Internet Tech Boston

For those who follow the local, Boston Interent Technology scene, there is no better place to network, learn about upcoming pre-funded ventures, and meet really smart people than the Web Innovator’s Group. If you haven’t been to one of the quarterly gatherings yet, you definitely should put it on your list. Unfortunately for me, the summer event fell smack dab in the middle of my vacation week. As much as I like Web Inno (and I really do), I was hard pressed to leave the sun, sand, and surf of Cape Cod and venture up to Cambridge. Luckily, my colleagues at PermissionTV were there recorded the entire night’s events. Enjoy!

Last night I ventured out to the Boston-area Startup Marketing Meetup organized by Nathan Burke and hosted by the folks at Aprigo in Waltham. I gave a 15 minute talk on the subject of using video to strengthen your online marketing efforts. There were about 15 or so people from the local startup community – some folks looking for work, some looking for marketing ideas (like me), and some brave souls starting their company of 1 and needing some moral support. In other words – it was a great crowd with people who could really share their unique perspectives and help each other out.

Phillip Zannini

I particularly enjoyed listening to Phillip Zannini talk about his experiences and “lessons learned” from his time working at 2 startups that he either founded or co-founded. Phillip gave some good, honest, and actionable advice that may seem simple, but if not followed can lead to really disastrous results. For example, he advised that co-founders should form a team of complementary but different skill sets. By nature, entrepenuers and co-founders are hands-on. If the members of your startup team have similar skills, it will result in everyone trying to do everyone else’s job – not good in the already-hectic culture of a startup.

If you’re interested in learning more about my talk, I’ve posted my presentation slides below. Also, be on the lookout for Nathan’s video recording of both presentations on his blog.

This past January, I started producing a weekly live video webcast at work called PTV Live. Even though it’s only a half hour once a week, my co-workers were pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to keep it going for more than a couple of months. Even though I had never done anything like this before, I was confident I’d be able to get it done. After all, all I really had to do was give our opinions on blog posts and news about online video marketing. As my father-in-law says, opinions are like . . . well, let’s just say- everyone has one.

In the past few months, I’ve also been spending a lot of time on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and FriendFeed. I’ve been able to meet a ton of new people and learn a lot because of my interactions on these social sites.  But, creating lots of short form content is a great deal different than the long form blog content I’d been used to. I have not been able to switch gears to keep all these content creation engines humming.

Well, it’s 5 months later. I”ve successfully produced 20 shows, and been followed by and have followed several hundred interesting people. Not bad! But, looking back on my efforts,  I can see it’s had a dramatic affect on this blog. My twitter digest, once just a single post in a week of other content, has taken over as primary content, like a virus that has eaten up every other decent idea for a conversation I’ve had in the past few months.

Here are a few lessons I’ve learned about myself and blogging. I’m not sure if these are universal rules. I think they might be.

1. Short form content is not long form content. Don’t install a Twitter Digest widget on your blog platform. Having your Twitter stream in a sidebar is one thing, but having an automated bot post daily or weekly entries gives you yet another reason not to post to your blog. You’ll end up with 33 consecutive posts titled “Tweet Tweet, My Week.”
2. Cut your losses with old, half-dead posts. One of my ideas was to do a running column titled “Heads-Up Tech” – pitting 2 similar web technologies against in each other. I had been dragging my feet on finishing up a decent column about Last.fm vs. Pandora. But then Mashable released it’s Pandora vs. Last.fm post. Yeah, it’s professionally written, but I still couldn’t get over how much more better and more complete it was. I stared at my draft post, off and on, for the next 6 months until I finally just deleted it.
3. Share less, explain more. Last week, I tried Sessmic Desktop after being a happy TweetDeck user for 9 months or so. There were some key features missing, and it didn’t make sense to me to learn a whole new UI that offered basically the same feature set as the one I was used to. My 140 character mindset fired off a quick missive and moved on. Yeah, it was great to share my thought, but it would have made a better “Heads-Up Tech” post.
4. A blog is about content, not widgets. In the 6 months that I haven’t been writing content, I’ve installed dozens of themes and played around with bunches of widgets. I had fun playing with the technology when I should have been writing.
5. It’s just a blog. I’m not writing for Time or Newsweek. It’s ok to write a post that’s . . . Ok. No need to win the Pulitzer each and every week. When I have a thought, I’ll write about it quickly and get it out there.

