Southeast VC

Internet Summit Attracts Over 1,200 People to Raleigh

The second annual Internet Summit was last week in Raleigh and co-presented by TechJournal South and Southern Capitol Ventures. You can see all the details, speakers, sponsors here. Over 1,200 people attended, which was almost double last year's event.

The conference exceeded all my expectations and as a firm, we were proud to be involved. When I sat down with Eric Gregg and Scott Hedrick at TechJournal South a year and a half ago and we came up with this idea, I never thought it would get this big, this fast.

The goal of the conference was to put on a more national internet focused conference here in our own backyard. I think this area has needed something like this for a while. What I really like about it is the ability to tie in so many leading national brands and still have the ability to show off the very best regional ones too. For example, locally iContact sponsored. So did Cary, NC-baed Bandwidth.com - the guys that power Google Voice. Research Triangle Park has a lot of depth. Sometimes we need to show it off a little. :)

Also, I love all the new business connections that conferences like this help with.

I also liked how we had a great networking reception the night before, had a packed agenda, but still was able to keep the price of the conference at $295 or $245 if you used one of the codes circulating around. I think that helps make it very affordable.

For those that attended, I'd love to get your feedback. I've read a lot of it following #isum09 on Twitter. You can also leave a comment below or just email me - jason [AT] southcap.com. Also, I know a bunch of you have been asking when the taped sessions will be available online and I heard that it could be in about a week and all conference attendees will be sent an email.

For more info about Internet Summit 09, read the TechJournal South story or read this, this, or this.

Thanks to everyone that attended, sponsored, flew in to attend or speak (very very important) and a special thanks to my partner David Jones for all his help and connections. And of course, thanks to Eric, Scott and the team at TechJournal South. Their hustle and passion for making a difference here in the region is noticed and very much appreciated.

Why Showing Up to a Meeting is Not Enough

Over the last few weeks, I have been giving greater thought to how people perceive our firm after a first meeting. And this is happening because during that same timeframe, I've had two very different experiences with companies I have met with. And that made me think more about my personal interactions with people that meet me or my partners. I thought I'd share my experiences here from those 2 meetings hoping you and I can learn something from this as well.

To set this up properly, it is important to mention that:

1. Our firm could be a customer for both companies I talk about.

2. Both execs I spoke with are very influential in their organizations.

3. They both operate in a very competitive business (not against each other).

4. What they sell is not important.

5. I received a very warm intro to each person.

Here is a brief description of how each meeting went along with my reaction to each:

Meeting #1

What happened: I met him at his office. He personally came up, made me feel welcome and like he was really excited I was there. Warm smiles, great handshake. He seemed very polished, interested in our firm and in return, I was sincerely interested in what he is doing too. I promised him a 30 minute meeting. The meeting did not seem rushed, but was focused. He didn't stare at his watch or work on his blackberry. I ended the meeting after 30 minutes. He followed up afterwards with a very positive note and some other things to be helpful.

My reaction: I felt good about him and his company while walking out his door. I know I will refer them business. He seemed very genuine, has a strong reputation in the makret and I know if I referred someone there, I am completely confident, they would be in great hands. If he asked me for help going forward, I would do it.

Meeting #2

What happened: Again, I promised this individual 30 minutes. (Btw, I like 30 minute meetings sometimes because they get everyone very focused.) All during the call he seemed rushed and really not caring about most of what I had to say. He jumped to conclusions on some topics without letting me finish and before really understanding it. I could hear him typing. He wasn't engaged. In fact, I felt like he couldn't wait to hang up the phone with me. The call (with my suggestion) ended quickly. I left the call thinking this guy was a prick.

My reaction: Not sure how he will treat people I refer to him. Will they be treated similarly?

Final conclusions:

Okay, I am not leaving this post just bashing some guy I spoke with. Instead, I want to relate this directly to me and our firm. At SCV, we take a lot of calls and meetings. We are constantly meeting new people and we love that. It is our choice to acccept these meetings, put them in our calendars and show up! But just showing up as "Meeting #2" did above, is not good enough. Our reputation continues to be built on passion. We hope people that meet us, see and recognize our passion and excitement for being in the VC business. We want to leave a favorable impression and hope more people want to work with us or at least want to get to know us better. We can never have enough friends. Never.

