I’ve been a fan of the Northwest Entrepreneur Network’s First Look Forum for a few years now – and not just because I’m on the NWEN Board. The Seattle entrepreneur community has a lot to offer, and while you probably aren’t going to see the next Google or Amazon pop out of it, First Look Forum could be a spot to watch for your next Gist or Tippr.

Now, I’ve been in and around a number of startups over the years, including partner roles (Spring Creek Group, Social3i) and marketing consulting roles (Imagekind, GotVoice, Savester, Movaya, Golazo, Lilipip). I’ve also worked on wild and fun side projects with no revenue model to speak of (MyElectionChoices) and non-profit philanthropic efforts with even less of a revenue model (EvigSeattle). On every company, there’s a little something to learn.

But this is the first year I worked on a team taking a startup through the First Look Forum process. For the last 6 months at Social3i, we’ve been building and testing a number of social media related products, and are now in the alpha stage of two separate ones. One of them will make it’s debut to the NWEN investment community on Oct. 18, thanks to FLF. (The other you’ll have to keep an eye out for – it’s coming soon.)

So what’s the point of this post? Well, First Look Forum has been a great experience for us, serving as a forcing function to hit deadlines and milestones. Plus, throughout the process, we’ve been able to meet with investors and entrepreneurs who’ve provided excellent feedback on a wide array of topics relevant to launching a new product. Being on one side of the First Look Forum process for a few years had given me one perspective. But now being on the receiving end of the help, I really think FLF should be on the top of the list for anyone thinking about launching a new venture.

Anyway, if you’re an investor or angel, go beg Daniel and Caitlin to let you have a ticket to the event in October. If you’re a would-be entrepreneur in corporate clothing, get your team together and make a run at FLF in Spring 2012. It’s definitely worth the time you’ll put into it.

The Northwest Entrepreneur Network hosted one of its signature events last Wednesday, the spring version of First Look Forum.  (For those who want to know the whole format, check the appendix at the bottom of this post.)  In a nutshell, it’s a several month process that brings 12 entrepreneurs who have never pitched their business before, together with 60-70 VC’s and Angels.  Very cool format. 

This year’s group of 12 finalists spanned the gamut from fusion to chocolate.  My colleague Shelley Whelan already posted a nice follow-up on the NWEN blog.  But Alissa Johnson from the Alliance of Angels had a clever idea for a blog post, and allowed me to steal it from her, since she is too busy at VCIC to put it together.  Her idea – explain how if all of these companies became successful, how might one use all of them in a single day.  So here goes, using me as the example.

As soon as I woke up, I’d log into the dashboard of FLF winner Guide Analytics.  The company helps patients manage heart failure and avoid hospitalization through the continuous monitoring of edema.  Patients wear a bracelet around their ankle, measuring ankle size and relaying that info via bluetooth and wireless devices to the main computer.  Now I don’t have heart problems, but I’d be able to check on my aunt’s status, and make sure everything was ok.  The system will tell us when she is in danger of a heart attack, and lets us get her to the doctor before it happens.

I’d get in my car and head to work.  I’d stop for coffee first at a certain store, because I could get some valuable points to help me in the BodSix game I was currently engaged in.  (This is still in development, so I can’t share too much here.)  But soon I’d get into the office and say hi to the staff.  One of my team members, a woman getting married soon, would be choosing bridesmaid dresses from Little Borrowed Dress. Her bridesmaids would be able to rent these silk dresses for $75, rather than spend $230 for some taffeta number they’d never wear again anyway.  Our happy bride-to-be is also showing pictures of the bridesmaid dresses to her fiance, who lives in New York, on their private page at SnuggleCloud, a personal online space for couples.

We’d probably have a client coming in that day, and undoubtedly, there’d be some furniture issue in some hard to reach angle of the room.  Thankfully, we’d have our new Flipout Screwdriver, which would enable us to fix it.  Before the client got to our office, we would have downloaded the reports from ReadyPulse, a company that provides insight on what works best to grow your audience on Facebook and Twitter.  Our client – a software company – is probably using AgileEVM, a product that helps with agile software developments.

