Startupland: Behind the Scenes

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Janice K. Mandel

You’ve probably already heard that hundreds from DC’s entrepreneurial community came out to preview the first two episodes of the Startupland documentary series at Landmark’s E. Street Theatre. It was a first-class event, but then it was back to the grotto for producer/director, Justin Gutwein, who compares his first opening night experience to his wedding. “It happened so quickly, you’re getting pulled into 1,000 different directions constantly, I don’t remember half of it – and I was sober,” he says. “There was just so much going on.” Like any good marriage, the project he’s been wedded to since July 2012 has been a balance of passion, commitment, creativity and work — lots of work. But, for Justin, polishing the 2 ½ hour documentary series he has edited down from over 200 hours of footage that he shot is more mission than a job. Most days, it’s a labor of love. Until this project, Justin made a living shooting brief documentary-style marketing videos for commercial websites. Startupland marks Justin’s headfirst plunge into living the feature filmmaker’s life.

Welcome to DC!

A little over three years ago, Justin’s wife got a job on the Hill and the couple moved to DC from Indiana. Justin had to leave his job at an Indianapolis-based video production company, and made a fresh start in DC founding “Shine on Storytelling.” No stranger to meetups, Justin quickly found many great opportunities to network in DC’s expanding startup community. “The cool thing about the tech community here is that it’s tightknit,” he says. “Somewhere along the way at meetups I met Adam Fazackerley, a limited partner at Fortify; then I met its founder, Jonathon Perrelli a couple of times. I started doing more tech company videos, basically 2-3 minute marketing films, but they were in a documentary format.” His video client list grew from startups like Social Tables and CoFounder’s Lab to the Fort.

“I got to know Jonathon little by little,” Justin recalls. “I’d see him at meetups. One night in a bar after a meetup we were talking and he said: ‘You know what would be really cool? A reality show inside of an accelerator.’

“Um…no,” Justin replied “because reality shows are pretty terrible.” Then, he rallied: “But, a documentary could be interesting if it were authentic and had more benefit than shock value.” And, that was the beginning of a conversation. “We continued ping ponging the idea back and forth until it became clearer and clearer,” he said. “Eventually, we decided to go with it and give it a try.” That was July 2012. The Fortify team had already decided that Spring 2013 would be the last class of the accelerator. “We wanted this final class to be filmed to capture and share the experience of founders participating in an accelerator,” says Jonathon. “I loved the idea that The Fort would live on through Startupland.”

Now, all they had to figure out was how to do it.

Just start it

Working out how to get the series made was what Justin calls a “pretty organic process.” It was clear that he would need to be physically present and fully immersed in the accelerator to be aware of the activities of all five companies and who was coming and going.

“We got some more equipment that I thought we would need – at one point I thought we’d have a secondary guy there. We were getting close to the start day and I wasn’t 100% sure of the style I wanted to do it in. We were even talking about getting security system cameras and putting them up around the Fort so we could get that footage going.”

Then, Justin stepped back and did what any aspiring artist would do: Study what had been done well before. “I started watching documentaries I brought online powered by VHX, like ‘Sound City,’ by Dave Grohl and ‘Indie Games: The Movie.’ Visually, I know what my kind of thumb print is, but I learned what kind of stuff I would need to capture to make this feature work.” He practiced and got used to using a new shoulder-mount camera.

Class is in session

By January 2013, the Fort had welcomed LegCyte, RidePost, SnobSwap, TrendPo and TripTribe into its second accelerator class and Justin moved into the corner office with his gear. It took a little time to gain the trust of all five of the CEOs and have them get comfortable with a camera aimed at them.

“The first couple of days were awkward, but then as one CEO told the crowd at the premiere, they kind of forgot I was there. I went to work with them every day, went home with them and went to meetings with them,” says Justin. “I was always trying to find the balance of finding really interesting, informative things to film but also being respectful of the fact they were trying to build a business.” He filmed weekly stand-up progress sessions and Investor Day pitches but not every meeting. Sometimes, if you’re going to meet with a potential investor having a camera in the corner is not always the optimal thing,” he says. However, the CEOs got comfortable keeping Justin in the loop and invited him to come along on some meetings. He doesn’t mind missing angel investor meetings at which investors say “yes.” “If a successful angel pitch is filmed for a TV show, it tends to be staged anyway,” says Justin. “Whenever I see something like that in a documentary, I call BS.”

“Because Justin was there every day, ready to film and capture footage, he saw the story as it was being written,” says Jonathon.

The idea wasn’t to dive deeply into the nitty gritty of things like specific company pitches but to convey the idea of what makes for a good pitch and, ultimately, capture an authentic view of the startup journey. As far as the actual story of the five companies, Justin says there is nothing hidden in the series that is relevant. “Each company had a natural progression of a story line and my job was to present that,” he says, proud of staying true to his style. “I didn’t sweeten it up, or ugly it up,” he says. “Bad things happened and good things happened, but they’re not overdramatized in any way.”

As the CEOs worked to grow their startups to the next stage, the film project also evolved. Originally, Justin says he tried to keep the project really small, like an engaging U-tube film that could help educate. Even just a month or two into filming, the idea started getting bigger. “But, it wasn’t until about halfway through that we realized we had the opportunity to do something grander, and make more of a positive impact on the world.” That’s when the team decided to weave in interviews with successful startup veterans and expand to a slice of startup life on a grand scale.

Startupland as startup

Jonathon knows how to go big. He proposed a Kickstarter campaign to fund the web series. In one month, the team pressed forward and raised $85,000 from 354 backers, with much higher pledges than average campaigns. “We sold three executive producer spots and sponsor spots at $10,000 a person,” says Justin, who went way outside of his comfort zone to ask friends and family to contribute to the campaign.

By then, Maxim Wheatly, who Jonathon had met at a Georgetown Entrepreneur Day event and brought on as an intern at the Fort had “fallen in love” with the Startupland project and came onboard as a salaried associate producer who spent the summer doing just about everything needed to free up Justin for focused shooting and editing. He spent the summer doing much of the valuable research and outreach to industry people featured, which ultimately included Steve Case (AOL, Revolution), Michael Chasen (Blackboard, Social Radar), Esther Dyson (Angel Investor and industry analyst), Kevin Hartz (Eventbrite, Xoom Corp., ConnectGroup) Chris Heivly, (MapQuest), Amy Millman (Springboard Enterprises), Alexis Ohanian (Reddit, Hipmunk) and Tim O’Shaughnessy (LivingSocial). (Elon Musk respectfully declined, but had the class to reply.) He also planned and executed an awesome premiere theater experience.

“Startupland itself was a startup and we were able to work on our plans for the Kickstarter campaign, marketing, partnerships, our premiere, the global tour and more because we were together every day,” Jonathon observes. Following Investor Day, Justin took his gear and moved back into his studio to begin the post-production process. “Had he been in the office with us, it would have been much more challenging for him to edit and polish video amidst the chaos. We tend to forget the enormous ‘behind the scenes’ effort, but without dozens of mentors, the Fortify partners, and specifically Carla Valdes, the accelerator and Startupland would not have been possible.”

The right results from the right process

Justin admits he’s a guerilla filmmaker in every way. “We lucked out that each company had a pretty interesting progression from where they were when they joined the accelerator to where they were when they finished. “Some things were positive and some weren’t,” he says. “They definitely go through some trials, that’s for sure. That’s the thing about Startupland, every day’s kind of a trial.”