Of course, as you read this, I hope you realize that your time is also important. If you decide that a meeting is important enough to schedule, put some effort into it and get something out of the conversation. You committed to the meeting already and are investing your time. Will the 30 minutes be positive or negative for you and for your guest? It is your choice. How you act in could stick around for a long time. And people talk. If you don't want to be there, be respectful and cancel the meeting saving the person you are meeting the time/energy.

Happy Halloween!

Wow, the folks at ChannelAdvisor really went all out for Halloween this year. Looks like fun. Check out all the pics of their employees today. I wish I could have made it over to see in person!

Best Buy, Google, ChannelAdvisor & Pier 1 Share their Holiday Strategies

Retailers: here is some good advice for the holiday season offered by some experts. Video features Lorraine Twohill and Eric Schmidt from Google, Jeff Haddox from Pier 1, Brad Smith from Best Buy and Michael Jones from SCV portfolio company, ChannelAdvisor.

If you want to learn more, check out the Google Retail Advertising Blog, which highlights this video.

Internet Summit - Save $50

Internet Summit is next week Nov4 and 5 in Raleigh, NC. Our firm, Southern Capitol Ventures is co-presenting along with TechJournal South.

Friends of SCV can receive a $50 discount when registering by using the VIP code "SCV50." That will bring the cost for you down to $245. Register here.

We have a fantastic lineup of 75 speakers including brands such as Google, Pandora, Expedia, ESPN, Digg, Lending Tree, Technorati, comScore, Huffington Post, Meebo, AOL, Gannett, IBM, Goldman Sachs, SAS and Microsoft just to name a few.

Last year was sold out. This year we expect north of 1,000 people to attend.

Hope to see you there!

AVIcode Exceeds Q3 Sales Goal & Company has Fun (at Mike's expense)

We announced our investment in Baltimore-based AVIcode earlier this year.Look what happened when they topped their sales goals for Q3. Ha, looks like lots of fun. Congrats to the AVIcode team! 

And here is my partner David Jones (in white). Have you ever seen a VC so happy?

GoodBarry Website CMS Alternatives

Adobe recently acquired GoodBarry but it looks like they are changing the strategy a lot to just focusing on offering their software to web developers. A few months ago, I started thinking about the do-it-yourself business website market for our own site. The good news is that there are still a number of providers out there that have great products for business owners who want to manage their own business website. We have used a few of  them, but the one that we signed up with very recently is an innovative startup in RTP called Preation. Given that it is a relevant topic lately and we recently re-launched our website using software that does this, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts and experiences here.

As background, we felt like our old website was too static. My partners and I wanted a website that was flexible, included more features, allowed us to easily add/subtract pages and quickly change content. We wanted a better marketing web site. I think we grew tired of emailing all the changes to our website developer once/month and explaining everything in detail. My partners agreed. Also, not like we spent a lot with the website developer that designed and updated our old site (he did a great job for us), but bringing that expense to $0/month is an added bonus.

Initially, we started with Squarespace for 30 days. Given the limited time we could invest in learning their software, we had a hard time with it. It wasn't easy for us to make the changes we wanted to (colors, format, quickly adding titles, pages, etc.). I think if we had a website developer on staff or someone that could hand over a template (we asked), this one might be a great solution. We liked the low price point. The cusomer examples on their site atracted us and these guys have been getting lots of GREAT press. Their customer support rocked and they were very flexible and understanding and were quick to extend our free trial. We needed something easier for us to use internally.

Next, we tried Preation. They gave me 20-30 minutes of training on their product called Eden and that's it. I was off and running. Really. Their customer support team is fantastic. I have my own account manager and he was very responsive (1-2 hrs) when I hit roadblocks. Anyway, I ended up building out our new website myself... quickly. It didn't take long to get hooked and once I gave my partners a quick demo, it was a no-brainer we inked a 1 year contract with them.

