Category: Ottawa

Crash Davis: Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls – it’s more democratic.
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: [to himself] What’s this guy know about pitching? If he’s so good how come he’s been in the minors for the last ten years?

I guess this makes me Crash Davis, ten years in the minors, makes me wonder when my Waterworld is coming (so please make sure you take any feedback with the appropriate sense of pending doom).

“Open challenge to local startups to “pitch” for a meeting in a 140 characters or less in the comments (more realistically less than 420 characters – basically 3 tweets).”

In response to my Pitching Fastballs post on StartupNorth (reblogged), Trevor and Karim from Big Time Design have answered my open challenge, along with a bunch of others in the comments. Along with Scott Annan and Tim Harris.

Big Time Radar

big time Radar is: Discreet, targeted messaging; customers ask for it & you deliver via Live Messenger, Twitter, SMS, email & Facebook from one interface.

Big time’s management team consists of three guys from marketing, design and development backgrounds.  Radar’s market opportunity is massive for anyone in the marketplace looking to use social media to sell, communicate and connect with their customers.  Initially, we plan to focus on four verticals: retail, events, media and real estate.  Our pricing model is segmented by number of users and selected features. We are currently in the beta phase (with very positive initial results) and are bootstrapping rather than looking for funding as our overhead cost is negligible. 

Commentary/Feedback

This is a great approach to layered information. The piece that is missing for me is the separation between Big Time Design and Big Time Radar. I’m assuming Radar is a product offering of Big Time Design. That coupled with I’m curious at the benefit of the solution, i.e., it sounds like a multi-channel replacement for MailChip or Constant Contact, i.e., email marketing that uses social media for notification beyond just email. A little more clarity about how it fits with respect to these other offerings might be helpful.

Network Hippo

Network Hippo is a smart address book for startups and professionals. It combines and scrubs contact information from dozens of sources, finds more info about them on the web and social networks, plugins into your email, and alerts you when – and who – you should contact. It’s a smarter, personal, social CRM. We’ll replace Highrise completely & Salesforce’s smallest customers.

Commentary/Feedback

I also like the one provided on Network Hippo’s home page , “Network Hippo is a powerful and unique network relationship application that puts your professional network to work. We help professionals and small businesses build their network, identify their most valuable contacts, remind them when somebody needs a call, and track deals for their business.” It’s very clear who the product is for, what the product does, and who are the competitors. I would like a little more detail on the differentiator, i.e., what makes Network Hippo special?

Star Return

Star Return links out door media to rich media content on handheld apps via web services, while providing advertisers with solid analytics to evaluate effectiveness and viral affects of their campaigns.

Commentary/Feedback

I’m still not sure how Star Return links outdoor media to rich media content (I’m assuming that this is online content). I still don’t actually know what Star Return does. Jumping on the Interwebs, I find “We are Star Return. We allow you to download information to your mobile device, related to products, places, people and businesses.” and “Star Return puts a new twist on information access. Users – anytime, anywhere can now access information on restaurants, stores, products, sporting events, concerts, bands, real-estate and much much more.” My guess is that it’s bit.ly for billboards?