We’ll want to take the client to lunch afterwards, so we’ll check UrbanQ a way for us to discover places and experiences we’ll like, from our mobile device.  UrbanQ might recommend a nice waterfront restaurant, where we notice all the ships using Fusion Engines developed by Woodruff Scientific.  These ships are actually sing sea water and the elements inside of it, to generate fuel through fusion.  The restaurant is great.  So I log into Meevine and ping my friends about it.  Hopefully we’ll all be able to pick a date soon.  

It was a long day.  So when I get home, I open up a high-end chocolate bar I got from Chocolopolis, something that goes nicely with my Spanish Rioja, and that I’ll probably pick up more of for the dinner party I’m throwing later this week.  I end the day reading a book about baseball history that had been turned into an iPad application by Appitude.  I use this app because I get to do more than just read the book – I’m part of a virtual book club, chatting on my iPad while scrolling through the text and pictures.  Some of my real life friends happen to be reading, and I’m connecting with other baseball history fans. 

That’s how I’d be able to utilize all the businesses who made it to the finals of this First Look Forum.  I encourage you to go check out the companies who already have products live, and signup to get ont he beta list for the others.

———

Appendix: About First Look Forum

1. Over the course of several months, about 70 entrepreneurs, who have never pitched their business plan to an investor group, apply to FLF.  Everyone who applies gets some business plan coaching from NWEN’s Exec Director, or someone from the investment community.  
2. A screening committee then whittles those 70 plans down to 20.  More coaching.
3. Those 20 get parsed to 12.  Still more coaching.
4. Then the even itself.  Each of the 12 gets 5 minutes in front of the most influential group of VC’s, Angels and investors in the Puget Sound.  5 finalists are chosen for 2 more minutes of pitching, and then a judging panel selects a winner.

A friend of mine recently commented that they never quite understand what I do for a living, but it always seems cool.  I couldn’t agree more.

Whether it be building batting cages and selling corporate ticket packages in minor league baseball, writing press releases and guiding customers on the top of a ski resort, working for a future Senator and selling the idea of audio and video on the internet, assisting professional athletes and their families raise money for charities, aiding venture backed startups with Go-To-Market campaigns, or most recently, helping guide a social media and community management agency go from 2 to 35 employees, the two common threads have always been challenge and fun.

So July 2010 marks the start of the next great adventure – social3i Consulting.  Xavier Jimenez and I will team up for the 3rd time now, taking what we’ve learned from our last few years working with the largest social media team in the region, and reshaping it to a more focused, strategic, and consultative presence that can work for exemplary brands, where size doesn’t matter.  

Our old colleagues at SCG continue do fantastic work in the realm of community management, and we wish them continued success as they drive forward.  But the focus of social3i will be different.  We’re going to be doing more classic strategic consulting, and lots of team building, training and development.  Rather than execute long-term tactics and serving the role of outsourced engagement and analytics, we’re going to use a data driven approach to deliver Insight, Ideas and Influence (hence, the 3i) to clients tasked with building their own in house programs.  We believe our past experience building these types of teams and our history of working with some of the largest technology brands, positions us well to solve huge social marketing problems for brands that we’re excited to help out.  Plus, we’re going to be able to join forces with some folks down in the Bay Area who I’ve been hoping to work with for years.  It’s too early to talk about now, but it will add a neat new angle to typical marketing analysis.

Like every new venture, I’m sure we’ll have our share of hiccups and bugs along the way.  But it’s an exciting time and I hope you’ll come find us and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  We’ll look like a bunch of clowns if we only have 4 followers, so if you read this blog, consider following social3i in these social channels the tax you need to pay for all the free content you’ve gotten over the years

Thanks again to the SCG team for what has been a fun couple of years.  But I’m not sure I could ask for a more exciting way to open up the 2nd half of 2010 than launching social3i.

(Finally something somewhat social media related.)