What I also liked is Eden is not only the low price point (I'm told that it starts at $10/month) but  all Eden features (SEO, forms, photo slideshows, galleries, calendars, event registration, testimonials) are included for everyone.

The real bonus the Preation guys shared with me is that Eden includes SEO which is dummy proof to use. The software gives you specific advice on what to change on each page to make that page more effective. Right now, I am not following a lot of that advice. This should be big savings for a lot of small companies. For example, I know a local company that was looking for SEO help. They were getting charged a few thousand bucks per month for help. Eden would bring that extra spend to zero. I also dropped in Google Analytics on our site, which is also easy to do inside of Eden.

Anyway, if you are looking at options for your own site and I can help guide you, let me know.  Hope some of our experiences help.

Friday Comments

Some random comments before going into the weekend. I hope everyone had a great week!

• Good seeing the StarPound guys this morning at our office. We are not an investor there, but Scott has been one of the more active entrepreneurs in the Atlanta area and we always enjoy his immense passion. For those that don't know Scott, he and Mike are the guys behind Capital Lounge in Atlanta - a free networking event for entrepreneurs and investors.
• Lots of good press for North Carolina this week here, here and here.
• CED's Venture 2010 is already shaping up. Make sure you have it on your calendar now. Jim Whitehurst is going to be one of the keynotes. And I asked Brad, Noel and Todd to be on a VC panel and they're all coming. Looking for 1 more to fill it out.
• Internet Summit is coming up next month. Lineup is awesome. We've put a lot of effort into it.
• We're getting asked a lot lately about if we're seeing a huge spike in new companies coming to us for funding. No. But I can't say we ever saw a massive drop off either. Yes, we saw a lot of companies go away or quietly hunker down. But with those, we also saw a new crop of companies and entreprenuers emerge.
• A couple of different groups are working hard locally (North Carolina) to put together their own angel group. That's not easy in this market for sure. But if they pull it off and I hope they both do, I know a lot of entrepreneurs and the VCs here, would welcome it. Are you interested in joining an angel fund? Let me know and I will connect you to both.
• Not sure you saw, but I did some quick calculations this week one night and tweeted the ages of these companies at launch: GOOG 25; YHOO 26; MSFT 20; AAPL 21; DELL 19; EBAY 28; Facebook 19.  Just a quick sample. But I think it shows that we need to continue be supportive of the next wave of entrepreneurs in our region.

Cloud Computing Update

We hosted a SCV Entrepreneurs' Breakfast yesterday exclusively for the local software companies. I invited Laura Lederman from William Blair to fly down from Chicago & speak and give a Cloud Computing Update. I've known Laura for a couple of years. A few things about her:

1. She knows SaaS cold and has a TON of experience as a stock analyst

2. She is filled with energy (even without Starbucks)

3. She is very very honest and gets right to the point and I love that part

We had about 25 different companies represented. Almost all were CEOs and all the major SaaS companies locally had someone there. For those that couldn't make it or we forgot to invite (sorry), I attached the presentation Download Cloud Computing Update 2009.

We saved a lot of time for people to chat with their peers before and after, which was good. The questions and answers that flew back and forth was great and from all the feedback since yesterday, I know we will do this again soon.

Thanks to Laura and to everyone that attended, including the companies that drove from Charlotte and the Triad.

Two Must Attend Events in NC in the Next 30 Days

We get asked a lot for ways to plug into the local tech scence here in North Carolina. Here are two ways to do that in the next 30 days:

1. CED's 25th Birthday Party. Friday, 9/25 to Bay 7 at American Tobbaco from 3-7pm. Come out for food & drinks, listen to good music and celebrate CED's 25th year of operations with hundreds of others in the Triangle. Southern Capitol Ventures is on the host committee and all my partners and I will all be there! The cost is $25 per ticket and that price includes a guest.

2.  TechJournal South Deck Party. This is a regular event and the next one is 10/8 from 5:30-9pm also in Durham. Drink beer, eat good food. Usually 500+ people show up for this. I know a lot of our portfolio companies usually send a few people. Investors are always there. I like the mix of people and its a very relaxed environment. These are free, but you need to register in advance.

Hope to see you at both!