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FundingUniverse acquires TwitJump!

Well, it officially came out this morning on Techcrunch that FundingUniverse has acquired the social media analytics company TwitJump.  As part of the deal, Alex Lawrence, a local serial entrepreneur, will be joining the FundingUniverse team as a board member and Chief Evangelist.

We’re super excited about this announcement as this technology is one small piece to our ever-growing strategy to help small business owners.  Over the 2 years, we have really expanded our vision from the original idea to help entrepreneurs connect to angel investors.  That is still at the very core of what we do, it’s just that now we can do so much more.  We’ve taken a broader focus to small business funding and have added over 400 banks across the US to our platform.  We can now help business owners navigate their way to obtain SBA loans, unsecured lines of credit, business credit cards, equipment loans, alternative loans, and equity investments.  This alone has made a huge impact on our ability to increase the number of companies getting funded.

We’ve also expanded our product line as to help business owners grow their business.  For example, it many cases, business owners need to lay a stronger foundation before approaching a bank to get a business loan.  This may include getting a website, writing a more solid business plan, and/or improving their marketing & sales strategy.  We can now identify the needs of the business owner and then figure out efficient ways to offer them what they need.  By so doing, this improves the business owner’s chance to succeed.  A by-product of that is an increased chance of getting approved for a business loan.

That’s where TwitJump comes into play.  We are excited about the opportunity to really help up and coming companies increase their social media strategies to increase their customer base.  Unlike anything theretofore, social media has evened the played field to allow small businesses to play on the same level as large companies.  If used correctly, we feel strongly that small businesses can use social media strategies to attract new customers and increase sales.  We have already seen many case studies from clients (chiropractors, restaurants, tech companies, etc.) that are proving out our assumptions.

You’ve also heard that we are expanding across the US.  We have already hired reps in Arizona and Colorado, with the hopes to get 3 more reps hired within the next couple of months.  It’s an exciting time right now at FundingUniverse and I’m enjoying the ride!

February 11th 2010 Posted to FundingUniverse

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Now Hiring! Please Comment, Email and/or Forward…

FundingUniverse is on a tear.  I will be posting periodically with various positions we will be hiring for.  Feel free to email me – bblake AT fundinguniverse DOT COM.  We offer a really cool place to work, great benefits, a stable and successful company, with a fun group of nice people to be around.  Sounds decent enough, eh?

Here are some of the details:

Senior PHP Developer
PAY:  $55,000 – $75,000 DOE

Description:

Lead a team of developers building an exciting new site from the ground up.  Plan, track, and develop along with the team during sprints.

Experience:

  • 3 years minimum PHP 5 experience
  • OOP expertise
  • Experience with PHP frameworks (Kohana, Code Igniter, Cake)
  • MYSQL, with experience planning and deploying databases
  • Solid UI skills
  • HTML/CSS/Jquery experience
  • Experience prototyping and planning large consumer web apps
  • Rapid development (SCRUM) experience preferred

Bachelor’s in computer science, information systems or other technical degree a plus.

January 25th 2010 Posted to FundingUniverse

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FundingUniverse expanding across the U.S.

Great things are happening on the FundingUniverse front.  It’s been a while since I’ve provided an update so I figured that I would talk about some of the exciting things that are happening lately.

  1. Great team. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, so much of a company’s success depends on the quality of talent that you can attract.  Thus far, we have a tremendous team in place and I’m excited about the results.  When you have talented individuals around you (we added a new addition within the last couple of months — see here) that surpass expectations on a regular basis, it motivates you to be at your best — that is happening right now with our team and it’s exciting to be a part of it.
  2. Expanding product line. Over the past year, we have really rounded out our offering in order to be almost a full-service business solution for our customers.  What I’m most excited about is that we are constantly adding new funding resources to our model to help out more and more business owners.  Recently, we’ve landed a partnership deal with an aggressive SBA lender and now more than 70% of the clients that we send their way are getting approved for a business loan.  Instead of just helping on the angel/VC side of things, we can help a lot more entrepreneurs in a variety of ways.
  3. Opening up new markets. Over the past few months, we’ve been pushing hard to open up new markets in Denver, CO; Phoenix, AZ; and Portland/Seattle.  We’ve got great partners in each of the region (including Amazon, GangPlank, NOW advisors, Jive Communications, SEO.com, Newswire, etc.) and it’s allowing us to do some fun things at our CrowdPitch & Speedpitch events in those regions.  Not only have we announced that all of our events will be FREE from now on (for everyone in attendance), we are also giving away a $15-$20k prize package for the winner of each event!  This has attracted the attention of ABC phoenix and others.

