• Innovate! Pitch Slams - multiple cities
• Bayarea Startup Weekend focus on Education - 8/27/2010 to 8/29/2010
• Amplify Business Pitch Competition (needs a woman founder/executive on team)
  
• Women 2.0 Labs (open to boys & girls!) - Pre-incubator for Fall 2010 -  Deadline 9/4/2010
• Facebook Developer Garage - Girls in Tech - 9/11/2010
• Pitch: Women 2.0 Startup Competition (needs a woman founder/executive on team) - Deadline 10/1/2010
• AngelPad is a mentorship program for startups - next session starting February 2011

Outside the seating area near the vendors, multiple booths were set up for fans to take pictures (Polaroid, Virgin Mobile).  Polaroid let fans take pics with a metal orb structure like the one from the “Bad Romance” video.  Very chic.  Fans then have to go to the Polaroid website to buy, yes buy, the picture.  Touche for these companies driving traffic to their websites and the same time fans love posing for pics.

So why is Virgin Mobile a good sponsor?  Well, fans with phones now make the concert an interactive experience.  Who best to connect folks, but a telecommunications company.  Before the concert, fans could text messages and upload pics that show up on the globe-o-tron.  During the concert, all you see is a sea of cameras taking photos or video of Ms. Gaga doing her thing on stage.  If you go to YouTube the night of the concert (search “lady gaga san jose concert 2010″), you can re-live the concert through someone else’s lens.  Technology at its best.

Fans can also win contests during the concert.  For instance, my friend got alerted via text (midst concert) that she won a live phone call from Lady Gaga, a call that Lady Gaga makes in the middle of her show.  When Ms. Gaga called my friend on the phone, you couldn’t miss us because we were plastered on the globe-o-trons chatting away with her.  The contest award also included upgraded seats (lower level row 3) and a backstage meet and greet (after the concert, for a minute).  Let’s just say that I’m a huge Lady Gaga fan and now a Virgin Mobile fan.  Best night ever!

Now, let’s talk about Lady Gaga leveraging social media.  She knows have to use it well.  The top celebrities on Twitter garner over 5 million followers with Ms. Gaga as #1 with 5.8 million followers.  Also, she has the most Facebook fans with 16.5 million fans and had the most watched YouTube video (“Bad Romance” music video) with 267 million views (think Justin Bieber just beat her).  This is not by chance.  Her marketing team knows how to cater to the fans.  Exclusive and controlled content is delivered through these channels and the fans want it.  It’s a win-win situation.  How can you apply the same strategy that makes sense for your business?

PS - If you have been to a Lady Gaga concert, please leave a comment about what you thought.  Share with us!

Almost always I am con-stealth mode, I think people are cheating themselves from getting good feedback from others.  How can someone give feedback if they know nothing about the idea?  I am not asking these folks to disclose everything, such as implementation and IP, just enough information so that people know what the idea is about.  Also, if someone is afraid to share, then maybe that person isn’t bringing anything to the table to make the idea a success.

When I am pro-stealth mode, it’s usually because I know that people just don’t want to share things with folks who they don’t know too well.  It’s nothing personal.  Also, I can see people not interested in hearing feedback when they have already made the decision to move forward with the idea no matter what someone else says.  Been there, done that, I understand.  It’s dedication baby!  Well perhaps ignorant dedication, but still dedication.

So, yesterday, I was thinking about some advice that I received from an Angel Investor at a Women 2.0 event.  I am a trained engineer after all so it is my job to over analyze things.  He told me, “Someone can steal your idea, but not your vision and experience”.  I didn’t think too much about it until now.  Basically, he was saying don’t get hung up with a copycat.  You are the person with the vision/roadmap and the person with experience (e.g., knowing the customer pain and how to execute).

Similar to the triangle of cost, content, and time when talking about making a product, I propose a triangle of idea, vision, and experience when talking about starting up.

Back to the idea of stealth mode.  Besides the reasons that I discussed earlier about being in stealth mode, I actually think that people go into stealth mode because they lack vision and experience (e.g., missing two sides of the triangle).  For vision, people just don’t understand what makes their idea cool and how the product can evolve into that cool product.  There are going to be folks who go into an area where they lack experience.  Until you start developing and selling the product, you gain no experience.  For this very reason alone, people need a head start so that they can get the experience, not for a first mover advantage as some may argue.

Enough ranting.  Enjoy!

When I first heard about Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner (BAGGD), it was when Google hosted the very first one.  I unfortunately heard about the event too late to even attend.  Rumor has it that there was food galore with plenty of free schwag and sushi!  I have longed waited to go to a great Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner party.  Last night, may have been it.

