iBreakfast

Monetizing Social Networks - iBreakfast Video Report

2008-05-14T10:49:00.000-07:00

Report from our April iBreakfast

SPEAKERS:

David Birnbaum, Takkle
Michael Lazerow, BuddyMedia
Steve Ennen, Neighborhood America

Monetizing Social Networks was a revealing event where companies shared their secrets for extracting revenue from his key Web 2.0 phenomenon. The basic challenge is that the trusted social environment of these networks makes it hard to pay of referrals or otherwise tap the interactivity of the medium.

However, since the involvement factor is exactly what makes these networks so compelling that is where these there companies have developed solutions. (As an example of this involvement factor we showed how under 30's were willing to make complete fools of themselves taking on a Zulu dancer where a generation before them would have been content simply to watch.)

The favored solution is a high involvement contest or ratings game. The extent and variations are all over the place but they call come down to this key Web 2.0 idea we call "Collaboratition" driving people to work for you by creating a competitive environment. The main thing here is that people are encouraged to spread the work and grow the campaign virally.
Brands are typically using them to expand involvement with their products and the system, according to Lazerow is forming into the next ad unit.

WIKINOMICS REPORT

2008-03-20T13:51:00.000-07:00

March 19 - iBreakfast

Katarina Skoberne, OpenAd.net
Nic Perkin, The Receivables Exchange
Jessica Morris, OurStage.com

The March iBreakfast was notable for showing how to put the world to work for you by tapping into idea marketplaces. This is not about Wiki software per se but about extracting value from the universe simply by putting it to work for you. We call it Collaboratition – motivating people to work together or against each other for a common purpose.

This is truly a revolutionary concept even though it has been talked about for a long time. What is clear now is that all the tools and public sentiment is in place for those who can think outside of conventional parameters to harness. This point is so important because it also explains why your next competitor is not likely to be your current one – since they are probably as captive as you are to conventional wisdom.

We looked at 3 companies using some form of Collab – in music, advertising and monetizing receivables.

OpenAd.net is a really good example of all of the above because it is a great way for marketers and advertisers to reach out to the world creative community for ideas. They pay OpenAd a fee of several thousand dollars and then put out a brief to their community of 10.000+ creatives worldwide and offer a prize – typically between $500 and $2000 – for a fleshed-out campaign idea. The concepts pour in. The most famous being one set up by Bono to retire 3rd World Debt. But many Fortune 500 companies like Gillette participate too.

And where does this groundbreaking company, now with offices in the US hail from? Slovenia.
Next, we looked at The Receivables Exchange, which monetizes the short term loan you give to customers when you allow them terms of 30 – 90 days. From their perspective this is a free loan which, worldwide is worth around $2.3 trillion. Now that’s a nice number!
This is often called factoring and normally, companies call their bank or a factoring company and get the best deal they can which is typically around 15-25% in annualized interest. By creating an open exchange, suddenly you have made your business opportunity available to the world and your interest comes down dramatically. Investors tend to get a very good return for their risk too.

Finally, there is OurStage.com, a music judging and promotion site which covers just about every genre from rap to world music as well video. It is open to all comers and has a monthly contest for around $500 in prizes in each category. The dynamics are very interesting. Aside from raising $13 million, the site has grown quickly and attracts 1.2 million monthly uniques.
Visitors are asked to judge two songs whenever they log on and here’s the secret – it is a “thin slicing” approach - you only have to listen to the first 15 seconds to judge. Naturally, that favors songs with the hooks up front, but even so, by aggregating the scores on these microjudgements, they come up with a good index of what is hot. Any musician, amateur or pro can submit and there is no fee. The site makes money through ads, selling songs and sending out the cream of the crop to record co.’s and concert organizers.

The eye-opening part is how they grew – by the musicians themselves, of course. That’s because today, every busker worth their salt has an email list and their own little marketing machine called: “emails to fans.” It can be postcards toom but you can’t beat the price of emails

So the lessons learned are: figure out who can be motivated to help you (especially ones who can multiply your message), how to reach them and how to execute with a great site. This is a key point because so much of this intangible that the IP rights are a critical issue.

The metaphor we chose to set this show in motion are UFOs and the Web, partly because, like the value concepts of Wikinomics, they have a way of popping out of nowhere and people seem hellbent on uploading these videos by boatload onto YouTube. The motivator appears to be the ubiquity of camcorders and a desire to let the world know you’re not crazy. Or is it too much Photoshop? Either way, the world works for you – you just need to figure out how to tap into it.

Other Blogs about this iBreakfast:
Why the Big 4 Labels are Dead by Ray Beckerman

Attention Surplus & The Fastest Monetized Music Site - Ever

2008-03-17T08:07:00.001-07:00

If the record business needs a lesson in how to make money, then the former Governer of New York has one for them.

Think about it - within 48 hours of the public discovering that Ashley Dupre, the high priced call girl who took him down, was a budding singer with two moderately good hip hop songs on the 'Net, she sold something like 200,000 downloads.

This is truly a first. Hookers didn't used to sing. And if they did, they almost certainly didn't have a record contract.

Now you don't need a label and a scandal is worth more than a record deal.

The moral of the story is this is: this truly an attention economy and you have to be ready at any given time with monetizable product. We, of course, prefer you stick to more distinguished efforts but the principle is there.

More importantly, it explains why someone like Edgar Bronfman was willing to put up $2 billion for Warner Music. The record business may be dying, he said in a Daily Deal conference, but not the music business. So when an Asian star has a hit, his company has 400 SKU’s from ringtones to keychains, to sell.

The question for everyone out there is:

1. What do you have to sell at your moment of attention?

2. How do you get that moment of attention (without quite that moral turpitude?)

To be discussed at our Wikinomics iBreakfast on Wednesday, and many more to come........

Wikis & UFOs: The "Rodney King" Moment in "Star Land?"

2008-03-14T06:42:00.000-07:00

Here I stick my neck way out and instead of focusing on Digital Media, I talk about what it has enabled.

UFO's, right? Has the power of the 'net made a difference to this great controversy?

You’d think by now that the prevalence of camcorder phones and other cheap image-capturing devices would generate a lot of videos. And with Youtube, they could be seen from anywhere in the world. No possible government or media intervention to worry about.

So, has there been a Rodney King moment? The kind where something we've been talking about for years is captured right there for everyone to see.....

Is that happening with UFO's.?

Perhaps. Not only that, but it may be happening every day.....

Top of that list is aol.com with this little picture:

This picture of a UFO over London was shown last month on the front Page of the London Sun.

This picture of a UFO over London was shown last month on the front Page of the London Sun.

On Youtube, UFO's are so plentiful and convincing that you would not have enough time to see them all in a week. Not only that, but many are shot in broad daylight or with digital camcorders that somehow pick up infrared or other parts of the light spectrum not otherwise visible to humans.

Here are a few that simply bowl me over:

The Live Turkish Broadcast

The Chinese Shakeout

The French Freakout

The Haitian Hover (could be fake but WOW!)

