The idea behind Ativiti is to identify and then expose all of the steps required to do pretty much anything. What are the five steps that you must take to learn the guitar? The hundred you must take to start a business? The experts out there have already figured out these steps and simply need a way to capture and ‘widgetize’ these steps into someone else’s project plan. Ativiti makes it reproducible — viral, even.

For anyone out there that learns through practice problems and example code, Ativiti is for you. Rather than just describe how to do something, you want to see the steps. Get rid of the project friction and those moments where you state “wouldn’t it be great to”… Instead of “wouldn’t it be great”, Ativiti plans to offer, “this is how you can”. Sign up for the beta now.

A few months back, I had the chance to sit and chat with one of Ativiti’s co-founders, Dave Whittemore. Dave is also a product manager at On Deck Capital, a financial services startup that provides small business loans, and an assistant organizer for the Blue Venture Community (formerly the Columbia Venture Community).

Dave talked a bit about some of the challenges of starting a business. Ativiti is being created by a team of moonlighters who find time to work on it outside of their day jobs on nights and weekends. This schedule makes getting their project off the ground that much more difficult, as it’s no easy task getting your idea vetted when you can only talk about it at night.

What the Ativiti team does have to their favor is familiarity. The Ativiti team has now worked together, in some form, for several projects dating back to Varsity Flicks and their Facebook application, MyOffice / Study Groups. Dave has settled into his role of working on marketing, blogging, and strategy with a product manager focus. Larry has been the developer throughout. Brandon takes care of external partnerships and analysis, and their newest team member, Nick, takes care of design. They’ve worked together for a while and know what to expect from each other. They’ve survived life shifts and now want to get something off the ground and popular.

Right now, the team is wholly focused on the product by taking a few mock ups and moving towards a working, private demo product. They’re using the blog to define their problem (and even list out their competitors) and following their three core principles:

1. Templating helps solve the problem of how to do something
2. I/O everywhere — meaning, tools need to move with you
3. Don’t reinvent the social network wheel

After that, they want to get their product out to the public and see what works and doesn’t. Only after this proof of concept stage, do they think they’ll focus on the business model with premium account.

Dave’s advice for any other moonlighting entrepreneurs out there — keep plugging away with consistency. Throughout the financial crisis (and as a New York-based team, this has been even more of a distraction), the team has continued to meet. Creating something new requires an evolutionary approach. At times, moonlighting helps — your day job influences your night job. Your night job influences your day job. It’s incredibly important to learn from both sides.

Baveo allows users to post photos, videos, and text updates to a blog devoted entirely to the newest members of the family. The site is well designed for parents and family on the go. Parents can post directly to their Baveo blog via their site or their phones, and friends and family can stay updated via email or text messages.

I recently had the chance to chat with Ari Greenberg, Baveo’s CEO and founder. Ari helped break down where the idea for Baveo came from, how the team came to be, what they’re up to, and a few other thoughts about being an early entrepreneur.

After witnessing a childhood friend and his wife blog about the birth of their first child, Ari’s idea for Baveo was born. Ari saw the chance to make a wonderful and important experience even better. Expecting parents deserved a better and more integrated blogging experience.

Previously at Magnify.net, Ari spent his free time exploring the project further. He had always known he wanted to start his company, but he lacked an idea worth pursuing.

Baveo quickly became that idea, and when he realized it, Ari wasted no time building a team of three. Everyone works for equity, and Ari wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s how he knew the team believed in the idea and wanted to see it succeed. It also ensured the team would be honest with him and tell him when things weren’t going right. Both are equally important.

The site is currently invite-only so the team is working towards building out new features and publicizing the site. There’s a large community of mom and dad bloggers out there for them to tap into, and they’re exploring ways for users to better capture and share baby memories.

No matter what they think now, though, the team is focused on letting their users decide where Baveo goes next. “Everything needs to be about the user,” Ari says, “Users will tell you what they want if you listen.”

For all of you expecting parents out there, sign up for a Baveo invite now. Let your friends know what’s going on with your little cherub and let Baveo know what you think of their service. They’re listening.