One last thing – an apology. I’m sorry to those who had subscribed via email and to my RSS feed. You thought you were signing up for one thing, and got something else instead. Here’s looking forward to a different approach for the rest of ’09.

Continuing the effort to raise awareness of Boston area based Internet Startups, this month’s guest post comes from Dan Haubert, Co-founder of TicketStumbler. I talked with Dan at TicketStumbler, a Y-Combinator that launched in August 2008, not only to find out more about the company, but also about how he saw themselves fitting into the Boston area web entrepenuerial sector. This guest post continues a series on Boston area startups that includes Matt Wiseley from EditMe and Abby Kirigin from TipJoy. Thanks to Dan for his time and sharing his thoughts.

Mamet: What’s the compelling reason to use TicketStumbler instead of more well known companies TicketMaster?
Haubert: The biggest advantage of using TicketStumbler is the ability to pick your seats while comparing hundreds (or thousands) of listings at once. This allows you to find the best seats at the best price. At Ticketmaster, you’re never able to select your seats – you just hope Ticketmaster spits out something you like. If Ticketmaster ever changes this, we’ll include them within our main site listings. Furthermore, at our site you can compare multiple events at a given venue at the same time. For example, if you know you’re going to be in Boston for a week, you can compare all the relative Red Sox games.

On the ticket blog we include Ticketmaster offers & links. If the event is expected to sell out, your best bet is probably Ticketmaster as the prices are fixed. However, most events don’t sell out so you can often find tickets below face value at TicketStumbler. And since we’re in a recession, this is more true than ever. NHL winter classic tickets were going for below face value as were many NCAA college bowl games. Finally, if the event is sold out and you want tickets, TicketStumber allows you to browse everything that’s available as prices can vary widely.

Mamet: How does TicketStumbler make money, or plan to make money?
Haubert: We receive a percentage of every sale directly from our ticket providers (e.g. Stubhub, Ticketsnow, Razorgator). The cost is the same going through TicketStumbler as it is going straight to one of our ticket providers. TicketStumbler is, and always will be, free.

Mamet: As a Web 2.0 software company, how have you been helped or hindered by being located in Massachusetts, as opposed to California?
Haubert: To be honest, I still don’t know exactly what web 2.0 means. For us, Boston has been a major advantage. Our burn rate would have almost doubled had we moved to San Francisco, and we would have almost certainly needed to take on additional investor funding (as of right now, the only money we’ve received has been from Y Combinator). Not having to worry about that has allowed us to focus on our product. The major advantages of San Francisco are: more investors, more talent to hire and a stronger startup community. We’ve been fortunate to have investor interest from both coasts. We aren’t hiring, but we would love to see a stronger startup community in Boston. Tom and I are both big fans of San Francisco so we’ll probably move out there eventually. For now, Boston is great and Bruins games are awesome.

Mamet: Is this scalping? Am I going to get into trouble if I use your website?
Haubert: TicketStumbler actually doesn’t own any tickets; we’re just an aggregator. A good analogy to use is thinking about us as an Expedia or an Orbitz. Expedia doesn’t have any physical planes – TicketStumbler doesn’t have any physical tickets. The scalping laws have largely been revoked and usually don’t apply to online ticket sales. Major League Baseball signed an agreement with Stubhub as did the Washington Wizards and numerous NFL teams. People are realizing that allowing safe, free markets is a better solution than regulations that don’t work or are ignored anyway. That said, I’d still be careful buying from a street scalper as there’s no certainty that the tickets are real. All of our ticket providers offer 100% guarantees.

Mamet: Given that you’re up against some big names in TicketMaster and LiveNation, how do you plan to spread the word about your service and grow your customer base?
Haubert: Just as United Airlines & Delta aren’t direct competitors with Expedia, Ticketmaster & Livenation aren’t direct competitors with TicketStumbler. Ticketmaster is already a partner and once Livenation introduces their affiliate program, they’ll be a partner as well. We’re not trying to compete with them (although we compete somewhat for traffic). Our goal is to include as many tickets as possible and let fans pick what tickets to buy and where to buy them from.

Mamet: If you had a 2 minute audience with all your potential customers, what would you say to them?
Haubert: I’d tell them that we have over $1.5 billion worth of tickets on our site to almost any event imaginable. If they were first time users, I’d tell them to give us a try for MLB & NBA games where below face value tickets are abound.

Most businesses, especially small to medium sized businesses, are run poorly. That’s why they don’t all succeed. Not because they have bad ideas, or bad employees, but because of poor execution. I focus most of my professional energy trying to execute well. I use that word, “well,” purposefully. Well is not perfect. Well is not poorly.