Yahoo hosted the 7th(?) Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner at their headquarters in Sunnyvale.  It was a class act party.  I’ve been to their cafeteria before for previous events like P-Camp, but they transformed the cafeteria into party central.  It was unrecognizable to me.

Unlike previous BAGGD events that I’ve attended, the food kept coming out and there was an open bar.  The decor was in purple fashion like the BAGGD and Yahoo colors, what a coincidence!  There was a computer-themed cake.  The music (I think) was from Los Gatos DJ.  They played top 40s and some dance.  It kept the vibe upbeat.  And all attendees received a “Code like a girl” womens t-shirts.

Unfortunately, the party central layout was not optimal for listening to speakers.  There were two of them - Hiliary Schneider, Executive VP of Americas, and Cheryl Ainoa, SVP Global Services Engineering.  To be honest, I couldn’t hear them too well.  All I remember is that Hilary had no slides and was talking about tomatoes at the beginning.  Oh and that there are 35% women at Yahoo.  Cheryl had slides and was talking about more technical things which were interesting.  I did not get all of it, but I know that Hadoop was mentioned.  Maybe her slides are posted somewhere?

One thing that I would have loved is a Q&A at the end of their talks.  I love Q&A.  I had one question brewing that I wanted to ask the keynote speaker.  So Hilary or someone else from Yahoo who has authority, here is my question, drum roll please…  Sophia: “It’s great that Yahoo opens up its data sources for developers to create applications on top of.  I did notice that many of the APIs are for non-commercial use only.  What role does this (personal use APIs) play in being competitive with companies like Google, Twitter, or Facebook who offer APIs for commercial use?  In what way does this (personal use APIs) encourage innovation?”  …end of drum roll.

Of course, one of the reasons that companies sponsor BAGGD events is to share something with a captive audience (girl geeks).  Yahoo did a great job of motivating attendees to visit all of their demo booths.  Why you might ask?  Well, they had a card that they called a passport and you needed to visit at least 6 booths to get 6 stamps.  Then, you can enter to win a…..IPAD!  As much as I love winning things, each booth was crowded and I heard from a friend that it took 45 minutes to get all the stamps.  I was not that motivated.

I wished that Yahoo had a handout about each demo so that I didn’t have to physically visit each demo to learn about it.  So of course I know nothing about the demos that they had last night.  But, I did ask a friend about one of them.  She told me that Yahoo has a FireFox plug-in that you can use to monitor your web performance and it will offer suggestions on where you can optimize your web site such as image caching for a longer time if the image does not change that often.

Not all BAGGD events will be as posh as this one, but you got to give credit to Yahoo for throwing a kick @ss party.  I was very impressed.  I suggest that you “fan” Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner on Facebook so that you know when the next one is coming up.  Companies, I suggest that you host a BAGGD event if you want to share something great about your product to girl geeks.  See you at the next one!

More pics from others and others. A YDN blog posting.

When I first arrived, the event was not ready yet.  Note to self, don’t arrive when the event starts.  I wandered around and attacked the Motorola photo booth (I <3 photo booths!).  They had a bunch of out of space toy props so naturally I picked the mechanical robot arm.  About 30 minutes later, I found out that the same Motorola booth was giving out Droid X phones for free.  All that I had to do was do a 30 second video on what interesting thing that I do outside of work.  I hunted down the one guy who was recording the videos, did my pitch and voila!  Phone!  It was the highlight of my night.  Thank you Motorola (@motomobile)!

Some other booths that were there include Dorsey & Whitney LLP law firm and CalInnovates.org.  The Dorsey booth as far as I could tell was unmanned all evening.  I being a sucker for free schwag raided the booth anyways and got some bottom-lit plastic shot glasses and blinking light keychains.  Not sure what the correlation is with party gear and a law firm, but the schwag were cute trinkets.  The CalInnovates.org gave away free iPhone skins of the California state flag (it’s on my iPhone now) and a free t-shirt, womens if I may add.  They asked how I felt about California legislature affecting high-tech companies.  I just commented that California government is doing what the housing real estate market is doing.  There is a high demand to live in certain areas (e.g, SF, LA, near the beach), so hike up the house price until buyers stop buying aka companies stop coming to California.

The description of the event described it as a mover and shaker type of event with VCs and entrepreneurs and enthusiasts (like me).  It was not apparent to me that there were a lot of VCs at the event.  I did notice a bunch of entrepreneurs which was fun to hear their war stories.  The number of people were on the lower end from what I expected although I did talk to people longer AND met more of the attendees (higher percentage).  Not a total lost cause.

In case you were wondering about the food and drinks.  They had Cass winery, Magners Irish Cider, Kicks ice cream sandwiches, a Mexican taco truck, and an Indian/Mexican food truck.  There were plenty of food and drinks.

Question, would I go again?  If the location is cool, then yes otherwise I’ll pass next time.

