ServePath Blog

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!

This was a very special SF New Tech for us at ServePath. Last night we demo-ed our new product, GoGrid, to a packed crowd. It was actually the world’s first public demo of the new instantly scalable, on-demand, web-based hosted server offering (whew, lots of adjectives there).

At SF New Tech, companies sign up to give 5 minute demos of their product and service. The list of companies presenting were: GoGrid/ServePath, Surf Canyon, Buddy Fetch, Xeequa, and Askpedia.

GoGrid was the first demo to be seen with Paul Lappas (VP of Engineering) and Paul Lancaster (Business Development Manager) showing how a server could be created and a series of servers load balanced within the 5 minute demo window. To make matters even more interesting, “Murphy” was in the audience somewhere, causing the Internet connection to crawl, thus chopping a minute off of our demo time. That hiccup didn’t prevent the demo, and actually Lappas was able to not only initiate the creation of a server, but also clearly demonstrate how an F5 BigIP load balancer could be created and load balance 2 existing web servers in less than a minute!

I also spoke with a few people who have already signed up for GoGrid trial accounts, including one user who had successfully deployed 5 servers. The general consensus was that the service was “great” and the user interface and ease-of-use “fantastic!”

After the successful demonstration of GoGrid, Surf Canyon, a ServePath customer, showcased their powerful search-engine “enhancer.” Surf Canyon creates a “tiny browser extension that is installed in the user’s browser - either FireFox or Internet Explorer.” When a search is initiated on either Google, Yahoo! or MSN, much more targeted and relevant results are presented to the user, enabling them to truly see the results that they wanted, significantly accelerating the search process.

There were several photographers on hand for this event. My photos can be found on ServePath’s Flickr photostream.

SF New Tech is right around the corner, and this time it is fortified with a demo of our very own NEW product, GoGrid! The theme for this month’s meetup is “Geek Out!” which will hopefully resonate with many of you techies out there.

This should be a really action-packed event. Obviously, showcasing GoGrid is our main mission, however, many ServePath “geeks” will be on-site to answer questions about GoGrid or any of the other products and services we offer.

This Meetup is at the Mighty (located at 119 Utah @ 15th Street in San Francisco). Date & Time: Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 @ 6:30pm.

To plagiarize from the SF New Tech site, here are the companies doing the 5-minute demos for the night:

GoGrid
Paul Lancaster, Business Development Manager
Paul Lappas, Vice President of Engineering
GoGrid is the world’s first multi-server control panel that enables you to deploy and manage on demand server hosting, allowing you to scale your server hosting quickly and easily from any web browser. Come see the “world premier” of GoGrid (at least within a public audience)!

Surf Canyon
Mark Kramer, CEO / Founder
“Using next-generation semantic personalization, Surf Canyon is developing Queryless Discovery for Search. The patent-pending post-query disambiguation technology sits atop virtually any third-party search engine and assists users in finding relevant information buried within the often overwhelming results.” Surf Canyon is a customer of ServePath.

Buddy Fetch
Craig Stadler, CEO / Founder
BuddyFetch is a search engine that allows people to search for fellow IM, social networking, and Internet dating users. BuddyFetch was created because there was no central directory that allowed searches for IM/Social Networking/Dating users across multiple providers (AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, Skype, Paltalk, Myspace, etc.) in conjunction with the fact that some directories would only allow you to search for screen names of IM users that were only presently online.

Xeequa
Axel Schultze, CEO / Founder
Xeequa is a social network for business that allows business people to create a partner network and collaborate immediately without any of the time-consuming implementation processes common to traditional enterprise software.

Askpedia
Yong Su Kim, CEO / Founder
Askpedia is an online knowledge marketplace powered by Questions and Answers. Instead of searching for static published information, users can ask questions to benefit from the collective knowledge and experience of real people. We also provide a knowledge marketplace where users with knowledge get recognized and earn money by answering questions with monetary rewards.

Don’t forget about the 60-Second Soapbox where you have a chance to talk for 60 seconds about just about anything!

Apart from the GoGrid demo, ServePath will also have a table so come by and chat.