot com era and when he was not directly involved with any, he was consulting with them, emphasizing the importance of business planning and helping with ideation (the process of creating new ideas).

I asked him to come speak to my class eight years ago as he was one of the authors who contributed to the text of "Cracking the New E-Conomy" with chapters on that all important business plan. In fact, it was the business planning template that he provided for free from the Normandy Partners web site that the class was using in building out their own plans. It is also the business plan template I will be presenting on at the Startup Weekend Tacoma.

Since then he founded PersonalGrid, a start up that provided a first-of-its-kind consumer web service for sharing, managing, storing, and publishing digital information. He was also co-founder and EVP of Product Strategy at SchoolSoft Corporation, a start up developing the first adaptive web service to teach children in precisely the way that they learn best. He conceived of the innovative initial product plan, product roadmap, and go-to-market strategy. The company has evolved into a tremendous resource for teachers and students based on the efforts of the team who succeeded me.

So after couple of companies and successful exits later, he is back to the consulting field, though now the company is called NimbleSource LLC. According to their about page NimbleSource is describes itself this way:

"Business success is about speed: to market, to revenue, to profitability. Maximizing speed means fault-tolerant planning and agile market management to remove the friction in your business model. At NimbleSource, our principals have decades of experience in business planning, product management, marketing strategy, and sales excellence. We help entrepreneurs turn ideas into opportunities."

The business plan template and the advice provided along with the document are still quite valuable. If you go to the resource page of the site it will provide you access to the document. If that doesn't work go to the resource page and look under business tools.

We still use this template in the class, and will be using it during the Startup Weekend on Jan 29th, 30th and 31st. I have had a number of folks already send me their interest in participating to my gmail account. droid116@gmail.com

Next week I will lay out more on the logistics including a map and directions to Suite133 and some general requirements of what to bring and what to expect.

You may want to take a look at the business plan template in the meantime.

IdentityMine - Company Profile Number Two

IdentityMine was another company in the South Sound that was founded at the onset of the Dot.com meltdown. Headquartered in Tacoma (1015 A Street,Suite 1200) with offices in Seattle, Pleasonton and Hollywood, California and India, it provides a product and service approach to user experience solutions.

Integration of deep technical expertise and rich engaging design through the use of Windows Presentation Foundation, Silverlight, Microsoft Surface and Natural UI technologies set us apart. We facilitate the inevitable convergence of IT, traditional operations and marketing efforts to make a truly memorable and intuitive user experience.

I like that they have a mix of both services and products.

As they describe their services:

IdentityMine offers services that span from very short-timeframe demo application development to full project outsourcing requiring many different disciplines over an extended period of time.

The products are pretty interesting and include "Blendables" a set of tools and components that help in design and development and "Surface Skins" which creates a customized look for a Microsoft Surface Table.



The Blendables products come in three varieties which according to the site is:

- The Essentials Mix is a set of 10 controls which span all aspects of design and development in Windows Presentation Foundation.

- The 3D Mix is a platform for easily creating immersive 3D application experiences in Windows Presentation Foundation.

- The Layout Mix is a set of layouts which leverage the Panels technology used for application and content layout in Windows Presentation Foundation.

If you are interested in learning more the product line has its own web site at www.blendables.com.

The Surface Skins is an extension of a Microsoft product and is a design project described as such: "Our designers work with you to evaluate your location, the function of your Mirosoft Surface and your target audience to create the perfect match."

For a better understanding you can read this 2008 press release which gives an example of what they do. In part it reads:

Hotel 1000, downtown Seattle’s premier luxury destination and a leader in hospitality IT, and IdentityMine, the leader in User Experience, announced today they have partnered to release one of the first customized versions of the latest Microsoft Surface applications. IdentityMine designed, developed and installed the customized applications for Microsoft Surface specifically for Hotel 1000.

I don't have any information on how many employees they have as the spread I found on a Linked-in page was 11-50. However they appear to be quite busy.

According to a post on their blog from last week, they were in New York showing off a new product solution, the IdentityMine Retail Map.

“The IdentityMine Retail Map is another solution in a set of solutions focused on the retail vertical,” said Chad Brown, SVP of Sales and Marketing at IdentityMine. “Recent focus by retailers to increase the enjoyment of the shopping experience has lead to entirely new thinking about user experience (UX). By leveraging our expertise in Microsoft Surface and Windows 7 Touch, IdentityMine is uniquely positioned to create new interactive experiences across multiple physical environments.”

As long as you have Microsoft's Silverlight loaded their web site shows it off nicely. Some examples of their work on this page.

----

Mark Brown
CEO | President

Chad Brown
Senior Vice President Products & Services

David Meunier
Senior Vice President Operations

David Fitzgerald
Senior Vice President HR & Staffing

They have a blog for Blendables http://www.blendables.com/blogs/

They have a blog for the company IdentityMine http://www.identitymine.com/forward/

Check out their videos on Vimeo http://vimeo.com/identitymine

There is also a Twitter account, but no Tweets to speak of recently. Best to search on the company name.

Bootstrapping a Business

"Bootstrapping — the practice of launching a business with personal funds, credit cards, hard work and chutzpah — has long been a catalyst of Silicon Valley's dynamic economy." starts an article by Scott Duke Harris of the San Jose Mercury News. It was carried by the Seattle Times on December 7th and it got me thinking about the nature of entrepreneurship in today's economy.

One of the reasons that comes up frequently when discussing why companies fail is that they did not have enough capital. Often it is the case. But when loans and investment dollars are short on supply and the economy is stagnant at best, there is a requirement to build from the ground up. That is when bootstrapping becomes a more common phenomenon.

You obviously start at a disadvantage and eventually money has to come in from revenue and potentially investors, but the friends-family-self funding stage is where a great deal of groundwork needs to be laid.

Ben Parr of Mashable outlines some of the realities of bootstrapping in his December 8th blog post.

Bootstrapping is the art of building a startup with little to no venture capital. You’re creating your company as leanly, efficiently, and cheaply as possible. Perhaps it’s because you need a viable product before you can obtain investment or because you don’t want to give away 20% of your company to a VC. Regardless, bootstrapping is becoming a more popular option for many entrepreneurs.

Though he mentions that it is becoming a more popular option, the tone does not pull any punches as to the difficulties involved.

However, if you have an interest, join me on the 29th, 30th and 31st of January at Suite133 to discuss bootstrapping, prototyping, business planning and many other tech start up topics. This is an informal event, but it is important to know who can make it and how many may come. You can email me at droid116@gmail.com.

If there is enough interest and the weekend goes well, we will likely be able to land a few sponsors for the next go round and may even be able to involve the folks from StartUp Weekend. If you are interested in what kind of companies could possibly launch from three days worth of exploration and prototyping, check out the list of companies that have successfully launched from their events.

http://startupweekend.org/past-companies/