Things that I learned

• when working with potential cofounders: 1)  before starting, agree to high level plans of the role that person could play and what contribution translate to what equity %, 2) work on small projects and see if working relationship and quality of work are good before moving forward
• you don’t need to be techie to work on a tech idea, in a previous posting, I mentioned the same thing.  as a non-techie, you can do mockups (check out MockApps) to show to your potential cofounder or contractors
• money can come from your extended network.  i met a founder who got some odd millions of dollars (think $5M) from a shared connection with his company’s lawyer
• demo like a salesperson.  one demo booth was uninteresting.  they had 4 youngsters hanging out and when i walked up, asked if i wanted to see a demo instead of just pitching and demoing.  amateurs! j/k
• don’t eat anything messy because you’ll get dirty and people will talk about “that guy” or “that girl” who spilled all over the place.  there was one guy, so I heard, that ate some mexican food and spilled it all over the front of his shirt.

People whom I met:

• Director at Silicon Valley Bank
• Founder of Appfeeds
• Founder of a medical management software system
• Director at Woodside Capital
• Founder of a digital media company
• A lawyer focused on startups
• Founder of SF MusicTech
• Marketing person at a stealth B2C/B2B payment company
• Founder of Chic Meets Geek events

To help you with your season’s greetings, here are some tips from my friends with my two cents.

• If you’re applying for a technical position, spend some time reviewing relevant topics and coding exercises (e.g., databases, data structures, networking, etc.).  You can usually find lists online of commonly asked interview questions for various types of positions.  Only a small quantity of information will be of use during the interview (1% 5%?). Get used to it.
• What key things do you want the interviewer to remember about you?
• In 60 seconds, how would you sell the interviewer that you’re the right person for the job?  This is important during the “tell me about yourself” part.  Support this with specific examples and evidence from your past experiences.
• Pause to answer questions.  A thoughtful answer is more important than a quick answer lacking details.
• Boost up your confidence.  Find at least one person who’s going to make you feel like you’re the best for the job.
• Even if you’re not in the market, you should be ready for an interview at any time.  Stay up-to-date with skills for your role.
• Be nice, friendly, and don’t elude tasks or questions during the interview.  Answer questions clearly.
• Come prepared with a list of questions to ask at the end.
• Be thoughtful and specific to demonstrate a genuine interest in the company.
• Be on time (i.e., 5-10 minutes early).
• Dress to impress.

One of my other favorite organizations in the bay area is Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner (I’ll call it baggd for the sake of laziness).  A few weeks ago, I attended baggd #6 at the Computer History Museum hosted by Polyvore, an online fashion dressing room where you create clothing sets and share them.  This was my 2nd baggd event.  It’s so interesting to see the type of women who attend these events based on the topic du jour (or topic du event?).  I can definitely tell you that there were a bunch of stylish women, but not so sure how many of them were geeks.  So I am a geek and I love fashion so this event was a perfect match for me.

The evening started off with some nibbles and drinks.  Then they had a 4-5 person panel about online fashion.  The food was good, but it was gone soon after I arrived.   Women love to eat.  They also had a fun photo booth with props in the lobby.  This is the second time that I’ve seen a photo booth at an event.  It’s becoming quite popular.

Now the panel, it was okay.  It went a little long and  the focus more on fashion than on geeky topics.  It would have been good to get a balance of the two topics.  The CEO of Polyvore did the moderation with folks from Polyvore (of course), Chictopia, Moxie, and eBay.

I did ask two questions: 1) since this is girl geek dinner, who makes the technical decisions at your company? and 2) are you profitable?  I didn’t get a straight answer, but eBay said that a woman (not her) makes the technical decisions.  Yeah!  For the profitable one, the Polyvore CEO said that they are and commented by saying profitability is not a good measure of success.  Not sure why she said that because I did not infer that profitability a success factor or even the only success factor.  Hmm…  The CEO said that she didn’t want to be profitable so early in the company.  If she thinks profitability is a bad thing, then someone should let her investors know to pull the plug.  Hahaha.

My notes from the panel discussion:

• soft goods like fashion, jewelry is surpassing hard goods like tech, soft goods make up a small percentage of spend (eBay)
• users influence what designers they carry (Moxie)
• luxury brands want to control messaging like Twitter (Moxie)
• brands with prominent face for the brand like DVF (Diane Von Furstenberg) can leverage Twitter a lot better (Polyvore)
• luxury brands fear loss of control in the internet space (eBay)
• we use Ruby on rails, focus on core set of features/functions, get feedback from influencers to shape the product (Chictopia)
• eBay is good at search, need to be sure that users can find items, how can a user find more things to buy, leveraging image search to find products, open up the minds of users, users do 80% search 20% browse (eBay)
• start social media in public relations, don’t ignore social media (Moxie)

Aside from the event agenda, I really enjoyed networking with new and old friends.  You can count on baggd events to give you that opportunity.

