Other than pimping Amazon, she also owns a Mexican Wholesale company and a football team in Texas – at least that’s what new Social CRM plugin Rapportive tells me:
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )
Under the Radar: Commercializing the Cloud – Apply to Present / Discount Tix Here
Posted on March 5, 2010 ·
Under the Radar is Silicon Valley’s most established startup debut platform: a conference series organized by Dealmaker Media, covering business applications, social media, entertainment, mobility..etc.
This year’s conference in Mountain View, CA on April 16th will focus on Commercializing the Cloud – that’s a fairly wide definition, and one that perfectly mashes with our focus over @ CloudAve, so we’re proud to be Media Partners at this event. That means we’ll be covering it before, during and after, and if you decide the attend, we’ll get you in at a discount rate.
In this American Idol of startups typically 32 finalists are selected, who are grouped in categories of 4 each and each has about 15 minutes to present in two parallel tracks. They get grilled by the judges and audience, and at the end of the conference the winners of each category are announced. A few years ago I participated in the pre-selection of startups, and I remember having checked out hundreds of companies to come down to the finalist set. At the moment 19 finalists are announced:
AppDynamics, AppFirst, Aprigo, Cloudant, CloudShare, CloudSwitch, Conformity, CubeTree, Fonolo, GoodData, Layerboom Systems, Makara, MaxiScale, Neo Technology, NorthScale, Reductive Labs, RiverMuse, SaaSure and SendGrid.
This means two things:
- A dozen or so slots are still open
- The Selection Committee will likely sift through another 100+ applications to fill those slots.
So if you consider your startup a (future) leader in Saas | Collaboration | Business Apps | Development Tools | Compliance | (and more!), don’t waste time, apply here to be a presenter.
A personal note: the roster so far is quite infrastructure-heavy, which I’m sure makes Krish happy… but as the dumb non-techie business guy, I’d love to see more Business Apps, too 🙂
Past presenters include: Heroku, Get Satisfaction, Marketo, Eucalyptus, Zuora, Box.net, Ribbit, Hubspot, Twilio, New Relic, CloudKick, Jive Software, and many more. Many (54%) of the UtR participant received funding, some grew to fame, others disappeared… but disappearance is not always bad – as is the case of 2008 Under the Radar graduate 3Tera, which just got acquired by Computer Associates. 🙂
And if you’re not presenting, you sure would like to attend 🙂 CloudAve readers get $100 off their tickets here!
Under the Radar is not only a great startup showcase, it’s perfect good networking and and deal-making forum in Silicon Valley. Stay above the clouds – see innovation in its earliest stages – and get deals done; one handshake at a time. Mingle with 350 VC’s, journalists and C-level executives seeking to find, connect and partner with startups who’s products, technology and teams fit strategically into their road maps.
Remember to use our discount – and see you there!
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )
The Care and Feeding of Industry Analysts
Posted on March 4, 2010 ·
Some of my email spam is actually quite entertaining, like this offer for a “research report”:
The Care and Feeding of Industry Analysts
The Top 10 Questions The Care and Feeding of Industry Analysts Will Answer For You Include:
1. What are the ten deadly sins NOT to commit when working with an industry analyst firm?
2. What are the typical characteristics of an industry analyst that will enable you to more effectively work with them?
3. As a vendor, when should you be humble and when should you position yourself as an expert?
4. Does subscribing to an analyst’s research improve coverage of your products or company?
5. How is a research briefs created and what impact can a vendor have on its content?
6. What are the three highest-level benefits you can enjoy from an effective analyst relations approach?
7. How can you best capitalize on industry analyst ‘rules of engagement?’
8. Precisely what homework must you do before you brief an analyst?
9. How do vision and ability to execute relate to how an analyst sees your company?
10. During a briefing, how do CEOs, VPs of sales, PR firms and VPs of marketing impact how an analyst sees your company?
The actual report (PDF) costs EUR 316. Is it worth? I leave it up to you … but I promised entertainment. Look at the other “research” this paper is associated with:
Customers who bought this item also bought
Chinese Markets for Baby Care Products
Toilet Care Products – United Kingdom
Surface Care – United Kingdom
Chinese Markets for Laundry Care Products
Hair Care in the US
Laundry Care – United States
Long-Term Care Market Review 2006
The Future Of Personal Care Occasions
Wow.. .I especially love the pairing of Toilet, Laundry and Analysts 🙂
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )
Why I Quit Reddit – Actually, Reddit Quit Me
Posted on March 4, 2010 ·
Three years ago I was quite active on Reddit – at least for a while, until I realized just how manipulated it became. I’m not really holding it against reddit, the same happens on Digg and probably on all similar sites – nothing new here, you’ve probably read all this a thousand times, so I won’t be the 1001st 🙂
Suffice to say, I reduced my activity level, but occasionally still found interesting items I voted up or down there. Hack, I even broke Reddit – or that’s what it said.
Then it broke me. A few months ago I noticed I could no longer log in with my usual credentials. No reason to worry, that’s what password recovery is for:
Oops.. “no email for that user” – I don’t exist. Reddit killed me 🙁 Except it’s not really true. Reddit still knows me as a user:
Still no reason to panic – that’s what support is for. Or so I thought. Most of the support links require logging in, which I obviously could not do, but eventually I found a feedback form, which I duly filled out – and am waiting for a response ever since.
As a last resort I tweeted up @reddit – but as it turns out that’s not a real Twitter presence for Reddit – it’s just a marketing bot that reposts popular reddit entries.
End of story… and I don’t really care. I’m quite happy with StumbleUpon instead.
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )
Dell Sales Support Chat
Posted on March 3, 2010 ·
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
<SOAP-ENV:Header/>
−
<SOAP-ENV:Body>
−
<SOAP-ENV:Fault>
<faultcode>SOAP-ENV:Server</faultcode>
−
<faultstring>
Unable to Connect to Talisma Server at 143.166.82.76
</faultstring>
−
<detail>
−
<e:faultdetails>
−
<message>
Fail to receive through socket – [10054: WSAECONNRESET]
</message>
<errorcode>99999</errorcode>
</e:faultdetails>
</detail>
</SOAP-ENV:Fault>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
No kidding.. and this is SALES (?), not even tech support. 
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )
Mark Suster on Fox News: How to Present Your Business to a Crowd
Posted on February 26, 2010 ·
My favorite quote: One of the worst things with Powerpoint is the bulletpoint…
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )
Now We Know Why The City Never Sleeps
Posted on February 25, 2010 ·
Now we know why The Citi Never Sleeps: they are busy censoring their customers. If you are a Citibank customer and they dislike your blog, you may just get in trouble. (Disclosure: I do have a Citi account… so am taking a risk by writing this post.)
That’s just what happened to fabulis, a social network for gay men. Someone at Citi read their blog, decided that “content was not in compliance with Citibank’s standard policies” and froze their business account without advance warning. Fabulis Founder Jason Goldberg says:
for the life of us we can’t find anything “objectionable” on our blog besides some good humor, some business insights, and some touching coming out stories from some great and fabulis gay people.
Some speculate it’s images like that of this underwear with fabulis printed on it. If you ask me, these are not the most fabulis [sic] briefs, but who cares?
In fact it really doesn’t matter whether the fabulis blog has any “objectionable” material or not. Since when is it the business of a bank to read and censor their Client’s writing?
I’m pinching myself, thinking it’s a bad dream. But it’s not. This happened in the United Sates in 2010.
Something tells me within hours as management wakes up, Citi will be bending over backwards to dig themselves out of this huge PR nighmare – the damage is done, repairs will be costly.
In the meantime, enjoy Fabulis (almost) by Amanda Lear.
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )
Bring On The Inquisition! Judge Should Not Let Google Evil-doers Get Away!
Posted on February 24, 2010 ·
<rant>
Italian Judge Oscar Magi (photo @ TechCrunch , but I am not showing it for fear he might slap me with a privacy-invasion charge) has no idea what he’s dealing with. He’s just allowed evil witches get away with only 6 months suspended jail sentence. (C’mon, why would their employer insist on covering up with the “do no evil” slogan?).
Not enough. Time to start a full-scale witch-hunt, bring in the Spanish Inquisition (OK, you’re Italian, but let’s face it the Spanish were the masters of this art), shut down Google, then the Internet, close libraries, burn all books and rid us of all evil!
</rant>
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )
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