Historically, I get a lot of flak from professionals in all the companies I’ve been in, whose primary interest lies someplace else. Usually, these well-intentioned people are just focused on talking rather than executing. Sometimes these people are less well-intentioned and just want to maximize their own benefits. This constant struggle between me vs. them is wearing.   Occasionally, I’ll come across a book, an author, or a presentation that revitalizes me and reaffirms my beliefs in what I feel is the “right way” to run a business. The “10 Laws of Building a SaaS Company” presentation by Bessemer Venture Partners is one of those. Here’s a Cliff Notes version of what I learned:

1. Your key monthly business metrics are: CMRR Committed Monthly Recurring Revenue, Churn, Cash Flow. “Bookings” is for suckers.
2. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Customer LifeTime Value (CLTV) are the best indicators of long term value creation.
3. Tune before you scale. Stop at 3 sales reps until at least two of them are making 100k MRR quotas. “You need at least 2 to 3 sales reps that are productive and efficient on their own, without a lot of executive support, before you step on the gas.”
4. Separate your “hunters” and “farmers” and pay them all on CMRR growth. “Orient all your [sales team] compensation plans around CMRR, not around bookings.”
5. Focus your business dev. efforts on business service channels, not IT channels. IT Channels are not good for SaaS companies because there isnot a lot of hardware and software needs when your product is purchased, because you’re providing it. Also, there aren’t a lot of professional service deals because it’s not an implemented product.
6. By definition, your sales prospects are online. Savvy online marketing is a core competence (sometimes the only one) of every successful SaaS business.
7. Stay local – prove your business in North America first. Only after reaching $1M in CMRR should you consider overseas. Save Asia for post-IPO.
8. Single instance, multi-tenant, single datacenter. Have only 1 version of code in production. “Just say no” to on-premise deployments. “You can get the worst of both business models if you have a highly fragmented, on-premise model with the subscription economics of revenue.” This made me think of 37 signals, immediately.
9. The most important part of software-as-a-service isn’t software it’s service. Monitor,  gather feedback, and then benchmark. You can drive a ton of Product Marketing and Product Management insights from all having all customer data in single instance. Simply tracking usage of your customers gives you significant insights into your product. I thought of Hubspot.com when I heard this.
10. Be prepared to cross the desert. SaaS requires R&D and sales expense up front for a multi-year stream of revenue, so it demands enough investment captial to fund 4+ years of runway. Load up for the long trip and pace your consumption of calories! (dollars)
11. Bonus Rule. You can ignore 1 or 2 of these rules, but not more. Great companies innovate, but pick your battles. This “bonus” rule made me laugh. This first excuse that poor leaders of companies give, when faced with the overwhelming data that their current strategy and tactics aren’t working, is something like “Well, this companys is so different from all the other companies out there, the normal rules don’t really apply to me.” Obvioiusly, the folks at Bessemer have heard this too. (Probably a lot more times than I have. . .) and decided to throw this Bonus Rule in. You’re not that different. You’re just a bad leader.

The Web 2.0 world is a fairly large sized walled garden. Most people involved in the development, design, creation, and usage of web sites and applications built around the Web 2.0 concept share similar goals, objectives, tastes and opinions. Web 2.0 companies like Twitter and Facebook have brought a large group of us together online, but have paled in comparison to the seismic affect on consumer behavior we saw with Web 1.0 companies like Amazon and eBay.

Over the past few months, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see a string of companies invest in online companies that seek out an audience that doesn’t already have 4 online profiles or a few hundred followers – jocks. This particular audience is passionate about easy ways to get lots of information about their favorite sports teams delivered to them in a manner that’s easy for them to consume. Some parallels to the needs and wants of the existing technology-set, but this sports crowd is not passionate about technology for technology’s sake – you’ll have to give them something actually useful. The good news is, they’ll probably pay for it and not whine about open-sourcing everything.

