When: Tuesday, Mar 2, 2009 7:00 PM Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto More: http://meetup.com/svnewtech
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Lineup:
notepal.com – Online market for buying and selling notes from classes, conferences, book summaries, etc. [Duane Nason]
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99designs.com – Leverage a community of designs for ‘on-demand’ designs fast and affordable. [Jason Aiken]
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superfeedr.com – Bring real-time updates and notifications to your app with real-time feed parsing in the cloud [Julien Genestoux]
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envolve.com – Just add Envolve to your site for enabling conversations and building community. [James Tamplin]
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Links & Give-aways
* Can your technology solve the issues surrounding the Cloud? Win $10,000 and mentorship in the Cloud Security Challenge 2010. Entry is free. http://GlobalSecurityChallenge.com
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They’re hiring [Sponsored Section]
* Aftershock is looking for a superstar rails/java devs who wants to work in the exploding iphone games market for a company leading the Top 10 games – jobs@aftershocksf.com
* Lead programmer wanted: Exciting 1 yr old web 2.0 start-up. Facebook meets Ebay. Low pay/Ground Floor. I Founded a current leading web entity. Contact: marketing@stylophane.com
Ignite are 5min lighting presentations, with each slide at 30 seconds. I put together some material for any event organizers that shares some of the knowledge I’ve gained over the past 4 years with my Silicon Valley NewTech meetup and how we grew from 5 members at a coffee shop to 5,000 (technically, we’re at 4,874).
You can watch me with firery red hair side by side with the slides:
Here are our notes from the last meeting which include some really valuable links you may want to bookmark. (copied here: http://delicious.com/vlauria/sfadpub )
In March, we’ll have somebody from Google AdSense joining us
A few 3rd party networks for selling space on your site:
I just attended a breakfast hosted by Next Step, The Brenner Group and K&L Gates on how to position your startup for acquisition. There’s a lot of common sense that goes into it. I picked two halves of a pb&j because I think that’s what best represents a merger or acquisition – when the additive results tastes great and keeps the customers coming back to buy more. Here are a few meaningful points I took away:
Position your self for an acquisition, such as partnerships with potential acquirers. Think about this in your product strategy.
Think of your competition from your acquirer’s perspective. You may not necessarily compete for the same customers, but maybe there’s similar technology/services out there that you would be similar to from an acquirer’s perspective.
Be mindful of your intrinsic low value customers vs. your high value and strategic customers. Low value may be online sales customers, ad revenue customers, etc. High Value and Strategic customers will usually be of the highest interest from a potential buyer
Accounting / GAAP / Tax compliance – make sure this is all legit. I repeat, make sure you are fully compliance here. 1, it can really delay due diligence not to have all your paperwork or be out of compliance. 2, it can slow down the due diligence and you may not have the resources to sit through it. 3, it could be used against you during negotiations as the price can lower with increased risk. 4, if a public company is acquiring you, they will have to do a full audit with the SEC w/in 75 days of purchase. Finally, as you are positioning yourself for acquisition, you may want to have your company audited – your company will look stronger for it, and you’ll also avoid any delays during due diligence.
Make sure all your other ducks are in order, cap table, previous employees, founders that left, board seats, etc. You (and your acquirer) don’t want any puppies coming out of the closet during or after acquisition.
Global acquirers? They’ve seen a lot of global investment, and think the market might be opening up to more global acquisitions with companies looking for a presence here in the valley.
Hey all, just a quick reminder on our meetup tonight, Feb 9th. In March, Google AdSense will be sending a rep or two to answer your questions, so we’ll use some time tonight to prepare some questions I can send them before hand.
Tonight, Feb 9th, 7pm.
Zebulon, 2nd Floor, above the bar (83 Natoma St)
Please forward this email to any friends/colleagues that run a web property and make real revenues from ads. The more people that join the group, the more influence we’ll have at getting ad networks out to answer your questions.
Also note, I may have to limit the RSVP count in March to 30 ppl, priority will be given to people who have attended this meetup at least once.
