1. Height: Tall / Medium / Short / Unknown
2. Build: Heavyset / Average / Lanky/ Unknown
3. Personality: Type A / Type B / Unknown
4. Brainpower: Dim/ Average /  Smart / Unknown
5. Organization: Unorganized/ Average /  Super-organized / Unknown
6. Effectiveness: Below Average / Average /  Above Average / Unknown
7. Talkativeness: Below Average / Average /  Above Average / Unknown
8. Discipline: Below Average / Average /  Above Average / Unknown
9. Personal Charm: Repellent / Average /  Charismatic/ Unknown
10. Power in Business Organization: Below Average / Average /  Above Average / Unknown
11. Power in Social Network: Below Average / Average /  Above Average / Unknown

Those were just off the top of my head.  What else would the perfect salesman remember about someone they just met?

photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

• Blog Name
• Internet Power Score, defined as a function of inbound links, number of comments, and the number of twitter followers.
• Inbound Links
• # of Comments Last Five Posts
• # of Twitter Followers
• Blog URL
• Blog Description
• Contact Person
• Contact Email
• Twitter Name
• Created

Anything I’m missing?  These are the people I’m going to be contact early for advertising and advice.

And before anyone says anything, yet, it did occur to me to have a special website only version of Stronico where one could track different power players on the internet (the power score could be displayed as size!) but that is a few version away.

photo credit: AndYaDontStop

1. Primary Market – The near Aspberger entrepreneur – I call this market “Steve” because I’m trying to solve my own problem.  Steve needs help in maintaining his personal network since he remembers connections, names, faces, and details poorly, but needs to remember them better.  Steve networks poorly, has a medium sized network, and has a strong need to maintain that network.
2. Secondary Market – The power salesman – we’ll call this market “Eric”.  Eric needs help maintaining the network not because of any natural defect in his networking skill but because the network is large and expanding.  Eric has strong networking ability, a large network, and a strong need to maintain that network.
3. Tertiary Markets – The researcher – we’ll call this market “Greg”.  Greg could be a lawyer, policeman, student or teacher, but fundamentally he is someone who maps out social networks, usually not his own.  The Stronico.org model will be the primary avenue into this.  Greg has variable networking ability, huge networks, and a moderate need to maintain that network.

Thoughts anyone?

photo credit: Bogdan Suditu

The community was quite nice (I saw a number of familiar faces, and met some new people too), and the Georgia Tech was nice enough to loan out the Georgia Tech Research Institute facility auditorium. I had a great time meeting everyone and Mike Schinkel and his volunteers moved things along well. It is impossible to overstate how important it is to keep these events running on time.

And now, the contestants! We listened to the presentations, and voted via twitter for our favorites, here were mine, recorded here for posterity. I judge startups by the following criteria, on a scale of 1-10 (higher is better). I thought I would share it here for the first time.

1. Problem Solving - It can be a cool product, but does it make anyone’s life easier?
2. Actual Customers - I am defining the customer as someone with both problems and money.
3. Simplicity of Pricing – can the fees be described to anyone, do you need more information about the prospect before you can offer a quote?
4. Chicken and Egg Problem – does the product require a lot of Customer A before Customer B becomes interested, and vice versa? This applies a good bit to middleman/broker type companies like E-Bay.
5. Remarkability – that is to say, can someone who heard a quick presentation about it describe it to someone the next day, and have it be understood?

Note, I do not judge the passion of the founders, quality of marketing, execution etc. That’s too hard to judge based off of a short presentation.

And so, with no further ado, here are the startups from last night. I’m going to omit descriptions of the startups as those can be found on their websites.

• Less Meeting – Jeff Steinke presenting – Short Version – a web based application that plays the role of a crotchety timekeeper enforcing the meeting agenda.
  1. Problem Solving – 10/10
  2. Actual Customers – 10/10
  3. Simplicity of Pricing- 5/10
  4. Chicken and Egg Problem- 7/10
  5. Remarkability- 6/10 – I find it easier to describe the effect rather than the cause

  Total Score:38

• Spitter – David Eckhoff presenting – Spitter.com provides real-time, relevant sports information (the wheat is separated from the chaff somewhere along the line)
  1. Problem Solving – 5/10 – Providing relevant information is going to be a relative thing for everyone, both provider and consumer.  If I were a bigger sports fan I might see the utility in this.  Seemingly it would be better used spinning off into politics or outright inside gambling tips.
  2. Actual Customers – 0/10 – Apparently they were not at the point of defining the people who actually pay money yet,  David Eckhoff is a capable guy, so I assume they do exist, but since they were not presented, I’m rating this a zero.
  3. Simplicity of Pricing- 0/10 – No pricing yet either
  4. Chicken and Egg Problem- 10/10 – no problem that I can see.
  5. Remarkability- 10/10 – “Twitter for Sports!” – It is a highly remarkable venture

