The program will offer six existing DC-area businesses an initial investment of up to $50,000 plus a host of intangible benefits: private bi-weekly meetings with managers of the program to direct and track progress of the business’ development, exclusive members-only classes taught by recognized experts on a variety of topics of interest to growing businesses, access to numerous networking contacts and relationships mediated by program leaders, and a continuing relationship with Amplifier Ventures after conclusion of the program.

While the program’s basic structure might seem similar to LaunchBox or CTI’s GAP Fund (two programs whose vision the Amplifier Ventures team fully supports), Aberman pointed out a critical difference. Unlike incubator programs whose focus is on creating new business models, the program targets ventures with existing business models that require additional resources to scale successfully.

Aberman stressed that the program’s goal is that an infusion of capital and expertise will have a meaningful effect on the trajectory of the businesses.

We’re just trying to find the best six businesses to help, where we can make a material difference. The money’s not a lot, and we’re not taking a big ownership stake — it’s far from that — it really is a sweat equity deal on our part. It’s got to be a business where we can make a difference in three months. Those are the kind of companies we’re looking for.

Successful applicants to the program will benefit not just from a quick infusion of funding, but from the deep pool of knowledge and experience found within the Amplifier community.

$50,000 and some good experienced help is more useful in many circumstances than $500,000. It’s a better way for my team to spend our time now…developing relationships that will help people get through this time, and who will be part of our network when the economy gets better.

Some observers might be surprised that a group of investors would eagerly roll out a new initiative in a time of grave economic uncertainty.  Aberman and his partners think now might be the perfect time to make a big difference with a small amount of capital and a personal touch. In fact, Aberman sees the program as an opportunity to combat the present negativity in the business community.

Entrepreneurs are very optomistic people. There is so much negativity; I want there to be a positive force for people to respond to – to help people get their strength back.

So far, the response to news of the program’s launch has been quite positive, indeed. In fact, Aberman himself has been surprised by the variety of companies that have responded. In addition to the expected web startups, Aberman noted that he’s seen applications from clean tech, life sciences, and consumer products, among others. Because this is a new venture, the program is actively soliciting applications from teams of various sizes and experience, and from businesses at various stages of maturity. Amplifier Ventures is eager to match their resources with the specific developmental needs of the businesses with which they work.

If the best opportunity is a tech product with an entrepreneur who could use an experienced manager, we know lots of guys right now who’d be happy to do a new startup if it was interesting – we can do some matching up.

Aberman is particularly excited about working within the local DC startup community. Like many local entrepreneurs, Aberman feels that breadth and promise of the DC startup community is highly underrated.

Nobody’s ever done this in DC before. Nobody’s ever come up and said, ‘I don’t care what your business is, let’s start there and see if we can make something happen in a bad economy.’ Since nobody’s ever asked the question before in Washington, let’s see what comes out of it.

To learn more about Amplifier Ventures Business Accelerator Program, view the program details or join the Amplifier Network startup World community.

Along side of this new feature, we’ve also launched the Contribune Facebook fan page. This page will enable members of our community to see who else is using Contribune and also receive updates about the application on Facebook.

We believe that Facebook offers a number of powerful tools to help spread the word about causes and political campaigns in order to get your friends and community more involved. Check back soon for more updates on these features and others.

• ShareMeme
• GeniusRocket
• Starburbs
• ViaPlace
• InsideJob (Facebook application)
• JunJonz
• MindGrub

The diverse crowd also reflected a growing interest in the local web and technology community, with everything from consulting groups to national news media corporations represented.

ShareMeme

The Contribune team had an especially good time talking to Luc and Ahson from ShareMeme, a LaunchBox Digital ‘08 backed startup focused on simplifying messaging and invitations across multiple platforms and channels.  They two advised us on the challenges of feature and scope creep, and stressed that startups have to focus on one or two core use cases, and not attempt to support ever feature requested.

This is certainly a challenge Contribune has faced, as we’ve been eager to incorporate new features as we’ve become increasingly excited in the larger vision of Contribune.

