I need to start off by first thanking Paul and Kady for creating and hosting such a great event. They do a great job of bringing people together with 1 Piazza and the Startup Rockstars demo events.The latest event at Viget Labs went fantastic. We spend so much time chained to a computer trying to get everything just right with our applications that it’s  a huge benefit to get in front of some the brilliant people in the area, show your concept and have a chance to see the flaws you’ve missed or chosen to ignore. It was a lot of fun, and it was great to see some other really cool things being developed.

We had a lot of people asking great questions during our presentation, and the discussions that followed were all very helpful to us. I had a pleasure talking with Michael Mayernick from www.Contribune.org about the challenges of starting a company in the area. I hope to get a Beta Invite to check out his site soon and see what it is all about.

Jonathan Aberman from Amplifier Venture Partners had an impromptu introduction talking about what the current financial crisis means for startups, specifically ones looking to go the route of obtaining VC financing. The general message: It’s not the end of the world, but be prepared for less people getting funded, especially without a proven revenue model or clean exit.

The other Rockstars from the event:

GamerVixens

Christina had a wonderful presentation showing off her site: www.gamervixens.com. GamerVixens is a social network for female gamers. Tackling the social network space is a dangerous target, but they are going about it perfectly. The sexy branding possible with GamerVixens is powerful. I was talking to someone after her presentation that summed it up perfectly: “What is cooler than a chick that plays video games?” The flow in their site was fantastic and their development, with well used ajax, was done phenomenally . It was lightweight, unobtrusive, yet still powerful.

BrandClik 

The guys from Brandclick have a great product with a lot of potential. They have their act together and I fully expect them to become a very big deal, so I’m glad I got to meet them now before they are on the cover of Inc or Business Week Magazines. From what I can tell it works  their site helps marry content providers and advertisers in a very novel and needed way. From an advertisers perspective If your brand, or any other keyword you select, appears on the content sites you have chosen to partner with it will automatically create a link to a site within your domain.

They have a lot put together already, and you can see a lot of avenues they could go down with their concept. They were recently featured in the Washington times here, discussing starting out in the current financial circumstances.

CreateDebate

CreateDebate is a platform for creating and managing debates about virtually any topic. They had a well put together site, and it appeared to have quite a few users. I was hoping to catch up with them after the presentation to hear more, but only met them briefly. Would love to hear more about it next time I have the opportunity.

OurCoupleSpace 

Gary presented OurCoupleSpace very well. OurCoupleSpace hopes to help couples that are having issues with their relationship by utilizing technology to point out the true areas they find important and to better communicate their needs. Obviously with the eHarmony’s of the world, this is a space that has a lot of recent interest and I think it’s a good idea. I wish him the best of luck, and look forward to seeing more of what comes of the project.

 Ok, so we have ourselves a blog now for evDeliv. Now what do we do with it? With the energy we are putting into blogging instead of the myriad of other issues facing us we’ve been forced to take a hard look at what we are doing here. The truth is, I feel like I am trying to pretend that we are doing this for all the right reasons (engage customers, allow a discussion about our brand, company strategy and direction, and because we truly feel we have something deep and meaningful to say. the truth is however, while these are great reasons, I fear the real reason is somewhat distracting and takes away form the benefits we could see. Blogging is also clearly a marketing tool, allowing us to create a larger brand, and personal brand for myself and the rest of our small team. To reach our fingers out across the net and start to have some clout. The problem with this, is that it doesn’t inspire us to write anything new or useful, and it makes the whole act of doing this feel empty and hollow. If it is only to let people know we are launching evDeliv. It will feel empty barren, black & white, and boring.

So what are the uses for this blog that can be both rewarding for us and the people that read it?

Clarify our own thoughts

Only through conversations with others, and ourselves can we develop a mature understanding of the concepts we grasp. Moments of elucidation may occur fleetingly, late at night, or in a rush of insight, but only by digesting that information through communication and thought can something real be garnered from it.

Provide a mechanism for criticism

What is great about ideas, is that they are highly moldable objects. Without the right tools a piece of wood, is just a piece of wood, but given a saw, tape measure, router, sander, screws, putty, stain, and veneer it can become almost anything the creator can imagine. The same is true of ideas. Given two-way communication, and insight an idea can be molded, bent, prodded, and shaped into being something real, tangible and useful.

Discuss Topics important to us

In any two-way communication you are actively involved will, the topic will invariably be 50% what you want and 50% what the other participants want. (We will ignore the fact that the sum is greater int he pieces in this case) By blogging and discussing the concepts we have we allow the conversation in our life to naturally

One thing I constantly have to remind myself is to accept criticism. Not even just accept it. Relish in it. Roll around on the floor in it. Actively seek it out from every source, from a babbling idiot on the street, to technology experts, to tech savvy kids that are convinced of their own unalienable 20-20 vision of the future.

In starting EV, we have sought the council of CEOs, developers, bloggers, venture capitalists, friends, colleagues, and anyone else that would listen to our own vision.

From them we have heard the good, bad, and indifferent:

“If you don’t do this, someone else will, and it WILL be here.”

“Why would you make a desktop platform, everything is going web”

“It seems you have the bull by the tail. It’s too big and your resources are too sparse”

Each of these spats of –isms, and many more we have heard, is true to a point and helpful to us, but they certainly can’t stop our progress.

“You’re afraid of making mistakes. Don’t be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people’s faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn” - Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

One thing that has constantly struck me as we go through the process of building a company is to relish criticism and mistakes. If we didn’t we would not be able to keep moving forward. In every area of business, communication and software development there are people that are better, faster, and stronger than you. But to improve and to reach new levels you have to be able to talk to an expert in that area, accept the truth of what they are saying, improve and keep moving forward. One thing to me is clear, much like we all do with the concept of death; You must blind yourself to failure and to actively repress that success is not a given or you can never be successful. 

And a moment of zen: Julie’s suggestion for our blog header:

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