  Total Score:25

• Other Number – Andrew Johnson and Walter Duncan presenting – They provide a virtual PBX
  1. Problem Solving – 7/10 – Phones seem to be a solved problem, so I’m not sure of the benefits of having a virtual PBX, but it does seem like a cool product.
  2. Actual Customers – 6/10 – In my limited experience nobody ever wants to switch PBX systems.
  3. Simplicity of Pricing- 5/10 – Variable pricing!
  4. Chicken and Egg Problem- 7/10 – no problem that I can see.
  5. Remarkability- 7/10 – “Virtual PBX!” – which is easy enough for those who know what a PBX actually means

  Total Score:32

• Chirbit – Ivan Reyes presenting – Online swapping of sound files for social media. Full disclosure, I’ve been friends with Ivan for the past several years
  1. Problem Solving – 8/10 – Chirbit does supply a way to move sound files easily, especially the recording of them.
  2. Actual Customers – 6/10 – Voiceover talent isn’t the largest market, but this would solve a lot of problems for them.
  3. Simplicity of Pricing- 0/10 – No announced pricing
  4. Chicken and Egg Problem- 7/10
  5. Remarkability- 5/10 – “Social Media Condiment” was how Ivan described it, but that doesn’t really tell the story

  Total Score:26

• Co-Thrive – Rachel Orston presenting – Online task management with lots of cool email features
  1. Problem Solving – 7/10 – I’m still waiting for an application that insists on the active voice and won’t let you use adverbs. Their system does not fix the human problem of task management (that would make it a 10) – Their system does take it quite far.
  2. Actual Customers – 8/10 – they have actual customers! A wonderful thing for a startup.
  3. Simplicity of Pricing- 7/10
  4. Chicken and Egg Problem- 7/10
  5. Remarkability- 5/10 – The product is a well executed application of a simple concept (the best kind) but I honesty can’t think of a simple, accurate way to describe it

  Total Score:34

So, my rankings were LessMeeting, Co-Thrive, and Other Number.  I learned quite a bit from all of the presenters, particularly David Eckhoff.  I look forward to the next one!

photo credit: juhansonin

On a somewhat related note, might I recommend Brain Rules by John Medina – it is a wonderful book about the working of the brain, with a remarkable number of surprises.

Then I had the thoughts:

1. Why not have a website (of course) where I could give away handmade prizes in exchange for information
2. The items made on the lathe’s would be one-offs, the best tip, tidbit, etc per month would win the price, which would probably be a gavel of some sort.
3. There would be a new topic every month, as well as a new prize
4. Later be the prize could be for the best entry on the free educational versions of Stronico as well (more on that to come).
5. The information would have to be in the form of short, freeform entries, or tips, on a particular topic, either mneumonics, cooking, woodworking, typing, or whatever.  Ideally there would be some voting involved, but initially I would choose the monthly winner and send out the prize.

The next challenge I suppose would be how to structure it to support Stronico, either as a promotional site, or as a freeware standalone part of the social networking/mnemonics/brainware part of the internet.

That’s my idea for the day anyway – I thought I would share my thought process with everyone.  I find it helpful to flesh out the idea in words instead of leaving it unformed in my head.

photo credit: Robert S. Donovan

And yesterday was the highest traffic day in the history of the blog.  I’m not sure why, but the middle of the week tends to do far better than other days.

And in case anyone was wondering,  I’ve been building out the public side of the site lately.

I have looked over many, many modal popup schemes and decided to use the Queness modal popup method.  It is  the most usable of the methods I’ve seen.   Look for it on the main Stronico site when it launches!

1. Psychological profiling of contacts.  I’m thinking of a simple Type A, Type B snap judgment one can make after first meeting a person.  If I can think of working in the Myers-Briggs personality types that would be wonderful, but I don’t think the information is there to implement it practically.
2. A matchmaker feature – if two contacts have similar tags, friends, interests, life statuses, locations etc, but are not known to know each other, it would be a great thing to introduce them (as written about in the great book “Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi.  I realize that Facebook has a similar feature, but this would make the decisions based on information that only you, the Stronico user would know.
3. Archetyping – this is related to point 1, but it would be useful information to store impressions about someone, i.e. is that person a drama queen, unflappable robot (much like the author…), sports fanatic, sensitive artist, and the like.  These would not be that accurate, but it could come in handy, particularly for those people with large networks.  The use of broad archetyping is useful as a sorting mechanism.