Usually, it is the user reaction that sells it even though its the easiest part to fake. In any case, the highlights include great still images, video on live TV and credible-looking images over world cities. In January 2008, there were widespread reports of a mass sighting of a UFO Fleet in Stephensville TX.

Then, there are compelling documentaries with the testimony of credible people like Fife Symington, former Governor of Arizona, describing the famous mass Phoenix sighting in the 90's in a CNN special. Even video from NASA - which includes the famous "Tether Incident" displaying dozens and dozens of UFOs, are appearing, making it clear that something is going on out there.

Air Force video clips from all over the world are appearing on the 'Net. China is full of UFO Clubs and high levels of sighting are reported in Latin America.

Increasingly, these craft are being seen in formations. There just aren’t enough Photoshop hours in the day to make all of them fakes.

So the question is what’s going on?

As it happens, an old school friend who lives in Hong Kong contacted me a few months ago to answer that. The big word is Exo – as in Exo Politics and Exo Worlds and Exos of all kinds.

The short story is - there certainly are other intelligent life forms out there from other planets. Why, for heaven’s sake, wouldn’t there be? Thinking of mankind as unique has to be the highest form of self-flattery - of the delusional kind, that is.

But aside from that, these forms have technology that enables them to move at amazing speeds and at very high levels of maneuverability. They may pop in and out of other dimensions or wormholes and they can be huge - the size of several city blocks. Some are as big as a whole neighborhood.

They are usually saucer-like and some have a recognizable cut-out making them look like Pacman. But they also come in chevrons and oblong shapes.

Naturally, there have been encounters and experts have patched together a storyline from the collected reports.

Since the first major sighting in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 seems to have occurred within a few years of the first nuclear weapon, people think they are connected. The gap in time gives us an idea of how far they traveled though we think their tech may have improved so more can get here quicker. It may also be that the escalating nuclear threat could be an issue.

If they are truly here, they come at a very good time because they know how to use free vacuum energy from the universe. So there could be economic interests at play. Also, their technology is more advanced, so the military is deeply interested. They are generally more highly evolved beings using, more of their brains, and they can access telepathy. They don't seem to suggest war although they do abduct us - but only if we are willing to go through with it.

They come in what has been identified as over 50 races. Some look like us - others really don't. And there may well be a federation. Since their craft do crash and leave bodies, we have reports that their anti-immune system doesn't work well here.

So what are we to do? There really may be Star People and aliens and a Star Land - if the evidence really stacks up.

So we need to get a heads up on the other side. The government does have knowledge of them. Why wouldn't they - since they are responsible for dealing with any invasion to the land. There are reports they not only classified the races but actually kept a little colony of "Tall Whites" as they are known, in Nevada caves. These beings are a paler version of us, are intelligent, have higher consciousness and so on. However, if the Nevada story is true, then they may have been left behind in the home furnishings department.

Then there is the question: so why are they here and what should we be doing?

My friend Neil Gould, has plenty to say about this in an English language news interview.
He claims to have seen them since he was a boy. I have known him since then and can only say that even if true, he never mentioned it to me!

In any case, this calls for a conference…….Exo-Con.....coming soon!

And here's the best part about this conference we are planning - skeptics and believers pay different prices.

My question to you, dear reader, is: who should pay more, the skeptic or the believer? Who should subsidize who?

We welcome your comments. Or just the vote: skeptic or believer? Who pays more?

(C) 2008 Alan Brody

Web Video: Is There Money to Be Made?

2008-03-04T21:54:00.000-08:00

Report form the Feb 2008 iBreakfast

Marcien Jenckes, Voxant
John Lumpkin, Heavy Media
Bryan Thatcher, Empressr

TV may be going the way of Web Video but according to Marcien Jenckes, a former AOL exec, “TV dollars are only giving us Web Video pennies.”

So how do you make a pile of pennies, these days?

It turns out that YouTube and IPTV in general has attracted thousands of competing sites but in order to stay alive, they have had to reinvent themselves.

Heavy.com which was originally just a destination site for young men has become a kind of media aggregator and sales that sells and syndicates young male-oriented content to its major ad partners.

Voxant redistributes high value video streams for free to new viewers who mind wind up as subscribers to the premium sites.

Empressr is a hybrid video and slideshow site that enables viewers to communicate in new ways.

For the most part, however, whatever money is being made is through advertising and there, pre-roll, those annoying ads that run prior to the video, are king.

At the end of the day, the challenge video is arbitraging the half-penny or so a stream into a profitable cpm. For many, the solution, at least in part, may come form Google's recent introduction of Adsense for Video.

Long Live the Pre-Roll (for Now)
ClickZ News, NY - Feb 27, 2008
Heavy Media's John Lumpkin and Voxant CEO Marcien Jenckes both made that assessment today at an iBreakfast program, "Web Video, Where's the Money? ...

For VideoEgg and Its Platform, Ads Trump Content Delivery
ClickZ News, NY - Feb 28, 2008
The company's shift was pointed out by Alan Brody, organizer of an iBreakfast panel discussion in New York City about the Web video business. ...

From Barack-Clinton to Google: Could You See The Tipping Point?

2008-02-26T10:04:00.000-08:00

Can Hillary vs. Barack teach us something about the Internet marketplace?

Everyone seems to recognize the tipping point after the fact. But can you see one coming?

My view is fairly simple – look for the bases to be somehow loaded and then watch out for something outstanding or outrageous to happen.

In politics, the bases are always loaded, so the key is: what would set your own people against you?

Right now, the Obama campaign has a tremendous momentum behind it. Coming off 11 straight victories, Obama has the upswing in his favor. But where did this momentum start? What was the tipping point?

Conventional wisdom has it that the appearance of Bill on the attack worked against the Clinton campaign.

But my view is a little different.

"Attack Bill" is nowhere near as loaded as a veiled racial attack, and I think that is where Hillary's campaign began to fall apart.

When Hillary accused Obama of working for a slum landlord, she almost instantly lost the black vote. If Obama had been deeply involved with the slumlord it would have been one thing, but his involvement was slight. People of color were asked to choose: a gender-correctness or a race-correctness. Tough, until the gender candidate did a little racial attacking; point tipped.

What can the market learn from this? Be careful about your face-offs? Know what people really think you stand for?

Let's take Google vs. a possible Microsoft-Yahoo combo. Let's forget for a minute that Microsoft is like the Giuliani candidate; we respect them, someone might actually love them, but for the most part, they're so last year.

Can anyone really take on Google? Do they have a tipping point loaded against them?

Of course, they are not running for office, but we vote with our clicks.

So here's the question – and there's a free iBreakfast in it for anyone with a good answer – what would make the market tip against Google?

My guess is that it's something that lets more people keep the money Google generates from its clicks.

