LaunchUp #9: O-CODES, RawData, Pixelture

Thanksgiving Point in Lehi was the facility that hosted this evenings LaunchUp. They provide great services to the entrepreneur community in Utah.

Company Pitches

• oCodes Dave Oldham presented his idea of how companies, more specifically those that sell through periodicals, can improve their customer experience by providing OCodes to their readers that they can text on their phones. Once they have text’d the code all their networks will get updated, purchases will happen and the world will be a better place because OCodes bridged the gap between “offline” and “online” browsing. If you text “OCodes” at 62626 you can get a copy of the presentation that Dave has given. Ask Not a clear ask except to text for the presentation.

• Chad Nuesmeyer from RawData presented his company. Only one analytics package exists for broadcast TV. Neilsen and other collectors of data have a view of some consumer information, but we have more. We load information from users cell phones. This reflects everything they are experiencing, music, radio, video etc. We load this data in to a report and sell that to advertisers. Ask 1) Ideas on DB query problem across massive amounts of data. 2) Hardware acceptance to the markets. 3) Looking for funding – around $ 120,000.00.

• Justin Strong with Pixelture give a presentation about their technology. It is a unique solution that allows users to share their desktop with others. Pixelture provides a server that client software connects with. The client can choose to share their entire desktop, an application or a number of different screens with the server that then projects or broadcasts the screens to other clients. Ask Since they are looking at distributing to the education market does anyone have relationships or suggestions on getting in to the market.

Amp Session was by Steve Spencer. His main message was that as entrepreneurs we should recognize our weaknesses and strengths very honestly. Then, in the places where we are weak we should find outstanding talent to help us out. The second principle is that when you found a company you should craft a way for co-founders and partners can exit gracefully. One of the worst things for a startup company is when one of the founders doesn’t belong in the company anymore and all the employees recognize it, but the founder doesn’t have a simple way to get out.

In the Weeds was presented by Jared Richards who is an attorney with BTJD and also has his own startup company that builds customer skis. He gave a list of six things that entrepreneurs should keep in mind as they start their company:

1. Choice of entity – If you are going for VC then go straight to Delaware C Corp. Otherwise consider the LLC. It’s cheap and flexible. Don’t make agreements before the company because you lose liability value.
2. Relationships – This is between your partners. You should consider drafting “walk-away” clauses at the very beginning.
3. Leaving – If you are creating your company while working with another company make sure that there is a clear line that separates the two entities.
4. IP (trademarks) – You can do your own search and file your own at US PTO.
5. IP2 – Make sure that all consulting work done for you is owned by You.
6. Attorney usage – Use them wisely. Make their job easy and it will keep your costs down.

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

We look forward to seeing you at the next LaunchUp on August 5, 2010!

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