ServePath Blog

Last week, we had some very exciting news. Our Cloud Computing Hosting Division, GoGrid, has been positioned in Gartner’s Visionaries Quadrant for Web Hosting and Hosted Cloud System Infrastructure Services (On Demand) in the Magic Quadrant.

About the Magic Quadrant
The Gartner Magic Quadrant is copyrighted July 2009 by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

For a limited time, the full Gartner Magic Quadrant study is available on the ServePath home page. Simply look for this graphic and click through for the full report:

The report is only available until October 7th, 2009 so get it now!

The press release is available online and the full text is provided below:

GoGrid was positioned in the Visionaries quadrant for Web Hosting and Hosted Cloud System Infrastructure Services (On Demand) in Magic Quadrant

Evaluation is Based On Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute

San Francisco, CA July 8, 2009 — GoGrid, a leader in Cloud Computing Infrastructure Hosting and the Cloud Computing division of ServePath, LLC, today announced it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc., in the Visionaries quadrant in the “Magic Quadrant for Web Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure Services (On Demand)” report.

Gartner evaluated each provider against five use cases, specifically: Self-managed hosting, mainstream managed hosting, highly complex managed hosting, global solutions portfolio and enterprise applications hosting in order to produce a composite rating.

“We think our positioning in the visionaries quadrant is validation of our industry-leading cloud computing technology.  GoGrid pioneered cloud computing before any other leading hosting company was in the game. We continue to offer a more complete hybrid hosting solution consisting of on-demand cloud infrastructure and robust managed hosting environments,”
said GoGrid CEO and Co-Founder, John Keagy. “We think this will position us well to promote our technology as a standard in the field that lends itself manageability, scalability and portability of computing environments around the globe.”

The “Magic Quadrant for Web Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure Services (On Demand)” report is available currently on the GoGrid home page.

GoGrid is the only Cloud Infrastructure vendor that supports the automated instantiation of Windows Server 2003 and 2008, CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Cloud servers through a user-friendly GUI or the GoGrid API. Customers can instantly deploy servers and quickly and easily create cloudcenters (datacenters-in-the-sky) using a variety of tools and features that are included in GoGrid, including free hardware-based F5 load balancing, Cloud servers, Cloud Storage, public and private networks and Cloud Connect, which enables Cloud infrastructures to be connected to dedicated or colocated backend environments via private, dedicated megabit connections.

Cloud Connect handles database servers, transcoding and statistical analysis environments on custom, managed hardware with the power and I/O to perform well. Entire cloudcenters on GoGrid are easily controlled and managed by an industry-recognized web interface or programmatically via a REST-like API.

GoGrid offers customers including startups, small/medium businesses, government and enterprises, the ability to provision, scale and manage complex and robust server networks and infrastructures quickly and easily in the Cloud.

Parent company, ServePath, LLC was included in the list of “Cool Vendors” in the April 2009 “Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing Systems and Application Infrastructure, 2009″ report by Gartner, Inc. published April 6, 2009.

About the Magic Quadrant
The Gartner Magic Quadrant is copyrighted July 2009 by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About the Cool Vendor Selection Process
Gartner’s listing does not constitute an exhaustive list of vendors in any given technology area, but rather is designed to highlight interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness of a particular purpose. Gartner defines a cool vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are: Innovative, enable users to do things they couldn’t do before; Impactful, have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology); Intriguing, have caught Gartner’s interest or curiosity in approximately the past six months.

About GoGrid (http://www.gogrid.com)
GoGrid is the leading Cloud Computing, hosted, Internet provider that delivers true “Control in the Cloud™” in the form of cloudcenters. GoGrid enables system administrators, developers, IT professionals and SaaS (Software as a Service) vendors to create, deploy, and control load balanced cloud servers and complex hosted virtual server networks with full root access and administrative server control. GoGrid server instances maintain the industry standard specifications with no requirement to learn and adapt to propriety standards. Bringing up servers and server networks takes minutes via a unique web control panel or GoGrid’s award winning API. GoGrid delivers portal controlled servers for Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server, and ASP.NET. GoGrid hosts multiple open-source server operating systems including several Linux operating systems (Red Hat Enterprise and CentOS) and supports application environments like Ruby on Rails. Free f5 hardware load balancing and other features are included to give users the control of a familiar datacenter environment with the flexibility and immediate scalability of the cloud, a “cloudcenter.” GoGrid won the coveted 2008 LinuxWorld Expo’s Best of Show award.