Personal outsourcing at a click. More wisdom of crowd solutions……

We're going to find out at our next iBreakfast when we look at solutions that ask the world to help companies find tipping points against big problems that face them. They could be science problems, they could be ad problems, or maybe even the next big hit. But in all cases they will be about using the net and the collective wisdom of crowds to figure it out….

Look out for our "Wikinomics - Idea Markeptlaces" iBreakfast in March

Advertising 2.0 iBreakfast Report: Follow The Customer

2007-12-14T06:52:00.000-08:00

If there is one simple conclusion to this completely sold out iBreakfast, it is not whether online is more important than TV, or mobile; or whether Madison Ave. can handle the onslaught of the big tech guys - it is, as Ogilvy’s digital gurus are showing, about tagging the message to the customer wherever they go.

In this continuum of media it means that agencies have to think of how a message on TV ought to pop on a website and then on a cell phone (more of those to come, experts say) and at any other point along the viewer’s trail to purchase.

In this view, the onslaught of media digitization, as exemplified by Google’s buyouts and other appearances on Madison Ave. and the emerging media exchanges (the topic of next Wed. Dec. 19th iBreakfast), not only makes perfect sense but is a prerequisite of the next wave of the Ad Business. We think Madison Ave. will prosper on but not without a few palace coups. It is clear that the young blood is all digital while the old guard is still wary and has traditionally compartmentalized the digital services. Clearly that has to change and you can be sure that some agencies will and others won’t and there will be much upheaval. Think how Rumsfeld combined the three armed services and then think what that did for him and the country. Yet, the first part of it had to be done……

As for cellphone advertising. At first this seems like a horrible idea. Such a personal item infested with such knowing ads! But if you want the free searches, the special offers, the music, the TV shows and so on, you will be getting them on your cell phone soon and if the agencies are smart, it will be in away that serves the TV campaign. For this MoPhapp will be happy explain

This is just a hint of the actual conversation and amazing presentations at this iBreakfast – if you are hungry for more you can request these presentations by emailing us at ad2@ibreakfast.com

The Secret – as Applied to Business

2007-12-14T06:45:00.001-08:00

Stand back Oprah, I've got something to say......

Since I have spent the season speaking with investors and prospective entrepreneurs who ask about what we really do, I have had to boil it down to a few principles. We’re in the business of helping companies understand what makes their business plans works, what trends are going to drive the industry and occasionally, the true nature of being.

Savvy early stage investors know what I am talking about because they even have terms for this – “the secret sauce” or the “thumb on the scale” but like the concept of a tipping point, few of them have a way to really articulate this quality.

That’s really where the iBreakfast Entrepreneur Club and the bimonthly Innovator Evenings kick in.

One of the things we do is help people understand the critical element of their business. And that gets into another area that you don’t learn in business school. As a journalist I once covered Artificial Intelligence, and I know from the art of Knowledge Engineering, the interrogative process programmers use to create the rules driving the system, how you gather and order the intelligence. Generally it requires interviewing a domain expert and getting them to explain it in the form of rules of thumb. Often, these turn out to contain strangely mundane little secrets. There are famous storiees like the old Italian immigrant who ran Campbell’s soup tomato vats who had all kids of ways to figure out when the boiling was just so.

So I learned to become a great believer of “The Secret”, but not really in the Oprah way. She may have something though I don’t it believe it works in the way it is hyped. i.e. “learn this secret and everything happens.” But in a particular context where everything else has been prepared, a secret can make all the difference in the world.

It definitely happens in business and I believe it underlies many great businesses even though the secret is usually something quite mundane. It is really the context it makes all the difference. Agein, if you’ve read The Tipping Point you’ll know that big differences can take place from very small issues. Consider them the keystone in an otherwise unformed edifice. The question is how to find them, better yet, which is what we try to do, how do you predict what they will be?

Some of my Favorite Examples of Business “Secrets”

Starbucks – What Exactly are we Buying Here?
How do you get people to pay $4 for a $1 cup of coffee? Do you just make it better? But 4 times better? And how can you support one on just about every corner of the country? Maybe you need to look at the history of the Opium Wars where the British brought cheap opium from India for sale in China. Or just check with the local pot dealer…….of the local convenience store with cigarette ads at counter level. What Howard Schwartz learned in his incubation years as a coffee grinder was how to get more caffeine out of a bean. Starbucks sells the highest caffeine content coffee in the country and his customers, all lined up first thing in the morning, are caffeine addicts. Forget the arguments about taste, the real issue is when it comes to addictive products is whether or not it hits the spot. Starbucks does and it makes them the true successors to the tobacco cartel, the Cali Cartel, the rumrunners. They treat their staff well, they support the arts and if they weren’t so legal and downright acceptable they would probably support organizaed religion too.

For all I know, Schwartz got his ideas from Phillip Morris (remember, mundane secrets are fungible) who learned how to up the nicotine content in Marlboros through a combination of specially cultivated strains of tobacco and the addition of nice, fresh ammonia. He might have read David Ogilvy’s classic “Confessions of an Adman” where we learn the secret of how the young Ogilvy, as a cook, charmed an old dowager on a strict diet of one stewed apple a day by mashing up the content of two apples and shoving into the shell of one…… Or, maybe he just have stumbled upon it. But you can see how it worked - it took Americans a few years to get hooked……and then wham! My guess is that if anyone ever buys Starbucks it will be tobacco company……..or a drug company.

MacDonalds: Getting You Out in 20 Minutes.

The story goes that the founder came up with the combination of fast food and free diner seating in the army. The camaraderie of the cafeteria in wartime was deeply compelling and that became the basis of the MacDonald’s brothers fast food concept. Don’t just sell hamburgers, give people a nice place to sit down and eat ‘em. The problem was, how do you get these happy customers out of there in 20 minutes or less so that you could maintain the turnover necessary to reach profitability. How do you get rid of seat-hoggers? The obvious answer is - uncomfortable seats. But that wouldn’t look good besides, you still want the initial experience to be comforting, you just don’t want it to last that long. So they came up with molded seats that forced you to sit in such away that your spine would tell you to leave in less than 20 minutes. Even my chiropractor laughs at that one as he forces me out of his office in 20 minutes…….

The funny part is that when the fast food co.’s first started taking over midtown Manhattan with 24 hour free seating in a nice warm place - the winter tramp community paid attention. Turns out they understood the principles of ergonomic engineering too and to get around the forced spinal subluxation, they simply piled up freely available old newspapers in a way that voided the back-aggravation, enabling them to stay all night and long enough into the morning to enjoy a nice Egg MacMuffin. Is it any wonder then, that one of the biggest franchise holders in midtown is a former cop. What are the odds he came up with a secret of his own for getting rid of the bums? Just wondering……

The Secret in Sports

No question, sports has its secrets too. Not the chemical ones, although there clearly is a huge market for that. (And of course, no ever guessed those bulked up hitters were doing anything other than Exercise Made Simple or 5 Minute Abs.) I am talking about all kinds of subtle ones that again, only really work in the context of a particular talent. Everyone knows Wayne Gretzky’s mantra, “don’t be where the ball, be where it’s going to be.” But that’s easier said than done. Did Gretzky major in calculus or did he just have a sixth sense? I’m guessing he would do well in options trading too.