“The most unique aspect of Startupland is that the founders of the companies did not necessarily want to be filmed, but they accepted the cameras as they went about their daily lives,” says Jonathon. Authenticity was Justin’s goal from the start, and it was certainly achieved.”

It’s been a long haul, but Justin’s solitary polishing won’t end until the Startupland series is released for online distribution via VHX on June 6. “I’ve always done everything on my own,” says Justin. “This project was so large that it was actually a crazy thing to do. But, I’m still rolling to the end on this one. It’s kind of like being at Mile 23 of a marathon. You don’t stop there. You’ve got to go ahead and finish.”

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With the premiere of Startupland, the new documentary series, I’m reblogging an earlier post that features the back story on three familiar faces in the film. You’ll find a little known fact about Trendpo’s JD Chang at the end of the post “So, this Macaw, Yapper, GovTribe, TrendPo and The PoshPacker Walk into a TechCocktail.”  Let me know what you think on Twitter @janicekmandel

Janice K. Mandel's avatarJanice K. Mandel

Transporting Experiences: The Trip Tribe, RidePost and Fortify Ventures

Think back to when you were a little kid. It wasn’t about the money, was it? Was it? Was it? – Sports agent, Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise), to Rod “Show me the money” Tidwell (Cuba Gooding, Jr.)

Somewhere between grad school at Harvard and several years on the White House National Security team and in the State Department, Dave Aidekman accidentally fell into the travel business.  Along the way, he was evacuated from the White House complex on 9/11, served as Tom Ridge’s first $60+ billion budget director for U.S. homeland security programs, worked crazy hours on the original team to write the national strategy for homeland security and spent several years with the State Department as part of the Secretary’s office.  The travel business stuck.

“During this time, I rarely took a vacation,” says Dave, who left the government in…

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Posted on March 17, 2014 by Janice K. Mandel | Leave a comment

So, this Macaw, Yapper, GovTribe, TrendPo and The PoshPacker Walk into a Tech Cocktail

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Janice K. Mandel

No joke.  Tech Cocktail does a great job of gathering founders and innovation seekers in a public forum.  You know the drill:  Startup founders demo informally at high, round tables and then pitch the crowd to be named a top company…in the room, at least.  Sometimes the crowd gets it right.  It just depends on who’s there.  I went to their mixer in February because it was at 1776, DC’s entrepreneurial hub, and you never know who will stop by.

Fresh off the elevator, I ran into former Fortify VC mentor, perennial board member and serial entrepreneur/investor, Benjamin Wan, currently CEO of Urban Venture, who brings some Silicon Valley mojo with him.  We walked into the event early together and I asked: “Hottest companies?”   He pointed out potential “game changer” Macaw, whose founder, Tom Giannattasio, did take the #1 slot in the night’s pitch contest.

Macaw is Tom’s baby, which makes software to solve his challenges as a designer. “I was pretty frustrated with my own workflow, which involved a solid mix of Photoshop and hand-coding,” he explains.  “I thought there had to be a better way to work directly with the medium and I set out to create it.”  Tom committed to full-time 20 months ago.  Last year, Macaw raised $200,000 over its Kickstarter goal.

Macaw enables designers to do:

  • Create website layouts with responsive design, which can be read comfortably on every kind of device
  • Quickly create functional prototypes by adding JavaScript to see how things might work.

Tom says Macaw’s biggest differentiator is the code it publishes.  “Many people see it as a great learning tool because it uses industry-standards to write the code.”  He notes that “Macaw’s fully functioning app is in private beta stage now” and his four-man company is prepping to launch publicly in late March.

But first, the startup will venture out of its space at Canvas Cowork in Dupont Circle this week to showcase at SXSW in Austin at MediaTemple’s Open House.

George Washington University represents!

Yapper took the #2 slot that night, winning the Reader’s Choice poll.  I didn’t see that coming, but then again I was with the generation of investors who didn’t get Twitter on first look, either.  Yapper is a location-based, ephemeral (disappearing) text communication app that promises to let users “Chat Right Here, Right Now.” Think: “Hey, guys, there’s free pizza left in the student commons.”   Rob Wyant, President, and several of his fellow founders are George Washington University MBAs who are advised by Jim Chung, Executive Director, Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer at GW.

Other GW alum founders at the mixer, The Poshpacker’s Founder & COO, Tania Cruz, and Anna Kojzar, CEO got started by solving their own travel-on-a-budget challenges.  The Poshpacker began as a directory for hip, high-end like boutique hotels and hostels around the world priced at less than $100 per person per night.  It emerged from Hatch Accelerator, in Virginia last summer as a curated booking site with a $30K investment by Hatch’s Zack Miller and opened its office HQ at 1776.  The same year, Guardian U.K. named the company a top travel site. By January 2014, The Poshpacker partnered with Booking.com and launched a booking engine with its first customers.

Hey, big data

The first thing I noticed at GovTribe’s demo table was the dozen pink cupcakes that founder Marc Vogtman’s wife had baked and decorated with the company’s logo.  She knows what it takes to get someone to stop and talk about government contracting at a Tech Cocktail mixer.  After a decade of competing for contracting work with the federal government and for limited partnership slots at a Big 4 firm, Marc understands two key things:  “Government is not as sexy as some other industries, but I think we’re going to sneak up on people.” 

The GovTribe mobile app, and soon-to-be expanded website, automates the process of pulling out and collating public data from the sea of publicly available PDFs.  This enables government contractors to mine information on opportunities, projects, offices, agencies, contract officers or topic categories in real time.

That means that a commodity food vendor can understand how to propose to sell the government some of the $100,000 worth of food it purchases each quarter from the dozen or so vendors that have uncovered its request for quotes.  Or, that new players can unravel the details of long-term “IDIQ” contract lifecycles worth over $100 million and perhaps reach out to awardees as subcontractors. You get the idea.

Since last August, the app gained over 1,000 users by word of mouth.  Marc also has a three-to-four-man service provider team to provide customized analytical services.  Spoiler alert: “We want to get things right in the government space,” says Marc.  “We think there’s also definite value in our data-mining techniques outside the space.”

Speaking of “TMI”

On my way out, I ran into JD Chang, Founder and CEO of social media company, TrendPo, in the elevator ride down to his 8th floor 1776 co-working space.  The former West Coast film producer and tech project manager came out to say a quick hello to his advisor, Benjamin Wan, and check out the scene.  He’d presented at previous Tech Cocktail events.  During the quick, four-floor ride, I learned that TrendPo is one of 5 companies pitching at the SXSW “Move Your Company to Austin” contest on Friday at the startup village in the Hilton.  The new space would be for TrendPo’s tech team, with engineering headed up by technical co-founder, John Mao, a University of Texas graduate.

TrendPo combines metadata and social media with politics for real-time buzz and ranking trends.  It started out as Fanitics.com, a fantasy politics game (still on Facebook) that JD, who loves fantasy sports, created with a politics-loving friend that he grew up with in Texas.  When the company was accepted into the Fortify Accelerator, JD’s move to DC from San Francisco made sense.  The House Republican Conference was among the early users, followed by current major user, the Heritage foundation.

