Oct

1

Event Seek Beta - live and ready for action!

Filed Under product design, production, public relations | 1 Comment

It’s been just over a year in the making, but Event Seek is finally ready for prime time! Last night at midnight, we officially launched www.event-seek.com as a platform for discovering new and interesting events. Anyone is welcome to use the website to discover events and activities in Atlanta. Other cities will be coming soon, but right now we’re focused on proving the concept out. If you’d like to see Event Seek carry events for your area, send an email to info@event-seek.com and we’ll use your requests to drive our expansion.

In addition to launching the beta product today, we are also celebrating our 1 year birthday. Exactly 365 days ago, we began full-time work on creating a product that would allow media companies, struggling with their current revenue, to expand their online offering and drive value from the website. Today we have completed our fully-functioning commercial product and are in several conversations with early-stage pilot program customers. Before you know it, you’ll see Event Seek powering the local events calendar of your favorite newspaper, tv, and radio station.

The year has gone by amazingly fast, far more quickly than I would have expected. As I look back over our accomplishments through the past year, I’m proud of what we’ve been able to do, but more importantly, excited about the future. In addition to closing several rounds of fundraising from friends and family investors, we’ve established a market need and developed a product that our customer contacts absolutely love. I can’t explain how exciting it is to demonstrate the product for potential clients and hear the words “this is exactly what we’re looking for - and more.”

Some of my favorite successes from the past year include:

  • Leaving our full-time jobs with an idea and a few dollars in our pockets
  • Developing a prototype in less than a month and presenting it to a wildly impressed top 20 newspaper nationally
  • Being selected as one of the top 15 technology startups in Georgia as part of the GRA/TAG business launch competition
  • Selecting an early-stage development partner and rapidly building the basis for what would become Event Seek
  • Convincing a host of talented, successful, intelligent, and experienced professionals to join our advisory board
  • Expanding our team to include the most talented front-end and back end-designers I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with
  • Developing an alpha product, launching it, and using customer feedback to continue to improve the offering
  • Honing our individual and corporate strategy to focus the business where we can drive the greatest value for customers, investors, and employees
  • Being selected as one of the companies for CapVenture, a fundraising preparation boot camp in Atlanta
  • Expanding skills we always knew we had, developing ones we never knew were there, and faking everything else
  • Establishing our name in the Atlanta entrepreneurial community as a company to watch
  • Being profiled in several technical trade journals
  • Finally launching a product that not only are we proud of, but has real potential to help people and companies

I’d like to think that we’ve been able to get where we are today thanks to our hard work and determination, but I know better. We have been damn lucky and have been helped along the way by individuals of all walks of life. I’m not sure why these people see something in us, but I’m just glad that they do. I’ll be thanking each and every one of you over the next few years and for years to come. We couldn’t have accomplished what we have without you and for that I am eternally grateful. 

With all of that being said, stop reading and go to the website! Use it, tell us what you like, tell us what you don’t like, and tell your friends. Event Seek becomes more and more useful and valuable the more users we have. We’ll continue to add content, find great local events, develop useful features, and bring on new geographies - you just enjoy it and spread the gospel: “Stop searching for events…start discovering them!”

Sep

24

Startup analogies

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Read a really cool article today about what Startups can learn from Superheroes. It is a neat little blog post that shares a lot of the same values we have around here, basically: Focus, Don’t Quit, Be the Best, Be a Team Player. All of this results in a team having one goal and being able to accomplish pretty incredible things. Even if you aren’t in a startup its worth the three minute read.

This article led me to reflect on all that we’ve been able to do in the past year and how we’ve been able to do it. Amazingly next Wednesday is our one year anniversary. Next week we can officially say that our company has survived for 365 days, which if you ask me is a pretty monumental accomplishment. We’ve done some really cool things along the way, but I’m not going to detail them in this post (we’ll save that for later).

This all seems pretty fitting for what will happen next Wednesday. On October 1st, we will launch the open beta of Event Seek - free for everyone who wants to use it. No closed doors, no invitation codes required, everyone is welcome. Event-Seek.com will be focused on Atlanta for the time being, but expect that to change moving forward. I’ve watched a lot of websites go up and down in the past year, some grow, some shrink, some explode, and some fold altogether. We’ve stuck to our singular purpose and the fruits of our labor are about to be exposed to the world.

Is the team excited? You bet. Are they nervous? Absolutely. Will we throw one hell of a launch party? Damn straight!

Pretty soon you’ll be hearing about Event Seek all over the place - get ready we’re about to take the events world by storm.

Oh and just for fun I took the test that compares you to a superhero, I’m Ironman. Who are you?