Look forward to seeing you tonight,
Vinnie
917-612-0051
– What is SFAdPub?
SFAdPub is a monthly meetup for ad publishers & web startups looking to learn from each other and share advice. Each month we’ll focus on a different topic, such as ad placement optimizations, mobile advertising, affilate networks, alternate ad networks, google analytics, etc. The group has been casually meeting over the past few months and started the monthly meetup in January. Come network with other startups and ad publishers and learn how to make more money from your site. Every other month, we’ll feature representatives from major ad networks to answer your questions: http://meetup.com/SFAdPub/
We have a great lineup of companies leveraging the power of real-time information and updates to power a new set of services.
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Also, at the end I’ll be recapping some info of how we passed the 4 year mark and now our group is about to hit 5,000 members! The NYT has also provided us with some iphone schwag, enough for all.
* Red Cross Wearale Technology Contest – Help the Red Cross bring awareness to the importance of disaster preparedness through wearable technology. Free to enter! http://bit.ly/svnt-redcross
* Aftershock is looking for a superstar rails/java devs who wants to work in the exploding iphone games market – and for a company leading the Top 10 games on itunes. Lots of perks, like free lunches, full healthcare, etc. aftershocksf.com/jobs
ul.timate.info – Add a whole new UI to the social web. Pile on features to twitter, facebook, foursquare and a number of other social services. [Jason Wiener]
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lazyfeed.com – Get real-time on real-time news. Described as a sushi conveyor belt for your interest, let’s see how fast you can fill up. [Ethan Gahng]
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my6sense.com – Filter out the most relevant real-time content coming at you from your social stream. [Barak Hachamov]
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leapfish.com – The web has evolved quite a bit in the last decade but has your search engine? Leapfish brings real-time and community to your search experience. [Lena Shaw]
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Links
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* Watch January’s Expert Series Talk, Putting a Term Sheet together by Brad Rock, Partner DLA: http://bit.ly/svnt-termsheet
* Can your technology solve the issues surrounding the Cloud? Win $10,000 and mentorship in the Cloud Security Challenge 2010. Entry is free. http://GlobalSecurityChallenge.com
* Tech & personal experience talks to take the Automattic stage for @IgniteBayArea’s celebration of Global Ignite Week on SF on March 2.
Friends from the bleacherreport.com (great sports site btw) shared this tip with me a few months back, and now after having friends inquire about it, i figured it’s something to be shared.
It’s a custom report that you must create, just create these filters
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Step 1
Login to Google Analytics and Add a profile to an existing account.
Edit the profile settings and scroll down to the filters section. Add the following filters:
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Step 2 – Create filters
Filter 1: Organic Filter – just include organic traffic
Type = Custom Filter
Option = Include
Filter Field = Campaign Medium
Filter Pattern = organic
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Filter 2: Google Filter – just include google sources
Type = Custom Filter
Option = Include
Filter Field = Campaign Source
Filter Pattern = google
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Filter 3: Search Engine Visitors – only include search results with ‘cd’ in the referrer
Filter 4: Search Ranking – display results in user defined report
Type = Custom Filter
Option = Advanced
Field A -> Extract A = Referral \bq=([^&]*)
Field B -> Extract B = Referral \bcd=(\d*)
Output To -> Constructor = User Defined $A1 | Rank: $B1
Field A Required = Yes
Field B Required = Yes
Override Output Field = Yes
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Once you have some data in the account you should be able to view reports and go to Visitors > User Defined. Type in the filter Rank: [1-5]$ and you’ll see a listing of all your keywords that are in the top 5, you can change 1-5 to be 1-10 to see all keywords on the first page.
The meetup will be an informal gathering for ad publishers to share knowledge of ad optimization and ad networks over beers. As the group grows, we’ll have small roundtables with small and large ad networks, like google adsense.
The first one is tomorrow night. Whether you’re interested in joining us tomorrow or in the future, please be sure to join the group to be informed of updates and free tips.
