entrepreneur27.org

Tired of the same old boring panel discussions…

Rainmakers Live! 2007 features a game with a real-life entrepreneurial theme amidst an atmosphere of fun and friends. Rainmakers Live! invites its participants to come up with unique and innovative ways to overcome a challenge set by an up and coming startup, Mint. We are providing an endless supply of food, great music, a pool table, a crowd of like-minded folks and prizes too!!

Event Details:

Date: 12th April 2007
Time: 6.00pm – 9.00pm
Venue: Plug & Play Tech Center (440 N. Wolfe Rd, Sunnyvale, CA 94085)

Learn more here: www.nusea.org/rainmakers

Excites is a social bookmarking service where users can save and share their bookmarks online. It is a fun and easy way to discover what is popular and what excites other people on the internet. Brad is 22 years old and lives in Adelaide, Australia. Excites is his first website that he has created and he runs it by himself and also works as a freelance graphic designer.

How does Excites differentiate itself from other social bookmarking applications?

Excites aims to provide a service not just for saving and sharing your bookmarks online; but also to help you discover new and popular sites which interest you. We want to create an easy to use and feature rich site where people will discover what is new and popular on the internet.

Do you feel that social bookmarking has taken off in the sense of reaching critical mass, or is it still in it’s infancy?

Social bookmarking has certainly taken of with a real explosion in the last few years, all the new social bookmarking sites popping up is proof of this and I think it is safe to say with all the innovation in this area that there is a real bright future ahead for these types of sites and what they can provide for the user. However, having said that, I do think it is still a relatively new trend and still in it’s infancy as far as user adoption is concerned. There is still plenty of room for it to evolve into something bigger and better.

One of the main features that can help social bookmarking sites gain further popularity with the average internet user is the search function. This is a kind of social search engine where the results are based purely by how many times a site has been bookmarked and by what tags the book-marker has bookmarked it under. As this part of the site improves and the database of bookmarks gets bigger, then it will become a good alternative to using a search engine for a lot of people. This will help social bookmarking gain a new audience, and also most importantly, will be where it makes the majority of it’s money.

Also, I think there needs to be more incentive and benefit for the average internet user to spend the time and the effort needed to save and manage there bookmarks online. As more features are built in this area and with the search function continually improving, social bookmarking will only become more popular with time.

What has been the biggest success and the biggest obstacle for Excites?

By far the biggest success so far was getting a good domain name that fits with what the site aims to provide, which is something that “excites” it’s users. The biggest obstacle is creating new and unique features that convince people to continually add bookmarks into there account and also make the move from the pre-existing bookmarking sites.

What is your favorite thing you have bookmarked right now?

The best site I have bookmarked so far is originalsignal.com. It is one of those sites I visit first thing in the morning and multiple times throughout the day.

Copyright © 2007 by Will Kern

Talkonaut is a mobile Jabber client that allows users to free chat to Jabber/XMPP, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and AIM contacts; participate in conference rooms and make voice calls to Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo and SIP contacts or other phones using our VoIP infrastructure. Evgeny Korolenko has extensive experience in software development. While he was a student, he worked for a telecommunications company in Tyumen and developed ISP and ITSP billing systems. Later, when he was a postgraduate, he led a team of developers at Tyumen State Oil and Gas University which built a corporate information system for his Alma Mater completely based on Web technologies. Personal interests: cars, skiing.

Ruslan Zalata – while he was a student at TSOGU, he worked for a number of Russian telecommunications companies as a UNIX system administrator, network engineer and consultant. Later, as a postgraduate, he led a group of network technicians who first designed and built a university corporate network, then a city-wide educational network infrastructure in Tyumen, Russia (the project was sponsored by the regional government). Personal interests: big jeep cars, extreme sports: snowboarding and inline skates. Do you see the mobile IM market really taking off, or do you think that it will take more time before it reaches critical mass?

Definitely. People are ready for something better than SMS. They want to have chats with their friends around the Globe on PCs and mobiles, no matter what IM systems they belong to. They want to participate in cool text chat rooms, they want to use the whole power of presence and they don’t want to pay $0.10 (sometimes even more) for each 170 bytes of text they send. Finally, that’s the coolest way to utilize their data plans they already paid for :-).

