Sharra Chan, 27, is the founder of Orange Door, delivering software as a service for small and medium size tax accounting firms, a 1.1 Billion Dollar market. Sarah says this market is grossly under-served at this time. Sharra makes an interesting case as to how the Accountants are forced to learn about IT, networking backup etc in order to run there business as they can't afford an IT person.

Orange Door,  Sharra's startup which she founded a few years ago, delivers full featured Tax Accounting Software as a service for SMB Tax Accounting Firms, allowing them to work and focus on the Business of Tax Accounting, instead of becoming IT experts and managing computer and local networks. All that a client would need is a simple browser to login and start working. Orange Door Inc has a small dedicated team of programmers and very experienced accountants and is rolling out it's closed beta product to a select few customers. So far Orange Door Inc. is boot strapped, but now they are looking for half a million dollar in seed funding.

A great assortment of founders and VCs from pre-seed to post A round were in the room. The speakers included Saeed Amidi, Founding General Partner of Amidzad, Jim Simmons, Draper Richards, DC Cullinane, CEO, ThinkingVoice.

Saeed Amidi, a serial entrepreneur and a seasoned executive with over 23 years of experience in founding, operating, and growing successful companies, shared with the audience the story of the entrepreneurship and how he build his many ventures world wide. Saeed is a true entrepreneur at core and understand the difficulties and challenges faced by an entrepreneur while building a startup. At his venture Plug and Play, Saeed is making it easier for the entrepreneur to start new Startups in campus like energy filled environment.

Saeed also funds the entrepreneurs through Amidzad and also bringing in other venture partners to help make venture successful along with his operating experience. Saeed has been closely involved with more than twenty new emerging growth companies, of which 2 became public companies (PayPal (acquired by eBay) and Preview Systems). His investments include DoveBid, Crosslayer Networks, Paypal, Affinity Engines, Gabbly and Sigma Quest. For the past 23 years, he has chaired and spearheaded the operations and management of a number of the Amidi Group entities, growing the aggregate value of its assets under management to over $250M.

Jim Simmons is currently an Entrepreneur in Residence at  Draper Richards, an industry leading early stage venture capital firm in San Francisco.

Jim, who has experience as a senior marketing executive with sales, applications engineering, and operations experience at both start-up and established high technology firms and served as Vice President, Marketing and Sales for both Conductor and Superconductor Technologies (Nasdaq: SCON), shared pointers on how to build a successful hardware startup using newest tools and techniques. 

âDraper Richards is looking to fund entrepreneurs with the energy, vision, experience, and a burning desire to build great companiesâ?, Jim said. Jim holds a BS with Honors in Applied Physics from California Institute of Technology and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

DC Cullinane who is a serial entrepreneur shared some of his CEO in the trenches stories. DC is widely known as a pioneer in the online performance based marketing arena. While at Impulse Buy, DC drove both the revenue share and pay per click relationships that Impulse Buy closed with its 400 merchants. In fact, the industries first pay per click deals were closed by DC back in 1998, at 50 cents per click. He continues to be a large advocate of performance based marketing and has invested in a number of start ups in the category.

Next Startup-U Event at this venue is schedules for Tuesday, October 17. This Startup-U event will feature Mike Lyons of Compass Ventures talking about VC Valuation Techniques!

A great assortment of founders and VCs from pre-seed to post A round were in the room. The speakers included Saeed Amidi, Founding General Partner of Amidzad, Jim Simmons, Draper Richards, DC Cullinane, CEO, ThinkingVoice.

Saeed Amidi, a serial entrepreneur and a seasoned executive with over 23 years of experience in founding, operating, and growing successful companies, shared with the audience the story of the entrepreneurship and how he build his many ventures world wide. Saeed is a true entrepreneur at core and understand the difficulties and challenges faced by an entrepreneur while building a startup. At his venture Plug and Play, Saeed is making it easier for the entrepreneur to start new Startups in campus like energy filled environment.

Saeed also funds the entrepreneurs through Amidzad and also bringing in other venture partners to help make venture successful along with his operating experience. Saeed has been closely involved with more than twenty new emerging growth companies, of which 2 became public companies (PayPal (acquired by eBay) and Preview Systems). His investments include DoveBid, Crosslayer Networks, Paypal, Affinity Engines, Gabbly and Sigma Quest. For the past 23 years, he has chaired and spearheaded the operations and management of a number of the Amidi Group entities, growing the aggregate value of its assets under management to over $250M.

Jim Simmons is currently an Entrepreneur in Residence at  Draper Richards, an industry leading early stage venture capital firm in San Francisco.