We have 15+ RSVP’s for tomorrow night, that’s great! I’m looking forward to getting 8-10 of us together for our first event. I’ve spoken to people at Google and they’d love to come out to a future event in February or March – which would allow us to ask them direct questions about Adsense.
What to expect Tuesday night – A very informal gathering of fellow ad publishers sharing tips. I’ve spoken to the manager at Zebulon and she’s gonna give us our own room above the bar. And as an added incentive to join us, I’ll grab a drink for anybody who brings a fellow ad publisher along or gets them to join the group (honor system, i’ll trust you)
What: SF Ad Publishers Meetup w/ FREE snacks/appetizers When: Tues, Jan 12, 7pm Where: Zebulon, 83 Natoma St, San Francisco, CA 94105 More: http://www.meetup.com/sfadpub/
Brad Rock, a partner at DLA Piper and gratious host of the Silicon Valley New Tech meetup has shared with us his incredibly valuable Expert Series Talk on what Term Sheets look like in Silicon Valley for web & tech startups. The presentation was record on ustream and I’m working on getting the audio sync’d with the presentation below. The slides have a ton of information and I had a number of people come up to me after the talk and say how what they learned about Term Sheets would have cost them hundreds of dollars if they had to sit down with their own lawyers.
Understanding Silicon Valley Term Sheets – Which Terms Don’t Matter & Which Terms Do
A sample Series A Term Sheet provided by Brad Rock, Partner at DLA Piper
Thank you DLA Piper for your many years hosting the Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup.
The SVNewTech started in Jan of 2006, and in 4 years we’re now 4,700 members strong! Take advantage of our community offline on our LinkedIn Group.
Tonight we’ll be featuring 3 hot startups with pretty killer iphone services, some with true business models!!! We also have another speaker of our Expert Talk Series – Brad Rock who you all know as the gracious host to introduce each night will be giving a talk on putting a Term Sheet together.
Google Wave – We’ll also have a few bloggers testing out the real-time collaboration of google wave, if you’d like to participate, at 7pm enter the following in the Google Wave search box: tag:SVNewTech with:public
And a reminder, isocket and meetup are hiring, info below.
apptizr.com – iphone app suggestion service that actually works. It’s like Netflix for apps on your phone. [David Li]
iformbuilder.com – Data Collection on the iphone, that is super easy to build and use. Some customers include Hershey Chocolates, Comcast, and a number of Universities. [Chris Reichart]
thinkcomputer.com – Will be launching a new mobile payments service that really impressed me – I think you will be impressed too. [Aaron G. & Michael Anderson]
Expert Talk Series – Putting a Term Sheet together. [Brad Rock, Partner DLA]
Are you an Ad Publisher looking to get more money from ads and share tips with other publishers? Then join the new meetup I’m starting next week. http://bit.ly/sfadpub
FREE – IBM Developer Cloud beta: Request base OS servers and load the stack you like, or try out images of IBM software. RESTful API available. http://ibm.com/cloud/developer
isocket is a hot new ad platform that just landed some top funding and TechCrunch as their first beta tester. They’re adding a few backend web devs to their small and talented team. Apply – http://www.isocket.com/jobs
Meetup is looking for superstar engineers to move to New York City http://meetup.com/jobs (mention this email)
Your company here – email vincent -dot- lauria -at- gmail -dot- com
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A special thank you to:
The New York Times for sponsoring this meetup – nyt.com
Meetup.com who is looking to hire superstar engineers wanting to move to NYC meetup.com/jobs
DLA Piper for hosting us each and every month – dlapiper.com
Future-works.com for providing wine & beer at tonight’s event.
[Your Company Here] -> Email vincent -dot- lauria -at- gmail -dot- com
With 2009 ending, we’ll also be wrapping up our 3rd year as a group. Jan 2010 will be our 4 year birthday! We have great demos and an Expert Talk tonight, and I’ll leave a little time to field any questions you might have about the meetup for a year-end wrapup.
