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ClearLeap Lands the Jump

Published on March 17, 2008 in Startups and Venture Capital. 1 Comment

Big funding news this morning. Clearleap just announced a $9 million first round of funding that they’ve closed. Who is Clearleap? Well, they’re pretty new to the scene since they just started back in mid-2007. They were founded by a bunch of ex-N2 Broadband folks. N2 Broadband was previously acquired by Tandberg Television (Tandberg was itself acquired by Ericsson after they received a buyout offer from Suwanee based Arris Group).

So the things that are interesting to me is the time since they’ve been around (7 months according to Braxton Jarratt - Clearleap’s CEO - his photo on the left), the size of the round they got (especially for a first round of funding), and the funders themselves. On the first two points I don’t have much to add so let’s talk about the funders.

The lead funder seems to be Trinity Ventures which is based in Silicon Valley (Noro-Moseley also invested in this round as did Imlay Investments and the former CTO of Time Warner Cable). Trinity is a pretty large fund overall with about $1.2 billion under management and their last fund (Trinity IX) closed in 2005 with $300 million. Given the age of the fund, they’ll probably start raising another fund in a few years. But more importantly, Clearleap is Trinity’s first investment in the Atlanta area. They’ve had interesting investments like Speedera (disclosure: they were a partner of mine at Digital Envoy before they were acquired by Akamai) and scanR but also companies like Starbucks and P.F. Chang’s (not sure if this means that Clearleap’s offices will be stocked with Starbucks). Hopefully with this initially foray into an Atlanta area startup, Trinity will start looking at other opportunities in the Atlanta area. Also, I hope I can entice them to attend the upcoming Startup Riot event. Same goes for the folks from Clearleap (you reading this Braxton?).

As for what they’re doing, Clearleap is working on a way to expand the ways that television content is delivered to consumers. Instead of doing something like Joost, Clearleap is focused on working with satellite and cable providers to deliver a cohesive experience for the consumer. From the little I know it sounds interesting although the path to adoption is a lot harder since it takes agreement and coordination from entrenched players. That being said, I haven’t heard of many people talking about using Joost (I tried Joost and gave up on it - I should probably revisit it at some point) so perhaps the issues aren’t that unique and Clearleap’s approach will provider a better user experience and thus lead to wider adoption.

By the way, this is also a huge win for ATDC as well since Clearleap was recently added as an ATDC company.

So congratulations to Braxton and the rest of the folks at Clearleap! We’re all looking forward to hearing about some interesting developments from you guys and seeing you involved in the local community! By the way, Clearleap is hiring.

Introducing Startup Riot

Published on March 10, 2008 in Events, Startups and Venture Capital. 9 Comments

Okay, so I’ve been thinking about this for a while and it’s finally time to test the waters and see if I can pull off this event. At the last Startup Dinner, I mentioned that I’d like to do a startup focused pitch event. The idea would be for startups to get up on stage and do a (strictly enforced!) three minute pitch on their company. I’m calling this event Startup Riot.

Target Audience

The invited audience will be three pronged so that all interested startups will have one or more groups to pitch.

First, I’ll look to invite folks who are looking for jobs especially those who are just graduating from local colleges. Rather than condemn these folks to cube farms, let’s try to get the best and brightest working in some great startups.

Second, I’m planning to invite those involved in technology with large local corporations and non-profits. Clearly getting these folks as customers would be a boon for any startup. Non-profits actually present a unique opportunity for both parties. Startups can leverage these folks as early adopter customers and get valuable feedback on their product/service while non-profits can have the opportunity to adopt new technologies for free/cheap.

And finally, I’m planning to invite investors - angels and venture capitalists. No need to explain why I hope.

Between these three groups, every startup that wants to pitch will have one or more groups that they’ll want to appeal to. But remember, you’ll only have three minutes in which to do this.

The Schedule

The format I’ve been able to come up with would get us through about 45 company pitches over the course of the day with lots of time left over for networking and private discussions. The format may change and adapt based on the venue I end up using as well as the demand for pitch slots. If it’s way over 45, then I’ll rejigger the event so that everyone gets a shot.

I intend to allow any startup that wants to pitch to be able to do so although I reserve the right to refuse anyone a slot based on my sole opinion. Realistically though, most anyone can suffer through three minutes of the most idiotic pitch.

Sponsors and Cost

This isn’t going to be cheap to do. I’m looking into catering (lunch and whatnot), venue costs, printing, etc. I’m fortunate to already have a few people volunteer their time for this event but the overall cost is still going to be hefty. Given that, I’m planning on running this event differently than most of my other events or events run by other local entrepreneurs.