If any good comes from the financial crisis, I’m hoping that it helps developers on Wall Street realize that there are paths they can take other than the supposedly “stable” employment that large banks provide. Scratch that — I’m biased. I’m hoping they realize there’s one specific path they should be taking: working at NYC-based startups.

After talking to a few of my friends who work in IT for various large financial institutions, it doesn’t seem like the crisis has had the effect I’d hoped for, yet. Instead of it giving them cause to seek out greener pastures, they seem to be happy that they still have jobs. Rather than adjusting their appetite for risk (or exposing the real risk associated with Wall Street), some developers seem more attached to their jobs than ever.

Now, this isn’t universal, but the fact is, a lot of blood has been shed on Wall Street. Lots of folks are looking for jobs and plenty more will be at risk. The risk/reward of working in IT on Wall Street will surely change even if that’s not obvious now. The alternative — working in a startup — needs to be better publicized.

Josh Kopelman is doing a great job leveraging the financial crisis to tackle this issue head-on with his new website, Leave Wall Street, Join A Startup. That’s the kind of awareness I’m looking for. He lists out plenty of reasons for joining a startup that are dead-on, from the work environment, to creative control, to the potential equity upside.

I love his approach. The startup community in NYC needs to jump at the opportunity, build sustainable solutions, and attract technical talent. It might be easy to hire talent in the short-term, but long-term solutions are needed to ensure success when the crisis ends (and they always do). With companies like Lehman and Bear Stearns tanking, there aren’t many left to complain about startups’ lack of credibility or brand equity. What other objections are there?

A long-term solution begins with creating a better funnel between the various local educational institutions and the startups that reside here (shameless plug: this is one of the goals of Columbia Venture Community). We need more insitutions like CVC, NextNY, and the NY Tech Meetup that can provide continuity of awareness and thought leadership and broadcast success stories throughout the rapid turnover of the startup lifecycle.

The long term solution also requires more awareness and a bit of a reality check. There’s as much risk in your Wall Street job as there is with a startup. Bail yourself out.

Over the past year (only some of which has been recorded on Enter Venture) I grew attached to the New York City startup scene, Silicon Alley.  It is the only startup hub this early entrepreneur has ever known, and, well, you never forget your first.  I started Enter Venture in NYC, and it is entirely based on shared ideas with friends and colleagues from there.

I tried out a number of different Meetup events ranging from Internet Marketing, Columbia Venture Community, NY Video 2.0, NY Tech, and a Mashable event or two.  The scheduling gods conspired to keep me from attending the New York Web Standards meetings, but for the web standards-curious, these sounded phenomenal too.

I loved the underdog feeling at NY Tech events.  There was a constant sense of mission to prove the success of NY Tech.  There is a feeling that the NYC technology industry is going through a special transition right now.  People are asking questions, but they’re also looking for answers.

I’m not alone in this feeling either.  Mark Davis — a VC, blogger, and leader of the Columbia Venture Community — is in a much better position to make this statement and says the same with his NY Region is Hot post on Get Venture.

While looking for jobs in the Bay Area, I noticed this.  It seemed to me that there were more jobs posted for NYC than the Bay Area.  That’s a highly unscientific assessment, but I have also heard several early entrepreneurs think about, and decided not to move to the Bay Area just to be a part of the NYC community.  Something’s going on in NYC.

Over the past year, I also worked for the NYC Dept. of Small Business Services on the NYC Business Express project and website.  Over the next few years, the site will change the way largely traditional, non-tech businesses interact with city government.  There are too many stories of restaurant, laundry and grocery store owners spending precious hours in line for permits, only to find themselves tripped up on the city’s maze of requirements.  The group I worked with is attacking these problems from every angle, and I was priveleged to be a part of this large, difficult project. (I wont say much more about my time with SBS except that I’ll probably come back to this.  There’s an enormous experience that I need to process a bit more.)

So why did I leave all of this and move my life to Silicon Valley?  The reasons are not all work related, but the ones that are have to do with experience.  Like my process with Enter Venture, I want to experience a wide swath.   There are lessons from Silicon Alley that I’ll take with me, but Silicon Valley, and San Francisco in particular, will require a new perspective.  Whether I fail or succeed with that new perspective, I believe I will be wiser for having taken the chance.

