You won’t get too far in the world of e-commerce without talking conversion rates.  Providing the desired content, an intuitive interface, and elegant design all play a key role in getting a user to perform an intended action.  These rules are as true for gathering customer feedback as they are for affecting purchasing behavior.  And in the opinion of Floq co-founder, Jonah Cacioppe, the current state of consumer surveys is lackluster, at least in terms of design.

“We’ve created something that’s not just easy to use, it’s beautiful…There really is no excuse for users not to have a beautiful online experience,” says Cacioppe.

Not only does Floq focus on beautiful surveys, they’re also adding a new dimension to consumer intelligence.  By pooling together the data from all survey responses taken through their platform, Floq includes comparative benchmarking to demonstrate how your business stacks up versus industry standards.  ”We believe context is King,” adds Cacioppe.

Cacioppe and his six-person team are looking to disrupt a longstanding industry from down under, with company headquarters based out of Perth, Australia.  Tech Cocktail caught up with Cacioppe to learn more about the startup scene in Perth, the inspiration behind his service, and the importance of design in user engagement.

Tech Cocktail:  What was the inspiration behind Floq?

Jonah Cacioppe:  After working for 12 years as a fine artist I joined my old man in starting a boutique management consulting firm and ran that for five years. As part of this we did quite a few surveys for companies and they played a really important part in helping people and businesses get clear, objective feedback. I looked into other folks in this space and was amazed how clunky lots of the products were and how they didn’t capitalise on any of the network efforts of having open, shareable data pools – even the big guys like Surveymonkey. If you send out a few questions to the customers of your coffee shop with Surevymonkey never ever will you be able to compare your punters feedback to the norm for all other coffee shops. It was like they’d missed the birth of social networks and open source approaches to information like Google maps.

There seems like a massive gap in this space with few folks making questions and survey data open, shareable and comparable. So we’re trying to take the best from open Q&A platforms and apply that to the structured data from surveys, test and polls.

So I decided to quit the consulting thing, revive my creative juices and kick off a startup. In some weird way it satisfies the creative aspect and my love of numbers and info.

Floq co-founder, Jonah Cacioppe

Tech Cocktail:  In your opinion, what role does design play in user engagement?

Cacioppe:  I think design plays a huge part in user engagement and this will only increase with time.

There’s been a huge shift in the digital landscape from functional websites and apps built by developers to a whole range of beautiful intuitive websites and apps built for the average punter like Path, Instagram and Rdio.

Guys like facebook are putting huge investment in having the very best designers. It’s not an accident that Y Combinator’s uber guru Paul Graham spent a year studying art in Florence after finishing computer science at Stanford. His book Hackers and Painters talks quite a bit about the close relationship between the visual arts and software development. I think that lately these two communities are realising they both need each other. Hackers can build the architecture for the most effective communication medium there has ever been, and Painters (designers and artists) are repurposing their pencils to make them work for the digital era.

If Leonardo Da Vinci was alive now he’d probably be working for Facebook or starting the next Apple. Hell probably Jonathan Ives will be looked at in the same way in a few hundred years.

In terms of user engagement I think the average user wants something that is beautiful, efficient and intuitive to use. And as digital products are global they have to cross cultural boundaries – visual design and iconography is the best way to create a universal language and experience. I think it’s fairly obvious that well designed sites and apps are winning the digital battle field: Apple, AirBnb, Instagram and Path. Why wouldn’t someone pick efficiency of function and beauty of form over just good functionality unless your talking about an old slow moving encumbent that has everyone by the balls. This trend will only increase even more rapidly.

Tech Cocktail:  Can you speak to the startup scene in Perth, Australia?

Cacioppe:  Sadly the startup scene in Perth is fairly small and under-resourced. While there are some great apps coming out of here like Discovr most creativity, intelligence and investment goes into our booming mining industry. Australia in general has some awesome digital companies like Atlassian, Freelancer, Hitwise and 99Dresses, but we need a few more massive wins to get Australian startups the awareness both locally and internationally they deserve. I’m planning on putting my US passport to good use though and establishing some relationship with US mentors and investors a little down the track.

One of the benefits of having a small startup community in Perth is that startups here learn to do a lot with very little, and are really focussed on creating solid businesses rather than puffing up vanity metrics.

We’re doing our best to put Perth and Australia on the map.

Need to gain insights for your business?  Test the waters with a free Floq account today.  

We get it, you’re busy.  You weren’t able to get to every Tech Cocktail post this week; it happens.  Fear not, because we’ve curated the week’s top 10 posts as determined by the Tech Cocktail editorial team.

To get the Tech Cocktail weekly wrap-up direct to your inbox; sign up for the Tech Cocktail newsletter today. 

1. Work Harder On Yourself Than You Do On Your Startup
2. Is the Facebook IPO the Death of Innovation?
3. Take A Tour Of 1871, A New 50,000 Sq-ft Coworking Space In Chicago
4. Demo Day: Pittsburgh’s AlphaLab Launches 6 Startups
5. myHomework: Bootstrapping to 2 Million Downloads in 15 Months
6. Powerful Social Networks Become Powerful Selling Networks with Qwiqq
7. Fundable: Crowdfunding Just For Startups
8. Personal CEO Shares How A Berlin Trip Sparked His Life Mission
9. Demo Day: Surge Accelerator in Houston Launches 10 Energy Startups
10. Five Tips for Managing Interns This Summer

Hey San Francisco, what are you up to this week?  We’d love to see you at the San Francisco Tech Cocktail Mixer this Wednesday, May 30th.  We’ll be showcasing a group of really exciting early stage, local startups.  Stop by, have a couple drinks (free with your ticket) and chat with fellow tech enthusiasts.  Good times are sure to ensue.

Also, check out this week’s post on how you can win a HP Folio 13 with Windows 7 Professional laptop.  If you’re into the whole winning free computers thing….  

How would you like your startup to get 10,000 media mentions that is seen by an estimated 10 million peole – for one story?  This just happened for Boston-based WordStream, a search marketing startup.  In the words of Founder/CTO Larry Kim, “We hit the public relations lottery.”

Here’s how they did it – and what you can learn from their success:

Be topical

Kim said that every month, they send out a press release that is more general interest (rather than SEO or search marketing focused) that will appeal to a wide audience.  Since there was so much media attention around the Facebook IPO story, they ran with that.

Write from your perspective

Since WordStream helps companies with online advertising, they wrote about the IPO story based on their expertise.  “We thought, well, we have to be credible and come from the angle of an Internet marketer,” said Kim.  “So we published research comparing Google banner advertising with Facebook banner advertising. “

Have a “So what?” factor

When you do your research, figure out a “So What?” factor – why should anyone care about this story?  Have an angle that is contrary to conventional wisdom but is also true and evidence-based.  The conclusion of their study was shocking: Due to a lack of engaging ads and poor targeting options on Facebook’s part, Facebook ads get clicked on 10X less than Google ads.  In other words, 1 out of every 2,000 ads for Facebook gets clicked, while Google is 1 out of 250.

Time your story

WordStream released their press release with this “Facebook Ads: Do They Even Work?” infographic on May 15, 3 days before the IPO – just when a lot of people were trying to figure out the market valuation of Facebook.  “We got a couple of big media hits, like the Wall Street Journal, and got 10 media placements in mainstream media publications.  We thought it was a home run!”

Luck plays a role sometimes – be ready for it

Once a story moves, it moves quickly, so you have to be prepared for it.  At 3pm that same afternoon, the Wall Street Journal reported that GM was dumping Facebook ads – and GM said the reason was because they don’t work. Bingo!  “So suddenly those reporters we sent our news to were calling us – Fox Business, BBC, NPR – everyone was calling us.  We got picked up by news services like Reuters, and those stories get translated into other languages and gets syndicated in other countries – our story appeared everywhere from New Zealand to Turkey to Indonesia.”

Visuals help

If you’re doing any infographic marketing, be sure to have a Pinterest button on your site.  An infographic is very visual marketing that people like to share.  “A thousand people pinned our infographic and generated a lot of traffic early on…. Think about your business.  What kind of data do you have access to, what do you know better than others?  Make that relevant to the conversation and turn it into a meaningful infographic if you can.  Brian Wallace’s team at NowSourcing did ours.”

Align your story with the media narrative

WordStream’s original press release had a rather straightforward headline: “New study compares effectiveness of Facebook advertising vs Google advertising.”  Not a viral title at all – so when GM made their announcement, WordStream re-released the press release with a slightly different headline.  “We changed it to ‘Does FB advertising work?’ This new headline was viral and played into the new media narrative.”

Don’t give up

“These efforts don’t always work – it’s hard to know how the press will react to your stories.  Will they pick it up or ignore it?  Don’t be discouraged – a half dozen other stories that were similar to this weren’t picked up.  Keep trying out different stories until you get a hit.”

You’d think Paul Watts could rest on his laurels by now. Along with Meevine cofounders Jonathan Nelson and Ben Demboski, Watts helped grow Wildseed, which sold to AOL in 2005. He also built OneBusAway for Android, which helps tens of thousands of Seattle transit riders daily, and has worked at HTC and Microsoft.

But Watts is still chugging away: Meevine graduated from the Founder Institute last year with its group travel planning website, Gatherball. Gatherball is very open-ended: you can add sections to a longer trip (1. fly to Florida, 2. arrive at hotel, 3. dinner at Denny’s) and let your traveling companions comment (ew, Denny’s?!). If you’re planning a roadtrip or a surprise party, list a range of dates so you can settle on a time that’s best for everyone.

So where does Watts get the energy to funnel into a new project?

“We’re driven to make products that people love to use. I love when our elevator pitch gets reactions like, ‘I totally need that!’ Talking directly with people using what you’ve built, and getting excited by their excitement…there isn’t anything more satisfying,” he says.

Gatherball is still in beta, and was showcased at our Tech Cocktail Seattle mixer this week.

