Posted by Tom Blue on January 16, 2009 under Companies, Executives, Funding, Investing | 
Recently I did a post on the best twitter app. Apparently, the app that I felt was the best, TweetDeck, just got angel funding. I am not surprised they got funding because Twitter is growing so fast, but many people (including myself) are questioning the investment. How do they plan to make money? What happens when twitter decides to add these features within twitter.com? During the time I was testing out these twitter apps I was wondering why twitter itself didn’t have all of these features. I guess it is worth the $500,000 gamble for Betaworks.
Posted by Tom Blue on January 14, 2009 under Uncategorized |
I mentioned earlier that we were thinking of changing the blog’s focus to profiling companies that have not been funded by vc firms. This is our first profile, Rogue Valley Microdevices. CEO, Jessica Gomez was very open about her experiences and details. See the Q&A below…
1. What do you do?
We deposit Thin Films on the surface of silicon wafers for the microelectronics industry.
2. Who are your competitors?
IMAT Technologies, Silicon Quest International, Process Specialties, Noel Technologies.
3. What makes you different than your competitors?
We have an extensive background in MEMS and Semiconductor Manufacturing, which gives us the ability provide better technical support to our customers. We have great Lead-Times, and because we are a small company we can provide more personalized customer service.
4. What are your or your ceo’s biggest challenges?
My biggest challenges have been:
A) Hiring the right group of people and teaching them how to work as a team. I believe that one of the most important things you can do as a CEO, is build a great team. When we started this company I really didn’t know the first thing about selecting employees, and I made a lot of mistakes. The biggest mistake I made was waiting too long to let people go. I would always say to myself “Maybe they haven’t had enough training”, or “Maybe they don’t know what is really expected of them”. I’ve learned that you can tell right away if an employee will be truly exceptional, and that it’s the employees that start out being just okay, that end up not working out. As the CEO, and as a manager you have a responsibility to the other team members to find, and retain the best people you can.
B) Developing a strategy that will ensure our company’s success during this economic downturn. Developing a good strategy is difficult, and the most important thing that I have learned is that you must be creative. The goal is to make your company successful even if you have to change directions, or enter into an unfamiliar market. Your company is a living breathing thing that may evolve into something unexpected but completely successful if you take advantage of the opportunities that come your way.
5. What does your founder spend his/her days doing?
I spend my day doing a whole variety of different things. When you have a small company, your daily routine is pretty diversified. I take care of all the bookkeeping and payroll. I do a lot of technical support and sales. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time working on our website and Marketing material.
6. How long have you been in business?
We have been operation about 4 years.
7. How many employees do you have?
We have 10 employees
8. How much growth did you have in 2008 over 2007? Can you give us approximates on your revenue for 2008?
We grew quite a bit in 2008. We increased our sales by about 30%, ending the year around $1.1 million.
9. Are you profitable?
Yes
10. When were you founded?
We were founded in 2003.
Posted by Tom Blue on January 13, 2009 under Uncategorized |
A lot of blogs have been talking about the iPhone application that Chipotle has released. The app allows you to order from their menu on your iPhone so you can pick it up and their nearest location. Apparently the application has been removed from the app store by the developers because they have gotten hammered with orders, etc. Anyway, I think the idea is fantastic and I am sure many more restaurants and other retail stores will build similar apps.
The only problem I see with apps like these is that after a while users are going to have multiple restaurant apps on their phone and that makes your display quite messy. I have about 20 iPhone applications on my phone now and that already makes it quite ugly.
I believe there is an app opportunity to provide this type of service/app with multiple restaurants. That way you can go to a specific app and then pull the menu from the restaurant that is near you or you happen to be in the mood for. Hopefully things will move in this direction.
Posted by Tom Blue on January 12, 2009 under Uncategorized |
I have heard of Yodle, but I didn’t know too much about them until today. They are quite interesting and apparently growing quickly.. It seems they make the process easier for these local business to get advertising and leads via the major search engines which I believe is a great idea. There still too many people out there that don’t understand how to use Adwords, etc to bring in new business for them. This could be their solution. Apparently they are doing very well right now which I am not surprised. As we have noticed at Lead411, demand is actually up in 2008 because so many people need new customers. As the TechCrunch article (linked above) states, the company has just received $10M in funding and expects to be profitable with at least $120M in yearly revenue within the next 6 months.
Posted by Tom Blue on January 8, 2009 under Uncategorized |
I have been in a search for the best twitter application on the desktop. I am looking for something that allows me to filter tweets a bit better so I figured I would do a review on all the apps I try. Later I will do the same for the best iPhone twitter apps. Keep in mind that I ran through these applications quite quickly and might have missed some features. I figure if the application doesn’t make a feature prominent it probably isn’t worth much.
Twhirl: This is the app I have been using for the past month. I like that it alerts me when you have a new tweet, but I imagine that could be annoying if you are following lots of people. I also like that you can have multiple accounts listed. The filter is a good idea, but it needs to be a larger focus. I don’t want to have to enter in each user’s nickname every time. Can’t we make a group for different friends/users?
Google Gadget: I kept getting errors when trying to load this gadget so I had to stop wasting time.
TweetDeck: If you don’t already have it, you have to download Adobe Air first to use this application. A-ha! They have groups! It is very easy to name a Group and then add the Tweeple. From there, the group will be shown in the column on the far right. Past the Direct Messages area. Use the scrollbar at the bottom if needed. I have a feeling I will be using TweetDeck.
Blogo: This app costs $25 so I didn’t review it.
Digsby: This app looked interesting, but it had more features than I needed. I am only looking for pure twitter applications.
Spaz: This app was also created with Adobe Air. I really didn’t find any additional features with Spaz. It looks like it just provides the basic features of twitter. That is it.
Snitter: Same as spaz, nothing different.
Twiteroo: Nothing really different, but I did like their interface. They made it so simple. The only problem is that I could not find where you edit any of the settings.
Right now, my vote is for TweetDeck. I am going to start using their app over Twhirl’s. What I have learned from doing this search is that there are way too many twitter applications.
