Great article in the WSJ today about problems start-ups face in selecting names. It discusses the potential for trademark infringement and how some companies have already lost thousands of dollars in disputes over the company name. Here’s a link http://online.wsj.com…

While the article discusses potential risks in choosing a company name it does not discuss how to avoid them. One easy way to avoid possible trademark infringement is by doing a search on the Internet for the name you propose using. If there is already a well-established company with that name, chances are it’s not worth using. On the other hand, if the company is not in your same geographic territory and provides a service or product far different from yours, it is worth exploring further. At this juncture, you may want to perform a trademark search on the US Patent and Trademark Office’s website and/or consider contacting a lawyer. A lawyer can help perform a deeper search of the potential trademark and assist you with trademark registration should you encounter any opposition, which may likely occur.

Nimblelight builds dynamic web presences for businesses, non-profits, and artists. Their work includes web design and development, web consulting, web application development, paid search and search engine optimization, site analytics and user response optimization, social networking and relationship marketing, and online reputation management.

Nimblelight was founded in 2007 and has already established successful web presences for clients as distinguished as CarSense, Postgreen Homes, Auto Lenders, the City of Philadelphia, The Delaware Children’s Museum, and the seaside vacation town of Mystic, Connecticut.

Start Philly caught up with Nimblelight’s Brian Melton (Partner), who graciously answered our probing questions so that you, our treasured readers, would be thoroughly enlightened and informed about Philly’s companies on the rise.

Read on to get the inside scoop on the joys and pains of starting up, how failure can be valuable, and Brian Melton’s secret code name…

(SP) A couple of years ago, what did you think you’d be doing now (have you always been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug?)?

(BM) Before we started Nimblelight in 2007, I worked as a freelance cinematographer and then for a web technology start up that was building an online video channel. I had no clue I’d be doing this now, but I’ve always had the stomach for risk-taking and have always been into new media.

(SP) What motivated you to get involved in starting Nimblelight?

(BM) I was motivated a lot by my past experience working at a start-up. The president of that company ran 2 other businesses and was also a practicing doctor. Inevitably, he got stretched really thin and was pretty aloof to day-to-day operations. That leadership vacuum basically forced me into doing sales and developing a business plan even though that wasn’t really in my job description. I had no business school training and no experience pitching, but I was literally presenting our business plan to Microsoft VC’s and leading sales meetings with big companies like Borders and Crozer-Keystone.

As you might’ve guessed, that start-up didn’t quite make it off the ground, but the experience gave me a lot of confidence to try starting my own company and showed me how essential it is to build start-ups on a foundation of good ideas and reliable sources of revenue.

(SP) Your partners seem like a pretty cool group of guys:how did you find the key people for this enterprise?

(BM) Thanks! They are cool and very good people to work with. Patrick and I met six years ago while we were at Wake Forest and Patrick has been friends with Adam, our other partner, since 7th grade. So I didn’t have to do much looking — getting together was the easy part.

(SP) Did you have an “official” business plan? If so, what lessons did you learn from the preparation of it? If not, what type of planning did you do prior to starting up?

(BM) Not really. We thought that implementing our ideas even on a small scale was more useful than working them out in a formal document and, since technology changes so fast, we wanted to ensure a certain flexibility in the direction we were heading. After a month or so of research, brainstorming, and beating the ground for potential clients, we started working small jobs with a broad set of ideas about the kind of company we wanted to be.

That initial work provided us with a sort of reality-based business development where we shaped our company as we tested our ideas in the real world. We quickly learned exactly what our strengths, weaknesses, and capabilities were and saw things we needed to change to keep our company afloat and moving forward.

(SP) And now *drum roll please* the inevitable question of funding: how did you guys raise capital to get Nimblelight going?

(BM) We didn’t… This was a huge decision that generated a lot of discussion but it was important to us as friends coming together in business that we had the freedom to do what we wanted, including the freedom to stop if things weren’t working out.

None of us liked the idea of potentially owing money before we’d made any. Or, if we did make money, we didn’t want the goals of investors to clash with our own. So we made the decision to start up with the (meager) savings and equipment we had.

I don’t necessarily recommend starting up a company like this — it was extremely stressful and we definitely lost sleep over it. We were operating on virtually zero capital. In hindsight, we probably should’ve at least started a small line of credit or something. Luckily my partners and I were relatively young and living and eating like poor college students was still a familiar state of being. However, we learned some valuable lessons in budgeting and containing costs in that first year and it certainly feels good now to run a company with no debts.