The company’s technology can expand to other industries as well.  “We like to think of ourselves as competitive intelligence,” says JD.  “We target engaged audiences on social media and then our clients can do a lot of different things like advertise to them, reach out and message them and do market research around them.”

By 2016, JD says his team is aiming to “provide a daily approval poll in TrendPo and translate that into election results.”

I can only surmise that JD’s mom must be relieved to see him move on from Hollywood, where in 2009, under the name Damon Chang, he served as line producer on the horror flick, Hallettsville, starring Gary Busey as the Sheriff.  No joke.

 

Posted in 1776, entrepreneurial community, entrepreneurs, Startup DC, Startup America, communications strategist, startups, Uncategorized, Venture Capitalists | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

SmartThings, The Internet of Things and Just Plain Cool Things

Posted on February 11, 2014 by Janice K. Mandel
Alex Hawkinson, SmartThings, and Brian Park discuss The Internet of Things at Startup Grind in DC

Alex Hawkinson, SmartThings, and Brian Park discuss The Internet of Things at Startup Grind in DC

Alex Hawkinson continues his 15-year leadership path with cloud-based technology companies as Founder and CEO of SmartThings, a platform to connect and control objects in the physical world remotely. Two things he said about the next phase of how we interact with the internet, the Internet of Things. First, it’s up to us if we want to start living like the Jetsons or deciding what we will accept; and it is hard to know how things like companies are valued. Imagine the things you’d like to be able to monitor or activate by pressing buttons on a digital device. Alex told the Startup Grind DC attendees that he is working through his company, SmartThings, to promote a software platform to facilitate creating a connection with things.

Imagination and motivation is the only limit on folks using SmartThings. This is a given and a concern. For potential customers who want to use SmartThings to enable an application, but can’t or won’t build it themselves, SmartThings has a layer of professional services, like security companies, that will set the users up. Some creative tech types are great at figuring out how to incorporate novelty into grand-scale marketing, exhibition and events. Consider Peter Corbett’s iStrategy’s social fridge at SXSW (the annual South by Southwest festival in Austin, TX), which opened remotely to offer beer, or his Twitter-controlled paint gun, which his company put together and showed off via social media or Dominoes Pizza order button. Imagine a Staples pretend EASY button that really works. The tools are here and imagination, need, want and motivation are the limit.

In a quick tweet out contest, Alex offered the Startup Grind crowd a shot at winning the $300 software platform in a box small enough for a fedora. The winning idea: use the kit to transform limited space from office to formal evening through sound, light and other things. Alex said he jokes with his wife about having a romantic room setting connected with a motion sensor by the children’s bedroom doors. If the child opens the door, Barry White or Marvin Gaye stop singing and a classical symphony begins while candlelight is washed out bright light.

Imagination and social acceptance are key to SmartThings.

It started by accident

Alex started the company in response to a problem his family experienced. It helped that he was paying attention because he was looking for a new project. “I turned 40 last year and wanted to solve a big problem,” Alex explains. Then, he and his family had a big problem. He and his wife arrived with baby in tow for their annual ski trip at their Colorado ski house and found that water in its pipes had frozen, the pipes burst and thawed. “We found it ruined,” he said with a strong hint of his native Minnesota accident that emphasized the “oo” in ruin. “When the ice thawed, water ran through every floor, wall, ceiling, piece of furniture. It was all wrecked.”

Alex recalls on New Years Eve before 2012: “I thought, so many of our things are already connected. How did we not know our home had a water emergency when the handyman lived around the corner and we could have asked him to go check the house and shut off the water?”

Alex has a claim to fame for the second-highest Kickstarter funding campaign, $1.2 million for SMBLive, the cloud-based marketing software company he started in 2005, and sold to ReachLocal for $8.4 million. He observes that his experience showed him to: “Raise as little capital as you can, as long as you can. Bootstrap as long as you can because you never know how much something is going to be valued. Have a working product people want and it will get you there.” He added: “Customer service is as important as anything in the company. Alex said he is on the support strings for customers each weekend. “We give customers the red carpet treatment, writing personal thank you notes for every customer who signs up, things like that.”

It wasn’t long before the questions at Startup Grind asked what Alex thought of Google having just bought Nest for $3 billion. He deadpanned respectfully:
“That’s what my Board of Directors just wanted to talk about last week.” Then, he dug in: “What people have underestimated is the scope of the impact of the connected world. This Third Wave of the web is going to be the biggest tech trend in the next 10 years. It’s going to touch every facet of life. The impacts are so beyond the simple applications, it’s mind boggling.”

Alex is enthusiastic about his fourth startup: “I think this feels like it,” he said.

Do no research; raise no funds

Alex admits he just started going after the idea without even casually checking to see if there was anything that had already solved the problem. He said: “The biggest strength you can have as an entrepreneur is naïveté.” Products might look the same at first but tend to evolve and could become something different, complementary.

His fourth startup is both fun and a lot of work getting a company up and running behind the scenes. Alex observes: “The best jobs come from seeing the way the world works and trying to break it up and do it differently.”

He’s happy to talk to people looking to crowd source if you can catch up with him. Try reaching out on Twitter @smartthings. He retweets. Tweet this story and ask for some advice.

“Connected Things” vs. “Things That Connect Us”

Kendrick Jackson stopped by Startup Grind at nClude, the firm that helped him with the user experience of his new retail/project, State of Affairs. The things he’s into are best handled in person. His vision is to display professional gentlemen’s and ladies’ tailored apparel and accessories displayed in a pleasant cafe experience. Come for the coffee, sandwiches or cocktails and leave with the latest style ideas, fashion advice and perhaps measurements for a new suit or dress. Good conversation, fashion and even local art. Busboys and Poets meets Alton Lane, the bespoke men’s tailored apparel seller. Alton Lane’s service includes custom measurement appointments while “enjoying a beverage” and online ordering. Kendrick’s café experience flips the priorities to make the destination to be the café first, retail, second. “nClude helps us with online branding, logo and color scheme; making sure we look good once we put ourselves out there.”

He and his friend and former colleague at In the Capital, writer Carl Pierre, percolated the idea for State of Affairs. Carl had staked out the place of honor in front of nClude’s office elevators to sit out a table to discuss WeWork, a co-working space expanding to DC from New York City. “Carl’s into coffee, and he’d go to coffee bars, the downstairs kind, where all the guys are wearing suits. And, he put it together.”

Without carrying inventory, State of Affairs offers people a view of current tailored apparel to customers who come for the wood-paneled, café experience. Kendrick notes it’s a good use of the physical store, which when dedicated to clothing tends to be empty in the afternoons. I noticed that companies coming into the city were “doing a lot of not seeing” the perspective of DC customers. Kendrick says: “Certain Georgetown stores put the $300 trousers by the front door and cheaper priced items in the back. “I’d walk by and automatically feel poor and walk out,” says Kendrick, who says he has only two good suits, but mixes and matches them with different shirts and ties for different looks.

“I’d like to bring back drinking in the day,” he adds. “It would be nice to have a new venue to go to.”

Maybe, the Internet of Things will help clients retrieve their stylish overcoats while patrons use the Uber or Hail-O apps to cab it to the next meeting.