LaunchBox Digital

Luc and Ahson also talked with us about their experience with LaunchBox Digital, which is now accepting applications for this summer’s seed investment program.  The program allows small teams working on early stage projects enough money to work through the summer in exchange for a small equity stake.  The real value in the program is the business and legal assistance they offer young companies, along with the general support, advice and speaker series that goes along with the program.  At end of the summer, LaunchBox hosts a demo day which is an opportunity for LaunchBox companies to show their products to potential investors.   The program is backed by a really extrodinary group of individuals: Sean Greene, founder and forner CEO of the Away Travel Network, cofounder of Rock Creek Ventures; John McKinley former CTO and founder and President of Digital Services for AOL and advisor to numerous startups; Julius Genachowski, former executive at IAC/InterActiveCorp and current chairman of Thummit; and Matthew Jacobson, a former AOL Vice President .

When asked what he though made for a compelling application, Ahson stressed the importance of deliverying a simple and concise pitch of your concept, in addition to having strong technical credentials on your team.

The two have done a spectacular job with ShareMeme, and I imagine there will be no shortage of good applications this year.  This year seems like an especially opportune time to apply. As Amplifer Ventures partner Jonathan Aberman mentioned late last year, some of technology’s greatest companies were started in challenging economic time.

InsideJob and JunJonz Photography

The team also watched a demo of Lorne Epstein’s InsideJob Facebook application, which is an interesting approach to job search and recruiting.  The really interesting part of the concept is the applications ability to turn everyone into a “passive recruiter.”

JunJonz Photography was on hand taking photos of the event.  The man behind this concept has setup an interesting website which allows his photos to be tagged back to Facebook.

The Contribune team was also able to snap some photos of the event.   Check them out.

Enjoy some photos from the event below.

Twin Tech III

Twin Tech III. All images CC Contribune

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In addition to the usual name tags, Alex provided chalk and construction paper for each attendee to write about their top cause — Poverty appeared to be the crowd favorite. While there, I had the opportunity to hear some feedback on Contribune, in addition to hearing about some other interesting projects. It is really an extrodionarily stimulating experience speaking with some of these people. Exchanging ideas with this crowd always leads me to new creative concepts, one of which has turned into a Knight Foundation application. Speaking of which, if you haven’t heard yet, there is still time to submit – $5 million for local news.

Paul Worsham took a number of photos I look forward to seeing (Paul has covered this event before). As the evening progressed, the chalk was increasingly used for more creative purposes, including a Contribune pronunciation guide authored by Qui.

While the event was a little unstructured, I enjoyed the chance to meet a number of really enthusiastic activists and look forward to more of these meetups in the future.

Additional Links

• Changeblogger Ning Network
• Changeblogger Wiki
• ChangeBlogging: Let the Meme Begin

Each video clip contained some useful insight, though some more obvious than others (a chat participant noted he would have to “write that one down” when a video clip mentioned adding keywords to your website).  I particularly enjoyed the comments made by Guy Kawasaki, Tim Ferriss, Tony Hsieh, Chris Brogan and Mari Smith.  In general, I was most intrigued by the discussion on the integration of offline business and marketing efforts with those being made online.

While I had initially expected a mostly DC based crowd, Network Solutions and Livingston Communications did a fantastic job getting the word out about the event.  From what I could tell, there was tremendous geographical diversity among the participants.  The format of the event was particularly creative – pre-cut videos with an enthusiastic chat crowd “co-watching”.  While I think this format has a lot of potential, there is definitely some tweaks that could be made in future iterations.

(Don’t) Focus on Chat

The live chat window was where most of the action took place, and a lot of value was create by the networking and discussion opportunities presented therein.  Unfortunately, the window itself was relatively small and automatically re-focused to the newest message.  The volume of messages was far too high for this model, however.

Quickly, it became impossible to keep up with the conversation.  This window should be made significantly larger and the auto update feature should only work if one is already at the newest item.

Twitter Integration

I was particularly excited to see twitter posts integrated directly into the conference site, based on the #solutionsstars tag.  But Twitter use during the event went well beyond my – and perhaps the site’s creaters – expectations.  A large chunk of the conversation was about or through Twitter, and I found myself juggling browser tabs as I kept checking up on various twitter profiles that came up (while hpelessly trying to stay caught up on the chat conversation).