(SP) What’s been the most difficult part of starting up?

(BM) Working for nothing. In the beginning, we knew we had to outperform similarly-sized companies, over-deliver to clients who were essentially taking a risk by choosing a company as new as us, and put every dollar we made back into the business. All of that was very difficult.

(SP) What’s your concept of a fruitful day?

(BM) Well I wear a lot of hats around here. We all do. So a fruitful day would need to be a well-rounded one where I make headway on current projects, line up future projects, check in with our freelancers, chat with with all the clients we talk to regularly, run analytics for the highest traffic sites we maintain, pay bills and update the quickbooks, and still make happy hour at the Memphis Taproom.

(SP) Random question #1: What internet site do you surf the most?

(BM) I spend an embarrassing amount of time on coudal.com — I think Jim Coudal is one of the most exciting and inspiring entrepreneurs in the world of design and technology. There’s everything from essays on experimental web publishing to 14-step martini recipes on the site. I also love Andrew Sullivan’s blog which is constantly tackling provocative subjects and proving how ineffective and irrelevant old media is becoming.

(SP) Nimblelight describes itself as “small company” that gets “big results” and prides itself on the strong relationships it builds. How do you address your competitors while not allowing them to define you?

(BM) About 80% of our new business comes from word of mouth referrals or face-to-face networking — it’s where our best-fit clients seem to come from — so we’ve spent very little advertising ourselves and haven’t done much to address our competitors. We’re not too concerned at the moment about how our competitors may define us… Instead, we stay focused on exceeding our clients’ expectations and let that define us…

Starting out, we kept noticing our clients were choosing us partially as a reaction to how unhappy they were with their previous web company. They’d found it hard, for instance, to get a live person on the phone or difficult to get their questions answered if they wanted advice or were having technical problems.

There’s a perception — deserved or not — that web developers and technology geeks have poor social skills and trouble taking responsibility for deficiencies in their work. You may have heard the joke: How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb? … None, it’s a hardware problem.

Well we’ve been trying to counter this perception with a more “old-fashioned” client-relationship approach. If you call us, you get us on the phone; if you want to know why we chose jQuery over Flash, we help you understand the reasons why; and if your site isn’t loading, we help — even if it’s not our fault.

Overall, the work we do helps guide our clients into the right decisions about their web presence and provides platforms for cultivating long-term relationships with past, current, and future customers. We believe the best way to help our clients achieve those goals is to first build strong relationships with our clients.

(SP) Random Question #2: If you were a spy, what would your alias be?

(BM) Snake Eyes.

(Snake Eyes was a completely awesome G.I. Joe covert operations specialist who had a pet wolf named Timber.)

(SP) What do you think about the entrepreneurial scene in Philly? Are you optimistic? What would  you like to see more of?

(BM) I don’t have much to compare it to. I’ve had a fantastic time running a business in Philly and I couldn’t ask for much more — in just a few years, we’ve been lucky enough to meet and work with some talented entrepreneurs who are all doing amazing things — Postgreen, Machinery, Caspari McCormick, and great independent minds like Fran McGowan, Max Sobol and Ed Tettemer.

Read the full post here.

WinTheView™ (WTV™) is a powerful interview preparation and presentation tool that is designed to help job seekers determine the critical hiring requirements and formulate the key points they wish to articulate during the interview.  A PDF file is generated in the form of a flip chart-like presentation that can be printed and taken to the interview. The WTV™ development center is secure and enables the job seeker to prepare multiple presentations, follow-up letters and accomplishment stories with online access 24/7. An example of a sample presentation:

WTV™ Can Be Used In The Following Ways:

1. Focus process and thinking on your most compelling key points so as to enter interview situations prepared and confident.
2. Introduce WTV™ as a professional looking printed qualifications summary during the interview to impress the hiring manager and help guide the discussion your way.
3. Create a lasting impression with a printed or emailed “leave-behind” WinTheView™ summary for each hiring team member.
4. Email a WTV™ PDF file immediately after each phone screen interview to increase your chances of earning that coveted face-to-face interview.
5. Email a WTV™ PDF file in advance of each face-to-face interview to facilitate discussion and demonstrate a proactive mindset.
6. Generate a “career summary” presentation, then link its PDF file on your LinkedIn.com profile via SlideShare, so they can find you.