Hosting an event and need a caterer, cleaning service, or photographer?  Or are you looking for new health or auto insurance?  Maybe you’re looking to get a dog, website design work, or even a spray tan.  Whatever you need, conventional practices put the onus of the work on you.  You’ll spend the next 30 minutes on Google searching for the best deal.  This model is changing – services such as ThumbTack and TaskRabbit are making the service providers work for you, not the other way around.

Tanzio.com is a new player in this game.  Like the previously mentioned websites, users input the service they need completed, and business bid on your dollar.  What separates Tanzio, however, is the breadth of providers.  Instead of a business paying to sign up for their service, as is the case with ServiceMagic, Tanzio includes all local businesses for free – they do the heavy lifting by contacting the providers.  The result?  ”We can return a good number of responses to the consumer,” says Jason Buck, CTO and vice president at Tanzio.com

I caught up with Buck to learn more about the inspiration behind his platform, how Tanzio differs from TaskRabbit and Zaarly, and his take on Seattle’s startup scene.

Tech Cocktail: What was the inspiration behind tanzio.com?

Jason Buck: I had to paint my house last year. I was looking for painters to call and get bids as I wanted some options. When calling, some businesses just don’t answer their phone, and then when they do I have to re-explain myself for each painter I talk to. This is tedious and time consuming, and I thought to myself, “I wish I could just post an ad, and let the businesses call me back.”  And that’s exactly what Tanzio does.

Tech Cocktail: Who do you see as your biggest competition and how does tanzio.com differentiate itself?

Buck: ServiceMagic, Zaarly, Thumbtack, TaskRabbit.

All of our competition has the chicken-and-egg problem. Consumer’s won’t use these sites unless there are businesses signed up, and businesses won’t sign up unless people are using it. Tanzio skips this problem completely by including every business. Literally. Tanzio is a lead generation service, and when we send out our leads we send them to absolutely everyone and anyone that can help whether they know it or not, and whether they like it or not.

If you post a request on ServiceMagic.com, for example, they will send out your request to 3 or 4 businesses. These businesses have to pay to receive each lead. Consequently, they’re much more discriminating on which leads they’ll accept. The end result is that the consumer has a poor experience because they get a poor and limited response. Tanzio doesn’t charge for the leads – they’re free. This means we can return a good number of responses to the consumer.

Jason Buck, Tanzio.com VP and CTO

Our business model completely distinguishes us. When we deliver our leads, we do so in priority order. The first business we contact is our number one advertiser. They get a live phone call and exclusivity on the request for five minutes. Afterwards we deliver it to our number two advertiser, and so-on-and-so-forth. After we call all of our advertisers, we’ll blast it out to everyone else.

Every business can participate and receive leads. However, the ones that receive them first have a competitive advantage. All of our competition either charges per lead delivered or takes a percentage of each transaction. The former is detrimental as already described, and the latter cannot be applied to cash or barter transactions done off of the site. Tanzio just skips all of these problems.

Tech Cocktail: Can you speak to the startup scene in Seattle? What’s one advantage and disadvantage?

Buck: We’re pretty new to the startup scene in Seattle, but it’s been a fruitful experience so far. There is a lot of talent and genuinely interested people in the community. In fact, we ended up hiring a woman we met at a previous social event where we presented. She was so impressed she came knocking on our door and wanted to be a part of the startup.

A negative thing I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of vendors and businesses that try and sell startups they’re services. At these social events, I would rather see more investors and entrepreneurs than other businesses trying to sell me something.

Tanzio.com was one of the startups showcased at the recent Tech Cocktail Seattle mixer.

Is Twitter broken?

Success seems to hinge on this question for Thirst, winner of the SXSW Accelerator in social media and social networking. Thirst uses natural language processing to group together tweets around specific topics – like the election or the Facebook IPO – and add photos. Important tweets won’t tumble unseen into Twitter’s black hole, and you can see how they fit into the bigger conversation.

Twitter itself seems to think something is broken – and has attempted to fix it with the Discover section, with trending topics and photos. (I don’t know about you, but I rarely look there.)

But Thirst’s interface is more beautiful: huge colorful images with transparent text overlaid on them, and items ordered and sized according to your interests. Its iPad app launched earlier this month.

Founded in mid-2011, Thirst is seed-funded and graduated from UC Berkeley’s startup incubator, FounderSchool. They will be competing with a new wave of startups hoping to be the aggregators and curators of our social media streams – stay tuned.

Amazing how much a startup can change in 7 months.  Since we last covered CoCollage last fall, this Seattle-based company has worked hard to improve the user experience around their already very cool concept – CoCollage lets you post photos, comments, and content to a digital bulletin board, all from your mobile phone, to create a community wherever you are.

As they’ve grown and added customers, they’ve really focused on the commercial applications, since this is a really great way for a retail store, restaurant, or bar to engage with their customers.  CoCollage has been busy adding venues and making it easier for venue owners and event planners to set up and run the platform.  They also launched a powerful new app and ad platform, and they drastically improved scalability, which CEO Tyler Phillipi said is opening up opportunities with distribution and advertising partners.

With so much going on, I asked Phillipi what he’s learned along the way.  Here are his 7 tips to help you grow your own startup:

1. If you are going to succeed you can’t have failure as an option. If you remove it as an option, you figure out a way to succeed despite the opposition.

2. The startup community is full of smart, driven, talented people that are happy to help you, but you need to help yourself. Take advantage of their knowledge to help fill the gaps in yours.

3. Know what you need help with, be specific with what you need and don’t be shy / afraid to ask… no one will help you if you don’t tell them HOW they can help you… and then be sure to take the help that is given!

4. Nothing is worse than wasting someone’s time by not listening or giving excuses. If you don’t like what they are saying, if it doesn’t make sense to you OR you are not getting what you want from them, that is your fault.

5. When all the help in the world is received, build a good mental filter and weed out the crap. This comes over time but is drastically improved by increased knowledge and experience.

6. Try out stuff even if you are not sure, take a meeting that you don’t truly see the value in, talk to people who can not offer you anything but you may be able to help them. It only comes through working together that we all get better.

7. I do not believe in ‘Zero Sum Equations’; I believe that the success of anyone in the startup community builds success for the rest. We should all help out each other because it will help us all in the end.

CoCollage was a showcased startup at our Tech Cocktail Seattle mixer two nights ago.

Chuck Templeton, the founder of OpenTable and chairman at GrubHub, always had a “light green tint” to himself, he says. When his daughter was born 7 years ago, he started wondering what the world would be like when she got older – and became a bit uneasy.

So Templeton is now managing director of Impact Engine, a new tech accelerator for for-profit, social-impact startups set to open in Chicago. Impact Engine’s first class of 10 startups will go through a 12-week mentorship program from September to December and receive office space and $20,000 in funding. Once the startups are chosen, Impact Engine hopes to match them with “supermentors” who will stay with the startups long-term.

Until September, Templeton’s job is to help bring together an innovation community in Chicago around social and environmental issues. Impact Engine has already held a few “Start Your Engines” events, including a design workshop, a panel on social entrepreneurship, and a networking mixer. The upcoming June 4 event is “Office Hours,” featuring free 20-minute coaching sessions with local business mentors.

The Chicago community is also stepping up to provide support. Impact Engine startups will have mentorship and intern help from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, the Kellogg School of Management, and Northern Illinois University. Templeton hopes to stir up some activity in Chicago’s social-impact scene, and get local foundations, corporations, and especially young graduates involved:

“It’s a really energetic group that sees a lot of the challenges that we have out there and doesn’t believe that they’re somebody else’s problems,” says Templeton.

The application deadline for Impact Engine is June 30 – apply here.

Yesterday, at Capital Connection ’12, 28 startups demoed at TechBUZZ, a half day conference showcasing emerging technologies.  Three of them were voted as the “Best of the BUZZ.”  Moments ago, Augaroo was announced as the event’s overall winner.

The Best of the BUZZ startups pitched in front of an audience of more than 800 investors, advisors and entrepreneurs, and by popular vote, Augaroo took the top position.

Augaroo, a DC-based startup, is building a real-time data visualization system called Zoomdata – a platform capable of processing real-time data streams and generates interactive, tangible visualizations on both web and mobile devices.  According to the Zoomdata beta signup page, their service will “allow you to do things with data that were never possible before. Touch, pan, zoom, pause, rewind, fast-forward. See your real-time and historical data in an entirely new way, on web and mobile devices.”  President and CEO, Justin Langseth, graduated from MIT and served as the CTO of a trio of companies, Strategy.com, Claraview, and Clarabridge, before taking the reigns at Augaroo.

The other pair of startups to break the top three were Cont3nt.com and Speek.  Cont3nt.com, a marketplace for user-generated media and video journalism, earned their participation into this event by winning the Startup America TechBUZZ Challenge Contest.  Speek is a browser-based, simplified conference calling service utilizing both VOIP and telephony gateways.

Highlight speeches and keynote speakers for this year’s Capital Connection conference included Chairman and CEO of Revolution, co-founder of AOL, and chairman of Startup America Partnership, Steve Case, CEO and co-founder at Gilt Groupe, Kevin Ryan, and CEO and founder of Opower, Dan Yates.  The TechBUZZ winners were announced by Tech Cocktail’s very own Frank Gruber.

LastPass has just released the Wallet app for iOS, which securely stores and syncs notes, images, audio clips, and more, all for free. This nifty app helps you easily unclutter your physical wallet.

If you are new to LastPass, their goal is to help the world remember their passwords and better manage their online lives.  Once you set up your account, start adding text, audio and photo notes – and no, it is not another Evernote. There are at least two main differences:

First, LastPass Wallet provides you with templates for your notes to store your important info. There are forms for credit cards, passports, driver’s licenses, membership cards, bank accounts, and more. You also have an option to add a blank note and write whatever your want.