Here’s a fun little ticker from a guy named Gary Hayes and his blog Personalize Media. Who knows if the data is accurate, but it’s fun to watch numbers go up…

I’m not in the habit of posting stories from Techflash, but Greg Gottesman of Madrona has a solid guest post on what makes a great start-up culture.

Full article here:

http://www.techflash.com/venture/Thirteen_characteristics_of_a_great_startup_culture_45678557.html

I’ve started reading the Seattle 2.0 blog a little more regularly, especially now that people that I know and am friends with seem to be writing the bylines on a fairly regular basis.  

Anyway, I’ve been meaning to add the site to my blogroll for a while.  And this article written by the Alliance of Angels’ Rebecca Lovell is a good reason to send people over to check out the site.   Let me know if you disagree with any of Rebecca’s points.  

Does this make me want to buy a bunk bed? Maybe not. But did it introduce me to a url I had never heard of before? Yes. And am I forwarding said url around to others who might want to buy a bunk bed? Apparently so.

But check out this fun and easy game from Bunkbeds.net.
I could survive for 1 minute, 28 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

I stumbled across a cool little search engine in beta, called Viewzi.  Now I’m not making this out to be a Google killer or anything, but it’s a kind of fun way to troll through web sites if you are looking for a visual representation of the page.

My favorite of their searching options was the “Web screenshot” view.  Now, my take is that this will be less helpful for certain types of searches than others.  For example, I think it did better with a search on Cristiano Ronaldo (below) than the Georgia-Russia conflict (above).  And the algorithm isn’t perfect.  When I searched on my own name, it at first attached me to the usual places, but then attached me to a bunch of web sites with “Spring Creek” in the name.  So, it was a good effort to look at say, AndyBoyer.com, see a link to SpringCreekGroup.com and make that connection, but then it took it to far when it surmised I also must be part of SpringCreekFishing.net. 

But I’m not here to criticize.  It’s kind of cool to play with, and there are a few target markets I’m sure they are already very popular with.  Check it out at Viewzi.com

I encourage everyone to take a quick trip over to Qvisory.com,.a extremely socially conscious and responsible project headed up by Eileen Quigley, the former head of RealNetworks’ philanthropic arm, RealImpact.

Dubbed, “Tools for life, ” the site helps young people (and old ones too) achieve their work, money and life goals.  Here’s what they said in a recent email:

Our mission is to help young people build their economic future and
gain more control over their lives. Today’s 18 to 34 year-olds face
significant challenges in our evolving economy. We’re providing them
with information and tools to help manage and meet their money, work,
and health goals. And we’re advocating for change to ensure that their
voice is heard in Washington, DC, in board rooms, and in state capitols.

I have long been an advocate of our school system shifting gears and actually teaching things that people need to know – little things like how credit card companies make money, how to fill out tax forms, why interest only mortgages are a bad idea, what happens if you eat fast food and chips every day, etc….So, I think this is a great project.  Check it out and let me know what you think.

Bonanzle, a young and exciting company we recently started working with, just received a fantastic review from Ecommerce-Guide.com.

An alternative to Craiglist and Ebay, Bonanzle is designed to make it easier for people to buy and sell products online.  Given the state and direction of the economy today, any way to make it easier to move used merchandise is positioned to do well.  Some choice quotes from the article:

“You get Bonanzle
— an eBay alternative that is quite simply, the best I’ve seen in my
four years of reviewing and writing about start-up marketplaces aimed
at taking sellers away from eBay.”

The Bonanzle platform was designed in-house from
the ground up, so not only does the site look very different from other
alternative sites, but this is the reason why the tools and features on
this site are so radically different.

The best way to experience Bonanzle is simply to log
on and try it. What you will find is that Harding and his team of
self-titled “action-minded experts” have managed to offer sellers more
features in this one site than any alternative to date, yet keep the
entire site and selling process simple, compact and super-easy to use.

Check out the whole article, and please Digg it or add it to Delicious if you would be so kind.