We know that Muhammed Ali won through talent and mind games. But did you know that Michael Jordan’s genius also had something to do with a special skill he mastered. According to a recent TV interview, he showed how we able to imperceptibly tug or push the limbs of his opponents so that he could manipulate them and amazingly, always seem to get the ball away form them. Why did it have to be imperceptible? Because its illegal. But what the camera couldn’t see, the refs couldn’t either. Now that Michael is retired, he is happy to talk about it….Turns out, talent has tricks too……

I would argue that in each case, these geniuses, especially the ones giving the $1500 motivation courses, are leaving out this critical element. For example, Tony Robbins wants to unleash the giant in you. But it helps to be giant in the first place and you don’t get that from seminars. Donald Trump wants to make you rich, but no book of his can help you grow up with a father who taught you everything about the building industry, hand you off to all his contacts and then leave you a few hundred million to get you on your way. By the way, I consider the fatherly training and credibility-building more valuable than the cash which he would have lost anyway, if it hadn’t been for the former.

In another context, lots of people want to be the next Bill Gates but aside from his privileged background (his parents got him a gig debugging minicomputers while still in high school), it helps that he has something akin to a photographic memory.

The secrets are really something specific to a certain person a certain management or even a certain time and space. Our passion at the iBreakfast Entrepreneur is really to help people find their own. Usually, it encounters great resistance and denial of the sort…..”I already know….blah….blah…blah….” Sometimes they do. Usually not. Wish it were easier but when you come down to it, that is why we’ve been dong the iBreakfast for 10 long years……..

Why Big Media Really Doesn’t get Google.

2007-12-14T06:43:00.000-08:00

I was at a media conference where a number of TV execs lamented first that the Maurice Levy, chairman of the giant European ad agency, Publicis, said there wasn’t enough ad money to pay for TV-like ads on the internet. Also, that Google was up to something that threatened the ad industry in their new relationship with Simon Cowell of American Idol. Then, one of the execs showed off this new TV Networks’ website along with an ad for a national brand. I asked that if they realized that Google’s market cap was about 10x all of Madison Avenue’s simply because they had found out how to make themselves accessible to millions of small, non-national brand advertisers. So, in the spirit of responding to Maurice Levey, what would they be doing to address this issue.

“Nothing,” said the exec.

“So you’ll be coming to the next iBreakfast,” I said.

The point is that big media is really the handservant of big business. The guys with the pinkie rinks only know how to go after fat cats just like them. Same with the flashy media saleswomen. Google advertising is open to all comers, is mostly self service, requiring little sales support and therefore is worth much, much more. In order for these old media guys to prosper they are going to have to reinvent themselves at a completely different level.

Report: Entrepreneurs Club & Start-Up Pitching

2007-11-06T05:16:00.000-08:00

After 10 years of helping Start-Ups get funded, the iBreakfast finally
launched a special meeting group for Entrepreneurs with the help of the wonderful folks at Pace University's SCI2 Incubator. What makes this group
different is not only that it helps Entrepreneurs stay in touch with the
support providers they need and of course, the investment community, but it
enables them to work through the issues that define their business concepts.

At the heart of this group is the interactive, peer-to-peer discussion of
the issues shaping their business concepts. By using group dynamics to
analyze elevator pitches, the group is a powerful force to help start-ups
shape their ideas and make themselves salable to investors and
to customers alike. This is like Oprah for Entrepreneurs and no one leaves early...

The Entrepreneur Club will meet at least 3 times a year and is a special
membership package offered to iBreakfast Attendees. Just by signing up for
an iBreakfast Entrepreneur membership (currently $155 a year) members get 6
iBreakfast/iEvening events free. They can use 3 credits for a one-time
investor pitch and they can attend the Entrepreneur Meetings at no charge.

With support from people like Rosalind Resnick of Axxcess Business Centers,
who is a highly successful entrepreneur in here own right, the FENG CFO Club
and the pitch and marketing support of Laura Allen (15secondpitch.com) and
Sandra Holtzman who wrote "Lies Start-Ups Tell Themselves to Avoid Marketing) the group offers a lively interaction with leading industry figures and Entrepreneurs.

The next meeting will take place on Q1 with the support of Agency.com

IEVENING START-UP PITCHING REPORT

Once again the Start-Ups came out with a fascinating group of business ideas
that ran the gamut of arcane research to fast foods. The judges included
Josh Grotstein of SASI, Allan Grafman of Mercury Capital, M.J. Segal of
Joshua Capital and T.J. Walker or Media Training Worldwide, who critiqued
the presentations.

The winner was the MugsToGo, a nifty, patented way to add handles to Starbucks type
paper cups which are sold as an advertising medium. Since there are billions of cups
sold every year, the judges' sense of large numbers kicked in they voted
Tomas Leszczynski the winner. Many other companies got warm responses too.
BreadnBrie.com, a Fresh Direct competitor that uses technology to tie together
independent food producers to deliver bag of groceries to NY shoppers
was judged as having the best presentation. Mommies on Demand, an
IPTV-community solution for new mothers was judged interesting. Investors
were also very interested in the Universal Listing proposal for local
businesses from Name Dynamics which lists local businesses for a low $30 fee.
Chalex Corp, a low-cost, online document management system also got a mention.

The other companies were GreenCanopy a B2B Green business magazine.,
Tuglink a targeted jobsite, Darwninian Media Interactive and RealMarkets, a
Real Estate investors advisory.

Report from the Oct. VC Outlook Meeting

2007-10-25T08:53:00.001-07:00

by Alan Brody

[This was one of the most insightful events we have had on the art and mindset of early
and middle stage investors. So we have included extra long videos of the speakers
and an in-depth report on the event.]

Way Too Early vs. Last Money In

The heart of the October iBreakfast was the interaction between Howard Morgan whose
lament is that he invests too early (and way too early) vs. Robert Hoffer an investment
bank advisor. The early stage investor goes through many twists and turns before seeing a
return on their relatively modest investment. Oftentimes they see nothing. The late stage
investor, the last money in, on the other hand, gets the most money and often sees the
payout a lot sooner. The investor who participated in Facebook at a $500 million
valuation, saw a 20x return - and much sooner than the typical Angel, who sees his
investment flounder at the same time that he gets diluted with each round.

So what makes an Angel tick? A big part of it is love - they just love to be at the cutting
edge of the next big thing. Or realistically, putting together a few bets that anticipate
it. On the other hand, they also need to make a big return. Forget 10x, think more in terms
of 30x. This is what pays for all the failures. So how does a true Angel Investor -
a unique combination of compassion and greed - think?

