Boom Startup's First 10

Boom Startup's chosen the first 10 statups to include in their mentoring program.

It's not Techstars yet for sure... a number of these guys don't have websites yet so you know it's pretty early.

Orem, Utah – May 10, 2010 – BoomStartup, a seed capital and mentor-focused investment program for web and software start-ups, today announced it has selected 10 companies to participate in its inaugural three-month program. The companies in the Class of 2010 include 3PointData, Bazari, Case Rover, Fashion Genome Project, IActionable, Khumbu, MashWorx, No Ink Publishing, O-Codes, and Voycit.

Each selected company will receive up to $15,000 in seed capital, free office resources, professional services and mentoring from a group of seasoned and successful entrepreneurs. Companies will be paired with one of the investor-mentors, who will guide each start-up and connect them with people in their networks to help them get their businesses off on the right foot.

“Utah has a proven track record of creating and supporting great technology companies, and we’re confident that these 10 start-ups will be among the growing list of innovative companies to come out of our state,” said Robb Kunz, co-founder and co-Managing Partner of BoomStartup. “These companies have great ideas and technologies that will push their individual markets to new heights due to their innovation and the mentoring that they will receive from our group of successful investor-mentors.”

The selected companies are as follows:

3PointData solves the decision maker’s data problem by creating real-time data streams to make better decisions, better products, and more money. 3PointData delivers weather, stock, geo IP, zip code, sales tax, traffic, and much more, right to a spreadsheet, database or custom application.

Bazari is a text message-based platform that provides the benefits of ecommerce to markets without internet access. Through the platform, customers can browse for products, purchase the specified product, make the payment, and have the product delivered similar to shopping on eBay or Amazon.

Case Rover is a software-as-a service (SaaS) platform targeted at the multi-billion dollar U.S. litigation support and compliance markets.

The Fashion Genome Project is the next big thing in online clothes shopping, utilizing revolutionary technology to eliminate the pain points and unpredictable results that usually come in the process.

IActionable is a SaaS-based application that helps sites and services attract new users, retain existing users, and increase desirable actions by providing customizable achievement and points systems. IActionable enables any site to define and automatically award public badges and points to their users when specific actions are performed.

Khumbu is helping consumers simplify their wallet while creating affinity programs for vendors, by offering virtual loyalty cards for mobile devices. Khumbu weaves affinity tracking with social media. Khumbu’s clearinghouse allows consumers to trade, redeem, and consolidate partially used loyalty cards, while also providing intuitive offers and promotions for related vendors.

MashWorx creates permission-based applications designed to help companies better serve their customers beyond the limits of a single site. MashWorx’s apps, or mashups, enable people to choose their own web experience.

No Ink Publishing provides an online authoring system for do-it-yourself mobile publishing, with an initial focus on interactive, animated children’s books for the Apple iPad.

O-Codes creates small text codes that appear in offline media (magazines, newspapers, brochures, billboards, TV, movie trailers, coupons, catalogs, business cards, etc). Consumers can “bookmark” the offline content they like, share that content (to Facebook, Twitter, and Evernote), and even make purchases using simple text messages, and without using a computer.

Voycit is a political, social website where citizens can come to get informed on political issues, current events, legislation, voting histories, and candidate platforms, get involved by voting on current legislation, completing polls and organizing for action, and hold elected officials accountable. In turn, Lawmakers can engage with their constituents, get real feedback on legislation and clarify positions and voting.

All companies will be headquartered at the Canyon Park Technology Center, Building J (1401 N. Research Way, Orem, Utah). In addition to providing companies with seed capital and free resources, the companies will complete an education curriculum designed to teach each entrepreneur the fundamentals that will help them become successful as they grow their companies.

The three-month program will conclude with an Investor Day in September hosted by BoomStartup that allows interested investors to meet with each company.



Fight Club is back.

What's Fight Club?

Fight Club is a networking event (usually dinner) for entrepreneurs and startup CEOs who are interested in building their network. Yeah, there are a number of other events around but Fight club is for startups to network with each other.

Why Fight Club?

