The Progress Bar

WIRED mag on VCs Adjust to Facing More Competitors for Fewer Companies. Appropriate given tonight is the bi-monthly Webinnovators group meeting here in Boston. David Beisel at Venrock founded Webinno, he’s done a great job bringing startups in front of an audience that now is pushing 400 people per event. Hey, this blog is the #2 link on Google for “webinnovators.”

I’ve been to a few events lately billing themselves as “like webinno, but smaller, more focused, easier to meet people.” Webinno is hit or miss in terms of connecting with useful people, as are most large-scale networking events. Unless you are a pro networker, you’re wandering around the room and practicing your quick exit strategy, as in “nice to meet you gotta go.”

Boing Boing’s Corey Doctorow says most Internet startups don’t need VC, or if they do, it’s for small seed rounds. I say it depends on the market sector. Nobody builds a new piece of hardware like a router on their credit card.

Paul Kedrosky, a partner with Ventures West:

Right now, honestly? This time sucks for us, it’s a bad time.

Most internet startups these days are simple to the point of being more of a web service, requiring less startup capital, fewer employees and a totally flat org hierarchy. Six months from cocktail napkin business plan to finished closed beta service is almost the norm these days. Anything more and you’re legacy building, which is a waste of time for the most part in most entrepreneurs minds, unless you’re building a router.

I was surprised to see that the WIRED article says nothing about the other values VC bring to the table, like experience, connection, mentors and other back-room value that’s lost to most entrepreneurs in the beginning.

See you tonight, Royal Sonesta Hotel, Cambridge.

It’s that time again.

We a€™re a little over a week away from the first Web Innovators Group meeting of 2008 on Tuesday January 29^thstarting at 6:30pm. We have another solid lineup of startups demo’ing at the event… the main presentations to the entire crowd will start at 7pm, thirty minutes after we open the Grand Ballroom at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge:

• MakeMeSustainable – Ben Brown & David Delcourt
• SpotScout – Andrew Rollert
• Urban Interactive (Conditor) – Nicholas Tommarello

As a new feature, we’ll be introducing the opportunity for the crowd to vote for the “Audience Choice� — the favorite Main Dish demonstrating company of the event.

Following those presentations, each of our side dish demonstrators will have an opportunity to give a quick 30-second overview of their service to the audience followed by a showcase of their companies at tables spread throughout the periphery of the room during the unstructured networking portion of the evening:

• MyHappyPlanet – Karen Ong
• Survol – Stan Lyness
• Glassbooth – Ian Manheimer
• Mofuse – David Berube
• Buildium – Michael Monteiro
• Socrato (Omnisharp) – Raju Gupta

As always, everyone who is interested in web and mobile innovation is encouraged to attend the free event. Please RSVP (and find additional details) on the event page (http://webinno16.eventbrite.com/) if you plan to join us so we are able to print name tags and appropriately size the room.

Last night I attended the latest (14th) Web Innovators Group meeting. It was the best one I’ve been to yet. The presentations were solid except for some Facebook glitches, the crowd large enough to warrant expanding the room size to accommodate all the new folks. For the first time, I talked to so many people that I didn’t get to see all the side dishes.

I ran into people I haven’t seen in years, (Hi Karen!) clients showed up and I met some very smart/connected/successful people I hope to do business with in the near future.

Afterwards a few of us went over to the Muddy Charles pub at MIT where there was some sort of Brazilian/Columbian networking party. Transitioning from talking with VC’s to watching cute 20-year-old Brazilians dance around wearing flags while we talked about  mobile phone design made for an interesting evening.

It was fun to go downstairs from the Muddy to walk by WMBR. In 1993 I had a radio show there called ElectricSpace. We interviewed lots of amazing people that went on to become Internet legends, had a lot of fascinating late-night conversations and my roomate Michael proved that dance music can be Intelligent.

GregPC does his usual WebInno scorecard. Definitely worth a read if you want to lowdown on the presenters and side-dishes.

See you in November at Webinno 15.

Crashing into my apartment in Google Earth Flight Simulator
Google Working on Social Network Aggregator
WPP Buys LA Interactive Agency Schematic; Latest Digital Acquisition

Dyebag touchscreen

10 Future Web Trends

See you at Webinno tonight. The usual suspects will be downstairs at Dante afterwards.

The next Webinno is Monday September 10th. Event begins at 6:30pm in the Grand Ballroom at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge

There are three main dish presenters who will take the stage for a six minute demo of their service to the entire crowd:

Frame Media – Alan Phillips & Jon Finegold
GoLoco – Robin Chase
DesignMyRoom (Swatchbox) – Jesse Engle

Following those presentations, each of our side dish demonstrators will have an opportunity to give a quick 30-second overview of their service to the audience followed by a showcase of their companies at tables spread throughout the periphery of the room during the unstructured networking portion of the evening:

Fafarazzi / Dirtlocker – Chris Keller & Todd Galloway
SNIF Labs – Noah Paessel
TheUpDown – Michael Riech
GuitarStar (AdMe Corp) – Peter Eggleston
Mobleo – Tom Boilard Oncero – Phil Kim

Please RSVP at http://webinno14.eventbrite.com/ if you plan on attending.

