Now Robert has put together at conference called Add-on-Con which is focused on browser add-ons. It’s happening in Mountain View, CA on December 11. They’ve just added a closing keynote called “The future of the web browser” which will be moderated by Douglas Crockford and featuring representatives from Microsoft, Mozilla and Google. They’ve also created a program called Sandbox which is designed to help new companies get exposure to the community and the browser vendors. Finally, they’ve created a game with the goal of facilitating name and face recognition of people attending the conference.

Robert was kind enough to offer me a discount code for anyone reading this who’d like to attend. Use “DCohenaddoncon09″, it takes $50 off of the $150 registration fee.

Some of these are open to interpretation or are really a hybrid of a couple of forms. My categories might be somewhat arbitrary. But here’s the data as I see it:

SaaS (33%) – These companies sell their product to customers via the web, and don’t bother with a “try before you buy” product. Examples include Rezora, SendGrid and Filtrbox.

Freemium (20%) – These companies give away a free product, and then try to upsell more sophisticated features or solutions on top of that. Check out Baydin and TimZon.

Sell Installed App (5%) – I broke this out from SaaS, because these companies are actually selling software that is licensed and physically installed. Subtle difference these days. A good example is RedLaser from Occipital.

If you add the three approaches above together, you get 58%. So well more than half of the companies we’ve funded are ultimately selling software to people who pay for it. Novel idea, huh?

Gather/sell eyeballs (18%) – You might call this the “advertising” model, or the “underpants” model. Some call it “audience aggregation”. Some of the companies which achieved early exits were in this category (Socialthing, Intense Debate) , but it’s quite risky too. Often, companies doing this initially have other models in mind once they reach a critical mass but can’t use that approach early on because they don’t have enough scale.

Marketplace (13%) – These companies try to aggregate buyers and sellers, and generally take commissions or service fees for providing the marketplace. Foodzie and oneforty are examples.

Lead Gen (5%) – These companies often provide a valuable free service, and then provide qualified leads to buyers. This is very similar to the Freemium model, except that the upsell is not more software, it’s other services or software provided by someone else.

Virtual Goods (2%) – This model typically involves providing a game or other interesting virtual environment and then selling virtual goods in that environment. J-Squared Media’s MiniPlanet is a strong example.

Crowdsourcing (SaaS) (2%) – These companies use the power of a large distributed workforce, often to do things that computers can’t do automatically or efficiently. Typically they ultimately deliver a service to the customer. Retel Technologies is a good example.

Content Production (2%) – Although it’s a perennially unpopular approach with investors, these companies create content and then attract an audience for that content, typically selling advertising inventory targeted at the audience or subscriptions. Howard Lindzon’s WallStrip is an example of this approach that worked well.

Enterprise 2.0 (0%) – I was surprised to see that we haven’t funded any companies (yet) that are taking web 2.0 consumer technologies and applying them to enterprise settings. Some companies I know of that are doing these sorts of things are Yammer and Brainpark, as examples.

So there you have it. If you’d categorize the models differently, please let me know in the comments.

• How I became an entrepreneur
• My first company - Pinpoint Technologies / ZOLL Data Systems (acquired)
• My second company - iContact (failed)
• My third company - earFeeder (acquired)
• My fourth company - TechStars

There’s some fun Q&A at the end about TechStars and more. Enjoy!

Funding Universe is expanding their presence in Colorado and they are presenting a CrowdPitch event on September 30th in Denver. It costs $125 to present your company there, and it’s free to attend otherwise.

Some of us vomit when we hear that promising entrepreneurs are being charged to pitch to investors in Colorado (or anywhere). I’m hoping people will stop doing it. In my opinion, If investors want to see companies they (or sponsors) should bear the costs instead of the entrepreneurs.

To be fair, CrowdPitch is an event that is geared towards to general community and not specifically towards investors. It’s designed as a fun investor role-playing “monopoly money” type event. But still, it’s a bummer that companies have to “pay to pitch” in any setting.

So to welcome Funding Universe to Colorado, I’ll offer to pay the presentation fees for half the companies if they’ll match me.

In any event, here’s some more information about the event:

Want to pitch?

At LivePitch early stage entrepreneurs have 4 minutes to pitch to a panel of experts and a live audience of 40 - 70 peers in order to:

1. Discover investor insight.
2. Let the community know what resources are needed to move forward (partners, services, funding, connections, talent).
3. Gain visibility in the business community.

Want to attend, but not pitch?

Attendance is free. You’ll learn how investors think, meet the hottest start-ups in Colorado, and have a lot of fun. You’ll also help decide the winner of the event by investing your monopoly money in the business of your choice.

When and where

When: Wednesday September 30th
Time: 12:00 - 1:30 pm
Where: TAXI
3457 Ringsby Ct.
Denver, CO 80216

Let’s face it. You want an excuse to come to Boulder and have some fun with us and Andrew is giving you one for just $99. Come hang out for BoCo and stay for the weekend. We’ll show you around.

There is a similar code for people doing reference checks. I’ve never really seen it documented anywhere, but if you’re doing reference checks it probably pays to know the basic code.

If you ask me about someone that I’ve worked with or done business with, you can expect one of three general types of responses. The first will look something like this:

So and so is just awesome. She did fantastic work and I’d hire her again in a second if i had the chance. I recommend her strongly.

This is what I would call a good/strong reference.

The second type is one of general indifference. It looks something like this.

So and so did a good job and delivered consistent work.

What I’m telling you here is that they did “fine.” I wasn’t blown away by them. I haven’t used words like “fantastic” and “awesome” and “strongly” like I did before. I’m not ever going to give a bad reference to you, and that’s the code. You should view a flat reference like this as code for “There’s nothing horrible about this person, but they’re no superstar either.” Note that I’m not telling you to run for the hills.

The third and final type of reference is one where I want to warn you off of this person and that my review is going to be mixed at best. It will generally take this form:

Give me a call when you have a second, and we’ll discuss.

This is bad news. It means I have something pretty major to tell you but I’m not willing to put it in writing. This is smart. It’s rarely a great idea to put something in writing that is very negative or highly critical of a person. Generally when I get this response from someone that I trust, I don’t even need to call them. If it’s someone I don’t know, I’ll usually call just to be sure what I’m hearing is fair and balanced, as well as verifiable.

Does this check with how you operate when responding to reference checks?

I’m proud that TechStars is a member of EFCo, and that two of our companies were among the first five exits that have generated proceeds and helped give back to the community that has been so supportive of the program.

While I was there, I walked around and talked to a few of the folks who’ve been involved. Here’s a quick video that I shot.

I’d encourage you to think about donating a small portion of your company’s equity to EFCo. It’s a great way to build a culture of giving back into your company from the very beginning. If you’d like details, just drop me a note and I’ll be glad to help.

Dozens of out of town investors joined the scene on the rooftop of the Lazy Dog last Wednesday night and this is what they saw.

The building on which this projection is taking place is the TechStars building, and that seemed intentional. At one point the laser projection said “This wall seemed so… boring.” While this was taking place, several people accused me of organizing it. While I will admit to knowing a little something about it, I can tell you that I was neither the instigator nor the perpetrator.

I hope that this sort of thing turns into a new tradition on the eve of TechStars investor day each year. I think the out of town folks enjoyed it. I wonder what will happen next year?