I’ll have a new job with a startup that will color that perspective, but I’ll also have  new events, new lessons, and new experiences to share with early entrepreneurs.  I’m aware that I’m entering the echo chamber but ready to embrace and explore it.  I even have a new whiteboard, currently full of a few months worth of post ideas.

Stay tuned.  Enter Venture has gone west

When it comes to experience, though, early entrepreneurs should broaden themselves. When you’re starting out, participate in a wide swath of activities to better understand each part of a business. Write a business plan. Code part of your site. Try testing the site. Present your pitch. Whereas a scientist knows how to do research, an entrepreneur must know how to do the research, the grant writing, the accounting, and the floor mopping.

Widening your experiences also teaches you what you’re not good at. When it comes time to build your perfect team, experience will tell you that maybe you’re not the best guy for accounting, even though you know how to do it. Find a rock star accountant as soon as you can.

In the spirit of this idea, here are the 5 ways I try to broaden my experiences:

1. Read.

I’m an RSS (and book) junkie. I read anything from typography and web standards to financing and marketing (and biographies, fiction novels, and an occasional book of the Core Curriculum variety).

2. Get out there.

I practice my message and get new material by going to NYC tech events. Try to find events that are targeted to your market but emphasize different parts of your market. I can’t say enough for Meetup to help with your search. NYC has several Meetup web groups, some specific to video, marketing, web standards, programming languages, etc. There are also sites that announce weekly events. For NYC, try Garysguide, NextNY‘s calendar, and Silicon Alley Insider‘s weekly posts.

3. Try it.

Enter Venture is just one way that I try out my ideas. I practice teasing out ideas on my whiteboard and rough site specs for feedback from friends. You can build a local version of your site to practice your coding skills. Open Photoshop, or Gimp and play with some color scheme ideas using tutorials on the web. Sign up to be a software tester at uTest.

4. Analyze.

I’ve been using Google Analytics, Feedburner, and WP Stats to track visitor usage and identify visitor trends. I’m in the midst of using Crazy Egg to better understand usage patterns on the site, which will help drive my next round of Enter Venture updates.

5. Improve.

If you follow #1-4, you should always be improving. Be aware of what you’ve improved on and celebrate it. Be, also, aware of what you need work on and work on it.

Start from #1 again.

(If there are any rock star accountants out there, let me know what you’re up to.)

I had actually been waiting for that as a type of milestone. The last time no one visited the site for an entire day was May 10th. I kept writing and watching my visitor statistics in order to keep myself out of the red. I wanted to see how long I could keep the streak going. 113 days later, I’m happy with the results.

I started this blog on April 16th and have been tracking my visitors and subscribers ever since. (On June 9th, I added both Feedburner stats and WordPress stats. For the next Enter Venture stats update, I’ll have more data to compare all three.)

In my Enter Venture Update post from June 9th, I mentioned the most popular posts up to that time:

1. Columbia Venture Community
2. Dealing with Constraints
3. Back up, what the feed are you talking about?

Now, the most popular posts, not including pre-June 9th data, are:

1. Two Ideas for the NY Startup Scene
2. NY Video 2.0
3. Columbia Venture Community
4. Mashable Exhibit Hall – NY Internet Week
5. The value of engineering education

I’ve noticed two popular trends for the blog — events and ideas. Events bring tend to bring in the most traffic, but it’s more fickle. People go to an event, read about the event, and then the event passes on. Ideas tend to bring in lasting users, users that subscribe, users that comment.

Going back to one of my earliest posts, What this blog will be about, the one thing that hasn’t seemed to break the popular posts lists are my book posts (actually, these updates haven’t either). I think this is a case when I’m going to ignore my users though. I like those book posts and hope that they’ll become a better resource when I’ve compiled a bigger, more comprehensive list for early web entrepreneurs.

