DC StartupDigest – August 8, 2011

9/08/2011

Below is an archived version of the DC StartupDigest Events List – a weekly curated listing of the best tech startup events in Washington, D.C. If you would like to get next week’s digest on Monday, sign up here.

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In addition to the two startup coworking spaces I mentioned last week, I want to add to the list the DAGpad, the David All Group’s co-working space for tech and design startup entrepreneurs in downtown Washington. The DAGpad has space for new startups, so if you’re looking for your first office, contact Meghann Olshefski at meghann@davidallgroup.com. 

The high regarded Open Angel Forum is making another east coast appearance for its second stop in Philadelphia. OAF selects 5 to 7 early stage companies to pitch to a group of top angel investors. Applications from DC based companies are welcome and are due August 26th.

DC StartupDigest is curated by:
Michael Mayernick – Co-Founder, Spinnakr

 

DC StartupDigest is supported exclusively by:
Winners of Global Entrepreneurship Week’s Startup Open competition, sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation, could win a trip to Liverpool to hang out with global entrepreneur experts or a year’s worth of mentoring from the founders of Redbox. Learn more about all of the prizes here and submit your startup here.

 

What’s Going on in the DC Startup Community

NoVaCoWork Meetup
When: Wed Aug 10, 11:00am
Where: Artisphere, 1101 WILSON BOULEVARD, Arlington, VA 22209 

If you’re a builder of web things or a creative designer, writer, or UXer who wants to get out of the house (or office) a bit, then come join us.

Open Angel Forum Philadelphia Deadline
When: Fri Aug 26, 12:00am

Open Angel Forum gathers the best regional angel investors in a room and put 5 to 7 great startups in front of them.

 

 

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Why Email Isn’t Dead

6/08/2010

This post is based on a conversation I had with Tyler Crowley from Mahalo and Open Angel Fourm. Bio is below:

tyler crowley OAF mahalo

Tyler Crowley is the Director of Corporate Strategy at Mahalo and Producer of Open Angel Forum (OAF). OAF is a high quality private investor pitch forum for founders to meet quality Angels. They are looking for operational startups only, but there is no fee of any kind to pitch or apply. He can be reached @steepdecline.

I’ll start with the conclusion: Email is far from dead.

How could this be? We’ve all read articles, reports, and blog posts telling us email is dead. The truth is though that not only is email not dead, it’s growing fast along with the social media channels that are supposedly replacing it as a communications channel.

Many people believe that Twitter is the biggest threat to email. It’s a very efficient communications channel, it’s easily mobile, you only get Direct Messages from people you want, and the messages are short. But at the same time, Twitter is also a very limited communications channel. It’s very hard to efficiently schedule meetings, make introductions, and send long form content.

Our own StartupDigest newsletter is tangible evidence that email is not getting replaced by social channels. It has grown from just 22 subscribers to over 60,000 in just 6 months. Our subscribers are the most technologically savvy people in the world (developers + founders creating new technology) and yet still love getting StartupDigest weekly in their inbox. Being the early adopters they are, they subject themselves to the most amount of noise through new social channels but enjoy StartupDigest as a rare break from the clutter and noise every other channel is producing.

And email is only getting more powerful. There are companies like Rapportive that give you social context to emails, Mingly that is becoming the social CRM for personal relationships, SailThru that allows your newsletters to have behavioral targeting, RapLeaf that gives you social data based on email addresses, and MailChimp’s Social Pro that gives you real demographic analysis on your email list.

Watch out for an email renaissance coming to your inbox and new startups that extend your inbox to a socially powerful communications tool.

rapportive mingly rapleaf mailchimp sailthru logos

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