She said, “If we are not the first person that the CEO calls (outside of the internal management team) about questions, problems, good news, etc.; then we feel that we are not doing our job.”

That explanation painted a very clear picture of how important it is to their firm to really partner with their portfolio companies.  That is a real compliment to the team at Volition and their philosophy.  Since then, I have asked myself the question of who do I call?

Obviously, first I start with our executive team.  We all get along very well and it’s a normal daily occurrence to have us talking on the phone at night and/or passing emails back & forth until the late, late nights or very early mornings.  Next, I usually call my wife.  While we don’t get into as much detail, she is definitely aware of what’s happening and provides a nice sounding board.  Finally, I usually call one of my brothers.  I have several brothers that are business executives (Adobe, Wal-Mart, BeachBody, etc.) and another that is an attorney.  It’s nice to get the opinion of someone that is un-biased and can bring in an outside perspective.

So… who do you call?

Well, that first introduction has now led into bigger and better things… and we are excited to announce that Michael Gerber will be the keynote speaker at FundingUniverse’s upcoming Angel Investor of the Year Award luncheon!  Here’s why Michael is such a stud:

• He’s authored 13 books on entrepreneurship — the most notable are the The E-Myth Revisited and The Most Successful Small Business in the World.
• He’s appeared on BusinessWeek’s best seller list for 28 consecutive months!
• Currently a NY Times Best seller
• Founder of E-Myth worldwide with over 70,000 clients in 145 countries

As you can see, we are pretty lucky to have him here in Utah!

We are also excited for our 2nd annual Angel Investor of the Year event.  Last year, Scott Frazier from the Utah Angels won the prestigious award with Greg Warnock being named the Mentor of the Year.  If you know of any angels in Utah — please nominate them here.  If not, plan to join us on June 23rd at the Grand America for the luncheon.  We had over 300 people in attendance last year and we expect around 500 this year.

As of 5 pm this afternoon, you now have the chance to post your business/business idea onto IdeaPitch and win $2,000.  We just released the new FundingUniverse Facebook app that will be a idea competition that happens every 2 weeks.  It’s simple…

1. Record a video
2. Post it to FundingUniverse IdeaPitch
3. Get as many people as you can to vote on the video
4. Video with the most votes (after 2 weeks) wins $2,000
5. Rinse & repeat!

There are no strings attached — we don’t get equity in your company, nor do we expect you to pay it back as a loan.  For the next two weeks, we are opening up to friends and family — so get your ideas & videos going.  Good luck!

BoomStartup, a mentorship-driven investment program for Utah, needs you startup software business’ application now.  Startup software businesses can receive $15,000 of capital investment, $15,000+ of in-kind services, and mentoring from some of the state’s most successful entrepreneurs and mentors.  In exchange, BoomStartup gets 6% common equity in your company.  This is all based on successful models working around the country, like TechStars (www.TechStars.org).  The deadline is this coming Sunday (April 25) at 11:59 pm, but it is highly recommended to get the application in earlier so it gets the most consideration possible.

Who is Eligible?

• 4 awesome companies that pitched to a crowd of 450+ audience members.  Companies included:

1. 1. TripWare — cool technology that books your entire trip & creates an expense report in 3.5 mins.
   2. Regreet — a green greeting card company that allows you to re-use greeting cards and track their journey online
   3. Xit Poll (Cleva Technologies) — kiosk-like portal that takes surveys from customers in a retail location
   4. HighPoints Learning — online technology that provides affordable tutoring to k-12 students — WINNER OF THE $50k in prizes that we gave away!

• Star-packed panel of heavy hitters included:

It was a lot of fun to see the FundingUniverse brand gain so much traction in the national spotlight.  Michael & Norm had a great time on the panel — in fact, they were having a “Grumpy Old Men”-type -spat in front of the audience which made it fun and interesting.

After the FundingUniverse CrowdPitch, Alex and I had several discussions with Michael Gerber and his team and are excited about some potential partnership opportunities that may arise their.  Michael is a brilliant man that knows the world of small business.

Let’s just that entrepreneurship is alive and well among Utah’s university programs.  I’ve seen so many fantastic entrepreneurs with great ideas and I love being a part of that.  I guess that the reason that I’m so passionate about helping student entrepreneurs is because I truly believe that the best time to start your entrepreneurial career is either while you are in school or just after you graduate.  Here are a few reasons why:

1. Getting out and starting a company could be the greatest learning experience that you’ve ever had.  I’m not sure if there is anything that compares to real-world entrepreneurial experience to teach you about business.  It becomes apparent very quickly what is “academic” vs what is “street smarts.”
2. You don’t have a lifestyle to maintain.  Most students are used to living in apartments, eating ramen noodles, and riding the bus.  This type of lifestyle is key to the success of a boot-strapping entrepreneur because you are doing everything that you can to stretch your dollars.  On the other hand, those that start their business later in life have a mortgage to pay, kids to support, and a lifestyle to maintain.
3. You won’t waste a lot of time wondering whether or not your are an entrepreneur. How many people do you know that have spent their entire corporate career wishing and/or talking about getting out on their own on being an entrepreneur?  All too often, those same people make the jump only to find out that they don’t really like being an entrepreneur (for whatever reason).  If you give it a run just out of college, you have the opportunity to figure out if this is the type of lifestyle you want to live and still re-vert back to a great corporate career if that’s the decision you make.  I’d also venture to say that the experience will set you apart and help you land a corporate job.
4. You’ll have time to recover. Going along with #3, you’d still have the ability to recover financially the rest of your career if you start and fail young.
5. You have more energy. Entrepreneurship is full of ups and downs, high mountains and low valleys, exciting times and disappointments, early mornings and late evenings… you get the picture.  When you are young, I’d venture to say that you have more energy to be able to handle all of the challenges that come with entrepreneurship.
6. It’s sexy! Ok… I don’t really know how else to say this, but you all know what I’m talking about.  There is definitely a group of young entrepreneurs that attract attention from the community and form a bond.  I know that I am good friends with a lot of other young entrepreneurs because we are all going through some of the same challenges.

