ServePath Blog

If you are a San Francisco Bay Area Start-up, Web 2.0-er, Developer, Investor, Entrepreneur or just want to attend an extremely informative and useful meetup, then look no further. The next StartUp SF meetup is just around the corner. Join us hearing Brian Solis of PR 2.0 and Bub.blicio.us talk about “Conversational PR for Startups.”

About: StartUp SF brings together technologists, entrepreneurs, developers, technologies, services and solutions in an environment designed to further your learning, meet like-minded professionals and promote networking in order to make you successful!

The next StartUp SF is schedule for Wednesday, June 18^th from 6 to 9 PM in the 8^th Floor Café at the offices of Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe (@ 405 Howard Street, San Francisco). The format is simple:

6-7 PM –> Networking and Demo Companies (Demo companies will present for 2-3 minutes)
7-8 PM –> Guest Speaker (presentation with Q&A session)
8-9 PM –> Networking and more Demo Companies

StartUp SF is a not-for-profit event with all proceeds going to charity. All proceeds from this event will be going to Inveneo (http://www.inveneo.org), a demo company at this event. The last StartUp SF raised $400 for Habitat for Humanity.

Speaker

With the success of the inaugural event behind us, we have lined up another stellar speaker, Brian Solis, of Bub.blicio.us and PR 2.0. To quote:

“bub.blicio.us is here to help capture the excitement and insight behind everything two point oh providing a lense into the social landscape that’s energizing and shaping the new tech economy.”

Following the StartUp SF theme of providing helpful information to becoming a successful start-up, Brian’s presentation is titled: “Conversational PR for Start-ups”.

Demo Companies

Throughout the evening, the following companies (subject to change/additions) will be providing hands-on demos and answering questions about their product or service:

Mosio Project – Noel Chandler – Co-Founder
http://www.mosio.com

About Mosio – “Mosio is a mobile question and answer community enabling you to text any question from your phone and have it answered by real people. Harnessing the power of helpful people, mobile technologies and the internet, Mosio gives users access to information anywhere.”

Nirvino – Phil McGarr & Meli James - Partners
http://www.nirvino.com

About Nirvino – “Nirvino is, simply, the easiest way to find great wine. Our innovative technology combines wine reviews and ratings from print, online, and broadcast wine critics into one score. Get all of the information you need to make an informed purchasing decision with just one click. If the Nirvino Rating says a wine is great, look no further!”

Inveneo – Kristin Peterson – Co-Founder & Chief Development Officer
http://www.inveneo.org

About Inveneo – “Inveneo is a non-profit social enterprise whose mission is to get the tools of ICT into the hands of organizations and people who need them most: those in remote and rural communities in the developing world.”

More about the event

At the event, you will hear some tips and tricks from a successful startup, find a good crowd, demos of some thought-provoking leading-edge products and drinks and light snacks.

You will leave better connected and educated AND with the following gifts from us:

• $100 GoGrid service credit which enables you to deploy, scale and load balance server networks instantaneously - More info about GoGrid
• Orrick’s Startup Kit CD which includes legal documents critical to every startup Venture - More info about Orrick

Please join us for StartUp SF and tell your friends about it.

When: Wednesday June 18th 6 – 9PM

Where: Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe, 405 Howard St. San Francisco at the 8th Floor Cafe

What: StartUp SF Meetup, networking, knowledge, friends and schwag to kick start your startup.

Who: Technologists, Entrepreneurs and interested folks who are over 21 years of age

Bring: Business cards, elevator pitch, curiousity, legal dilemmas and server needs

How Much: $10 in advance / $20 at the door (all proceeds go to charity)

Bring yourself and your technology friends to meet likeminded, future-looking folks who may become your next colleague, customer, vendor or competitor.

ServePath’s UpStream Networks (USN) was recently highlighted in Sound & Communication’s April 21st, 2008 issue in an article titled “Faith Streams - Where AV and IT meet in the HOW segment” by Shonan Noronha. Houses of Worship (HOWs) are becoming more technologically advanced in their methods of communicating their messages to their communities at large.