Benefits for the Job Seeker:

• Bolsters confidence just by going through the WTV™ process
• Demonstrates high level of preparation and professionalism
• Helps to gain a better understanding of the key hiring criteria
• Correlates candidate talking points directly to hiring criteria
• Differentiates candidate from competitors not likely using this approach
• Prepares job seeker for behavioral interviews via accomplishment story feature
• Makes job seeker think through qualifications carefully
• Accesses online portfolio of presentations, follow-up letters and accomplishment stories for easy future use

We are currently selling WTV™ directly to job candidates via the web, and to channels such as career experts, outplacement firms and executive recruiters.  In the near future we will be pursuing the University and MBA programs throughout the U.S. which we believe to be a high potential market for WinTheView™. We’ve been particularly pleased with the high level of acceptance from well respected “Career Thought Leaders”, which are the experts that write resumes and career documents, LinkedIn profiles, provide job search strategies, interview coaching and more.

The WinTheView™ user success stories continue to mount and we are building new functionality based upon individual user feedback, along with feedback from the career expert community. In addition to the three offerings today which include; interview presentation development, career accomplishment story development and follow up letter development, we will be adding the capability to develop an elevator pitch or 2 minute drill for effective networking. These files are retained for the job candidate for use throughout their career via subscription renewal.

The conference opened up with a keynote speech by Peter Schwartz, Co-founder and Chairman of the Global Business Network, and a partner of The Monitor Group. The speech, both dynamic and engaging, encouraged entrepreneurs to look at risk in new ways. Mr. Schwartz asserted that entrepreneurs would have to learn how to “embrace failure” while noting that  one of our biggest cultural barriers is the idea of “instant success” which is becoming increasingly hard to achieve post-1990s. It was hard to feel discouraged as he maintained that future successful entrepreneurs would be those that had a willingness to persist.

After a stellar (free!) lunch, two panels: “Financing Your Business Venture” and “Using Social Networks to Build and Sustain a Business” commenced simultaneously, with the latter being the panel of choice. It was truly an interactive session, with real-time poll results from the audience shown on the screen to gauge interest in discussion topics, as well as live comments/questions from the audience coming in on TwitterFall. The panel was led by a group of savvy entrepreneurs (all Swarthmore alums) with impressive backgrounds: Dom Sagolla (Co-Creator of Twitter and founder of Dollar App) proved quite helpful in sharing helpful websites and other technical resources, while Ted Chan (Founder/CEO, Upward Mobility and MocaHealth) talked practically about how to get things accomplished using social networking. Chan also touched a bit on how social media technologies can be of great use when trying to get the word about how socially responsible your business is. The third panelist, Noël Theodosiou (Strategist and Facilitator, Luminous International Ltd.) gave concrete and concise suggestions about using social networking to measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.

Following the panels were multiple round table discussions, which covered a wide range of interesting topics. A few titles included: “American Style Bootstrapping”; “The Patent Market”; “Business Tools and Technology for Social Change” and “What Is a Woman with Brains, Talent, Drive and a Good Idea to Do?”  Start Philly participated in the exciting round table discussion titled “The Entrepreneur’s Dilemma: How Do You Create Value When All You Have is Vision?” led by Tracy Korman (CEO and  Co-founder of Longitude Health, Inc.). We only wish that we could have been at every round table discussion simultaneously.

The final panel, titled “Your Company: the First Five Years” proved to be a spirited discussion centering around issues like choosing business partners, creating company culture and of course, bootstrapping vs. accepting VC/Angel  and other outside funding. Heading up this discussion were Amity Cox (Former Vice President of Talent & Culture at Clarix LLC), Tracy Korman and Chris Pearson (CEO, Sound Innovations); all of whom provided detailed advice to audience members along with candid  insights into their personal experiences with startups.

The networking reception drew the conference to a close. Start Philly, ever the opportunist, did get a chance to chat with a few interesting folks. When we asked Twitter co-creator Dom Sagolla about the most surprising thing that’s happened to him within the past 5 years, he replied:

“My son. I’m surprised at how much having a kid is like having a start up.”

Pardon?

Sagolla clarified by describing the similarities: “You nurture it, obsess over it, and want it to succeed so much!”  His countenance noticeably brightened as he gushed about his startup- er, son and suggested that he was inspired to greater heights of innovation now, more than ever before.