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Pitching Ted Leonsis, Meeting Tige Savage and Heeding Mark Suster

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Janice K. Mandel

Recently, I connected the dots at back-to-back Metro-DC area events: the BallstonBID Launchpad competition appreciation dinner, In the Capital’s “50 on Fire” and Startup Grind, featuring Tige Savage. Tige is the co-founder and managing director of venture and growth equity investor Revolution LLC. Revolution Ventures (Revolution LLC’s venture fund) recently closed on a second $200 million venture capital fund aimed at early-stage technology investments. Like his fellow Revolution investors, Ted Leonsis and Steve Case, he’s part of the early-AOL crowd who remain to enrich the business community, themselves and their many good causes, with their complementary strengths. Tige is the guy who rolls up his sleeves to work with companies like Revolution Money, which used the Internet to change the economics of credit card processing and survived the 2008 financial crisis to be purchased for $300 million by American Express.

I was as curious to hear what Tige Savage had to say as I was to see who else would turn up to meet him. I wasn’t disappointed.

Putting the “meat” in meeting

At Startup Grind, sitting side by side in the row ahead of me were two tech company founders at different stages: Joshua Szmajda, CTO of Optoro, a Lanham-based software company transforming the reverse logistics market by enabling major retailers to sell their excess or returned merchandise directly to consumers through third-party online markets such as eBay and Amazon.com, and Upen Patel, Founder and CEO of M2 Labs, a cloud-based mobile payment network that picks up with mobile where Revolution Money left off. Optoro was recently funded by Revolution Growth.

I’d met Upen briefly at an event last Spring. Then, again in November when Khurrum Shakir, founder of iGrabberAutos [See iGrabberAutos, Cvent and Less than Six Degrees of Separation from Steve Case], a Kayak.com-like search engine for cars recently rebranded as CarSquare, invited me to an appreciation dinner to which the 14 finalists of the BallstonBID Launchpad competition invited their supporters. During the welcome speech, I turned my head and found myself face to face with Upen, who it turned out was one of the 14 finalists winnowed from some initial 225 entries. His company, M2 Labs, was subsequently voted in as the fan favorite to join the final three selected to pitch to a panel made up of Ted Leonsis, former U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly and Mark Gruhin, co-managing partner of Saul Ewing in Washington. CarSquare and BuilDATAnalytics, a business intelligence platform for the commercial construction industry, tied for first place, because as Ted told the local press of the winning business plans, “There was meat there.”

The judges couldn’t break the first-place tie for the prize of office space in Ballson, legal services from Saul Ewing and $15,000, and organizers report that Ted volunteered and wrote the second $15,000 check himself. Finalist Changecause, a service that connects charities with business sponsors to match donations, will be among the four finalists invited to pitch to Ted in January. Upen knows he’s got his work cut out for him. “I spoke with Ted very briefly afterward and he commented that he wants to see more details when we meet.”

Learning to innovate by the numbers

Upen had come to Startup Grind to meet Tige Savage and let him know that M2 Labs is looking to take on the payment industry again. He is closing on a patent Dynamic Tokenization technology that creates virtual identity in real time every time a customer logs in to do a transaction. It resonated with him to hear Tige emphasize the importance of getting deep penetration into a market before spreading into newer markets. He also took to heart the advice to figure out and track the key indicators for his industry. “If you’re tracking four metrics and three continue to fail,” said Tige, “figure out a line of business that’s focused on the fourth. Hold yourself accountable to the numbers but don’t die by them.”

Upen asked the first question in the Q&A to learn how Revolution Money got a bank onboard as a processing partner, and in the end, walked the speaker out. “He was very open that Revolution doesn’t do seed rounds,” says Upen, “But, I wanted to get on Revolution’s radar for the future, because I am essentially Revolution Money 2.0.” He got Tige Savage’s card to follow up and learn about how Revolution Money overcame some of the same challenges he now faces. “Until yesterday, he did not know that I, Upen, or my startup, M2 Labs, existed,” says the optimistic entrepreneur. “Now, he has heard about me and whether he might invest in me or not, he might introduce me to other investors who would be willing to invest early stage.”

Meanwhile, in fat city

What was Josh doing at Startup Grind? I found out two weeks later at In the Capital’s “50 on Fire,” where Optoro was a tech winner, just having capped off an extraordinary year of funding with $7.5 million in January led by Grotech Ventures followed by $25 million in July from Revolution Growth and a few more million in late November from SWaN & Legend. Josh, who has enjoyed working with Ted Leonsis who sits on Optoro’s board, had learned that Tige Savage would be at Startup Grind from a friend at Optoro and he figured he’d stop by to meet him and say hello. Tige explained with self-effacing wit to the gathering that his team invests in “boring, existing categories where incumbents can be flanked.” It made sense to find out that Optoro never pitched Revolution, but was approached by them. “From what I understand, we were approached by Revolution Growth almost a year ago,” says Josh. “They were interested in what we were doing because we’re transforming an industry that’s been underserved by technology, and that’s a kind of business they look for. We weren’t looking to raise at the time, but they managed to convince us to work with them. So, ultimately, we never ‘pitched’ Revolution, although we did explain our business a number of times along the way.”

Upen says he came out to Startup Grind because he is working on giving investors an advance look at his business plan and keeping them updated by sharing his successes in advance of the next level of funding. He is working on being, what investor Mark Suster (Upfront Ventures) once referred to in a 2010 blogpost, as “a line, not a dot.” Tige expressed appreciation for those who can get creative and cited Mark Suster’s penchant for not telling people how to reach him. Though, he emphasizes that most of the companies he invests in come invariably through recommendations and relationships rather than over the transom.

Josh comes at things from his CTO’s lens: “Build something for yourself,” he says. “Stay involved in the community. Don’t focus on raising money or the pitch. If you need cash, get a job that pays the bills but don’t stop your own projects. Great people who succeed do so on the strength of their product. Understand your customers and what it is you’re doing to delight them. Get all that straight and people will pay attention.”

And, sometimes, said Tige, when emphasizing that first-time CEOs don’t need to be perfect, but they do need to be honest, “Shit happens. It just does.” Like my being late to Startup Grind that night. I held the elevator for a pleasant-looking guy with glasses wearing a checked shirt when Startup Grind’s Derek Andersen jumped in behind him and said, “Oh, this is tonight’s speaker, Tige Savage.” I turned to shake his hand and smile, half-regretting I’d forgotten to bring business cards. “I’ll be writing about tonight’s event in my little blog,” I said. “I’ll send it to you. I hope you like it.” And there it was. The elevator doors opened, and I guess you could say I’d made my first elevator pitch. Probably needed more meat…

Posted in DC Metro Area Startup Community, entrepreneurial community, entrepreneurs, startup grind, startups, Venture Capitalists | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

From Building Priceline.com to Driving the U.S. Economy, T. Scott Case Is All About Thinking Big & Connecting Startup Communities

T. Scott Case, best known as the CTO co-founder of Priceline.com, the name-your-price internet service, and now CEO of the Startup America Partnership, is looking forward to his 25th high school reunion. At the reunion in the wealthy suburb of Greenwich, Connecticut, where he says he grew up in the “working class part of town,” Scott says he is hoping to see a former classmate to tell him that the life he’s living today is “all his fault.”

