Come and join ROCC on November 13 with Steven Tylock, solopreneur, speaker, and author of the LinkedIn Personal Trainer as we explore how the world's #1 online professional networking site can be used for entrepreneurial activity. Bring your questions and your own personal stories of LinkedIn best practices as Steven will interactively share his view of how entrepreneurs can tap into the power of being "Linked In".

On October 9, ROCC gathered at the annual RIT Entrepreneurship Conference. Special thanks to Richard DeMartino, Director of the Albert J. Simone Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at RIT, for letting us participate in an otherwise sold out event. I was only able to attend a portion of the conference (and couldn't get past the fire marshal to sit in on Elan Lee, co-founder of Fourth Wall Studios' keynote due to over capacity issues). However, I was delighted with the events I did attend, particularly the panel on Social Media, which showcased three local entrepreneurs, Anna Roco-Castro, Founder, FamilyEden.com; Sean Colombo, Founder, Motive Force, LLC, creator of LyricWiki (acquired by Wikia, Inc.) and Aaron Newman, Founder, Techrigy, Inc. (acquired by Alterian Ltd). Not only were the panelists current on the latest social media trends, they were also very well schooled in starting (and in some cases exiting) web based startups. It was great to see, as I often get asked by others from the larger venture capital and entrepreneurial communities how much interesting technology and talent exists in the region. Based on the companies I met at the conference, I'd say it's getting more interesting every day.

Aaron Newman, founder of Techrigy, Inc. recently shared with ROCC members strategies that he believed were critical to his success in building Application Security, Inc., a venture backed database security company based in NYC and more recently Techrigy, Inc, a social media monitoring company sold to Alterian in July 2009.

Some of the highlights:

- Thinking about the future: Aaron likes to think about what will be exciting 3 years from now and then refine that thinking by talking with key industry influencers and potential customers (vs. conducting formal market research). To become and be seen as an "expert" himself, he wrote a book related to each of the industries he planned to penetrate, co-authoring Enterprise 2.0 Implementation prior to founding Techrigy, Inc. and the Oracle Security Handbook, when he was starting Application Security, Inc.

- Being flexible & adapting to changes in the market: Aaron said he never knows what his companies will ultimately become when he starts them. Techrigy itself changed course when it appeared that larger marketing firms were more eager and accepting of the company's product than the company's initial target customer (compliance organizations within large corporations).

- Staying focused on what's important: High on Aaron's list...identifying and pursuing a specific niche to start; treating every employee as a partner with "skin in the game" (forgoing standard salary levels in exchange for equity); and jumping through hoops to get and keep your first customer.

- Enjoying the fun of being a startup: For Aaron, part of the excitement in starting companies is being able to build something of value even with very limited resources - in essence, "making something out of nothing".

Indeed, the question was asked as to what Aaron believed would be exciting 3 years from now...much to everyone's disappointment, Aaron just smiled and declined to answer.

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On October 9, ROCC will be heading to RIT's for the annual RIT Entrepreneurship Conference. This will be in place of our normal meeting. Coffee & networking will be sponsored by RIT during registration and ROCC members will receive free admission to the initial morning session.

On September 11, Aaron Newman, Founder & CEO of Techrigy, Inc., will talk about his experience with building one of the leading social media monitoring products available, SM2, as recognized by TechCrunch, Mashable, Forrester Research and Aberdeen, and with starting, scaling and selling Techrigy to Alterian Ltd., all in less than three years. As noted in an earlier post, Aaron and co-founder Jay Mari started Techrigy after moving to Rochester from NYC in 2006. Aaron and Jay were both previously involved with Application Security, Inc., a venture-backed data security company in NYC, which Aaron founded. It should be another great meeting. Hope to see you there.

Last month, George Daddis, CEO of WorldGate Communications and founder/CEO of Allworx Corp. (acquired by Paetec in 2007), gave an informative talk about his success in building the local telecommunications equipment and services company. George provided a lot of great insight on his strategy for leveraging early service revenue to fund initial product development. This self-funded development and ongoing service revenue allowed the company to more easily attract its initial outside investors. Some of the thoughtful advice from George for fellow entrepreneurs:

> Build anticipation in the angel community as you put key elements of your business in place (which shows early traction & an ability to execute). Obtaining early customer endorsements can also be helpful in securing angel investment.