We also caught up with Amity Cox and chatted a bit about her philosophy concerning company culture: “As a founder, you have the opportunity to mold the culture of your company into what you want it to be…it was important-to me at least- to create a values-centric work environment.” Cox added that “the first few employees are critical to your company: you want to make sure they really understand the goals and mission of your company because not only will they become the unofficial spokespeople and promoters, they will be training the next group of incoming employees…you want the values and mission of your company to be passed down in its purest form.” Cox also suggested that “bootstrapping it” is really helpful in maintaining control over company culture for obvious reasons.

Overall, the conference proved to be insightful, diverse in the topics it covered and a dispenser of practical guidance for people in all stages of startups. The food rocked too.

Did we mention it was free?

Next conference on the agenda:   The 85 broads 2020 Vision

This post originally ran on Technically Philly. It is re-purposed here with permission, as part of a previously announced partnership.

Josh Kopelman is angry.

When Technically Philly pops into his office, the normally cheery venture capitalist is busy trying to figure out why First Round Capital’s email service is down.

“They say six minutes of downtime,” he says. “but they’re way over that.”

After a brief phone conversation (he would later blog about the downtime) he immediately returns to his normal upbeat demeanor and for good reason: Kopelman is one of four founding partners of one of the most active early-stage investment companies in the country. The firm has become as much of a brand as the companies it invests in, boasting the most-visited VC site on the web.

Located in a small, nondescript office building in West Conshohocken, the firm has expanded to San Francisco and will open its New York City offices next week, giving it a headquarters in two of the largest technology communities. The firm is setting a new standard in investment by making a high number of smaller, early stage investments while nurturing companies from the ground up.

First Round, however, is just the latest chapter in the Wharton grad’s career. Kopelman, a New York native, started Internet information company Infonautics while still in college and almost didn’t stay in Philadelphia.

“Once you have 17 people in the company with mortgages and me without, that pressured me to stay,” he says, “Then I grew attached to the area, built networks and planted some roots here and started Half.com.”

Since then, Philly has treated him well: Kopelman and his partners sold Half.com to eBay for $350 million in 2000, giving Philadelphia one its biggest tech “wins” in the Web 1.0 times. After starting and selling Turntide to Symantec in less than a year, Kopelman switched from entrepreneur to investor, making Philadelphia home to one of the most influential Internet investment firms in the world.

We sat down with Kopelman to talk about his take on Philadelphia, what kinds of companies he looks for and why Philly (and every other city) has no comparison.

Read the rest here on Technically Philly.

If Max was happy to read about local companies expanding a few months ago, he must be absolutely overcome with joy now as myYearbook.com continues to grow rapidly, recently announcing that it reached 1 million updates per day and 1 billion page views, largely driven by its Chatter feature launched in November.  Chatter, which is basically a stream of content recently posted by other users on the network (and described as a “free, never-ending photo conversation”) works hand in hand with other features that have been introduced; like Rate Me and Ask Me, which are mildly self explanatory.

Despite personal opinions regarding content, it’s hard to ignore the numbers. According to comScore, myYearbook is one of the 25 most trafficked sites in the United States as measured by pageviews, by minutes, and by minutes per visitor per month. Furthermore, it’s an example of great success story: myYearbook was started in a single high school by a brother and sister team in 2005 and since then, has grown to over 20 million members worldwide. Moreover, its headquarters are located in New Hope, PA which is a hop, skip, and a jump (okay, and maybe another jump) away from our City of Brotherly Love…clearly boosting the cool factor.

What’s in the future for myYearbook? Whatever transpires, Scott Levine, who has recently been named Senior Vice President of Business Development will be at the forefront. Levine, who most recently held a senior level management position in Corporate Development at Sony Music Entertainment, will partner with virtual currency sites, application providers, and media companies to advance myYearbook’s vision of “creating the best place to meet new people.”

We’ll keep you posted!

Yet, when I sent out emails looking for women to publicize their work, even marketing and public relations mavens, I received little response. I was surprised, to say the least, and after a few weeks of chasing, I gave up.

My column has languished since, even though I had also offered to write on media relations. I thought it would be better for me to spotlight others’ businesses because I wasn’t comfortable with labeling myself an “expert.”

Earlier today I heard an interesting piece on NPR’s “On the Media.” A study done by one of their ombudsmen found that only 26 percent of the sources used on the major NPR shows are women. Brooke Gladstone, one of the hosts of “On the Media” then interviewed an “expert” on the topic, a blogger/professor who published a rant how women do not self-promote enough.