Check out some of the other things I’ve learned about my readers over the past few months:

Geography:

• 86% US (Largely NY, California, and Massachusetts)
• 3.8% India (Mostly from Hyderabad — what’s up guys?)
• 1.67% Canada
• < 1% from 23 others (significant time spent by users from Germany, Sweden, and Taiwan)

Referred by sites:

• 47% Direct traffic
• 24% Google referrals
• 6% Gmail referrals
• 3% Read Write Web referral

Using the following browsers:

• 62% Firefox
• 24% Internet Explorer
• 14% Safari

Much can be learned from these few tidbits about how I’m gaining traffic, what my users are like, and where they’re coming from. Stay tuned for future Enter Venture developments that will address what I’m going to do with this information. The first goal was to simply get people reading this blog. Next, I’m going to focus on how to grow Enter Venture.

Enjoy your 4th of July.

Visible Measures – Matt Cutler, VP Marketing & Analytics

Visible Measures analyzes the effectiveness of internet video and video advertising to determine how the video is being consumed and spread virally. Their solution is particularly cool in that you can analyze the way people are viewing a video — when they’re rewinding, when they’re navigating away, pausing, etc. For example, in this video of Kobe jumping over a car, they can track the precise part of the video that people end up rewinding to watch again. (The jumping over the car part, obviously). I can see how valuable this information would be for marketers, especially for those videos without the obvious ‘jumping over a car’ rewind section.

Boxee – Gidon, Co-founder

Update: I’ve received my alpha invite — thanks guys!

Boxee’s product looks awesome. Before I talk about their presentation, if you guys are listening out there, hook a brother up with an alpha invite!

Boxee is a social networking digital media center for the Mac (and other platforms soon too). Boxee scans your home network and builds a rich media experience over your digital library with browsing features similar to, but better than Apple TV and iTunes. Boxee imports third party content so you can read more information about your videos, see a pilot, or read lyrics to your songs (super cool — I never know the lyrics to even my favorite songs). You can use a remote (super cool again — maintains the tv media experience). You can invite and follow friends’ libraries (super cool one more time — can we finally realize a free on demand media service with this?). You can tune into your friends’ playlists, import slideshows from Flickr and Picassa. You can zoom in and out of your videos. Better yet, you can extend Boxee even further as seen with their Muxtape example.

Again, guys, if you’re listening, I’d love an alpha invite. I get the impression that I’d have a lot more to say about Boxee with more than a cursory feature review

MediaMerx – Tejpaul Bhatia, Co-founder & CEO

I reviewed Tej and MediaMerx’s service in my original Columbia Venture Community post. My original comments remain the same — great opportunity, great sounding company. For an example of MediaMerx’s service in action, check out videopassport.tv.

Hulu – Kevin McGurn, VP National Sales

Kevin McGurn presented one of the hottest new video sites — Hulu. He talked about Hulu’s focus on really building a site that highlighted already beautiful video assets using simple design and high resolution, high quality video. It’s quickly become the destination for professional videos of your favorite movies and tv shows. I could go on and on about how Hulu seems to have nailed the professional online video site. Just check out their site — your favorite shows are probably already up there.

Move Networks – Bob Bryson, SVP Sales & BD

Move Networks is another company bringing higher quality video distribution to the web. Their focus is on getting the highest quality video to the user, regardless of their connection or local environment. Users with the best connections can get the best video, while users with slower connections get a lower quality video, rather than an interrupted video experience. This sounds like a great solution for content providers — just check out their client list for proof.

Thanks everyone! I’ve included a video of all the great presenters thanks to Yaron and Blip.tv! This is a Meetup group I’ll definitely be visiting again, and next time, I’ll be sure to stay for a drink afterwards.

Several months ago I asked my friend Laks to recommend a good book that would really help me better understand how software should be done. For the past two years, I’ve worked in two completely different environments and seen two completely different ways of creating a web application. Unfortunately, I’ve never really felt like I’d learned to do things the right way.

I first tried reading the book online, but I didn’t appreciate the book in the same way when I had to follow a link somewhere, get up from my computer, sit down and find my place if I hadn’t left the page open from the night before. I knew I enjoyed what I was reading, but it was hard to keep coming back so I broke down and bought the book version for $25.

Aside from The Elements of Style, I don’t think there’s a smaller, more valuable book out there. I read the book on my way back from this year’s New Orleans Jazz Fest. On what should have been a let down flight, I found myself riveted by all 187 pages of this thing. A day after Jazz Fest and 2 hours into my flight I had the chills.

