P1100446 Matt Curtin presents SocialSmack

SocialSmack is an application that lets users give very simple reviews to anything they want, such as businesses or products. The review system is binary: "props" (thumbs up) or "drops" (thumbs down).

P1100451 Chad Farrell presents Recycle Match

Recycle Match goal is to make landfills obsolete. Companies are wasting resourcces to dispose of the garbage they generate, but one company's trash is another's treasure. Recycle Match lets companies offload their recyclable materials onto each other.

P1100453 Rodney Gibbs from Ricochet Labs

presents QRANK, a location-based trivia game. The game has rapidly taken off among Austin's Twitter community. Rodney Gibbs announced that QRank is building service architecture, and looking at verticals such as for-profit education.

P1100455 Eric Katerman presents Hurricane Party

Hurricane Party is a free iPhone app that lets people create instantaneous events, and invite friends via text-messages. Click on the image to read more.

P1100458 Ray Renteria presents WorkStreamer

Workstreamer lets people keep track of companies, e.g. competitors or customers. It's a more sophisticated way to get aggregate news and internet chatter about companies of interest than just setting a Google alert. Click on the image to read more.

P1100463 Calavista cupcakes

Calavista booth in the Innotech exhibit hall beckoned visitors with mini-cupcakes. Far better than the usual vendor giveaways. Nobody probably needs more pens, yoyos, mousepads or mini-USB drives. But cupcakes are tasty and don't weigh down your swag bag!

P1100465 Jason Cohen: from geek to entrepreneur

Jason Cohen (@asmartbear), the founder of Smart Bear Software, gave a talk "From Geek to Entrepreneur: Sifting Through The Bull5h1t". Click on the image to read more.

P1100470 Jason Cohen viral marketing slide

I don't quite remember what this viral marketing example was supposed to illustrate. Naming a company with an acronym STDS suggests a motto "Our invoices flare up every year!" It's a bit less funny taken out of the context of the presentation :)

P1100471 Tenets of Smart Bear vs 37 Signals

Tenets of Jason Cohen's company Smart Bear vs those of 37 Signals. In 37 Signals philosophy, a startup should solve simple problems and not work too hard (wouldn't that be nice!). Jason Cohen partially disagrees. Click on the image to read more.

P1100474 37 Signals in context

Three companies - 37 Signals, Smart Bear, and Mint - classified according to Rich vs. King and B2B vs B2C matrix. Click on the image to read more.

P1100475 Common advice in context

Here are the "pundits" of the entrepreneurial advice categorized according to Rich vs. King and B2B vs B2C aspects. Click on the image to read more.

P1100476 Dimensions of advice

The principles of building a startup differ greatly depending on what niche a startup wants to occupy - this was the gist of Jason Cohen's talk. This slide illustrates which niches his former company, Smart Bear Software, falls into.