This article discusses a few examples of technology strategies undertaken by HOWs to increase the breadth and depth of their reach. The article leads with the following summary of the technology evolution:

“New streaming media technology and content delivery networks are enabling Houses of Worship to expand their outreach through online live and on-demand services. Video production, capture and editing systems, signal encoders and servers, and networks for hosting websites and streaming media are all part of the mix.”

The entire article is available for download (PDF) here.

Used with permission of Testa Communications from the April 2008 issue of Sound & Communications magazine. For more information, go to www.soundandcommunications.com.

Yesterday we inaugurated with co-host Orrick a new event in San Francisco called StartUp SF. The idea behind StartUp SF is to bring together like-minded technologists, entrepreneurs, startups, Web 2.0 companies and others to engage, learn and network. The “special mix” of socializing, company demo tables and a guest speaker proved to be the perfect environment for this to take place. All proceeds from the event are donated to charity. For this event, $400 will be donated to Habitat for Humanity.

The 100+ audience not only received invaluable information on how to “kick-start their startup,” they also received the Orrick Emerging Start-Up Kit CD-ROM (containing important legal tools and document templates to help any business) as well as a $100 coupon towards GoGrid.

Speaker & Demos

After about an hour of socializing, meets-and-greets and mini-demos (by Triggit, Askpedia and MotivePath…and GoGrid, of course), attendees listened to and participated in a through-provoking and information presentation by Jonathan Cobb (CTO and Founder of Kiptronic - a long-time ServePath customer). The presentation, “Genesis of a Startup…from concept to company,” covered a wide range of important topics that anyone thinking about starting a company should consider, including:

• Early Validation (pitch, customers, risks)
• The Basics (capital, agreements, timing, records)
• Validation (milestones, customers, research)
• Core Team (people, network, skillset, compensation)
• Fund Raising (tight ship & stay hungry)
• Term Sheet (valuation, plan B)

The full presentation is available for download here.

The Audience and Photos

We took a few photos last night. They are located on the ServePath Flickr photostream. A few highlights…

John Keagy (CEO/ServePath)

Michael Sheehan (Tech. Evangelist/ServePath) Pete Cashmore (CEO/Mashable)

View from the Orrick balcony

Daniel Lieberman (CEO/bitpusher) & Robert Ficcaglia (Founder/MotivePath)

Jonathan’s presentation

In the future, we also hope to begin doing live videocasts of the event as well as make these videos available for viewing later.

More information about StartUp SF

StartUp SF will continue every other month, with the next one planned for June. Speaking topics will be geared towards different tools, techniques, methodologies and strategies to help start-ups and emerging companies grow successfully. Companies or individuals who would like to speak, be media sponsors or host a demo table are encouraged to fill out the Contact form on the StartUp SF site.

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area tomorrow (April 30th) we hope that you can attend StartUp SF, a meetup designed to help you “kickstart your startup.”

Speaker and Demo tables

Jonathan Cobb - Founder/CTO of Kiptronic (http://www.kiptronic.com)

Topic - “Genesis of a Startup: from Concept to Company”

• Early Validation — Before you start in earnest, you might wonder — What makes a good idea? Is yours worth pursuing? How do you size your opportunity?
• Covering the Basics — A handful of best-practices recommendations for general company administration: corporate formation, capital structure, legal, accounting, etc.
• Building the Core Team — How do you attract talent at this very early stage? What kinds of players will you need pre-funding? Post-funding?
• Market Validation — How do you execute to prove you have a winning idea? What milestones make sense for your business?
• Fund Raising — When should you raise money? Who should be your target funding sources? How much should you raise? What are common investment terms?

Demo table companies: Triggit, Askpedia and MotivePath. Also come see a demo of GoGrid, a definite “must have” for any startup.

