The MoPR Blog

You can add Under the Radar | Mobility to the list of industry conferences we really love at MoPR. This past week both Melissa and I had the opportunity to attend this conference together with our clients Talkster and Hovr, who were both presenting companies.

At Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus, 32 early-stage startups, together with 10 “Grad Circle” companies further along in their development, presented to an audience of VCs, reporters, bloggers and other industry watchers. The premise of the conference is telegraphed by the conference name. All of these companies are young businesses that have not yet become household names in their respective markets – they are “under the radar.” But the name of the conference producer really implies the purpose – Dealmaker Media.

There were awards given to the companies that were considered best by a panel of judges and another by the audience in each of the respective mobility categories: Publishing Platform, Messaging/Sharing, Search and Discovery, Voice Services, Advertising, Media Platforms, Infrastructure and Social Network. Having worked with Dealmaker Media to place companies into the conference, we can tell you that all of the 42 companies that made presentations are in fact winners as there was an extensive vetting process, as one might imagine, to whittle down the field of mobility startups to just 42. As a result, the conference was a fascinating portent of how mobility is going to be changing consumer and business services in the near future.

Hovr walked away with the Category Winner prize in Advertising for their ad-supported mobile gaming and social network service. As CEO Vipul Sawhney began his presentation, a group of VCs sitting behind me casually dismissed Hovr as being the same as their competitor, Greystripe – a company that was earlier in the market with ad-supported mobile games, but does not include any of the ad targeting or social networking capabilities of Hovr. But as Vipul explained MobileSpace, the social networking component to Hovr’s service – which enhances the social engagement aspect of mobile gaming that encourages repeated play of the same game by a group of friends thus driving more ads to be served and more revenue for Hovr and game producers – these same VC’s had their “a ha moment” and understood the big gulf between Hovr and Greystripe. In the end, judges Erik de Kroon of Vodafone Group, Daniel Rosen of AKQA Mobile and Eric Ver Ploeg of VantagePoint unanimously picked Hovr as the best in the Advertising category.

But as I said, each of the 42 companies were winners just by being selected to present, and the purpose of the event was not to win prizes but to make deals. In between sessions and during the breaks both our clients were engaged in several meetings with VCs and potential business partners. Each exec that attended from both Talkster and Hovr left the event with a pocket full of important business cards and, more important, a schedule of follow-on meetings.

We saw a lot of interesting companies at the event. Certainly, and quite objectively, our favorites were Talkster and Hovr.  Talkster had great momentum having won Best Overall Service at CTIA in October, and the buzz from their newly announced platform to ad-enable any voice or text communication carried over into the conference. It must be very gratifying after all the hard work of building and launching a service to have VCs approach you, as happened on a couple of occasions for COO James Wanless and president Jim Fergusen.

But besides our clients, people in the industry should pay attention to each of the 42 companies. Among our favorites were Vollee, a company that can stream processor-intensive applications to 3G phones (and other IP devices such as IPTV set top boxes) in the form of video. Their application allows for the best of console and PC games to be played on a mobile handset. They solved the problem of portability for Second Life, and that alone should make them hugely successful. TileFile was another interesting Media Platform company which allows the easy sharing and publishing of video optimized for the mobile platform.

Socialight was our favorite by far in the Social Networking category. The company has built a platform for content producers to create communities based on location. Another company in Advertising that was interesting is Zoove, which is looking to replace the five-digit SMS short code with a telephonic process. Zoove’s CEO Tim Jemison showed how their technology can replace a six step text messaging based call-to-action with a one step process that works like placing a phone call. In the Search and Discovery category, Dial Direct was category winner by both audience and judges for their very simple service – dial into your phone the word d-i-r-e-c-t-i-o-n-s (347-328-4667) and speak your location and the place you want to find and this service will not only find it for you but will send you step-by-step driving or walking directions. We actually met their co-founder Amit Desai earlier in the week at FierceMarket’s Wireless Voice conference in San Francisco and used the service several times even before seeing it presented at Under the Radar.

Another favorite aspect of this event is the event producers themselves. I met a lot of people at this conference, but among my favorites was Dealmaker Media CEO Debbie Landa. She has one of the coolest jobs in high tech. Through her events and blog, she gets to see the entire landscape of emerging technologies and watch the progress of the very best young companies. I’m jealous. Most people in her position would be harried and frazzled as she had to manage all the moving parts to ensure everything went off smoothly. But Debbie was omnipresent, always with a smile on her face and happy to talk to anyone who came up to her. On her staff, Shay Nowick was extremely helpful to us throughout the entire process of submitting our clients and getting them to the stage. But the entire Dealmaker Media staff gets our vote for a great conference very well produced.

If you’re at a young start-up looking for funding and exposure, we highly recommend participating at Under the Radar. Oh, and if you’re a young mobility start-up hoping to emerge from being under-the-radar, contact Mobility Public Relations!

We already introduced you to Kristen Nicole, editor for the 606Tech blog. Kristen, who is also a writer for Mashable, has a passion for new technology, as well as a devotion to Chicago. Next week she shines a light on both with a new conference she’s producing, Web Ascent Event Chicago.

Kristen writes, “We’ve seen a lot events in Silicon Valley. But I recognize that there is a need to showcase startups in other places of the country, where people are interested in technology and want to see the latest and greatest in the Web 2.0 space. There are tons of tech communities all over the country, and we need to showcase these start-ups.”

We think that Web Ascent is a cool and important new event. We’re proud sponsors of it, and we encourage people to attend. If you’re in town for NXTcomm, consider heading to Union Park in downtown Chicago on Wednesday evening, June 20th, and get a look at Web 2.0 startups and hear from people who are evolving the Internet.

So you’ve got an informal breakfast meeting in Toronto with one of Canada’s premier VCs. This superb opportunity to establish a long-term relationship depends as much on the restaurant as it does the industry savvy you demonstrate.

While Toronto has dozens of breakfast dining options, three stand head-and-shoulders above the rest – for various reasons – and the one chosen says a lot about you and the VC.

Tim Horton’s, the Great White North’s cousin to Krispy Kreme (sans the industrial donut extruder and roller assembly line), offers a ‘shock and awe’ inducing array of donuts, bagels and uniquely Canadian breakfast pastries, most notably the ‘duchy.’ The eats are great – and you’ll never tire of endless ‘pass the duchy par the left hand side’ quips – but Tim Horton’s is perhaps a little too informal for that crucial first meeting.

The King Edwards Hotel (”King Eddie” in local parlance) offers the classy, upscale dining experience you’d expect of a 4-star hotel named after British royalty (not the heir apparents mind you). You can’t go wrong with the King Eddie, but it’s an inherently safe bet that may be a bit too formal for an informal meeting.

Le Petit Dejeuner is a favorite with Toronto locals in-the-know and for several good reasons. First and foremost the food is 4-star. The ‘eggy bread’ (French toast that’s nicely carmelized) and the fluffy scrambled eggs are particular favorites. The décor is eclectic enough to induce grins and serve as an ice breaker, but is not overtly kitsch. There’s a quiet hum from other patrons, but this serves as white noise to keep your conversation contained to your table. The booths are too small for more than four (two if you’re both of defensive lineman proportions), but this is about the only issue. Le Petit Dejeuner is an excellent place for an informal business meeting, and an even better place for Sunday breakfast. Score!

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