Getting real isn’t the type of book that’s going to tell you what to do with every little detail. It tells you how to focus on a tightly focused framework that will guide you to how you should handle every little detail. Just check out the chapter titles:

• Introduction
• The Starting Line
• Stay Lean
• Priorities
• Feature Selection
• Process
• The Organization
• Staffing
• Interface Design
• Code
• Words
• Pricing and Signup
• Promotion
• Support
• Post-Launch
• Conclusion

Talk about brevity. This book hits you over the head with its succinctness. Try digging through another book about software and see if you can find as much covered in as few words as 37signals has done with Getting Real.

One of the tell tale ways I know I’ve found a good book is by checking to see how many pages I’ve dog ear’d. I’d say about 15% of this book meets this description. There’s all kinds of gems in here, everything from hiring:

“Find someone who’s enthusiastic… Someone who’s excited to build what you’re building. Someone who hates the same things you hate. Someone who’s thrilled to climb aboard your train.”

To making opinionated software:

“Some people argue software should be agnostic… We think that’s bullshit. The best software has a vision. The best software takes sides.”

To how to approach any type of problem:

“Are you facing an issue that’s too big to wrap your mind around? Break it down. Keep dividing problems into smaller and smaller pieces until you’re able to digest them.”

And on and on. Or not so “on and on”? The book’s only 187 pages!

Finally, if you’re not ready to plunk down $25 for your own copy, check out this David Heinemeir Hansson speech. Let one of the authors push you over the hill:

(Isn’t Omnisio’s video / powerpoint slick? I have to think this will become more popular.)

I don’t think I’ll ever stumble upon the best way to create software, but I think this book is certainly close.

Now, I’ve never lived or worked in Silicon Valley, but I’ve heard about it. I’ve heard that students are encouraged to pursue entrepreneurship. I know that they have startup career fairs. What I knew about the NY startup scene during college was this: nothing.

So, here are my two ideas for how Silicon Alley can change that:

1. Silicon Alley needs to go to school

At the CVC event tonight, I heard and participated in several conversations that went like this:

• “I had no idea there were startups in NYC when I was in school.”
• “Are there companies that come to campus that aren’t investment banks or consulting firms?”
• “Why doesn’t anyone just go recruit from SEAS (Columbia’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences)?”

Great question. I graduated from SEAS in 2006. While there, I had no idea that NYC had even a single startup. I knew exactly who McKinsey, BCG, Booz Allen, Deloitte, UBS, Citibank, and Goldman Sachs were, or rather, after going to Columbia I knew who these firms were. I couldn’t agree more with Ari Greenberg of Baveo when he says that, “before I came to Columbia. I didn’t even know what the hell an investment bank or consulting firm was.”

I get the impression that Silicon Valley really cultivates the relationship with the young talent coming out of its area’s schools. I remember reading an article from Hacker News that said that many of UC Berkeley’s CS majors had multiple job offers.

Just before today’s CVC event, I ran into a recently graduated CS major who lived on my floor when I was a freshman RA (don’t ask). What’s he up to these days? He’s looking for a job. Looking for a job??!! Are you crazy?

Do you know how many times I’ve been at tech events lately where someone announces they’re hiring? This always strikes me as amazing. You’re looking to hire someone at an event full of people already working for startups or people planning to start their own? Really? Is there no better place to ask that question?

Silicon Alley should be hammering on Columbia and NYU’s doors. What more could a startup ask for than a recent graduate with lots of energy, the willingness to learn, and tons of time on their hands? Sure, it takes a leap of faith to recruit entry level developers from college, but it sure beats standing in a conference room while holding a “Looking for Developers” sign over your head.

The message to Silicon Alley is simple. Students have no idea that you exist because, well, you’re not hiring them!

2. Silicon Alley needs to be the most popular kid in school

I think this would be pretty easily attained by Silicon Alley once they start reaching into the area’s universities. How many college students really dream about donning that suit and tie when they graduate, anyways?