Every attendee will receive:

• $100 GoGrid service credit which enables you to deploy, scale and load balance server networks instantaneously - More info about GoGrid

• Orrick’s Startup Kit CD which includes legal documents critical to every startup Venture - More info about Orrick

Quick Details:

When: April 30th, 2008 from 6pm to 9pm
Where: Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe, 405 Howard St, SF at the 8th Floor Cafe
Who: Technologist, Entrepreneurs, Startups, Web 2.0-ers (over 21 years of age)
Bring: Business cards, elevator pitch, curiosity, legal dilemmas and hosting needs
Cost: $10 in advance / $20 at the door (all proceeds go to charity)

Register at: http://startupsf0408.eventbrite.com/

Hope to see you there!

ServePath’s latest product, GoGrid, is starting to get some traction within the cloud and hosting arenas. With just over a month of being in public beta, GoGrid has sign-ups coming from all around the world. End users are understanding how easy it is to quickly create and deploy load-balanced Windows and Linux web, application and database servers through our innovated web-based graphical interface. Also, GoGrid was recently written up on bub.blicio.us as we announced our QuickStart Facebook Servers which enable Facebook developers to quickly get their Facebook applications onto the Facebook networks within minutes.

Today, as I was writing up about how GoGrid will be exhibiting at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, I noticed some truly great subliminal advertising. Many of you may be familiar with the GoGrid logo:

Well, you should pay particular attention to the “O” of “GO” since the artists at the Web 2.0 Expo believe that our iconography is particularly appealing to them and the Web 2.0 audience. The image below is from the Expo’s main page:

That being said, GoGrid should be of great interest to both those attending and exhibiting at the Web 2.0 Expo.

If you…

• …have ever wondered how to get your application on the Facebook network quickly…
• …need to rapidly scale a server environment…
• …want a sandbox, QA or demo environment that you can turn on and off at will…
• …are tired of paying for dedicated or shared hosting…
• …want to deploy real Windows servers in minutes…
• …are a LAMP or Ruby-on-Rails or Linux developer and a looking for a hosting provider…
• …want to experience an extremely slick and elegant web-based UI used for deploying and load balancing servers…

…then you should definitely come by our table and/or give GoGrid a try!

Come visit us at Table 22 in the Long Tail Pavilion. Those who drop by will get some $$$ applicable towards a new GoGrid account.

Hope to see you there!

ServePath is pleased to announce the latest and greatest meetup in the San Francisco Bay Area: StartUp SF. As regular attendees of meetups around the Bay Area, we have experienced first-hand what we think works and what people are looking for, so we have partnered with Orrick to bring you a new technology meetup, specifically designed to help “kickstart your startup!”

The format for this meetup is simple. Socialize, hear how other successful companies got that way, see demos of products, meet with venture capitalists, and generally have a good time.

You and your technology friends are cordially invited to inaugurate the StartUp SF Meetup on Wednesday April 30^th, 6 to 9PM at the spectacular offices of Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe, 405 Howard Street, San Francisco.

Speaker and Demo Table details:

Jonathan Cobb - Founder/CTO of Kiptronic (http://www.kiptronic.com)

Topic - “Genesis of a Startup: from Concept to Company”

• Early Validation — Before you start in earnest, you might wonder — What makes a good idea? Is yours worth pursuing? How do you size your opportunity?
• Covering the Basics — A handful of best-practices recommendations for general company administration: corporate formation, capital structure, legal, accounting, etc.
• Building the Core Team — How do you attract talent at this very early stage? What kinds of players will you need pre-funding? Post-funding?
• Market Validation — How do you execute to prove you have a winning idea? What milestones make sense for your business?
• Fund Raising — When should you raise money? Who should be your target funding sources? How much should you raise? What are common investment terms?

About Kiptronic - “Kiptronic provides a software-as-service platform as a comprehensive solution for publishers of video and audio content. Our Media Services Platform allows our customers to dynamically deliver ads with their content, extending their reach to any device, with support for leading hosting platforms and formats. We support audio and video delivered both online, such as in a website video player, or offline to any downloadable media device.”

