Nate Berger
President and CEO, KnockMedia

If I had a dollar for every time someone told me “Facebook is just not for me” or “I can’t get into LinkedIn, that won’t do me any good”… well, let’s just say that I’d have a lot of dollars. It’s hard to believe that with 350+ million registered end-users, some people are still against the idea of using a social networking site like Facebook to further their cause. The fact of the matter is that in 2010 social media is where it’s at; you simply cannot afford to not give this medium your attention. These networks can provide you with a unique venue for creating a buzz around what you are doing, regardless of industry and regardless of offering. The sheer volume of people that head to these sites on a daily basis tells us something… If you’ve got something to say, it’s time to take your message to where the masses are!

This is not just a Facebook thing that we are talking about… Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites on the globe, and for good reason, but it’s by no means the only game in town. Consider some of the other options like Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Bebo, Orkut, DIGG, and Technorati, just to name a few. All of these websites have their own spin on the social media craze, and many of these sites can offer you something of value if you take the time to think creatively and read between the lines.

Social networking sites and the tools they offer can help us do what most of us, if not all of us, are trying to do in one way or another… sell something. It doesn’t have to be a product or service. Maybe you are “selling” a message, or selling yourself (e.g. in the context of looking for a new job, you need to “sell” yourself to potential employers). If you are looking for a job, full-time, part-time, contract, anything really, there would be a lot of value in you creating a LinkedIn profile and connecting with all those people that you’ve worked with and for over the years. Get proactive and start communicating via this resume-style site; you simply never know what opportunities are available within your existing network until you tap into it. And it doesn’t stop there… Facebook now allows you to market your brand by creating fan pages with custom “tabs,” which is essentially a way for you to create your own website within their website. You can then push your content and messaging out to fans and friends with these dynamic and completely customizable tabs. As far as Twitter goes, don’t even get me started! If your business does anything with events you just have to try this out. If you want to fill seats at your next seminar, or want to get the word out about some recent PR (all good things of course), or keep customers updated with your upcoming trade show schedule, try tweeting this info. You would be surprised at what kind of response you can get when you are sending out simple, 140 character messages directly to your audience’s smart phones. Which brings up another very important point… don’t just consider what sites people are spending their time on, think of what they are using to access those sites. If there was ever a time to go mobile, that time is now.

With spending down year after year on traditional forms of advertising and marketing, companies and consumers alike have moved on to bigger and better ways to connect. If you haven’t already given a social media campaign some thought, don’t wait any longer. There are many options out there and you don’t have to break the bank to get started and test the waters. Be open to this constantly evolving medium, get creative and let your voice be heard!

www.knockmedia.com/services2point0.html
www.facebook.com/pages/KnockMedia/283123553816?v=app_11007063052
www.twitter.com/knockmedia
www.linkedin.com/in/knockmedia

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Posted under Tech Community / VC World

Griffin McGrath
Student, BS/MBA Program, Quinnipiac University

On Friday, February 26 the TD Bank Sports Center at Quinnipiac University saw more than just the success of the men’s and women’s hockey teams. The arena was host to Connecticut Innovations’ investment team and portfolio company CEOs networking event with members of the QU School of Business.

As an aspiring entrepreneur, I have realized that learning from others is as critical as learning from your own experiences. The networking event provided an amazing opportunity to mingle with some of Connecticut’s most successful entrepreneurs who have had firsthand experience building successful companies from the ground up. Their specialties ranged from software to bioscience. The entrepreneurs were able to pass on their wisdom and insight to the several entrepreneurship students who attended the event, including me. By having conversations with them about their own businesses, they helped me reshape some of the ideas that I had for my own business.

In addition, the Connecticut Innovations investment team was a joy to talk with. By speaking with a number of the team members, I was able to get an idea of how the investment process really works. It is one thing to hear about venture financing from a professor, but hearing it from a seasoned veteran in the field is another. They were able to debunk some of the myths I had heard as well as help me to understand the process and criteria that they use in evaluating startup companies. For example, did you know that having individuals with industry experience on your board of advisors is viewed more favorably than having individuals with purely academic experience – or that an entrepreneurial company with a good idea and a great management team has a better chance of securing funding than one with a great product but a bad management team? These little tips and hints were just some of the valuable things I learned from the Connecticut Innovations team.