If you can’t make tonight, 7pm Live Stream:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/svnewtech
Lineup:
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* likeminds.com – Share your ratings from different websites like Netflix, Amazon, iTunes and discover new favorites. [Alan ElSheshai]
* breakthrough.com – Counseling & psychiatry over the web. Lower costs than traditional methods, yet offers the same effectiveness and the ability to prescribe medicines. [Mark Goldenson]
* rrripple.com – A cool interface that allows you to organize and share your media with whoever you want, however you want. [Dan Smucker]
* Expert Talk Series: How To ‘Use’ your Users – A tongue-in-cheek approach at getting the most out of the community using your web product. [me]
* Year 3 Wrapup
When: Tuesday, Dec 1, 2009 7:00 PM
Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto
More: http://meetup.com/svnewtech
Links
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* Apply to showcase your startup to tech trend-setters and VC’s at SXSW in March. Deadline is this Friday. If you’re in bootstap mode, email chris@sxsw.com and he may be able to waive the fee. http://bit.ly/8V9Om0/
* Are you an Ad Publisher looking to get more money from ads and share tips with other publishers? Then join the new meetup I’m starting in January. http://bit.ly/sfadpub
SVNewTech Job Board
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* Gene Chamson – Accomplished marketing/biz dev professional with a broad combination of experience, is looking to contribute to an internet startup, <genemail09@gmail.com>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/genechamson
* Steve Bonner – network sales, <stevebonner@comcast.net>,
* Tim Crawford – IT Leader: Cloud Computing & Data Center Optimization. Strategic visionary to tactical execution, <tim.crawford@gmail.com>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/timcrawford
* Santiago Quijano – Product Manager with experience in telecommunications and internet technologies, <sqnewton@gmail.com>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/santiagoquijano
* Grace Hu-Morley – Looking to help the right company turn technology & market needs into successful, people-friendly products., <gracehm@gmail.com>, http://www.gracehm.com
They’re hiring
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* Ning is looking for Community Managers, Engineers, Product Managers, Designers, Oracle (11g) DBA and Database Architects. http://about.ning.com/openings.php Contact priya@ning.com and mention this newsletter.
* Meetup is looking for superstar engineers to move to New York City http://meetup.com/jobs (mention this email)
* Tristan Kromer – Looking for a fourth member of my venture startupSQUARE.com in San Fran. Know some engineers? PHP, PERL, HTML, Javascript? Send ‘em my way., <accounts@tristankromer.com>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/tristankromer
Sponsors and Supporters
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A special thank you to:
* The New York Times for sponsoring this meetup – nyt.com
* Meetup.com who is looking to hire superstar engineers wanting to move to NYC meetup.com/jobs
* DLA Piper for hosting us each and every month – dlapiper.com
* Future-works.com for providing wine & beer at tonight’s event.
* [Your Company Here] -> Email me by replying to this newsletter.
With 2009 ending, we’ll also be wrapping up our 3rd year as a group. Jan 2010 will be our 4 year birthday! We have great demos and an Expert Talk tonight, and I’ll leave a little time to field any questions you might have about the meetup for a year-end wrapup.
likeminds.com – Share your ratings from different websites like Netflix, Amazon, iTunes and discover new favorites. [Alan ElSheshai]
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breakthrough.com – Counseling & psychiatry over the web. Lower costs than traditional methods, yet offers the same effectiveness and the ability to prescribe medicines. [Mark Goldenson]
.
rrripple.com – A cool interface that allows you to organize and share your media with whoever you want, however you want. [Dan Smucker]
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Expert Talk Series: How To ‘Use’ your Users – A tongue-in-cheek approach at getting the most out of the community using your web product. [me]
Year 3 Wrap-up
Links
Apply to showcase your startup to tech trend-setters and VC’s at SXSW in March. Deadline is this Friday. If you’re in bootstap mode, email chris@sxsw.com and he may be able to waive the fee. http://bit.ly/8V9Om0/
Are you an Ad Publisher looking to get more money from ads and share tips with other publishers? Then join the new meetup I’m starting in January. http://bit.ly/sfadpub
.