Demo tables

MotivePath - Robert Ficcaglia - Founder (http://www.motivepath.com)

About MotivePath - MotivePath®, Inc. provides a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution to help marketers and advertisers quickly and easily reach highly targeted audiences for their product and service messages. The MotivePath technology platform empowers Everywhere Media™, and features a SaaS service core capable of serving targeted ad units and creative interactive content across web, social networks, mobile, video, and even connects to offline media such as print, outdoor and screen media. It features content management for tailoring content for different media types and channels, reporting, predictive models and analysis. It provides full campaign management, ROI measurement, scenario analysis, and Key Performance Indicators. In addition, the MotivePath open service platform enables clients and partners to integrate directly with MotivePath technology, resulting in the availability of best of breed solutions through the MotivePath partner program.

Triggit - Susan Coelius Keplinger - COO (http://www.triggit.com)

About Triggit - Triggit makes it quick and easy for web publishers to monetize their sites with advertising. Using a cross platform web application, publishers can now drag and drop ad units directly into their pages, optimize efficacy and track the results. Triggit takes the pain out of monetization.

Askpedia - Yong Su Kim (http://www.askpedia.com)

About Askpedia - Askpedia is an online knowledge marketplace for Questions and Answers. Users post questions with optional financial rewards for best answers. Others answer questions to earn rewards and establish their reputation within the community. All questions and answers, as well as users, are tagged and indexed with tags and location information to enable content and location based discovery. Askpedia also utilizes personalization technologies to match Q&A and experts to users based on interest and knowledge profiles.

More about the event

StartUp SF brings together technologists, entrepreneurs, technologies, services and solutions to meet, learn, socialize and network to success and monetization. We hope that you will join us for a fun professional evening. EACH MEETUP DONATES ALL TICKET PROCEEDS TO A DIFFERENT CHARITY. This inaugural event will be donating to Habitat for Humanity.

At the event, you will hear some tips and tricks from a successful startup, find a good crowd, demos of some thought-provoking leading-edge products and drinks and light snacks.

You will leave better connected and educated AND with the following gifts from us:

• $100 GoGrid service credit which enables you to deploy, scale and load balance server networks instantaneously - More info about GoGrid

• Orrick’s Startup Kit CD which includes legal documents critical to every startup Venture - More info about Orrick

Please join us for StartUp SF and tell your friends about it.

When: Wednesday April 30^th 6 – 9PM

Where: Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe, 405 Howard St. San Francisco at the 8th Floor Cafe

What: StartUp SF Meetup, networking, knowledge, friends and schwag to kick start your startup.

Who: Technologists, Entrepreneurs and interested folks who are over 21 years of age

Bring: Business cards, elevator pitch, curiosity, legal dilemmas and server needs

How Much: $10 in advance / $20 at the door (all proceeds go to charity)

Bring yourself and your technology friends to meet like-minded, future-looking folks who may become your next colleague, customer, vendor or competitor.

Being a San Francisco-based Internet Hosting Provider sometimes really has its excitement. Today was no different. Originally, the 2008 Olympic Torch run was scheduled to go right past the ServePath offices in downtown San Francisco, and we were there to greet them, at least we thought we were.

We parked ourselves above the torch route in front of the Palomino (a local restaurant in our building) with a different message, not pro-China nor pro-Tibet, just simply pro-hosting (sorry, I know that was bad). Unfortunately, because of the huge amount of protestors and a few scuffles that took place, the torch run route changed and we were left without the action passing under our noses.

Earlier in the day, I snapped some other photos of various protestors around our area.

As I’m blogging this, the excitement continues elsewhere in the City. Isn’t San Francisco wonderful?!