I say – Welcome aboard! Web 2.0 is supposed to be about sharing ideas and creating mash-ups of technologies. I’m tired of seeing the same news “break” on the same day at all the the “elite” tech blogs. If you are too, check out this list of companies mashing up Web 2.0 ideas and technology with sports culture:

• SportsFanLive: It’s Like Netvibes For Sports
• SportsPassion Brings Team Players Together Online
• ESPN Helps The Active Network Raise $80 Million More
• Nofouls Puts Your Local Basketball Games on the Map
• Get Ready for Some COLLEGE Football!
• Sportgenic Gets A $10 Million Bump In Funding
• Ultimate Football Network Will Help You Manage Your Fantasy Football Leagues
• Redesigned Sports Socnet CrowdPicks Offers Users Incentive to Keep Active

Last month, Walmart decided to end its involvement in DRM and sent an email to its customers to let them know they needed to protect their purchase by exporting DRM’d music to mp3 on CD. Given the politically-charged debate over DRM, this move was covered widely, including by the bigshots over at TechCrunch.

Not so fast. This morning I received the following email from the Walmart Digital Music Team – they’re not pulling the plug on their DRM server – yet. Apparently it’s not a good idea to yank down a server with only 30 days notice. Who would have guessed?

NOTE: This is a follow-up to our email titled “Important Information
About Your Digital Music Purchases” from 9/26/08.

Based on feedback from our customers, we have decided to maintain our
digital rights management (DRM) servers for the present time.  What this
means to you is that our existing service continues and there is no
action required on your part.  Our customer service team will continue
to assist with DRM issues for protected windows media audio (WMA) files
purchased from Walmart.com.

While our customer support team is available to assist you with any
issues, we continue to recommend that you back up your songs by burning
them to a recordable audio CD. By backing up your songs, you insure
access to them from any personal computer at any time in the future.

We appreciate your support and patience as we work to provide the best
service possible to you.  As we move forward with our 100% MP3 store,
we’ll continue to update you with key decisions regarding our service
and your account via email.

Thank you for using Walmart MP3 Music Downloads.

The Walmart Digital Music Team

For a long time, the iPhone fervor had me completely disillusioned, bordering on disgust. People standing in line for days for the privilege of forking over a substantial sum of money for a consumer electronic device was bringing out the worst in me. On principle, I decided against buying anything like the iPhone. Like my 98 Camry with 200k on the odometer, my old LG flip phone was working just fine. I did not need a shinier new toy.

But things change, as they tend to do. A steady barrage from Apple’s marketing engine, and the adoption of the iPhone among my friends, family, and colleagues wore me down. I bought the damn thing after a long period of consideration. Like most new iPhone converts, I spent the first week or two focusing on the user experience – the shine, the gloss, the sex appeal. I waited for buyer’s remorse to set in after the glow wore off. To my surprise, my love of the iPhone grew from summer time infatuation to a deep and abiding commitment. Here’s why:

1. GPS / Maps: I don’t need to buy a Garmin or TomTom. I don’t have to carry around another device.
2. Twitterific: Yeah, I’m a social media spazz and man-about-town. It’s fun to take pictures and Tweet while I’m out and about.
3. Yelp: I was on the streets of San Francisco and was hankering for a good steak. Yelp’s iPhone application, combined with the GPS allowed me to find a list of restaurants nearby, complete with user reviews and prices. A few minutes later I was chowing on red meat and red wine. Yum!
4. Evernote: Ever finished one of those long planning meetings where you wish you could just take a picture of the whiteboard rather than copy down all your notes? Well, with Evernote’s iPhone application you can do just that. I’m a big fan of the Evernote service, and the iPhone application is a perfect complement.
5. GrandDialer: Having spent my entire professional career in some facet of professional services, I’ve grown to loathe the “always on” attitude that some people have grown to expect out of the people who work at the companies they hire to do their work for them. Instead of giving these unreasonable people my cell phone number, I give them my GrandCentral number and it helps me filter them out of my personal life. Now GrandDialer lets me use my cell phone to call them and my GrandCentral number appears on their Caller ID.
6. Shazam:Ever wondered what that song is that you’re hearing on the radio or at a club? Open Shazam and let it listen in and it will tell you. Simple as that.
7. Pandora / Last.fm:Online radio services Pandora and Last.FM allow you to find new music that you’ve never heard before, but are “guarenteed” to like. Recommendations are based on music you already like. For a guy that spends over one hour driving to work in the morning and again in the evening, it’s nothing short of a miracle to listen to commercial-free, DJ-free radio that is specifically tailored to my interests. I prefer Pandora over Last.FM, and ReadWriteWeb has named one of the great iPhone apps. 
8. WordPress: Mobile device + WordPress app = Live blogging brought to a whole new level. iPhone keyboard is a little tricky for long-form blog posts, I’ll admit.
9. iPod: Oh yeah, did I mention that I get to carry 16 GB of my music, videos, and photos along with me? Again, no extra device required.
10. Future of the App Store:As Apple’s TV commercial pitch-man states, there are currently over 1000 apps, and “this is when you realize, this will change everything.”

