Venture Capital Speed Dating - Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford University

As part of Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford University, they are holding a Venture Capital Speed Dating event and mixer. This event looks like so much fun, I wish we had casual events like this here in Chicago, especially since Stanford encourages lifetime social interaction with the community and properly sees it’s role as larger than simply current students. They state “Events are open to all students, alumni, members of the greater Stanford community, and the general public.” Chicago university leaders, take note!

Venture Capital Speed Dating

Date:
Friday, February 29th

Time:
1:00-3:30 PM Student pitches
3:30-4:30 PM Mixer

Location:
Wallenberg Hall Learning Theater (Building 160)

For more detailed directions, please visit the Searchable Campus Map
Host:
Asia-Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society (ASES)

Student Application/VC Registration:
http://ases.stanford.edu/vc3/
No registration required for mixer

Cost:
Free

Overview:
Students, pitch your business ideas to Silicon Valley venture capitalists (VCs). Apply in advance for 3-4 opportunities to give three-minute pitches to VC pairs and receive three minutes of feedback. This portion of the event is closed to pre-registered students and VCs (see above for registration information).

At 3:30, the event opens to the public for a networking mixer. Come join us to meet entrepreneurial students and VCs. Event will end promptly at 4:30; continue networking at Arrillaga as you wait for the Innovation Tournament Showcase to begin.

Andy Sernovitz: “It’s good to have a goofy name”

He’s right that having a distinct name online can be extremely helpful. It has plenty of search engine results implications. Not enough people think about this issue when naming a company or product.

This is a really smart tip.

Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive and Other Potholes

The Chicago Tribune has a nice user generated content piece where they allow readers to input pothole locations. It is an open thread that simply says: “Tell us: Where are the worst potholes? Potholes seem to be everywhere this winter, but who has the worst — the city or suburbs? Tell us where you’ve seen the biggest and deepest.”

What’s upsetting is that just like the mismanagement of the CTA for decades, many of the comments allude to years of neglect and mismanagement by the government of the City of Chicago (along with visible disgust for the waste of resource on the Olympics 2016 bid instead of focusing on the basics). CBS put together a story on how to file a claim for damage. Why must everything become a crisis before anybody does anything about these things? Maybe the city and state will put in resources to fix the lack of easy access to entrepreneurial grants and angel investor tax incentives like Wisconson has next - while we still have an economy…

Here are a few answers Chicago Tribune readers gave (some make you laugh and cry at the same time):

Potholes on my entire way to work on Devon Avenue Between Northwest Hwy and Caldwell Ave. Noticed several vehicles with flat tires this morning causing a traffic jam

Westbound on North Ave, there are are at least 2 or 3 massive potholes just before and after Elston Ave. Stay out of the right hand lane

On Webster between Clybourn and Ashland. There is a fifty foot section with about 25 potholes

One more vote for Lincoln Ave. between Petersen and Devon — avoid at all costs if you care about your car

Central Road, from Milwaukee west to River Road. It is like driving a road in a third world county. Cars bob and weave into oncoming traffic. You can’t driver over 20 mph. Someone at county should be fired for letting a road deteriorate to this degree

Just as you get off LSD on to LaSalle North exit going south right lane is full of potholes

Park Ridge: Cumberland Avenue between Devon and Higgins

Worst — take your pick, LSD Irving Park Road to Foster. Second worst — Oak Street underpass northbound to LSD. Third worst. 47th underpass to LSD. Some of these above holes are a foot deep and several feet across

Cicero Ave and Lawrence, in the left hand turn lane on Cicero… it’s like an unavoidable abyss

On westbound Lake Street between Ashland and Western there are so many little potholes the drive seems like you are off-roading

Under the pass to get on Lake Shore Drive from Oak it’s been like that for over a year! Disgraceful! The CTA ride is awful and 311 doesn’t do anything about it! The drivers try to drive on the left side when possible as the busses bounce horribly!

