• Recently Written

  • Earth Day Redux
  • Aloha to Aloha
  • Startupalooza a High-Tech Hit
  • How Long Will Postal Mail Stick Around?
  • The Inconvenient Truth about Unwanted-Mail Removal Services
  • The sky’s the limit: Why pilots make great start-up employees, and why so many are entrepreneurs
  • Top 10 tips for funding a start-up company
  • Welcome to our ‘Start-Up Junkies’ blog!

• Archives

  • April 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008

• Add Our Feed

  •  RSS
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 

Startupalooza a High-Tech Hit

By Joanna Kane, Earth Class Mail

On Saturday, March 29th, Earth Class Mail was honored to participate in an event created for the Portland, OR, tech start-up community called Startupalooza. The afternoon consisted of featured start-up presentations, a “Technopreneur” panel, and new product demos.

The crowd in attendance ranged from those with decade-long entrepreneurial careers to wide-eyed observers hoping to absorb tips and tools to get their new ideas off the ground. The energy in the room was palpable, conversations were animated, and new ideas were being generated as fast as they were being shared. If I had to pick one theme for the day, it would be the common interest in making life easier through technology, coupled with making technology accessible for anybody and everybody.

Earth Class Mail’s own Nate DiNiro acquainted the group with our company’s services, and the response was certainly favorable. Many in the audience had already heard of us through recent publicity and media coverage or the successful “Start-Up Junkies“ series on cable channel MOJO HD. Our service’s focus on the conservation of natural resources was definitely of interest. Attendees wanted to know how we reduce our carbon footprint and manage to recycle almost 70% more paper mail than the average consumer does. These questions came as no surprise to us, considering that Portland is known for its advancements and trendsetting in environmentally friendly products and sustainable living.

Some other highlights of the day:

• Bill Lynch and Matt Tucker of Jive Software shared an abbreviated history of their still young and very successful start-up, complete with a plethora of dos and don’ts, plus a healthy dose of humor.
• The “Technopreneur” panel was my personal favorite, with real-life advice from seasoned professionals like Justin Kistner, newly of Voce Communications; Sarah Gilbert, producer for AOL Weblogs such as BloggingStocks; and Rick Turoczy of his own start-up Return (Marshall Kirkpatrick, of ReadWriteWeb, was unfortunately unable to attend.) All of the presenters offered gems of guidance, such as “knowing your focus is critical,” “don’t get desperate; never need, even if you do,” and “marketing yourself is either 100% or 0%; there is no in between.”
• Rael Dornfest, of Values of n, demonstrated a cool tool called “I Want Sandy.” Sandy is an automated personal assistant who accepts emails that let you set reminders, create calendar items, bookmark web pages, and send emails at a future time just by sending “her” an email. You can even use Twitter to note information for Sandy to keep track of for you.

It was remarkable how lots of the ideas, big and small, started with little more than a desire to fill a need that otherwise was not being addressed effectively, if at all. The event also showed how the start-up world has evolved. Many of the participants had been through the Silicon Valley dot-com boom, and they felt that the best places to be for technological innovations and start-up momentum were a bit farther north now. Overall, it was a wonderful afternoon for Earth Class Mail, for the Portland tech scene, and for all of the future entrepreneurs out there.

Comments

• Search

• Categories

  • Earth Class Mail
  • Start-Up Junkies

• Links

  • Earth Class Mail
  • Keiretsu Forum
  • Start-Up Junkies

Brought to you by the management, employees, investors and friends of
Earth Class Mail