LaunchUp #8: ooTunes, Buystream and Instructure

Miller Free Enterprise Center hosted the event and Mozy sponsored the corner dives. This was a great evening of getting together with entrepreneurs to network, learn and share ideas.

Company Pitches

• ooTunes was the first pitch and kept the audience in good humor. Steve Woolley presented his very straight forward business of selling an iPhone app that lets users listen to music. Some of the cautionary tales he shared were around not being dependent on solely one source of lead generation (Apple store). He also warned of the pains of growth. In his case, he has to deal with a significant amount of email, over 29,000/year sent. NEED: In the end he asked for what many entrepreneurs have a hard time asking for, a boss.

• BuyStream‘s Mark Thomas talked briefly about his company’s background which is focused on providing interactive video to its internet customers to improve their conversion rates. Interactive video means not just video content that a company dumps to YouTube, but a video that has embedded within it “calls to action.” This allows the viewer to give their lead information or close a sale while watching the video. Their customers have consistently seen an increase in conversion rates, but that has ranged all the way from 5% to 40% increase. NEED: Ideas on pricing model, additional customer focus and feature delivery, and more resources ($).

• Devlin Daley then presented Instructure, a company with a very well thought out product, a focused market and a clear exit possibility. Devlin’s solution is the “David” that is emerging in the market where Goliath is referred to as “Blackboard.” The higher education market has been gobbled up by Blackboard and yet the users hate the system since it is so outdated in its approach to teaching and learning.

Amp Session was given by Josh Coates. Josh started off this session of LaunchUp with a number of good laughs. He took pokes at himself and others while presenting his basic principle where X->f(X)->Y. If you want to experience “success” in this life you must determine first what “Y” or your success factor is, whether that includes validation, money or something else. Then you must complete an honest evaluation of “X” which is everything that you really are (skills, knowledge, passions). Once you have figured out those two things, then you and others can help you find and create “f of X” or the function / activities that will take you from where you are at to where you want to be. This was a great thoughtful discussion with some good follow up Q&A.

In the Weeds was presented by DJ Waldow from Blue Sky Factory. His message was focused on using social media to promote your company. The one key phrase that he opened with was “Be there before the sale.” This idea goes beyond just being omnipresent all over billboards and other media. It includes elements such as:

• Have a product that doesn’t suck and can sell
• Listen to your customers AND others in your industry
• Build a community management team early on including CEO
• Engage in conversations that are not solely closing a sale oriented
• Create killer content to support your product
• Be present or available for the conversations all the time
• Give a Darn because people can tell

The video for this event was done by  Clark at Mustache Power Productions and can be found at YouTube.

It was a great meeting again and I look forward to seeing y’all at the next LaunchUp on July 1, 2010!

You can find more complete notes (boring transcript style) at merrillhansen.com.