About ServePath (http://www.servepath.com)
ServePath, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, is the leading managed and dedicated hosted server provider, delivering custom solutions and managed services to businesses that require powerful Internet hosting platforms for their production environments. Thousands of companies worldwide look to ServePath for its reliability, customization, and speed. ServePath has a Keynote-rated A+ network and guarantees uptime with a 10,000% guaranteed™ Service Level Agreement. The employee-owned company has been in business for nine years and operates its own San Francisco data center and is SAS70 Type II certified. ServePath uniquely delivers server infrastructures optimized for complex databases with cloud front-ends and application servers with Cloud Connect.

If you haven’t given GoGrid a try, what are you waiting for? Find out for yourself why we were placed in the Visionaries Magic Quadrant!

Today, ServePath released the following press release related to our selection by Gartner as a “Cool Vendor” in the April 2009 “Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing Systems and Application Infrastructure, 2009″ report. The report covers ServePath’s Cloud Computing product, GoGrid, as well as discusses other Cloud Computing key findings. The press release is as follows:

ServePath Named “Cool Vendor” by Leading Analyst Firm

Vendors selected for the “Cool Vendor report” are innovative, impactful and intriguing

San Francisco, CA April 27, 2009 — ServePath, LLC has been included in the list of “Cool Vendors” in the April 2009 “Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing Systems and Application Infrastructure, 2009” report by Gartner, Inc.

The “Cool Vendor” report by Gartner, Inc. showcases key findings and recommendations to consider when evaluating Cloud server infrastructure services and companies. As defined by Gartner, Cloud services are divided into two general categories: infrastructure and applications. ServePath’s Cloud Computing division, GoGrid, represents excellence within both cloud categories as is evidenced through the Gartner “Cool Vendor” selection of ServePath. The report is available on the Gartner website for a limited time.

“We believe the recognition we have received by Gartner’s selection of ServePath for the ‘Cool Vendor’ Report further affirms our pioneering position within the Cloud Computing Infrastructure marketplace,” said John Keagy, CEO and Co-Founder of GoGrid and parent company, ServePath. “As innovators in the hosting industry, we firmly believe that Cloud Computing with a GoGrid cloudcenter exemplifies Cloud technology at its finest.”

GoGrid is the only Cloud Infrastructure vendor that supports the automated instantiation of Windows Server 2003 and 2008, CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Cloud servers through a user friendly GUI or the GoGrid API. Customers can instantly deploy servers and quickly and easily create cloudcenters (datacenters-in-the-sky) using a variety of tools and features that are included in GoGrid, including free hardware-based F5 load balancing, Cloud servers, Cloud Storage, public and private networks and Cloud Connect, which enables Cloud infrastructures to be connected to dedicated or colocated backend environments via private, dedicated gigabit connections.

Cloud Connect handles database servers, transcoding and statistical analysis environments on custom, managed hardware with the power and I/O to perform well. Entire cloudcenters on GoGrid are easily controlled and managed by an industry-recognized web interface or programmatically via a REST-like API.

GoGrid offers customers including startups, small/medium businesses, government and enterprises, the ability to provision, scale and manage complex and robust server networks and infrastructures quickly and easily in the Cloud.

About Gartner’s Cool Vendors Selection Process

Gartner’s listing does not constitute an exhaustive list of vendors in any given technology area, but rather is designed to highlight interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness of a particular purpose.

Gartner defines a cool vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are: Innovative, enable users to do things they couldn’t do before; Impactful, have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology); Intriguing, have caught Gartner’s interest or curiosity in approximately the past six months.

The full press release can be viewed here.

On November 13, 2008, ServePath’s new Customer Portal (v2.1), located at https://my.servepath.com,  will be live for all current and new ServePath customers. In case you missed my previous post about some of the changes, I encourage you to look here. Once the cutover is complete, you will no longer be able to access the old customer portal. All of the functionality and features that existed in the old portal will be present in the new one (but potentially in different areas) along with plenty of new or enhanced ones.

We have compiled a list of 10 FAQs in order to help you along:

FAQ: My.ServePath 2.0

1.    How can I be alerted to ServePath maintenances and outages proactively?

You can subscribe to the ServePath Network Status RSS feed by clicking on the RSS icon next to “Network Status” on the home page. This will notify you via your RSS feed reader whenever we update the status on the website. If you’re interested in subscribing to the ServePath blog, you can do that from my.servepath.com as well by clicking on the RSS link next to “News” from the home page.

2.    How can I order new products and services through my.servepath.com?

Our current lineup of products, services and upgrades can be ordered through the my.servepath.com customer portal by clicking on the “Services and Hardware Upgrades” banner on the home page. You can select new hardware upgrades for your existing server, services such as our Unified Security and Backup package or our Proactive Monitoring Suite, or choose from a wide variety of other services and tools we can provide you with.

