Live from Capital Factory Demo Day 2010
Nothing is stopping Capital Factory’s Demo Day 2010 from happening, it has been raining since yesterday morning in Austin, roads are flooded, traffic is unbelievable bad and yet, the AT&T Conference Center, University of Texas is a crowded place this morning. I had my breakfast and my coffee, now I’ll be adding comments to this post about the happenings at this event, stay tuned!
Keynote speaker Naval Ravikant talks about how the Entrepreneurs have gain leverage, it is easier than ever to start a company because it is:
- Cheaper
- Incremental
- Incubators/Combinators
- Transparency
- Mostly Seed investments
Naval talks about how the game has changed in the past 18 months, the market is now listening to the Entrepreneur’s demands. Angel Investors are listening to Entrepreneurs and the process of getting funded is easier, at least for startups looking for seed money. This a new way of financing:
- Product built at the incubator level
- Continuous, not discrete rounds
- No fixed amounts, no closings, no leads
- Standardized documents
- etc…
It is a spontaneous, social service for discovering fun events. Their national launch will be next year at SWSX 2011, look for their free app in the iTunes App store.
Collect, organize, and share the best of the web.Curate real-time content into visual collections. Remix tweets, status messages,and web pages. Embed on your website or blog.
Next up, Ash Maurya and Lean Startups. Ash is talking about Lean Startups, to learn more about this you can check his blog at ashmaurya.com
PetsMD – A presentation by a successful Capital Factory alumni.
Tina Cannon, CEO of PetsMD talks about how CapitalFactory helped her to get her business launched and now her company has achieved some tracking and success. PetsMD is currently Angel funded and they are currently looking for a $500,000 investment to help them expand their services.
Congratulations on your success Tina!
They help game developers build multiplayer games, for families. They provide the backend and a platform to achieve this.
They are currently looking to acquire more developers and enhance their feature set. Famigo is also looking for an A series round investment to help them grow and expose their platform to game developers.
Their product is currently in Beta, you can check them out at famigogames.com
This is a very cool startup and I am sure that my wife will love this idea very much. Today, I am happy for all the women out there, your life has become a little bit easier!
Rosilyn Rayborn pitch was great, I think her idea is going to work, it just makes sense to have a service such as this in the interwebs. Dave McClure tweeted “@davemcclure: pitch is hands-down best i’ve heard in the past 3 months. no question. cc @CapitalFactory”
Smackages.com is your one-stop destination to discovering the latest beauty trends from luxury brands, learning how to apply them and getting samples delivered directly to your door for free—because that’s how samples are meant to be!
Lunch at Capital Factory Demo Day.
So far this event has gone pretty good, we learned more about Capital Factory’s startups (class of 2009 and 2010) and it is very motivating to see all the entrepreneurs and investors that took the time from their busy schedules to be here.
It is great and interesting to see how Austin is evolving into a mayor player for startups, angel investors and the like.
The event is organized and very well put together. If you were not able to be here in person, you can view the live video stream here.
Also, if you want to follow and participate in this event using Twitter, the hashtag is #DD10
RippleFunction Converts Event Attendees Into Evangelists …So That Your Event Sells Out.
RippleFunction talks about their service key advantages, increase attendance, automated value metrics, integrated, no coding, etc…
Their pricing model is this, they charge a 5% fee per event attendee referred from RippleFunction. They only make money if your event makes money. They put butts in seats.
They have a great solution for a huge problem. Brooke Betts, co-founder of RecycleMatch says that their company is the first and only internet marketplace dedicated to matching companies that have waste with companies that can use the materials productively. We keep your company confidential, while using the internet to tell the world about the hidden resources that are in your dumpster. It’s a great way to save time and money, while saving the environment.
It is a great idea, it uses social media and the concept of an online marketplace to achieve their goal, making landfills obsolete! they make waste a resource.
Dave McClure talks about his 2010 investments, 40+ deals, $3.5M. Dave McClure founded 500 Startups LP in 2010 which is a seed fund and an incubator that will help startups with everything from design and UX, technology, marketing, etc…
After throwing a few f* bombs Dave McClure starts talking about distribution platforms and web 2.0, he says it is better, bigger and the startup costs are lower but most startup companies still fail. His advice is to find investors who know what they are doing to get not only the money but the expertise and connections that a good investor will bring. The Web 2.0 business model is all about Keeping it simple (KISS).
Dave also commented on Incubators, he called it Incubator 2.0: Education, Collaboration, Iteration. He advises Capital Factory to try to accept more startups, even if it feels it is unmanageable because 5 startups per program (which is the number of startups that Capital Factory helps per program) is not enough to have the network effect.
All in all, it was a great talk, very educational and helpful for any entrepreneur looking to succeed.