Second, LastPass Wallet encrypts your data. All the notes you store in the app are stored in the cloud and synced to all browsers, computers, and mobile devices.

“With Wallet, if you lose your physical wallet, you’ll have a secure backup that makes it easier to start over,” said CEO Joe Siegrist.  “You’ve also laid the foundation for securely managing access to your life, online and off.”

You can download the app for your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad here.

As temperatures heat up and electricity demand soars, Texas is at risk for blackouts this summer. It’s a reminder that we need to keep innovating in energy technology just to keep the lights on.

One innovator in this space is Surge Accelerator, which launched its first class of clean and traditional energy startups out of Houston today. Armed with $30,000 in funding, these 10 companies have survived a 12-week mentorship program and are hoping to make our energy use more efficient.

Energy is a unique sector, explains cofounder and managing director Kirk Coburn. He realizes that Surge is making a 3- to 6-year investment in these teams, who mainly sell to enterprises like oil or utility companies – companies that take their time when adopting new technologies. But that might be changing:

“There’s this great generational career change that’s happened in energy, where most of the executives of the big companies are Baby Boomers but over half of their employees are Gen Y and millennials,” says Coburn. “And the one thing we know about that generation is that they don’t know a world without Facebook, they don’t know a world without an iPhone, so they expect software to be elegant and high design. So we’re trying to take that concept and apply it to an industry that has not seen that in the past.”

This year’s class features 7 female founders. Here are the 10 startups:

• ActualSun (Houston, TX/Portugal): An analytics platform for renewable energy plant owners to compare performance and reduce costs. Cofounded by Sofia Pessanha, Nisha Desai, and Luke Murray.
• Advanced Seismic (Houston, TX): A seismic processing suite for Windows that lets companies pay as they go for computing power. Cofounded by John Almon and Leron Wells.
• drillMap (Austin, TX): An analytics application for petroleum companies that lets them access data within minutes and build reports.
• FuelMiner (Minneapolis, MN): Hardware and software for companies with a fleet of vehicles to optimize fuel use in real time. It monitors things like hard breaking and excessive idling. Made by Certusoft.
• Lowfoot (Toronto): A web-based energy-use tracker that connects to your smart meter and helps you earn rewards for saving energy. Cofounders Philip Playfair and Steve Hammond previously worked together on Advanced Utility Systems, which made utility billing software.
• Molecule Software (Houston): A cloud-based trading platform that helps those in the energy commodity industry manage their risk.
• Pinnacle (The Woodlands, TX/Boston, MA): Tools for utility companies to easily integrate with new smart grid devices and save money, without upgrades or customization.
• Revokom (Chile/Denver, CO): Creators of AssetFollower, a mobile platform for the oil and gas and mining industries that lets team members and service providers view activity on drilling sites, mines, and other assets.
• Snugg Home (Boulder, CO): Software tools for residential contractors to make homes more energy efficient. Cofounded by residential energy modeling specialist Adam Stenftenagel, global warming scientist Jeff Friesen, and technology professional Benjamin Mailian.
• Tune Energy (Palo Alto, CA): A subscription service for smart-meter users that monitors usage and efficiency so you don’t overpay for electricity.

Finding time to blog is a challenge that all startup founders face – squeezing in time for writing and marketing when you’re trying to start up, launch, and then grow your company makes you long for more than 24 hours in a day (sometimes, anyway).

As cofounders of a startup, BuzzShift, which just happens to be a digital strategy agency, Cameron Gawley and Eddy Badrina have experience with the not-enough-time problem.  Hence, they created CherryPick, an app helps your curate articles from around the web and re-publish the content on your website.

This is not a formula for plagiarizing, though.  The app lets you easily comment on favorite news articles, tag them properly for your blog and for SEO purposes, and then re-publish those articles, plus your insights, on your own website.  So you get to comment on current trends, adding your expertise to what is already being talked about and therefore more likely to be searched.

CherryPick is definitely filling a niche.  “The problem that we’ve seen as an agency is that our clients can’t produce enough content,” Gawley and Badrina said. “If you divide content into three categories – created, contributed, and curated – you’ll find that curated content has the most potential for quantity of posts and SEO quality, but currently is time-consuming to produce…. CherryPick solves this problem by automating the most important features of content curation: article selection, formatting, image selection, correct attribution, and comment insertion.”

While CherryPick is currently in closed beta, you can sign up to try out the app when it launches.

CherryPick was a showcased startup at last week’s Tech Cocktail Dallas mixer. 

If you want to operate a business in Brazil or France or even Canada, you need answers to about a million questions. How will you immigrate? How much do you have to pay employees? What about business taxes? And how do you make sure your employees find housing, get their kids in school, and adjust to a new culture?

The beta site internationalexperts tackles these questions and more. You can ask any question in the Q&A section (similar to Quora), or browse articles on topics like laws and immigration. Once you have a plan, find lawyers and other professionals to help you avoid slipups that can lead to lawsuits, fines, or worse.

According to cofounder Todd Heine, the biggest mistake companies make when operating overseas is doing nothing at all:

“While huge global companies have whole departments dedicated to global mobility, most businesses do not have resources that focus on cross-border issues,” explains Heine, a lawyer trained in US, Canadian, French, and EU law. “It creates serious compliance issues at home and abroad. And, compliance issues mean huge costs in time, money, and reputation.”

Heine cofounded internationalexperts in 2011 with Steve Dworkin, who has spent 30 years bringing engineers across borders as cofounder of CTS International, as well as Charles Mosher, Steve Cappo, and Paul Sogge. Internationalexperts is based in Bellevue, and was recently showcased at our Tech Cocktail Seattle mixer.

AlphaLab was ranked as the 15th best accelerator in 2011, and today it added 6 new startups to its portfolio.

Since 2008, Innovation Works’ AlphaLab has offered 5-month programs in Pittsburgh to mentor and kickstart startups, with office space and $25,000 in funding.

Here are the 6 startups (all based in Pittsburgh):

• HeadRight Games: A game development studio that creates games for a variety of devices, based on a game engine that makes creation faster. Their first title is adventure game Amusement World!, or “Willy Wonka meets Disney world.” Led by 7-year game professional Matt Rodgers, who previously worked at Nintendo and Microsoft.
• Insurance Zebra: A website to compare car insurance – the more information you input, the better the estimates are. Cofounded by insurance professional Adam Lyons, serial entrepreneur Jordan Messina, and “data nerd” Cal Leeming.
• Accel Diagnostics: Creators of pScreen, technology for analyzing proteins and biomarkers at the point of care that generates results in less than 30 minutes. Currently focusing on congestive heart failure. Cofounded by biomedical engineering scientist Dr. Alberto Gandini and chief marketing officer Salman Mukhtar.
• Bracketz: Marketing tools to drive engagement for brands with interactive, tournament-style campaigns. Made by WonDay Inc. Cofounded by Cyndi and Alen Knapic.
• RoommateFit: Roommate matching software for universities that focuses on personality traits. Based on PhD research and used at Ohio University. Led by recent University of Pittsburgh grad Justin Mares.
• ActivAided Orthotics: Creators of ActivAided Recovery, a body suit that helps patients recover from injuries by encouraging better physical habits. The team includes materials science/biomedical engineering grad Kelly Collier, assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation Gary Chimes, and former Boeing and IBM employee Josh Weiner.

Check out AlphaLab’s 2011 classes here and here.

The Tech Cocktail team is excited to be back in Seattle tonight, long the home of highly innovative and impactful companies.  Only tiime will tell if one of the 12 showcased startups at our Tech Cocktail Seattle mixer will be their industry’s next Microsoft, Starbucks, or Amazon.  Thanks to our partner StartupCity for making the event possible.

We look forward to seeing you tonight, but first, here’s a rundown on the company’s you can expect to meet:

CoCollage: A digital bulletin board that lets you post photos, comments and content from sites like Facebook, all from your mobile phone.

InternationalExperts: Global mobility service providers that let you demonstrate your expertise, reach thousands of potential clients around the world, and get more business.

Geedra: A cloud-based solution for visual monitoring of real estate portfolios using photos to report on building conditions and history.

Napkkin: Business networking without the paper. Quickly create and swap business cards on your phone and get referred in real-time.

TalkToTheManager: We help businesses avoid bad online reviews by providing anonymous feedback from customers by text message and allowing managers to respond.

Gatherball: Helps travelers plan group trips through social collaboration.

PlayMySurvey: Makes surveys fun, rewarding, and engaging.

Tanzio: Post one request and instantly receive multiple replies and offers from the business community.

OblakSoft: Plug your database into the cloud without changing code.

Jobaline: Makes screening candidates a breeze and lets recruiters pick which candidates to pay for.

LookBook: Online portfolios for creatives so they can better showcase their work as it should be experienced.

This post was adapted from the original that appeared on Social Tables’ blog.

When I graduated from college in 2004, I was more confused than the day I enrolled. In an attempt to figure things out, I interned for a local Congressman.  After 6 months, I was hired full-time and asked to reinvent his intern program – and reinvent I did.  Fast forward 4 years: I created a diverse group of 65 well-trained, young politicos, many of whom are rising stars in the political world today.

A lot of what I learned back then can be applied to your startup’s intern program.  Here are my top 5 tips:

1. Introduce them.  A couple of weeks before they start, introduce them to the team via email and to your audience of friends, customers and prospective customers via your blog.  Place them on your team page, introduce them to anyone who comes into the office, and introduce them to other startups in your accelerator or coworking space (this gives them the opportunity to meet other like-minded interns).
2. Share information with them.  After your interns sign an NDA, share your company calendar with them, your decks and marketing materials, and cc/bcc them on different emails to make sure they feel included.
3. Make them feel welcome.  Take them out to lunch, invite them to client meetings, and have them shadow you early on.  At Social Tables, we started a Potbelly Fridays tradition – I buy the entire team lunch and we eat together.
4. Assign them meaningful work.  Talk to your interns early on to learn what it is that they’re trying to get out of the experience.  Give them ownership of a portion of your business and include tangible goals.  These tasks should include a combination of operational and strategic work.
5. Coach them early and often. Interns joined your startup to learn, so make sure you mentor them.  To do this, ask them how they would get a task done.  After listening, give them feedback on the process they’ve outlined with relevant frameworks and examples from your experiences. You need to understand how they think before you can tell them what to do. They learn faster that way.