Being a Russian based company, what have you found to be the biggest obstacles in breaking into the US market?

Speaking about mobile markets, we quickly understood that in US there’s no real competition between carriers. But what is worse, carriers did their best to tie up users to their services either by locking handsets (so you cannot easily switch to another carrier nor can you run third party apps like Talkonaut) or by offering much cheaper, but very limited data plans which makes it impossible to use third party apps. What is most annoying is that handset developers (like RIM with their BlackBerry) are following the game. It’s virtually impossible to work around mobile carriers if you want to make a buck. If you try to you will probably lose. European and Asian markets are very different, users here can easily switch between carriers just by replacing a SIM card (one can have a single SIM card tie to many carriers which allows switching fast :-)) and can use their phones with the apps they like. But this also may change once mobile VoIP and IM become extremely popular and carriers will face a need either to take “protective” measures or to adjust to new rules and this will be a very uneasy way go for them.

The other thing which upsets us most is that US customers and investors don’t trust any services provided by companies which are not based in the Bay Area (or at least in US). There are some exceptions of course (namely Skype), but the fact is you cannot get very popular if you are a Russian based startup. That is why we are in a search for partners in US (mainly other small startup companies) who are interested in integrating our developments into theirs to achieve even better products or services for users and to benefit us both.

Since there were two of you that founded Talkonaut, what has been the decision making process for determining who does what?

Actually we have two projects running: GTalk2VoIP and Talkonaut. GTalk2VoIP is an open VoIP gatewaying service for major VoIM clients (Google Talk, MSN and Yahoo) which allows user to make free calls between different types of VoIM networks and paid calls to PSTN. This service was born as a “proof of concept” research by my colleague Ruslan Zalata when we worked together for the IT department at the local university. There’s an article at http://www.gtalk2voip.com/article1_en.html written by him on how the gateway was created and turned into a public service in March of 2006. Some months later (July 2006) we came to a thought that bringing all these VoIP services combined with IM to mobiles might be a very decent idea, so we started to work on it nightly. Ruslan worked on the server side part and I was developing the mobile application. Actually, I already had my own J2ME framework done, so it allowed us to build the feature-rich Talkonaut app in a very short period of time. At the moment of public run of Talkonaut (it was November 2006) our first project let us get some financial independence, so we completely quit our day jobs and started pumping it up with both server and app features.

Ruslan also does customer support over emails and on the forum because he has some experience in this and has better English knowledge. All paper work is done together. Usually a question “who does what” does not arise because each does what he’s best at.

What is your favorite cell phone of all time?

We have tried a lot of handsets. Some are very good, others less. But, what you should avoid is any Windows Mobile based device. It’s hard to explain all the negative user experiences you get with Windows Mobile, but believe me it’s ridiculous and completely not a suited OS to be used on phones. Ruslan enjoys his Sony-Ericsson W850i now and I’m currently using Nokia E60. But the best mobile phone is yet to be developed .

Copyright © 2007 by Will Kern

Hundreds of great ideas in your head, and more is brimming to the top, so why don’t you take the chance and join the Women 2.0 Napkin Business Challenge? Entrepreneur27’s sister organization, Women 2.0, has put this together for you, the creative entrepreneur.

Wait! Oh darn! You are male? No problem! Pick up the phone, poke via FaceBook or send an SMS to that dynamic, intelligent entrepreneurial woman you know. Ask her to join the team. Put together a team of up to 4 people and make sure half of you are females under the age of 35 (you can apply solo if you are a women under 35). Bring this team together with that brewing idea and VOILA! You have what you need to participate.

A Panel of 12 Judges – A first time combination of the Valley’s top-shelf VCs and creative entrepreneurs.
See who’s in: www.women2.org

6 Great Ideas will make it; 2 will win 30 minute meeting with Tim Draper or Michael Moritz after the Pitch Night. Are you up for the Challenge?

