ServePath Blog

Just in time for the 4th of July weekend, SF New Tech is here to help you get in the festive mood with the Big Summer Geek Out event. Taking place on 7/2/08 at Mighty (as usual), SF New Tech promises to deliver a fresh round of technology and Web 2.0 companies for your listening pleasure and demo experience. Tickets are $15 in advance online or $20 at the door (21 and over only). The event starts at 6:30 pm and goes till 11:00 pm.

This event is sponsored by GoGrid & ServePath. Come visit our table and get $100 off your next GoGrid Cloud Server!

Demo companies at the July ‘08 New Tech include:

SnappyStuff
Brook Eaton, Founder/CEO
SnappyStuff provides a snap shot of what you own and a system to help sell, trade and share it.  http://www.snappystuff.com

MyDogSpace
Robert Yau, Founder/CEO
MyDogSpace is a social network for … dogs!   http://www.mydogspace.com

Govit
Taylor Norris, Founder/CEO
Govit brings direct democracy to US citizens, helping voters learn about, discuss, and vote on active legislation.  Members can vote on active legislation and have their vote sent instantly to their elected representatives.  http://www.govit.com

Lefora
Vinnie Lauria, Top Dog
Lefora brings forums from the dark ages to the present by providing easy to use free forum hosting, forum software, forum installation,  and help promoting your forum.  http://www.lefora.com

Spongecell
Nik Bonaddio, Creative Director
Spongecell makes online media more engaging, by applying vertical solutions to standard marketing techniques.  Spongecell’s new Rich Media Ad, allows promoters to embed social, viral, and event-based functionality into their ads. http://www.spongecell.com

Backblaze
Gleb Budman, CEO/Co-Founder
Backblaze provides the “easiest” online backup service to enable everyone to backup. TechCrunch says Backblaze provides “Online Backup With Time Machine’s Finesse” and Ars Technica writes the company is “Making off-site backups brainless.”  http://www.backblaze.com

Hope to see you there! Be sure to drop by the GoGrid booth for instant savings on your next GoGrid Cloud Server!

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.

Once again it is time for SF New Tech, a ServePath sponsored meetup in San Francisco. The theme of this event is “Wine, Women and a Whole Lot More.” As always, the event is at Mighty (119 Utah Street @ 15th) from 6:30pm to 11:00 pm PT. Tickets are $15 in advance or $20 at the door.

The format remains the tried and true 5 Minute Live Demos, 60-Second Soapbox, Q&A, food, drink and lots of socializing with other geeks and techies.

Come and drop by the ServePath / GoGrid table and we will give you “free servers” on ServePath’s latest and hottest platform, GoGrid.

The schedule of events are:

6:30 pm - Doors open
6:30 -7:30 pm - Schmooze
7:30 - 9:00 pm - Demos
9:00 - 11:00 pm Schmooze

Demos at this week’s meetup are:

Nirvino
Christian Schroeder, Founder
Nirvino is a free, website and mobile wine resource that aggregates wine critic reviews into a single score. Users can quickly find or confirm great bottles of wine when they are on the go as well as receive food pairing tips specific to that wine. http://nirvino.com

Zivity
Cameo Wood, Product Manager
Zivity is a community-powered showcase of female beauty. http://zivity.com

Razz
Jeff Malkin, Co-Founder
Razz is creating and leading a new category in photo enhancement called “audio-enriched photos.” Users can mash well-known pop-culture audio clips and user-recorded voice with their favorite photos. With simple-to-use creation and consumption tools, Razz aims to be the YouTube of Talking Photos. http://razz.com

MyMeemz/Skollar
Alex Trolley, CEO / Founder
Skollar is a Web 2.0 tool that collates web documents, tagging and annotating both text and images in key idea context for research. http://www.mymeemz.com

Ribbit
Chuck Freeman, Director of Developer Platform
Ribbit offers an open platform for developing phone, voice and VOIP-based applications, making it easy for Web developers to integrate voice as an object into social, CRM, and 2.0 applications. http://ribbit.com

Hope to see many of you there!

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?!

SF New Tech is tonight (4/8/08) and the theme is “Dinosaur Robots and more!” This ServePath-sponsored event has the “special mix” of 5-minute Live Demos, Q&A’s, social time, and food and drinks.

Event details:

Cost: $15.00 online / $20.00 at the door
Date: 04/08/08
Location: Mighty (119 Utah St @ 15th)
Time: 6:30 pm PT - 11:00 pm PT

Be sure to come by the ServePath table and get a demo of our latest product, GoGrid, which allows you to create, deploy and manage load-balanced on-demand Linux and Windows servers, all through a web interface within minutes.

Other companies doing demos (5 minute and hands-on):

Zilok - Zilok an online rental marketplace where anyone, individual or professional, can rent or offer for rent anything in a few clicks.

Pluggd - Pluggd has developed an innovative and proprietary platform for searching within video and contextually serving ads to online video in a non-obtrusive manner

Soma Media - Soma Media specializes in recording and distributing conference presentations via the web and DVD

Splunk - Splunk is inventing large-scale, high-speed indexing and search technology for IT infrastructures. Splunk indexes and makes it possible to search and navigate data from any application, server or network device in real time. Logs, configurations, messages, traps and alerts, scripts and metrics. If a machine can generate it - Splunk can eat it.

Ugobe & Pleo - Ugobe introduces “Pleo”, its first robotic life form. Pleo is a one week old baby robotic dinosaur, and he comes with a social website where Pleo owners can connect, create and share behavior modifications for their robots, “plog” and post media about their pets.

OQO - OQO invented the umpc, the smallest computer in the world that runs full windows XP or Vista w/ embedded cellular broadband. “Best of CES 2007″

Schedule:

6:30 pm - Doors open
6:30 -7:30 pm - Schmooze
7:30 - 9:00 pm - Demos
9:00 - 11:00 pm Schmooze

See you there!