The United States was recently dubbed “Intern Nation” by Ross Perlin (an excellent review of that book can be found here).  We are known for our unapologetic use of interns, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to make them a part of your team and give them meaningful work.  By doing so, you will encourage their enthusiasm and support their entrepreneurial spirit and drive.  Good luck!

Dan Berger is the Founder and CEO of Social Tables, an event planning software platform based in Washington, DC.  You can follow him on Twitter @danberger

This week is National Small Business Week and the Small Business Administration is hosting it’s annual event in Washington, D.C. to celebrate small businesses. We are looking to also celebrate small business and thanks to Microsoft we are giving away a new HP Folio Laptop with Windows 7 Professional.

HP Folio 13

The Folio 13 is both light and thin with specs of 3.3 lbs and only 0.7 inches respectively and boasts nine hours of battery life; an ideal option for business travel.  Windows 7 Professional is the perfect compliment to your small business needs with enhanced backup options to protect your work with automatic backups to your home or business network.  Additionally, Windows 7 Professional is compatible with most XP programs, and for those that aren’t, simply switch into XP Mode.

How you can win

Simply follow the below steps:

1. Sign up for the Tech Cocktail Newsletter
2. In the comments of this post, let us know how you would use the HP Folio 13 with Windows 7 Professional for your small business.  This giveaway is about celebrating small businesses – we want to know how your small business will benefit!

We’ll accept submissions through this Monday, and the winner will be announced on Tuesday, May 29th.

That’s it.  Good luck and happy National Small Business Week!

Jim Huang, PhD, is a former researcher at Microsoft Research and published over 20 technical papers. But he recently went from doing a lot of thinking to doing a lot of doing – i.e., starting a company – because he wanted to solve real problems and delight people.

And delight is certainly lacking in the space he chose: professional networking, the realm of toppling piles of business cards and fake smiles. Huang’s iPhone and Android app, Napkkin, lets you swap business cards using a QR code.

It’s competing with a host of other apps, such as Card Swapp (which also uses QR codes), uME (to send cards by Twitter or email), CardMunch (to take photos of cards), Bump (to exchange contacts with, naturally, a bump), and CardFlick (to send cards to anyone nearby, even if you’re not talking to them). Napkkin boasts its own technology designed for faster scanning and the ability to make referrals within the app (no more of those X meet Y, Y meet X emails).

Huang’s cofounder is his wife, Vill Sithivong, who spent 10 years as the founder of a restaurant business. Apparently, they came up with the idea over dinner:

“Because we’ve established trust and intimacy to begin with, we avoid a lot of the problems with communication and coordination that might exist if we’d co-founded Napkkin as two strangers, or even two friends,” Huang explains. “The flip side of that is our personal and professional lives get mashed together, which is an extra problem that needs to be solved.”

How do you solve that? “Having the option of separate workspaces helps,” he adds.

Check out this list of married cofounders if you think it can’t be done, and meet the Napkkin team at our Tech Cocktail Seattle mixer tonight.

Unnecessary question alert: did you notice the pink turban in the above photo?  Of course you did.  Standing in the background during a presidential speech is a big deal.  A simple sneeze in that situation could capture the attention of millions of eyeballs at any given point.  Wearing a bright pink turban amongst a sea of navy suits, well, that’s just asking for attention – isn’t it?

“Grabbing media attention was definitely not my intention,” says Navroop Mitter, founder and CEO at Gryphn.  ”I needed something to match my tie. ‘Ok I’ll throw my pink turban on,’ I decided.”

As it turns out, Mitter had no idea he was going to be on camera – the whole event was rather serendipitous.  After responding to a White House tweet about how a payroll tax cut would effect people’s finances, Mitter received an invite to the White House to watch the president’s speech on the recent payroll tax cut extension.  ”I’m going to be sitting in the audience watching the president speak. I knew my mom was watching, so I told her that when the camera pans away from the president, you might see a pink dot.  When you do, that’s your son.”

That pink dot ended up garnering a good deal of attention, including ABC News.

And although Gryphn’s first product, Armor Text, was not yet ready for launch, Mitter decided to pull the trigger and release an early beta version to capitalize on the moment.

“We had to adjust our strategy,” says Mitter.  ”We weren’t planning on pushing out code but when we saw what was occurring, we expedited the work to get a early version out there. We had a lot of attention and the spotlight today, and we knew we would lose that tomorrow. As a result we actually made it work. It ended up being great for us.”

Although Mitter willingly acknowledges that Gryphn benefitted from the increase in traffic, his marketing philosophy doesn’t typically involve media stunts.  ”Do really really good work and the attention will find you. I was in Time magazine when I was 17 years old – for my work.  At times, this feels like a distraction. I make it a point to not always wear a pink, I certainly wear it a lot less than I did before.”

To go lean or not to go lean?

Although conventional wisdom says to stay as lean as possible, Mitter knew the surge in media attention was beyond what he and his team were capable of handling, or at least, not worth leaving to chance.

“We decided to pull in the best PR specialists.  I wanted to know how to appropriately leverage this situation.  How do we handle the right requests?  The reality is you don’t have to run lean all the time – sometimes you have to pull in the experts to get the job done.”

To learn more about this DC-based mobile security startup, check out the Gryphn website and their first product, ArmorText.

For the privacy conscious, some of the hot new applications for meeting people are causing a double take. Apps like Highlight and Banjo are so useful, the story goes – they show you everyone nearby on a map.

They show you everyone nearby on a map?

If you find that creepy, WhosHere might be a good alternative. Founded in March 2008, it was a social discovery app before there were social discovery apps. Its users have already sent 8 billion messages to connect with interesting people nearby, and now WhosHere is launching video chat.

Video chat came about as a way to deal with fake profiles and fake photos – to make sure you’re not talking to an older man impersonating a younger woman, or an abnormally clever cat.

“We’ve made this very safe, very uncreepy, very natural for people to verify who they’re talking to,” explains CEO and cofounder Bryant Harris.

In line with this focus on privacy, WhosHere doesn’t broadcoast your location; instead, it notifies you when your interests match someone’s nearby. The app is mainly for dating – Harris met his fiancée on it – but also for finding friends and mentors.

Other apps do let you disable “location tracking,” but WhosHere goes further: you don’t have to connect with your Facebook profile or even list your real name. You can send text and voice messages anonymously, then share information about yourself when you’re ready – mimicking the process of meeting in person. (By default, privacy settings prevent other users from calling or video-chatting you until you change them.)

Video chat is available now on WhosHere’s iOS app  and soon on Android. Funded by Lightbank, WhosHere has grown to over 5 million users – 400,000 on any given day – and 17 languages. Before you go, read Harris’s biggest takeaway from the last 4 years:

“We mostly bootstrapped this ourselves, and I think that’s definitely the hard way to do it. But it also teaches you a lot of discipline – there’s always going to be ups and downs, and I think going through that process and having that resolve that you’ll figure out a way and you’ll get through it is just critical. Because you get lots of good news, but then you also get a fair amount of bad news, and you just have to react to it and correct it if it was a mistake. Sometimes it’s a mistake you made, sometimes it’s a change in the industry – whatever it is, you just have to react to it and just keep plugging away.”

Tuesday was the official launch of Fundable, a crowdfunding platform specifically for startup companies. Founded by serial entrepreneur Wil Schroter, the platform follows the passage of the JOBS Act (or “Crowdfunding Act”), which allows companies to publicly raise money from anyone willing to back them:

“With the passage of the JOBS Act (yay!) investors will be able to back startups in exchange for equity. … Once the SEC provides the final go-ahead on equity investing, startups on Fundable will be able to raise both reward-based and equity-based capital on our platform,” says Fundable’s website.

All startups are encouraged to apply and will go through a vetting process, as Fundable claims to only work with “serious” companies. Once approved, you need to start a profile with information about your startup and its goals, how much capital you need to raise, and how you intend to return the favor to contributors. There are two options to thank them: provide an reward or (coming in 2013) offer equity in the company.

Schroter has founded 10 companies, 3 of which were venture-backed. His impressive background isn’t all that’s reassuring about Fundable. The advisory board includes a lot of big names in Silicon Valley such as 500 Startups founder Dave McClure, Startup Weekend CEO Mark Nager, venture capitalist Mark Goines, and early founders of both SecondMarket and SharesPost.

Schroter’s company Virtucon Ventures is the brand behind the new platform and is based in Columbus, Ohio, a fast-growing city in the tech and startup industries. They also have offices in Santa Monica, California. To learn more about Fundable and how your startup can benefit, visit their website at Fundable.com.

Guest author Amy Schmittauer is the Founder & Face of Savvy Sexy Social. She is a “social media frenzy” working in social relations consulting, blogging, and, of course, vlogging. She shares a glimpse into her life on her YouTube channel. Connect with Amy on Twitter.

Let’s say you start a company that not only creates an entire new industry, but also revolutionizes the way people conduct business.  How do you follow up on that success?  A) Travel the world, B) retire early and play a lot of golf, or C) start another revolutionary company?

If you answered C, you are a true entrepreneur, eager for the next challenge.  That is exactly what Mike Muhney, co-founder of ACT! did.  ACT! literally created the entire contact management category and industry and is still being used 25 years later.  Muhney’s newest venture is Dallas-based VIPorbit Software, which he co-founded with Kristi Elmendorf, an ACT! alumnus, and Max J. Pucher, a multi-patented software entrepreneur.