Finalists must be present on this day. Submissions accepted worldwide. Visit www.women2.org for details. Deadline March 30, 2007. Get drawing on that napkin!

Sponsors:

GOOGLE | AOL | SPOCK | LIVE365 | JIMMYJANE | ONSET VENTURES | DRAPER FISHER JURVESTON | TRINITY VENTURE PARTNERS | MOHR DAVIDOW VENTURES | WOMEN’S TECHNOLOGY CLUSTER | EL DORADO VENTURES | EXQUISITE SAFARIS | VIBE CAPITAL | INTUIT

Wetpaint Wetpaint is changing the way people share and collaborate about passions and interests online through its consumer-friendly Wiki platform. For the first time, anyone who knows how to use Microsoft Word can use Wetpaint to click and type online.Ben Elowitz is a passionate entrepreneur and is currently the CEO of Wetpaint. Prior to founding Wetpaint, Elowitz directed the product management and marketing at Precor USA, was a co-founder and vice president at Blue Nile, Inc, and held management roles at Fatbrain as well as Bain and Company.

Do you see Wikis as the Web’s next natural evolutionary step or do you think that people will need some convincing before they really take off?

Prior to Wetpaint, it was difficult for people to go online and easily share their own personal knowledge or experience with others. At the time, existing Wiki solutions required a high level of technical knowledge that we believe prevented a majority of people from participating.

With the launch of Wetpaint in June 2006, users finally had a solution that was much easier, more intuitive, not to mention empowering to use. Since Wetpaint’s focus is on making the technology incredibly accessible to the average user, we’ve helped expand the number of people who can participate in online content creation beyond those with specialized skills. Now, a broader audience is beginning to recognize the value of Wikis, which make it easy to find and continually evolve rich, authoritative information organized around topics of interest and passion. The strength of the Wiki paradigm is that the quality or accuracy of the information is collaboratively regulated by a community of people who have relevant knowledge or experience – the more people participate, the closer to the “truth” or accuracy of the subject at hand you get. When everyone has the chance to focus their light on the discussion, it begins to shine like a thousand-watt bulb.

What’s the biggest challenge that Wetpaint is currently facing?

The most significant challenge Wetpaint faces in 2007 is raising awareness of the Wiki category. According to a Wetpaint-sponsored Harris Interactive poll, only 17% of the online population is familiar with the term “Wiki” (compared to 40% for the term “blog”).

You have had great success with your past ventures. What personal values play the biggest role in your serial success?

The world is a very large place, and the number of ways in which we can make a positive impact are countless. I believe that with positive energy, tenacity, and drive I’m able to focus on the opportunities and push forward to make a difference—not just in creating a business success but in ways that are helpful in people’s everyday lives.

Bonus: What’s your favorite Wetpaint-powered site?

My favorite Wetpaint site is wikifido, which is a site about dogs for dog lovers. I have a page for my dog Jackson there.

Copyright © 2007 by Sonia Aggarwal

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

“SoonR”:http://www.soonr.com is dedicated to providing mobile users with a service that lets them access critical information and applications on their PC from wherever they are in the world, across any network and on any handset..Martin originally was involved with one of the early PC software companies, Borland International. This is where, among other things, Martin came up with the idea that there should be data exchange between computers and devices. In 1990 Martin co-invented (with Steven Boye, SoonR CTO) the patent for Appointment sync between a PC and a device. Later, Martin focused on the Web, and was the founding VP of Engineering at NetObjects, a company focused on Web authoring and publishing.

With there being so many communication mediums and information constantly coming at us, how does SoonR solve the problem of keeping it all organized?

At SoonR, we see that users continue to have a lot of information on their PCs, and the PC is a great medium for organizing. These days users have so much information that they use desktop search products so they can better find their own information. At the same time, we are all becoming more mobile, use mobile devices more and communicate with many people constantly. With SoonR, we believe in a model where the information basically resides back on the PCs and as we move around, we continue to have full access to this big cloud of information and applications that is spread around all these computers. However, it’s also important to realize the mobile world is different than the PC world; your 2MB PowerPoint slide show would take forever to get on the phone, so its critical that information can transform well to a new medium � so your slides may rendered one slide a a time as a JPG on the phone to ensure a reasonable user experience.

