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    • Sean Percival Sean Percival

      Speaking: Sunday afternoon

      Topic: Sunday Panelist

      Bio: Sean Percival is an American blogger and author from Los Angeles, California. For work, Percival helps companies like MySpace and Mobile roadie build compelling web and mobile experiences; for play, he is the founder of the Los Angeles-based technology blog lalawag.

      Formerly with Mahalo and Docstoc, Percival taps the real-time web to identify and develop content around today's biggest Internet trends. Along with his wife Laurie, the Percivals were featured in the 2009 LAWeekly 'People of the Year' issue. They were affectionately titled “Tweethearts” for their use of the modern social web in their marriage. He's been featured in Forbes and numerous other publication for his ability to develop and monetize social networks. Sean Percival is the author of MySpace Marketing and The Second Life Travel Guide, both from Que publishing


    • Stan Tomsic Stan Tomsic

      Speaking: Sunday afternoon

      Topic: Mentor/Advisor & Panelist

      Bio: Stan Tomsic is the Administrator of the Business Technology Center of Los Angeles County (BTC), which is a project of the Community Development Commission of Los Angeles County.

      The BTC is an accelerator incubator for high technology based entrepreneurial companies that is dedicated to assisting start-ups and early stage technology firms to grow and prosper. For the past eight years, Stan has been a partner of ACODA Technology & Investments, LLC, a firm specializing in strategic assistance, business consulting, investments and mergers and acquisitions, for technology and services companies. Stan’s experience in the technology and software industries spans over 25 years. Prior to ACODA, Stan held executive and management positions with Candle Corp., MVS Software, Inc., Goal Systems International, Inc., Arkhon Technologies, Inc. and Sentryl Software, Inc. He co-founded MVS Software, Inc. and helped make the company the leader in automated operation products. After its acquisition by CA, he was founder and CEO of Arkhon Technologies, Inc. which developed cutting edge software products for the automated network and systems management market. He was later recruited by the venture firm Wies, Peck and Greer to join Sentryl Software as Executive Vice-President, where he was instrumental in bringing the company’s products to profitability and in its acquisition by Fujitsu Corp. Stan is a Pasadena Angel and serves as a member of the board of directors and advisors for several technology and software companies, is Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum, and is an active member in the Technology Council of Southern California, Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) and Entretech.


    • Wil Schroter Wil Schroter

      Speaking: Saturday mid-day

      Topic: My Secret Success Formula: I make it up as I go!

      Bio: Wil Schroter is a highly recognized serial entrepreneur. His nationally syndicated column entitled “Go Big or Go Home” reaches over 4 million professionals every other week in 42 major cities across the United States.

      At 30 years old he is one of the most sought after voices for startup company and high growth business issues. After starting his first Internet company at the age of 19, Wil Schroter grew the company to over $65MM in billings in just five years. At 22 Wil sold his company into a larger ad agency, joined their board, and helped grow the agency to over $600MM in billings within four years. While still growing his ad agency Wil built, grew and sold a software company for $10MM by the time he was 26. Wil has been recognized by the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year as well as the US Small business Association Entrepreneur of the Year programs. Wil Schroter has also launched two more highly successful companies – Swapalease.com, the world’s largest automotive leasing exchange which has listed over $1 billion worth of vehicles and the Go BIG Network, the largest network for startup companies to connect amongst each other. Wil has appeared on television networks such as NBC, CBS and MSNBC as well as features in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Time Magazine. He is also the author of the upcoming book entitled Go BIG or Go Home that shows companies how to think big and grow like crazy. Wil provides powerful lessons and strategies from a seasoned entrepreneur who has not only had a great deal of past success, but considers himself a student just as much as a teacher. He approaches each topic and shares each lesson with his audience as though they are learning it together. Audiences most frequently comment on how “down to earth” and “approachable” Wil Schroter is in his speaking engagements.


    • John Dilts John Dilts

      Speaking: Sunday evening

      Topic: Navigating the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

      Bio: John Dilts is the Founder and President of Maverick Angels, LLC, a highly innovative angel investor network based in Southern California, which focuses on funding and mentoring early-stage companies.