They’re hiring
Ning is looking for Community Managers, Engineers, Product Managers, Designers, Oracle (11g) DBA and Database Architects. http://about.ning.com/openings.php
Meetup is looking for superstar engineers to move to New York City http://meetup.com/jobs (mention this email)
Tristan Kromer – Looking for a fourth member of my venture startupSQUARE.com in San Fran. Know some engineers? PHP, PERL, HTML, Javascript? Send ‘em my way. http://www.linkedin.com/in/tristankromer
Another great lineup and more free tickets in our monthly newsletter. Demos featuring: custom TV, recruiting software you’ll need with the economy picking up, people powered car traffic info, and how businesses do twitter.
watchuwant.tv – It’s like last.fm for video, create your own channel. [Adam Bossy]
newtonsoftware.com – Simple to use recruiting software to make your life easier when bringing on new hires. [Joel Passen]
waze.com – Crowd sourced traffic information. Something I’ve been asking for since 2003. [Anselm Hook]
coTweet.com – ‘How Business does Twitter.’ From Ford Motors to Starbucks, co-tweet will help your company engage customers using Twitter. [Jesse Engle]
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Links & Free Tickets
* Subscribe to my emailings on the meetup.com website to receive links to free tickets – meetup.com/svnewtech
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They’re hiring:
Ning is looking for a Site Reliability Engineer, Product Managers, Designers, Oracle (11g) DBA and Database Architect. http://about.ning.com/openings.php Contact priya@ning.com and mention this svnewtech.
Meetup is looking for superstar engineers to move to New York City http://meetup.com/jobs
You won’t want to miss tonight’s lineup, 4 companies with solid ideas, each in a different market. And for a clear indicator that this recession is turning around, the ‘We’re Hiring’ list at the bottom of this email is longer then the ‘Job Board’ for the first time since starting the job board this year. And if you subscribe to my emails via the group, you’ll be privy to $2,400 in free ticket giveaway’s this month.
trekaroo.com – A travel site focusing on a large interested community – families with kids. Find activities, share advice, and travel to all corners of the world. [Brennan Pang & LiLing Pang]
uShow.com – Turn your twitter fans into a video channel. Login to create a video channel with the videos your friends are sharing. [Joe Shapiro]
workingpoint.com – Simple invoicing and bookkeeping. There in prime territory after Mint’s acquisition. [Tate Holt]
plurchase.com – A secret y-combinator company that’s going to give you a sneak-peak before anyone else. [Tom Saffell]
Reminder – the newsletter has $2,400 worth of free ticket giveaways to the first to act! I work hard to sneak in free giveaways to the group each month.
Tonight’s lineup includes some fresh new startups and one well established company that has had recent success with another product launched on top of twitter.
feedbackjar.com – Allows customers at the local level to help answer questions and share ideas on products and services they use in their local community. [Nick Leung]
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* nutshellmail.com – Get a single email sent on your own schedule that includes updates and notifications from all your social networks. [David Neubauer]
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* philtro.com – Filter out all that noise on your twitter account with a simple but intelligent rating system. [Paul Singh]
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* imageshack.us / yfrog.com – ImageShack is the in the Alexa Top 100 (#61) websites across the entire web. Learn about what they’ve done and where they’re going with their new yfrog service and twitter. [Mike Harkey & Jack Levin]
* DLA is hosting the America West Regional Finals of the Global Security Challenge on 9/29. Top contenders will present their security companies to an audience of security investors, advisers, analysts and other experts. [free event] http://bit.ly/boiYn
* I’ve submitted a panel to speak at next year’s SXSW conference on ‘Community Power: How to Use Your Users’. I would love your vote: http://bit.ly/sxsw-users
* nvidia GPU Technology Conference: http://nvidia.com/gtc – 2 FREE passes to the first 2 ppl to email me w/ the subject NVIDIA GPU (a $750 value).
yourversion.com – Save time browsing the web and let YourVersion discover the best web content for you. [Dan Olsen]
nombray.com – Own your online identity. Pull all your social profiles into one place on the web for people to find you. [Chris Lunt]
hollrr.com – Get rewarded for shouting about the things you love. – [David Hegarty]
Expert Talk [SEO] – Lawrence Coburn of sexywidget.com and rateitall.com is an Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert and has helped a number of startups around the valley increase their rankings on Google.
