Since our 8th cycle of AlphaLab companies (The Ocho) moved in, they’ve already participated in 7 educational sessions, met our alumni network and started honing their elevator pitches (as well as basketball skills).

And now they’ve love to meet you and let you know what they’re working on!

Join us Friday, February 10th from 9-11 am at the next Open Coffee Club to meet our six newest AlphaLab companies as well as other entrepreneurs, investors, designers, developers, and startup enthusiasts in the Pittsburgh region.

Event Details:
Open Coffee Club
Friday, February 10 from 9 – 11 am
2325 East Carson St, Pittsburgh, PA

As always, the coffee is free and the event is open to all! So please pass along this invite to anyone else who you think would be interested.

(And for those of you who’ve never been to one of these events and don’t know what to expect, here is what it typically looks like…in 21 seconds.)

AlphaLab grads from our 7th cycle strike a pose. Pictured companies: 8020select, MakerCraft, Krowder, VitalClip, ComVibe, and PHRQL

Photos & Video from AlphaLab Demo Day are Up

Since our 7th cycle of AlphaLab companies pitched their ideas to a roomful of investors, entrepreneurs, and advisors (as well as 200+ viewers watching live) at AlphaLab Demo Day, we’ve put up photos up on Flickr and archived footage of the pitches up on Vimeo.

Cycle 8

Right now we have the difficult task of deciding which companies will comprise our next cycle. After a record number of applications, the decision will not be easy; however, the growing quantity and quality of applicants speaks to the blossoming ecosystem Pittsburgh has created for entrepreneurs that makes it possible to not just start a company here, but to thrive here.

For more on that, our friends over at the Allegheny Conference recently posted this great video of AlphaLab CEO’s discussing the benefits of starting a company in Pittsburgh:

Open Coffee Club – Pittsburgh

Though our nest will soon be empty in preparation for the next cycle, we wanted to open up the space before the holiday break for Open Coffee Club.

Join us on the morning of Friday, December 16th for free coffee, pastries and networking. And as always, the event is open to all, so please pass along to anyone you think would be interested so we can continue to grow this entrepreneurial community!

Delirium was named Most Innovative Company at Funded by Night–read the company’s account of their experience on their blog.

The Resumator closes a $700k investment from outside the region

NoWait wins Contegix Start-up, Boot-up Competition and is featured on popular food blog, foobooz

AlphaLab hosted the 3rd Innovation Happens Pittsburgh last week–pictures from the event (including the one above) are now up on our Flickr page

And mark your calendars—the next Open Coffee Club Pittsburgh is scheduled for Friday, 5/13 at AlphaLab!

The roundtable event will be held on Thursday, April 28 from 9:00 a.m. to noon at a location to be confirmed.

While the White House will ultimately decide on the final list of 150 participants, if you have experience in one of the following industries—Energy,
Environment, Software/Technology/Robotics, Healthcare, Manufacturing–and would be interested in attending this event, we urge you to submit a request, as each of these industries will be a focus of a breakout session.

To submit a request, send an email with “Pittsburgh” and one of the five industries above in the subject line to reducingbarriers@sba.gov. Also, copy rharris@chatham.edu and rlunak@innovationworks.org to be considered to be part of this conference.

Include in this email:

● Name
● Contact information-email, phone, address
● Business information
● Explanation of why you should be considered to participate in these roundtables
● Which session/industry you would like to participate in (same as above)

We encourage you to apply as quickly as possible. If you are selected to attend, you will be contacted by the White House directly.

More about the event:
Dubbed “Startup America: Reducing Barriers Roundtables” the proposed roundtable setting will enable entrepreneurs to identify and discuss outdated and cumbersome federal barriers and restrictions that currently inhibit growth. Input collected from these eight sessions will be highlighted in the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) response to an Executive Order from President Obama requesting the recognition and simplification of these barriers.

Chatham University’s Center for Women’s Entrepreneurship, in cooperation with resource partner SMC Business Councils, is working with the Western PA SBA District Office to coordinate this event. They have asked Innovation Works to extend an invitation to our partner organizations.

Image via flickr/C. Young Photography

For those of you who weren’t able to make it out to the event, or if you didn’t get the chance to meet all our current companies, check out Deb Smit’s recent article in POPCity: Wawadoo? AlphaLab unveils next class of software startups

Also, be sure to join the Open Coffee Club – Pittsburgh Facebook group to find out when the next event will be held.

(And don’t worry, we’ll be sure to double our next order of coffee.)

In between feverishly developing their products, market strategies (and basketball skills), they’ve received some advice from our previous cycle of companies; participated in an investor pitch workshop hosted by IW’s Frank Demmler and Terri Glueck; learned the importance of “shipping fast and often” from ReadWriteWeb’s Sean Ammirati; took part in a roundtable discussion on accounting considerations for startups with Sisterson & Co; sat in on a BlueTree Allied Angel Screening Meeting; and heard some valuable advice (and entertaining anecdotes) from Don Charlton, Cycle 2 alum and Founder/CEO of The Resumator.

And this Friday, you’ll get your chance to meet with AlphaLab’s current cycle of companies at Open Coffee Club Pittsburgh. Organized by Meakem Becker and open to the public, this event is an informal opportunity to network with fellow entrepreneurs, developers, investors, and designers in the area.

If you’re free in the morning, we’d love for you to stop by!

Event Details:
Friday, February 11
9-11 am
AlphaLab (2325 East Carson Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15203)

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.

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!