WOW! Tech Jobs Available

On Wednesday evening, I attended Startups Uncensored #20, a monthly networking event sponsored by Docstoc, in Santa Monica. The panel consisted of Jason Nazar (CEO, Docstoc.com), Josh Meyers CEO of People Media a subsidiary of Match.com, Jeff Tinsley CEO and Founder of MyLife, Robert Angarita Co-Founder of Cramster and Mark Kapczynski VP of Corp Dev at Experian.

During their introductions where they described their companies, at least four of the five stated that they had job openings, with one having 17 openings. I am not sure if Mark from Experian mentioned openings. These are tech jobs: programmers, product managers. So it sounds like the tech job landscape is alive and well at least in LA/Santa Monica especially if you are in any of the mentioned needed categories.

Podcast: Natalie Martin, CEO Blissport

On Valentine’s Day, I did a post on a new company Blissport focused on providing travel information and support, initially to grooms as they plan arguably the most important trip of their life, their Honeymoon. Well, this afternoon I had the pleasure of doing a Podcast with Natalie Martin, the CEO, who is in the process of raising capital as well as getting the business off the ground. Here is a hotlink to the cast. I hope you get a chance to listen and enjoy it and, if you are an interested investor, you can contact Natalie at natalie.martin@blissport.com.

Podcast with Gail Kantor, CEO ejamming

The other day I did a blog post about ejamming and how cool I thought it was. Well this afternoon I got to do a Podcast with Gail Kantor, the CEO, and talk about the company, where they are going and what she is looking to do in her current capital raise.

We decided to ejamming to record the cast. Very easy once you get it up and running. Not very difficult, but not the usual plug-n-play applications we’ve become familiar with. For example, you need a certain device driver and certain capabilities from you sound card. So I had to look around a bit and discovered it had everything I needed.

For doing one-on-one interviews, it’s a little overkill, but, if you wanted to do a conversation involving 3 or more people, this is the system to use. They use .wav files, which are quite large but will soon be supporting .mp3 format.

For any of you musicians or wannabe’s, they are still in beta and you can use the service for free. Even if they weren’t, the planned fees are miniscule considering the value you get.

I really enjoyed talking with Gail and hope you have 30 minutes to listen to her. I think we will be hearing a lot more about ejamming in the future.

Thanks for the great interview Gail.

eJamming, a Very Cool Company

Yesterday afternoon I attended a screening of companies looking to present to the SoCal Keiretsu Forum members and was pleasantly surprised. One of the companies screening was ejamming and the presenter their CEO Gail Kantor. I had come across them earlier this year as they were a presenter at Demo 07 out in Palm Desert and had taken the DemoGod award. Their solution allows musicians or wannabe’s to play, practice or learn by playing with others over the Internet. This might sound like a “So What”, but the big deal is everything is live! More importantly, they have solved a significant problem of latency or everyone in sync with each other and no one behind because of delays in the data caused by the network or distance.

 One of the demo’s I had seen on YouTube was a recording of a live session at the Bitter End in NYC where the singer and drummer are on stage while the bass player is in Boston and the guitar player is in Upstate New York. They did a Stevie Wonder number and you could not tell that everyone was not on the same stage.  I tried to provide a hotlink, but the video is down.

There is another set of segments on YouTube about a classical pianist who is now using ejamming to teach piano to students who are hundreds of miles away. Before ejamming she was severely limited in who she could provide lessons to since it had a lot to do about how far the students, or their parents, would travel. ejamming and a MIDI equipped keyboard solved all that.

What I hadn’t learned from the Demo background is the CEO, Gail Kantor has been in the music business forever. Her bio lists, among her many accomplishments, being one of the original Harlettes, Bette Midlers fabuloues backup group. Does it get much better?

A fascinating woman with lots of energy and a great concept and company. I plan to do a Podcast in the near term to let her talk about the company and what she is looking for in financing. In the mean time, if you get a chance, check them out.

Apple Response Time?

A story was released in the major media outlets this morning about how personal information is being downloaded with the songs that one purchases on iTunes. Now, I am not sure that the information included is that sensitive, but that’s not what I find interesting about the event.

Apple, as a company, has a “no blogging” policy. Consequently, they will have to rely on the traditional methods to respond to the story. What I am interested in is just how long this will take? You know, with all the approvals and checkpoints in the traditional method, it might take a day or two.

Too bad they don’t have established blog channels where they could respond immediately and get their side in the media more quickly to diffuse the story.

Interview With Kathy Woolverton, President of SoftSearch

Although it is Memorial Day, I had an opportunity to talk with Kathy Woolverton the President of a new business software distribution company called SoftSearch. I found out today that one of the downsides of being a global company is that there are some holidays that are just not followed outside the US and Memorial Day is one of them.

I met Kathy while she was presenting to the Chapters of the Southern California, Keiretsu Forum Angel group. She is in an interesting space with an in place system, quality team, distribution agreements and is generating revenues.

You can hear the cast at http://socalbuzz.podbus.com/softsearch2.mp3 So, if you have about 15 minutes, give a listen and hear about her company.