Western bridge going over Belmont, southbound, west lane. They’ve been there for at least a month

Have you seen the pothole on the bridge at Division and Halsted… Big enough to make a person disappear

Westbound on Grand just east of Milwaukee Ave. The whole thing is one series of huge potholes

The pot hole at Archer & Cicero in the northbound lanes just cost me $550 in repairs - yeah lets spend some more $$ on the Olympics -idiots

Like others have said, Cicero between 21st and 51st is a landmine. It’s so bad, I saw a small car driving along and it just disappeared into a hole….lol

I CANT BELIEVE DALEY HAD ALL THAT MONEY TO USE TO TRY AND BRING THE OLYMPICS TO CHICAGO BUT DOEST HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO FIX OUR STREETS. WHAT ABOUT THE BRIDGE ON 31ST BETWEEN PULASKI AND CICERO IT LOOKS LIKE MINES WENT OFF

Southbound on N. Clark Street, just north of Upper Wacker Drive, right lane swallowed my car. Still can’t find it

Right lanes of Ridge Road in Evanston. Very bad in both directions

The worst pothole is on the east edge of the southbound Fullerton entrance ramp to LSD. A close second are numerous potholes on Halstead between Chicago and Erie. You have to drive like you are going through an obstacle course

Almost all lanes of LaSalle Street between the Lake Shore Drive ramps and the intersection of LaSalle and Clark

4200 South Ashland. Even the CTA bus won’t go near it! And avoid at all costs Pershing Rd. between Halstead and Ashland

Bridgeport - 31st street between the Dan Ryan Expressway and Halstead (especially under the viaduct near Canal St) and the ENTIRE 31st St ramp getting onto the inbound Ryan. I’ve already replaced two tires this year.

Try driving on Cicero Ave. anywhere near the Stevenson. Pot holes deep enough to strand tanks. Been this way for weeks.

Have We Entered The Era of The Functional Web?

The New York Times has an article on how the potential sale of Yahoo! to Microsoft could be bad for minnows, i.e. small Silicon Valley companies looking to be acquired. I think this is a short sighted viewpoint.

In the late 1990’s dot.com era, the web was slanted too much towards wall street involvement that led IPO’s that were questionable and in retrospect not advisable.

A force outside the web, namely Sarbanes-Oxley in the Enron aftermath, has made the IPO considerably more challenging to achieve and costly to navigate - even for highly legitimate ideas.

In the web 2.0 era, the slant often went way too far to the left in terms of engineering. Some ideas with little actual business purpose have received unwarranted acclaim and without artificial sources of acquisition, some might not even exist.

Before I go onto explain why that development might create an alignment that I’ll tentatively call the functional web, let me state that I think there are plenty of other companies out there that could emerge to pick up the slack such as Fox, Intuit, Apple or any of a number of traditional media companies who “get it”.

This web might emerge even if the Yahoo! acquisition does not take place. If the functional web emerges a place where engineering and business purpose mix in equally important parts instead of the excesses in one direction or another, who potentially gains and who potentially has something to lose?

Potential Gainers:

- Strong Internet business skill generalists with strong system architecture, product management and the ability to network with geeks and non-geeks alike and iterate from feedback will be in higher demand.

- Companies who would like to challenge the big three who would get an opening.

- People who understand how to create revenue models that could provide for great stand alone businesses.

- People pushing for Sarbanes-Oxley reform to reopen the IPO spiggot a tad. They will push even harder.

Potential Losers:

- Funding sources who either fund ideas in a me-too fashion or just because they’ve known the people since the dot.com era and/or those who can’t define and lead a path to monetization or bring strong execution partners to the table.

- Domain name squatters and sellers.

- Passive executive recruiters who will have to actually analyze comprehensive skill sets instead of simply poaching from a direct competitor.

How to Be a Startup Marketing Warrior By Josh Kopelman

Josh Kopelman writes some extremely effective and highly useful blog posts. This one happens to be about what startup marketing really means.

I’m planning a series of venture capital interviews in the near future, I’d be flattered if Josh was one of the participants in that series.

Everyblock, Hyperlocal Search and the Likely Future of Journalism

Everyblock launched 1/23, one year to the day that the domain was registered, just one of a great many signs that indicate that Everyblock has a well defined plan and clear course of action. It’s an *extremely* impressive site on many levels and mirrors some ideas I’ve had on my own.

This is one of those rare moments on this blog where I must admit that I didn’t dig deep enough - I should have made this connection a few years ago as all I needed to see was in front of me. I’ve poked around with the chicagocrime.org site numerous times, somehow I never dug into who was behind the the site or what else they were up to.

