TechStars grads among Demogala notables

DENVER – Say you want to know more about how folks at the Food Network failed the “50 wings in 30 minutes challenge” at the West End Tavern in Boulder.

Or say you heard that scenes from the 2007 movie “Catch & Release” were filmed in Boulder, and you want to know where star Jennifer Garner liked to hang out in town.

A mobile phone application from Boulder’s TagWhat might be just the ticket to find you such information in Boulder, or in any city in the country, said Dave Elchoness, co-founder of the company.

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TagWhat and another 10 Boulder Valley-based companies were at the Colorado Technology Association’s 7th Annual Demogala Showcase and Innovation Conference Oct. 19 at the Sheraton Denver Downtown in Denver. The free-wheeling, one-day event is designed to bring new companies together with potential funding partners and help deals get made.

TagWhat currently is bootstrapping its operations with money from friends and family, Elchoness said. But the company recently signed a deal with The Associated Press to make sure news stories pop up about places a user types into the mobile application.

“We’re able to take Web content and deliver it to the places around you,” Elchoness said.

Also at the event, Jim Franklin told the Boulder County Business Report that SendGrid Inc., an online email infrastructure company, is growing quickly. It may go public within the next two years. Franklin was hired as the company’s chief executive officer in March. SendGrid has grown so quickly in recent months that it now has 10 Web programmers in Romania and other workers in places like the Philippines and Poland, Franklin said. The company has raised $5.75 million so far from venture capital investors.

The growth has come rapidly from things like more users taking advantage of online “daily deal” sites and dating sites, sending hundreds of thousands more messages online than ever before, Franklin said. Social networking sites such as Facebook have 100 million registered users now, Franklin pointed out.

“We’re in a sweet spot right now,” he said.

Finally, the marriage of video games and video clips from movies and elsewhere were at the heart of pitches from FlixMaster founders Erika Trautman, chief operating officer, and Cameron McCaddon, chief executive officer. The Boulder company is a TechStars graduate, a program for new high-tech companies looking for capital and advice. SendGrid also is a TechStars graduate.

The Flixmaster credo is “choose your own adventure,” which could be used in a variety of applications – from operating online video contests to creating family Christmas newsletter videos, the founders said.

McCaddon has a video game background, while Trautman comes from video storytelling.

Whether it was Dan Fox, creative director at Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Boulder showing off what “dancing Jello” looks like, or Brian Grainger, client relations manager of nVoq in Boulder showing off the company’s speech translation software, the conference had several offbeat moments.

Startups face paradox

DENVER – Colorado startups are facing a paradox – entrepreneurs are flocking to the state, while potential investors and venture capital firms are mystifyingly staying away.

That was the verdict of a panel of three area venture capital firm managers who discussed the state of their industry Friday at the Colorado Technology Association 2011 Demogala.

“The state of venture capital in Colorado sucks,´ said Seth Levine, manager at the Foundry Group, a Boulder-based venture capital firm. “The state of the startup market has never been more robust.”

About 93 percent of the money invested in Colorado startups and tech firms comes from outside the state, Levine said, a much higher proportion than in years past.

As the state, especially Boulder, has become known as a great place to launch companies, venture capital firms based on the coasts still seem reluctant “to open outposts” in Colorado, Levine said.

Chris Marks of the Tango Group, a private investment company based in Boulder, also was a member of the venture capital panel.

Earlier in the day, two Boulder startups unveiled demonstrations of their products.

Go Spot Check is a Boulder TechStars 2011 graduate. It is trying to develop applications that let brands verify that retailers are properly displaying merchandise on store shelves. The company relies on crowdsourcing to enable consumers to do the verifying while they are shopping.

Go Spot Check unveiled the app shoppers can use to verify items are being displayed correctly. Users will receive money from brands for completing mission. The apps will be available on the Apple App Store in two weeks, Go Spot Check founder Matt Talbot said.

Robert Reich demonstrated the app store his company, Openspace, is developing. Openspace allows users to buy apps that work across platforms such as computers, tablets or smartphones. Users only would have to buy an app once but would be able to use it on all their devices.

Openspace will make the app buying experience easier by allowing consumers to buy from curated channels that are tailored to users’ interests, Reich said.

Reich is founder of the Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup and OneRiot Inc.

– Michael Davidson

No second chances

DENVER – Fierce competition and the relentless pace of innovation means there are no second chances for Internet companies that stumble, the senior vice president of one of the world’s largest consumer Internet companies.

Liberty Media Corp.’s senior vice president Michael Zeisser delivered that message during his keynote speech at Demogala.

Zeisser provided about 300 attendees a brief history of the past 15 years of the commercial Internet industry. He highlighted some of the once hot companies such as MySpace and AOL that have withered in the face of technical change and competition.

“Once they stumbled, they were not able to turn themselves around,” Zeisser said. “If you miss a step, for whatever reason, or whatever the step may be, you fall back … and because you are competing with so many companies, it’s impossible to catch up.”

While any company’s failure can be attributed to unique reasons, companies that have proven successful in the brief history of the consumer Internet seem to share a handful of traits, Zeisser said. Foremost was a focus on their product, including user experience and ease of use. Successful companies also have succeeded at creating network effects, where users can improve the products with each use, such as Google’s search engine, which updates its algorithms with each search.

– Michael Davidson