Geek Dinners already taken. Besides, it's cooler to tell your wife/staff/buddies that you're going to Fight Club than have to ask strangers directions to the Geek Dinner. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Fight Club is about connecting, not selling.

Fight Club Members are entrepreneurs and business owners who understand that people are not the sum of what they can do for you. We're organized to build introductions and relationships between entrepreneurs outside the regular business environment and without the need to immediately sell to everyone.

Read this post on Horizontal Networking for Entrepreneurs.

If you're smart, and Fight Club Members are, you build relationships that give you access to another network and have other members actively looking out for you.

How you fit in.

Fight Club is small on purpose. We want to offer an environment where people can get to know the 'person' they're talking to, before the business. Anyone can come, you just have to attend with and be invited by an existing Fight Club Member the first time.

Fight Club is not an Old Boys Network.

We're just a bunch of similarly situated guys who value semi-inteligent conversation and understand that expanding your network and being of service is also good business.

Fight Club is also about deal flow.

From time to time I expect Angels from the local community to be involved. Certainly I've found it beneficial.

Most effective lead generation

From Ken Krogue's Blog comes this, '17 Most Effective Lead Generation Methods' which is great.

I believe that the best methods are those that are most Effective, but least Popular.  So look for a low number on Effective, and a high number on Variance:

Lead Generation Method	Effective	Popular	Variance
Executive Seminars	1	8	7
Inside Sales	2	9	7
Search Marketing	3	6	3
Webinars	4	10	6
Tradeshows	5	3	-2
TV Advertising	6	17	11
Email	7	1	-6
Radio	8	15	7
PR	9	2	-7
Online video / podcasts/ rich media	10	12	2
Direct Mail	11	4	-7
Blogs	12	13	1
Sponsorships	13	7	-6
Online Ads	14	11	-3
Other Web 2.0	15	14	-1
Outdoor	16	16	0
Print	17	5	-12

Popular isn’t necessarily good, it just means everyone else is doing it (email for example is ranked 1st as most popular, but ranked 7th in actual effectiveness.)  Take especial note of the degree of variance and whether it is positive or negative.  High positive variance shows extreme effectiveness that is relatively unused or unknown by your competition.

Jazz Bet on Sendside Sales Acceleration

The Utah Jazz is the first NBA team to begin using Sendside for sales acceleration. Of course, they're not the only ones. We have a growing number of clients who are using Sendside of sales automation, strategic marketing and customer retention.

In addition to being an NBA franchise, the Jazz sales team have a lot of sales to make... an NBA team, a stadium, a race track, movie theaters, concerts and events... that's a lot of inventory to move and speeding up the sales cycle is the way to do it.

Sendside gives the sales reps, sales management and marketing, the ability to craft their messages and be notified when they're opened. For high-value sales prospects that gives you an amazing ability to follow up while your content is fresh in a prospects mind and they're thinking about you.

For my part I love having the Jazz on Sendside. In fact, I have a personal side bet with the Jazz management. If the Jazz sales team is able to meet a revenue goal that's directly attributable to Sendside (completely at the discretion of the Jazz managment), we'll get four corporate season tickets.

We're pretty sure that using Sendside the Jazz can beat that goal pretty easily so I'm looking forward to watching a lot of Jazz games from court-side next season.

HireVue: Video interviewing SaaS that rocks!

HireVue's been on a roll lately. Every time I have dinner with Mark it seems that HireVue's rolling in additional customers, and it's no wonder. HireVue's offering real value to HR departments looking for efficiencies in their hiring process.

It's great to see another technology startup here in UT making the grade and building value.

I've used HireVue to interview. HireVue made the preliminary interviewing incredibly easy, and I was able to review and share the interviews I liked best. I ended up with a perfect fit for the position which would have been very hard to do just over the phone.

If you're looking to hire anyone, HireVue's the place to do it.

And, of course, HireVue uses Sendside.

HireVue is the worlds leading video interviewing service doing business in more than 70 countries. HireVue came to Sendside looking for way to accelerate their sales cycles and provide mind-blowing relationship marketing to their existing clients that include Google, Oracle, and Africa World Bank. Within months, Sendside increased helped increase their sales by more than 35% while cutting their sales cycle in half.
Read the HireVue success story