Founder Adrian Hovolaty in this interview has a picture that says “Getting structured data is half the battle.” That actually might be an understatement of the importance of a topic few in the web industry truly understand, I often feel my financial services beliefs which were rooted deeply in data models and data integrity at BlackRock are viewed as an alien creature in the Internet space. You’ve seen me write about this strategy issue in the past.

I look forward to meeting this fascinating group of folks, learning more about Everyblock and telling you all about it shortly.

Good luck gentlemen!

TECH cocktail Chicago 7

No other words are necessary, you should know the drill by now.

RSVP now.

Matt McCall on Ray Kurzweil’s Accelerating Investment Returns and Black Swans

Matt McCall writes about his talk last Thursday at Ignite Chicago on the issues of Black Swan and on Ray Kurzweil’s theme of accelerating returns. The Powerpoint of Matt McCall’s speech is here.

Quick points:
– a Black Swan is 1) a rare event, 2) with high impact, 3) that is hard to predict (pattern attributed post event)* examples include 9/11, stock market crashes, discoveries like Penicillin, start-ups (eBay, etc)
– most of mankind’s development has been driven by black swans (unstructured randomness) — black swans key in driving big entrepreneurial successes (payoff inverse to predictability)

Speaking of Ray Kurzweil, a few months ago he was in Chicago for Transvision 07, I had a chance to sit down for a chat with Ray at that time (scroll to the bottom for the podcast), but I’ve had some problems with my Wordpress audio software that I fixed over the weekend. My apologies to both Ray and his many fans for the delay.

Ray Kurweil talks about some of the following:

hedge funds

reading device for the blind

dietary supplements

his newsletter and web site

by the late 2020’s artificial intelligence eventually matching the ability human brains

becoming non-biological

seeing the intersection of artificial intelligence and biology

the ability to track history and information to create predictive models and time device introductions properly

exponential growth

his passion for ideas

developing his own treatment solution for type II diabetes

health and biology has not become information technology

pocket computing technology to help the blind with OCR readers

Second Life’s potential and indication of things to come and his breakfast with Philip Rosedale

Second Life’s potential to be as real as real life

Ray Kurzweil Interview [10:34m]: Download

Michael Arrington’s Entrepreneur Post

Michael Arrington talked about entrepreneurs the second time around today. I think he should segment that audience further into dot com era and other era projects.

Generally speaking, experience counts for something. So you’d expect entrepreneurs who’ve been through the ups and downs of a tech startup to have an advantage over the newcomers. Or at least have an equal chance at success. But in fact the opposite may be true. A number of venture capitalists I’ve spoken with have said that too many “old guard” entrepreneurs are not being bold enough in their business decisions, and it’s hurting their startups.

Here in Chicago this is even more pronounced. There are a number of people who talk about amounts of funding they raised in 1999. They live off that first mover advantage. Why aren’t people judging each deal independently of the personalities involved?

SES Chicago 2007 - Driving Local Sales with Internet Yellow Pages and Search

Moderator:
Charles Laughlin, SVP & Program Director, The Kelsey Group
Speakers:
Bruce Crair, President and Chief Operating Officer, Local.com
Scott Finholm, VP of Local Advertising Services, Marchex
Justin Sanger, Founder & President, LocalLaunch!
Tobias Dengel, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Website Pros, Inc.

Charles Knight from Alternative Search Engines also blogged this session

Websitepros, Tobias Dendel

255,000 customers/providers, 700 employees

It’s a mess to figure out how to position a small business online.

Do I spend money on radio, newspaper, whatever?

Even for a small business a web site is a critical factor in creating trust.

We don’t believe per action will be effective as it’s too complex.

Example, roofer in Indianapolis 15 unique calls and 15 qualified emails.

Local.com, Bruce Crair

1 million people advertising online, 18 million listings which shows the great opportunities still ahead.

Too many choices, the small business owner is confused. Even if they do understand the choices, the cost is hard. Then how do they create an ROI?

Most businesses don’t have websites, they need them to do the job. They need to figure out how to make the data accurate. All too often, it’s not.

Any business can do it. Just doing paid without organic is a waste of time.

Pay for placement, click bundles, pay per click, make sure you start witht eh simple stuff first.

Locallaunch, Justin Sanger

150 people, thousands of orders per week.

We intended to create the SME (Small Medium Enterprises).

Innovation outpaces adoption.

The innovation is amazing and significant. The SMEs don’t feel this. These enterprises are not yet able to take advantages.

