If you follow this blog you saw some mobile-posts yesterday, during the Early Stage Investment Forum. The event was good. There were about 30 companies presenting, and more than 300 attendees for the full-day event. I was told that about 100 those were accredited investors, Angel Investors or VCs.
They recommended that companies arrived at 6 AM (!!!) to set up their booth (a.k.a. 3-feed of a table against a wall). Paul and I decided it was insane. We are a software company and 6:00 AM doesn't exist on our clock. Paul got there at around 8:30 and I got there at around 9:00 AM.
I've met a ton of entrepreneurs, like Jon Clemens that founded Jakoba software, Meetul Shah from Knouen, Jordan Mitchell from Others Oline, Phil Cohen from Adapx, Peter Weiss from HyBlue, Allison Nelson from The Local Vine, and others.
Events like this always have their fair share of ex-Microsoftees, some are entrepreneurs, some are investors, some are looking for a startup to help, or are still working at Microsoft and desperate to quit and do something exciting.
On the VC side of things I've met Eric Monsowitz from Maveron, Rick Lefaivre from OVP, Tim Porter from Madrona, which was also the moderator of our presenting room. Meet a handful of angels that I won't disclose their name for now.
What is worth it? I have to wait a couple of weeks to tell you if anything good comes out of that, and by good I mean the 2-3 angel investors that we are looking for.
Our presentation on ESIF yesterday landed us a paragraph on the Seattle P-I today, by John Cook:
"Investors who listened to the presentation of Sampa -- a Redmond Web site creation service -- were so impressed with the backgrounds of Chief Executive Paul Gross and Chief Technology Officer Marcelo Calbucci that they wondered why the startup even needed angel financing. Gross has spent 25 years in the software industry, most recently serving as an entrepreneur in residence at Ignition Partners. Before that, he held senior vice president positions at Microsoft and Borland International."
First of all, we are honored by the "so impressed [with our] background" part. After Paul's presentation he had to leave the room so people could discuss the company, but I stayed (hidden in the back) and I heard a few people praising the team. My favorite was a gentleman that said "...this is a dynamite team...".
Second, I feel the need to explain why we need Angel Investing since John Cook paraphrases somebody on the audience that asked that question, and here it is...
I absolutely have no money left to invest. I literally invested 100% of my liquid assets in Sampa. I also sold my nice BMW and put into Sampa. My wife has a full-time job and she can pay the bills. I have not received any salary over the last 28 months and I have no discretionary spending money whatsoever. The angel money will not be used to pay me a salary (that I will wait until the Series A).
Paul, on the other hand, already made financial investments (besides his time and career investment) in Sampa. He is also going to reinvest side-by-side with the new investors, and, like any smart person would do, it is good to have external validation that you are going somewhere and that we are not drinking too much of our own Kool-aid. Another reason that we need other Angels, which Paul explained during the presentation Q&A session yesterday, is that he has put the bulk of his "risk capital" into founding a clinical research network for Hydrocephalus -- a brain condition that his son (and other 1 million Americans) have.
In summary we do need Angel Investors and hopefully that need will be met on the next few weeks with investments from angels that we've encountered on ESIF, Alliance of Angel and Keiretsu.
For me to consider a technology that requires a client-side platform, I'd probably would like to see 50% or more of adoption on our user base. Silverlight at this moment has close to 0.00001% (give or take a few digits).
Microsoft did other stuff on that past that didn't get any adoption, so, if they fail with this one it won't be the first time.
As a startup, every bet you make has to bring significant return and move you forward. A single bet that doesn't pan out is enough to kill your business. For now we are sticking to well-known, well-established client technologies like a browser, HTML and Javascript. Turns out that 100% of our users have that and near 100% of the Internet population have that as well.
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. The event was good. There were about 30 companies presenting, and more than 300 attendees for the full-day event. I was told that about 100 those were accredited investors, Angel Investors or VCs.
January, 2008