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.)

Along with the opening of the application cycle, we’re planning on having several opportunities for you to learn about the program, see the AlphaLab space, and engage the members of the AlphaLab Team. We will be hosting an AlphaLab Information Night later this month and have office hours throughout September and October in different locations throughout the area.

If you have any questions or issues with submitting your application please contact us at application (at) alphalab (dot) org. We also encourage you to check out the blog posts and videos we’ve been posting featuring our current crop of entrepreneurs!

Follow us on Twitter and continue to read our blog for additional news about the Winter/Spring 2012 application cycle. We’ll be announcing the date and time of the AlphaLab Information Night and first set(s) of office hours soon!

We will again be holding “office hours” that will allow applicants to meet the AlphaLab team and ask questions about AlphaLab and the application process. The following dates are currently scheduled:

• Wednesday, September 22th 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
• Monday, October 4th 4:30 – 6:30 PM
• Thursday, October 14th 12:00 – 2:00 PM

We’ve provided a method to allow interested individuals to schedule themselves for a meeting slot via online reservation. Two slots are available for each 20-minute time period. If a particular slot is grayed out, it has already been reserved. Please limit your team to one slot only.

If you have any questions or issues, please e-mail application (at) alphalab [dot] org.

Good luck!

Not long after, local Pittsburgh station KDKA did a story that not only features Josh and fellow founder Lynsie Camuso, but also the legendary cereal wall.

Most recently, Lynsie was interviewed by Mixergy and tells the ShowClix story and how it came to be the company it is today.

Congrats ShowClix on all the recent buzz!

At the end of the show Jason and Lon selected Shoefitr as the winner of the pitch contest! Here’s their pitch:

Also part 2 where they make the decision:

Congratulations Shoefitr on a great pitch and special thanks to John Ganotis from Deviceknit for organizing the event!

AlphaLab’s Demo Day is the opportunity for our “graduating” AlphaLab companies to present to an audience of investors, potential partners, and other key individuals from across the country. Attendance was standing-room only and the companies all did a great job with their presentations, continuing to raise the bar for the next AlphaLab class.

Innovation Works President and CEO Rich Lunak welcomes the audience with some opening remarks.

John Ganotis of DeviceKnit

Rodrigo Carvalho from Black Locus

Karen Anderson of 80 Degrees West Interior Design

Don Charlton, founder of The Resumator (far right)

The Shoefitr team (who also was featured on CNET.com’s Web Crawler Blog)

Derek Wahila, along with Regina Parundik and David Wells, from Photo Synesi

Startup Pittsburgh provides a round-up of the event on their blog as well.

]]> http://www.alphalab.org/blog/index.php/2010/06/15/spring-2010-alphalab-demo-day-in-pictures/feed/ 1 http://www.alphalab.org/blog/index.php/2010/06/02/modcloth-raises-19-8-million/ http://www.alphalab.org/blog/index.php/2010/06/02/modcloth-raises-19-8-million/#comments Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:07:26 +0000 Mike http://www.alphalab.org/blog/?p=162 Continue reading →]]>

Congratulations go out to our friends at ModCloth, who have secured the biggest raise in the Pittsburgh area so far in 2010 for the amount of $19.8 million.

CEO Eric Koger has spoken to AlphaLab participants on several occasions: sharing his experiences in starting the company as well as technical and business strategies that helped make them a leading online clothing destination.

You can find more information about the investment as well as Eric’s comments in the Pittsburgh Business Times article online.

ModCloth is an Innovation Works portfolio company and arguably the fastest growing startup in Pittsburgh – increasing its headcount by five times in two years to 138. The company sells retro and vintage clothing from independent designers.

Congratulations again to Eric, Susan, and the entire ModCloth team!

The response to the previously announced office hours has been terrific – so much so that they have already “sold out”!

Monday, April 5th from 12:30-2:00 PM is when we’re holding the additional office hours session here at AlphaLab. The meetings will be 20 minutes in length with members of the AlphaLab team to talk about your concept as well as ask questions and discuss the AlphaLab program.

While we encourage you to attend them in person, we also would like to welcome those who aren’t located in Pittsburgh to participate via conference call.

To register, please visit our registration website. Two slots are available for a given 20-minute time period. If a particular slot is grayed out, it has already been reserved. Please limit your team to one time slot.

Good luck!

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!