Destinations and inventory abound.

Yahoo! local and Google local provide new experiences all the time. Vertical search plays nice together with geos. This is pretty complex.

Who is winning?

Yellowpages are winning due to directional relationships

Pure Plays

RH Donnelly is a sales company. Google and Yahoo! realize this and are partners.

Margin pressure is intense and unsustainable.

Marketplace trends

Sales Organizations are driving the experience for SMEs

Content aggregation is a strategically vital business strategy

SME aggregators strive to collect and store richer, vertical-specific local business content

IYP is an old heading. It is now simply local search

Pure sales organizations are selling at non-sustainable margin – this is a critical driver of consolidation or service pressure

PPC pricing pressure will further compound an already fragmented marketplace

Marchex, Scott Finholm

We are a local online advertising company and leading publisher of local content.

Advertisers of all sides, we work with sales forces to teach them how to sell search.

Sites:

SEM and SEO aren’t the same thing

A great site isn’t necessary..but a “good” site is…

Services:

Can’t automate creativity

All businesses are not created equal

Clicks and calls both matter

Sales:

Small businesses look to trusted, proven providers

Simple product = more sales

SES Chicago 2007: Seth Godin Talks about Meatball Sundae

Seth’s talk was a more refined version of the teleconference he gave last month. I blogged that here. Three questions I want put out to the blogosphere for discussion are:

Should organizations be smaller like tree trunks instead of the traditional pyramids?

How can this change take place if most leaders don’t know it’s necessary and are not up to speed about what to do or how to do it even if they acknowledged the issue?

How will recruiting morph to put the generalist thought leaders in place to lead this change - perhaps those with competencies derived in other industries or through accelerated self learning?

Other coverage of Seth Godin’s Search Engine Strategies Chicago speech:

Meatball Sundaes and the Smelly Old Guard

Seth Godin Tells Marketers How to Avoid Meatball Sundaes

The Future of Voice Broadcast and Voice Messaging

At the DMA conference a few weeks back, I met Dinesh Ravishanker. He runs a unique, effective voice broadcast offering called Callfire that allows micro-targeted opt-in outbound phone calls. It’s unique, user friendly and efficient in the demos he showed me. He was alot of fun to speak to and recently sent me the executive summary of the company that is seeking growth funding.

It seems like a collaborative offering that could be highly effective when utilized with other parts of the multi-channel ecosystem. Maybe one day I’ll get to utilize it in my toolbox! Many people in the Internet society have forgotten about the effectiveness of phone conversations to drive collaboration, interaction and create actions. I recently had a conversation with my 82 year old great aunt in this regard. She stated that, “I lived for 72 years without the Internet just fine. I’m not sure my life is truly better with it.” A non-mainstream view perhaps but one that elements of how to be a successful marketer in the multi-channel sense.

Web 2.0 was NEVER a Business Strategy

You saw the craze. People built up Web 2.0. It’s frequently a term that people used to avoid business principles and focus entirely on technology without any end goal. I have always disdain it. Many folks surprisingly jumped in with funding for some of these ideas, likely more due to existing dot bomb relationships that business principle.

Yet Internet startups who focus on the following business issues closely will always have a good chance at succeeding:

1. Have a clear value proposition that meets some area of unmet need: Something that says, “We provide a first in industry solution to the problem of blah, blah, blah”. Not “This is kinda like part Digg, Youtube with a bit of Facebook - just way better”. I meet lots of people that say this stuff in the second category, I cringe when I hear it.

2. Realize that Internet companies are marketing companies first and technology companies second: I can’t tell you how many startups I see who hire a programmer, program something and then go hire a salesperson. They go through the whole process without a well crafted, customer focused value proposition.

3 . Have a clear data model that focuses on data integrity and creating a monetizable store of value:
Does your Internet startup attempt to focus on data integrity issues? Will it eventually create a monetizable store of value? I ask this question in the startups that I’ve assisted. It comes from my background in financial services where not having accurate information can cost you millions in an instant, the true Internet time.

4. Have a business model for the company as a stand alone entity. Key partners invested in your outcome? Good.

5. Have people that have worked in high performance startup cultures on your team who understand that real-time iteration of your offerings are critical to your success!