First, I’m going to get sponsors for the event. Yes, that includes service providers. But once costs are covered, I’m not going to keep taking sponsors on for the event. The goal here is to cover cost and not overwhelm the event with non-startup folks. So if you’re interested in sponsoring this event, you probably need to contact me sooner rather than later since I’ll give preference to those who contact me first.

Second, the event is not going to be free for all individuals but fees will take into account each groups ability to pay. Pitching startups will get some allowance of folks they can bring for free. This also goes for non-profits looking to potentially use products and services from the startups. Large companies will have some minimal fee to make sure qualified folks are signing up. Job seekers will pay some minimal amount in an effort to make sure folks who show up are qualified candidates and aren’t just signing up with no intention of showing up. Finally, investors will pay some amount to attend as well.

What I Need From You

So what do I need from you? Well, first I need to make sure that I can actually get 45 or so startups lined up to pitch. If there are more than that who want to pitch I need to know that as well since I need to figure out a schedule that works for this event. At this point I’m targeting either late April or early May for this event and it looks to be an all day event in Atlanta. If you are a part of a startup that wants to pitch, fill out this form and indicate your interest in pitching. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me an email, contact me via LinkedIn, or send me a note on Twitter.

Gifts for the VC You Love

Published on February 20, 2008 in Other, Startups and Venture Capital. 1 Comment

So if you thought coming up with a company over a weekend was extreme, Andrew Hyde is upping the ante. During a plane flight they launched Startup Plane and came up with a new company - VCwear.com. They’ve even racked up a few sales apparently at $100/shirt. I told Andrew that I thought they could actually sell a bunch if they dropped the price but heck, what do I know.

Below are some of my favorite VCwear.com shirts. The first cause I like Snoop, the second would be better by changing “with” to “to”, and the third cause, well, it’s true. If they were cheaper I’d probably buy a few of the last one and send it to some “friends” of mine.




Suniva Raises $50m

Published on February 7, 2008 in Jobs, Startups and Venture Capital. 0 Comments

SunivaLance mentioned that this might be the biggest raise (for Georgia) for 2008. He might just be right. Suniva announced a raise of $50m from NEA, Goldman Sachs, and HIG Ventures. They’re also looking to pick one of three manufacturing facilities which are located in Gwinnett or Cobb counties (woot! OTP baby!). Good new for Georgia and for Georgia Tech grads who might want to work in the energy and solar industries. It also makes me wonder if Suniva might be a good acquisition at some point for Siemens whose Energy & Automation unit is based in Alpharetta.

Learn To Play Songs With iVideosongs

Published on February 1, 2008 in Startups and Venture Capital. 1 Comment

Here is another story of an Atlanta company that I’ve never heard of. Seriously, there is a lot of stuff going on in Atlanta. I haven’t had a chance to talk to anyone at iVideosongs yet but I thought I’d piece together some information for Bilgistic readers.

iVideosongs is an Alpharetta, Georgia based startup which recently had a presentation at the DEMO show. The service provides a video based medium for individuals to learn how to play popular songs. Most of the lessons that iVideosongs has are centered around an acoustic guitar. There do seem to be some lessons for the drums, electric guitar, piano, and even a few for the banjo! From what I can tell though, there really isn’t a reason why this couldn’t be expanded to other instruments. Although as a cello player (I haven’t touched one in years though), I’m not sure if video instruction would work for me. But it sure would be interesting to be taught (even if only by video) a song by someone like Yo-Yo Ma or Itzhak Perlman (for the violin, not cello). I can definitely see the value for musicians who are a lot more serious about playing music than I am.

The big question though is are musicians going to be willing to pay for video instruction from a site like this. Pricing seems to be around the $5-10 range. Is that a price point that makes this attractive to folks? Only if these tutorials are that much better than buying sheet music (which, I think, are cheaper than this price point - but I haven’t bought sheet music in decades, so I don’t know). But based on some of the comments from the iVideosongs blog (assuming at least a portion aren’t friends/family of the company founders), these guys might be onto something.

This is especially true since I don’t know of anyone offhand doing this although the DEMO site mentions competitors Now Play It and Workshop Live. Note that Now Play It is apparently England based since their prices range from £1.99 to £3.99. On the other hand, Workshop Live is based in Pittsfield, MA and appear to have just done a new funding round (which hasn’t apparently been announced).

Watch the video below (if you’re reading this in a feedreader, you may need to link to the site to see the video) for the presentation that iVideosongs CEO Tim Huffman did at DEMO. Pretty well executed and having John Oates (of Hall & Oates fame) for the wrap up was definitely a winner.

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