——————-
When: Tuesday, Aug 4, 2009 7:00 PM Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto More: http://meetup.com/svnewtech
Tonight should be interesting. For the first half of the demos, you’ll see two companies that are doing very creative things in the micropayment space. They both have services to help content creators (publishers, newspapers, bloggers, videobloggers, etc.) get small contributions from their large reader list and followers.
The second half of the demos will feature the hard work that a number of SVNewTech’rs put together for historical data on the past 3 1/2 years of svnewtech demos. Diagramic will be presenting this in their data visulation tool, and I’ll spend a few minutes talking about how web companies have been evolving over the past few years.
Special thanks to the following group members These two put in many hours of work to gather historical data on presenters. This data will be published to the group after tonight’s meetup.
* Lakshmi Narayanan http://www.qalegion.com/
* Todd Miner who gets to achieve “total consciousness” caddyshack style
Also, thank you again to everybody that changed their RSVP last month to make for a better meetup experience. They’ve been added to a special VIP list to gurantee acess to 2 months of meetups.
The Lineup
payyattention.com – A micropatronage network supporting journalism [Steve Farrell]
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kachingle.com – Sprinkle change on the content you love. [Cynthia Typaldos]
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diagramic.com – Automatic data visualaztion that helps ‘connect the dots’ [Alex Kouznetsov]
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Review of Silicon Valley web companies over the past 3 years w/ Q&A from audience [me]
——————- When: Tuesday, July 7, 2009 7:00 PM Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto More: http://newtechmeetup.org
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Live Stream for those who didn’t make the RSVP list
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Thanks to ustream.tv, Tuesday’s, June 2nd meetup will be live streamed for those who didn’t RSVP and want to watch from home/work/some mobile device:
We are overbooked, there was a problem on the meetup website and the 150 cap was accidentally removed. We need to get the RSVP list <280 and I need your help! Read below and I’ll give you a GIFT in return.
If you didn’t RSVP, we CANNOT fit you into the event (I will have a printout of RSVP’s) – but you can watch it live at the link above.
— Great lineup with another ‘Expert Speaker’:
notableapp.com – Building a website? Notable allows your team to comment directly on the website for faster development times and easier communication. [Hunter Block]
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psd2cssonline.com – Turn a layered photoshop file into dynamic CSS file ready to theme your website or blog. [Shaun McIntyre]
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ccBetty.com – Your own personal email assistant, from event manager to file manager, just ‘CC’ Betty and she’ll organize it for you. [Michael Cerda]
. Expert Talk (Educational Series): Christian Ashlock of Google will give a lightning talk and answer your questions on Google AdSense, Ad Manager, and Analytics
——————————————————
Need 50 Volunteers & VIP status
——————————————————
We’ve done extra work to make room for the larger turnout (we’ll be streaming the A/V into another room to split btwn 2 rooms). However, we still need to knock off 50 people from the RSVP list (get it down to <280) and I have two gifts for trade:
1. A 50% discount on a NewTech meetup happening on June 10 San Francisco. Similar crowd, similar format, and just as interesting. The organizer of the SF Meetup is doing a great favor with this discount (first 30 to respond). http://bit.ly/nBzDO Email vincent.lauria+sfnewtech610@gmail.com for the discount code.
2. A VIP status for 2 months on the SilicionValley NewTech meetup which gives you a guaranteed spot at the next two meetups in Silicon Valley (first 50 to respond). Email vincent.lauria+VIP@gmail.com for VIP status.
If you are willing to help out the group in trade for one of the above options, please email me at the links above AFTER you’ve changed your RSVP to ‘No’ so I can verify. You’ll help make Tuesday night a better event for everybody.