6. Look at and study the history of business and technology innovation. Then use it in your transactions and execution.

These are the five that are most critical, though I’m sure you can think of more critical drivers. Please join the conversation. I can also think of several blogs that focus on buzzwords instead of business principles that are now more than a bit obsolete. It’s time to focus on business success principles at the party. it’s a smaller party, but one that will drive hundreds of new Internet startups for years and years.

AlwaysOn Top Dealmakers List

As I explore the path of joining a start up management team or potentially returning to the financing side, I will analyze the Alwayon Dealmakers list with great interest when time permits. You should too.

Limited Partners
Limited partners are the big, quiet kahunas at the front of the technology finance food chain. Venture capital firms are just one thing they invest in, but they’re what provides most of the money VCs have under management.
1 TIAA-CREF
2 CalPERS
3 CalSTRS
4 Harvard Management Co. (HMC)
5 Yale Endowment
6 University of Texas (UTIMCO)
7 Stanford Management Co. (SMC)
8 Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO)
9 MIT (MITIMCO)
10 Ford Foundation

Venture Capital – Early-Stage
You have a business plan and a bunch of code. Now you need to raise a million dollars or two to productize your concept and get an office. Besides providing operating startup capital, early-stage VCs will help you form your board and build your team.
1 Sequoia Capital
2 New Enterprise Associates
3 Benchmark Capital
4 Draper Fisher Jurvetson
5 Bessemer Venture Partners
6 Accel Partners
7 Charles River Ventures
8 Matrix Partners
9 Greylock Partners
10 Doll Capital Management
11 Lightspeed Venture Partners
12 Index Ventures
13 Norwest Venture Partners
14 Madrona Venture Group
15 Hummer Winblad

Venture Capital – Late-Stage
You’re hiring a sales force, building a channel, upgrading your executive team, and bringing products to market. At this point, until you’re fully profitable, get acquired, or raise public equity through an IPO, your operating capital comes from late-stage venture investors. Some VC firms do both early- and late-stage VC, as you’ll see in our picks below.
1 Sequoia Capital
2 New Enterprise Associates
3 Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
4 Greylock Partners
5 Menlo Ventures
6 Mobius Venture Capital
7 Draper Fisher Jurvetson
8 Benchmark Capital
9 Accel Partners
10 Bessemer Venture Partners
11 Oak Investment Partners
12 Redpoint Ventures
13 U.S. Venture Partners
14 Mayfield Fund
15 DCM - Doll Capital Management

Venture Capital – Corporate Investors
Corporate VCs are a little different. They can invest in early- or late-stage deals, but they usually focus on sub-sectors and investments with potential business benefits for their limited partner – the corporate parent.
1 Intel Capital
2 Comcast Interactive Capital
3 Hearst Corporation/Hearst Interative Media
4 Time Warner Investments
5 IDG Ventures
6 Qualcomm Ventures
7 Motorola Ventures
8 Cisco
9 Adobe Ventures
10 SAP Ventures

Corporate Law Firms
First, let’s call the lawyers – at least, that’s a good plan in the world of technology finance. Some of these firms have done well by providing low or deferred-fee incorporation services to brand-new startups, sometimes for shares, and some not only provide counsel but also introductions during mergers, IPOs, or other financing events.
1 Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC
2 Latham & Watkins
3 Fenwick & West
4 Gunderson Dettmer
5 Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP
6 Goodwin Procter LLP
7 Cooley Godward LLP
8 DLA Piper US LLP
9 Cravath Swaine & Moore
10 Manatt Phelps Philips

Investment Banks
When the time is right to take your company public or get bought, you work with investment banks. If it’s an IPO, they underwrite you – helping prepare your prospectus, setting the share price, promoting you to institutional investors, and once you’re public, providing analyst coverage of your stock to keep public investors up to date on your financial performance. If it’s an M&A, they act as advisers to either party, structuring the deal, and providing acquisition capital. There are two types of ibanks: the bulge brackets, that deal with any and every kind of company, and the boutiques, which are smaller and focus on a few sectors.

Investment Banks — Bulge Bracket
1 Morgan Stanley
2 Goldman Sachs
3 Lehman Brothers
4 Credit Suisse
5 JP Morgan Chase
6 Merrill Lynch
7 Citigroup
8 Deutsche Bank
9 UBS Investment Bank
10 Banc of America Securities

Investment Banks — Boutiques
1 Jefferies & Company Inc
2 Evercore Partners
3 Thomas Weisel Partners
4 Needham & Company, LLC
5 Montgomery & Co. LLC
6 Cowen & Company LLC
7 William Blair & Co., LLC
8 Wachovia Securities
9 Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin
10 Greenhill & Co.

