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The BostonWebInnovators (website, blog, wiki) event continues to impress. Last night’s event was held in a larger hall, approximately 250 entrepreneurs, VC, developers and media were in attendance. It was great to see so many startups and their support ecosystem in one place. The room exuded a heady, pre-bubble vibe, which no doubt raised eyebrows of some of us that were around for the first Boston internet boom, circa 1994.
I am starting to make connections and see more familiar faces at these events, which is good considering I have done little local networking the past few years. My clients are all in San Francisco, Florida or Europe and my marketing all happens through my blogs.
By way of introduction to new readers, I started my consulting biz, Digicraft, in 1994. I built a lot of websites for IBM, Modem Media clients, and then helped build an interactive unit for a boutique advertising agency in New York. I remember going to SIG (pre-Digitas days) and seeing their web shop, all of about five people. Working in Silicon Alley in 95-98 was amazing, and burning out and taking off to Bali to live on the beach before moving back to Boston was the best time of my life, at least so far.
My resume is in the sidebar, I’ll let that speak for me if you’re interested. Basically lot’s of early-adopter stuff that most people in the room last night are probably too new to remember. andwidth, social nets, open API’s and cheap hardware are fueling the current wave of web innovation. I’m excited to be excited again, and not looking back on past accomplishments, but ahead to the future.
Polling the audience about their pick for the Main Dish presenter most likely to succeed was interesting. It was somewhat perplexing to hear so many people champion web-based writing application Virtual Ubiquity. I’ve spent some time with Writely and Zoho and reacted favorably to VU’s feature set, which addressed some of the most annoying issues with MS Word. However, It’s a hotly contested space, and the demo didn’t address addressable market, revenue models, etc. All I heard is that high-school students are going to use it, they are going after the .edu market? It’s a demo, but I do expect to hear about why I should care about your company.
I personally cheered for MyDesingin the loudest. I don’t think people grokked the complexity of what they have accomplished technically. Easily importing fixtures, windows and associated stats and prices from external websites can be a screen-scraping nightmare, and the demo went off smoothly. Just the right amount of CAD-iness and ease of use. The social aspect of sharing designs with other users was a nice touch. Why build from scratch when you can search, filter on attributes and start off with a template that’s close to where you want to be in the end?
MyDesign had me thinking about Yahoo Pipes. I’ve been having a lot of fun mashing up different website and services there. MyDesign is after a big market with lots of cash moving through it and a chance to reduce the friction between couples during the remodeling process, two thumbs up. If they get Lowe’s or Home Depot to market the system, watch out.
Cardvio reminded me of Moo Card. My Moo Cards were supposed to arrive in time for WebInno, but they didn’t. Once a year I go to a card store and buy a ton of cards for every possible occasion. I stick them in a drawer and when iCal birthday alerts pop up I write a note with a pen, and fire it off. Cardvio is a nice execution and will no doubt be popular in the corporate thank-you note market.
The networking at events like these is ok, if not a bit daunting for the uninitiated. Color-coded badges are eschewed, instead, grab a drink and start staring at name tags while perusing Side Dishes.
I participate in a lot of alpha demos from companies before they hit TechCrunch, so my bar for what is cool/useful is set pretty high. I saw a demo for a blog comment system on steroids yesterday that would have had the crowd doing the wave. Do presenters have to be Boston companies?
I would like to be a presenter, except I’m not going to pitch a company. I would like to do a short bit on what I would like to see presented at future Webinno events and finish up by building a social web app in the alloted six minutes with Pipes, KickApps and Brightcove. That would blow minds and get people thinking in new directions. Or not.
Event organizer David Beisel announced the formation of dinner groups, which are a welcome addition. One week I’d like to sit in on a VC dinner, next week hang with devlopers and the week after see what people are saying about the social media.
As a consultant, I want to know what’s going on around town. These days, I would like to spend some time talking with VC about working with their portfolio companies or performing due diligence on potential investments. I’ve done this in the past and enjoyed the experience.
I tell people I’m the perfect 5th guy for a startup. 2-3 founders are insanely driven to realize their dreams, then you have the developer(s) and hopefully a greybeard for seasoning and then there’s me. Usually it takes about half a beer to decide if we should work together, which was the case last night with one company.
Speaking of deals, right before I walked into the event last night I got a call from a client I just met yesterday afternoon via Skype who is looking to do due diligence on a certain website community they are looking to possibly acquire, today.
The endorphin rush of being in the middle of a deal, then immersing myself with 250 peers and getting turned on to some cool startups was a welcome change to my normal day. I hope the trend continues.
David Cutler, GregPC (who blogged about last nights event) and I retired to Dante downstairs to continue the conversation. My girlfriend called from Australia and I went to a quiet corner to talk. When I got back it sounded like Dave and Greg started a company. I was only gone for 10 minutes!
I made some quality new connections and in general consider WebInno a must-attend event. See you at the next event. Add me to your newsreader or you can subscribe to this blog via email, see the sidebar.