The community was quite nice, and the venue, Ignition Alley was cool too.  Ignition Alley is a co-working facility about four miles away from Stronico HQ which is on my short list of places to go when I need an office.   I had a great time meeting everyone and the event was quite well run.

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.

• RocketDispatch – they send notifications to people in a variety of ways, in an ad supported model.
  1. Problem Solving – 6/10
  2. Actual Customers – 3/10 (it’s always that way with advertising)
  3. Simplicity of Pricing- 3/10 (it’s also always that way with advertising)
  4. Chicken and Egg Problem- 5/10 (they need the free customers before they can sell the advertising, beyond that, it’s not too bad)
  5. Remarkability- 8/10 (“They call, text, and email people for you” for you is the shortest description I can come up with)

  Total Score:25

• Core Motives – they provide information on customers.
  1. Problem Solving – 6/10 – information on customers is great, but how is it actionable?  That was not obvious about the product.
  2. Actual Customers – 3/10 (while the target market is sales people, the pricing is such that they would be dealing with corporate purchasing departments.  Corporate purchasing departments are the great complicators of life)
  3. Simplicity of Pricing- 2/10 (there is no simple way to do variable pricing)
  4. Chicken and Egg Problem- 10/10 (I don’t think they would have a chicken and egg problem at all)
  5. Remarkability- 2/10 (The current message presupposes a lot of knowledge that is hard to distill into a few words.)

  Total Score:23

• Net-Arb- Internet Aritration
  1. Problem Solving – 9/10 – It is the internet solution to an existing dilemma, so a high degree of problem solving.
  2. Actual Customers – 9/10  Problems and money in the same person
  3. Simplicity of Pricing- 10/10 One price can’t be more simple
  4. Chicken and Egg Problem- 10/10 (I don’t think they would have a chicken and egg problem at all)
  5. Remarkability- 10/10 (“Resolve legal disputes online” – 4 words, that’s hard to beat)

  Total Score:48

• NapStay- Rental Property
  1. Problem Solving – 8/10.
  2. Actual Customers – 4/10 – I don’t know much about this market, so it’s hard for me to guess, but the problems and the money do not seem to be concentrated in the same person.
  3. Simplicity of Pricing- 7/10
  4. Chicken and Egg Problem- 2/10 – this is a big factor
  5. Remarkability- 5/10 (Describing a broker is never easy)

  Total Score:26

• Neybor- Marketing for Real Estate
  1. Problem Solving – 7/10.
  2. Actual Customers – 9/10 – They serve small city newspapers (with local monoploies, something they mentioned quite late in the presentation).
  3. Simplicity of Pricing- 3/10
  4. Chicken and Egg Problem- 8/10 – not a big deal
  5. Remarkability- 7/10

  Total Score:34

The winner, by a larger margin than I would have thought is Net-Arb.  I liked the entire evening and will certainly be attending the others, and hopefully presenting Stronico at the April event.
photo credit: jm3