Jim, who has experience as a senior marketing executive with sales, applications engineering, and operations experience at both start-up and established high technology firms and served as Vice President, Marketing and Sales for both Conductor and Superconductor Technologies (Nasdaq: SCON), shared pointers on how to build a successful hardware startup using newest tools and techniques. 

âDraper Richards is looking to fund entrepreneurs with the energy, vision, experience, and a burning desire to build great companiesâ?, Jim said. Jim holds a BS with Honors in Applied Physics from California Institute of Technology and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

DC Cullinane who is a serial entrepreneur shared some of his CEO in the trenches stories. DC is widely known as a pioneer in the online performance based marketing arena. While at Impulse Buy, DC drove both the revenue share and pay per click relationships that Impulse Buy closed with its 400 merchants. In fact, the industries first pay per click deals were closed by DC back in 1998, at 50 cents per click. He continues to be a large advocate of performance based marketing and has invested in a number of start ups in the category.

Next Startup-U Event at this venue is schedules for Tuesday, October 17. This Startup-U event will feature Mike Lyons of Compass Ventures talking about VC Valuation Techniques!

In the new Web 2.0 world, the conversations are taking place round the clock  Ãïï People are talking about you, about your company, about your products. One user expresses his or her opinion, and other people join the conversation and start blogging about the original post, mixing it with other blog posts and their own opinion. Soon the whole Blogosphere start to resonate and you, your company and your products are affected.

If you are a marketer or researcher in the Web 2.0 world, your job becomes very difficult, figuring out who is influencing whom? Who started the conversation? Who started the chain-reaction resulting in your product getting the spotlight or maybe getting trashed? How do you make sure that when people are blogging and creating original posts, that they are using the right information? Or atleast figure out after the fact what information sources were used and who influenced who and the whole sequence of events in the chronological order? Or when your product gets trashed, your companeis reputation is at stake, how do you determine what is being disliked? What needs to be fixed? What changes you need to make to your product in order to make it likable.... the list goes on.

Enters BuzzLogic Ãïï applying the science of influence to Social Media - answering many on these questions and demystifying the Blogosphere.

I sat down and had a very interesting converstation with the Steve Reoberts ( ex Technorati.com ) who is currently heading BizDev at BuzzLogic. BuzzLogic has created some cool technology which allows you to slice & dice, analyze, research and map the conversations & their underlying relationship. In the process you may discover what your users are finding interesting, what is getting popular in the blogsphere and what the influencers ( bloggers ) are finding interesting (or repelling) about your product and services.

Clint Chao, General Partner at Formative Ventures. Formative Ventures invest in technology and communications industry startups. Their investments include InnoCOMM Wireless, IP Infusion, Marketocracy, OpenCountry, Pyxis Technology, Silicon Clocks, Zyray Wireless. Based in Menlo Park, CA, Formative Ventures invest in early stage startups.

Marie Alexander, President and CEO, Quova. Quova is the authority on IP Intelligence and the leading provider of IP geolocation data and services to online businesses. Quova's patented technology provides the geographic location of website visitors in real time, enabling businesses to detect fraud, manage digital rights, target content, conduct site analysis and ensure regulatory compliance.

Quovaâs customers and partners include such industry leaders as Major League Baseball Advanced Media, BBC, Bell Canada, Cisco Systems, Coremetrics, Corillian, PassMark, Bankinter, Globo, Times Online and Sky Sports. A privately owned company with investments from Mobius Venture Capital, IDG Ventures, Nexus Group and Schoffstall Ventures.

Clint Chao and Marie Alexander shared their experiences and ideas about Finding and Building a Core Startup Team for Startups, at the SVASE STARTUP UNIVERSITY, San Francisco event, held on August 10^th, 2006.

Marie Alexander, President and CEO, Quova. Quova is the authority on IP Intelligence and the leading provider of IP geolocation data and services to online businesses. Quova's patented technology provides the geographic location of website visitors in real time, enabling businesses to detect fraud, manage digital rights, target content, conduct site analysis and ensure regulatory compliance.

Quovaâs customers and partners include such industry leaders as Major League Baseball Advanced Media, BBC, Bell Canada, Cisco Systems, Coremetrics, Corillian, PassMark, Bankinter, Globo, Times Online and Sky Sports. A privately owned company with investments from Mobius Venture Capital, IDG Ventures, Nexus Group and Schoffstall Ventures.

Clint Chao and Marie Alexander shared their experiences and ideas about Finding and Building a Core Startup Team for Startups, at the SVASE STARTUP UNIVERSITY, San Francisco event, held on August 10^th, 2006.

In this podcast Chris talks about Granite Ventures, the investments they find interesting, his background in investing and some of the deals he has been involved with.