In case you don't follow the Sampa Blog, we just added support for Twango. Now your Twango Channels and Media can appear as first level elements on your Sampa site. Twango is pretty cool because they support all kinds of content, from pictures to video, from audio files to PowerPoint presentation.
The interesting thing for those that don't know, is that one of the co-founders of Twango is Philip Charmichael. Philip and I worked together on MSN Search between 2000 and 2002. Back then MSN Search was the number 1 search engine and Google was not that well known.
At ESIF, we've met Serena Glover (another Twango co-founder) and we decided to get together to see if there was a win-win. Sampa is the Mashup King application, so, of course there was a win-win. Sampa users get Twango and audio/video/etc., Twango gets a few new customers.
This year, between Paul and I, we had more than 40 investor meetings. Each meeting takes about a day out of our other tasks. You have to schedule, prep, commute, meet, commute back, follow up, etc.
That would be great if the investors were truly interested in Sampa, or if the meeting would have resulted in a term sheet. The problem is that most investors are not really interested in investing on you. The worst part is that they know that but they are not up front about it. Why? They want to hear the pitch. They want to keep connected for when another lead investor comes in, they can jump onboard. Or they are an advisor or investor in a competitor, and they are just sniffing around.
Because of that, about a month ago, Paul and I completely changed our pitch strategy. To begin with Paul is the only one that go to first meetings. This way at least one of us can continue to work on the product. Second, we do some background check to make sure that they are serious about investing on our space.
Here is a checklist to see if a VC is a good fit for Sampa:
Invested in the consumer space
Invested in a "Web 2.0" company
Invested in a company in Seattle
Have not invested in a direct solution alternative to Sampa (a.k.a., a competitor)
Is not at the end of its fund
Understand ad-driven business
Understand user generated content / social media
And prior to any meeting, we always check out www.thefunded.com . It can be quite entertaining.
PS: This post was written offline, that is probably why it has so few misspellings.
I'm sure there are plenty of good people out there giving him good advice. I have compiled a list of 14 tips that is very comprehensive and valuable, IMHO.
Besides those, I'd strongly recommend that he take a look at the "perception factor". That is, some pages load fast, but because of scripting on the client or poor HTML, it takes a few extra seconds to appear fully to the user. There is no amount of optimization you can do on the server to address that. You can ask the user to buy a faster machine, though.
Lisa LaMotta from Fast Company just wrote about the new Google Street View feature. Here is the first paragraph:
Google is bringing stalking to a whole new level. With the recent launch of Google's map feature, Street View, people are getting all shaken up about the real-time views that the Internet will allow of several cities, including New York.
What is wrong with this?
I'm assuming she didn't try the product and is making her own assumptions based on a popular article written on the NYT today. How do I know? Well, Google Street View is not real-time. You cannot stalk anybody. Period.
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, we just added support for 
October, 2007