Boulder OpenCoffee Club

July 7th 2009 Recap

mbedwards@gmail.com — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:07:54 -0700

Awesome meeting this morning with a bunch of regulars and new people.

Some highlights:

We discussed outsourcing, including offshoring to countries such as India. People have had good and bad experiences. Key take away is that if you think you are outsourcing the management of your project you need to make sure the contracting company has managers dedicated to your project. Other hints were contractual agreements for resume review and keeping the same people on for the lifetime of the project.

Aniomagic is a cool local Boulder company founded by CU grad students that enables craft makers to weave programmable LED lights into shirts, jewelery, and other objects. They demonstrated programming a woven bracelet using an iPhone that generated specific light patterns. Very cool stuff.

Callisto.fm is a new startup founded by long time BOCC member Michael Sitarzewski that enables podcast discovery by streaming podcasts together in the same vein as Pandora. They just opened up for public consumption and are looking for comments.

We discussed Marc Andreesen's new VC firm and statements people have made that up to 20% of VC's will close shop in the next few years. The theory is that people are unable to allocate large sums of capital efficiently.

Zeo, a company from Boston that helps consumers track their sleep habits was in town today and is presenting at the new tech meetup tonight.

Hope to see everyone at the next meeting!

--Michael Edwards

June 23rd BOCC Recap

mbedwards@gmail.com — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:38:36 -0700

Some highlights from the last meeting include:

- People are so far very impressed by the Pogoplug. $99 one time cost for monthly storage and transfer ability is a very good deal.

- People are using MS FolderShare (now LiveSync), and DropBox for syncing productivity documents

- iPhone 3GS graphics chip faster than original Xbox graphics chip. Much more responsive for every day tasks.

- No one buying a Palm Pre

- VersionTracker is a great source for Mac related software

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the July 7th meeting!

--Michael

June 9th BOCC Meeting

mbedwards@gmail.com — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:15:07 -0700

We had another great meeting earlier this month.

Some highlights:

shubme.com lets you checkin where you are at a meeting or conference

- Digital conference the other day, ceo -- advertising with teens survey to get into a game

- Colgate video tie-ins running at $40 CPM

- Talked about vesting, shotgun clauses being bad, voting rights vs vesting

- Maybe 30-40% of options avail to employees aren't exercised by leaving employees

- Firing for cause -- cause is impossible to define

--Michael

May 26 Meeting - NVCA, Facebook, Matt Galligan, Palm Pre, Startup Weekend

mbedwards@gmail.com — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:51:06 -0700

Awesome meeting this Tuesday (May 26th).

First order of business was congratulating our awesome host, Jason Mendelson, on being appointed to the National Venture Capital Association board.

Early discussion included the recent investments Jason's fund at the Foundry Group has invested in, including the PogoPlug which is a small device that for $99 puts the contents of any external harddrive into the cloud with sync options and full high speed streaming capability.

We then discussed the recent OpenTable IPO, which is one of, if not only dot com IPO's in the last two years and according to Bloomberg, one of the five biggest tech deals in the last year. Issues discussed were that it was not clear their business model is sustainable due to the fact that some restaurants will use it to build a brand then dump it and go solo. An additional threat is the Point of Sale vendors' recent offerings for web enabling restaurants directly into the POS machines.

Lance gave us a brief summary of the Facebook developer's garage last Friday. Discussion then turned to the $200MM capital injection into Facebook a Russian investment firm made at a $10B market capitalization. Rumor is Facebook is profitable this year and may be set to hit gross revenue of $500-600MM.

Matt Galligan, formerly founder of Socialthing, one of the first ten Techstars companies which sold to to AOL last year, announced his new startup which is an alternate reality gaming platform using mobile phones that integrates real world geolocation and environmental information.

The Palm Pre is being released in June and a dev camp in Boulder is going to be held as well.

A member that had a waterlogged iPhone took it to the Boulder Mac Repair Shop and got it fixed. Apparently there is a water indicator in the headphone jack.

Several people voiced preference for the Apple store in the Flatirons mall in Broomfield for better service and lower wait times than the one on the 29th Street Mall in Boulder.

We then discussed consolidation in the event ticketing industry and the near monopoly strength of Ticketmaster.

Andrew Hyde announced the third Boulder Startup Weekend coming up June 5 - 7. A $40 ticket buys you 7 meals.

The next meeting is Tuesday June 9th at 8am at The Cup in Downtown Boulder.

-- Michael Edwards

Awesome 2nd Year Anniversary Meeting on April 14th

mbedwards@gmail.com — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 01:11:55 -0700

We had another awesome meeting on April 14th and celebrated the 2nd anniversary of our first meeting. Regulars from the original that were present included Jason Mendelson (our host), Alan Kaplan, Lorenzo Carver, and me.