> For small companies who choose to use a dealer channel, building loyalty and relationships with dealers is critical.

> Regarding venture capital investors - understand that VC's are interested in making money and do so by making the company successful. The relationship with VCs is most successful when a CEO takes responsibility for problems as they arise and (simultaneously) presents constructive solutions.

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It was great to read some positive news recently regarding an increased interest among larger venture capital firms in making seed level investments (Venture Beat: Seed is the new Series A for VCs) . Involving quality venture capital firms at a seed stage can be very positive for both the investor and the entrepreneur, although the bar is undoubtedly high to attract such investment. It is, of course, also important that the deal is structured correctly, protecting both parties, but also leaving enough equity with the founder to withstand dilution in subsequent rounds (the seed term sheets I've seen used by some of the larger firms recognize this and have been structured appropriately). Its great to that more investment is occuring at this early/seed stage, and I hope this is a trend that continues.

Also out last week, a list of recently raised funds and the most active VC firms (Don Dodge: VCs fresh with money to invest). The VC world is certainly undergoing some changes, but it's encouraging to see some of the top firms are still making new investments.

We received some terrific insight from local entrepreneur and angel investor Dennis Kessler during the July ROCC meeting. Many were pleased to hear that from Dennis' perspective, local angels are still actively looking at and making investments in startups. I heard of several follow on meetings that were scheduled with Dennis post our session, so I hope some good connections were made. Dennis also shared his vision for an area wide event that would showcase local technologies through a collaborative effort between the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology. Per Dennis, there are more details to come, but it sounds like a terrific plan to highlight what our entrepreneurial community has to offer.

At the August 14 ROCC meeting, George Daddis, current CEO of WorldGate Communications, Inc. (maker of the Ojo personal video phone) and Founder of Rochester-based Allworx Corp will share his experiences while building Allworx from inception to a business with over 75,000 end users and a sales channel of over 900+ dealers throughout North America. During this period, George navigated several rounds of angel and institutional funding and ultimately sold the company to Paetec in 2007.

George has a great story to tell, so I hope everyone can make it!

Earlier this week, Alterion (LSE:ALN), a global integrated marketing firm, announced its acquisition of social media monitoring company Techrigy, Inc., based in Pittsford, NY. Aaron Newman, Founder and CEO of Techrigy, also helped to co-found ROCC and the Social Media Club of Rochester. Techrigy is the third company Aaron has founded, previously founding NYC-based Application Security, Inc. and DbSecure which he sold to Internet Security Systems (ISSX) in 1998.

Aaron and his team at Techrigy built an extremely robust product and an enviable customer base, less than three years from founding the company and relocating from New York City to Rochester. In May 2009, Techrigy acquired one of its competitors, Adiamo Systems, based in California, further increasing its position in the social media monitoring market. It's a pretty great story, for Aaron, his team and for our area, and it will be nice to see the company's solution expand even further, now as part of global company. Aaron has agreed to talk at a future ROCC meeting and share some his experiences with building break through technology companies.

TechCrunch had a great article on the acquisition of Techrigy and co-founders Aaron Newman and Jay Mari. Congrats again to Aaron, Jay & the rest of the Techrigy team!

From all reports, the open format at June's meeting was very well received. Special thanks to Mark Frisk for leading the discussion (he promises to post a recap of the meeting very soon).

I was sorry to have missed June's meeting, but had the opportunity to attend this year's Convergence Forum in Providence, RI. A plug for the forum's sponsors, J. Robert Scott and Foley & Larder LLP, I have to say that this was one of the best life science conferences I've attended.

A terrific panel focusing on the impact of new technologies on the cost of healthcare with Charlie Baker, President and CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Paul Levy, President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center was covered by Mass High Tech as well as a talk by Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer. On the funding side, my sense from the panel discussions and conversations with attendees was that even though capital raising (for both entrepreneurs as well as VCs) continues to be tough, and a lot more of investors' time is being spent with existing portfolio companies, new deals are still getting done. And although concerns about the exit environment are real, several of the investors I spoke with still seem to view this period as one of opportunity, as I do (it was also nice to see some venture backed IPOs in Q2 - hopefully a sign of good things to come).