 

Inventor. Businessman. Genius.

 

Sep

19

Event Seek in the press? - You betcha!

Filed Under fundraising, public relations | 1 Comment

Well its official. Event Seek is no longer in stealth mode. We’ve been working for so long to make sure that no one outside of Atlanta knows who we are that I’m not sure how I feel right now.

Today an article just came out in Tech Journal South that profiles Event Seek. It’s a short little piece on who we are and what we do, but its fairly flattering and highlights the majority of key points for our business. For those of you who haven’t gotten an update on the business in a while, its a good update on our current investment and sales messages.

Anyway, I just thought that it was a neat piece on Event Seek and you all would enjoy checking it out. Feel free to share your thoughts!

Tech Journal Article on Event Seek

Sep

10

Meeting with “The Board”

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 One of the neat things about running a small company is that if you are lucky you can convince smart, successful, busy people that they should be a part of your advisory board.

Every company uses this group differently, but I recommend building a group of individuals who you believe are smart, passionate, experienced, and willing to take your calls! Once you’ve put this group together, you reach out to them individually and ask for their advice as you work through the day to day operations of your business. They can be incredibly insightful, especially if you ask them for advice on topics they know well.

Once every few months or weeks (depending upon your company stage and board interest) get everyone in a room for 2-3 hours. If you’re putting together a strong group of advisors, this should be damn near impossible! Not because they don’t want to do it, but getting 5-6 successful people in a room means juggling some crazy schedules. Let’s just say we manage to pull it off by scheduling about a month in advance and giving lots of options.

I’m not going to get into the details of who should make up your advisory board - thats really up to you and what you want to do with your business. I would like to say one thing on the topic however. Build your board out of people who won’t bullshit you. No room for this attitude in an advisory board meeting. You need people who will give an honest and clear assessment of how they see your problems and potential resolutions. Just because their “name” is impressive to add to the corporate resume doesn’t meant that they will be helpful in anyway to your business.

Thankfully our board is merciless. Think of them as the kid who would kick you when you were down, but smile when they did it!

When we do get a chance to pull up and meet with our advisory board, it is really a wonderful breath of fresh air. Anytime you can get some of the smartest people you know in one room, you really have to feel good about what you’re doing and the fact that they are willing to spend their time with you.

Of course they questioned our assumptions, debated our strategy, argued points, and discussed the thought process, but they did the whole thing in an effort to help build a successful company. There really is nothing like unfettered access to brilliant minds who want you to succeed.

Today we discussed production, sales, and investment - and managed to have lunch somewhere in between. It was a lot to tackle in two hours and took us longer than expected (big surprise). However we were able to discuss some difficult issues as we struggle with challenges in each of those areas. Nothing is easy at a startup, but being able to have great people help you work through your opportunities is just invaluable.

Thanks to our board. Thanks for putting up with our incessant requests and providing guidance and support when we need it.

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Jul

8

Customer Feedback is King

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Just a heads up for those of you who have been posting in the forums and playing with our Alpha test - we’ll be moving to a more robust customer satisfaction platform shortly. It should facilitate better communication between you and us.

Why the change? Simple, you shouldn’t have to keep checking the forums to see if we’ve responded to your comments. So our new solution will automatically reply to you when we’re responding to your thoughts. This means that you can easily find out when we’re working on your issue.

In addition you’ll be able to see what other users have asked and how we answered their questions. Should make it easy to figure out if we already know about a bug.

Love the thoughts, keep them coming.

Jun

25

Event Seek article in Southeast Innovations magazine

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Event Seek was selected as a featured company for the most recent issue of Southeast Innovations! This a e-magazine delivered to a angels, VCs, and institutional investors throughout the Southeast.

It’s certainly not an article in the WSJ, the Economist, or the New Yorker, but it is press nonetheless. It is a brief review of our company, idea, management team, and market focus. It is always nice to be approached by someone who wants to talk about your company.

For those of you following the link, I apologize as it will only show you the header for our article - it is a subscription only publication.

As they say, any news is good news and we’ll continue to leverage any bit of PR we get to our advantage.

Alpha notes coming shortly…

May

14

Silver linings

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The great Event Seek run at the final prize for the Georgia Business Launch competition has come to and end. Sadly, we were not selected as one of the four finalists. While I’m disappointed that we were not selected, I’m proud of our accomplishments thus far.  Just being selected as one of the 15 semi-finalists is quite an honor (and one you can bet I’ll be shamelessly promoting).

I had the pleasure of talking yesterday with Sid Elliot, Director of Business Strategy for the Georgia Research Alliance (one of the groups putting on the competition). He was kind enough to sit through all of the judging sessions, compile feedback, and provide this to us struggling entrepreneurs.

