Month: November 2010
The new deal on Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals is up and is for Agloves.
As winter approaches, we all need gloves that we can wear and operate our iPhones while walking down the street. Agloves are infused with silver, which allow them to work with any touchscreen device. No more freezing my fingers as I check email outside in the winter.
The deal which runs through the end of the day of Friday is for $9, or half off the retail price (which I happily paid several weeks ago.)
I’ve got a couple more great deals queued up but am looking for more – email me if you have something to talk about. And – if you want your own daily deal site, just tell me and I’ll put you in touch with my friends at Deal Co-op (a TechStars Seattle company.)
We are investors in Memeo, the leading Digital Content software and services platform for consumers and businesses. They are looking for a VP or a Director of Marketing to join them in Santa Clara, CA. If you are interested, please send your resume to MarketingSearch@memeo-inc.com.
A description of the job and Memeo follows:
Memeo is currently recruiting for a VP/Director of Marketing to drive its SasS SMB product growth. Responsibilities include the following:
- Oversee SaaS SMB lead generation and marketing programs for backup, cloud sync, collaboration and large file transfer products.
- Create a lead nurturing and lead scoring strategy.
- Oversee analysis of marketing database.
- Implement infrastructure to improve lead generation workflow.
- Oversee social networking and thought leadership strategy.
- Optimize web presence.
Memeo’s suite of software products and cloud-based services helps users to “Simplify Your Digital Life.” Memeo’s offerings include local and online backup, multi-device, cloud synchronization, large file transfer, and multimedia file sharing. Memeo has issued over 50 million licenses in 20 languages in over 150 countries. In addition to millions of customers using Memeo products, there are over 100,000 companies using Memeo, including 1 out of every 7 Fortune 1000 companies. Memo’s partners include Google, Sony, Seagate, Western Digital, Buffalo Technology and NetGear.
Over the past few months I’ve had a number of people ask me if I know of any TechStars like accelerator programs for people creating non-software / Internet products and services. Some of the obvious vertical markets have been around cleantech and bio / life sciences but some of the more subtle ones have been around government services and non-profits.
I’m interested in examples of accelerator programs in the areas such as cleantech, bio / life sciences, medical devices, university R&D, inner city development, natural foods, women, and non-profit entrepreneurship. I’m also interested in people in these areas that already providing leadership in their entrepreneurial communities, especially in Boulder, Boston, Seattle, and New York (the cities where TechStars operates.)
If you fit in this mix or know someone or an organization that does, can you leave a comment on this post?
Glue Conference Invites New Startups To Apply To Participate For Free
Eric Norlin is a conference master organizer. The original conference we helped Eric create – Defrag – is happening for the fourth time in ten days in Boulder (11/17-11/18). I know of several major announcements that are happening around the conference along with a long list of amazing people that are attending that I’ll get to hang out with for two days.
In the run up to Defrag, something awesome happened last week as Eric continues to work on the two other conferences he runs – Glue and Blur. Alcatel-Lucent signed on to be the Community Underwriter and Partner Sponsor of Gluecon 2011.
Before I explain why that’s exciting, let me describe Glue in Eric’s words:
Glue is aimed aimed at developers, The topics are far technical and because Glue isn’t defined as “a cloud computing” conference, it’s not caught in the echo chamber of “defining” this, that and the other thing. Glue seeks to explore the connective “tissue” of the web and IT infrastructure. That connective tissue can be called a lot of things: service oriented architecture, web services, APIs, cloud computing, etc. But call it what you will, developers know that it’s not the name that counts, it’s the building of the application, and the underlying infrastructure that supports it.
His goal is simple: make Glue the gathering place for developers in the API/Cloud space. Alcatel-Lucent has agreed to underwrite 15 companies to have free demo space at Gluecon (i.e., the demo pod includes passes to the show, signage, internet — everything you need; just show up with a laptop).
The companies will be selected by merit by the following group of people.
- Eric Norlin
- Chris Shipley (Guidewire Group)
- Mathew Ingram (of MESH and GigaOm)
- John Musser (Programmable Web)
- Laura Merling (Alcatel-Lucent)
- Alex Williams (ReadWriteWeb)
- Jeff Lawson (Twilio)
- Jeff Hammond (Forrester)
- Ian Glazer (Gartner)
- Ben Kepes (Diversity.net)
- Vinod Kurpad (Best Buy)
- Seth Levine (Foundry Group)
The process will be simple: Eric will accept applications for the 15 spots, every person on the selection committee gets one vote, and the top 15 vote getters have a demo pod.
Eric is trying to change the game with this one. If you take away the company specific conferences (Google i/o, Twitter, F8), there really just aren’t that many national-level gathering spots for developers in the cloud/API space. The key word here is “developers.”
Eric’s goal (with Alcatel-Lucent’s sponsorship) is to make it easy for 15 new and exciting companies to show up and participate. If you are one of those companies, apply now for the Alcatel-Lucent Demo Pavilion at Glue.