3.    Where can I find my Account Team’s contact information?

The members of your account team are listed on every page of the new my.servepath.com customer portal. Contact information for our Billing, Support and Sales departments are all readily available so that you can contact us anytime.

4.    How can I Remote Power Cycle or run a Security Scan on my server?

Remote Power Cycle and Server Security Scan tools are now located on the “Servers” page. From there, you can power cycle your machine or run a Nessus scan to check for open ports that may pose potential security risks on your servers.

5.    When I create a case, I see some Knowledge Base articles. How does this work?

Our case creation system will search our Knowledge Base for any articles that may relate to the case description you enter. You case is created as normal, but we will provide you with any articles that may pertain to the issue to that you are submitting. You then have the option to help yourself and close your case if you choose to. Once you select an article, you can let us know whether or not the article resolved your case by clicking on the “Yes” button. If it did help, you then have the option to close your case. If not, our Support team will still investigate the case as normal. Our Knowledge Base can also be searched from the Support tool without entering a case, so you have 24×7 access to our library of thousands of support articles.

6.    Where do I go to manage my passwords?

You can manage your passwords through the “Manage Passwords” tab from the Support menu. You can easily add system or service passwords to share with our Support teams so that we can login to your systems and help you troubleshoot the issue you are experiencing. This is a tool for you to share passwords with our Support team or keep a log of passwords to share with your server administrators. Please note that changing passwords here does change the passwords on your servers.

7.    Where can I go to give feedback to ServePath?

We have a number of ways for our customers to provide us with feedback regarding our portal, website, products and anything else you wish to share. To send us a feedback message, you can click on the “Feedback” link located at the top-right of the screen. You can also provide us with feedback under the Support menu by clicking on the “Customer Survey” tab or by clicking on the “Take our Survey” link from the home page under “Quick Links”.

8.    Where can I access my Network Statistics?

Network statistics, which many of our customers utilize on a daily basis, have been moved to the main navigation for easy access. You can also click on “Network Statistics” under the “Quick Links” section of the home page. This will take you to the Network Statistics tool where you can view bandwidth and transfer utilization graphs for any time period you specify by server and by VLAN.

9.    Where can I access my billing information?

Billing and account information is located under the “My Account” page. You can also cancel your account or services from this page.

10.    How do I reach a Support Representative immediately?

We have 24×7 Support representatives available via chat for any time you need them. There is a Live Chat link on every page in the new my.servepath.com portal for you to get quick access to any of our Support Representatives.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for improvements or new features, be sure to fill out the new Feedback form within the Portal. Also, you can always create a Support ticket using the Support tool for anything that is not immediately obvious.

We hope you like it!

ServePath engineers have been working hard on providing a newly redesigned, more efficient and effective Customer Portal. The new portal was quietly released to all ServePath customers recently so I wanted to take a bit of time to point out a few of the notable changes that can be found there.

First, both portals are currently available (old here and new here), but this won’t be true forever. Once the new portal is finalized, the old one will be gone…forever! There is also a direct link to the new portal on the old login page currently.

Once you log in to the new Customer Portal, you will immediately see a redesigned interface with new sections. Note, your login information works on both portals. For posterity’s sake, I will be including screenshots of both versions.

New ServePath Customer Portal:

Old ServePath Customer Portal:

For starters, the Dashboard has been drastically redesigned to group pertinent information together, namely:

• Products/Services – Call-outs at the top of the page to critical or new product or service offerings (e.g., Services & Hardware upgrades and the ProActive Management Suite)
• Support information – who your account manager is, phone numbers for support and billing and a Live Chat button
• Quick Links – these are links that many of our customers frequent, carefully compiled to streamline the experience
• Network Status – current RSS feeds from the ServePath Status blog
• ServePath Blog feed – quickly scan recent ServePath blog entries
• Survey – answer a few questions and be entered in a monthly drawing for Amazon gift cards (HINT: it takes about 30 seconds to fill out the survey!)

Also live with the new portal is a revamped Support Section. With the new Portal, you can choose the “Create a Case” Quick Link and within one click, be able to enter a support ticket immediately:

Most notable is that you can, on the same screen, drill down to the exact server(s) or other hardware that you need help with. Once you select a particular server or set of servers, for example, you will also be able to select their associated IP addresses as well.

Also, when a Case is entered, after the form is submitted and the Case is created, the user is presented with a list of Knowledge Base (KB) articles that may be relevant to the Case. Users can potentially resolve their issues based on the suggested articles, however, if the solution is not present, the user’s Case is already in the system. If a particular KB article solved the issue, the user can attach that article to the Case and close the Case themselves.

