My friend Nathan Kaiser is organizing a nPost Happy Hour Pub Crawl next Friday (5/16/2008). They'll go from bar to bar and Twitter as they move along. Who said is all work and no play in startupland?
Sampa is looking for a Flash developer to do some work for us. This is a part-time/contractor work and the main task is to create a new Family Tree module for us to replace/augment our AJAX-based Family Tree.
Let me now if you know of someone that is great at creating amazing Flash apps. We want to hear from him/her.
Great news. Sampa and yours truly have been featured on the Seattle Magazine on an article about Seattle (of course) and Web 2.0. Please, buy a copy instead of reading it online. :)
Anyway, it tells a bit about all the people building the new wave of companies in Seattle and all those crazy ideas.
I just presented at the WTIA. It took me 7 minutes to present and the Q&A lasted 10 minutes.
I begun by getting a laugh out of the crowd (don't remember exactly what I said), but it certainly helped. I tend to have these spontaneous moments that I don't prepare for and I don't know where it comes from, but the audience usually enjoys. That's one of the reasons I hate to be over-prepared to give a talk. It kills spontaneity.
My goal was to tell the story of what Sampa used to be, what Sampa is now and where we want to go. I think the mission was accomplished.
The Q&A from the panel was much easier than I expected.
The other good thing was the fact there was only 50 people on the room, so the worst case scenario I've made a fool of myself to just 50 people. :)
It's a bit weird to blog about the "competing" companies at the WTIA since I'm a presenter, but I just can't stop myself:
Demoxi Demoxi is an interesting proposition w/ interesting technology to create a new ad serving platform that lives on your PC. Remember when you'd install some application and it would hijack your adds, show you popups, and control your PC? That's what Demoxi is, except they are doing it w/ the end-user in mind. So you control what happens, how it happens and when it happens. That's my understanding. I think there might be something for Sampa users since we are branding ourself as a "family safe" company Demoxi positioning is very much aligned with us.
Earth Class Mail I've seen they talk many times, and the whole send your mail to ECM and check it online simply doesn't work for me, as a consumer, but I can see the value for the enterprise or people that are seldom at home because they travel a lot. I think they will burn a lot ($$$$) of cash. The initial cost to get going is very high and they probably need a few million customers to break-even.
Yapta Yapta is really interesting and valuable to travelers. They nailed the technology and the website, but they have to create a brand and attract customers. I blogged about this before, but I think they should either merge with TripIt or duplicate TripIt's technology, which isn't that hard to do. The most valuable aspect of Yapta is the opportunity to get a refund on a price reduction of an airline ticket you already purchase.
I'm a Web-Consumer guy. That's my industry. I love to be part of it, I find it exciting and I want to dedicate the rest of my life to it.
Hearing the morning panel (Keith Grinstein, Steve Lidberg, Mike McSherry and Sid Parakh) talk about the Wireless industry I can think of a single word to describe it: b-o-r-i-n-g.
For me, Hardware, Wireless, Server Products should just work. Those are the commodities for me.
What you might not know is that on a previous life I worked on Telecommunications and on that world, software and the web are the commodity and the hardware is the key differentiation.
In other words, I'm glad there are people that are passionate by things I find boring. Otherwise I couldn't do what I love to do.
The WTIA Investment Forum is about to start. Several companies will be pitching to investors, entrepreneurs and service providers about their company. I'll be presenting Sampa.
I might try some living blogging between my mental rehearsals of the presentation.
At this point the place feels very empty. The Welcome by Ken Myers was supposed to start at 8:30, but it's already 8:35 and the room for 300 people has less than 20 right now.
I have too much to write about and too little time since I'm preparing for the WTIA presentation tomorrow (I'm soooo unprepared that I'll make a fool of myself) and I'm heading for the UW Business Plan Competition in a few hours.
Anyway, this is what I have to say:
I had coffee with Andy Sack yesterday. This guy doesn't stop amazing me on his way of talking, his energy and the good that he's doing for the startup community in Seattle. Is there a State medal we should nominate Andy for?
I went to nPost Network. Event was packed, fun. I was really impressed by RescueTime (way to go Tony), and with Alerts.com. On Alerts.com it reminded me of a time that we talked about our "personal assistants" that would find things that mattered to us, tell us of things that we care and wanted to be remembered, etc. Alerts.com has an aroma that resambles it. Finally, Nathan Kaiser just did a great job organizing the event.
Lastly, went to Jackson Fish Market to see Hillel unveil his new baby. I've got there 7:50 PM and it was packed, the food gone and I've got a half cup of beer from a Keg and it was gone too. Oh well, the event was fun and I saw some old friends I haven't seen for ages. Hats off to the JFM team to pull out a launch party like this (this is how startups should be doing it).
I'm the Founder & CTO of Sampa (site builder/blogging service). I was born in Brazil, where I graduated in Computer Science. Moved to the US in 1998 to work for Microsoft and there I worked for 7 years (Exchange and MSN Search). In 2004 I decided to do my own thing and left to start Sampa. Besides my new company, I keep myself busy with my new son which takes most of my non-working time. Once I have a few minutes to spare I read, cook, do video editing, take pictures and hang out with friends.
Subscribe to this Site
.