Chris Shipley – Co-executive Producer of the DEMO conference, Founding Partner and Chairman of Guidewire Group, and AlphaLab Advisor – dropped by AlphaLab last week to visit with us and share some of her insights.  Chris is a native Pittsburgher but lives in California so this visit was quite a treat.  We knew Chris would be in town but only found out that morning that she would be able to spend the afternoon with us
so we got together a group of AlphaLab companies and neighboring Innovation Works’ portfolio companies together last minute to meet with her.  Participating companies gave their elevator pitch and Chris asked them questions and shared her thoughts on their products.  Given Chris’ 20 years of experience working with technology companies (and the fact that she works with about 500 companies a year), this was greatly appreciated advice.  We hope she visits us again soon!

Shanna Tellerman – CEO of Innovation Works’ Portfolio Company Sim Ops Studios – was featured in a recent BusinessWeek article and was named one of the best young tech entrepreneurs by BusinessWeek Magazine.  This is quite an accomplishment and we at AlphaLab would like to congratulate her.

Sim Ops Studios is the creator of a really fun consumer and enterprise product called Wild Pockets, which I personally became addicted to when it launched.  Wild Pockets is a software service that lets you create just about anything you can imagine using 3D content.  I highly recommend playing it!

Congrats to SMaSh, an Innovation Works portfolio company and South Side neighbor to AlphaLab, for its recent round of investment led by Mark Cuban.  The company has developed a platform for developing mobile applications on top of the SMS protocol which allows for greater capabilities in areas of search, transactions while taking advantage of text messaging’s widespread adoption. It’s been great working with Eric and Chanu (Smash’s co-founders) as they have built their technology and initial applications and I’m excited about the continued growth of the company, especially with the investment and involvement of Mark Cuban.

Flickr photo by Spanaut

One of the unique aspects of AlphaLab is the “Interim Demo Day” that we hold at the halfway point of the program. It is an opportunity for the companies to present their investor pitch and demo their applications – to a small audience consisting of advisors and IW’s investment team -  while still having almost two months to incorporate the feedback into their development and market plans before the Demo Day. Each company gets 15 minutes to present/demo and then is given 10 minutes of American Idol style feedback from the panel of advisors, investors and fellow entrepreneurs.

We held our Interim Demo Day on last Friday and as with our last AlphaLab group, it was a quite a success. It was a great experience for the companies to test their investor pitch, their company messaging and in many cases, to show off the significant progress they’ve already made. While many did an excellent job, every company received constructive feedback on areas to improve and focus on – not only in their investor presentations and demos but also in their business and product strategies.  The companies also had an opportunity to better understand what their fellow companies were doing and to see the progress that others have made. While the AlphaLab culture is collaborative and supportive, introducing a competitive dimension is a good motivator for the companies to push themselves harder and collectively raise the bar.

Some takeaways from the Interim Demo Day:

•    I appreciated that several companies took some risks with how they presented and demo’ed and were able to get feedback on whether it worked or not. It’ll be interesting to debrief with them this week to hear their interpretations.

•    Many of the presenters didn’t highlight the relevance of their experience and background to their company.

•    While the “judges” were usually in agreement on the feedback, there were a few cases where there was disagreement. This is one of the challenges for startup companies – investors and advisors all have different perspectives and philosophies and will sometimes emphasize different variables – thus often resulting in seemingly contradictory feedback. The key for entrepreneurs is to understand the context and reasons behind a particular piece of feedback and to decide what is most pertinent to them.

•    All of the companies will need to do more work on their business model and projections during the remainder of AlphaLab.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the companies adapt and respond to the Interim Demo Day feedback – and to their continued progress over the next two months.

On Friday afternoon we began to take applications for the Summer/Fall 2009 AlphaLab session which starts on June 15th, 2009!

We’ve introduced a new phase of our application cycle this time around:  Early Action.  What is Early Action and what’s it all about?

Early Action is a great opportunity for applicants to be considered and potentially accepted earlier in our general application cycle.     Some highlights include:

• Early Action applicants will be invited to a meet-n-greet event with AlphaLab staff where they can interact and ask questions.
• Early Action candidates that are accepted to AlphaLab will be able to get an early start on working on their companies and have early access to AlphaLab resources.
• If an applicant is not accepted as part of AlphaLab Early Action, they will be re-considered as part of the general application period.