Tomorrow (March 25, 2008) is the second annual SNAP Summit held in San Francisco. SNAP Summit is a one-day, two-track conference focusing on the business and design of social applications. Held from 9:00am until 5:00pm at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, SNAP Summit promises to deliver a group of experts and timely topics.

Have you ever wondered how you could make your applications more viral or which applications advertisers like targeting the most? What will be the next “killer app” on FaceBook or is there another platform that developers or businesses should be developing on? Want to learn how to get a pre-configured, “Facebook-ready” server with a quick deployment feature? (You have to come find ServePath for that one!)

Prices are $399 online or $499 at the door. BUT, if you put in discount code “ServePath”, you get $100 off your ticket online!

Speakers include:

• Jessica Alter - Director of Platform and Business Development @ Bebo
• Kevin Barenblat - CEO @ [context]
• Jim Benedetto - VP of Technology @ MySpace
• Siqi Chen - Co-Founder/Developer @ Friends for Sale
• Jeff Clavier - Managing Partner @ SoftTech VC
• Jaren Fliesler - Director of Business Development @ Slide
• BJ Fogg - Psychology and Technology Professor @ Stanford University
• Seth Goldstein - CEO/Co-Founder @ SocialMedia.com
• Martin Green - VP of Business Development @ Meebo
• Steve Jang - CMO/Head of Business Development @ imeem
• Aaron Kahlow - Managing Partner @ BusinessOnLine
• Jeremy Liew - Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners
• Lee Lorenzen - CEO @ Altura Ventures
• Dave McClure - Advisor/Investor @ Blogger & 500hats.com
• Dave Morin - Senior Platform Manager @ Facebook
• Jeremiah Owyang - Web Analyst @ Forrester
• Rajat Paharia - CEO @ Bunchball inc.
• Joshua Porter - Founder @ Bokardo.com
• Jim Scheinman - Entrepreneur-in-Residence @ CRV
• Jia Shen - CTO/Co-Founder @ RockYou
• Anu Shukla - CEO/Founder @ Offerpal Media

Topics include:

• Effective Social Interface Design
• Methods of Boosting User Engagement
• Metrics: Where Users Come From
• Mass Interpersonal Persuasion
• Future of the Social Platform
• Social App Exit Strategies
• Building what Users (and Advertisers) want
• Viral Tuning and Viral Marketing - Best Practices and Real Life Examples
• Legal Issues Facing Social Media Companies
• Taking that App and Making Money - how does one really do it?
• Infrastructure Scalability 101: What you don’t know CAN hurt you
• Fundraising Strategies for Startups

ServePath is one of the sponsors of this event. We will have a table and people showcasing ServePath’s newest product offering: GoGrid which allows you to deploy a fully load-balanced server network in under 10 minutes. Look for us there!

Microsoft Windows 2008 Server is scheduled to be launched on February 27, 2008 and most hosting providers will not have it available to offer to their customers until some time in April 2008.

However, using the special “GoLive License” that Microsoft has created for hosting providers, ServePath can offer Windows 2008 Server NOW as a hosting solution.

ServePath, a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner and among the first hosting providers to provide Windows 2008 Hosted Servers, currently offers Windows 2008 Web and Standard editions. Pricing varies based on the number of processors, amount of RAM and the features required.

• Windows 2008 Web Edition is configured with IIS 7.0 and SMTP.
• Windows 2008 Standard Edition comes with Terminal Services Gateway, RDC, Application Server, Active Directory Domain Services, DHCP Server, DNS Server Windows Clustering and SMTP.

More information on ServePath’s Windows Server 2008 hosting can be found here. Be sure that you use promo code “ServePathWS08” (while available) to receive a Free Setup for your new Windows 2008 Server account. You can save between $250 to $1000 on the setup costs. Also be sure that you tell your sales representative that you heard about this offer from the blog! Call Sales at 1-866-321-PATH (1-866-321-7284).