According to David S. Rose who, like most Angels, wears many hats (Investor, Software
Entrepreneur etc.), the most important piece in the start-up puzzle is you the
entrepreneur. You plan comes next but they expect that to change anyway. It's you and
your team, expertise and willingness to adapt and endure that really counts. If they feel
you have it, they will work with you until your plan is investible.

In David's case, he has committed to a true in-house incubator of entrepreneurs, just
like that. Indeed, many investors have Entrepreneurs-in-Residence whose purpose is
to wait around until they have developed the right idea. So incubators, of one kind or
another aren't entirely dead. In fact, whole regions like Silicon Valley, according to
Robert Hoffer of Newforth Partners, an Investment Bank for early- to mid-stage
companies, are really large incubators. Rose is building one in New York while using the
overall experience to attract, anticipate and gather deals for his own funds or the NY
Angels group of early stage investors that he chairs. While some cynics may argue that New
York's idea of incubation is simply to leave the air conditioning off, in fact, this is
generating plenty of interesting deals. At the top of his list are a Fishing Community
website and Comic Book Portal. Fishing, as we learn, is one of the biggest recreational
communities in the country, while the demographics of Comic book fans are
surprisingly mature and well-heeled (25-35 year old males with decent jobs).

Howard Morgan's view is more of the jockey over the horse. He partners with idealab, one
of the great in-house incubators of all time. Aside from investing in big ideas on the edge
of a breakout like a hybrid vehicle that does 300 miles a gallon and a company that
provides all the solar energy roofs for Google, he looks at the 6 P's before
investing:

1. People - are you really the person for this company? Can an investor really work
with you?

2. Product - they have to flexible enough to position it where the investors think it
should go.

3. Profits - a monetization strategy.

4. Passion - can you fire up other investors, workers and customers .

5. Persistence - can you really stick with it.

As an investor, he is currently involved with VideoEgg, a web video hosting platform along
with other ventures in the online advertising category.

Robert Hoffer's, Newforth Partners looks for companies that can become fodder for M&A and
they like to bet on the technology and markets rather than the people. The people
running the company can change, he says, but we can predict where the technology is going.
His hot spots are any technology related to MPEG 4 and the digital distribution system
that accompanies it.

See the TechConfidential article on Howard Morgan and the iBreakfast

Report from the August Start-Up iEvening

2007-10-25T08:49:00.000-07:00

According to this popular blog, our Start-Up iEvening event went to the dogs - well not exactly, its just that the winner was MyHound, an artists/entertainers newstracking site.

According to Dorian Benkoil "it was no Always On Summit, but a gathering of startups, VCs, angel investors and others interested in it all gathered for a New York version of PowerPoint-meets-VC on Wednesday. About 60 people crammed into a large boardroom for an "Innovator Evening" hosted by event entrepreneur Alan Brody of iBreakfast. Brody says these events have already gotten some $40 million in funding for new ventures......"

Click for the rest of the article

Report from the July Search iBreakfast

2007-10-25T08:46:00.000-07:00

If you want to know where Search is headed, what Semantic Nets and Human-powered search are all about and, most of all, what Google has up its sleeve ,you need to read these reports on this milestone iBreakfast.

These reports capture the news and drama of this very important Search iBreakfast.

Red Herring iBreakfast Report

Silicon Alley Insider on the iBreakfast

Search Blogger

REPORT FROM WEB 2.0 NY - Madison Ave. 2.0

2007-09-24T10:04:00.000-07:00

REPORT FROM WEB 2.0 NY - Madison Ave. 2.0
Web 2.0 NY Makes a Business Case for Media Executives.

Whatever Web 2.0 has meant to hundreds of start-ups, its business applications made an impression on 350 Media, Investment, Advertising & Digital Executives on Thursday, June 14 in conjunction with the Fordham School of Education at the Web 2.0 & Madison Ave. 2.0 Summit.

While many of the ideas have filtered up from students and youth generation, the key issues are likely to change the way media and advertising is conceived and delivered, how companies present themselves to their customers and even how they organize themselves internally.

Citing the rise of the "personal brand" both keynoters, Esther Dyson and MySpace¹s Shawn Gold talked about a generation¹s interest in evolving and promoting their personal brand and how that has become both a development platform but also a new advertising paradigm where brands may reach out in trusted way through consumer-to-consumer advertising. Both Adidas and in a negative way, Dell were cited as examples of how this works as part of MySpace¹s 8 rules of consumer-to-consumer marketing.

On the Madison Ave. 2.0 side, a series of companies ranging from Live Technology to Spot Runner, Spotzer and Visible World talked about local delivery of national brands, a micro-focusing of brand messages by demographics, locality and even the weather and news conditions. In addition, just-in-time and highly targeted delivery of over 30 kinds of media in auction, spot and electronic delivery fashion were all discussed.

The key idea in Web 2.0 is collaboration and models of how ideas and power is distributed will be affected in numerous ways. MySpace thinks of this as relationship management, Motionbox sees a world of many electronic video capture devices and Social Network pioneer, Andrew Weinreich of MeetMoi.com sees it going mobile.

In our Start-Up forum many new companies with web 2.0 ideas debuted before a panel of angel Investors under David Rose of NY Angels, Allan Grafman of All Media Ventures and Paul Goodman or Cyruli Shanks. The winner was pond5.com, a broadcast-quality video and stock media exchange. Special mentions went to Collector¹sQuest.com, CollegeWikis and LiveLook.com, a webcam portal. (Video highlights to come)

OTHER ARTICLES:
THE DEAL.COM - TECH CONFIDENTIAL
THE DEAL 2
INSIDER CHATTER

The 27 Year Old Rule - Where Big Ideas Come From

2007-05-23T12:18:00.000-07:00

There is a lot more than a grain of truth to Steve Levey’s assertion in Newsweek that the biggest ideas come from people under 27. Psychologists have long noted that most professionals and artists and not few revolutionaries develop their big ideas in their 20s (think Einstein,Marx and Picasso) or began incubating them in those days (think Freud & Darwin). On top of that many investors like Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures have mulled over it, realizing they're not that thrilled about dealing with entrepreneurs under 30.

In the past 10 years, the iBreakfast has hosted thousands of new business idea presentations and we have developed our own classification system for handicapping the investiblity of entrepreneurs by age group.

(Note that true serial entrepreneurs, especially ones that succeeded early are in a class of their own to be discussed separately.)

THE YOUNG ONES: START-UPS 27 and UNDER
Moonshots: Big on concept but usually lacking in key details. Young entrepreneurs, unencumbered by mortgages and howling bambinos are free and hungry enough to go for broke. Too often though, bean counters get in their way. Their young egos are unpredictable and investors, seeking bargains, tend to offer low valuations or onerous term sheets. The young ‘uns tend to be strong-headed and yet.....they start Google, Paypal, YouTube, Federal Express, Yahoo, Virgin Records, Microsoft, Apple…..