——————————————————
Free $50 bucks – no strings
——————————————————
Rob Garcia, of April’s Meetup is giving away $50 awards to members of this meetup group, just sign up for a Lending Club account (no strings attached): http://bit.ly/GLcix
And another FREEBIE just for the SiliconValley NewTech group. The non-profit, HandsOn Bay Area has an event on Wed from 1-4 in PA. Join entrepreneurs, VCs, and investors at a unique philanthropic event – Venture Out, a half-day of high-impact volunteering. 2 FREE tickets for the first 2 svnewtech’rs to signup with code ’svnewtechfree’, everybody else gets a discount. http://bit.ly/biAY2
As you can see, I work hard to keep this event free and get rewards for you, so I hope that 50+ ppl can change their RSVP to ‘No’ to make Tuesday night fun and manageable!
——————- When: Tuesday, June 2, 2009 7:00 PM Who: Only those who made the RSVP list (sorry, absolutely NO drop-ins this time) Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto More: http://newtechmeetup.org
Last month, a friend at IBM asked me to give a presentation on what I’m seeing for the startup landscape from companies demoing at my meetup.
Below is the slides from my presenation. The short of it in a few bullet points:
We’re getting pass the social… and getting back to the practical.
2-3 years ago, 75-100% of a startups primary function was ‘social networking’ related. Today, a startup with a primarily ‘social’ function may pop-up only every other month.
Since Feb of this year, creative ideas & entrepreneurs are sprouting.
The new play is ‘Platforms‘. It’s no longer Open Source but Open API
Cloud Computing is just starting to hit on consumers, and it will take that adoption to make it really big on the corporate side of things (just like blogs/wikis/social networks made a bigger consumer splash before going enterprise)
Posted: May 7th, 2009 | Author:vinnie | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
A friend of mine just started a Meetup.com group and asked me for some tips on attacking members. Here’s 10 ideas I sent him:
free pizza and free beer (even 2 pizza pies and 2 12 packs is all you need to get a crowd in)
have it at a location ppl want to goto – either a fun bar/restaurant, or an office that is an interesting host, like a big firm that ppl would want to network with somebody at the firm (a normal office isn’t as exciting
tell everybody you think would be interested about it, i printed out biz cards for the meetup off the meetup.com website and always handed them out
invite ppl that you think will attract members, for me that was 4 companies to demo, for you it could be companies, or it could be a high profile individual. they don’t have to speak, but let the group know they will be there
send a personalized newsletter a few days before the event to remind me and let them know you want a true yes/no
use craigslist to repost the event in the events section, meetup.com helps with this. I also posted on sites like upcoming.org and eventful
be super friendly to all new members when you meet them so they keep coming back
ask your members to rate your meetup (meetup automatically does this, but if you don’t get a lot of ratings, ask again)
give out something free at the event (even a t-shirt) and mention this before hand
create a linkedin group around the event so there is a way to leverage the network offline
Posted: May 5th, 2009 | Author:vinnie | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Besides it being Cinco de Mayo today (I’ll bring some Mexican beers), we have another theme going tonight – alternate ways for you to make money (as an individual or a company).
lendingclub.com – Do what the banks don’t – show some common sense on loans and make great returns. LendingClub brings together investors and creditworthy borrowers to offer value beyond traditional banks. [Robert Garcia]
odesk.com – They’ve created a $70 million dollar market. Free lancers and firms have a market place to find new clients or contract hire individuals on an as-needed basis. [Gary Swart]
getgambit.com – A payment platform for onine gaming and communities that puts cash in your pocket from your customers based off of alternative payment systems they can easily afford. [Noah Kagan]
adroll.com – Boost your advertising income by connecting long tail advertisers that match your community. Or save money by hitting the right demographic with less money then other ad networks. [Jared Kopf]
—- When: Tuesday, May 5, 2009 7:00 PM Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto More: http://newtechmeetup.org
and the 