      Since founding the company in 2006, John has established Maverick Angels Chapters in Southern California and in Europe. John is an expert in the areas of innovation, leadership and entrepreneurship and often serves as a featured speaker at innovation conferences and angel investor forums. John formed a corporate consulting division of Maverick Angels which creates competitive innovation acceleration strategies for larger companies based on a unique “Pipeline Innovation” methodology. This proprietary strategy models the angel investment network process by profiling accomplished entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial ecosystem in which they operate. John’s open-market approach has been successfully proven when applied to create sustainable innovation strategies inside global organizations. John frequently teaches seminars on the topics of angel investing, innovation acceleration and entrepreneurial leadership around the world. His work includes advising and coaching executives from global companies, including Nestlé, Kraft, Amgen, GlaxoSmithKline, HSBC, Microsoft, ChevronTexaco, Intesa Sanpaolo Bank and the Fiat Group in Italy. John has served as a guest lecturer and panelist on the topic of entrepreneurship at various universities, including the University of Southern California, UCLA, Pepperdine University, California Lutheran University and the University of California at Santa Barbara. John is also a Co-Founder of The BioTech Forum based in Westlake Village, California. The Forum is a networking group focused on creating a new biotechnology cluster to bring together investors, entrepreneurs, scientists and corporate executives. The Forum addresses the biotechnology, medical device and healthcare fields and targets the region along the 101 Corridor stretching among Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles Counties. Early in his career, John was employed for several years with top corporate law firms in Silicon Valley and has since served on the board of directors for numerous emerging-growth companies, both private and public, addressing a variety of industries. John earned his law degree from the University of San Francisco and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California. For more information, please visit: www.maverickangels.com Contact: info@maverickangels.com or 818-706-7686

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Developer Opportunities – PSM&W Solutions

Posted by swla

One of our fantastic sponsors (who also participated in LASW) PSM&W Solutions is hiring. There are opportunities for Ruby, Python and PHP developers. Check out the careers page and get in touch with them

PSM&W Solutions Inc. is a Web Architecture Agency committed to provide innovative and agile software development for large-scale websites. We service online application development and web architecture by creating and deploying complete, tailored solutions with a focus on technical aspects.

Roundup

Posted by swla

We had a fantastic night of panel and demos on Sunday night.

Our panel included: Francisco Dao, Serena Ehrlich, John Dilts, Stan Tomsic, Sean Percival, and Mark Politi. They had some great answers to questions about legal structures and timlines for startups, patterns in major barriers that they are seeing with startups currently, focus for revenue streams and PR for startups. Thank you so much to the panelists – who then turned into judges and stayed to listen to the demos and helped us pick a winner at the end of the night.

We saw 6 functioning applications Sunday night!

The judges unanimously chose ming.ly as the winner. ming.ly is a social CRM predicated on tasks. Congrats guys!

Thanks again to all of our sponsors, to Amanda Abelove for locally organizing and to BlankSpaces for the space!

Interested in helping ot organize the next Startup Weekend LA? Start the conversation in the comments below.

The Low Down on Sunday Night at Startup Weekend LA

Posted by swla

We’re crazy excited about tonight. Teams are cranking hard right now and we’re seeing apps come to life and presentations take form.

The schedule for tonight looks like this (and note – we’re going to go with the flow, so don’t hold us to it).

*We’re going to be STREAMING LIVE. Big thanks to Jaymes Hines of Hines Media Group for making this happen for us.

6pm - Food and drinks. Mingle. Get everyone together. We’ll have some lighter food (we had a late lunch) and bring in some beer as well.

6:30pm - We’ll talk a bit about the awesome volunteers and sponsors who made this event happen.

6:40pm – Panel Discussion. We’re very lucky to have some great panelists joining us this evening. We’ll take some time and pick their brains about a few things. On the panel: Francisco Dao, Serena Ehrlich, John Dilts, Stan Tomsic, Sean Percival, and Mark Politi.

7:15pm – Presentations will begin. Each group (here’s the list) will have ~15 minutes to present. Our panelists will help us judge and we’ll pick a top idea. Remember, it’s all good fun!

Notes:

- We might have a few other people swing by. If we do, we’ll tweet and blog about it. Follow #lasw and also tune into the LIVE STREAM (URL to come).

- We have at least 2 groups working with the Twilio API. We’re pumped that they entered the competition this weekend. One of them should DEFINITELY win the prize (cough cough).

- Francisco Dao is with Twiistup. The winner tonight will be able to apply to the Twiistup Showoff for free! (normally $75)

- We had Wil Schroter speak to the group yesterday at lunch. What was meant to be a quick 15 minute talk turned into nearly an hour as the group asked tons of questions and a great conversation developed. Thanks to Wil for his insight, time, and willingness to be a resource.

- Jun Laoyza swung by yesterday and did some interviews. He’ll have that up on his site soon. Thanks Jun. Great to see you.

[we're probably forgetting things, but will update as needed]

Format for presos

Posted by swla

Pretty simple format for tonight everyone.  You’ll have about 15 minutes. You can do a deck, an actual demo, just talk… whatever you want.

We’ll hold you to ~15 minutes, so make sure to be succinct and cover what you need to cover. Be clear so the judges and audience can all understand.