The bubble years may have opened up the purses of many a stingy investor but that has changed and investors have largely reverted to type. That is why, in the long run, New York tends to lose the best ideas Silicon Valley because they are either more nurturing over there or because, a hot head who rejects a tough termsheet in NY turns to jelly when an even tougher one comes from an industry rock star in the Valley.

THE MIDDLE YEARS 27-50
These are the most investible. Fewer home runs but a lot of triples and of course, base hits. But there is an almost mathematical certainty that an industry pro with 10 years experience in a growth industry and a plan based on an actual market need or a genuine domain innovation, a briefcase full of warm leads and a bit of skin in the game is going to get funded. These are consistently the most investible entrepreneurs in the game – entrepreneurship’s true middle to upper-middle class. If you, as an entrepreneur fit this profile…..the check’s in the mail.

These are the kinds of people who start Salesforce.com, eBay, eTrade and other businesses with actual substance (but also Craiglist and Wikipedia, whose business models mystifies most investors). While a lot of middling, unknown companies come out of this field - your base hits that never quite progress - these people do really well when their idea coincides with a dramatic growth in their sector. They tend to know what they are doing and are less likely to drop the ball.

THE GRAYBEARDS 50-75
Like an old wine, when it comes to the geezer group, the bottle is usually in better shape than the content. The tannins may have softened but so has their oomph and they may not be ready for a 24/7 lifestyle with madcap deadlines. On the other hand, if they have had entrepreneurial experience or bring a good team with them they could do it.

They are best if they are an evolved version of the Middle Players but with more experience, a better team, more potent connections and a better understanding of the need they’re filling.

The Dubious but Always Interesting Graybeards Are:

1. The Immortality Seeker. Like a graying Indiana Jones they are on a quest to make meaning of their careers. Usually, it’s the Temple of Doom and, like the Pharoah’s attendants who built it, you, the investor will probably get buried with him.

2. May-December Team
You tend to see these at big money events for the same reason that you see old lotharios with young babes. The old manager finds a smart kid and backs him with resources, contacts and of course, adult supervision. But generally, the geezer’s ego gets in the way. The kid bridles or just gets diaper rash and shops his even bigger idea at a business hangout on line or at the iBreakfast (sure, why not?). Unless there’s a special dynamic, like these two really worked together in a previous life or the kid married the geezer’s daughter and has 7 years to work off his debt, watch out!

3. The Geezer just has to Do it.
While this looks like a quest for immortality the main difference is the motivation is tied to a genuinely good idea, the entrepreneur is prepared to do what it takes and the business flows from his past experience. Plus he may have a really experienced team (hopefully, with just enough tannins to keep the wine flowing) and extra skin in the game. This could be a thumbs up! Just don’t expect a home run, but ya never know! Plus, you won't have worry about them being lost to nightclubbing.

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT SERIAL ENTREPRENEURS
If yo are lucky enough to have an idea take off while you’re still at college (think Bo Peabody of Tripod, Dean Kamen of Segway or Kevin O’Connell of DoubleClick), you truly are the landed gentry of the community. However, things can go wrong. Even Spielberg produced 1941, Edison’s talking dolls (the ones with little phonographs in their bellies) were all returned and so on. Generally though, as long as they stop reading their PR, they rule!

Conquering Madison Ave. 2.0: Zulu Marketing (P. 2)

2007-05-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

Madison Ave 2.0: Conquering Madison Ave. (Part 2)

EXPLAINING THE REALLY BIG CHANGE – ZULU MARKETING

There is another, more historically - and for you war buffs, more militarily - explicable way to understand the changes afoot: we’ll call this The New Way for Media Companies to take Over the World. I could also have called this Nazi Marketing but Shaka was more charming and probably more creatively responsible for building his empire than his evil European counterpart.

STEP 1: NEW TOOLS FOR OLD PROBLEMS

In each case these leaders devastated their enemies by leapfrogging the gradual changes already taking place. They did this by understanding how new developments are initially used to solve old problems (often referred to as paving the cowpath) and then looking at the picture in a whole new way. They put the tools to do the work in ways more true to the new tools than ones they replace and the results can be devastating – until the rest catch up (think Google and link-based rankings, think the Civil War and new rifles whose reach put entire regiments in the line of fire).

Hitler saw tanks as more than protection for soldiers stuck in trenches (which is why they were developed) but rather as a way to quickly strike at the heart of the enemy with a motorized assault. When coordinated with the other assets of the wehrmacht - airplanes, mobile artillery and only then, followed by the infantry – it was unstoppable and got around silly little things like the maginot line the French spent years developing.

The doctrine we know of as blitzkreig was actually developed by Heinz Guderian and probably a few others including some Brits. But Heinz wrote the book, “Achtung...Panzer!” Hitler read it, took power, used it and, for a moment, ruled the world.

THE TIPPING POINT AT THE END OF A SPEAR

Shaka Zulu, had less science to work with but he saw that tribal warfare had become a ritual of sorts because, like TV advertising, their throwing spears were inaccurate. So the neighboring tribes had settled into a kind of Sunday sports warfare. The two sides would gather at opposite hills, families would come out with picnics and the young warriors would line up behind their small, round shields and hurl spears at each other. Eventually, someone would get hurt, the elders would meet and decide who won. The loser would give up some cattle and a bride or two and they would all go home for dinner.

Shaka was young, hungry and desperate to recover his family’s lost status as royal outcasts. He realized that if you really want to win you have to get really close to your target. So forget throwing spears. You need a new kind of up-close stabbing spear. He developed the iklwa, (often referred to as the assegai since who can pronounce it.)

By early 19^th Century Africa standards, that put him on a par with the tank developers - or the pay-per-click guys. The real change came when he realized that by changing his tactics, strategies and rules of war, he could conquer just about everything around him

So when he realized people weren’t going to let him get that close, he figured he needed to run fast enough to surprise them. So goodbye huarache sandles and, in the absence of Nikes, he developed the original running sole, the human foot hardened by dancing on thorns. (Pretty much how I feel about watching Dancing With the Stars.) Then he realized his blitzkrieg needed a tank of its own to stave off the spears which began to get accurate just as he got closer. So he developed a man-sized shield with a hardier coat of cowhide.

Now comes the hook shot. The enemy could still hide behind their shields, just like today’s advertising gatekeepers. So Shaka added a little do-hickey to his shield that, with training, would enable his warriors to hook on to the other guy's shield and just whip it out of the way. Then came the final problem, kind of like how do you get people to click, or should we say open up for business? Since spinning the opponent's shields revealed their sides and not their front torsos where you want to plunge the spear. Shaka came to realize you could reach the heart from other directions like from the underarm instead of the front. (In case you’re wondering, all testing was done on real people).

Today, the Internet guys have learned that beating people over the head is not always necessary. Indirect marketing works: putting paid results next to organic ones pays BIG. Affiliate marketing, cross-linking,a little word of mouth, the right endorsement, behavioral targeting - all of these get you to the heart without necessarily going through the front. And all are still worth more than the declining media placement fees eked out on Madison Ave.