As most people too this event as an opportunity to do some Twitter networking, this should be enhanced.  Perhaps allow people to link their chat name directly to their Twitter profile page by adding their Twitter tag while logging in to the chat.  The decision to keep the login as simple as possible (type a name, click login) was wise and refreshing, but I think this additional option would be worth it.

Other Items

There were several browser compatibility problems people reported.  I myself encountered a few errors and tested a different browsers before settling on Chrome. They guys behind the site did an excellent job solving many of these problems on the fly, though.  Putting technical issues aside, some people also seemed disappointed there was no interactivity to the video.  The “Ask a Question” feature didn’t seem to have a clear purpose – the only item on the site not to.  Perhaps have a few experts available to respond directly there?  Or just use the space to enlarge the chat window.

The most important thing, I believe, is to slow down the pace of the videos and maybe lengthen the clips.  While there were a number of useful suggestions made, it was difficult to digest them all so quickly.  Perhaps in the future, there could be a pause after longer individual clips and participants could ask a few questions about the ideas presented.

Thanks Network Solutions and Livingston Communications

Despite the possibility for improvement, the event was an obvious success and I was impressed from the start with the thoughtful and creative layout of the conference site. I definitely hope to see more of these kind of events in the future.  While it isn’t a replacement for real conferences, it was an innovative way to meet a number of new people and absorb the latest social media cleverness.  There are probably a lot of other enhancements that could be made to the site and format to push the concept further.  Any suggestion?  Leave a comment.

• Building Web Presence
• The Social Opportunity
• Start with Listening
• Strategy Drives Outreach
• You Need Social Networks
• To Blog or Not to Blog
• Visibility Through Search
• Rising Above the Noise
• Time Demands

Learn more at the Solution Stars website.

There have been a number of interesting comments coming out of the venture capital community in response to the financial crisis.  Programmer and venture capitalist Paul Graham stressed frugality in a recent article.

Fortunately the way to make a startup recession-proof is to do exactly what you should do anyway: run it as cheaply as possible. For years I’ve been telling founders that the surest route to success is to be the cockroaches of the corporate world. The immediate cause of death in a startup is always running out of money. The cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to kill. Fortunately it has gotten very cheap to run a startup, and a recession will if anything make it cheaper still.

These sentiments were echoed even more emphatically by others. Sequoia’s R.I.P. Good Times presentation stated simply “Spend every dollar as if it were your last.”

We enjoyed hearing a uniquely east coast perspective from Aberman, however. Given that the front lines have shifted from New York to Washington, D.C., it seemed all the more important to hear a local expert speak on the matter.

Aberman began by noting that some of technology’s greatest companies were started in challenging economic times. This was not a coincidence. Good times and easy capital tend to obfuscate the relative quality of business models. Accordingly, it can be difficult to differentiate the excellent enterprises from the weaker ones, particularly as the field grows. He also indicated that his firm and other local peer firms would continue to meet with startups and were in the process of closing several new deals.

Aberman acknowledged that many aspects of running a startup would become more challenging. Raising capital and finding customers would become more difficult and some companies will exit the market as a result.

Despite this, he encouraged the startups in attendance. “Don’t get discouraged – in fact, double down. If you can succeed in these economic times, you can succeed in any.” Aberman stressed in particular that the field would thin considerably over the next year or so and concluded by remarking that if one is willing to make sacrifices and really dig in, this economic downturn could be a tremendous opportunity.

One of the most interesting insights Aberman offered is that there is a huge new source of capital available. For the first time since the dot-com era began, the advertising budgets of major companies are available to startups. As downward pressure is exerted on the budgets of corporations, they will seek to move ad dollars away from traditional sectors as they seek higher returns. This in particular, Aberman noted, could offer a tremendous opportunity to startups focused on creating innovative advertising opportunities.

This last portion was particularly encouraging for us at Contribune, given our excitement about contextual engagement based ads. Overall, the remarks, along with the startup presentations that followed, were reinvigorating – but the challenges are clear.

Thanks to 1 Piazza’s Paul and Kady for the putting together the event and finding such an interesting guest speaker.