Perhaps the thing I enjoyed most about the event was the energy from all of the people who attended. People often talk about the “high-energy” startup environment, and now I know what they mean. As the CEOs talked about their companies and the investors talked about their portfolio companies, the energy and excitement was palpable. That passion for business and success is what will stick with me as I continue my journey of creating successful businesses.

I hope that other aspiring business owners get the chance to experience an event like this one. It is truly invaluable to hear the stories from other entrepreneurs and to be able to learn from people with industry experience. I am sure that more events like this, both at Quinnipiac and other universities around the state, will help foster and sustain a vibrant entrepreneurial community.

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Posted under Tech Community / VC World

According to the author of an article that recently appeared in VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner, it’s important for startups to stand out from the crowd when seeking new investors – especially given that venture capital will likely be in shorter supply in the coming months. The author, from the VC firm Dolphin Equity Partners, offers five pointers to help make a company “memorable.” The pointers cover how to tailor an investor pitch and what type of research to do about the investor. The points are well taken.

Here is a link to the article, “5 ways to make your start-up attractive to VCs.”

Pete Longo
President and Executive Director

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Posted under Message from the President

On February 4, I appeared before the state legislature’s Commerce Committee to present our annual “state of Connecticut Innovations” message. This is something that CI is required to do each year, and it is a great way for us to review with the committee the activities of our organization, our accomplishments and our future plans.

This year, in addition to providing our traditional update, we highlighted some findings from an economic impact study that we commissioned. The study, which covered the 14-year period from fiscal years 1995 through 2008, evaluated the economic impact on the state of CI’s cumulative investment of $152 million in 84 Connecticut companies during this period. Our impact on net state revenue, Connecticut gross domestic product and personal income was highly encouraging and speaks to why CI is so important to the entrepreneurial, high-tech community and to the overall Connecticut economy.

We also were pleased to report that the demand for our capital is the strongest it’s been since 1999. A strong pipeline of investment candidates is leading to a steady stream of new investments and an expanded CI client portfolio.

To view CI’s presentation to the Commerce Committee, click here.

Peter Longo
President and Executive Director

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Posted under Message from the President

Jessica Schweitzer
Founder and President, Campus Connect LLC

Campus Connect, www.CampusConnectCentral.com, is more than the latest website where students can buy and sell textbooks; we raise the bar for the business community by establishing relationships with these independent consumers early in their adult lives. While Campus Connect aims to make college more affordable and fun for students, we also give advertisers great access to the college student demographic. In order to meet our goals, we have to continually add more students to our list of regular users. To make that happen, students have to remember us and the monies they saved using want ads and from the coupons and ads provided by local businesses. The goal for us and our advertisers is for students to continue to be customers years after they graduate. This is truly a win-win-win situation.

So, what is the entrepreneurial challenge? Even though Campus Connect’s services are free for students, it can be challenging to get them to change their current process of book buying and selling. For advertisers and students, there is a “chicken-or-egg” problem – more students attract more advertisers, but students want more value-added content (like coupon ads) before they sign up. My company was launched in October 2009, and we are proving that we can attract students and some early-adopter business clients by demonstrating the value to students and advertisers. We harness students’ interest in saving money, provide a new social networking tool for the restless student market, and provide local businesses with an affordable, targeted way to access the local student market. We and our business partners are in a race to capture this rapidly growing market before other emerging businesses grab them; we are looking for more business partners who worry less about the chicken or egg and realize that building a valuable relationship takes time.

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Posted under Portfolio company guest article

To help entrepreneurs avoid some common compensation-related mistakes, attorneys at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati have put forth some useful legal pointers – focused specifically on wage deferral, employee misclassification, premature option grants, post-termination option acceleration and 83(b) elections. Exciting? Maybe not at first glance, but the information contained in this firm’s column is worth exploring further and keeping on hand. 

The Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati column appears in VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner blog.

Peter Longo
President and Executive Director

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Posted under Message from the President

While the Winter Olympics were being unveiled in Vancouver on Friday night, another debut of sorts was occurring on Fox 61. Jessica Schweitzer, founder of Campus Connect, a Connecticut Innovations client under the Pre-Seed Support Services Program, was making her television debut. Reporter Rick Hancock’s interview with Jessica aired on Fox 61 News at 10. Rick is host of the weekly segment Rick’s RSS.

