January Entrepreneurs Forum:
Essential Productivity Apps for Startups
The nuts and bolts of running a startup business.
Thursday, Jan. 14 - 6:30PM at WorkBar Boston
Topics:
- What are the essential productivity applications and services for startups today?
- Web apps vs. desktop software: The good, the bad, and the ugly of relying on SaaS for critical business applications.
- Does the today's startup need a "real" office?
- Dedicated, Shared, VPS, or Cloud - what's the right hosting choice for your startup?
- SEO - Science or Art? What every startup needs to know about SEO.
- Spending your ad dollars wisely - key considerations for promoting your startup
- Outsourcing - How much of your business can you outsource?
- Getting paid & PCI Compliance! Should you roll your own billing system or using use payment service?
- The SaaS sales cycle: Prospect, Demo, Close, Train & Support.
- Are there Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions that work for startups?
- Once you have a customers attention, what tools will help you communicate and impress?
Moderator:
Panelists (alphabetic order):
 
Panelist and Moderator Bios:
Rich Baker
In 1990, having tired of grubbing for research grants as an Assistant Professor at UCLA, Rich moved his young family from balmy LA to frozen Boston to join a videoconferencing startup called PictureTel. Over time, he became its CTO and enjoyed the ride as the company grew a dozen-fold.
He left in 1999, partnering with another PictureTel alum, Taylor Kew, to “start something” of their own. Countless conversations later, they decided the world could use a simpler way to see things they talk about. “Simpler” became Glance.
Ray Bernaz
Ray Bernaz is the founder and CEO of Socialibrium LLC. His background includes technology management, banking, and consulting. He now provides the strategic vision for Socialibrium's roadmap and works with the development team to translate that into practice.
David Hauser
David oversees the strategic direction and operations of Grasshopper and serves as the company’s technology visionary. A passionate technologist, he’s the guy you go to when you have a question about how the universe operates (or if you simply want to consult his encyclopedic inner search engine). As champion of the company’s Core Values and work culture, he strives to create an environment that is professionally and personally rewarding for all employees. David leads multiple departments across Grasshopper including Labs, Engineering, Network Operations, and overall company Operations. A technology start-up veteran, David was co-founder of Return Path, an e-mail performance management company, and founder of WebAds360, an ad-serving technology provider for small and mid-sized businesses. David’s strong entrepreneurial spirit has allowed him to serve as a consultant for various companies as well as a mentor to emerging entrepreneurs through his alma mater, Babson College. David is an Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) Board Member, and a Member of the Global Advisory Board for Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship (SAGE). He also judges several young entrepreneur competitions each year. David was born and raised in New York City. David graduated from Babson College with a Bachelor of Science in Business. He also enjoys long walks on the beach.
Larry Kim
Larry founded the WordStream in 2007. He bootstrapped WordStream by providing search marketing consulting services while managing a team of engineers and marketers to productize various search engine marketing tasks. In August of 2008 he secured a Series A venture capital investment from Sigma Partners. In September 2008, he resigned as company president & CEO to focus on marketing and product management. Larry currently serves as Vice President of Product Development. He is responsible for all inbound marketing efforts as well as for defining WordStream products and features.
Larry's background has been in software engineering, software product management, and product marketing (including SEO and PPC), for several widely-used software productivity tools over 10 years.
WordStream provides PPC software, SEO tools and keyword tools for search engine marketing, including their next generation keyword generator for conducting keyword research and keyword analysis for SEO and PPC.
John Smith
John is a computing and software technologist with 25 years of experience. His expertise is in high performance architectures. While at Thinking Machine Corporation, John produced the DataVault, the first commercial disk array, and then the Scalable Disk Array. He then founded and led STONE+WIRE, developing super speed disk arrays and networks to support the burgeoning digital special effects industry. After a profitable exit, (via acquisition by Discreet Logic, Inc.), Mr. Smith began his consulting career in 1996 and has worked with several successful Internet and enterprise ventures, including Alexa Internet, (purchased by Amazon), BrightMail, (purchased by Symantec), Knowledge Stream Partners, (purchased by Amdocs). John's work with Black Duck Software transformed this single product company into a SaaS provider by constructing a SOA platform and new website retooled to achieve the Learn > Try > Buy > Share ideal in attracting qualified traffic. John holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, and has completed two dozen executive programs in communication, management and leadership.
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