Turns out that both Fred Wilson and David are inviting entrepreneurs to submit  elevator pitches via a podcast. David's post has the details on how it works.

You can also listen to a podcast about sending podcast pitches to VCs at Greg Galant's Venture Voice.

Having spent several years in the IT department in one of those behemoths  that are the dream client of many enterprise software creators, I had found myself falling into the "enterprise software is dead" camp. We had incorporated all that we were going to incorporate, we certainly weren't going to buy anything from a startup, and we almost always opted for 'make' over 'buy' believing that anything out there couldn't scale enough, or would require such extreme customization to integrate with legacy systems that the real costs for buying something were often higher than making it ourselves.

My first clue that this experience may not really be typical was the DEMO conference that I attended last month. A full 20% of the hot new products demonstrated were in the Enterprise software and services market segment. I decided to review Chip's five themes & strategies to drive the creation of successful companies to this group of products. Given the results here, I think that Chip has definitely hit on something:

Chip Hazard's themes & strategies to drive the creation of successful companies in the enterprise software space (with the percentage of DEMO Conference products in this space using the strategy):

• Innovate to drive efficiency (69% of the DEMO conference products)
• Dominate a Niche (74% of products)
• Explore SaaS (software-as-a service) (38% of products)
• Consider Open Source (none of these products, though there were lots of non-enterprise software products at the conference that clearly used this strategy)
• Go Vertical (69% of products)

Hmmm... Maybe I should change my opinion on enterprise software being dead. There definitely seems to be plenty of room for companies to exist in this space. They still may not be right for my former employer, though lots of other companies definitely will see some interesting products for their organizations.

I've always found that understanding the questions and issues that others face brought clarity to my own challenges even if their questions didn't yet have an answer. In this spirit I am launching an occasional series of posts called "Up at Night". These posts will include excerpts from 15 minute interviews that I will have with various company founders and top executives that will consist of a single question, "What is keeping you up at night?"

This is your opportunity to add your night haunts to the conversation. If you are willing to be interviewed for this series please let me know your name, company (with URL if available), phone number and a couple of times that you would be available for a 15 minute interview. I'm assuming that most wouldn't want all of this info to be posted on a blog, so I suggest that you mail me instead. I'll get back to you to confirm a time.

• Eptascape, Inc (EptaCam) - On average people are captured on video surveillance cameras 200x/day in NYC and 300x/day in London. Eptascape's camera allows for this data to be protected by masking out the personal features. If there ever is a security breach the video can be unlocked to reveal the personally identifiable data. As Chris Shipley put it, this camera actually makes us more secure by allowing security professionals to monitor behaviors instead of the way that people look.
• Local Matters, Inc (Destination Search) - Online searching for products is pretty easy if you are looking for products that are actually sold on the internet. But, what if you are looking for a store to visit? Local Matters' product allows you to search for stores that have the product that you are searching and even do comparisons of these stores.
• YackPack (YackPack) - What can be said about these guys? They are fun and their product rocks. I think that it is the only demo that brought tears to my eyes because of its emotional appeal. This is basically online discussions with voice-to-voice communication within a closed community. It could be a community of family, friends or colleagues, and you can "see" the person who is talking because everyone's picture is displayed right there. Even three-year-olds were in the YackPack.
• Glam Media, Inc. (Glam.com) - Less than 50% of women (compared to 84% of men) use the web to purchase items. This site combines the emotional aspects of shopping or looking at fashion magazines with the practical aspects of on-line purchasing. They have style quizzes, searches of items by designers or celebrities, and absolutely beautiful pages. It is the height of entertainment-based shopping. Now, where's that Luca dress that I've been coveting?
• VideoEgg, Inc (VideoEgg Publisher) - Super easy upload of universally accessible digital video published to the web. If you are thinking "big deal" I'm sure that you have never tried to post video to the web. Go ahead think about how you'd do it and then surf on over to VideoEgg's site and check out how easy it could be.

So sad that it's over, though really happy that I got to participate!!

Technorati Tags: DEMOFall

The hot question today at the conference is "What is your favorite product so far. Well, I have many favorites, and some really surprised me as being my favorites. Below are just a couple of the many great products that were presented the first day.

