Last week IdeaTango.com presented a 90 second elevator pitch at the Rice Alliance Information Technology Forum to 350 venture capitalists, investors, entrepreneurs, and others. According to the Rice Alliance blog, out of 40 companies, IdeaTango was a "notable standout" which was very exciting. We greatly enjoyed the opportunity to spread the word about our unique community where ideas are the currency, and everyone benefits. Several people came up to us after the event and expressed their interest in our idea . . . no pun intended.
Although the main purpose for the event was to garner interest from venture capitalists and investors, that was not our purpose. Although we will eventually need funding to spread the word about our innovative website and inventive members, this was more of an "hello, my name is" affair. We were also happy to speak with other thriving startups such as Tenant Market, OurTrueHome, and De Nova Labs, all of which have very cool products to be released in the next year.
We also had a booth at the event, which gave us an excellent opportunity to give some site demos, explain our vision in more detail, and hand out some of our marketing materials. The notable standout was the "100% Organic Innovation" bumper magnet. Speaking of which, if anyone wants to spread the word about ideatango.com through a bumper magnet, email us and we'll mail you one, free of charge. All in all it was a great event to introduce ourselves, communicate our vision, and meet other startups.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

During my travels I carried along some Entrepreneur and Inc. magazines I'd been meaning to read. I found one really interesting article for a startup company called Prosper.com. Like IdeaTango.com, it's a user-driven, collaborative community. But instead of ideas, the site is a peer-to-peer lending website. It's a pretty cool concept that can allow many cash-strapped entrepreneurs to get loans from essentially, next door neighbors. Here's the catch, you have to have good credit to get a decent interest rate. But the rates are lower than most credit cards, so if you're looking for some quick cash flow and have not been able to get a line of credit from the bank, then this would be a good source for you.

On the flipside, if you are looking to get more bang for your buck than a 5% interest savings account can give you, check out the site. Of course remember that with higher reward, comes higher risk.

We're prepping for our presentation tomorrow, and we'll let you know how it goes.

Bryan

IdeaTango.com - A user-driven, collaborative community where creative members provide businesses with innovative ideas for product and services, where both parties financially benefit.