Overall, we’re not talking about a phone anymore. It’s a computer that you can put in your pocket, and we’re not talking about some bleeding-edge geek device that can’t be used by the average joe. Apple has applied it’s seemeless design sense and usability to make a powerful device. This is not a toy.

This month’s guest post comes to us from Matt Wiseley, founder and Chief Architect at EditMe.com, a hosted wiki with “a powerful JavaScript API that provides complete control over a highly configurable content management solution.” Based in Maynard, MA, EditMe was founded in 2002 under a firm set of guiding goals and a disciplined approach that is uncommon in the frenetic Web 2.0 Product Development industry. To that end, I asked Matt to share his thoughts on how he made the move from part of the rat-race to stable startup and small company.

Chicken Entrepreneurship is a term used to describe a growing class of entrepreneurs who start a business while maintaining their full time job. Internet businesses that don’t require full-time staff (at least in the beginning) have made this a popular option among entrepreneurs.

Perhaps you’re motivated by the allure of riches. In his blog, The Simple Dollar, Trent Hamm discusses how Chicken Entrepreneurship can lead to financial independence.   Maybe you just want the independence and flexibility running your own business can provide. Or maybe you just want to build something from scratch with your own brainpower and two hands. Any way you read it, this strategy for starting a business has some real benefits. I should know: I started my company while working fulltime. I’ve since left that job and my business is flourishing. Looking back, I wouldn’t do it any differently.

There are three huge benefits to starting out this way:

• You don’t need a salary. You can use the income from your full-time salary to support yourself while the business is ramping up. This would otherwise pose a significant capital expense to the new company.
• You can invest your disposable income. You can also use some of that income to fund the start-up yourself, perhaps avoiding taking on debt or the need for outside investors. Remember, if you start a company with somebody else’s money, it’s not really your company.
• Less risk to your finances and career. Finally, you can test the waters with a minimal monetary investment and back out with no harm done if it doesn’t take off.

What kind of businesses are best started this way? Look for these traits:

• Recurring revenue. Look for a business model that provides steady recurring revenue. You won’t have time to work for every penny the company earns. The more money the company can earn on its own, the less you’ll have to be there.
• Headless. Your business can’t require your presence during the day – you won’t be there.
• Homemade. Look for a product or service you can build/develop yourself, or one you can easily afford to outsource. If your company is within your area of expertise (it should be), nobody can implement your idea as well as you can at this defining stage.
• Low capital requirement. The company shouldn’t require a large capital investment, such as buying a fleet of delivery trucks, unless you’ve got the dough on hand and won’t miss it.
• Monthly expenses. Look for expenses that can be paid monthly rather than in large sums up front. Use services aimed at small businesses rather than hiring staff and buying equipment. This will allow you to use your disposable income to pay the company’s expenses with as little pain as possible.
• Keep the wind at your back. Find a business that takes advantage of market conditions. This is true for any business, but the more your company can benefit from external conditions the less up-hill pushing you’ll have to do. For example, I started a wiki hosting business just before the man-on-the-street was starting to know what Wikipedia was.

Once you’ve got an idea, you need to do a self-check to determine whether this is going to work for you at this time in your life and career.

• Spare time. You will need a lot of spare time in the evenings and on weekends. Without it, your business will be starved for attention. If you’ve got young children or are otherwise time-committed, this is not for you.
• Disposable income. Do you have significant disposable income? If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you won’t have much to put into the company. Cut your expenses down to the bare minimum during this ramp-up time (between 1 and 3 years) to maximize your non-debt investment capability.
• Leveraged skill. You will need a skill that can be leveraged by the company. For me, it was software development. Your time will be the most valuable (and free) asset the fledgling company has, so make sure it’s put to good use.
• Flexible job. You should work things so that you’re not interrupted at all by your business during the work-day, but some flexibility in your day job will come in handy. If you have a pushy over-seer of a boss, consider moving to something a little more low-key during this process.

Finally, you’ll likely need to pick up some new skills and do some homework. Assuming you’re the only real employee, you’re going to have to wear all the hats. Don’t assume you can figure these out as you go along. Find good books on each subject you don’t consider yourself an expert in and read them before starting out.