Topics of discussion included Brad Feld's new job as a Spud Brother's fry cook, CU entrepreneurship week, and Colorado governor Bill Ritter's new enthusiasm for focusing on Internet, software, and information technology based businesses located in Colorado.

We then continued our ongoing discussion of the media industry. A statistic was floated that the average teen spends 18 hours a day consuming media including double/tripple counting (you can listen to MP3's while playing games). 18 hours a day is not changing over time, so it appears it is the ceiling (maxed out for attention). I shared an interesting graph I found that showed the decline in newspaper readership started in 1980. We discussed whether the local Daily Camera paper would survive. Consensus is not pretty whatever the ultimate outcome is.

We then moved into discussing doctors and electronic medical records. $100mm's lost on helping doctors (similar to lawyers, accountants) adopt technology. Discussed initiative in Boulder county to get all medical records online.

Finally, we debated Facebook Twitter integration and general usage patterns for Facebook (more personal) with Twitter (more business, free form).

Our thoughts on MySpace were that the customizable annoying stuff is what MySpace users really like....

Hope to see everyone at the next meeting on April 28th at The Cup on Pearl St, 8am.

--Michael Edwards

March 31 Recap and 2nd Anniversary!

mbedwards@gmail.com — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:04:56 -0700

The March 31st had a lot of interesting conversation.

We discussed Google Ventures and its strategic impact as well as the new Google Voice.

Jason Mendelson proposed open-mic nights for entrepreneurs in Boulder for those of us that need a bit of 'help' with our pitches :-). Lots of people interested.

Jason also asked us if we knew of anyone providing an outsourced SaaS analytics solution. No one at the group knew of anything off hand. I've since
come across Mix Panel that appears to offer a very slick solution that looks like it would be easy to integrate with (using a REST API) which would traditionally be my
biggest push-back area.

Another query from Jason was if we'd have interest in a product that would let us connect an external storage unit to a router and have automatic access to the files from any Internet
connected computer. Some people wanted it, others didn't. One device fitting the bill is the PogoPlug.

The discussion included fertile crescents of technology, ala Silicon Valley, academia, defense, creativity, a culture of not being afraid of failure, non-unions / right to work. We discussed choosing to create a Silicon Valley type startup hotbed w/ your local University ala Silicon Flatirons. Jason went on to give a talk at Ann Arbor, Michigan about this.

Matt Emmi asked for suggestions to an interactive Google map he is working on that displays the density of high tech companies in Colorado. A lot of interesting UI/CHI talk followed. It's amazing what Google Maps and Earth allow you do to. Google Earth, originally Keynote, is the software that powers a lot of visualizations that traditional news organizations generate.

Afterwards we had another meetup re: the BOCC blog and a unified startup events calendar for Boulder with me, Matt Emmi, Lance Weber, Michael Sitarzewski, and Andrew Hyde.

The morning ended with the people still at The Cup discussing bit.ly's recent funding.

The next meeting on April 14th will be our 2nd year anniversary. I hope to see everyone there!

--Michael Edwards

March 17th Recap

mbedwards@gmail.com — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:43:34 -0700

We had a good discussion at the last meeting centered around the future of newspapers (inspired by the recent closings here in Colorado and everywhere else), the Palm Pre, and AIG bonuses. re: Newspapers, Lance Weber pointed to an excellent analysis done by Clay Shirky.

After the meeting, Michael Sitarzewski, Lance Weber, Matt Emmi, and I had a quick meeting re: upgrading the BOCC blog which was followed up by another meeting the next morning.

I also wanted to congratulate our longtime regular Jennifer Ross for starting a new Open Coffee Club in Victoria, BC, CA where she is living now.

Lastly, for those of you who missed Jason Mendelson's recent Venture Capital Crash Course (contains slideshow) at the Silicon Flatirons you can download a video of it.

Looking forward to seeing all of you at the next meeting on March 31st -- we're closing in on 2 years!

--Michael Edwards

March 3rd Recap: Disruptive Technology

mbedwards@gmail.com — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:49:26 -0700

I missed the last meeting and so Lance Weber graciously agreed to fill everyone in. Thanks go to Michael Sitarzewski for helping coordinate this.

"We had a good turnout and plenty of first-timers. One topic was industries that we thought would be ripe for disruptive technology innovation, and in addition to the usual healthcare, education and finance sectors, the construction industry got quite a bit of discussion. It was great to see several people who had been laid off from big companies deciding to strike out as entrepreneurs. The networking part of the meeting was lively, with several folks talking well past 9:30." -- Lance

Looking forward to seeing everyone this Tuesday, 8am, at The Cup. If you can't make it, tune into #bocc on Twitter for our continuing experimentation on that front.