The area needs more buzz. It needs to create this buzz by looking outside its IAC walls. It needs success stories that people know about and hear about. Students shouldn’t find out about the Silicon Alley startup scene two years after graduation. They should be dreaming about being a part of it from the moment they step on campus. They’ll see startups, join startups, and think, “Hey, I can start one of these on my own.”

All of a sudden, that CS major becomes more attractive. You don’t need to move across the country. You don’t need to squeeze in that economics minor to make yourself more attractive to the McKinseys and Booz Allens (not that I’m advocating being one dimensional). Awareness will build on campus. Students will start telling stories about those firms that are dishing out free lunch and that let you wear jeans to work.

I can just imagine the career fair now. Imagine a table for Meetup right next to the table for JP Morgan Chase. How many engineers would choose writing back end financial software over working on a hot web product?

As Mark Davis said at today’s CVC event, “Columbia has a lot of people interested in entrepreneurship, but there’s not a lot of community.” The community has to come both from the universities and industry.

Columbia is starting to get it’s act together. Your move, Silicon Alley.

Whenever I go to one of these events, I enjoy a little chuckle to myself when I think of the conferences I’ve attended for my day job.  There’s typically a host of software providers, or a featured software provider, trying to sell any doohickie or widget they can stuff down the government’s throat.  I’m often the only person in the room under 40 and always the only one in the room with a spike of hair running over the top of his head.  For one of the more enjoyable conferences, NYC’s GovTech, the NYTimes tech blogger, David Pogue, gave a great, but revealing presentation about all kinds of new things on the internets — Skype, iPhone (1.0 not 2.0), etc.  It sometimes feels like stepping back in time.

Mashable was about as different from my day job’s conferences as one can get, but maybe it was a little too far in the future?  The event was hosted at Touch, a faux ritzy lounge / club that most people probably think of when they think of New York bars.  That’s right kids, plush couches, and a freakin’ DJ!  The only problem with this is that whole “Exhibit” part sometimes got kind of tough.  People were yelling over one another, and the exhibit area was packed, even during the first hour or so that I was there.  Not a bad bar scene, but again, the exhibit was kind of lost in the mix.

Don’t get me wrong.  I completely enjoyed myself at Mashable’s Exhibit Hall.  A bit of free food, (not free) beer, and internet geeks in the same room makes for a good time. Maybe they just needed a bigger space?

Rather than talk about the event, I decided to do something similar to what I did with the Columbia Venture Community article and review a few of the companies and websites I saw yesterday.  (If anyone else wants to review some of these sites, feel free to do so in the comments.  Yes, you, my 10 readers…):

NameThis – NameThis is another Kluster product and seems very similar to the Kluster site.  NameThis offers allows you to crowdsource the name of your company, product, or, well, anything.  My initial impression with the site is that I’m not in love with the wooden deck-like header overlaid horizontally on the vertically striped background.  It kind of hurts my eyes, but doesn’t keep me from being able to quickly figure out what this site’s all about.  They do a great job of using the most important screen real estate with the important functions of the site – naming competitions.

I ran into a few stumbling blocks when I tried to use NameThis though.  And by that, I mean, I can’t log in to use the site really at all.  I tried to log on to NameThis using my Kluster email account, the log on kept failing, but there was no message to tell me what was wrong.  I decided to “forgot my password” and had an email sent to me with a link to reset my password.  When I reset my password, I was taken straight back to the original log in screen as if there was another unannounced error with the system.  Grrr.  I can log in to Knewsroom and Kluster so I don’t think it’s me.

I can log in to the site and see the current naming competitions, but I can’t participate.  It’s too bad too.  The concept of this site is so simple and easy to understand that I want to participate, you know?  Just the tip, just to see how it feels?

One last thing about Kluster, they seem like they have found a system that will really be able to churn out products.  It seems like they’ve put together three different applications over night so I bet we can expect more.

edopter – edopter was probably my favorite site of the event.  Even better, Matthew from edopter was probably the easiest person to talk to of all the participants.  Great site.  Great people.  Good combination.  I don’t think I’m a part of edopter’s target market, but I can completely see the type of people who would love this site.  In fact, I have a friend of mine that I’m sharing the link with once I finish this post.

