Following up on Sean Ammirati’s talk to the AlphaLab companies, we had an elevator pitch workshop with the AlphaLab companies to help them create and hone those important introductory sentences that describe their business to their target audience. We were fortunate to have Dave Mawhinney and Frank Demmler lead the workshop with the companies. Dave is a close friend and Advisor to the AlphaLab program, has been a serial entrepreneur in the region for over 20 years and is currently an Executive in Residence at the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse and an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Frank has managed several seed funds and mentored numerous companies, currently heads up the Entrepreneurial Services group at Innovation Works and also teaches entrepreneurship at CMU. Frank has also created an online toolkit that is a valuable resource for entrepreneurs as they build their business.

The workshop was very valuable and pretty entertaining. I had a chance to role play meeting the entrepreneurs for the first time and hearing them tell me about their companies. Frank pointed out that the elevator pitch is “an arrow in the quiver” that entrepreneurs can use to communicate with investors, just as an executive summary, business plan and slide deck are other quivers. Dave emphasized that the pitch needs to include a definition of the target customer, what pain they’re feeling/what problem you’re solving and a quantification of the unique benefit being provided.

Thanks again to Dave and Frank for helping the companies hone their pitches!

Our AlphaLab companies tell us that one of the most valuable aspects of the program is the opportunity to meet and learn from fellow entrepreneurs, our advisors, and other domain experts in our network. We do this in many different ways, ranging from AlphaLab alumni group and our Interim Demo Day to networking events, but a core component of our program is the weekly group sessions with these guest speakers.

Recently, Sean Ammirati, the COO of ReadWriteWeb and an AlphaLab Advisor, talked with the companies about a variety of topics, centered around the theme of “Demo or Die.” Sean stressed the importance of reducing risk from an investor perspective during the AlphaLab program and that a key way of doing so was developing an initial release of the product and iterating rapidly on user feedback. Sean shared five tips with the companies on how to “Release Early & Often”:

1) Be “embarrassed by your first release” – LinkedIn’s founder Reid Hoffman’s quote is a great way to capture this sentiment of releasing early.

2) Go “anti-stealth”. Sean stressed the importance of developing relationships early with the people who can help your business and that a good way to do so was to be transparent about your ideas and plans so that they can provide feedback/help early on.

3) Get really good at the elevator pitch. Usually one thinks of elevator pitches with talking to investors, but Sean emphasized that the companies need to have an elevator pitch for any interaction they’re going to have.

4) Use agile development techniques. Even with a two or three-person startup, it is important to be able to estimate and manage development. Sean talked about the notion of “velocity” and how Scrum (as a technique) could help companies measure their velocity.

5) Measure, Measure, Measure – Sean emphasized the importance of measuring the business and identifying what matters the most to measure.

Sean has been a great advisor to AlphaLab and we thank him for continuing to be a big part of the program!

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.

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!

This Wednesday, we’re hosting the Open Coffee Club of Pittsburgh at the AlphaLab offices at 2325 E. Carson in the Southside.

What is Open Coffee?

The main goal of Open Coffee is to make investment more transparent to entrepreneurs, and to move away from the formalized “pitch” to an open conversation. Investors can give entrepreneurs really valuable feedback, and this environment is meant to foster that in a pressure-free way.

The AlphaLab team will also be available to answer questions about our program and the open application cycle.

If you’re a entrepreneur this is a great event to have informal conversation, speak with others about your business, and learn about AlphaLab!

Open Coffee starts at 9 AM.  You can read more here (http://www.mypunchbowl.com/partypage/3b3e47b197ef0270)

Hope to see you there!