A turning point in his life came, he says, came as an early teenager, following a summer job cutting the neighbors’ grass with his dad’s lawnmower. Back at school, he told his friend, John, he’d started a landscaping business. “I did, too.” John replied. He elaborated, adding: “Halfway through the summer, I was able to buy my second tractor and had three different crews cutting grass. I made like $20,000.”

“Oh,” Scott recalled thinking. “You actually started a landscaping business.”

The lesson to think big stuck with him, Scott told the Startup Grind crowd he addressed on September 16 at 1776. “If John hadn’t done that landscaping business, maybe I would have done something else.”

Communities That Connect

The story brightened a day that began under the cloud of a mass shooting at the Navy Yard. Startup Grind founder, Derek Andersen, fresh off a plane from San Francisco, helped improve the mood. For me, the fog lifted as Airman Wight Goforth came by for a hug, noting that his internship with 1776 resident, Hinge, the dating app, had evolved into a paid job as designer.

Another 1776 resident drawn to the event was American Samoa native Leonard Hyman, entering his fifth month as Account Executive for Zoomph, a platform that measures social influence, displays popular tweets and drives social media engagement for events or organizations. Some Zoomph clients have used Zoomph to power widgets or display on a long-term, ongoing basis. Seen at a 1776 party by the PR person for UP Global, which will combine Startup America and Startup Weekend activities going forward, Zoomph was selected to power social media engagement at the UP Global Live Lounge at SXSW V2V in Las Vegas. Leonard was attracted to Startup Grind that night because of Zoomph’s relationship with UP Global.

Scanning the room, I noticed the new 1776 intern, Alex Tatem standing near the entrance. The high school graduate taking a gap year before deciding how to proceed set his sights on an internship there and asked one of his Chevy Chase Eagle Scout Troop leaders, Scott Johnson, CEO of Chief and founder of RockCreek Strategic Marketing, if he could make an introduction. Timing couldn’t have been better. He was scheduled to see Evan Burfield and Donna Harris the next day, and soon 1776 took on Alex as an intern.

“Alex is just one of those kids that just takes any little opportunity and turns it into something,” says Johnson, noting that when he decided to become involved in the startup community, Alex learned about all of the events going on about town and networked his way in for free. A former Living Social intern, Alex set his sights on going to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event where he met Steve Forbes and Shark Tank’s Daymond John and Barbara Corcoran.

“The three-day event cost $800, so Alex came home from school, put on a suit and searched LinkedIn on the way to the event to find someone in his network connected with someone at the Chamber of Commerce to get him in for free,” recalls Johnson. “He asked a question during one of the sessions and afterwards was complimented by Raj Lahoti, founder of DMV.org, the third most-visited .org on the Web, who offered mentoring advice.

Teams Build Better

At Startup Grind, Alex paid close attention as he learned how T. Scott Case was recruited at age 26 as part of a four-person team by Walker Digital Invention Laboratories founder, Jay Walker, to go after giant markets. Scott says there’s leverage and value in being part of a team with complementary talents. Zoomph’s investor and co-founder, Ali Manouchehri, the Metrostar Systems creator who, straight out of college, found success in the federal government consulting arena, couldn’t agree more.

By 2007, on the cusp of where Web 2.0, mobile and social media were going to change how government does things, Metrostar evolved with a digital practice. Right place, right time, Metrostar was doing some business at the Department of State, which by about 2009 was looking for innovative ways to expand its digital and public diplomacy.

Says Ali: “As a result, the greatest thing that happened to us was that we were able to bring together all of these really smart people from different cultures, genders, backgrounds and ages and look to expand our footprint of digital diplomacy and digital diplomacy. We had all of these different toys, listening tools, search tools, sentiment tools that we were using to see what people are saying during or after a speech of an ambassador or secretary of state or the president. Our big break came in 2011 during the president’s trip to Indonesia. We got a call from one of our contracting representatives at the state department who said that President Obama was going to make a speech at the university there in 72 hours and asked if we could use these tools to enable them to automate the ability to aggregate, moderate and syndicate tweets on displays in different locations around the campus.” One hackathon and 48 hours later, they did it. It worked. They used it. It was a success and more people wanted to use it.

Listen to Your Customers

At Startup Grind, Scott tells the crowd that there are a lot of times when people are going to tell you’ve got a bad idea. The only people who matter are your customers. And, sometimes, you might tell your story 100 different ways, absorb the feedback and adjust until your story resonates with customers.

Ali listens carefully to his customers, and his customers listen carefully to each other. “Our rule is when three people ask for the same thing and we’ve solved a problem, the solution becomes a product.” That’s what happened with Zoomph. In the Spring of 2012, Zoomph was incorporated as a company. By the Fall of 2013, over 120 customers were using Zoomph — from NASCAR teams to professional sporting and entertainment events and major brands globally. Customers come to Zoomph by word of mouth. They use Zoomph because, like Amazon’s model, customers buy products based on what other people tell you about them.

Scott says it’s also important to listen to yourself. Be open to the possibility that there are other roles besides founder that might suit you best. Finding a successful founder to work for and learn from for several years can help new founders avoid rookie mistakes, like building cool products without a clue as to how to market them. And, it pays to have trusted friends around who can also “tell you when your baby’s ugly.”

Intern Alex’s eyes leave the stage, only to scan the crowd, and return intently when Scott Case says “We celebrate the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world but those are the exceptions. You need to find success in the ways you feel comfortable with it whether that’s monetary gain or building a small company into a big company, and reevaluate success, because lives change.”

And, Scott Case should know. As skill and luck would have it, Priceline.com hit it big and took the team on what Scott calls “a crazy, ridiculous ride.” Priceline.com earned close to $1 billion in revenues in less than 24 months and went public. For the decade that followed, Scott, now 43 has continued to put his problem-solving skills and experience to work. First, he learned to make cool things such as the first PC-based simulated flight instructor and photo-realistic fight simulator, and then to make cool things happen, through projects to make the world better, such as Malaria No More (as CEO) and Network for Good (Chairman). Having four kids can make you care about the planet if you’ve got your head on straight. Still, he says, though he’d known the Cases for a decade through their philanthropic activities, he was surprised when Steve “no relation” Case tapped him to lead the Startup America Partnership as CEO and board member. Relationships are important.

“If there’s something I could tell my 20-year-old self,” he concludes, “it is that creating and investing in relationships with the people around you is important. Some come and go, but the durable ones tend to become the kinds of relationships that you draw on throughout your life.”

In its next phase as part of UpGlobal, Startup America, will focus on facilitating relationships. “The more lasting and more valuable set of resources we bring is the kind of community building work we do with people like you. An entrepreneur in the room trying to get to a corporation based in another city doesn’t have to bump into me for help. You can see Donna Harris, for example, here at 1776 and she can connect you through the Startup America network usually in one or two hops to somebody that can introduce you to somebody in that city or that market.”

Taking Pride in the Ride

Alex is thinking big. Just two weeks into his internship, he was sitting in the 1776 kitchen when the president of resident Flatworld Knowledge, a college textbook publisher, came in. By the time he finished making his sandwich, Alex emerged with a job offer. “It might have taken me three months to find that person,” says Alex, adding “ Being part of a community like 1776 that crunches strong entrepreneurs and mentors together can make things happened much faster.” Next time he DJs, he’d like to bring Zoomph along.