Private Equity
Private equity, or leveraged buyout, firms are the ones that take public companies private, or buy their stock with the goal of turning them around and selling them.
1 Carlyle Group, The
2 Texas Pacific
3 Blackstone Group, The
4 Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company
5 Silver Lake Partners
6 General Atlantic
7 Hellman & Friedman LLC
8 Vista Equity Partners
9 Vector Capital
10 Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe

Institutional Public Investors
Asset management firms of all stripes (mutual funds, hedge funds, etc.) fall into this category. Besides investing in technology stocks, they may also become limited partners in private equity firm funds.
1 Fidelity Management & Research
2 T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.
3 Wellington Management Co. LLP
4 Capital Research & Management Co.
5 AllianceBernstein LP
6 Capital Guardian Trust Co.
7 Vanguard Group, Inc.
8 Gilder, Gagnon, Howe & Co. LLC
9 Goldman Sachs Asset Management LP (US)
10 Wells Capital Management, Inc.

Corporate Buyers – Global Tech
Big companies want to acquire successful startups that have a strategic fit, breakthrough technologies, masses of customers and profit margins.
1 Cisco Systems, Inc.
2 Oracle Corp.
3 Microsoft
4 Motorola, Inc.
5 LSI Logic Corp.
6 International Business Machines Corp.
7 Siemens AG
8 Google, Inc.
9 Seagate Technology, Inc.
10 EMC Corp.

Corporate Buyers - Media
Big companies want to acquire successful startups that have a strategic fit, breakthrough technologies, masses of customers and profit margins.
1 Publicis Groupe
2 CBS Corporation
3 Lagardere SCA
4 Dominion Enterprises
5 Axel Springer AG
6 Walt Disney Company
7 Hearst Corp.
8 MTV Networks
9 Pearson Education, Inc.
10 EMAP plc

eComXpo is October 9,10,11, 2007

Chicagoland’s very own eComXpo is October 9,10,11, 2007. You can join the fun and learning from anywhere in the world though!

eComXpo is the premier virtual Internet Marketing conference that is FREE to attend. I’ve also had the honor of speaking there previously. It’s a great resource for learning Internet marketing concepts and networking. Register now.

SMXLOMO Denver - Day 2 - Show Me the Money!!!

Moderator:
Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence

Speakers:
Ian White, CEO, Urban Mapping
Shawn Riegsecker, Chairman & CEO, Centro
Justin Sanger, CEO, LocalLaunch
Alfred Chow, Head, Yellowbook

Justin Sanger, Local Launch

I can’t help but get caught up in some of the hype. “Context galactic scale” – thanks Google. He then said, “Talking about local search in 10 minutes is like spitting into the grand canyon.” Then said a few words to get Greg Sterling to actually blush! Really funny stuff.

Tremendous opportunities in the IYPs. Local and vertical are merging. Social networking is also converging with local. What is the differentiation of these local search sites? Even within Yahoo! you have a multitude of options. SMEs are overwhelmed and confused. The mission of marketplace consolidations – our goal is to remove the complexity not only for our small businesses but for our sales forces as well. The traditional relationships

$ Cost of Traffic $$$
Content>>Proprietary>>Organic/SEO>>Paid Placement>>Paid Search / SEM

Silos and advertisers don/t mix in local search!!!

You need to be inventory agnostic…

Shawn Riegsecker, CEO, Centro

Brand marketing increases future clicks. Newspaper growth is slowing in terms of rates of growth, national advertisers are exploding this year. Next will be the regional advertisers, which now comprise less than 3% of advertising.

Ian White, CEO, Urbanmapping

? Where the hell is the money?

7FTE, San Francisco based, geo-spacial data to enable advertisers

Why and what?

Technical limitations

User behavior

Search Engine “Keyword Lockdown”

GEO IP lookup “geotargeting” SUCKS

99% accuracy country level

95% accuracy state level

Chicago TiECon ‘07 Mentorship: Boosting Tomorrow’s Business Leaders

There are still a few seats left! TiE puts on amazingly high quality events, I greatly look forward to seeing you there! Sign up now, don’t delay!