Overall our feedback was exactly what we expected, nothing new and nothing we can’t continue to work on. For those of you interested, here were a few key points:

  • Tighten up your financial projects and assumptions (know every last detail of the model)
  • Articulate the market pain in a way that individuals not in our target demographic can understand the gravity of it (help non-twenty something judges get why people want to find events)
  • Strengthen your barriers to entry (figure out why no one can do this better than us)

“So, where is this silver lining?”

Late in the discussions, one of the judges was leaned back scratching his shin when he said to the group: “I’m not yet convinced I’d invest in this idea…but I would invest in these guys.” At which point almost everyone the room agreed.  Never been said about any group in the three years of the competition…

WHOA! Seriously, wow!  Did I mention we were the youngest group in the semi-finals? Not sure what this group saw in us, but awesome for Event Seek!  Now all we have to do is leverage that and tweak our business plan and pitch until they love the idea. [Insert me]

So, while it was sad not to win, there clearly was a silver lining for us at Event Seek. And, we’ve got a fair amount of upcoming opportunities to do some self-promotion. I’ll be attending a variety of startup related activities in the next coming weeks like StartupRiot, Capital Lounge, the Entrepreneur’s Showcase, and Run it by the pros. If you see me, stop by and say hi.  

Ok so that’s actually something that serious bloggers (who have real audiences) say.  But it felt cool to act like people might seek me out.

 

May

9

The siren’s song of the air-mattress is calling my name

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Things have been pretty exciting around the office lately with development picking up speed, preparing for the business launch semi-finals, and the general mood that comes with hitting milestones.  The thing that I’m most excited about right now however, is the addition of the air-mattress.

I brought it in a week or two ago because it was just taking up space in my house and we’re certainly not hurting for storage in the office (tends to happen when you work in a Uhaul).  I’ve taken a few cat naps on it thus far, usually about 10-15 minutes in length, but generally just enough to close my eyes and get back to work.  As I’m writing this post, I’m basically counting the words until I can go crash on that plush gray pillow and sleep for the next hour.

As many of you know we’ve been preparing for the semi-final round of the Georgia Business Launch Competition.  This week has been hectic as I’ve worked to make sure we were bringing the right set of materials, knew what we wanted to say, and were going to be showing off our A game.  As a result, I haven’t spent much time outside of the office or slept any normal person’s sleeping patterns.

At 8:00AM this morning we presented to a panel of distinguished judges.  Seriously, this group was full of powerful, thoughtful, entrepreneurial, I-eat-pieces-of-shit-like-you-for-breakfast investors.  Tristan and I were bright-eyed and busy-tailed and put together what I thought was actually a solid presentation.  The judges asked excellent and difficult questions and we tacked each one to the best of our ability.  I’m thrilled to say that the presentation and Q&A went off without a hitch and I think we have a real shot at making the final 4 groups.  

Are the odds against us?  Sure.  Is our idea better than everyone elses?  Of course.  will the judges agree with me?  Who knows.  I can say this for sure though: I’m off to take what I believe is a well deserved nap.

Somebody set an alarm…

 

May

1

Picking up a little street cred

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Today, we received our first award. Well its not like a real award, and its not a huge deal, but hey we’ll take whatever we can get right?

This afternoon Event Seek was selected as a semi-finalist for the Georgia Business Launch Competition. Of the 90 or so companies that applied to the competition, we were chosen as one of the top 15. To those of you who voted for our video, my most sincere thanks! Amazingly, we weren’t one of the top two videos receiving votes for the competition, so as it turns out, our application stood on its own *ahem* merits.

We’ll be presenting our plan to a team of distinguished Atlanta judges next Friday at 7:45 am. Many of you know that I’m not a morning person so I have a feeling I’ll have to get up early and drink a red bull or two, but you can bet I’ll be there pretty psyched to present. Neither Tristan or I are veterans at this, so just being invited to present is pretty exciting. Did I mention that the judges are definitely connected to money and influence around Atlanta? I guess I’ll have to get my suit pressed and wear my power tie…

We’ve slimmed the presentation down to just a few slides that really hit our critical points, so hopefully our passion and excitement can shine through. If anyone wants to see the slides, feel free to shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to share.

Keep your eyes open for future updates on our progress. I’d love nothing more than for Event Seek to make it to the finals, but really I just want to put together a good showing for our small company, investors, and all the friends supporting us along the way.

Oh and if today wasn’t good enough already, we’ve managed to bring in another investor to the team. You know who you are (I don’t think its good to name drop in a blog), and I couldn’t be happier that you’re with us.

Back to making pretty slides…