But, Alex needs to soak up as much as he can by January, when he moves to San Francisco and travels abroad as one of ten Uncollege fellows from around the world organized by Dale Stevens with funding by Peter Theil. “After interning at Living Social and running a DJ company, my plan was to work as an intern for a year,” he says. “But, the only part I’d be missing would be the social aspect of living with people my own age while seeing what I want to do. You can’t beat living in a group house in San Francisco with other interns. They have a network of companies to choose from, but, I am also thinking of reaching out on my own…I’m interested in what everyone’s doing because I don’t know exactly what I want to do yet. I’ll just ask questions and people will take me along for the ride until I can branch off and do my own thing.”

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Posted on September 30, 2013 by Janice K. Mandel | 1 Comment

Capital One’s Nigel Morris and Hinge: What’s in your dating app?

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Janice K. Mandel

“Yes ma’am, I’m still in the Airforce,” said Airmen Wight Goforth, who has about eight months to go. For now, Wight works an eight-hour shift at the USAF in Virginia then drives to the 1776 campus in DC where he works as a product design intern at Hinge, the hot new dating/introduction app, until it’s time to “call it a night and go home.” I caught up with Wight on a Thursday night in May as he walked down the hall from Hinge to come to Startup Grind’s fireside chat at 1776 with Capital One Financial Services co-founder, Nigel Morris.

During the chat, we heard what it was like in 1994 to be a 26-year-old consultant with one slightly older colleague trying to convince Signet Bank in Richmond that customizing credit card terms could fundamentally transform the consumer lending industry. “That part was like cheating because we knew the answers before we started,” Nigel said referencing his team’s disciplined, data-driven approach to identifying customer needs. Eliminating annual fees for their credit card later just added to the buzz. After a spin off as Capital One Financial Services, Nigel and the other self-selecting “intrapreneurs” moved North to Tysons Corner, Virginia.

Branding was a whole different matter. “We didn’t know what was going to work,” he said. Eventually, a talented agency team personified their attack on industry inertia with Vikings wreaking havoc on a village crying out: “What’s in your wallet?” About $150 million per year later, everyone knows the product behind the slogan, which can now be uttered equally effectively by Washington Capital’s Alex Ovechkin during the playoffs.

A blissfully terrifying situation

The execution of that strategy, however, which included unfamiliar tasks, like running customer service, was “a terrifying situation,” which sounds self-effacingly clever in Nigel’s British-sounding accent. “I was totally unsuited for it, I was totally unqualified to do it and I had to learn quickly,” he said as several Startup Grinders nodded. His team bridged its talent gaps by reaching out to the best business schools to “hijack talent” before graduates could be recruited by top-notch consulting firms.” By 2004, after 10 years, Capital One Financial Services had made the transition from an emerging startup to a public company with about 15,000 employees valued at over $20 billion. Nigel realized he missed “the excitement and verve” of the rapid learning and retired.

Today, as the managing partner of QED Investors in Alexandria, VA, Nigel focuses on high-growth companies that leverage the power of data strategies and seek to have industry forces behind them like the wind at their backs. “We’re hammers in search of nails,” he laughs. QED is Latin for quod erat demonstrandum, from the Greek “which was to be demonstrated.” The initials are traditionally placed at the end of a mathematical proof or philosophical argument.

Just connect

After Nigel spoke, I walked briskly past a trio of young men with an eye towards introducing Nigel to 1776 tenant, Scott Keohane, of Perfect, a data-driven restaurant marketing tool. But, as Nigel veered off towards the men’s room, I cut my stride in half just as Wight Goforth caught my eye and said: “Excuse me…hi…we met at my first Startup Grind event at nClude. “I was sitting on a coach by myself, eating pizza, and you told me I was supposed to get up and talk to people.” He smiled, now a veteran of meetup groups such as DC NightOwls, DC Tech , DC Lean Startup Circle, Design Thinking DC, Toastmasters, Idea Fusion and Build Innovate Grow: DC, which he says, helped him integrate into the DC tech scene.

I stopped walking and turned towards the trio. I didn’t recognize Wight at first, his sweat shirt replaced by a tidy blue sweater over a white shirt and slacks, messenger bag slung across his back. Then, of course I remembered him, only now he was standing tall, smiling warmly and simply ready to connect. He was part of the Hinge team and had the glow of an intern at a growing company with great buzz and events to add to the excitement.

Escape from lonely island

Wight first read about Hinge in a Mashable article via TechCrunch earlier this year. He downloaded the Hinge app to his iPhone, as did over 10,000 other active users in the D.C. area. (Android app just released). The core concept seemed good: See available “Friends of Friends”of your Facebook profile and rate their images delivered by the app on a scale of 1-5. Those who have rated you 4 out of 5 will be listed as those interested in connecting. No lengthy, traditional dating site profiles by complete strangers “on a lonely island,” on websites probably accessed on a PC by an older crowd. Instead, Hinge connects self-selecting networks to grease the connecting/dating wheels.

“I travel a lot and, like some fellow airmen, have used online dating services when I come home,” Wight explained. Hinge it solves the problem he had with traditional online dating sites: “Being alone on a date with a complete stranger can be awkward, and sometimes, it can be scary. There were a few times that I felt like I could end up on the back of a milk carton.” It just made sense to limit the dating pool to local friends of friends you’re interested in meeting who have confirmed they’re interested in meeting you, too.

In full CMO mode, Hinge co-founder Bennett Richardson, says: “Hinge is built to match the lifestyles of our social, mobile-focused users age 18-35: the entire Hinge experience is designed so you can complete the entire experience on your phone, and we tap into user’s real life social networks so that they aren’t looking for dates on a “lonely island” like you are with traditional dating sites.

Taking action

So, after reaching out to meet friends of friends on Hinge, one night, Wight decided to send an email to Hinge co-founder Justin McLeod asking if he could join the Hinge team as a product design intern. Justin, a time-crunched CEO, meets people through Hinge himself and can attest to the relevancy of recommendations. While he was out on the town, Justin matched with his good friend’s cousin, who had just favorited Justin in Hinge as someone she’d like to meet. Justin’s companion mentioned that her parents live in Florida, which brought up something that surprised them both: They both grew up going to Cheeca Lodge, and shared separate-but-wonderful memories of the idyllic resort in the Florida Keys. Hinge’s proprietary algorithm does not predict cute coincidences, but it does bring people together who have people, organizations and interests in common. People with different levels of connections, from close ties to acquaintances from other activities, such as charities, schools and companies linked on Facebook are more likely to find connections that share their interests than completely random strangers.

A few days after he sent the email, Wight became a Hinge intern. Working in the 1776 co-working space meant he could walk around and meet the UX designer of Living Social one day and influencers, even royalty, like Queen Noor of Jordan touring the facility the next.

Being part of a community

Being a part of the DC community has always been important for Hinge’s co-founders. Justin and Bennett were members of the Fort’s first accelerator class and founding tenants of 1776. Today, with 7 employees, Hinge is the largest company that is a full-time resident of 1776. The company has raised nearly $1 million in venture capital from Fortify, 500 Startups and local Piedmont Capital Advisors. They mentor other founders at the Fort/1776, speak at events and in classrooms and have served as judges at the Distilled Intelligence startup pitchfest that resulted in the second Fortify DC class.

