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'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.
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 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. :)
Subscribe to this Site
November, 2007