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Contribune demoed at the last Startup Rockstars event and it is very exciting to see the scene growing.

Check out my thoughts on the presentations and a ton of event photos after the break.

evDeliv

I really enjoyed talking to Shawn and Julie from evDeliv. They make a great team and put together a very professional presentation. I think these guys are smart to focus on usability with a broad audience in mind.

evDeliv enables users to place food delivery orders from within a desktop application. The core functionality seemed to be well implemented, with clever and thoughtful features, such as recording average delivery time. As some members of the audience pointed out, I think their best early market may be in the corporate environment. While the current scope is limited, I’m especially interested in the broader vision they alluded to in their presentation. The two have also put together a great blog.

Though I only met Shawn and Julie last night, evDeliv has had a presence at a lot of the events Contribune has been at in the past. It wasn’t clear to me what evDeliv was up to until yesterday, though. This makes me wonder about the efficacy of our own marketing efforts. To date we’ve been focused on name recognition, but maybe we need to make our mission more clear in the future.

OurCoupleSpace

I’ve met Gary of OurCoupleSpace at a few events in the past. He is very friendly and passionate, and it showed in his presentation. His project, OurCoupleSpace, seeks to help couples manage their relationships online, with access to community best practice recommendations and couple satisfaction reporting. I’ve have to admit that I approach the intersection of web 2.0 and relationship intimacy with some reticence, but Gary is right to point out the huge and underserved market of unhappy couples.

OurCoupleSpace is actively seeking beta tester couples, so if you are intrigued and can convince your mate, signup.

GamerVixens

GamerVixens is a social network for female gamers. The site is strikingly well developed, with nice ajax touches embedding in a lot of the user interface. The audience seemed to think the site had some really great potential for targeted marketing.

I had a good conversation with Christina, who presented for GamerVixens, about the challenges women face in a lot of technology and science related fields. I hope to see her our at some more events in the future.

BrandClik

The guys from BrandClik put together a very slick presentation. They began by telling an anecdote about their own frustrations trying to defend their brand online. Their technology allows companies to embed links to their own sites in content on the web. This may be a good way for certain content producers to monetize their content. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to talk to these guys personally, but hopefully I’ll have a chance in the future.

They’ve put together quite a local marketing push over the past few months. Their official launch was held at Twin Tech II and I have the bright blue wristband to prove it.

CreateDebate

CreateDebate is a platform for creating and managing debates about virtually any topic. I was particularly interested in the way they offered users the ability to rank and filter arguments. The details on various elections being debated was quite comprehensive as well.

I chatted with the team about potential collaboration with Contribune, since we both are looking to aggregate content related to political campaigns, though for different reasons and with a different scope.

A Great Crowd

A lot of familiar faces were in attendance. I had a good time catching up with Paul and Kady, who organized the event. They managed to arrange for some introductory remarks from Jonathan Aberman Amplifier Venture Partners. Anyone considering starting a company in today’s economic environment should absolutely listen to his remarks. I believe his talk was video taped and will be up on the Startup Rockstars site.

In addition to those presenting, there seem to be some other really interesting startups in the pipeline. I hope to see Inside Job and Stitcho demoing in the future.

Thanks also to the guys from Sun Microsystems for sponsoring a lot of these startup events and always providing entertaining commentary. They’ve put together some tremendous breaks for startups. I plan to read up a little more on Joynet, their partner for scalable Rails application hosting. Check out their website to learn more.

Startup Rockstars 3

Startup Rockstars 3 hosted by 1piazza.com and Viget Labs. All images CC Contribune

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The team had a good conversation with Raj of Introin about finding more ways for DC startups to better work together. We met quite a few new people, including the guys behind Planypus, iDooba, Strands and GeniusRocket. Thanks to Frank Gruber for putting together this great event.

Click through for pictures of the event, or view our Diditz.

Contribune at Tech Cocktail DC 3

Pictures of Team Contribune and friends.

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Official Tech Cocktail DC 3 Pictures

Photos taken by DC Metro resident photographer Raoul Pop.

11 Photos

Shash's Tech Cocktail DC 3 Photos

(cc) Shashi Bellamkonda

2 Photos