“Hinge is an interesting animal,” says Bennett, struck with the diversity of businesses attracted to 1776. “We are a consumer-focused startup in DC. We’re not going after education, healthcare, transportation or any of these government level national industries headquartered here [as other 1776 tenants do], but at the same time we are able to make a substantive impact in the DC startup community by taking our own position.”

As part of the Application Developers Alliance, Hinge is working toward voluntary privacy guidelines through the Department of Commerce/NTIA privacy multi-stakeholder talks. Earlier this year, at nearby congressional offices, Hinge’s Bennett Richardson visited with Rep. Hank Johnson’s staff to discuss privacy and how certain types of privacy legislation can either help or hinder innovation and user experience.

Hinge noticed many of its users are connected with networks in New York City and just launched a Hinge app there on May 28. Though moving towards becoming a national consumer mobile product, Hinge prefers to remain headquartered in DC where it has found it advantageous to be part of the growing startup community.

What’s in Nigel Morris’s wallet?

“An American Express card. As an officer of Capital One Financial Services, the paperwork required to carry a Capital One card was enormous!” He left us laughing at Startup Grind. When Nigel emerged from the men’s room, I introduced him to Scott Keohane to hear what he thought of Scott’s pitch for Perfect, the data-based restaurant marketing tool. He listened carefully, asked a couple of key questions and headed for the elevator. On his way out he said “This was good. I don’t do enough of these things.”

Scott seemed pleased. He said: “I got more out of that few minute meeting than I thought would happen tonight.”

***
“I attend lots of cool meetups; Startup Grind is my favorite,” Wight says, “You go to these cool events, meet great people and learn all things you can’t find written in a textbook or on any blog [try Google’s blog search] – and discover opportunities. If you work really, really hard and put yourself out there instead of just staying in your comfort zone you might just find yourself becoming apart of something really, really cool as well, like I did with Hinge.

Posted in 1776, entrepreneurial community, Startup DC, startup grind, startups, User Experience, Mobile applications | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Transporting Experiences: The Trip Tribe, RidePost and Fortify Ventures

Think back to when you were a little kid. It wasn’t about the money, was it? Was it? Was it? – Sports agent, Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise), to Rod “Show me the money” Tidwell (Cuba Gooding, Jr.)

Somewhere between grad school at Harvard and several years on the White House National Security team and in the State Department, Dave Aidekman accidentally fell into the travel business.  Along the way, he was evacuated from the White House complex on 9/11, served as Tom Ridge’s first $60+ billion budget director for U.S. homeland security programs, worked crazy hours on the original team to write the national strategy for homeland security and spent several years with the State Department as part of the Secretary’s office.  The travel business stuck.

“During this time, I rarely took a vacation,” says Dave, who left the government in 2006, “but when I did I wanted to make sure it was big and fun and amazing.”  Word of his awesome skiing, sailing and traveling vacations spread throughout his social circle, friends came along and before he knew it he got e-mails from friends of friends asking if they could get on his email list of equally fabulous people so they could come along on his next vacation.  The appeal of the small consulting firm he joined to continue doing national security work was overshadowed by the call to adventure.

“It was fun, it was on the slow growth path and it wasn’t going to be a huge thing,” says Dave, “but then we realized this is a huge opportunity in a huge industry that needs to be transformed.”  Wait…we?  Behind the scenes, Meg Griles, a marketing/communications professional David knew through a charitable cause, was having a major impact on the direction of the company.

Social Web + Group Travel = Great Relationships

To really get to know someone you’ve got to travel with them, right?  That can go either way, so if you’re planning to go on an awesome bucket list trip like a Cruise to Antarctica, a trek to Kilimanjaro’s summit or sailing off to the biggest New Year’s eve party in the Caribbean, you’re going to want to know who’s coming upfront. Better still to be part of a more-the-merrier group with returning members.

To solve the “who’s coming?” part of the equation in a scalable way, Dave set out on an early experiment that led to his startup, which marries the pervasive social web- with its profiles of people, their backgrounds, their preferences and their friends – with group travel.   

Four years ago, adventuresome DC resident, Masha Tatianina, recalls seeing Dave’s first experiment in advertising a ski trip for 12 to Vail in a DC forum on the exclusive online network ASmallWorld. “I called a friend and asked if she was interested in going,” she says.  “She thought I was nuts to travel to ski without knowing the people, so I contacted Dave and asked him to meet us for a drink to get to know each other better and find out more about the organization of the trip. He agreed. We met and he seemed very pleasant and, more importantly, legit.  We gave him a deposit. He found the condos, organized the activities, bought the lift tickets and found us deals for the plane.  We had a great time and my friend was able to make several more trips!”

Masha and her friend met other young professionals from Florida, New York and DC, including Meg Griles.  “They didn’t appear to be dating before the trip, but somehow, Meg ended up with a stomach bug and David took care of her, bringing her rice and ginger ale,” says Masha.  The trip was a turning point that fueled a relationship in which David and Meg became a couple, co-founders and soul mates (June 2013 wedding date).  Masha kept in touch and created David’s first website, Adventurati from which he branched out and, as a certified sailing captain since the mid-2000s, ran larger, more ambitious trips in the Caribbean and the British Virgin Islands as part of The Yacht Week. The company, owned by three Swedes, organized trips including Croatia and Greece that served about 1,000 people per summer. 

Becoming The Trip Tribe

Among her many contributions over the years, Meg (who in a June 2013 wedding joins the Aidekman tribe) helped to rebrand the company as The Trip Tribe to better reflect the tightly knit community of returning travelers it has become. “We’re taking offline social networks and bringing them online; we’re taking online social networks and bringing them to real experiences,” says David, who says The Trip Tribe is aiming for premium experiences that can leverage group travel for high value at a good price.

To get the social component right, The Trip Tribe platform features social profiles with personal background information and travel preferences, from athletic or relaxing trips “craved” to compatible company, such as trips with singles, couples, mixed groups to night owls vs. early birds with a hint of life philosophy in their favorite travel quote and “About me in six words” section.  

You never know where getting to know people who share your travel preferences and interests can lead. A passenger Dave bonded with on a sailing trip he led to Croatia three years ago, Kevin Kirk, from Baltimore, just came onboard with The Trip Tribe’s growing team to head up business development.

Sharing the Journey through Fortify Ventures

Since February 2013, The Trip Tribe has grown and joined the class of another tightly knit group, the Fortify Ventures accelerator, which first came together at Fortify’s Distilled Intelligence event in October 2012. “We’ve had really good camaraderie among the class,” says Dave.  “Everyone’s been really helpful supporting and learning from each other.”  

One relationship with a current Fortify member that’s blossomed has been with the crew at another cooperative travel company, RidePost, whose four co-founders met at an MBA program studying international business at the University of South Carolina.  Co-founder and CEO, Marty Bauer, 28, says he and his colleagues were inspired to find ways to cut their weekend travel costs on the overseas component of their semester abroad.  While studying in Europe and SE Asia, Marty became aware of an email list of travelers posting rides needed and offered to share that he says opened his eyes and ultimately led to his online company, RidePost.     

“My first time ridesharing in France cost $15 Euros for a trip that would have cost $120 by train,” he said.  “Not only was it a bargain, it was a great experience.  The more I traveled, the more convinced I became that this needed to be taken online and expanded and customized.”  Given the Washington, DC, metro area’s population of young, accomplished, mobile professionals, it was a first choice location from which to launch RidePost.

