It is really strange how life turns sometimes. Vassil and the entire Blogtronix team were preparing for the event, getting together and planning how the presentation would go. We got some great girls and guys to help us. It really worked quite well. WE HAVE WON! Boy, am I happy!? What is strange is that Vassil had lines of people to shake his hand and exchange business cards, we talked on the phone like 20 times that day, 5 AM, 6 AM, talked to Rod Boothby at the café shop (not the Dutch café shop, normal one, Rod was excited about the upcoming happy event in his personal life), then Vassil and I talked like every 15-20 minutes... then 10 minutes before the presentation ..... Then all applauses for Blogtronix, Bravo Vassil! ... and the really strange thing is that we have not stopped talking about the productive and successful Under the Radar event since then. We exchanged over 150 e-mails with different companies and individuals.. and none of us had the time to post about that wonderful event and about that great news on our corporate website ... This is strange, right ?!
Well, I am posting now. Guys, we have won the Under the Radar event. We have won in our sector - Team Work, and we were the choice of both the judges and the audience. We are very happy about it. Just to tell you a small secret - Vassil's presentation was based on a version that our clients are using since January. We are releasing a new, much more upgraded and powerful version in the next couple of days that will really show the true power of the Blogtronix Enterprise Communication and Collaboration Platform... anyway.. Here are some texts from Under the radar Blog site... OH, I forgot: we have won an MS Office, Professional Edition 2007. Thanks to the organizers for the award!
Here is what the girls and boys at Under the Radar had to say about the event:
http://www.undertheradarblog.com
(all texts bellow available at http://www.undertheradarblog.com)
Under the Radar: Why Office 2.0 Matters
March 23, 2007 | 8:00am - 6:00pm | Mountain View, CA | Microsoft Campus
Did you get the memo? The 2.0 phenomena isn't replacing the office - it's just making it more productive. Whether you call it Office 2.0 or Office 3.0, a new generation of productivity tools is reinvigorating the way we work, and more importantly, the way we work together. The TPS report may still be mandatory, but this time it will be a collaborative online document, cutting expenditures, reducing waste, and increasing efficiency. Lumbergh may still need you to work on Saturday, but this time you can do it from home via web-based spreadsheets and documents, instant message client, VOIP, and a whole host of next-generation tools.
Join us on March 23, 2007 for Under the Radar: "Why Office 2.0 Matters". We will showcase 32 emerging, disruptive technologies that are changing the office landscape in sectors such as organization, collaboration, tracking, publishing, communicating, personalizing, and syncing. From the industry experts and pundits to the company presentations and audience feedback, you will learn about the future of office 2.0 - its challenges and opportunities, from SMB and enterprise adoption to the monetization of services
CONFIRMED PRESENTERS:
Approver | Big Contacts | Blogtronix | Brainkeeper | Cogenz | ConceptShare | ConnectBeam | Diigo | EditGrid | Firestoker | InvisibleCRM | Koral | Longjump | Mashery | My Payment Network | Proto Software | Scrybe | Sitekreator | Slideaware | Smartsheet | Spresent | Stikkit | System One | Terapad | Teqlo | TimeSearch Inc. (Calgoo) | Tungle | Vyew | WorkLight | Wrike | Wufoo | Xcellery
Fireside Chat with David Allen, Author, Getting Things Done
Moderators:
Sean Wise - Wise Mentor Capital
Rafe Needleman - Webware/CNET
Judges:
Jeff Barr, Evangelist, Amazon Web Services
Stowe Boyd, /Message
Bruce Francis, Vice President of Corporate Strategy, salesforce.com
Ismael Ghalimi, IT Redux
Ken Gullicksen, Partner, Morgenthaler Ventures
Rob Hayes, Partner, First Round Capital
Steven Li, VP, Technology Innovations, WebEx
Eran Megiddo, Group Program Manager, Microsoft
Jonathan Rochelle, Product Manager, Google Spreadsheets, Google
Rob Rueckert, Senior Investment Manager, Intel Capital
Stephanie Vargo-Walker, Sr. Director, Corporate Development, Sun Microsystems
Jason Yotopoulos, VP, Office of the CEO, Corporate Strategy Group, SAP
GRADUATE CIRCLE:
Atlassian | Colligo | DabbleDB | EchoSign | Etelos | FreshBooks | Jive Software | Joyent | iUpload | Oddcast | ThinkFree | Zoho
SELECTION COMMITTEE:
Rod Boothby - InnovationCreators, Richard MacManus - Read/WriteWeb, Zoli Erdos - Zoliblog, Ismael Ghalimi, IT Redux, Stowe Boyd - Message/, Ori Weinroth - Microsoft, Troy Angrigon - Business Objects, Brad Feld - Feld Thoughts, Rafe Needleman - Webware
LOCATION:
Microsoft | Conference Center, Building 1
1065 La Avenida Street | Mountain View, CA 94043
Sector: Stay Organized
Companies: Approver, Big Contacts, Worklight
Moderator: Rafe Needleman, Webware/CNET
Judges: Stowe Boyd, /Message
Jason Yotopoulos, SAP
Stephanie Vargo-Walker, Sun
Approver.com provides a document sharing and reviewing system. The pain point that Approver is solving is avoiding the back and forth of email attachments. Alerts to changes can be received via RSS feeds, RSS, and email (least desired!) Why wouldn't Google do this?