Check out the Early Action FAQs for additional information.

Want to see the questions without having to start an application?  Check out the PDF of our application questions.

The Early Action deadline is April 17th, 2009.  Our general application deadline is May 15th, 2009.

For questions or issues, please send an e-mail to apply (at) alphalab [dot] org.

Good luck!

Yesterday we hosted our fourth Open Coffee Club meeting – a group organized by Aaron Tainter and Alan Veeck of Meakem Becker Venture Capital.  Alan speaks to the goals of Open Coffee Club in this post on his blog, Pittsburgh Ventures.  The turnout was great, as can be seen in the picture.  We had a nice mix of entrepreneurs (seasoned, new, and wannabes), investors, and service providers all mingling with each other.  One of the attendees texted me, “good networking” after the event and I would agree: I saw a lot of familiar faces but many new faces and had an opportunity to speak with many of the attendees.  Justin Kownacki – self-proclaimed social media explorer – discussed his experience at the event in this post on his blog, Cafe Witness.

In conjunction with the Open Coffee Club event, we announced our second group of AlphaLab companies.  You can read more about the new AlphaLab companies here. We are excited to work with the six companies and look forward to a busy twenty weeks!

If you’d like to find out about the next Open Coffee Club in Pittsburgh, join the Open Coffee Club group on Facebook.

ShowClix, great supporter of AlphaLab and Innovation Works portfolio company, has an important role in the activities going on in conjunction with Super Bowl XLIII.  They were recently covered by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review for landing several high profile Super Bowl parties going on in the week leading up to the big game.

Heading down to Tampa?  Diddy and Deion Sanders headline the extravaganza as part of the Good Life Experience.  Want to meet Playboy Playmates and models, or are professional athletes both current (Ray Lewis and Reggie Bush) and former (Earl Christy and Joe Namath) more your speed?  ShowClix offers a great way to get into these hot events with tickets issued electronically in a no-muss no-fuss fashion.

(ShowClix is a Pittsburgh-based event search engine and online ticketing company created to connect artists, venues and event promoters with the millions of people around the world that are seeking local events. The website combines an open, event database with an online ticketing platform, giving event promoters, artists and venues an easy, affordable way to promote their events and sell tickets to users who search for, track and share events on the site.)

Tonight AlphaLab will be hosting Refresh Pittsburgh from 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM.

Refresh Pittsburgh is a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical, and professional culture of Internet developers in the Pittsburgh area.

Tonight’s speakers are Val Head from New Perspective (speaking on “Observations on Client Relationships and How We Deal with Them”) and Samantha Warren from Viget Labs (presenting “Typography is the Foundation of Good Web Design”).

If you are a web developer or interested in web design and technology, please consider joining us!  Refreshments and Wi-Fi will be provided!

Hope to see you there!

PodCamp Pittsburgh,  the local premier “un-conference” on social media, is happening this weekend! and it all kicks off at AlphaLab tonight!

PodCamp Pittsburgh is a community UnConference for people who create, enjoy or are interested in learning more about blogs, vlogs, audio podcasts, web video, content networks and new media monetization.

The official Meet-n-Greet kicks off at AlphaLab tonight at 6 PM with food and refreshments and is an excellent opportunity to network with individuals that share an interest and passion for social media in Pittsburgh! You’ll see many of the attendees though the remainder of PodCamp’s sessions which start at 9:00 AM on Saturday. Check out the schedule to see all of the great sessions available on blogging, podcasting, social networks/tools, monetization, and community that occur through Sunday afternoon.

See you this weekend!

AlphaLab will be hosting DevHouse Pittsburgh 5 starting at 6:00 PM on Thursday, October 2nd and lasting until midnight.

From the organizers of DevHouse Pittsburgh:

We’re about rapid development, ad-hoc collaboration, and cross pollination. Whether you’re a l33t hax0r, hardcore coder, or passionate designer, if you enjoy software and technology development, DevHouse Pittsburgh is for you.

DevHouse is not a marketing event. It’s a non-exclusive event intended for passionate and creative technical and design people that want to have some fun, learn new things, and meet new people.

Members of the AlphaLab team will be presenting a lightning talk about the AlphaLab program and the application process.

If you are a developer and are interesting in sharing, learning, and talking about technology in a open collaborative space… you should come down to the AlphaLab on Thursday!