For the most part, the site design is great.  I came away with a few ideas for updating the Enter Venture blog design (whenever that will be) .  They do a really good job of focusing your eye on big, clear images and text, which makes for a fun browsing experience.

I do have a few complaints: Some of the graphic design makes it a bit difficult to scan for elements on the site.  The buttons blend in with the rest of the background and text a bit too much — for example, the log in button on the home page.  The search bar also suffers from a similar problem but looks more like a button than an input field.

Concertattack – ConcertAttack has a great, clean site that addresses the popular music / artist / fan / concert market.  I should be feeling great about ConcertAttack, but here’s the thing…  Haven’t I seen this site before?  Or some variation of this site?  I’m certainly not someone who would use the site.  There definitely are a lot of people who would — just check out the activity on the site.

My worry for them is how are they really, really going to stand out?  Something tells me the fans of these sites are pretty fickle.  Concertattack must do one or two things better than anyone else, it’s just hard for me to know what those things are.

VideoClix.tv – VideoClix was a crowded by people so I knew there was something worth checking out in them.  I just watched the demo of their product and can now see why it was so crowded.  VideoClix has made video interactive and clickable for more information and product suggestions.  While watching a video of Steve Harvey, you can mouse over the video for an indication of what’s clickable.  When you click on the video, a small sidebar slides out with more information about Home Depot, sandpaper, Steve Harvey, etc.

The product doesn’t yet seem perfect from the demo, but it’s a certainly on its way towards a really new and interesting viewing experience. I look forward to my beta invite to see more.

Rubicon – Hmm.  Rubicon.  I was at  first excited about Rubicon.  This might be something I could use in the future.  I have a blog.  At the point that I have more than 10 readers, I might want to put ads on this blog.  Unfortunately, I never found myself wanting to get started.  They do some sort of ad network optimization thing where we all magically make tons of money, or “mad cash”.  All I wanted to do is figure out what they could do for Enter Venture.  Instead, I filled out a form, that took me to their “User Interface” (I should have known to bail out here), then another set of questions, and really, I stopped there.  It was clear that this wasn’t something I wanted to use.

After writing the above, I decided to give Rubicon one last try and at least view their 3 minute demo.  Instead of a demo though, I got a voiced over sales presentation.  I think they’re really stretching the use of the word “demo” (short for “demonstration”) here.

MotionBox – MotionBox was another company and site that I really liked.  Put them in the edopter bucket.  MotionBox seems to have found a niche in the family video sharing space.  Their site uses all kinds of language and images that target the “Hi Mom, the baby did x today!” audience.  MotionBox’s user account screens look the best of any of the sites I saw at Mashable.  They’re well organized, have subtle design touches that compliment that organization, and they make it extremely easy to use their system — right down to the short but instructive step-by-step guide that’s just perfect for their target market.

Unfortunately, it’s ridiculously hot in my apartment right now as NYC just got slammed with a heat wave so I need to wrap this up here.  MotionBox deserves a more extensive review, but I’m (thankfully) short of any sample baby videos at the moment and don’t expect any soon.  Maybe then I’ll give them the full test.

Thanks again to Mashable and all of the event’s participants!

Scott asked the panel to give one piece of advice to the entrepreneurs and their startups. Here’s the gist of what they said:

• Mimeo (CEO Adam Slutsky) – “The team is most important.” “Start with the customer.”
• Thumbplay (VP/BD Chris Phenner) – “Get used to what each other smells like.”
• The Ladders (Marc Cenedella, CEO) – “Get going.” “Get real customers that send you angry emails and learn something.”
• DailyCandy (Catherine Levene, COO) – “Focus. Figure out what you’re doing and do it well.”
• Meetup (G.Whalin, CTO) – “Have a vision and stick to your guns.” “Launch iterate. Launch iterate.”
• Etsy (Rob Kalin, CEO) – “Head down and work.”
• Huffington Post (Jonah Peretti, Co-Founder) – “Be flexible.” “Know yourself”
• Huffington Post (Betsy Morgan, CEO) “Leave behind conventional rules.”
• AlleyCorp (Kevin Ryan, CEO) – “Carve out a market that people didn’t realize existed.”

Thanks to CenterNetworks for the video!