Get to Give, New Startup

I was recently at a Keiretsu Forum (International Angel Group) of which I am a member and saw Aaron Saddock, President, of a new startup, Get To Give. Interesting company with an interesting objective. They have created a new kind of loyalty program that has a three-way win. They work with consumers, charities and merchants to create a way for a consumer to give have money donated to their favorite charities when shopping at stores who’s owners have agreed to support those charities. The consumer gets a loyalty card, signs up at Get to Give’s web site and selects up to five charities they would like to support. They then look through a list of local merchants who Get to Give has signed up and when the consumer makes a purchase and shows their card, they get a discount on their purchase and the merchant send a donation off the charity.  Charities can also have cards created with their brand on them.

As I said in the beginning, this is a very interesting concept. I talked with Aaron and have a Podcast of the conversation.  If you have few minutes, check it out. I think it is great when a team of young entrepreneurs get together and focus on ways to make things better while still building a technology focused business.

Children’s Educational Network

A few days ago, I got to see Greg Writer, the CEO, of the Children’s Educational Workshop present his business opportunity to a group of Angels at a Keiretsu Forum meeting in San Diego. As Greg mentioned, there are about 53M American youths (4-16 years) that access the Internet from their homes. Few of these use systems that protect them from accessing pornographic materials or chatting with the numerous pedophiles that surf the net and look for opportunities to interact with these children. Well Greg got tired of it especially since he had children of his own to protect.

Greg didn’t sit on the side lines and complain. Instead he created the Children’s Educational Network and its safe browser, TUKI(tm). Additionally, he offers TUKI as a free download for end users and is developing relationships with major brands who are targeting this demographic and creating “Private Label” browsers.

Kudos to Greg and I hope he is successful at building this business. We need more entrepreneurs who are willing to take on issues like protecting our children from sites with inappropriate materials and the sick people who try to communicate with them. If you have children, download TUKI and give it a try. It won’t cost you anything to try out. If your kids like TUKI, you can get access to more rich content for a low  monthly fee.

Keiretsu Forum Presenter – BiggyTV

Being interested in what new products, services and companies are being developed in Southern California, I generally attend the monthly meeting of the San Diego Chapter of Keiretsu Forum. If you are not familiar with the group, click on the hotlink and read a little about them. One of their differentiators is their North American footprint. Also, Southern California Chapters in San Diego, Orange County, LA, and Westlake Village are under a common leadership team, which adds to the variety of companies one gets to see. Each month, 4-6 companies get to present their opportunity to the local membership.

We are seeing more entertainment related opportunities, which probably is the result of the close relationship with the LA area chapters. One such company, BiggyTVpresented last week. When you’ve had a pretty fixed diet of high tech/telecom/life sciences start-ups over a four year period, I find it pleasantly interesting to listen about some new area.

As described by Kyle Borg, the President/CEO, “BiggyTV is a B2B global digital video distribution and syndication service that includes B2C elements.” They are using a somewhat creative revenue sharing model. Somewhat like Amazon’s Partner program, a business can subscribe to BiggyTV and have a player they place on their web site. Whenever someone clicks to watch a program, Biggy shares the ad revenue.

Although I think Mr. Borg needs to take a closer look at his competition, I think he is in the forefront of a nascent industry where video and television is moving from the traditional analogue broadcast medium to the digital Internet. He is also looking hard at demographics and signing up some interesting content that I know people will pay for.

One he mentioned is Soap Opera’s and how they will re-purpose content so that a follower of Luke and Lara, I think these are characters on All My Children, can see a program that combines just their parts of the series over a period of years. I know there are a lot of people who diligently follow the Soaps along with certain characters. So, I think that Biggy is on to something.

As I said above, they do need to upgrade their competitive intelligence. He only mentioned one company, Brightcove, as a competitor and I know there are more. As a matter of fact, the current issue of Wired Magazine has an article about Internet TV and some entrepreneurs who have disinter-mediated other technologies who are now in the space. There is a chart that list Brightcove and nine other companies. Still, ten players in a new, nascent industry, there’s plenty of room.

I hope they are able to get out and get established before guys likeJoost get better established. I am looking forward to the advances being created in video and Internet TV. I think the Infotainment Industry is the next New New Thing and can’t wait until I can get first run movies pumped into my house and don’t have to worry about dealing with the Simpson Family next to me in the theater talking, answering the cell phone and disciplining their kids. It doesn’t happen often, but enough that I think about it when I am waiting for the movie to start.

If you haven’t looked at what’s going on with Internet TV, spend some time looking at the companies listed in the Wired article and don’t leave out BiggyTV.

Podcast with Gene Alexander, CEO MaMoCa

I had an opportunity to talk with Gene Alexander, CEO, of MaMoCa an Irvine, CA company developing solutions for the motion capture industry. If you go the their site, www.mamoca.com, it becomes clear what they are talking about since you see Tom Hanks going through some motions for a part he played in an animated film.

MaMoCa’s solution is far superior to the current technologies, which means that the resultant capture provides significantly more information that leads to a more realistic animation.

Their current focus is towards the gaming industry where the revenue numbers are big and less fragmented than other applications. It seems hard to believe that the graphics can get more realistic that they already are.

 So, if you have twenty minutes, you can download the cast at http://socalbuzz.podbus.com/Gene_Alexander_MaMoCa.mp3.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did in creating it.