For July's ROCC meeting, we will be joined by Dennis Kessler, an active local angel investor, executive professor of business administration at the William E. Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester, and co-owner of Kessler Restaurants, LLC, the largest Friendly's franchisee in the country. Dennis earned a Law Degree from Yale University, a Master's Degree from the City University of New York and a Bachelor's from John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York.

We had a great discussion at this month's ROCC meeting with special guest Peter Platt, VP of Online Media at Butler/Till. Peter covered a number of key topics, tools and trends in online advertising including the use of traditional banner ads and Google Ads, as well as Facebook and Twitter. He shared some sobering statistics about the short life of most widgets as well as blog readership (with the number of blog "writers" today exceeding the number of blog "readers"), and after some pushback regarding the true value of Twitter, Peter offered an example of a "good" business use of Twitter: a retail client who tweets about weekly specials to its niche followers/best customers.

ROCC members Cory Armbrecht, co-founder of Float, Steve Shapiro, founder of Digsby and ROCC organizer Mark Frisk also shared ideas and tactics they've used to generate new business, including leveraging national online PR/Media resources, CPA advertising, Twitter and viral tactics: making it easy for current users (customers) to recommend your company to friends.

As always, it was great to meet several new companies this month including Tenrehte, a fabless semiconductor company offering Wi-Fi system on a chip solutions and Jorsek, a software company providing solutions that allow users to edit and restructure their websites as easily as they edit a Word document.

Peter's parting words for us:"Understand your goals and audience before trying any new advertising or digital media tool". Thanks Peter for your time and terrific insight. Special thanks to Melissa Geska, founder, Fabunation, LLC and co-founder of ROCC, for referring Peter.

For more information on "good" uses of Twitter check out Business Week's recent article "Twitter: Building Businesses Tweet by Tweet", and for some additional stats on social media use, a recent presentation by Barry Hurd of 123SocialMedia.com provides some great info. Peter also posts some great information on the Butler/Till website.

Peter Platt, Vice President of Online Media with Butler/Till, a full-service media planning and buying agency, will stop in for a talk during our May meeting. Peter has seen a lot of change in his 20+ years in the marketing and media industry (the last 16 of which have focused on internet marketing). When Peter first started working on Web projects in 1993, the Lycos search engine only listed about 150,000 Web pages in its directory.

In addition to his current role with Butler/Till, Peter has held prior positions with dockside.net, ICE Communications, Saatchi & Saatchi and Rumrill-Hoyt. His experience brings together a unique combination of account management, technology and strategic planning. Peter is committed to helping businesses realize the true value that the internet can provide to a company's bottom line. He cringes at some of the business models and plans that many former dot-com companies tried to implement in the past and will talk with ROCC members about what he believes are the best methods for leveraging the internet to maximize business and marketing objectives.

A great mix of entrepreneurs came out to our March 27 ROCC meeting including several new entrepreneurs with ties to RIT -- newDigs.com, Float and Barnaby, as well as several more experienced entrepreneurs (previous 'intrapreneurs') from Kodak, Carestream and Xerox.

We heard from Jennifer Sertl of Agility 3R, who coaches both entrepreneurs and corporate executives, and shared some words of wisdom on leadership. Jennifer's advice of not overacting to things that cannot be controlled, but staying focused and open to new opportunities during turbulent times seemed particularly relevant. Thanks Jen for joining us!

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On April 10, Will Hoy, partner at Harter Secrest & Emery LLP, will join us for a Q&A roundtable discussion.

Will is head of HSE's Private Equity and Venture Capital Group and represents both private equity and venture capital funds in all aspects of portfolio financing transactions, including portfolio company acquisitions, dispositions and recapitalizations, preferred equity structures, stockholder arrangements, and management employment and equity compensation arrangements. Will also represents a broad range of private and public clients in mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures and general corporate matters. Prior to joining HSE, Will represented both private and public clients with McDermott Will & Emery LLP in Chicago.

Will is making himself available to answer any and all questions, on financing, equity compensation, general corporate matters, etc., and yes, he promised 'the clock will be off'.