• Tony Hsieh’s “Delivering Happiness” book - people love giveaways, what can I say.  an idea from the book that I’d implement is the idea of having mini-promotions instead of a long time period for  promotions.  the idea gives employees the feeling of progress.
• Women 2.0 Angel Investor Round Table - Be open to feedback but don’t let it deter you.  Do you think investors would like the idea of facebook or foursquare without seeing the users?  I think not.  Build it, show results, and the people will believe.  If you have nothing built, then treat the feedback with a grain of salt.  Who knows if your idea will catch like wildfire.
• Jennifer Convertibles lacks customer service - would you believe that this posting is very popular?  apparently JC doesn’t have many happy customers.  I suggest that someone from their PR team does some online damage control.  do a google search and you’ll see why.
• So you wanna pay someone to create an iPhone app? - lots of interest in iPhone apps,
• Startup Weekend makes a pitstop in San Jose - there was an associated press article on startup weekend in NYC.  awesome press for the SW team, but we all know that Silicon Valley is still the best place to start up.  one thing to comment, the SW coordinator for San Jose said the true test is whether you are still working on the idea 6 months later.  good challenge!
• Chic Meets Geek V1.3 entertains - You can see more pictures on their facebook page.
• Partying with (PR2) Robots at Willow Garage - Nothing much to say here.  The best parties are with robots.
• Willow Garage launches PR2 Robot Beta Program - ditto.
• Use Zilox.com to rent out your goods - this is an old posting and not sure why it’s showing up.  could it be the green thing kicking in or the bad economy?  why rent when you can buy cheap on craigslist?
• Tips for shameless networking - my personal favorite, if anyone has done of these things, let me know if they worked.  I’d like to add, if your boss asks you to join her, get coffee or lunch for the 2nd time that day.

My notes:

• show repeat visitors to your website
• make sure investor understands your business
• need to be able to answer questions quickly otherwise it appears you don’t know the space
• can you convince someone on the phone to have a follow-up meeting with you?
• describe a type of customer, who would pay for this?
• angels try to find a reason to say no
• you need money when people will no longer work for free
• don’t raise money that you don’t need, it takes time to raise and you get stuck with a valuation
• if you want millions of dollars, you need more operational skills to grow the team
• top-down market numbers could work if you can make it relevant to your business
• if someone steals your idea, it’s good, go to someone else and say that you’re the one with the vision
• if you can explain it to non-techie people, that’s good
• find companies in your space and go after their investors
• get someone to give you an intro to an investor, cold calling/emailing doesn’t work
• what prevents a competitor from going into your space?

Some business ideas that were shared include connecting scientific experts with people looking to contract expertise, improve retaining knowledge and deliver education through the phone, and end-to-end vertical ad network.  One woman flew from NYC just for the event, well it gave her a reason to visit her friends out west too.

My conclusion, angels want to see some family and friends investing and money making now whereas VCs could invest in an idea with huge potential payout.  Whether you have an idea or not, it is always educational to hear what someone has to say about different ideas.

The book goes over his early upbringing and introduction to Zappos.com, how he and others kept the company afloat during trying times, then how they sustained and grew the performance of the company.  At first, the book reads a bit slow, but started to become more interesting as it got into the Zappos.com story.

My highlights:

• Tony likes poker and raves
• Find a market that’s huge and figure out how relevant it is to your company (e.g., 10% of online goods sold were shoes)
• If shipping was a core function, vendor relationships and location of goods (e.g., east coast warehouse in addition to west coast location) were important, don’t outsource your core
• Every interaction with the customer is your chance to do good marketing/PR
• Core values come from the employees and make it part of the culture
• People work harder when they are happy because they care
• Very open communication with employees is a good thing, Zappos had Q&A with their employees often

When I think about delivering happiness in general, I think about how employees need to feel happy as well as customers.  You can’t have one or the other.  For instance, how often do companies ask their employees, “besides compensation, what would make you happy working here?”  If someone asked me that, I would say free tissue boxes, a big flat monitor, and business cards.  Something so simple.  I’m just saying.

Alright, so I just happen to have one extra book to give out to the my blog readers.  I will personally mail it out to you.  The first person to tell me via my blog comments 1) Where did Tony Hsieh go to undergraduate school? 2) What is your favorite SophiaPerl.com blog post and why?  Good luck!  Note: You will not see all the comments until I process them.  This helps prevent comment spammers.

Please note that I received two free books (one for me, one to giveaway) as part of the book’s blogger program.  I have been asked to write an honest review during the week of the launch.