Finally, Shaka, like the generals of the 3^rd Reich understood there were no set battle lines and so they embraced the concept of total warfare or in Zulu, mfecane. Expect Microsoft, Google and Yahoo to exercise something similar and refuse to accept the normal boundaries.

We can talk ad infinitum about all the possible responses – and we will – both online at Madison Ave 2.0 on June 14. We suggest you do what Shaka and Hitlers opponents did most effectively – create alliances and develop new strategies. That’s why Swaziland and Lesotho were never invaded by the Zulus. And you wouldn’t want to be a Pondo. The best place to sharpen your spears and make friends is, of course, at a conference, and the Chief conference in this field would be the Madison Ave. 2.0 – Web 2.0 NY Summit on June 14 at Fordham on 62^nd @ Columbus.

Madison Ave. 2.0: Conquering the New Mad Ave (P. 1)

2007-05-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

There are a few ways to look at the mad rush of acquisitions on Madison Ave. but I can give a very simple guiding definition that will make it all luminously clear. It came out of our 2006 Local Ad World Conference (you can even watch the video highlights below).

Making AdSense of it All
The definition, which came from Nick Grouf, co-founder of Spot Runner, puts into focus all the significant changes portended by these acquisitions on Madison Ave: the Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and WPP acquisitions and the way the advertising will get done is the no. 1 topic of discussion at our June 14, Madison Ave 2.0 Summit, the sister conference to our Web 2.0 NY Summit (and new version of our very successful Local Ad World.)

The concept, as Nick put it, also explains why he started Spot Runner - he liked Adsense so much, he thought all the advertising world should look like that. So, what we are looking at is an under-automated, underpaid industry (expect for a few creative stars) ripe for the picking.

With that in mind, here’s how we look at the changes on Madison Ave, which will come up at the Madison Ave 2.0 Summit on June 14.

THE NEW RAIDERS OF THE PAY-PER-CLICK PAGE

1. Cash-laden, mature tech/internet companies that have learned to prosper from highly measurable online marketing are buying up the relatively poorly paid gatekeepers to massive ad budgets. These budgets were once closed to online. Now they are ripe. It follows then, as any good lobbyist will tell you, “why woo when you can buy.”

2. Automating Media Placement.
Does every newspaper, magazine, radio and TV station need their own salesforce? Maybe, for the premium placements but not for the run-of-the-mill spots. Likewise, does every agency need scads of lit grads doing media planning on an entry-level paycheck?

3. Open Creative Market: Goodbye Donny Deutsch
Does every business need a custom ad? Can your agency be counted on to come up with a good idea every time? Why not trade in tested ideas from around the world that you can customize? Donny can still sell his ideas on the open market and keep his TV show instead of showing up to the office every day.

THE BIG PICTURE IDEAS

Now for some Big Ideas - the kind of thing that careers and great fortunes are made of:

(You’ll see more if these as our www.bigideajournal.com takes shape)

1. ADVERTISING IS MANUFACTURING
Advertising is no longer the sales lubricant of the Industrial Age. It IS the Industrial Age of our time. We have long gone from figuring how to sell what we already manufacture to finding what the customer really wants and then figuring out how to manufacture it.

This is just-in-time manufacturing and the factory now is really the commodity.(Remember fab-less chip companies etc. - similar idea.)

Since we will continue moving to Research and Development while outsourcing manufacturing, our ability to reach consumers, detect their tastes and meet their expectations is more valuable than the product itself. That’s really what Madison Ave is all about, except that it doesn’t really understand that or, more to the point, allow that. That’s because they were organized to serve the guy with the factory who says “go figure how to sell my junk.”

Internet companies on the other hand, not only understand this issue but they own the vehicle of idea manufacture and distribution so they actually fuse these two properties that has kept Madison Ave. in the support business - and they are moving in. The Internet guys just need gatekeeper access to corporate budgets and marketing creativity to move this up to the next level. They have piles of cash and more interestingly, will invest in the ideas they like, not just take a fee from a client.

To be fair, every ad guy I ever met has fantasized about advertising as incubator of new business ideas but manufacturing and distribution was their barrier. Now that the internet has made manufacturing a commodity and turned the UPS/FedEx into your distribution system, much is possible.

Bottom line: tech companies are NOT just buying themselves ad networks and ways to deliver ad dollars to their properties, they are buying the future of the economy.

2. TECH/INTERNET CO.’s – THE NEW ECONOMY CARPETBAGGERS?
Could this principle apply elsewhere? High tech companies taking on other industries stuck with declining growth that high tech could reverse. Energy, Autos, Transportation, Entertainment Studios, Real Estate, Banking, Rocketry. Actually, in each case, they already have or they are energizing a movement that’s already taking place. After all, who thought of Apple as a music company or Microsoft as an advertising company…eTrade as a bank, Paypal as a fund transfer system or their founders as racketeers. Then there’s Google’s quest for a new internal combustion engine and the Tesla, that battery powered sports car half of Silicon Valley seems to be betting on.

If you can dabble in HTML, Ajax, RSS, MySQL or sell the product thereof……or if you understand the use of social engines and “Collaboratition” (our admittedly unwieldy phrase to describe the state of competing while collaborating with just about everyone – customers, suppliers and actual competitors) - you have a future. Otherwise, Madison Ave. (and a few other industries we’ll discuss in the Big Idea Journal) will undergo dramatic change. 5 years from now, the ad world will not be recognizable to anyone in the business today..

You can see the Future at Madison Ave 2.0 on June 14 in NYC.

Solar Flashlight in Africa - A Good Idea Gone Wrong

2007-05-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

OK, I love the idea of a solar powered flashlight that is transforming lives in Africa. Suddenly, at no cost, villagers, whose lives came to an end at night because there is no electrical light, can now read, travel, see their enemies, possible molesters and even scare away animals. In places where they can burn wood for light, he is doing away with pollution. A kindly oil man, Mark Bent, put up $250,000 of his own money to develop and produce these in China, and Exxon, among others is paying to give them out in Ethiopia, Angola and many other places you’ve never heard of.

Not only that, but if you buy one online you can pay extra and buy one for the gipper in Gambia or somewhere nearby, thereby getting light and spreading it.

This is good and someone gets to go for heaven for this. But in the long run it’s really, really bad. Here’s why.

The Talmud said it is not enough to give a man a fish, you have teach him how to fish. My Talmud - and you only have to go to the iBreakfast temple to get this - says that you really have to create a fishing economy. That way, they learn to fish, people learn to eat all kinds of seafood (not just kosher), others get to sell, distribute, store, prepare and maybe export the good stuff.

Sophisticated African leaders talk about this all the time as “sustainable development.” Instead of taking a World Bank loan, paying off a bunch of indunas and building a smelting plant that no one can really sustain while the country winds up saddled with debt, you develop things the locals can fully engage with and develop. The same seems to apply to education, many are educated for Western professions that barely exist out there.