Right now the basic service offered is free. With the upcoming release of your premium service, what will be included and what will be the cost?

We have not yet decided exactly on this. Currently, we are very excited about the fact that we have built a global following with users in over 200 countries and we have now seen SoonR being used successfully on over 600 different mobile phones. We have a user-base that is very active and provides us with a lot of valuable feedback; we believe that is in itself extremely valuable. It was a founding principle for us that we could evolve SoonR through real use.
Where do you see SoonR one year from now?

You will see that we will have continued to aggressively innovate on this platform; you will see us deliver more functionality that will extend the power of the PC to the mobile hand-set. You will also see us working with many partners around the world that will integrate SoonR functionality into their offerings, like we earlier this week announced a joint offering with WebEx�s PCNow product.

Bonus: You have had previous experience in developing products that assist users in reaching new levels of productivity, was SoonR a natural progression of that?

Absolutely, my career launched as the PC was born so I lived these early years of the PC. Later I saw the web coming and spent a decade or so in that world. All along, I had this passion for mobile devices; as I would visit my home-country of Denmark I saw how people became more and more sophisticated in their use of mobile devices so it became a natural for me to pick mobile as the next project. Being in it, it’s clear the mobile space has an even bigger potential than the PC or Web had � its off the hook!

Copyright © 2007 by Will Kern

“Green Options”:http://www.greenoptions.com is a media portal for the world of green, with a focus on engaging people who are new to the movement, without preaching to them. We specialize in bringing a diverse range of information to users, in the most useful and intuitive formats that web 2.0 has to offer, all filtered through a green lens.David was a student of political behavior and sociology at UCSD, but he ended up focusing on sustainability and writing an honors thesis on renewable energy policy. He started Green Options because he saw a need for better information brokering on green topics; it seemed to him that the industries making up the ‘green sector’ needed more informed and enthusiastic consumers than they had been able to create for themselves.

Tell me about the “30 Days to a Greener You” email course.

Green Options’ “30 Days to a Greener You” is an “e-course” newsletter that teaches subscribers specific steps they can take to lighten their environmental footprint while still living a comfortable life. Users will be given a full month of step-by-step actions, from the simple and free (turning off the lights, recycling) to major investments in a greener lifestyle (greener cars, solar energy systems). With each lesson, a user will learn what s/he can do that day to green his/her life, and the benefit of doing so.

What is the key to identifying talent? Once it is identified, how can you attract and retain a really committed team?

We are heavily influenced by the design and business principles advocated by the “37Signals”:http://37signals.com people, which they call “Getting Real.”:http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php When we look for team members, we search for people that:
* have the exact skills that apply to the project for which we are hiring them. In doing so, we make sure no one on the current team can do what we need done, so that the person will definitely be bringing unique skills to the group.
* have a broad range of skills that will be useful later both for the company’s development as a whole and their individual advancement. This includes making sure all web developers have an eye for design as well as code.
* have a passion for making a difference in the developments of a public consciousness on green issues, especially people who feel that they did not have that opportunity during their previous work.
* don’t mind working on a trial/contract basis for a month or three. That way, those that fit in best with our team have an immediate path to getting hired full time, and if someone doesn’t end up gelling with us, they still get something out of the relationship.

This process generally leaves us with committed, excited, talented people, who are willing to work at a below-market rate until they prove their mettle (we keep a tight budget) in order to have a chance to be a part of creating something special over a larger time frame.

Where do you see Green Options a year from now?

We have many projects in the pipeline, most of which I can’t talk openly about yet, but suffice it to say that web 2.0 media is only a starting point for Green Options. There is so much information out there that is waiting to be formatted and marketed correctly in order to make it accessible to the rest of society. Hopefully, 2008 will see GO providing a wider variety of innovative tools to accomplish that goal. There are angles to take that can make a solid case for sustainable living to people of every persuasion and perspective (except maybe Dick Cheney), including those who feel belittled or condescended by preachy rhetoric. Those people need to be included in the process to create change on the scale necessary, and that starts with making information accessible to a wider range of audiences.