Big Contacts is an online contact manager for small businesses and workgroups to store contacts. They have 1700 users today and subscription model supports up to 3 users with a total of 500 contacts for free. Target market is consumer, VSMB market who don't want to pay for salesforce.com and/or Microsoft Exchange.
WorkLight allows "Web 2.0-style" access to corporate applications allowing users to customized/personalized interface via a secure RSS reader. The problem WorkLight is trying to solve is knowledge worker inefficiencies due to multiple applications and data centers, aim is to unify application access. PS: I tried to use this, and it didn't work.
Summary: Stowe Boyd said it best: these companies are features, nice-to-have but not real companies. Aspirations are great but they haven't built enough. And all of them have a daunting task of gaining real traction and adoption before the big guys just add these themselves. The presenters felt a little misjudged as enterprise 2.0 plays (which they are not), but I'm not really sure what kind of traction they will get, regardless.
Sector: Collective Intelligence
Companies: Cogenz, Connectbeam, Diigo, Stikkit
Cogenz calls themselves "del.icio.us for the enterprise", or really, helping employees leverage their collective intelligence (aka bookmarks). Team edition is $4 per month up to about $1000 for enterprises of 500 or so. Adoption is one of the main problems they face.
Connectbeam is "del.icio.us and LinkedIn for the enterprise." With shared bookmarking and tagging, enterprise workers are more likely to find what they need. ConnectBeam works with Honeywell, other Fortune 100s, and several SMBs, provides an on-demand Saas version and a pre-configured server version to operate behind a firewall. Self-funded and now looking for a Series A.
Diigo is one of the most talked about collaboration/sticky-note companies. It's certainly the kind of product that you have to play with to derive the value. BTW, Diigo stands for Digest of Internet Information Groups & Other stuff.The origins of the company are interesting. The CEO is in the asset management business and had to read an enormous number of SEC filings - it was a great way to track and share information. Right now it's free, but eventually they will charge for advanced features.
Stikkit makes sticky-notes on steroids - it's so extremely simple that you have to wonder what else they are cooking up. Sandy, is their new email-based personal assistant, it's now in closed beta. Not sure how they will make money yet, but without knowing about Sandy, it's hard to comment.
Summary: The judges' largest recommendation for these companies is to grow from the bottom up... Which loosely translates to make raving fans of the individual user and then make an enterprise version. Look at BlackBerry in the enterprise, Craiglist, Ebay... It's just that you really have to put something out there, being focused, and being clear about your business model...
- Posts by Alison Murdock
Sector: Desktop Tools
Companies: InvisibleCRM, Scrybe, Timesearch, Inc. (Calgoo), Tungle
Moderator: Rafe Needleman, Webware/CNET
Judges: Rob Hayes, First Round Capital
Jonathan Rochelle, Google
Bruce Francis, salesforce.com
InvisbleCRM: 3 apps that work with salesforce.com, Sugar and other CRMs. Outlook contact and tracking integration; document sharing between desktop and salesforce app; and desktop change alerts. Very slick, very useful IF you use CRM. Paid customers obtained through AppExchange and directly from site.
Scrybe: Online calendar with offline usability and very advanced UI. List imports and calendar changes are easy and quick. Also stores webclips and 'idea stream' notes. In beta with big waiting list.
Timesearch, Inc. (Calgoo): Online calendar that links Outlook, iCal and Google Calendars into one Google-esque interface. If you like Google calendar, you'll love Calgoo.
Tungle: Meeting scheduling across multiple calendar apps, requires downloads for users, working on web-only solution as well. Demo said interoperable with many calendaring apps but site FAQs don't say specifically. In beta release.