This expert was Clay Shirky, a man. Yes, they both saw the irony in this.

The discussion that followed illustrated why I have yet to spotlight a woman-owned spotlight on startphilly.com. Very few women will “self-aggrandize” or act in “pompous” or “arrogant” ways. Instead, as Shirky said, a woman tends to “hide her light under a bushel.”

No, being a woman should not be the only thing that gets you attention or a job or success, but don’t be afraid to leverage your gender. As women we have a tendency to want to be “one of the boys,” to get the same treatment as any man out there and that would be ideal. However, if being a woman serves as a disadvantage in some situations, shouldn’t we relish the times when it’s an advantage?

After considering all this, I am back. This is what I need from our women start-uppers:

1. Contact me. I would like to talk to you about spotlighting your business and getting you a little free publicity here.
2. Promote yourself. If you are a woman with your own start-up, YOU ARE AN EXPERT. When there is a national news story, get in touch with your local newspaper, TV and radio station and offer your perspective. If you’re in the travel industry, speak to the impact of national disasters on travel. The effects are far-reaching! Heck, if you make bandages, offer your opinions on healthcare. I can not think of a single business out there that doesn’t have a unique perspective on something in the news. Get your voice out there.

Austin Lavin is excited.

During his phone conversation with Technically Philly we can nearly hear the 25-year-old smile through the phone. His excitement is well-founded.

Austin, along with his 19-year-old sister Celeste, just sold their first company: myfirstpaycheck.com.

The siblings founded the Ardmore-based Web site in 2007 when then-15-year-old Celeste Lavin began looking for her first job. The family noticed that, in an age where teenagers spend increasing amounts of time online, there were no career resources for teens.

The duo built a job board that also featured career resources for young people, a niche popular enough to attract the attention Phoenix-based Simple Employment Solutions.

We sat down with the Penn grad to ask him what it felt like to sell, his advice for others and when he will be buying his yacht.

Read the rest here.

Senator Dodd’s financial reform bill, which was created to impose heavier regulations on big banks and Wall Street, has now attached language that would bring entrepreneurism, innovation, and angel investing to a screeching halt.

For almost 2 decades Regulation D (Rule 506) has been the most effective and reliable avenue for start-ups to seek and acquire angel financing. The bill that has been presented before legislation will give the SEC power to delay or hold up funding based on their decision (if they get to it) before sending down to the state securities commissions, along with increasing financial expectations on “accredited investors”.

For startups that offer or sell stock Under Rule 506 “private placement”, compliance is easier, faster, and much cheaper if sold to “accredited investors” that are registered with the SEC. There are two benefits to this exemption. First, it overrides State Securities Laws, which means that startups do not have report to securities regulators for compliance purposes (other than Form D). Second, there is no written disclosure requirement if the investor is “accredited”. If one or more investors are not “accredited” with the SEC, Rule 506 may not apply. This opens the start-up to compliance and disclosure obligations that will outweigh any benefit of this exemption.

The most significant changes purposed by Senator Dodd’s bill affect both entrepreneurs and angels.

First, the definition of an “accredited investor” – as it stands now, an “accredited investor” is one (or jointly with spouse) that has a net worth that exceeds $1 million at the time of purchase or income that exceeds $200,000 in each of the two most recent years ($300,000 jointly with spouse). The purposed changes – would increase the net worth to $2.3 million or annual income of $449,000 ($674,000 jointly). In this recession, according to Business Week raising these two critical components would lower “accredited individual investors” by more than 75 percent.

Second, even if all investors are “accredited”, startups relying on Rule 506 will now have to file with the SEC. The SEC will have 120 days to review/approve funding before the transaction can be complete (again, if they get to it). Or if the SEC deems that certain financings are too small in size or scope to warrant a review then it will be sent down to the State Securities Commission for decision, delaying funding even longer.

If passed, there will be fewer and more expensive angel investors, less funding for motivated- self driven entrepreneurs. The American Dream for innovators will be over.

In an economy that has fallen due to “Big Bank” and “Big Corporate America”, can we really afford to apply more red tape around startups and small businesses that ultimately drive the market with the creation of jobs and resources?

You can stop the repeal of Regulation D by signing the petition: http://gopetition.com/online/32354.html or contact your local Senator or Congressmen.