If you can’t tell, I’m a big proponent of starting your entrepreneurial career when you’re young.  In fact, I just realized that half of our management team started their entrepreneurial careers when they were students!

We’re super excited about this announcement as this technology is one small piece to our ever-growing strategy to help small business owners.  Over the 2 years, we have really expanded our vision from the original idea to help entrepreneurs connect to angel investors.  That is still at the very core of what we do, it’s just that now we can do so much more.  We’ve taken a broader focus to small business funding and have added over 400 banks across the US to our platform.  We can now help business owners navigate their way to obtain SBA loans, unsecured lines of credit, business credit cards, equipment loans, alternative loans, and equity investments.  This alone has made a huge impact on our ability to increase the number of companies getting funded.

We’ve also expanded our product line as to help business owners grow their business.  For example, it many cases, business owners need to lay a stronger foundation before approaching a bank to get a business loan.  This may include getting a website, writing a more solid business plan, and/or improving their marketing & sales strategy.  We can now identify the needs of the business owner and then figure out efficient ways to offer them what they need.  By so doing, this improves the business owner’s chance to succeed.  A by-product of that is an increased chance of getting approved for a business loan.

That’s where TwitJump comes into play.  We are excited about the opportunity to really help up and coming companies increase their social media strategies to increase their customer base.  Unlike anything theretofore, social media has evened the played field to allow small businesses to play on the same level as large companies.  If used correctly, we feel strongly that small businesses can use social media strategies to attract new customers and increase sales.  We have already seen many case studies from clients (chiropractors, restaurants, tech companies, etc.) that are proving out our assumptions.

You’ve also heard that we are expanding across the US.  We have already hired reps in Arizona and Colorado, with the hopes to get 3 more reps hired within the next couple of months.  It’s an exciting time right now at FundingUniverse and I’m enjoying the ride!

Here are some of the details:

Senior PHP Developer
PAY:  $55,000 – $75,000 DOE

Description:

Lead a team of developers building an exciting new site from the ground up.  Plan, track, and develop along with the team during sprints.

Experience:

• 3 years minimum PHP 5 experience
• OOP expertise
• Experience with PHP frameworks (Kohana, Code Igniter, Cake)
• MYSQL, with experience planning and deploying databases
• Solid UI skills
• HTML/CSS/Jquery experience
• Experience prototyping and planning large consumer web apps
• Rapid development (SCRUM) experience preferred

Bachelor’s in computer science, information systems or other technical degree a plus.

1. Great team. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, so much of a company’s success depends on the quality of talent that you can attract.  Thus far, we have a tremendous team in place and I’m excited about the results.  When you have talented individuals around you (we added a new addition within the last couple of months — see here) that surpass expectations on a regular basis, it motivates you to be at your best — that is happening right now with our team and it’s exciting to be a part of it.
2. Expanding product line. Over the past year, we have really rounded out our offering in order to be almost a full-service business solution for our customers.  What I’m most excited about is that we are constantly adding new funding resources to our model to help out more and more business owners.  Recently, we’ve landed a partnership deal with an aggressive SBA lender and now more than 70% of the clients that we send their way are getting approved for a business loan.  Instead of just helping on the angel/VC side of things, we can help a lot more entrepreneurs in a variety of ways.
3. Opening up new markets. Over the past few months, we’ve been pushing hard to open up new markets in Denver, CO; Phoenix, AZ; and Portland/Seattle.  We’ve got great partners in each of the region (including Amazon, GangPlank, NOW advisors, Jive Communications, SEO.com, Newswire, etc.) and it’s allowing us to do some fun things at our CrowdPitch & Speedpitch events in those regions.  Not only have we announced that all of our events will be FREE from now on (for everyone in attendance), we are also giving away a $15-$20k prize package for the winner of each event!  This has attracted the attention of ABC phoenix and others.

Need your help: We are hoping to have 8-12 offices open throughout the US by the end of 2010 — if you live in an area outside of the above mentioned markets and are interested in being our local market rep (or know anyone that might be interested), please let me know!  We are always looking for good talent.

So this year, I decided to start the fun on Monday morning by bringing BYU football sugar cookies for everyone in the office.  Afterward, I sent out an email to the entire company announcing that it was “BYU week.”  Here are a few things that followed:

• On Tuesday, our admin brought in UofU cookies and gave them to all of the employees
• Our CTO, Trent Miskin, played a nice joke and replaced our company logo (on our website) with the BYU logo.  The funny thing is that only those within our office network could see the logo.  Most people didn’t know this and were shocked that we would change our FundingUniverse logo with the BYU logo for ALL to see!
• Then, the other developers swapped the BYU logo with the UofU logo AND made it so everyone’s computer background was changed to a UofU picture.
• Finally, on Wednesday afternoon (the day before Thanksgiving), my admin planned a fake meeting for me out of the office so that Alex (my partner) and the rest of the FundingUniverse team could do this:

Believe me… I was shocked! I couldn’t believe that they painted my office! That being said, I seriously thought it was hilarious and wasn’t upset for a second. Since then, everyone was asking how I would get him back. I had quite a few ideas on what to do, but I figured that the scoreboard was good enough. Since BYU won 26-23, here was my response:

At the end of the week, it was just all good and fun and I can’t wait until next year.  All I know is that between now and then… BYU has all the bragging rights!  GO COUGARS!

(Don’t you think Alex looks great in that BYU shirt?!!)