VIPorbit is a 21^st century iteration on ACT! – as the first relationship-centric mobile relationship manager on the market, you can easily manage your contacts, calendars, and communications on your iPhone or iPad.

Naturally, Muhney is applying some ACT! lessons learned to VIPorbit:

“Meaningful business comes from, and is sustained by, meaningful relationships – and today’s ubiquitous mobile device market can … enjoy the same type of efficiency, effectiveness, and value that before now was limited…. VIPorbit is creating a whole new and immensely larger-potential category [than contact management] called Mobile Relationship Management, and delivering the most robust and seamlessly integrated functional value that reflects the way relationship-centric people work both in business as well as personal.”

Muhney added that the sky is the limit.  “Everybody sells – as Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn says, ‘Today, everyone is their own business, and as a business how are you managing it?’  The most important, pertinent, valuable, and even priceless assets are everyone we know.”

So far there are been some surprise users of the platform: Playboy headquarters and Sinbad, the comedian and actor, who claims that VIPorbit is, “Better than a joint!”  Try out VIPorbit for yourself and see if you agree!

VIPorbit was a showcased startup at our Tech Cocktail Dallas mixer last week. 

Anyone studying the art of negotiations should read the seminal book “Getting to Yes.” Many people who work in sales think that Getting To Yes is the holy grail.  Well, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you get to yes and the faster you weed out the no’s the better you will serve the yeses.

Salespeople tend to look at their pipeline with rose-colored glasses.  They listen to their prospects with “happy-ears,” only hearing the positives. Management takes comfort in the size of their pipeline, yet few organizations are ready to face the truth: they suck at qualifying their pipeline.

The problem is that salespeople tend to hold onto bad leads, because getting rid of a bad lead translates into dialing for dollars to replace them with real prospects. This remains the reality, even though qualifying your pipeline and working good leads delivers better results: more predictable revenue, lower cost of sales and higher close rates.

The objective of qualifying your pipeline is to get to no as quickly as possible so:

1. You can better predict revenues
2. You can spend quality time with qualified prospects, thus improving your chance of getting to yes
3. You free up time to work more yeses

Startups need to build a process to ensure their pipeline is qualified.  To do this, develop a qualification checklist containing questions that fit the profile of qualified deals.  If the answers to the questions do not fit the profile, the prospect is removed from the pipeline. Some examples of qualifications questions:

1. Is there budget?
2. Is there a project timeline?
3. What is the decision process?
4. Who is your company’s sponsor?
5. Is there an incumbent?
6. Who are the competitors?

This is not an exhaustive list. The questions may or may not be relevant for your startup, while the correct answers are company dependent.

The point is that you should have a process. You should have weekly, or bi-weekly, pipeline calls with everyone responsible for driving revenue.

Lastly, ruthlessly weed out the pipeline.  Check for movement.  For instance, if a deal is stuck at the demonstration stage for too long without moving to the proposal stage … eliminate it. If the proposal was submitted 4 weeks and you still have not gotten an answer, take it out the pipeline.  This isn’t to say that the prospective customer should be ignored; instead, put them on the back-burner and do not count on them to produce near-term revenue.

Management should set pipeline goals for all salespeople so that when you eliminate a prospect the sales rep is responsible for replacing them.  Weed out the maybes and nurture the likely yeses.  Spend quality time with the deals you can win and improve your chances of getting to yes.

Remember: Qualify, qualify, qualify.

Editor’s Note: This blog post has been excerpted from an article that was originally published by Joel Cascoigne on his blog. 

“Work harder on yourself than you do on your job.” – Jim Rohn

A long time ago, I came across the amazing quote above. It stuck in my mind, and as the years go by, I feel I’ve increasingly started to learn its true meaning.

In a startup, this quote is even more relevant. Here are some of the reasons I’ve discovered why you may want to consider working harder on yourself than you do on your startup:

1. It usually takes a few tries

I certainly hope you do things better and faster than I have – and I know people far smarter than me building kickass products – but looking back, the Internet is literally littered with my previous startup attempts. It’s taken me many tries and many years before I started Buffer and started to have some success.

For that reason, it’s not a smart approach to put all your eggs in the “current startup” basket. Instead, be sure to always work on yourself.

2. Be open and vocal, and build your network

During the year and a half I was working on my previous startup, I was consistently sharing my progress via Twitter, Facebook and blogging. This turned out to be surprisingly helpful when I started Buffer.

Many people ask how I drove initial traction to the product-less MVP of Buffer. The truth is, I was rather lucky. Because I had been open and vocal about startups and my learnings, I already had 1,700 followers on Twitter, and a few on other platforms, too. Since Buffer’s initial target user was a Twitter user, this was a great channel for me.

Even if your startup isn’t related to Twitter, you can still benefit from a personal Twitter profile where you share your progress frequently. In addition to the “launchpad” effect at the start of Buffer, my Twitter followers (now over 6,500) give me some credibility that can lead to making new connections and speaking at events.

3. Do activities to improve all aspects of yourself

Of course, sharing your progress on social networks is just one of the things you can do to improve yourself. Working on these other aspects can increase your chances for success at a current or future startup:

• Coding and technical skills. This is even more relevant in current times, since Andrew Chen has clearly highlighted the immense power of a “Growth Hacker” who is both a marketer and an engineer.
• Marketing and blogging. Coding isn’t everything; you need to get your name out there. Marketing and blogging will help you learn to communicate clearly and sell your startup to the press. My personal blog has brought me far more benefits than I originally realized it would.
• Exercising and paying attention to your body. Consistent sleep and daily exercise mean I am usually super happy, which translates into productivity when I’m hacking or positivity and enthusiasm when I’m in a meeting.
• Speaking and mentoring. Learning to speak in public can be a confidence booster. I’ve also been offering help to local Hong Kong startups with validating their idea, gaining traction, fundraising, and scaling – an eye opener and a great way to meet smart people.

When you’re doing a startup, it’s hard to separate life and work. Therefore, why not work on yourself just like you do on your startup? Plan the necessary disengagement from your startup just as carefully as you’d plan the time you work on it. If you can systematically improve and expand your skills, then whether this one works out or not, you’ll be in an increasingly better position as the weeks and months pass.

Are you working harder on yourself than your startup? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Joel Gascoigne is the Founder of Buffer, a smarter way to share. Joel is always learning and shares his journey on his personal blog. He also loves to help others and you can follow and reach him on Twitter at @joelgascoigne.

Deep down, everyone is a creator.  The proliferation of blogging has made millions of writers – so too has Instagram with photographers and YouTube with video producers. The technical skills required for an idea to manifest are rapidly approaching zero, and as we approach this diminished barrier, the number of media platforms available for creation will only continue to increase.

Virl Hill, CEO at Jumala, is attempting to build this platform for video games.

The Bellevue, Washington-based startup has created a new platform for video game creation – a game within itself.

“We envisioned Jumala as a place for gamers to create and share awesome-looking 3D games in a fun and easy way. Not everyone wants to be a game developer, so the core Jumala experience has to look and feel like a game, not like a tool. Even just noodling around creating has to be a lot of fun,” says Hill.

Hill compares Jumala to The Sims, whereby users play the game because it’s fun, not because they’re aspiring architects or career planners.

The Jumala gameplay is free. Users can choose from thousands of enemies, props, hazards and interactive objects for free in their Marketplace. Jumala plans to monetize by selling virtual goods – “Piper Jaffray predicts this will be a growing, global $6 billion market by 2013. We aren’t the only ones who will provide content to the Marketplace,” Hill adds. “We’ll eventually have a couple of different ways third parties will be able to upload their own original content to Jumala and sell it to our community.”

Hill, whose background includes a variety of roles at RealNetworks (where he worked for ten years) and Disney, is now taking the reins of the 18 person startup, Blade Games World (the creators of Jumala). I caught up with Jumala’s CEO to learn more about what learning lessons he has taken with him from his corporate experience, how to give a great pitch, and what the future of gaming looks like.

Tech Cocktail: Can you speak to the learning lessons you’ve carried over from your previous positions?

Virl Hill: Throughout my career I’ve been very fortunate to work with smart, passionate people to bring audiences new, fantastic media experiences. I love getting out of my comfort zone and tackling big, difficult challenges with talented, driven teams. I think that approach creates the best opportunity for success, whether you’re in a startup or a larger company.

Tech Cocktail: What is the biggest difference between your former roles and heading a 3D game company?

Hill: Biggest differences? Disney was a huge company. RealNetworks grew from about 300 people when I started to about 1500 at its peak. Even small teams at those companies had trouble being nimble because they had to use centralized backend platforms or follow other processes that just slowed their ability to innovate. We don’t have that problem here at Jumala. With a small team it’s critical to prioritize, of course, but once that’s done, we just do it!

Tech Cocktail: Biggest surprise?

Hill:  So far, the biggest, pleasant surprise has been the enthusiastic response to Jumala from the education community. University of Washington is using Jumala to teach an entry-level game design class. Schools from Seattle to Seoul to New Zealand have contacted us about using Jumala for summer camps, game jams, contests and a wide range of creative projects like geography assignments or making Christmas card games. Over a dozen schools at the March Game Developer Conference expressed interest in introducing Jumala to their students. I also think we have more surprises in store when our community uses Jumala to create interactive experiences that we haven’t even envisioned.

Jumala CEO Virl Hill

Tech Cocktail: In your opinion, what is the most important element to giving a great pitch? How did you apply this to your presentation at DEMO?

Hill: Know your audience, craft the pitch to meet the needs of that audience, then practice, practice, practice. DEMO is all about new products. Jumala is a game changing, visually stunning and fun new product. No brainer: show the product! We immersed the DEMO audience in Jumala for five of the six minutes of the pitch while highlighting our key messages. Most importantly, we showed Jumala delivers on its core promise – we made a game while live on stage, in less than six minutes!