• Marketing. Your company will need to make every penny of its marketing budget count. You can avoid costly mistakes by doing your homework before spending any money. Trust me: marketing is harder than you think.
• Insurance. Research your need for business liability insurance. If you don’t do this properly, you can be sued by customers and lose your personal assets.
• Business entity. Research legal business structures and pick one. Doing so can add to your protection against lawsuits, and can also provide valuable financial and tax benefits.
• Delegate. Learn to delegate and outsource. For example, don’t design the marketing materials and web site if you’re not a designer. Learn to use tools like Elance to find affordable short-term staffing.
• Employee agreement. Research the implications of any employee agreement you have with your current employer. Consult an attorney to make sure there are no conflicts and that your employer can’t swoop in and “own” your company.

I spent years slowly growing my business, rather than BAM! New business. This organic, gradual growth enabled a lot of practice and trial and error. The only deadlines and revenue goals were my own, and not a lot was riding on them. To me, it was the only way to go. It was smart, not chicken. With no debt and essentially no risk at all, I got to where I wanted to be: owning a company that I enjoy working for. I’ve never regretted it and am currently incubating another idea to build on the side while running my business. So, go ahead, be chicken!

It’s been a busy month for local internet technology events, and it shows no sign of slowing down. Monday night I was at the Boston Web Innovators Group meeting WebInno19. There was a huge turnout of local web and mobile entrepreneurs and technologists. Several local startups gave informal demonstrations of their company’s product at side tables located throughout the auditorium. You can check out a couple of snaps that I took on the trusty iPhone. Three of the companies gave formal product demonstrations to the assembled group at large:

• Givvy, a charitable management system. Call me a selfish Grinch, but I just don’t see this getting a lot of attention, nor making any serious money.
• Pixily, an online service for storing paper documents as digital files. Pixily won the Audience Choice award for the night. Voting was done by sending a text message from your mobile – pretty clever.
• Brring, a free ringback service that lets you personalize your ringback tone by uploading an audio file. Of the 3 demos given, I thought this was the most compelling. They showed how you can upload your audio file, see it get transcoded, and then edit the file’s timeline to pick the parts you want to use.
  

  Brring demonstrates its thing at WebInno19

  After the 3 “main dish” product demonstrations were completed, the event turned to an informal social mixer. There was a great crowd of young, talented, and eager people from both the business side and the technology side of the house. I was pleased to meet a bunch of people, including:

• Gautum Gupta of General Catalyst Partners. GC is a VC firm with a slightly different take. Rather then load up on MBA/Ivy League/Wall Street types, they focus on building their firm with people who are honest to goodness entrepeneurs and have a “been there, done that” type of resume. I really liked talking to Gautum. GC has both PermissionTV competitors Brightcove and Maven Networks in their portfolio. Clearly, they’ve made good choices.
• Anthony Hand specializes in User Experience Design and Usability of Mobile Applications. We didn’t get to talk for too long before the main dishes started up, but I was impressed with his focus of UX + Mobile. Clearly a sign of the times.
• Joe Baz, Principal at Above the Fold, a boutique web design and online marketing firm located in downtown Boston. As someone who used to run Embarc, a local interactive agency, we traded some war stories. Best of luck with your future plans, Joe!
• Ariel Diaz is Co-Founder and CEO at YouCastr. Ariel describes his product as the destination site for coverage of local and/or second-tier sports (i.e. fencing, water polo, etc). TechCrunch describes YouCastr as a sports version of Justin.TV. Ariel and I talked a bit about how the execution of his product roadmap. Like PermissionTV, YouCastr employs an agile (little A) development methodology. We shared some pains related to “cowboy coding,” and I let him know that Agile Project Management with Scrum has been working for me at PermissionTV. Thanks for the LinkedIn invite, Ariel!
• Neil Costa, of Stimulate Solutions was meeting with client and WebInno19 “side-dish” presenter Tune Rooms. Stimulate is a social media marketing company with a focus on developing an analytics-driven product to measure ROI of campaigns across all social media platforms. Very interesting idea, I’ll be following them closely. . . .

Overall, I was very impressed with the event. Everyone there seemed to be sharing a similar mindset of building a profitable web or mobile-based product company that utilizes the latest technologies. No jokers or hacks allowed. If you were in attendence, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the night in the comments.

Next up – MITX Video Series: The Ins and Outs of Making Money from Online Video, sponsored by none other than PermissionTV, coming up the night of Wednesday the 17th . . .