On the old portal, the process of entering a ticket took a bit longer and did not offer the user the ability to resolve their own case. An example of the same type of ticket entry as shown in the previous image is listed below:

There are other numerous changes in the new ServePath portal. If you are a current ServePath customer, I encourage you to compare the different versions. We are currently working on the next revision to the new portal as well, so if you have suggestions, comments or, gasp, criticism, feel free to leave a comment on this post and I will share it with the Engineering team. We will also have a feedback form within the new portal as well soon.

Hope you like the changes! We certainly do.

The judges at the 2008 LinuxWorld Convention peered through the clouds and found something truly noteworthy of recognition, namely ServePath’s Cloud Computing offering, GoGrid, and gave it the Linux World Best of Show Award! The Product Excellence Award is given out to various categories (GoGrid was a finalist in the Best Virtualization Solution for this year), and a Best of Show award is granted to those who rise up above the rest (like the clouds).

The Product Excellence Awards represent “major areas of innovation in the Linux and open source community,” according to an IDG World Expo press release. ServePath won a LinuxWorld Product Excellence Award for “Best Grid Solution” in 2007.

What really makes this Best of Show Award stand out is by simply looking at some of the past winners of Best of Show which include Mozilla FireFox and SUSE Linux.

Among the past Best of Show winners are:

• 2001 – IBM eServer iSeries
• 2002 – Borland Kylix 3
• 2003 – SGI Altix 3000
• 2004 – Mozilla Foundation for Mozilla Firefox
• 2005 – Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP)
• 2006 – OpenSUSE
• 2007 – Unicon Systems’ System-on-Display (SoD)
• 2008 – ServePath’s GoGrid

Be sure to sign up for an Award-winning GoGrid account today! We offer Windows 2003/2008, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS Linux as well as free f5 load balancing, free static public IPs, private and public VLANs, Free Support and several pre-configured images to help you deploy a GoGrid Cloud Computing environment in minutes without any up-front costs to you.

IDG World Expo today announced the finalists for the 2008 LinuxWorld Product Excellence Awards. These awards will be presented at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo next week in San Francisco. The LinuxWorld Product Excellence Awards recognizes product and services innovations. GoGrid is a Finalist for Best Virtualization Solution. (I would think that next year’s Awards would include a Best Cloud Computing Solution, but alas, this year’s did not. We probably would have won that one hands down!)

ServePath won the 2007 LinuxWorld Product Excellence award for Best Grid Computing Solution, and given the tremendous press and public uptake of our Cloud Infrastructure product, GoGrid, is well on the way toward winning other awards in the future.

A full list of companies and product nominated for the various 2008 LinuxWorld Product Excellence awards can be found here.

GoGrid (ServePath) is an exhibitor at 2008 LinuxWorld and can be found at Booth #900 which is located directly inside one of the entrances of the Expo. The Conference runs from August 4th through August 7th 2008 (Exhibit Hall is open August 5th-7th from 10am to 5pm) in Moscone Center North.

If you would like a complimentary LinuxWorld 2008 Exhibit Hall Pass, please contact us via the GoGrid blog with your contact information.

Do you have data storage needs that go beyond what is traditionally available? Are you looking for a solution that provides terabytes of additional storage for hosting image or video libraries or large databases? Then look no further! ServePath now has a new offering for you called StoragePath. Usable storage starts at 1.25TB and scales upwards to 5TB with the upgrade options. Pricing starts at $599.99/month (setup is $499.99) with discounts available.

But this is not simply a hard-drive available for storage, the StoragePath solution is a high-end dedicated data server. All servers are Intel Quad Core 2.33 GHz servers starting with 4 GB of dedicated RAM. Hard drives are SATA’s and can be pre-configured as either RAID 5 or RAID 10.

Deployment time is typically 3-5 days and both RAM and hard drive upgrades are available. RAM can be upgraded from the Base level of 4 GB to 8, 12 and 16 GB total. Hard Drives upgrades include:

• 1.25TB (RAID 5)/750GB (RAID 10)
• 2.5TB (RAID 5)/1.5TB (RAID 10)
• 3.75TB (RAID 5)/2.25TB (RAID 10)
• 5TB (RAID 5)/3TB (RAID 10)

StoragePath is available on:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 & 5 (RHEL)
• FreeBSD 6.2, 6.3 and 7.0
• CentOS 4.5, 5 and 5.1
• Ubuntu 7.10 and 8.04
• Fedora 6, 7, 8 and 9
• Debian 4
• Windows 2008 Server
• Windows 2003 Server

Be sure to contact Sales to get the best deal and proper configuration for your needs.

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.