(Don Charlton, seated center)
Don Charlton, the creator of The Resumator, has written about some of his most important takeaways from participating in the AlphaLab program during the Winter/Spring 2009 cycle. We love having Don as a member of the AlphaLab family and The Resumator continues to grow, attracting customers including some high-profile Web companies such as Dropbox, Posterous, 37 Signals, and Evernote.
It’s that time of year! We are excited to announce that AlphaLab is now accepting applications for its Winter/Spring 2010 cycle!
AlphaLab is a catalyst for launching the next generation of software, web, mobile, and entertainment technology companies. Created by Innovation Works, one of the nation’s most active seed-stage investors, AlphaLab provides funding, free office space, expert business advisors and services during its biannual program in Pittsburgh. AlphaLab helps companies rapidly develop their technology, gain user feedback from early product releases, develop go-to-market strategies, and move towards a successful commercial launch.
For more information and to access the application, visit: www.alphalab.org. The application deadline is October 20th and the program begins on January 5th. You can also learn more about Pittsburgh’s entrepreneurial scene and AlphaLab’s role within it in the following blog entry from Center Networks: http://www.centernetworks.com/why-i-love-pittsburgh-startups.
If you would like to learn more about the program, you can attend the next Open Coffee Club meeting at AlphaLab (2325 East Carson Street in Pittsburgh’s South Side) on October 1st starting at 9 am. AlphaLab team members will be at the Open Coffee Club meeting to answer any questions you may have about the program and to help you determine whether your business idea is a good fit for the program. You can also meet others who are interested in the program and a few of the current AlphaLab teams.
Posted in Uncategorized
Congrats to Showclix - an online ticketing solution for event organizers – for closing on a round of funding from Pittsburgh Equity Partners! They were featured in this Techcrunch article discussing the funding round. We look forward to seeing how Showclix grows as a result of this funding and are just very happy for Josh and Lynsie (Showclix’s cofounders in the photo above) for this accomplishment!
When I told my friends in the Bay Area that we were moving from Palo Alto to Pittsburgh, many of them asked me about the tech scene in Pittsburgh. I tried to describe to them what I knew then about the city and the potential it had to become a tech region. Seven years later, that potential has become more evident and I am even more excited about the future of Pittsburgh, especially in technology. Sean Ammirati, CEO of mSpoke (an Innovation Works portfolio company) and an AlphaLab advisor, does a great job of describing why we love Pittsburgh in a post today on Center Networks. And he was able to make the case without even once referring to the Steelers, Penguins, or the fact that Pittsburgh is a great sports town.
Vivo – a current AlphaLab company - was featured in today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Vivo is a web-based video broadcasting service that provides users with a private, customizable environment for sharing events. The article about Vivo is the featured story on the Post-Gazette website and is on the front page of the business section in the print edition. You can access the article by clicking on the following link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09197/984226-96.stm. Congrats, Vivo!
Posted in Uncategorized
Felix Brandon Lloyd, President and CEO of Skill-Life, was invited by the White House to be present for remarks by President Barack Obama highlighting innovative social entrepreneurs around the country. Felix remarked that “to be included in a group of social entrepreneurs that the President says are creating the most innovative solutions to our communities most challenging problems, is humbling and inspiring.”
The remarks were made by the President to call upon organizations to work together as well as to call attention to the $50 million innovation fund that is part of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. The President thanked the attending organizations, saying “… today, I want to recognize that pioneering spirit and thank you all for the contributions that you’re making to our communities.”
Felix believes that the $50 million fund will “help take social enterprises like Skill-Life, Inc. to higher levels as will the fact that the President has established an Office of Social Innovation.”
Skill-Life, an alum of the Summer/Fall 2008 cycle of AlphaLab and 2007 Echoing Green Fellow, is developing a game-based platform through which tweens earn real-life rewards as they play games to teach life skills such as financial literacy, nutrition, and citizenship. Skill-Life plans to release a beta version of their CentsCity product later this month.
For more information check out the Official White House Blog as well as the President’s complete remarks.
Posted in AlphaLab Company News
Tagged Barack Obama, Echoing Green, Skill-Life, White House
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!
Posted in AlphaLab Advisors
Tagged alphalab, Chris Shipley, Demo Conference, Guidewire Group
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!
Posted in Innovation Works Portfolio News
Tagged alphalab, BusinessWeek, Shanna Tellerman, Sim Ops Studios
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.