Tech Cocktail: What do you see for the future of gaming?

Hill: The future of gaming starts in a few weeks with the next major update to Jumala’s beta! Every industry panelist spouts the mantra “you gotta be mobile AND social.” While we completely agree, we also believe gaming will become more personal. Historically, creating your own experiences within a game like Halo or Starcraft was the realm of a few dedicated hard-core gamers using level editors.

Games like The Sims, Little Big Planet and, more recently, Minecraft showed that millions of people love to create within a game just for the fun of creating something and for the fifteen minutes of fame they get from showing off their creations! At Jumala, we are expanding on that idea and will eventually enable anyone to create any gaming experience they want, in any visual environment they want and on any platform they want with their friends. We think that will unleash a whole new dimension in gaming. That big vision really inspires our small, passionate team. We want Jumala to bring game creation to everyone, just for fun. We invite everyone to come join us on that journey.

In Ecobe’s DEMO pitch, VP Joseph Stanfield called Google greedy and outlined his vision for a more fair search engine. Afterward, two young Google engineers came over to chat – they were curious, and “perfect gentlemen,” Stanfield recalls – and they had a philosophical discussion about what the web is.

The Ecobe team believes that search engines have a responsibility to share their revenue with content providers, whose websites provide the results for any search. Without them, the rationale goes, search engines wouldn’t exist. So Ecobe is creating a new search engine and offering 40% of its gross profit to web publishers. This will be split among websites based on the percentage of click-throughs they get.

Could Ecobe actually have a shot against Google? In a recent post by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham on billion-dollar startup ideas, he explains why it might be time to compete with Google. Google showed some weakness by entering the social network business because it’s afraid of Facebook, Graham argues. A startup could succeed with a simpler search engine that targets hackers.

On top of that, critics have pounced on Google recently for Search Plus Your World, which prioritizes Google+ results and allegedly departs from the company’s “don’t be evil” motto.

“We can’t underestimate the value of the un-Google,” says Stanfield. “7UP is kind of the un-Cola.” He hopes to lure away these Google critics with the promise of a more fair model.

Plus, there’s another notion of fairness involved: by using Ecobe, we would increase its ad revenue, which translates into revenue for the free sites we visit and benefit from. If nothing else, struggling publishers would be loud champions of Ecobe if it could boost their businesses.

But Ecobe has a bumpy road ahead. They’re trying to significantly change our online behavior in the name of abstract “fairness,” without much tangible benefit to consumers. Stanfield admits that Ecobe’s technology isn’t better than Google’s: they use standard search APIs plus their own proprietary algorithms. This led to “some really tough comments” from analysts at DEMO, he says.

With just over $1 million in funding, Ecobe has grown to a team of about 14 and will be launching in Korea in June, where the search market is dominated by Naver. Korean search may turn out to be more ripe for disruption than the US market, where Google’s shadow is menacing. But as Paul Graham notes, “The biggest startup ideas are terrifying.”

Timothy Chi, whom I recently had a conversation with, came up with the idea for WeddingWire while encountering pain points during the planning of his wedding. He took action on the simple idea of creating a resource for wedding planning and turned it into what is now a growing company.

Tim joined us in Washington, D.C. for the kickoff of our monthly Sessions speaker series. Chi shared some of the insights from his two very different startup experiences at Blackboard and WeddingWire, which included the four important success factors:

1.) Team
2.) Listen Carefully To Your Customer
3.) Do Not Be Afraid To Fail
4.) Timing

We also uncovered though the sessions Q&A that Timothy connected with one of his first WeddingWire investors, Martha Stewart, via LinkedIn. Reid Hoffman would be proud. Watch the full keynote by Timothy Chi, CEO and Founder of WeddingWire.

Join us at Tech Cocktail Sessions as we break down the different ingredients that go into starting and running your own business (check our schedule). Our next DC event on May 24th features Scott Case, Founding CTO of Priceline.com and current CEO of Startup America,  Rohit Bhargava, Author of the new book LIKEONOMICS and Zvi Band, Co-founder of Contactually.

When your startup is young, managing operations is easy – there are only a few of you, so it is easy to keep track of who is doing what.  But as you grow and add employees and customers, the days of managing operations with spreadsheets, email and reports come to a close.  You need something flexible that can change as you grow, but you certainly don’t need enterprise-level software.

That’s where SPOTS Tracking Systems comes in. Founded by Gustavo Ansorena, Jose Briones, Alberto Perez, and Alejandro Perez, the Dallas-based startup, which we showcased at last week’s Tech Cocktail Dallas mixer, provides cloud-based flexible-workflow management software to improve the profitability and efficiency of your operations.

While that is quite a mouthful, the software has a lot of really useful features for retail, service, and manufacturing companies.  For instance, you can tracks orders, information and items through fulfillment and keep an audit trail via social-media style comments

Because 3 of the 4 co-founders have worked at startups, they already understood that “value proposition, market segmentation and competitive analysis are critical for success,” said Briones.  So, while SPOTS 1.0 was developed in 2010 to fill the internal needs of a manufacturing company, they realized it was applicable to other industries as well.  Hence, SPOTS 2.0 (the current SPOTS) was started in mid-2011.

As Briones explained, the cloud is the future of software:

“The cloud will result in significant disruptions to the software business.  Launching a new software product in the cloud is orders of magnitude less expensive, thus many startups will create a new generation of products for businesses that will replace all of the existing products.”

When asked about emerging trends around business management tools, he added, “Products need to be flexible and adapt to the way people do business, not the other way around” – which makes SPOTS spot on (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun!).

There already exists a slew of private social networks, but William King believes that private clubs require a different kind of social network.

“Private member clubs and organizations have been demanding a way to utilize social media tools to best engage their members, while still maintaining the industry’s commitment to privacy,” says King, COO and partner at Clubster.

Clubster differentiates itself from other social networks and mobile apps because of “how we service our members, manage facilities, and help to maintain nonprofit status,” adds King.

On the surface, Clubster sounds a bit like Path – closed networks intended for more specific forms of interaction.  As King puts it, “While Path allows users to share out data to other social networks, Clubster only allows users to share data to Clubster, keeping Clubster private.”  Additionally, members can create private groups, RSVP to events, and easily consume information from all participating clubs in their newsfeed, as most users belong to multiple.  King is quick to add, “None of this is possible on Path.”

Starting up in Dallas, Texas

As of the startups recently featured at the Dallas Tech Cocktail Mixer and having a long history of doing business in the area, I was curious of King’s take of The Big D’s startup scene.

“Two of the founding partners have been in Dallas for over thirty years, with our other founding partner residing in New York City. The advantages of starting up in Dallas are numerous. No new business can start without some help from the community, including financial support, an educated and available work force, and a ‘can do’ attitude. Dallas has all three of these, plus a lower cost of starting a business than almost any other part of the country.

“As far as disadvantages to starting a business in Dallas, we simply do not believe there are any.  In addition, Dallas is home to the Texas Rangers, with the best current record in baseball and the best all around player. Go Rangers!!”

What do you do if you’re solving a problem that few people know is a problem? Is that a problem?

Dallas-based startup PolicyPulse, part of the latest Tech Wildcatters class, has a big vision to bring citizens together with city governments, nonprofits, and advocacy groups to collaborate on new laws. Right now, they say, politicians don’t know what people want, and citizens don’t even know when local issues are up for voting.

The team has seen this firsthand: COO Krishanu Sengupta was a consultant to local governments, and CMO Andres Ramos worked on exposing problems in education while at Teach for America. They cofounded PolicyPulse along with CEO Miles Bacon.

As Sengupta explained, they knew their main challenge would be engaging citizens:

“We’re a startup company focused on local policy, so our experience has been similar to trying to build an airplane in mid-flight,” he jokes. “Despite the general apathy that exists today, we’re confident that great design, built on the back of emerging trends, can in fact connect communities to the decisions which impact their everyday lives.”

To do that, PolicyPulse is taking it slow and simple – starting with a very personal issue (education), one community (Dallas), and one feature (questions). Questions come from city leaders looking to get answers from the community – What are the most important traits in a principal? Will longer school days improve graduation rates? Next will be Agendas, where citizens can weigh in on upcoming local policy issues. PolicyPulse also hopes to engage the apathetic with its pretty, photo-heavy design.

PolicyPulse demoed at our Tech Cocktail Dallas mixer last week. As part of Tech Wildcatters, they will be launching officially on July 11.

myHomework doesn’t have the seemingly traditional startup backstory where someone has an idea and forms a team, and everyone quits their jobs on Monday. They also don’t have the glamorous “overnight” success story we all read about. While spending time with cofounder Keith Entzeroth at Big Omaha, I heard an interesting story that is much more common but far less told.

Rodrigo “Rigo” Neri built the first version of assignment tracker myHomework while attending Park University, to solve his own problem of tracking classes, homework, and projects. The app saw good initial traction, but wasn’t intended to become a startup.

Neri went on to take a job at Cerner Corporation, where he would eventually meet his cofounders, Entzeroth and Ryan Niemeyer. At Cerner, Entzeroth spotted Neri’s rockstar abilities and recruited him to work on a high-profile internal project along with Niemeyer. Entzeroth described the project as “the closest you’ll get to a startup in an enterprise.”

When Neri told the others about myHomework, they were both intrigued. After some more discussion, the trio decided to found Instin in January 2011, with myHomework as their first product. Entzeroth says the time they worked together on the Cerner project gave them the confidence to go it alone.

Now here’s where you’d think all 3 guys would quit their jobs, but that didn’t happen. Entzeroth’s last day wasn’t until this April, and the other 2 refrained from putting in their 2 weeks notice until last week, 15 months after Instin was officially organized.

