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TechCafe Developer Lunch @Cheezburger

Another great TechCafe event over at the Cheezburger Network. The usual networking and interacting with the best and brightest in the Seattle tech community with a dose of Cheezburger goodness! Scott Porad, CTO over at Cheezburger provides some insight into the process they use to onboard new developers into the Cheezburger fold (of course they are hiring if you are interested).

The premise is simple, writing code doesn’t have to include a lot of office politics, in fact writing code and building great software products can be fun – the way it was when you learned it! The solution is relatively straight forward as well… Don’t show them the bathroom until they commit code!!

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Company Profile – PipelineDeals

Next up in our TechCafe Alumn presentations… PipelineDeals! This was a fun event down in Pioneer Square a couple months ago. Great company and things to learn….

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Date Founded – May 2006
Team Size – 6
Target Market –  Any company with a sales team from 1 – 1,000.
Brief Value Proposition – PipelineDeals provides you with the easiest way to manage your sales pipeline. Sales teams use PipelineDeals to manage deal flow, track leads, run reports and close more deals. PipelineDeals is affordable at $15 per user per month with unlimited storage, no long term contracts and all backed by our amazing customer service.
Product Stage –  Launched
Company Stage – Bootstrap
Brief Description about what is interesting about the team or company – PipelineDeals is passionate about customer service. We firmly believe that by providing better service to our customers will result in a more satisfied customer who will talk about us. We are a month-to-month pricing model and must add value immediately to our customer’s business. We re-earn our relationships with our customers each and every month.
Where Can I Get It!!www.pipelinedeals.com

CrowdMap Profile

Introducing… CrowdMap!

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Date Founded – April 2010
Team Size – 5
Target Market – The mobile consumer who wants to capture ideas with mindmaps and collaborate or brainstorm with a group. This could include conference attendees, students, project teams, journalists, families … the list goes on and on!

Brief Value Proposition CrowdMap lets you build mind maps collaboratively on your iPad or iPhone, syncing data in real time as you work with your friends, classmates or colleagues. Store your maps in the cloud and access them from anywhere at any time, on your iPhone, iPad or browser. It’s a simple and intuitive tool for organizing and sharing your ideas from a lecture, a project, or a brain-storming session.

Product Stage – pre-release (alpha), Beta (public/private), Launched: Launched
Company Stage – bootstrap, friends/family, angel rounds, VC, independantly wealthy: Bootstrap (with dreams of being independently wealthy)
Brief Description about what is interesting about the team or company – The Barking Minds team met at a Seattle Startup Weekend and worked together on a mobile geolocation app that won Best Overall Startup for the weekend. The company has an Agile development process, and the company structure is completely flat, with team members earning cumulative equity based on their contributions toward each product release. Barking Minds is excited about the future of its flagship product, CrowdMap, and plans to continue building mobile apps that can improve the way teams work and learn.

Where Can I Get It!! http://appshopper.com/productivity/crowdmap

What other questions do you have for future profiles or to follow up on with the CrowdMap team?

Company Profiles and Video

If you’ve been to a TechCafe in the recent past, you might have seen me diligently taking video… You might have seen some of the videos show up on TechFlash as well and thought it was great to see the content for later review or because you missed the event and wanted to hear the talk. The good folks at TechFlash will probably always continue to be faster at getting videos up on their site and report on the companies that we have hosting or speaking. They are really good at that! Here at the TechCafe site, people are always interested in what the history has been, who has presented, what the events were like, etc. So we will have more of a historical view of what has happened at the TechCafe events along with a focus on Company Profiles.

Now that we have the logo out of the way, the next big thing will be to get our Company Profiles built out. This will include a bit of a talk from the company and some details about the company (business they are in, details about the stage they are in, etc). A good portion of TechCafe events already include the talking bit – everyone who attends gets to learn from entrepreneurs who have approached a particular market or used a specific technology and the attendees get to ask questions etc. For non-attendees it is useful to at least hear and see the event after it occurred as the content is relevant to a broader audience.

Plus it’s great to know who the startups are in Seattle!!

Of course, we will have videos that are not included in the company profiles – such as the ones here, these were taken at TechCafe @TalentSpring earlier in the year – this is a four part series where Jonathan Sposato discusses his experiences taking a Seattle startup through being born to being sold to Google. Great series that’s worth watching!!

The Art and Science of Being Bought (part 1 of 4)
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The Art and Science of Being Bought (part 2 of 4)
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The Art and Science of Being Bought (part 3 of 4)
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The Art and Science of Being Bought (part 4 of 4)
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