Grubstake Breakfast this morning turned out to be a productive event and better then the last one we attended, back in June.  Some of you might remember that we had submitted to present at this morning’s breakfast, but had not been selected.  They have moved away from having pre-revenue, start-up companies present, and have selected to have companies that are farther along and established present.  I’m guessing it's because that’s the type of companies investors are more interested in.  Three out of the four companies were rather impressive…one of them really shouldn’t have been up there at all.

The Presenter

Out of the three…one of them made me say: “What…right here in Virginia” and “Where have these guys been hiding out”.  The company is mpowerplayer. 

“Mpowerplayer helps you discover the world of mobile gaming from the comfort of your PC desktop. Quickly browse a vast library of mobile games and applications, and you can sample any or all of it with a single click. With our desktop-based player application and a built-in content catalog, Mpowerplayer brings the “iTunes” approach to mobile gaming.”

To really get a full sense of their services you need to download their dashboard.  By the way, my first piece of feedback to them would be to make the image of their dashboard much bigger, to show it off.  Of course, I have much more feedback and I know so would the other members of our growing DC Tech community.

I got to talking with a couple of the guys on the mpowerplayer team and asked them if they knew anything about the DC Tech community.  They shrugged and said no.  I told them a little bit more about the community and being able to leverage the community and other entrepreneurs in the community to help them out.  The core reason they are looking for funding is to beef up their team and add someone to focus on sales and more marketing.  I ended up given them a few pointers, that I hope they’ll follow because it would make a big difference to them and have a really low cost. 

Anyway, that was to prove the point that they can get some of the help, support and assistance they need from a solid community of other sharp entrepreneurs and it costs nothing other than their participation and sharing of their own knowledge to help others.  Working ALONE is fighting an uphill battle—when are people going to realize that.

I hope they get involved because they have an impressive and great product…they can really be part of showing off the innovation of the start-up community in the DC, VA and MD area. 

The Investor

Another person who uttered the words “What…right here in Virgina” in not so many or exact words was Kiran Hebbar from Valhalla Partners.  I gave him the quick pitch on Why Go Solo but that really wasn’t why I wanted to talk to him.  I know, I know, hard to believe, right.  I wanted to know if he knew about the Open Coffee Club meetings, Lunch 2.0, DC Refresh and other events that are being hosted in the area…since they (VCs) haven’t and aren’t coming out to them.  I explained to him that we are starting to have quite a thriving community of entrepreneurs and tech community that is working at making a dent and a name for ourselves, but we can’t really do it without the support of the investor community.  He was surprised to hear such a community was forming and in existence.  He handed me his business card and I’ll be emailing him shortly with links and points of contacts for what’s been and is going on. Let’s hope Kiran takes proper action and starts 1) coming out and 2) encouraging others to do the same. 

On that note, since I talked to a Washington Post reporter who is doing a story on the DC Tech community and complained about the lack of involvement on side of investors in our community it was probably why I felt compelled to let Kiran know a little bit more about the DC Tech community.  I might be a little bit guilty of not sending invites and informaton about events to investors...and putting the ball in their (investors) court to act accordingly.

Recap 

All and all it was a good morning.  After the breakfast myself, Martin and Keith reconvened in the lobby and shared our thoughts on how it went and who we met.

Between the three of us, we walked away with quite a few business cards for potential partners/customers and other good people who showed solid interest in what we’re doing.  A couple investors asked Martin to send them our business plan.

Next breakfast is three months away.  Our plan is to have the seed funding by then and perhaps more…but if not, we will be very well positioned to be selected to present and get the entire room sold on Why Go Solo.