Fred Wilson emailed me a link to Dennis Crowley’s post I’m running the NYC Marathon tomorrow! Fred knows my obsession with human instrumentation, marathons, and social media. And if you recognize Dennis’ name, that’s because he’s the founder / CEO of Foursquare.
As I write this from my house in Eldorado Springs, Colorado, I can see that Dennis is at mile 4.64 of the NYC Marathon via RunKeeper. He just checked in at mile 5 on Foursquare. And yes, Twitter and Facebook are active also.
While some people may not like this future, I love it. Yeah, it’s kind of a pain to carry a bulky iPhone around on a marathon, but there are armbands for that and – in a decade – it’ll just be a thing you inject into your arm under the skin. But for now, guys like Dennis are helping us create the future.
Oh – and he’s running a marathon. He’s now at mile 5.64. Way to go Dennis!
My mom (Cecelia Feld) has had a huge positive impact on my life in many ways. I like to think that I’ve also had a huge positive impact on her life, although I’m sure there have been times that she wanted to hide in a closet from me and scream at the top of her lungs.
Cecelia is an amazing artist who has worked at her craft her entire adult life. As kids, my brother Daniel and I understood that between 9am and 5pm “mom was working in her studio” and was not to be bothered. Among other things, I learned the notion of focused, passionate discipline from her, but I also figured out how to keep myself entertained until she was done working for the day.
One thing that I’ve pestered her endlessly about is being a more shameless salesperson for her art. So, it’s with much pride that I see her now doing her “art pick of the month” where she’s selling one of her pieces for 30% off and promoting it through her email list. I can’t get her to do a blog, so instead I’ll promote it here.
This piece is called (#984) Kimono Series #6 and is a collagraph monotype sized 22×30”. Cecelia did this in 2002 which makes me think of the chaos that was in my head as I continued to unwind the mess that was my world from the collapse of the Internet bubble. It lists for $950 so with the 30% November 2010 discount it’s only $665.
If you are an art lover and this piece appeals to you or you want to be added to Cecelia’s email list, send her an email. I’d love to be able to tell my mom “see – my blog is worthwhile – I sold a piece of your art through it.”
My friends at Orbotix, a TechStars Boulder 2010 company that Foundry Group invested in recently, are having their second hackathon on 11/13 – 11/14 at their office in Boulder.
Orbotix is the gang that is “reinventing the ball” while also creating smartphone apps that control robots. The November Hackathon is all about hacking Android apps and there will be a contest that I’ll be judging on Sunday afternoon along with Paul Berberian (Orbotix’s CEO) and Julian Farrior from Backflip Studios.
The Orbotix guys understand that beer and pizza are required at a two day hackathon and there will be plenty of it. If you are interested, all you need to bring is your Android phone and computer (with Eclipse and the Android SDK) – Orbotix will supply everything else.
If interested, contact Adam (adam [at] orbotix [dot] com).
If you are in Boulder, come to my community hours today between 1 and 5 at the Boulder Bookstore on Pearl Street. David Cohen (TechStars CEO and co-author of Do More Faster) and I will be hanging out all afternoon, talking to whoever shows up about anything that is on your mind, and signing copies of Do More Faster until the Boulder Bookstore runs out of them.
As readers of this blog likely know, I do monthly community hours (also known as random days) where I’ll meet with anyone for 15 minutes about anything they want to discuss. Usually they are scheduled – today’s is an open free-for-all.
Come hang out, buy a book, and talk about entrepreneurship with me and David.
The Defrag Conference is happening in Boulder on Wednesday November 17th and Thursday November 18th and is looking like it will be the best one yet. If you haven’t yet registered, use the code “foundry2” to take 15% off of your registration.
The confirmed Keynote Speakers include:
- Alex Wright addressing the “deep history” of Oral Culture and Social Networks
- Stowe Boyd speaking about “social cognition”
- Esther Dyson on Exploration and innovation
- Dion Hinchcliffe on the future of social analytics
- Jeff Ma on Business Lessons from the Blackjack Table
- David Weinberger on the Philosophy of Knowing
- Paul Kedrosky talking about Monkeys, Typewriters and Data
- Jeff Jonas on Organizations Getting Dumber, and IT’s to Blame
- JP Rangaswami on Information as seen through the eyes of a Foodie
And that’s just some of the keynotes. Toss in a bunch of networking, lots of stimulating discussion, and breakouts that cover everything from APIs to shifting to the Cloud to Social Media Analytics to the Social Customer and it’s shaping up to be dynamite.
If you’re from Colorado, I’d urge you not to miss this stage of deep thinkers from around the nation coming to our fair state.
If you’re from outside of Colorado, what could be better than a few days in a resort overlooking some of the nicest mountains you’ll ever see while thinking deep thoughts?
I hope to see you at Defrag.