Judges commended the offline sync capabilities of Scrybe and InvisibleCRM, but news about Firefox 3 offering offline support mean this will only be an advantage for them for a short window of time. Scrybe was advised to let the 74K users who signed up for beta to get access now, while the demand is hot. Tungle was not as impressive to judges, didn't like the interface (though it looked a lot like IM to me and not that weird) it was the download aspect nobody was thrilled about. Calgoo was well received by judges and audience seemed impressed (they must use Google calendar too). Future incarnations will work with other Google apps, 'little brother to the big guy' play for customers.
Sector: Team Work
Companies: Blogtronix, Brainkeeper, Firestoker, SystemOne
Blogtronix: Built for enterprise - solves the problem of employee collaboration by leveraging blog-style information sharing with outward and inward facing capability.
Brainkeeper: Shared corporate communication, wiki collaboration & knowledge management, not project management. Presentation was mostly explanation based, didn't see enough demo to get a real idea of what the product has to offer.
Firestoker: "Blogging meets social networking" to bring knowledge in from the edges. An Enterprise play, seeks customers among franchisees and chain businesses that need bottom up worker-level communication.
SystemOne: Knowledge management and accumulation - wiki and journal based entries with built in search-while-you-work.
Blogtronix's strong permission control and corporate compliance (think Sarbanes-Oxley requirements) made this a favorite, as well as the fact that they're bringing in customers (and income). SystemOne's search platform was interesting to the judges but they wanted to see a use case that would better demonstrate usability. Firestoker and Brainkeeper didn't get as much attention, as Rafe stated before the presentations started - these are all wiki plays, and these two just didn't get much reaction. Judges also asked about migration issues, bringing in data from current sources to these new platforms. Brainkeeper offers a one-time migration, the others had less well-defined solutions.
- Posts by Shay Nowick
Sector: Collaborative Planning
Companies: Editgrid, Smartsheet.com, Wrike, Xcellery
Moderator: Sean Wise, Wise Mentor Capital
Judges:
Eran Megiddo, Microsoft
Ismael Ghalimi, IT/Redux
Steven Li, WebEx
EditGrid: online spreadsheet service for online collaboration
Smartsheet.com: web-based solution for managing and reporting on tasks, projects and processes
Wrike: online collaboration tool to assign and manage tasks
Xcellery: collaboration tool that lets users share and edit Excel spreadsheets online
Editgrid comments:
Ismael Ghalimi, IT|Redux: Data online is a key feature. Enabling multiple people to edit data simultaneously is very useful. Features that Excel users needs, if one can provide an existing migration path, address privacy features, then EditGrid is going in a good direction. EditGrid should consider adding project management and planning applications as well.
Regarding EditGrid, Sean found some questionable privacy issues of what users are making available and thinks EditGrid needs to take a more proactive approach rather than letting users be responsible for their own actions.
Smartsheet.com comments:
Ismael Ghalimi thinks the planning and workflow of Smartsheet.com is really terrific due to the ability to do "row-level" permission-based sharing with colleagues.
Steven Li of WebEx: This was a very impressive app. I'd use it with our partners globally. One problem that we have today, we can work fine internally, but the moment we go across organizational boundaries, we run into problems. This app in my mind is less of a spreadsheet app but it is a database app in the form of a spreadsheet. However, with multiple users, directory becomes an issue, How do you share a unified directory without forcing people to use a password, etc. Smartsheet.com's functionality lets people take control around business processes. Take a simple tool and work in small groups without IT.
Wrike comments:
Ismael Ghalimi, IT|Redux: Don't want to use Wrike to use do task management. People will not change their current behavior.
Xcellery comments:
Eran Megiddo, Microsoft: Some advice I'd share with these companies or have them remember is that they should focus scenarios to solve critical problems. Look for partnerships. Work with providers that are already out there. Don't spend resources on something that is not core to your value add.
Sector: Web Sharing
Companies: Conceptshare, Slideaware, Spresent, Vyew
ConceptShare: Flash-based 'workspace' approach to design collaboration for product managers/marketers, etc. to communicate design intentions.
Slideaware: a full featured presentation management platform to manage lifecycle and leveraging of presentations
Spresent: Flash-based online presentation application
Vyew: Real-time online meeting capabilities with rich multi-media capabilities
Collectively, this group of startups are bringing new, powerful and highly flexible ways for users to collaborate online. Solutions with no downloads required, asynchronous and synchronous communications, always on-anytime collaboration, flexibility to work on multiple operating systems, no logins required, publishing to the web or for mobile devices with a simple click.