A 2009 college graduate, Jessica launched Campus Connect last fall after winning a cash award for the start up of the entrepreneurial business through the Connecticut Collegiate Business Plan Competition. Conceived while Jessica was a student at Central Connecticut State University, Campus Connect offers a Web-based media platform that helps college students stretch their dollars; it provides a want-ad and advertising service focusing on textbooks, housing, jobs and local savings and coupons. While Campus Connect has been in operation for less than six months, already four Connecticut universities have signed on as initial customers.

Hear more about this up-and-coming company and Jessica’s ambitious plans for Campus Connect in Rick’s RSS segment on Fox 61 News at 10.

Charlie Moret
Managing Director, Business Development

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Posted under Tech Community / VC World

A recent study by McKinsey & Company concluded that energy efficiency offers a vast, low-cost energy resource for the U.S. economy but only if the nation can craft a comprehensive and innovative approach to unlock it. The study also pointed out the paucity of tools for evaluating, measuring and verifying savings resulting from adoption of different conservation measures. We believe that Sustainable Real Estate Solutions Inc. (SRS), our latest portfolio company, will play a significant role in driving energy efficiencies in the commercial real estate arena in the days ahead. Its tool, Sustainable Real Estate Manager™, automates a host of functions that assess the sustainability performance of commercial buildings. For instance, this tool will help commercial real estate owners disclose the energy metrics of buildings they are trying to sell (a requirement in several West Coast states and perhaps, in the future, also here on the East Coast). Additionally, it helps building owners determine where they can make infrastructure improvements – how they can make their buildings more energy efficient and less reliant on fossil fuels.

Clean tech software, therefore, is an important piece of the broader energy puzzle. It is a low-hanging fruit that we can focus on as our nation strives to become more energy independent and secure.

Anil Vasagiri
Director, Investments

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Posted under From the Deal Team

Time efficiency – defined as the length of time that it takes a company to consummate a liquidity event – is a key factor in determining financial returns to both entrepreneurs and investors, according to the co-authors of a recent New York Times article titled “Another View: The Challenges of Time for Start-Ups.” In fact, they argue that it is just as important as capital efficiency.

The time efficiency of prospective Connecticut Innovations portfolio companies is definitely a factor that we evaluate during our due diligence process. However, as pointed out by the co-authors, time efficiency is not something that is easy to predict; a number of variables, including market factors, which are difficult to anticipate, come into play. Nonetheless, we do our best to assess what we believe will be the time efficiency of each investment prospect.  

Entrepreneurs and investors alike should find this article, and the tips presented therein, to be of great interest. Entrepreneurs can learn how to make their companies more attractive to investors, and investors can learn how to make smarter investments.

Peter Longo
President and Executive Director

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Posted under Message from the President

On Tuesday, January 26, 2010, a workshop titled “What You Need to Know About Valuing Your Early-Stage Company” was attended by 75 people, of whom 55 were entrepreneurs. The workshop was a joint undertaking by CTech (www.CTech-CT.org) and the Entrepreneurs Association of the Connecticut Venture Group (www.CVG.org).

At the beginning of the session, the attendees were asked how many of them were trying to raise funds for their startups. A sea of hands went up. The three panelists, Frank Morse (an investment banker), Konstantine Drakonakis (a venture capitalist) and John Seiffer (an angel and entrepreneur), spoke candidly about key issues to consider when raising funds and selling equity in one’s startup. There were some key takeaways from their presentations:

• There is often a huge difference between the entrepreneur’s and the investor’s estimate of value. The entrepreneur’s first priority should be to GET THE FUNDS. Traditional scientific approaches that rely on income, discounted cash flow or asset value to value a company do not always work for early-stage companies. The process is largely an “art,” the result of creative negotiations that result in a mutually accepted value. So, don’t get hung up on valuation, but work hard to get to an agreement with the investor, because getting the funds will propel your company forward.
• Investors invest in the belief that there will be future cash flow; they do not invest in products.
  
• Capital-efficient models – those in which small amounts of money are used to efficiently bring products to market – are preferred by investors.

The panel also discussed some factors that investors weigh when evaluating startups: (1) a proven technology or product, (2) some revenue, (3) reasonable cash flow break-even projections, (4) an experienced management team, (5) regulatory compliance systems in place, (6) intellectual property, and (6) an exit strategy.

A videotaped recording of the January 26 workshop is available on the CTech Web site. Please also check the site for details about future CTech workshops.

Charlie Moret
Managing Director, Business Development

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Posted under Tech Community / VC World