Boston’s Web Innovators Group continues to mature although I keep running into smart connected people that don’t know what Webinno is, so here’s a recap from the blog.

The Web Innovators Group (WebInno) is comprised of people engaged in internet and mobile innovation in the Boston area. We aim to support entrepreneurs, visionaries, and creative thinkers in the field by holding events which foster community interaction.

Our regular meetings provide a forum for entrepreneurs from self-funded/early-stage startups to present new services to their peers, as well as an opportunity for everyone in the community to share and exchange ideas.

WebInno was founded and is currently led by David Beisel of Venrock.

Last week someone said they thought they saw a familiar Tech Crunch trajectory brewing. I’ve never been to one, but early Tech Crunch parties saw friends of mine crashed on Arrington’s couch after a long night of  networking. Something tells me that won’t be happening at the Royal Sonesta.

The Webinno website/blog has undergone various changes over the summer. The Webinno signup wiki has been replaced by Event Brite and looks like the entire site is now powered by a blog. Tip to the Webinno webmasters: why is the blog under the category sub-directory?

Despite a lack of community and conversation outside of the bi-monthly events and the fact that most demo’s could be done sitting at home in front of my computer, Webinno continues to grow month after month. We are starved for contact with our people, but is Webinno enough? In a word, no. Sites like Mark’s Guide tell us about the events, but the topics of most tech events are either too mainstream or technical for my liking. Beisel created Webinno to flow deals into his VC firm, the side-effect being a bi-monthly room full of people who tangentially have something in common.

Does anyone remember the MIMIC parties on the top floor of Trattoria il Panino back in the day? That was more of an excuse to get drunk and dance than network, although I remember some decent sized deals originating on the dancefloor.

Webinno has hosted a few dinners focusing on specific topics like mobile and widgets, but I cannot comment, as I was not at either of them. One of the best Boston dinners I’ve been to was the Identity conference at Harvard last summer. Sitting across from Doc Searls at a table full of brilliant people talking about the everything from digital cameras to persistent, portable identity metasystems and soaking in the conversation and great wine.

Questions for Webinno staff. Where is the message board? Where is the monthly newsletter? Why is the wiki gone? The blog has few comments but that’s because the content on the blog doesn’t really draw one out to leave a message.

Part of what makes blogs like Tech Crunch and Scoble interesting is that they are frequent posters, often wrong and write incendiary posts that get commenters up in arms several times a day. Makes for good reading but it’s sad that grown men are reduced to tears based on a non-stellar Tech Crunch review of their me-too social net or video sharing service. Boo-hoo.

I was expecting some more collaboration and conversation to pop up, but then again I work from my home office and my clients are around the world, requiring late night conference calls, so I don’t get out and about the Boston tech scene much. I guess I should start a networking event that caters to what I need. Isn’t that how most great ideas start out?

A quick shout out to the Co-Working Betahouse, who throw good parties every once in a while. I want a Betahouse for the rest of us. The marketing, financial, design, biz dev and in-betweeners. Who’s heading that up?

Ok, I’m done thinking about Webinno. One last Webinno feature worth mentioning- the Webinno job board, powered by Edgio, has several openings, mostly technical. Go forth and interview, and don’t forget to sign up for the September 10 Webinno. See you there.

David Beisel, founder of Webinno is interviewed by Intruders.tv.

David has a post about Seven Upcoming Digital Uber-Trends Ripe for Startup Opportunities.  I was surprised at the topics on this list, most topics appear to be almost two years old. Then again, I spend most of my time ahead of the curve and forget that people sometimes need to catch u[

My man GPC does a scorecard about how he thinks the WebInno 13 presenters are going to do. I prefer to wait until afterwards, because I really have nothing to say about something like (Beacon Street Girls) until after I see the demo.

I did however have a great demo of Webkins over the weekend. I will be hanging out there with my god-daughter to play games and goof off with her from time to time. Webkins is 8,0000% more fun than Myspace and there is a ton of stuff to do. We did a 20 minute demo and got through less than five percent of the features. It’s like cartoony game-driven SecondLife for the under-10 set. First you go to Webkins, then you graduate to Beacon Street  Girls or any of the other tween-focused social sites.

See you at WebInno on Monday July 9th.

I went to the Linden Labs SecondLife recruiting party in Boston a few weeks ago. Talk about a mind-blower. I ran into people that I worked on virtual environments with almost 15 years ago and made some new friends as well.

Speaking of SL, the new atmospheric rendering from WindLight is major coolness.

Even more SL: GregPC caught myself and John Lester doing some late-night canoing after a long conversation at Dante after the last WebInno event in Cambridge.

List of demonstrators is at the Webinno blog.