When I asked Entzeroth what took him so long to quit, he said, “I was very analytical in my decision. For the last 3 months or so I’ve been trying to find every reason I shouldn’t quit.”

myHomework is a free app currently available for iPhone, iPad, Android, and the web with the ability to sync across devices. They have a unique in-app purchase revenue model where local sponsors subsidize students’ upgrades. myHomework has now been downloaded over 2 million times, has 400,000 active students this semester, and 20,000 paying users.

Guest author Nick Tippmann is a young entrepreneur with a thirst for learning and a passion for helping. He is an organizer for Startup Weekend, a mentor for Lean Startup Machine, and currently working full-time on his own startup. Follow him on Twitter @ntippmann.

Is Microsoft innovative? Not as much as they once were. Is Yahoo innovative? How about RIM, or HP? These companies are decades away from their last innovation and all but Microsoft are a few last gasps away from the once innovative corpse of Kodak.

What is it about innovative companies that mutates the once active innovation-gene into engines of stale thinking?  Could the initial public offering (IPO) have a hand in the fall?

According to research outlined in Daniel Pink’s book, Drive, the pressure of cash rewards stifle innovation for right-brained, conceptual workers. Does maintaining the stock price of a billion dollar company create sufficient pressure to narrow focus and hamper innovation?

Companies are either focused on Customer Intimacy, Operational Excellence or Innovation, and for those companies focused on innovation, the IPO is the start of their corporate slide to irrelevancy.

Instead of long-term investment, the executive team turns their focus to stock price movement based on the whims of short-term traders who are more concerned with next quarters’ revenue and profit rather than the value of long-term R&D. Upon going public, employees of the company immediately feel the pressure to deliver quarterly results at the expense of all else.

Salespeople, desperate to produce their quarterly numbers, drag sales forward with discounts on deals that could have fetched list price had they gone through the natural sales cycle, thus decreasing the value of the pipeline and intensifying the pressure. Margins drop as focus shifts from the long-view to the what-have-you-done-for me-lately view.  Mounting pressure continues to narrow focus in a downward spiral of lost creativity.

Apple is one of the few companies to drive sustainable innovation well past their IPO. Apple, however, did suffer the post-IPO doldrums, losing their innovative mojo decades ago after ousting Steve Jobs and replacing him with John Scully, who quickly turned Apple to the prototypical post-IPO firm.  Only Jobs’ return to the helm restored Apple to it’s pre-IPO innovative form.

Apple reclaimed their reputation as an innovation factory during Jobs’ second reign. Under Jobs, Apple was more Jobs, Inc. than Apple Inc.  Apple became an extension of Jobs’ ego. The company became a centralized corporation driven by a man who was not distracted nor motivated by the twists and turns of Wall Street, and, therefore, Apple did not succumb to IPO Innovation Atrophy.

With Jobs gone, it will be interesting to see if the company doesn’t go the way of  HP, or Yahoo, or Google, which is now trying to grow revenue on the backs of ho-hum, me-too products like their “Facebook Killer,” Google+.

Will Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg duplicate the success of the personality- driven Apple, or will Facebook join the list of former bottle-rockets turned free-falling meteors? If Facebook slams to Earth, will the crater it leaves equal or exceed the craters soon to be left by Yahoo, RIM and HP?

Take the CTA downtown and hop off at Merchandise Mart to visit Chicago’s newest tech hub: 1871, a coworking space – and more – that’s a collaboration among some of the city’s biggest startup supporters.

Ride the elevator to the 12th floor of Merchandise Mart, and you’ll be greeted with 50,000 square feet of desks and meeting rooms, along with a 143-foot glass whiteboard.

The lobby of 1871

The 1871 manifesto

You might see the summer’s Excelerate Labs class hacking away, mentors from Groupon and GrubHub offering advice to startups, and Code Academy students working on their technical chops. Or peek in on a business class or a coding workshop.

Working from 1871

Run as a not-for-profit, 1871 is named after the innovation, passion, and ingenuity that rebuilt Chicago after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The space is led by CEO Kevin Willer, also the president of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center, who spent over 10 years with Google and cofounded its Chicago office. Below, Willer reflects on what 1871 means for Chicago:

Tech Cocktail: What is the significance of 1871 for Chicago? 

Kevin Willer speaks at the grand opening of 1871

Kevin Willer: I think this is a really important part of continuing the momentum that we have going on in Chicago now. I would never say this is the solution – that if we have this, we’re all set. We need to do a lot of things really well, and this is a part of getting even better. Some people have said that this put a stake in the ground for us in Chicago, saying, “Hey, this is real. We’re building great companies here and we’re going to build even more in the future. Investors should come here from other places and invest in the companies here. Talent should move here.”

It puts some firmness underneath the ground of the startup community here, and said, “Hey, we’re here. We’re going to make a big, long-term commitment to this startup scene … This is going to be a big part of the future economic development of the city of Chicago, and we’re here to stay and we’re hopefully going to be really successful.”

Tech Cocktail: What are some of the challenges for the Chicago startup scene going forward? 

Willer: First and foremost, technical talent is lacking all over this country. For sure, we definitely have that issue here. We have a lot of great business talent here – 2 top-5 MBA schools – but we need to do a better job of training technical talent here and keeping the talent that we do train here and not letting them get away….

We’re starting to see our companies here attract talent from other places that will move here for a startup or a growth company. We have to continue to do a better job of that. We can’t just depend on locally home-grown talent; we have to import talent from the coast and from other places….

The third thing is not that sexy, but we have to be patient. This is not going to happen overnight. We don’t want to just talk a big game; we have to show the results. And if I see anything, I see an incredible pipeline here. You have the big success with Groupon, the big public offering, but now we’ve got to follow it up with companies like a GrubHub or a Braintree or a BrightTag or whoever – all these companies that have raised $10 million or more in the last year-18 months. We have to have some of them keep growing, maybe go public, maybe get acquired, and behind that we have to have a massive pipeline of all the little seed-stage companies. And I know we have that – I know we have that, I see it – but we have to keep adding to it.

Tech Cocktail: What’s been most surprising about 1871 since the launch?

Willer: I’m really close to it – I mean, this has been my life for the last 6 months, at least…. We even opened a month before our grand opening in “beta” just to let some early applicants in to test out the place and tell us what was working and what wasn’t. But I guess it’s not surprising: what’s been so neat is if you bring all the pieces of an ecosystem together into one physical location, you actually create incredible amounts of energy that just is impossible any other way except for physical proximity….

There’s this serendipity kind of thing that just creates a lot of energy. It speeds things up; people get things done so much quicker because they’re down the hall instead of having to track someone down. That’s been surprising how quickly it’s taken hold and how everybody’s just sold about making this place a success long-term. We were hoping for it, but it’s been a little surprising how quickly everybody’s been on board with that.

All of 1871’s reserved coworking desks are filled, but you can jump on the long list for shared coworking space here.

More photos:

An art mural in special event space

Reserved coworking space

You have a great idea, but what do you do next? How do you take that inspiration and turn it into something? Moving from ideas to action is what separates entrepreneurs from those with just a dream.

Shane Green, whom we spoke with previously at South by Southwest, joined us in Washington, D.C. for the kickoff of our monthly Sessions speaker series. He took the audience through his story of how a trip to Berlin sparked his life mission and took him on a couple of startup adventures.  He sold his last startup to NAVTEQ and he is currentlyy the CEO and Co-Founder of Personal based in Washington, D.C. and shared how he took his idea and turned it into action. Watch the full keynote by Shane Green, CEO and Co-Founder of Personal.

Join us at Tech Cocktail Sessions as we break down the different ingredients that go into starting and running your own business (check our schedule). Our next event on May 24th features  Scott Case, Founding CTO of Priceline.com and current CEO of Startup America and Rohit Bhargava, Author of the new book LIKEONOMICS.

In a November 2011 study, Pew Internet found that over half of the adult cell phone owners downloaded apps on their phone. Of these, over 74% downloaded apps that provide regular updates on news, weather, sports or stocks.

I am a fan of weather apps. I have learned from experience that it is important to check the weather before venturing out from home. During the pre-smartphone days, I checked my local TV and radio stations, but now I check my phone every morning. My go-to weather app is OurCast. It lets you report conditions via the app, which are then integrated directly into Ourcast’s forecasts.

At present, it is an iPhone only app, though I did test it on an iPad. According to OurCast, this app is a “new type of statistical modeling that uses real-time radar data and weather station readings provided by 20,000 volunteers across the U.S.” and enhanced by user-generated weather reports provided in real-time.  The advantage of seeing weather reports in 10 minute intervals is great; you can quickly squeeze in a run before the weather turns nasty.

It seems like a cool idea to supplement weather technology with crowd-sourced weather reports. If they play their cards right and partner with local TV and radio stations, we may hear of “OurCast” reports from users along with Doppler radar reports.

The app is easy to use – you can submit your report by checking-in (don’t groan about another check-in tool!) to the app and choose a weather report symbol, like “no rain.”  You can also choose to see weather for “Everyone,” “Nearby,” or your report, and you can share your check-in report on Twitter and Facebook. It would be great if they add a photo feature as well. Additionally, I will be happier when they finally release the Android app, which is in the works.

If you’ve ever sent or received a text message, then there’s a 99.99% chance that some (or all) of your intended meaning was lost in translation.  Without body language, tone-of-voice, or any other non-verbal cue that we would otherwise pick up on during a face-to-face interaction, text messages often fall victim to misinterpretation.

This is the reason for the creation of Blurtt, an iPhone app that helps you express how you feel with pictures.

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a message with an image is worth more. Our mission is to help people say what they really mean to say so they can better express themselves digitally,” says Jeanette Cajide, co-founder and CEO of Blurtt.

The founding team – which consists of Cajide, Kuba Tymula, and Laura Gurasich – all met while at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern.  They have been hard at work on their latest photo sharing venture since 2010, albeit from different cities.

