Posts Tagged “webinnovators”

All the discussion of lipstick these days makes me think of the old adage, “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your handsome prince.”  Sure, some frogs are so awful they’re utterly unkissable, and some hop away as soon as they see you pucker up, but it’s generally a good truism.

Tonight I dropped in on Web Innovators Group’s 19th demo meeting shindig at the Royal Sonesta to watch the frogs line up.  The event drew an impressively-sized crowd, although not as animated as the crew at the last one, which shouted at each presenter with great gusto, “how are you going to make money?”  And if there was an after-party at Helmand, I missed it this time. Three companies were given longer demo slots as “main dishes”

First up was Givvy.com, a site that proclaims, “Better Givving for a Better World™” - talk about creating your own category.  I work for a company with “giving” in the name, too.  Givvy helps people organize their charitable givving with a searchable database of charities and a sort of charity mutual fund concept.  They also help you with year-end tax prep.  There’s a social aspect in that you can share your charity lists with others.  They say they’re going to make money by selling corporate packages to companies, but I also spied some google ads on their site.  They partner with Network for Good, who are known to take a fee on donations, so I wonder what if anything Givvy’s share is.  Maybe its just me, but I’m just not sure there are a lot of people who want to give but can’t figure out where or how to do so.

Next, Brring.com, “a free ringback service” huh?  I guess I’ve been under a rock of some kind.  Apparently there are lots of people who pay good money to change the sound heard by people who call them.  Not ringtones like the noise your phone makes when people call you, but ringback tones, what callers hear before you pick up.  Weird.  Anyway, Brring lets you do some sound editing on their site to create these tones (and of course you can share them), and makes money by running tiny audio ads that are played to people who call you before the ringback tone kicks in.  I must be old fogy of some sort, because this all sounds terribly annoying to me.

Finally, Pixily.com showed us how they help you save “time, money, space and trees” by scanning all the paper that fills our lives and making it available (and sharable, natch) and searchable onlne.  There are definitely some issues they have to work out, not least among them the security and confidentiality of the paper they handle, but they have a revenue model and unlike the preceding two, they seem to be solving a problem that actually exists.  My main disappointment is that they return your scanned paper to you - I’d much rather see them store it or shred it, like Iron Mountain does.

The SMS-voting masses confirmed my choice of Pixilly as the most likely to get kissed with an overwhleming 2/3 of the votes.  Givvy did ok and Brring was down in the single digit percents.

The “side dishes” got 30-second audio-only pitches and were to my ears not too engaging.  Half a minute can be a long time; I think most of them could have used it better.  Only JobVent and OpenVote stuck out in my mind after.  JobVent because it’s an entertaining idea (almost exactly what it sounds like) and OpenVote because the speaker claimed that it’s a Web 2.0 play that’s not dependent on ads for revenue.  Now that would be innovative.

So, what did I take away from this?  My three and a half thoughts for the night:

1.0 Web 2.0 social whatsis business models propped up by ads are still getting treated with some respect.  Maybe less than before, but many are still puffing on that particular crack pipe.

2.0 Clear thinking and good presentation skills are still in shorter supply than I’d like.  In the short and the long timeslots, there was often a serious lack of getting to the point and selling the sizzle.  Or maybe there was just no sizzle.

3.0 There is hope that technology does occasionally put itself to use to solve problems rather than create them.  If that hope has any hope of making money, I’m still not so sure.

3.5 Product/company naming trend that’s going to explode in 2009:  Ends in -y (givvy, pixily, what’s nexty?)  You read it here first.

It’s been a busy week at limeduck HQ. I will attempt to convey the highlights and then pull myself together to get over to Podcamp Boston, where I’m sure more blogworthy high jinks will ensue.

Fit the First: WIG 18

Webinnovatorsgroup boston (as their typography has it) has the tagline “Promoting Boston’s Web and Mobile Innovation Community.” Their 18th shindig was Tuesday night at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge. It was a large (800 people) networking event with three short pitches and a handful of tabletop exhibits.

It was also the first live event where somebody recognized me as limeduck from my nametag. Scary.

I won’t spend a lot of time picking at the business models or technology of the three pitches, but I will say that the presentation slots were blessedly brief and not all that well-prepared. The crowd was great, however, bellowing out “how are you going to make money?” after each one.

Zeer: Consumer reviews for healthy eating. They won the audience choice award so they must be doing something right, and I do love me a food-related social network. But they do have that annoying way of enforcing first and last name in users. What if Cher wants to join?

Webnotes: Create and manage online annotations. Impressive functionality, but the demo crashed when 500 iphoners in the room tried to follow along. Next time, have a nice whale graphic ready.

Totspot: A place for parents to publish a page about their kids. Two young guys in company t-shirts under blazers kick off the pitch by saying that they’re not parents. If I was their VC, I’d have them grounded.

After the event, I was lucky enough to join a table of the cream of the twitterati at Helmand, one of my favorite places in town. Best Afghan restaurant in Boston sounds like faint praise but this place is special. We enjoyed several plates of delicious pumpkin kaddo and other morsels and pretty much closed the place down.

Fit the Second: Full moon over Scampo; MIA at DeCordova

Thursday, I foolishly accepted a dinner invite with some good people at work, having somehow completely forgotten about the DeCordova Museum’s roofdeck party. I hear the event was fantastic and the view was beautiful. And that somebody there was looking for limeduck. Scary. Since I’ve stopped driving to work, the DeCordova has felt very far away. Must make a visit soon.

Meanwhile, back in Boston, at the bar Clink (it’s a pun, get it?) in the Liberty Hotel, I noticed that Grgich Hills Fume Blanc was on the wine list for $75. Eek. I paid $45 at Casablanca, and a bunch less than that at Sabur. We had some different and delicious wines, but I was glad this one was on the company. We had a pleasant dinner outdoors at Scampo in the same hotel.

From left, risotto with fava beans, fresh mozzarella with carpaccio and smoked sea salt, and gnocchi with swiss chard. All very tasty and well prepared but not quite up to the hype of the setting. The Liberty seems to have become The Place to be seen. As we left, there was some kind of fashion shoot taking place at the valet parking stand. That seems a sign of something just a bit too very very.

On the way home, I spied the thunder moon attended by Jupiter.

Fit the Third: if a tree falls in Cambridge…

As you might have noticed, I’ve been doing some fundraising for the American Heart Association using my birthday as a rallying point. Last night the fundraising hit double my initial goal, and about 25 of the donors joined me at Sabur for small plates and wine. I was very pleased with the turnout and amazed at the fundraising total. Sabur’s team came through with great dishes - cheese burek, potato celery root cakes and balkan sausages were among the favorites - and even managed to get me a good deal on half a case of Grgich. A grand time was had by all, and I’m very grateful to everybody who came out and donated. The fundraising goes on, and I’m sure the dining and drinking will resume at some point.

Then the police called.

“Hello, this is the Cambridge police, we’re calling about your vehicle…” Last time I got a call like that, I was in Hong Kong and somebody had made off with my 18″ TRD wheels, and the police wanted me to move my wheel-less car before they towed it. Tonight they were calling to tell me that a tree had fallen on my car.

Then they asked me to hold on, had along discussion among themselves, and decided that in fact the tree had fallen on a neighboring car, but that I needed to come down right away to see if there was any damage to my car. I didn’t really see the urgency in that, so I got back to the party. When I finally got home, this is what I found.

A large piece of the huge ivy-covered tree had some off and apparently done some damage to whoever was parked behind me, but there wasn’t a (new) scratch on the juice box. Just lots of pollen, sap and bird poo.

All’s well that ends well. Off to Podcamp.