What's the future in web sharing?
Steven Li, WebEx: We think we've barely scratched the surface on presenting and collaborating on the web. The future direction that we see is that people will start to develop structures both internal but more importantly across organizational boundaries. Slowly, collaboration will become more structured with future tools.
Ismael Ghalimi, IT|Redux: collaborative tools that run on all browsers. Online tools that are more affordable and that enable participants to edit data simultaneously.
Eran Megiddo, Microsoft: One of the missing processes that haven't been solved. Collaboration tools for brainstorming. I'd like to see more of a technology community emerging.
- Posts by Alison Murdock and Carmen Hughes
Sector: Mash It Up
Companies: LongJump, Mashery, Proto Software, Teqlo
Moderated by Sean Wise
Judges:
Jeff Barr, Amazon Web Services
Rob Rueckert, Intel Capital
Ken Gullicksen, Morgenthaler Ventures
Longjump is web-based marketplace for small and large businesses with customizable applications, primarily for CRM functions. Can also publish applications you've created to a community for tweaking and refining. It's been profitable since 2003 and currently serves 106 large enterprises.
Mashery provides an infrastructure for managing the sharing of APIs including security, access, metering, use and performance of web services, and tools to build a developer community around the APIs created. They have 6 customers now.
Proto Software banking their business on the fact the power users (just geeky enough) have outgrown the Excel spreadsheet and want to build mashups to further productivity and analysis tools. What's built can be shared with the user community. They are partnered with a financial analytics library and Yahoo! Pipes among others but are not web based yet. They are seeking $6M in Series A.
Teqlo is a mashup platform that pulls together web services from different applications and services and enables them to work together. It's in open beta with 2000 people using the service today.
Summary: These companies today serve very small market segments of API developers and users who like to trick out their applications. But with a little more user adoption and simplification, we can see a much larger market for personalized productivity tools that allow people to play, create, and share their creations with certain traction in big enterprise. The biggest challenge is distribution and promotion for these companies. Longjump and Teqlo were the only one that addressed the money question and it's vaguely subscription-driven but the amounts are locked down.
Sector: Open for Business
Companies: MyPayment Network, SiteKreator, Terapad, Wufoo
MyPayment Network provides a payment model today geared for the technically unsophisticated K-12 education market. Imagine the harried mother paying for PTA dues, soccer uniforms, and field trips. Product is sold today through partners, but the vision is to be a viable alternative to PayPal.
SiteKreator is a website creation product that provides an easy platform for site design and implementation. They have 3000 paying users and over 35K users total. Self-funded, they could be profitable in 3-6 months. Free version and levels of paid Pro versions offered, with add-on services and consulting available for modest fees. They work with channel partners to get the word out but the market is so segmented, this could be difficult.
Terapad is a website creation company that offers video embedding, image hosting, commerce, blogging tools and more which doesn't require any real technical knowledge. Making money from AdSense and revenue sharing with PayPal. Fast forward to the future: they hope to be 80% small business and 20% consumer. Hmmm.
Wufoo is an online html form builder that also hosts user data. Better yet, it's less than $200/month for unlimited entries. They have 700 customers which is huge for a company this size and some pretty major ones such as Microsoft. They have great word-of-mouth today.
The end-of-session discussion, based on an audience question about an easy-to-use, turnkey ecommerce solution, the moderator and panel encouraged the presenting companies to take a hard look at how each of them might be able to work with each other and partner to offer a stronger solution. This sparked some interesting back and forth.
And The Winner Is....
Here are the winners Under the Radar | Office 2.0! Congratulations to all the companies for a great show.
Best in Show Winner - Overall:
Smartsheet.com
Audience Choice Winner:
Wufoo
Category Winners:
MASH IT UP
Judges: ProtoSW
Audience: Mashery
DESKTOP TOOLS
Judges: Timesearch, Inc. (Calgoo)
Audience: InvisibleCRM
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
Judges: Wufoo
Audience: MyPaymentNetwork
TEAMWORK
Judges: Blogtronix
Audience: Blogtronix
COLLABORATIVE PLANNING
Judges: Smartsheet.com
Audience: Xcellery
STAY ORGANIZED
Judges: Worklight
Audience: Big Contacts
WEB SHARING
Judges: Conceptshare
Audience: Conceptshare
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
Judges: Connectbeam
Audience: Diigo
Technorati tags: blogtronix , event , Under the radar , award , win , winning , 1st place
Tracked from my original blog at Blogtronix.com
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