I caught up with Cajide to learn more about the inspiration behind Blurtt, what surprises her team has encountered along the way, and what advantages there are to starting up in Dallas.

Tech Cocktail: What was the inspiration behind Blurtt?

Jeanette Cajide: So many important conversations today happen over email, text and even social media, and yet there is no good way to convey emotion, tone or meaning. Emoticons have become the digital representation of emotion or feelings across the Internet, but a smiley face can mean a lot of things. Are you being sarcastic, or sweet, or condescending?

Tech Cocktail: What surprises have you encountered since launching Blurtt?

Cajide: As part of the design, I wanted Blurtts to look uniform so that the branding was consistent, and I had a hard time deciding whether or not to keep the text box. I was out-voted by the rest of the team. We launched in private beta and asked our users what they thought, and this time I was out-voted by the users. What really surprised me was the creativity of the users in how they use the text box. Here are two examples that we saw within the first few days of launch.

(Editor's Note: Amazing)

Another surprise that we’ve found was that small businesses have been using Blurtt to create ads for their business.  As a result, we built an SDK and have our first partnership.

Tech Cocktail: What drew your team away from Evanston to Dallas?

Cajide: We all met at Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, but the team has worked mostly virtually. I am in Dallas with the engineering and design team, Laura is in Austin, so I spend a lot of time there as well, and Kuba, our other cofounder, is in New York City, where he keeps up with the digital media community there.  By being spread out, we can really leverage multiple networks, and you will see why this has been important to us below.

Blurtt CEO and co-founder Jeanette Cajide

Tech Cocktail: What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of starting up in Dallas?

Cajide: In Dallas, because there are fewer of us here doing anything as crazy as a startup, I felt very supported. What I have here in Dallas are champions, not advisors. My champions Lea Nesbit and Trey Bowles are two successful Dallas entrepreneurs who have helped me manage the roller coaster that is a startup.

The biggest disadvantage is funding. Dallas investors historically are hesitant to invest in social media startups. I think that Instagram acquisition and Facebook IPO validates that there is value in this space. I hope we see more angel and seed investors consider investing in these type of startups. Texas has more Fortune 500 companies headquartered here than in NY or California, and the cost of living is manageable, particularly for a startup. No entrepreneur should ever have to leave this state because of lack of funding opportunities.

Blurtt was one the startups recently featured at the Dallas Tech Cocktail Mixer.  Download their free iPhone app here.  

If charity is all about sacrificing for others, Instead makes that sacrifice visible. Its cute interface lets you select what you’re giving up – like coffee, beer, or a movie – then make a micro-donation.

You can choose from around 200 charities, including the American Cancer Society, Habitat for Humanity, Kiva, a variety of churches, and Instead itself. Instead is a pending 501(c)(3) nonprofit, supported by volunteers who don’t take a salary. Its operating costs are covered by the 5% fee deducted from donations (after credit/debit card fees).

Instead isn’t revolutionary technology, but it’s designed well to motivate you to donate to charity in everyday life – when you’re about to grab some Starbucks, just make a $3 donation and bust out the coffee maker at home.

This simple interface is based on founder Micah Davis’s experience at previous startups, where he learned to design for mobile (Instead is available on iPhone and Android), then adapt an app to the web.

“This forced us to adopt ‘feature diet’ and focus on the core functionality,” he explains.

Instead is based in Dallas – check them out today, and get donating!

We get it, you’re busy.  You weren’t able to get to every Tech Cocktail post this week; it happens.  Fear not, because we’ve curated the week’s top 10 posts as determined by the Tech Cocktail editorial team.

To get the Tech Cocktail weekly wrap-up direct to your inbox; sign up for the Tech Cocktail newsletter today. 

1. Femanomics: 105 Women in Venture Capital & Angel Investment You Should Know
2. Who’s Seattle’s Hottest Startup? [Poll]
3. Brian Spaly, CEO Of Trunk Club, Is On A Mission To Get Men To Dress Better
4. Tech Tips: Avoiding Intellectual Property Issues on Twitter
5. What Mom Taught Me: Advice From 8 Entrepreneurs
6. Seven Tips for Busy Mompreneurs
7. Startup Outlook 2012: Entrepreneurs Are Optimistic and Hiring
8. Fantasy Politics Games Proliferate: Fanitics Launches This Month
9. Four Neat Tricks for a Good Entrepreneurial Night’s Sleep
10. Launching Today: Find Customers & Do Networking on “Skype in the Workspace”

Attention Seattle and Washington DC: team Tech Cocktail is coming your way next week.  On Wednesday, join us for our Tech Cocktail Seattle Mixer at PNK Ultra Lounge.  And on Thursday, we’ll be hosting our 2nd Tech Cocktail DC Sessions, a new speaker series where entrepreneurs teach other entrepreneurs the secrets of their success.  Next week’s Sessions will feature Scott Case, the founding CTO at Priceline and current CEO and board member at Startup America Partnership, and Rohit Bhargava the author of Personality Not Included and the recently released Likeonomics.

Can you believe we made it this far without mentioning a certain social network’s IPO?  Me neither.

Are you a student coming to Silicon Valley for an internship this summer?  If so, Pierre-Simon Ntiruhungwa and Nicolas Grenié (who you may remember as from this year’s winning StartupBus team) invite you to come and receive the “Silicon Valley experience on steroids.”

The duo have founded Startup Dream Team, a 9-week program aimed toward educating young entrepreneurs on what’s required to build high-execution teams.  The program features a weekly speaker series, a weekly hackathon, and a an opportunity to pitch your idea to a soon-to-be announced entrepreneur or VC.  Startup Dream Team runs from June 18th through August 12th and will be held at the StartupHouse in San Francisco, where participants will live together in a friendly, hostel-like environment.

The deadline to apply is tomorrow, May 20th.

I caught up with Startup Dream Team co-founder Pierre-Simon Ntiruhungwa to learn more about his program.

Tech Cocktail: What is Startup Dream Team?

Pierre-Simon Ntiruhungwa: Startup Dream team is a 9-week team-building program for 30 interns in Silicon Valley.  Students, coming from all around the world, will live together in a hostel for entrepreneurs called Startup House.  On top of their internships that they have found by themselves, they will help organize a speaker series which includes Robert Scoble, Aaron Levie and Hiten Shah, and weekly hack days on Sundays.

The central focus of the program will be on team creation and teamwork.  Indeed, the team is the core value in a successful startup, and we believe that this program will help students to find their matching cofounders.

Startup Dream Team Founder Pierre-Simon Ntiruhungwa

Startup Dream Team will give them an overview of Silicon Valley lifestyle. By making them live together, we would like to create a startup-minded environment, where engineers will be surrounded by business people and vice-versa. Living the Silicon Valley lifestyle means also being proactive, so students will be in charge of organizing events.

Tech Cocktail: Who is it for?

Ntiruhungwa: This for young aspiring entrepreneurs who are about to do an internship in Silicon Valley.  The internship part is important, as they will all have great individual experiences of the startup world that they will be able to share between one another. Developers, designers, and biz dev/marketers are encouraged to appl,y as it’s important to have a balance of skill sets.  Above all, this is for students who have big ambitions, are willing to learn with others, and crave an authentic Silicon Valley experience.

Tech Cocktaill: Why should someone attend?

Ntiruhungwa: Someone should attend because he/she will:

• Attend and organize conferences with Robert Scoble, Hiten Shah and Aaron Levie
• Have the rare opportunity to be in an environment favorable for team building and teamwork with other aspiring entrepreneurs
• Be able to build a lifetime network by living with other people like him/herself and, hopefully, find the perfect co-founders.
• Enjoy a Silicon Valley experience on steroids with a quick and deep integration to Silicon Valley ecosystem

Apply to the Startup Dream Team here.

As a PR guy for tech startups, I’ve had countless clients approach me about how to make them or their products “go viral.” There’s arguably no better way than video, and several companies have been born purely to address this need.

But there’s no secret formula, no recipe for success. And with so much attention focused on viral videos, it can be easy to overlook the impact of a simple, well-engineered video that touts the basics of a company’s product or service in a few short minutes.

That’s where Lightswitch hopes to carve out its niche.

“Video is the best way for a business to tell its unique story online,” said CEO Jason Stulberg, formerly of Redbox. “It’s memorable and instantly connects with potential customers.”

Founded in Chicago late last year, Lightswitch bills itself as the go-to startup for developing short videos for business profiles, product demonstrations, customer testimonials, recruiting and training segments, and more.

“I think the future of video marketing is very bright,” Stulberg said. “The power of video to connect with consumers is unquestioned, but it’s traditionally been complicated and expensive to produce.”

Lightswitch uses its network of more than 5,000 freelance videographers across the United States and Canada to create targeted video content – whether you’re a tech startup or a dentist office – starting around a few hundred bucks a pop.

So what kind of return-on-investment can small business owners expect from adding video to their marketing mix? According to Stulberg, ROI comes in several forms, from increased foot traffic and higher online conversion rates to higher-quality job candidates and reduced training costs.

How soon and to what extent business owners can realize a significant ROI isn’t abundantly clear, but the low price point lessens the risk involved, making it easy for small businesses to roll the dice.

The market for online video is exploding, and with a large network of freelancers already in place, Lightswitch is in a prime position to capitalize. Demand Media made a name for itself by crowdsourcing media talent on a large scale, using freelancers around the globe to produce written and video how-to content. In doing so, the company faced challenges that stemmed from serving two masters: the freelancers who write the content and the end users who write the checks.

If Lightswitch can walk a similar tightrope, the future appears bright indeed.

Guest author Andrew Cross is a Tech Cocktail contributor and an account executive at Walker Sands Communications in Chicago. He covers tech startups, particularly those based out of the Midwest. He has a BA in public relations from Illinois State University. Contact Andrew at andrewrcross[at]gmail[dot]com or @Andrew_R_Cross.