Touted to be a revolutionary upgrade, Windows 2008 Server includes:

• Web
  • Internet Information Service 7.0 (IIS 7.0)
  • Hosting of Applications and Services
  • Management and Lower Infrastructure Costs
• Virtualization
  • Hyper-V Server Virtualization (not available at launch)
  • Terminal Services Presentation Virtualization
• Security
  • Network Access Protection
  • Read-Only Domain Controller
  • Active Directory Rights Management Services
• Solid Foundation for Business Workloads
  • Management
    • ServerManager
    • Windows PowerShell
    • Power Management
    • High Performance Computing
  • Reliability
    • ServerCore Installation Option
    • Next-Generation Networking
    • Failover Clustering
    • Dynamic Hardware Partitioning

Learn more about Windows 2008 Server at the Microsoft Windows 2008 Server Launch Site. Order your Windows 2008 Server Hosting Package from ServePath by calling 1-866-321-PATH (1-866-321-7284).

We are well into February 2008 now and people should have fully recovered from the 2007 holiday madness. So what better way to remember the holidays than to note some of the results of our 2007 charitable contributions.

ServePath participated in 2 notable drives, namely the San Francisco Food Bank and the Toy Bin Drive with the City of Dreams. We also hosted an employee charity basket raffle where we ended up actually contributing funds to 6 other charities!

San Francisco Food Bank

About the SF Food Bank: “We collect donated food from growers, manufacturers and grocers, then distribute it to people in need through food pantries, soup kitchens, child care centers, homeless shelters, senior centers and other human service agencies with meal programs. All in all, we will distribute 28 million pounds of food this year to hungry people in San Francisco.”

ServePath organized a corporate food drive program where employees were encouraged to bring in items as specified.

The Results: More than 300 organization in San Francisco participated in the Food Drive, resulting in more than 132,133 pounds of food and $133,919 for holiday meals and winter food distributions.

ServePath contributed 218 pounds of food which equated 170 meals!

City of Dreams - Toy Bin Drive

About City of Dreams: City of Dreams created a youth development and mentorship program specifically for At Risk Youth. We provide caring mentorship in group settings and one-to-one matches, designed to help young people understand the value of staying in school and avoiding teen pregnancy, drugs, and gangs.

The Toy Bin drive was set up to provide a way to “sponsor a child’s dream.” Children listed out their “dreams” (aka gifts) and contributors could fulfill those dreams. At ServePath, the drive consisted of employees donating new/unopened toys.

ServePath had 50% of the employees contributing to this drive which gave multiple donations to over 15 children!

ServePath Charity Baskets

One of the more exciting charity programs that really got tremendous outpouring from employees was the Charity Baskets.

The setup: Each ServePath department is given $250 to buy items for a raffle gift basket. Then, employees can buy tickets for the raffle of the basket of their choice. Each ticket cost $1.

The Charities:

• Larkin Street Youth Program - (SALES) - iPod Touch and Accessories
• Children’s Hospital of Oakland - (ADMINISTRATION) - Digital Camera and Accessories
• Association of Retarded Citizens of San Francisco - (MARKETING) - SouthWest Airlines voucher
• Marine Mammal Center - (SERVICES) - Nintendo DS Lite and Accessories
• Second Harvest Food Bank - (ENGINEERING) - Star Wars toys
• Sisters of the Missions of Charities - (OPERATIONS) - City Pass voucher

The Results:

The raffles where held at the annual Holiday Party. (I actually won the Marine Mammal Center prize - a Nintendo DS Lite which went to my daughter). A total of $1692 for all the charities was collected. Below is the breakdown:

• Larkin Street Youth Program - (SALES) - $491
• Children’s Hospital of Oakland - (ADMINISTRATION) - $364
• Association of Retarded Citizens of San Francisco - (MARKETING) - $221
• Marine Mammal Center - (SERVICES) - $205
• Second Harvest Food Bank - (ENGINEERING) - $205
• Sisters of the Missions of Charities - (OPERATIONS) - $205

All in all, it was a very successful and charitable 2007 Holiday Season!