• Sykler Technology, Inc. (Skyler real-time data processing engine) - In my conference notes for these guys I only wrote the simple note, "These guys are going to be big!!" Basically they have an engine that can process massive amounts of data (100 million messages/sec) to provide real-time information processing. Their first application is for stock trading information, though there are lots of other applications too.
• Roku LLC (SoundBridge Wi-Fi Music System) - A simple dual-alarm clock radio with off-the-hook features. You can set "radio" presets to be AM, FM, Internet Radio or any combination of your digital music libraries in your home streamed to the radio over your home wireless network. What, you're not familiar with what internet radio stations are out there? That's okay, they have 100 of them built into the radio itself. This one definitely fits into that "gotta have it" category with me. They are even offering pre-sale discounts for people who order before they come out next month.
• U3 (U3 Platform for smart drive computing) - Another one in my "gotta have it" category. In fact, I did get one. I couldn't wait! This is a simple USB smart drive, though it does more than allow you to simply store files like an ordinary smart drive. This product allows you to store your entire personal workspace, applications, settings and all. Now I won't have to worry that I don't have my personal computer with me when I'm on the road. I can just carry it with me in my pocket including that personal application that I shouldn't be installing on my work computer. Woo hoo!
• Always On Wireless, Inc (WiFlyer+v) - when I saw this product I had visions of going into my Starbucks "office" with one of these little hubs and a landline phone for my conference calls. After talking with them I realized that it is so much more. Basically a little hub that combines a Wi-Fi router, VoIP adapter and modem to enable wireless data and VoIP connectivity over dial-up and broadband connections. The $12.95 monthly charge for all of those VoIP calls is making me re-think that decision to keep my landline!

I'll post after the afternoon session to let you know my favorites from today!!

Technorati Tags: DEMOFall

John Barnhill, CEO & Founder of Pie (a company with a cool product that allows home networking to be "easy as Pie") summed up what I think of being the key difference about this conference over others. He relayed a story to me about the practice session for his on-stage, 6-min demo. During this time one of the conference organizers received a call and told the caller that he couldn't talk because he was "with the client". John relayed to me during his work of creating Pie a conference is usually not where he is called "the client".

This conference is really all about the entrepreneurs, their companies and their products. To find out a bit more about it check out Greg Galant's Venture Voice for a great podcast intro to the conference including an interview with Chris Shipley, executive producer and driving force of the conference, and an interview with the founders of  VideoEgg, one of the conference demonstrators.

Technorati Tags: DEMOFall

Blogging is like that. There�??s a need to get some momentum going, so that more guests will start coming to the party. It�??s a burden we�??ve been feeling around here. We launched this blog several weeks ago, enthusiastically making posts, waiting for the response �?� well, we have received some comments, as you can see, but perhaps not what we would have imagined. (No, please don�??t feel guilty, really).

This posting may be the blogging equivalent to the poem I remember someone trying to get away with in Mrs. Owens's high school English class, on the cleverly meta-topic of �??I don�??t know what to write about.�?? But the concern is valid: we�??ve started questioning ourselves and our dedication to the blog. Should we forge on, in the hopes of fanning this little flicker into a real flame? Or, should we make some radical changes in direction, and write about something real, instead of blogging about topics like �?� blogging?

We are at an important time in the project of developing a new site - basically the transition point between all of the planning and design and the point where all of that stuff needs to be put into action. In pushing with the team through to the other side lots of the regular stuff got neglected, not least of which  was posting to our blog.

What do you do when you get busy? Do you go back and take time to catch up on things that you didn't get to do or do you take the opportunity to cut out all of that stuff that you normally do but may not really have to do? I'm not sure where this blog fits into those two choices. I guess I couldn't really go back to fill in all of those days that we missed (at least not without anyone noticing.) Though, even though I suppose I don't really have to post, I like to and love to hear from all of you!!

Well, next week should be better. Looking forward to previewing some of the new site features & pages with you in the coming weeks!!

I completely agree that simple language is essential, particularly for people who may only care about the outcome - receiving information when and where they need it  - rather than the process - RSS, R|mail, aggregators, etc. As Jeff puts it:

I think that the [Neilsen study] result might vary drastically based on the question being asked, and will venture that if you asked people open questions like �??How do you access/read your favorite blogs�?? and �??How do you bookmark a blog in order to remember it�??, people would respond that they get new articles/headlines in MyYahoo or some other program that shows the latest changes �?? without having any idea of how these �??changes�?? got there.

I couldn't agree more...

Technorati Tags: entrepreneur