Rough outline:

1. Define the opportunity (the problem that exists).

2. Proposed Solution – aka enter: your company

3. Demo and/or explain. We’d love to see some demos. If you’re not that far, give us the overview of what it is and how it will work.

*4. Pitch-ish – Market, addressable market, rev model, competition, etc. This one is starred because it’s not essential. You’ve been building all weekend and this part may not have been addressed yet. If you have it, great. If not, no worries. Revenue models are always good though :)

5. Learnings from the weekend – what did your group learn? How did the weekend go? What were some things you had to overcome?

6. Next Steps – was this a weekend event and a mental exercise? (totally cool) or are you planning on working together on this or other projects after the weekend ends?

Pictures from Startup Weekend LA !!

Posted by swla

The Projects

Posted by swla

We had 45 pitches last night. Voting created 6 groups. We’ve since seen a rogue project spring up as well so we’re looking at 7 active groups.

1. Social CRM – If you’re familiar with the idea of social CRM – this isn’t radically different. We need logic in our social graph and contacts and we also need associated tasks and prioritization.

2. Round Up – Application to round up at POS and in digital transaction situations to donate to causes and charities.

3. Keyword-based push notifications for time-sensitive web deals.

4. Location-aware geo-hashing + Twitter services (the rogue project).

5. Global Progress Specialists – Emerging Market mentoring content and distribution

6. On My Way – Geographic + Chronological application built on top of foursquare API to inform people and networks of progess to location.

7 . Centralized FTC endorsement disclosure database and service.

Startup Weekend LA Day 1 Roundup

Posted by swla

Catching you all up on Startup Weekend LA.

The event is taking place at Blank Spaces – a coworking and office space in Mid-Wilshire. We had about 45 people attendd pitches Friday night and attendees are weighing heavily toward developers (good! we can build things!).

Stan Tomsic led things off sharing information about the Business Technology Center of Los Angeles County. This group offers space, mentorship, resources and networks to capital.

Jaymes Hines of Hines Media Group helped capture content. We’re editing some video and will have that up soon.

We had 45 pitches. ideas ranged from quick apps built on top of popular APIs to physical products and professional services. Voting narrowed things down to 6 ideas that groups are currently working on… and there are a few rogue projects in the works as well.

Great things going today. Teams are hard at work and we’re looking to Wil Schroter talking to the group at lunch.

More information on running projects as well as pictures soon!

Jaymes Hines of Hines Media Group helping capture the event

Posted by swla

Hines Media Group

We’re pleased to announce that Jaymes Hines will be joining us at Startup Weekend LA. He will help capture content from the event as well as lend his experience and perspective to teams as they work toward demos on Sunday evening.

Hines Media Group (“HMG”) was established by author, newmedia producer and Internet entrepreneur, Jaymes Hines to create aspirational, empowering and innovative cultural broadband video content and apps for commercial web and mobile audiences worldwide.  The company is based in Los Angeles, CA and New Jersey.

Producer, consultant, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment, original online video programing and signature live streaming events, Jaymes represent a diverse portfolio of the very best Internet television formats, events rights and finished programs including entertainment, e-learning, music and cultural media for direct sales, promotions, merchandising, syndication and distribution via DVD, itunes and online for kids, families and educators everywhere.

URL: www.hinesmediagroup.com

Twiistup 007 official! Check it out

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

Twiistup 007 is now official and we’re stoked about our first confirmed speakers: Paul Graham of Y-Combinator, Om Malik of GigaOm, and Lisa Stone founder/CEO of BlogHer – and this is just the beginning. We also have Rick Heitzmann managing director of $2 Billion VC fund FirstMark Capital and a slew of other players to be announced soon.

Tickets are now on sale and for the next 5 days (until Fri), we are offering a special Super Early Bird Full Event pass for only $197. Save money by registering early today.

Twiistup 007 Includes:

8:00-9:00am Continental Breakfast Mixer
12:30-1:30pm Lunch included at the event
8:30-9:30pm Open Tapas/Hors D’oeuvres bar (No-host drinks)

See you January 28th!
Francisco

Partnership with DEMO!

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

DEMO

Startup Weekend is excited to announce it is partnering with the guys at DEMO to help further our efforts to provide new and valuable opportunities to our community!

DEMO is one of the foremost tech conferences in the world. What types of companies come from DEMO?

vmware, Salesforce.com, Tivo, Bitgravity, Symantec, Java, E*Trade, Boingo, palm, six apart, and more!

Why is this cool?

Successful Startup Weekend companies will get “fast track” consideration with the directors of DEMO for the Alpha Pitch segment of the event for early stage startups! Stay tuned for other great opportunities to come from this partnership!

Already a Startup?

Get the Demo Facts, and Attend DEMOspring 2010 in California March 21st-23rd.

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