Bonus: How did the environment become your passion? Any particular experience that opened your eyes to the issue?

As a recent college graduate, I don’t have years of experience in the world of green, but I do have a fresh perspective, and consider myself an intuitive person. I like to make connections between people, issues, and events that others might not automatically see, or care to see. My passion for renewable energy was forged by the computer game SimCity2000 back in, oh, probably sixth grade, and I’ve been slowly piling on related issues ever since. Because the question of how to live sustainably can be applied to every facet of life, at every level of social organization, I’ve come to believe that we need to build public support for seeing broader economic, social, and political decisions through, as I said before, a “green lens.”

Copyright © 2007 by Sonia Aggarwal

Entrepreneur27 is co-hosting Women 2.0’s mixer on the Stanford campus this coming Thursday night. Normally, Women 2.0 holds women-only mixers but we’re opening this mixer to all genders this once to introduce members of Women 2.0 and E27 to each other for the upcoming “Women 2.0 Napkin Business Challenge”:http://www.women2.org/?p=21.

“Eyejot”:http://www.eyejot.com is the first, comprehensive, client-free video messaging platform ideal for both personal and business communications that offers everyone the ability to create and receive video messages in a self-contained, spam-free environment. It’s like video email, except it�s better!David Geller is the founder and CEO of Eyejot. He is also the founder and CEO of “WhatCounts”:http:www.whatcounts.com, a leader in comprehensive e-communication programs leveraging the power of targeted permission-based email messaging, interactive two-way dialogue, personalized content syndication (RSS) and extensive marketing services. He remains the CEO of WhatCounts while launching Eyejot.

What is your vision for the future of electronic communication?

Video communications between individuals and small groups will become increasingly popular as new computers start to come with attached cameras and mobile devices begin offering standard web browsers, mobile Flash and 3G and 4G networks.

How will you work with email clients to integrate Eyejot? What is your projected time frame?

Eyejot is a perfect addition to email and there’s a natural migration for some types of communications. But, we’ve never suggested that video messaging would replace email. They both have very important roles. In terms of a time frame, we’re already seeing a huge adoption rate of people using Eyejot and other video platforms. We estimate that this year alone we’ll see more than 14 million new web-cam enabled laptops reach the market…and the prospect for mobile-originated content are even greater with tens of millions of new phones coming to market with great embedded cameras running on decent to fast networks.

If “YouTube”:http://www.youtube.com decided to begin offering a similar service, how would you stay ahead and what would be your plan of action?

YouTube already allows users to record videos through a flash recorder. But, our platforms are fundamentally different. YouTube is all about user generated content designed to be broadcast and seen by lots of people. Eyejot is about one-to-one or one-to-a-few private communications. Just like email, but with video. We don’t expect YouTube and Eyejot to intersect too much. But, we’re happy that YouTube has made so many people aware of video and that makes our platforms complimentary to one another. We plan to keep innovating so that our users are happy with our platform and so that it’s constantly serving their needs. This will include increased support for mobile devices, added features for interaction with video and some features we’ve got planned that we think will appeal to corporate users.

Bonus: What was the first Eyejot you watched on your iPod?

It would have to have been one that was generated by myself or one of my partners. To be honest, I don’t recall the details. So much was happening in preparation for our launch that things like who sent the first Eyejot, when was the first mobile Eyejot received, etc. have been lost in the mix. But, that’s a good thing. We like the fact that things have been so busy and users have been swarming to the platform. We’ve also been surprised and delighted by some of the uses we’ve seen for Eyejot. One of the more interesting, to us, as been its adoption by some people in the hearing impaired community. Apparently signing with Eyejot can be faster than typing. Plus, the same benefits that we’ve been talking about for everyone apply – namely – the fact that with video it’s so easy to impart emotion, energy, excitement, sadness, jubilation, etc.

Copyright © 2007 by Sonia Aggarwal