So, back to the flashlight. With LEDs and free solar energy the product is pretty sustainable, so what’s wrong with this picture. The answer is there is not a solar economy. They should be making these flashlights in Africa, and they should be selling them not giving them away. Even if we get paid in chickens or chickpeas, why create another dependency? People always have something to give and both the buyer and the seller will be empowered by the transaction. I’ll buy an extra flashlight if the solar devices can be strung together, add-ons attached and a generation of entrepreneurs set in motion. Otherwise I’m perpetuating the unintended Faustian bargain of self-defeating charity.

BTW Africa’s a funny place. Bono means well but Africans don’t really get him because he can barely sing a note without millions of dollars of equipment behind him. Nor can he dance. Nelson Mandela can do both and does with aplomb whenever called upon to do so. Thabo Mbeki can do neither. Since you probably didn’t know that Thabo took over from Nelson, you’ll get my point.

Bottom line: unless the receivers of our largesse - those local villagers - are engaged, this is just the old paternalism dressed up in new technology. Good ideas must sing and dance with the villagers in order to sustain change. That’s why the microloaners are so much to be admired - they actually require the villagers to engage with each other in all kinds of community-sustaining ways.

Read the full article in the NY Times.

Jimmy Wales Founder of Wikipedia and Wikia at the iBreakfast

2007-05-15T07:38:00.000-07:00

It Is hard to believe that Wikipedia, the no. 9 most visited website in the world began with just 7 articles or that its founder, Jimmy Wales, actually believed that he would encapsulate the sum of all human knowledge on his site. But that is more or less what he did. And we're truly honored that hecame to share that story with us at the iBreakfast.

So how did this unlikely success story take place other than that he offered the right software and an idea that the world wanted to help him make so?

Wikipedia is now supported by donations and volunteers all over the world. It has listings in 66 languages 67 if you count Klingon - and is vastly more comprehensive than its former competitor, Encyclopedia Britannica.

Now Jimmy has developed Wikia, a kind of open Wiki which allows all kinds of collaboration efforts ranging from sports news to travel guides and even a Muppet site. The total content is intended to be bigger than Wikipedia, in the way that a library is bigger than an encyclopedia and the efforts will be supported by ads.

The big story is that Wikia is also providing an infrastructure for a new collaborative Search Engine effort, dubbed by Fast Company magazine as"Google's Worst Nightmare." (Who says hype is only for tabloids!) In this case, Wikia will provide a server infrastructure, the collaborative software and Jeremie Miller, a heavyweight techie who authored Jabber, an intersystem Instant Messaging standard.

Much of the follow-up Q&A focused on the viability and security of open systems content production and the business side of collaboration. Our take is that wikis and "Collaboratition" (our word) will challenge some old styles of doing business and is just getting started. More, much more to come on this!

See the highlights of Jimmy Wales' speech at:

How iBreakfast Helped Launch MarketingSherpa

2007-05-15T07:05:00.001-07:00

MarketingSherpa Founder, Anne Holland, wrote:
"iBreakfast helped me launch MarketingSherpa successfully in three significant ways. First, as an attendee watching my peers present I learned an extraordinary amount about what works (and what doesn't) when giving a compelling elevator pitch to a crowd of strangers. Then by networking with fellow-attendees, I wound up making connections with critical business partners who understood and appreciated our unique business needs as a start-up venture versus a "normal" potential client. Lastly -- and perhaps most importantly -- despite the fact that, caffeinated to the gills, I talked waaaay too quickly during my presentation, when I sat back down the gentleman next to me introduced himself and wound up becoming our very first angel investor.

Without his investment, his enthusiasm, and ongoing mentoring for several years after that, MarketingSherpa would have been much harder to launch successfully. Now seven years later after my iBreakfast presentation, MarketingSherpa is a research firm with a quarter of a million business customers around the world and six years of healthy, growing, profits. Every good idea needs a solid kickstart -- iBreakfast was a big part of ours."

Video: So You Want to be a Start-Up

2007-05-15T07:01:00.000-07:00

This is what it's like to pitch your Start-Up to Angels......

Click to View

If you think you're ready to pitch - or you just want to see what it's really like go to www.ibreakfast.com and sign up for our next event.

Yahoo & Mobile Breaks Out - Report & Video

2007-05-15T06:55:00.000-07:00

View the highlights of last week's Mobile Breaks Out iBreakfast at:
Video Highlights: Yahoo! & Mobile Breaks Out

Elizabeth Harz of Yahoo joined Harry Kargman of Kargo.com, Chris Phenner of Thumbplay and Michael Salit of Free411, to show how websites are staking their claim in the fasting growing digital medium. Driven by under-30 year old's, by 2010 4 out of 5 adults will be on mobile. Do you have a strategy?

Click to View

M&A iBreakfast Report - Roger Aguinaldo M&A Advisor

2007-05-15T06:53:00.000-07:00

Roger Aguinaldo, CEO of M&A Advisor and a nationally renowned expert and consultant in Mergers & Acquisitions, brought an audience of entrepreneurs up to speed on the reality of M&A. lt is not what you expect.

The news media may be filled with multi-billion dollar glitzy payouts, but the vast majority of deals are much more modest. While tech still carries upwards of three times the multiples of non-tech, especially in the $500 million plus space, the fact is, most of the newsmaking deals are special cases with valuations based on projections and earnouts.

For the entrepreneur, revenue or in the case of digital media companies, valued eyeballs, matter.

The real news is the M&A starts almost form the beginning when companies structure themselves for measurable revenue and raise money, not from VCs or family, but from their customers, suppliers and even their competitors – each of whom in many cases may also become their acquirer.

It certainly is a different approach from the VC money trail, but fortunately, we will still be offering that on April 26 at our Start-Up event. (Roger’s presentation will soon be available on the iBreakfast website www.ibreakfast.com)

Word of Mouth Marketing Report - Feb 2007

2007-05-15T06:44:00.001-07:00

Feb 1: Word of Mouth Marketing
Word of Mouth Marketing has been the holy grail of marketers for generations. Sometimes they get it, mostly they don't. But with the Internet, a science has emerged that makes it possible to control and measure the process. With it, we can now learn the rules, best practices and case studies that have taken many companies from zero to billions in a stunningly short amount of time.

How this works and what you can do are the subject of this eye-opening iBreakfast.

Andy Sernovitz,Co-Founder & Author, Word of Mouth Marketing Association
Jon Berry, SVP & Author, Keller Fay

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Andy Sernovitz, Co-Founder & Author, Word of Mouth Marketing, is a fourteen-year veteran of the interactive marketing business and author of Association
Jon Berry, SVP & Author, Keller Fay, is one of the nation’s leading experts on word of mouth and consumer trends and co-author of the seminal book, "The Influentials."

REPORT

View the 6 minute highlight reel with Andy Sernovitz of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and Jon Berry of Keller Faye, to understand how companies are using WOM and Viral Marketing to build great businesses.

Click to View