TiECon Midwest is the premier event organized by TiE-Midwest held every two years. Join us in Chicago this October 5th for TiECon ‘07 Mentorship: Boosting Tomorrow’s Business Leaders, a half-day event for leading Midwest entrepreneurs to share thoughts and ideas on business and innovation.

Over 400 attendees will hear a keynote address by local, successful, serial entrepreneurs Glen Tullman and Howard Tullman. Following the keynote, distinguished panelists will present topics aimed to increase Entrepreneurial IQ through a series of sessions. Panels topics are: Right Dollars at the Right Time, Business Model Refinement, Attracting and Retaining Talent and Executive Coach for the Entrepreneur. The event will conclude with a cocktail reception designed to foster networking.

TiE stands for Talent, Ideas and Enterprise and is a not-for-profit global network of entrepreneurs and professionals. Founded in Silicon Valley in 1992, TiE is an open and inclusive organization that has rapidly grown to more than forty chapters in nine countries. TIE Global is the world leader in cultivating and nurturing entrepreneurship.

Chicago’s Enso Introduces New Beta Products - Web Search Anywhere, Translate Anywhere and More

Aza Raskin chatted me up a few minutes ago and shared with me that they are launching four new beta products Monday. These will complement the existing Humanized offerings of Enso Launcher and Enso Words which I’ve been using since shortly after I met Aza at Barcamp Chicago earlier this Summer. Enso is a useful tool, but you need to have an open mind to fully appreciate what it can do for it to be effective at it’s full potential. Just remember that these are beta products so they may have some unique bugs, but I like they way they’ve set up transparent feedback for each offering so that they can live the quotes of Peter Drucker and others in their actions.

I had a few brief moments to download it and bang on them a bit. So without further delay here is a quick and dirty rundown of the four new Enso beta products, you can download them here in a nice little bundle, I’ve ranked them in the order that they interest me and my typical readership:

Enso Web Search Anywhere v0.1 - Simply select your document text, hold the caps lock, type goo and presto a new browser with that query executed in Google appears! After doing that only three times, I kind of find manual entry or cutting and pasting to be kind of ancient and stone tablet like. A distant memory. Maybe even downright lame!

Enso Translate Anywhere v0.1 - Translate languages on the fly in Enso. With a little refinement, I think the last reason I ever visit Alta Vista will meet it’s ultimate demise!

Enso Media Controller v0.1 - Now you are getting it. It controls your media with ease.

Enso TeX Anywhere v0.1 - Nothing to do with the lone star state, I think they state the value proposition quite well, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a way of creating stunning equations quickly and simply?”

Again, this is just a brief overview, be sure to visit the Enso micro pages above for vivid detail and screen prints.

Suburban Chicago Silicon Prairie Social Internet and Technology Mixer Thursday

Tim Courtney sent me the following note late last week, I hope to see you there….

When: Thursday, September 20, 2007 from 6:30-10:00pm
Where: Mullen’s Bar & Grill 3080 Warrenville Rd., Lisle, IL 60532

An opportunity to connect in an informal setting with like-minded people in technology; whether you’re an upwardly mobile professional, a job seeker, an entrepreneur, or a VC. We welcome everyone, including IT workers, e-commerce companies, Internet and Web 2.0 startups, mobile and mobile marketing, and B2B services.

The event is free to attend, free drinks and food will be provided. RSVP is required at http://siliconprairiesocial.eventbrite.com.

For more information see www.siliconprairiesocial.com or call Tim Courtney at 630.983.6064 or tcourtney at xnet.com.

Rick Klau from Chicago to Honorary Engineer at the Google Dance

Rick Klau was an honorary engineer for one night at the Google Dance 2007. You’ll recall that Rick, formerly “Mr. Naperville”, moved west to work at Google’s headquarters shortly after Feedburner’s acquisition. Rick reports that his commute consists of a short 10 minute drive followed by a one hour bus ride that is fully productive with Internet access. It was nice to see you Rick, hope to see you again soon!

There are good summaries of his speech on blogs and feeds lurking about. Important stuff! Especially now in the universal search era. Speaking of blog and feeds, I recently changed over to the Feedburner Mybrand product and my new feed is http://feeds.daviddalka.com/DavidDalka , please update your feed readers! Thanks.