Entrepreneur Energy-LaunchUp 20100701

Another great evening at Thanksgiving Point.

PITCHES

oCodes: Dave Oldham

1. If you have an idea make a power point and sell it
2. Customer satisfaction is a key to success in any market
3. Trust everyone but get everything in writing

Stacks of magazines that you note and dog ear, but you don’t actually act on because you have to go online. OCodes bridges the gap between offline and online. There is a level of experience that you get offline that is much better than online. We allow users to text an OCode immediately while they are reading a magazine so that it is shared and saved.

The product is free to the users. We charge the publisher a small fee per code and a monthly fee based on volume of text. In the future we will also be selling the analytics. Companies that are interested in us include Victoria Secret, Panasonic, Us magazine, and rustico leathers will be enabling our codes in August.

We have a great team and some excellent partners and friends. BoomStartup has also been great. We have some competitors but we have chosen simple text messaging versus them. We are targeting magazines and catalogs right now. You can text OCodes to 62626 and get a copy of this presentation.

QA – Iphone app? We are looking in to it.

Are you targeting advertising or publisher? The publisher wants to provide it as a service. We have some advertisers that have come to us but we are targeting publishers.

Do you recognize the location people are texting from? We aren’t sensing it now.

How did you get mentors? I spend a lot of time networking and pitching, up to 50% of my time. I’ll talk to people and meet others through these introductions. It is important to build the networks and then the doors open.

Have you looked at this product outside of the US? We thought about starting in India. It was cheap and easy. We wanted established media players though so that once we win this hard problem then we can roll it easily to the next countries.

With a new activity like texting during reading, how are you going to train users? We are starting with magazines because they publisher will teach the users.

Ask: Not a clear ask except to text for the presentation.

RawData – Chad Nuesmeyer

1. Not all money spends the same, know where it is coming from and why, and mentors can and do work for free.
2. Terms are always negotiable. Always ask.
3. You can always find another person to work with.

Only one analytics package for broadcast TV. Everyone targets online analytics now and is starting to ignore the 18 billion dollars in advertising on TV. Neilsen and other collectors of data have a view of some information, but we have more. We load information from users cell phones. This reflects everything they are experiencing, music, radio, video etc. We load this data in to a report and sell that to advertisers.

We are code complete and will start a dark launch tomorrow in Seattle. We have presold our solution so that in two weeks we will be ready to go fully live. We will then start our sales push. We haven’t taken any outside funding and are a local startup.

Ask: 1) Ideas on DB query problem across massive amounts of data. 2) Hardware acceptance to the markets. 3) Looking for funding – around 120,000.

QA? What about the sample problem? We have to have a certain amount to make sure we represent the population. I let my customers tell me who they want me to track. We don’t promise ubiquitous coverage so I constrain my required sample size and cost.

?Who are your target companies? Local broadcasters. Major companies can only own one major broadcaster in each area. I am guaranteed to have at least 5 broadcasters and 4 of them are competing for top billing.

?What is your pricing model because, once you deliver a number that says the target audience also does X, Y and Z, the ad agency now knows all they need to and doesn’t need to pay you anymore? We are targeting the stations and the advertising company themselves. This is so affordable that we expect them to match this live data with their other pieces. This live information is a greater value.

Pixelture – Justin Strong

1. Everyone falls down, the successful ones get up more times.
2. Genius is more about tenacity and sweat
3. Love what you do. Period.

In the context of sharing great ideas, Bigger is Better. So when I want to show something to you, then you can get more information when you are shown more. The limitation now is a “cable.” So we have a wireless client that can share your screen/display to multiple displays at once. We want to facilitate more discussion and sharing in groups.

Our technology shares desktop, applications or pixel area of your display. You can share with a brokering agent and your screen can spread in an entire room. In the future we expect that you will see an email on your phone and will “project” it to the TV in the room you are in.

Ask: Customer revenue questions. We see higher education as target market and they move slow. Can you speed it up? How about Enterprise or OEM? We don’t have contacts with large media companies so help is wanted.

QA? What is your price for higher education customer? We want a site license but we can do a perpetual license or recurring revenue license for a per class. So there is a display host that students connect to. You can download the software for free and it is the server that is licensed.

?Do you solve other problems besides the cable? There is not quite a fire burning beyond the cable. Right now the cable is in the way of the free exchange of ideas.

?Have you thought about partnering with other companies? Most people hate Blackboard so we have not connected with them. Good idea.

REWINDING to beginning:

Amp Session – Steve Spencer – Founder of twelvehorses and merged with One to One interactive.

I will confess that I pee in the shower. This is something embarrassing but being an entrepreneur means you have to be ready to admit your weaknesses and there are lots of scars that come from starting up companies. You have to recognize what you do well and get people to help you where you have weaknesses. This is the first principle.

The second principle that is a hidden secret for startups is that your founders may not always be together. There may come a time to find a reasonable way for founders to exit. Sometimes, later in a companies growth, the situation can get uncomfortable so the time to have the exit ability discussion is at the beginning of the company.

Q&A: How do you structure an exit?

You can say that at any point and time we will use a formula to calculate the “FMV” for ourselves, so if someone wants to exit, then you can easily calculate the amount for stock.

In the Weeds – Jared Richards – Attorney and Entrepreneur (Blue House Skis)

Six legal startup issues in 9 minutes:

Choice of entity – If you are going for VC then go straight to Delaware C Corp. Otherwise consider the LLC. It’s cheap and flexible. S Corps are hard for VC, but Angels can come in. Delaware is very comfortable to VCs. Don’t make agreements before the company because you lose liability value.

Relationships – If you start with three, consider using Vesting principles. Be careful with documentation. Make sure that those who “walk away” do so with a signature. Set up clear agreements at the beginning.

Leaving – When startups come out of companies, you have a duty to the prior company. You should be very clear about hours, equipment, and ownership.

IP (Trademarks) – Do your own search. You can also file your own if you want to. (Software) You have to make sure that any consulting work is owned by you.

Attorney usage – Use them wisely. Get ready in advance and do a lot of research. In this way they can help you best and keep the costs down.