Great Meeting Last Week and New Blog Maintainer

mbedwards@gmail.com — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 03:21:39 -0700

We had a great meeting on Feb 17. Matt Emmi was compiling a list of free tools for entrepreneurs. Suggestions came back for Google Docs and Lovely Charts among others. Robert Reich was there and we discussed the addition of the second meeting for the Boulder Denver New Tech meetup which will be held in Denver.

Lastly, Jason asked for someone to help maintain the blog and I volunteered, so you'll be seeing more posts by me in the future.

Michael Sitarzewski suggested we try a Twitter back-channel during the meetings. Feel free to follow the #bocc hashtag during the next meeting as we try this out.

If you have any other suggestions let me know.

Best,
Michael Edwards

Happy New Year!

jason@foundrygroup.com — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:22:40 -0700

We had a good first meeting today - great turnout of old and new folks. Discussions surrounded Denial of Service attacks (Yes, Brad Feld, we spoke about you), several new companies started in the Boulder area, will Android kick Apple's butt and Lori Joy from 32 solutions who even had some jobs to place for her new recruiting firm.

Nice to see everyone

Recap on the November 11th, meeting

jason@foundrygroup.com — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:31:50 -0700

Great meeting today with lots of fresh faces and old grizzled veterans. We talked a lot about patents and the Bilski case. Looks like business method patents are dead, at least "mostly dead."

Some cool ideas around semantic web were present and travel appears hot, as several new folks are looking to see what next generation travel platforms might looks like.

Thanks for coming, great time as always and see you soon

- Jason

October 28 Update

burns.l.brian@gmail.com — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:12:40 -0700

Hi. Brian Burns here, trying to keep this blog a little more active, and a little more up-to-date. Bottom-line is that the group is still getting together, and still having a good time. We met up this morning, and even without our fearless leader Jason Mendelson, we had a productive hour. We met new people, Elizabeth of MyUSearch, Bill of Indra's Net, and Nate and Natty of everlater. We also heard about Ignite Boulder, talked about the new G1, and did a lot of good networking.

Next meeting is November 11th, and I'm sure more people will come on by for that one (with, perhaps, some impetus for a good branding/politics/election conversation). If you're in the area, drop on by - it's an open and welcoming environment... helpful if you want to make new friends, new contacts, or just get a little inspiration. See you then!

July 8th Update

ross@jasbone.com — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:01:30 -0700

(Lance here, filling in for a vacationing Jason...) Thanks to everyone who dropped in this morning at the Boulder Open Coffee Club. Where else can you geek out with 30 other people discussing the complexities of inter-community exchanges of trust management and reputation systems? A consistent theme I hear from newcomers is their surprise at how great the startup scene is in Boulder. How great is it? We got to hear about four new startups in four minutes: eSwarm, eBookPie, TravelFli and Verving. Also, plan on attending the Thin Air Summit, a New Media conference hosted here in Denver this November. We'll be back at The Cup in two weeks (July 22nd) , see you there!

May 27th Update

jason@foundrygroup.com — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:35:53 -0700

A good time, as usual. The TechStars are coming! The TechStars are coming! The guys from Ignighter were there and present and it was nice to see some new folks.

Nothing earth shattering to report. It was cold today.

See y'all in two weeks.

April 1 Boulder OpenCoffee Club Meeting

jason@foundrygroup.com — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:29:45 -0700

Today's guest writer is Lance Weber. Lance, take it away!
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Thanks to Jason for letting me guest host today and not sharing his cold with the rest of us; I know it caused a little confusion at first since we look so much alike!

More importantly, I'd like to thank the great folks who dropped in for some coffee and camaraderie this morning. I think we ended up with somewhere near 25-30 people, with about a 50/50 mix of old hands and newcomers. Some quick highlights:

Several people who made it to Startup Weekend Boulder II talked about the experience. I'm a huge fan of Startup Weekends, I like to think of them as Amish barn raising for the digital age. I highly recommend adding "Live through a Startup Weekend" to your Life Experiences TODO list.

Goldie gave us a shout out about the Colorado Podcamp event scheduled for this fall. Anyone with an interest in new social media should definitely check this out.

We also tried out a second iteration of Cluster Discussions, where you are encouraged to present a problem to the entire group, then as we break up into networking anyone with input/interest in the topic can gather and discuss. Feedback on this has been good, and I think it makes for a great ice breaker and segue point into the networking part of the meeting.

That's all the updates I have from the meeting this week. On a personal note, I like to measure the success of events like these by how energized I am afterwards. I'm always pleasantly surprised at how pumped I am throughout the rest of my Tuesdays when I've made the time to drop in and spend some time with everyone here. Thanks and see you in two weeks!
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* Luckily for the rest of you I only had about 5 minutes notice which left no time to prepare a highly elaborate yet extremely sophomoric April Fools Open Coffee Meeting event. *sigh*