The Road Ahead

RidePost and The Trip Tribe are exploring ways in which the two companies can work together to transport The Trip Tribe members to long weekend overnight experiences, like music festivals or the Kentucky Derby. 

Marty truly believes in the RidePost lifestyle.  Being interviewed in his wife’s car (searched for at the iGrabberAuto booth at the Everywhereelse conference in Memphis) on the way to his sister’s wedding in Cincinnati, Marty laughs when asked if he’s sharing the ride.  “Of course,” he laughs.  “We posted a ride and our friends are joining us on the way back!”  

Already onboard with one distribution model, ClemsonUniversity is the first of many to come with a RidePost url (Clemson.RidePost.com) to use as a booking engine for high-traffic weekend airport shuttle for students and staff with an @clemson.edu address.   

Marty can’t say enough about the introductions and support he’s received from The Trip Tribe and Fortify teams, particularly Dave Aidekman who “is awesome”and founding partner, Jonathon Perrelli. “I met Jonathon through a mentor of mine, Dan Waldschmidt from South Carolina who knows Carla Valdes, a Fortify partner,” he says, adding they built a relationship over time as they continued to get out from behind their computer to build community. “Jonathon is the Jerry Maguire of investors.  Once he selects a company he really goes to bat for them, making introductions, opening doors.  He’s always got our backs.”

So, this journey really isn’t all about the money?  Is it?  Is it? Is it?

To cite Dave’s favorite travel quote on The Trip Tribe profile: The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page. – St. Augustine

 

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Janice K. Mandel | 6 Comments

iGrabberAutos, Cvent and Less than Six Degrees of Separation from Steve Case

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Janice K. Mandel

iGrabberAutos, Cvent and Less than Six Degrees of Separation from Steve Case.

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iGrabberAutos, Cvent and Less than Six Degrees of Separation from Steve Case

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Janice K. Mandel

It isn’t always apparent when the ripple effect of a local success story like AOL enriches a startup community.  If you panned the crowd of the DC Chapter of Startup Grind fireside chat at iStrategy Labs in March, you might have missed one.  Khurrum Shakir is founder of iGrabberAutos, a search engine similar to Kayak.com, that gathers information on car listings from multiple portals.  Type in your information once and search them all.  He recently caught up with Cvent CEO and founder, Reggie Aggarwal, at a fireside chat he learned of the day before at a Tech Breakfast and decided to attend with long-time friends and now, colleagues, Phil Howard, Director of Operations and Sales and Ronald Fraser, Chief Engineer.  Though Khurrum and Reggie both have Asian roots what binds them is closer to home: northern Virginia and less than six degrees of separation from Steve Case. 

During his “chat,” which he commandeered by bringing a slideshow, Reggie smiles wryly when he tells the group that as the son of two Indian engineers, his choice was to be an engineer or a doctor.  Instead, he unsettled his parents by going to law school and then by becoming a bootstrapping entrepreneur right before the dot.com bubble and 9/11. They’ve come around now that Cvent is on the way to becoming the largest event management software company in the U.S., with 1,100 employees and used by 150,000 event and marketing professionals in 100 countries plus $136 in venture funding from an impressive list of business leaders, including Steve Case.  But not before Reggie says he hit bottom as a 33-year-old nearly bankrupt entrepreneur who owed nearly every top executive in town and lived in his parent’s basement.  It’s a darkest-before-the-dawn sound byte that captures at least as many headlines as Cvent’s growing success

Aspirins vs. vitamins?

“Is it better to sell aspirins or vitamins?” Reggie quizzes the Startup Grinders.  (Hint: You know when you need an aspirin.)  

Khurrum and his friends nod and smile, knowing that iGrabberAutos was an aspirin, inspired in 2010 by Khurrum’s personal pain and frustration in filling out forms on multiple sites like Carmax, AutoTrader and even eBay in search of a GMC Denali sport utility vehicle. Since the site went live on November 15, 2012, in the first two months with no advertising or publicity, iGrabberAutos had over 1,500 users per month.

Reggie emphasizes the importance of maintaining the entrepreneurial culture of the business he built at great personal cost. Who can blame him for interviewing everyone that Cvent is looking to make part of the team?  He earned it.  Personally, he tells the group: “To nearly fail is one thing; to nearly fail publicly with speculation in the press is gut-wrenching.”  

Khurrum thinks hard about assembling the right team. His tech team came to him through a referral by a local friend and he recalls the night he invited Abdul-Malif Ahmad, Chief UI Developer/Designer and Deepak Pillai, Chief Software Architect-Developer to his home office.  “We had a great conversation and I thought, let’s call it an evening,” says Khurrum, “but they were so passionate to start they asked me to show them the prototype to identify its problems and see if they could fix them.  Once they saw the back end they were like kids in a candy store and they kept working until 1:30 in the morning.”

As the fireside chat continues, Khurrum and his colleagues take it all in, exchanging glances as Reggie recounts familiar struggles, mistakes and victories trying to figure out the right avenue to solve a problem or create something new?  BtoB…BtoC…How to connect with the right investors?  That’s still a question as to date Khurrum has funded iGrabberAutos through his personal savings.

What’s the Steve Case connection?

Khurrum, raised in Norwalk, Connecticut, is a natural storyteller who needs to get warmed up before sharing that his father and grandfather were actors. His father’s advice was to find his own path after college.  That path, blazed by Khurrum’s brother, Usman Shakir, led to AOL’s offices in New York City, where Usman served as Director of  Finance.  After starting out at GE and taking on a finance role at a small company, Khurrum joined AOL in 2006 as marketing program manager.  Within a year he was promoted to join the business development team and AOL relocated him to Leesburg, Virginia to the home in which he now runs iGrabberAutos.

As a business development lead for AOL, Khurrum was responsible for supporting AOL Latino and AOL marketplace and commerce, which included a division called AOL Autos for which he “had the pleasure of doing deals and negotiating partnerships for AOL autos, commerce, travels and personals.”  Over his three years with AOL, Khurrum learned a lot about structuring teams and putting together agreements with perspective partners.  He learned to introduce innovation through divisions of AOL autos, such as Wheels TV, which integrated videos into an audio platform that provided a narrated, virtual test drive alongside coveted cars such as audis and Ferraris.

Khurrum left AOL in December 2009 and by January 2010 was hit with the idea for iGrabberAutos.  He ran with it.  At last year’s Everywhere Else Conference in Memphis, he met Scott Case, the founding chief technology officer of Priceline.com, who warned him of the tough road ahead but said he had a fantastic concept that he saw doing very well.  And, no, Scott Case isn’t related to Steve Case but he was named CEO and board member of the Startup America Partnership to which Steve Case is pretty darn connected.  [See Steve Case, Wikipedia.]

At the end of the fireside chat, Khurrum lingered, connecting with fellow entrepreneurs and ending up near the end of the line that had formed to meet Reggie.  The guest speaker had been running late at the start and the sponsors needed to flick the lights on and off to signal the evening’s end.  The remaining people moved towards the elevators and Khurrum found himself standing next to Reggie.  He turned, shook his hand and had his moment as the elevator doors closed.

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