Techpaulogy

Startupalooza and #drunkgeeking

This weekend's Startupalooza event was a lot of fun. Thanks to all the organizers! While I very much enjoyed learning about some really cool new projects in PDX, as is the case with most structured events, the most rewarding part for me was all the side conversations buzzing in hallways and nearby bars. It's all about the people! It reminded me of one of my side projects, the Entrepreneur Salon, which has been percolating for a year or two. The essence of it is to gather techie folks for informal meetups at local bars, to get together and have fun, with no real agenda -- only time set aside to hear each other's ideas and get the entrepreneurial spirits (literally and figuratively) flowing. I haven't done much with this idea yet, though Scott Kveton just called me out, in his re-cap of Startupalooza:

And, as is the case at any event in Portland, there were the seedlings hatched for new events. One was an impromptu idea that Paul Biggs (aka @techpaulogy) had called #drunkgeeking. Say you’re married, with an SO, etc and they have gotten tired of your inebriated ramblings about technology. Wouldn’t it make sense to find a couple of other nerds you could get your drink on with and then talk about geeky topics? Instead of trying to organize it on a regular basis, why not just use Twitter + the hashtag #drunkgeeking to coordinate on-the-fly events. For example, you could couple this with Unthirsty and find a good happy hour, Tweet “#drunkgeeking in 15 minutes at the Side Door” and see what happens. I love it and am looking forward to it after Paul gets done with his three day pantless bender. :-)

Aside from that latter part about the bender (which may-or-may-not be related to CommandoSEO.com), I must agree. If anyone wants to give it a whirl, that is, getting together ad hoc beer & entrepreneurship/techie meetups, try to send up the bat signal on Twitter: #drunkgeeking. Here is the inagural tweet, and here is the Hashtags page to see how the idea fares.

(Sadly, I won't be able to be involved for a week or two thanks to the current frenzy at Jive -- I've been rallying with our Web Engineers and Design team in the office until 2am every night for the past week, and plan to do so again this week as well).

Portland Web Innovators Meeting

I just got back from my first Portland Web Innovators meeting -- met a great crew of people. The main topic was a free-form discussion lead by Jason and Matt about their experience working on a side project (Unthirsty, a sweet happy hour finder) that they essentially used instead of a resume to help land their current gigs at Instrument.

Here are some of the people I met:

• Jason Glaspey,  Unthirsty co-conspirator
• Matt King, Unthirsty co-conspirator
• Justin Lewis, Interactive Director at Instrument
• Adam DuVander, creator of wifiPDX
• Justin Kistner, Interactive Manager at Nemo Design (& wrote a full summary of the meeting)
• Kevin Scaldeferril, programmer at Yahoo
• Sean R., a Geek With a Laptop

Catalyzing Entrepreneurs - Early Stage Incubators

A recent post on Techcrunch, "TechStars: Summer Camp (and cash) For Entrepreneurs," caught my attention -- recently, there's  been a wave of venture capitalists reaching out to help early stage entrepreneurs. And by "early stage," we're talking people who haven't even really got a business plan together yet. I am a big fan of this, and have my own idea for such an undertaking, which I will get to in a later post. In the meantime, the field is getting interesting. The new incubator Techstars is collecting applications for a 3-month summer camp in Boulder, CO where winners will (the plan is to choose 10 applications) band together with mentors and $15,000 in seed funding to try to turn their ideas into a reality.

While it's almost grounds for a good reality TV show, in truth, it's a great idea. I believe one of the hardest parts of leveraging a great idea is actually taking the risk to put aside your other priorities and jump in headfirst. There are a few other players in this space, including:

• Y Combinator - recently launched companies like Reddit (bought by Conde Nast) and JotSpot (bought by Google), but for hundreds of thousands, not millions. More details on them over at Techcrunch.
• Charles River Ventures - CRV's new QuickStart initiative aims to open up a new market for this larger incubator and VC firm, with the motivation that it is going to be less up-front risk (and potentially higher ROI) to get in at this level.

Business practices aside, I think that this mindset among the angel investors will help motivate more budding entrepreneurs to take a crack at their ideas, rather than fall into the traditional corporate mold that often sucks in newly minted graduates -- myself included!