Need your help: We are hoping to have 8-12 offices open throughout the US by the end of 2010 — if you live in an area outside of the above mentioned markets and are interested in being our local market rep (or know anyone that might be interested), please let me know!  We are always looking for good talent.

December 11th 2009 Posted to Angel Investing, Entrepreneurship, FundingUniverse

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A little bit of rivalry fun at the office!

For those of you that know me well, know that I’m a die-hard BYU fan.  It would be a very rare occasion for our family to miss a BYU football game.  You should also know that the BYU/Utah rivalry is one of the most heated rivalries in the country and dominates almost every conversation in the state of Utah no matter where the setting (work, school, church, etc.).

So this year, I decided to start the fun on Monday morning by bringing BYU football sugar cookies for everyone in the office.  Afterward, I sent out an email to the entire company announcing that it was “BYU week.”  Here are a few things that followed:

  • On Tuesday, our admin brought in UofU cookies and gave them to all of the employees
  • Our CTO, Trent Miskin, played a nice joke and replaced our company logo (on our website) with the BYU logo.  The funny thing is that only those within our office network could see the logo.  Most people didn’t know this and were shocked that we would change our FundingUniverse logo with the BYU logo for ALL to see!
  • Then, the other developers swapped the BYU logo with the UofU logo AND made it so everyone’s computer background was changed to a UofU picture.
  • Finally, on Wednesday afternoon (the day before Thanksgiving), my admin planned a fake meeting for me out of the office so that Alex (my partner) and the rest of the FundingUniverse team could do this:

Believe me… I was shocked! I couldn’t believe that they painted my office! That being said, I seriously thought it was hilarious and wasn’t upset for a second. Since then, everyone was asking how I would get him back. I had quite a few ideas on what to do, but I figured that the scoreboard was good enough. Since BYU won 26-23, here was my response:

At the end of the week, it was just all good and fun and I can’t wait until next year.  All I know is that between now and then… BYU has all the bragging rights!  GO COUGARS!

Brock Alex Rivalry

(Don’t you think Alex looks great in that BYU shirt?!!)

December 05th 2009 Posted to FundingUniverse, Personal

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Coming to an area near you

I’m in the Portland Airport writing from my new iPhone (which I love). We are just leaving town after hosting a LivePitch event here in conjunction with PortlandTen, NedSpace, Stoel Rives, and Lunch2.0. We had around 125 people in attendance and saw 5 pretty awesome companies pitch.

I love these events. I love seeing the passion of the entrepreneur in action. I love to see the vulture and variety that is so apparent in various cities throughout the US. I was especially excited today because we announced to the group that we are looking to expand permanantly into the NW and hire someone up here — and we had a lit of interest.

We are also looking to go to other markets also: Colorado, Arizona, and SoCal to name a few. If you or someone you know is interested, let me know.

Each person that we recruit in the local market will be focused on 3 things: community development (angels, entrepreneurs, universities, business organizations, etc), events, and attracting new revenues. Let’s be honest, it’s my dream job! :)

After leaving events like this, i’m reminded how much the business community needs them. We need to move quicker to spread them out to our already-existing custers throughout the US. Here we come!

August 26th 2009 Posted to Entrepreneurship, FundingUniverse, On The Road

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How does Social Media affect FundingUniverse?

One of the things that has been on my mind since I attended the Gnomedex 8.0 conference was how social media can positively and negatively affect the FundingUniverse brand.  Now, I realize that “social media” is a very popular buzz word these days — everyone (& their dog) is talking about social media and I’m trying to decide if the buzz is justified or if this is a fad similar to podcasts and other new media.

Some of you might be asking… what is Social Media?  I’m no social media expert, but I’m referring to the following platforms:

While it may be a little early to in some of the platform’s life cycle, I think that there is a significant upside opportunity by embracing these platforms.  For example, the highly-read blog TechCrunch leverages their entries & pageviews by frequently communicating with over 24,000 followers on Twitter.  It’s also interesting to look at companies built as Facebook or iPhone Applications (including Paul Allen’s We’re Related Facebook App that I talked about in a recent post).
We’re excited to use these platforms to continually build the FundingUniverse community.  We haven’t fully flushed out our strategies, but we have chosen to start with the following:
It’ll be interesting to see where all of this goes and if it’s worth the thoughts, energy, & time that it is currently demanding.
September 04th 2008 Posted to Entrepreneurship, FundingUniverse, Interesting

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UVEF Top 25 under 5 Years

Trent and I had the opportunity to attend the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum Top 25 under 5 award luncheon yesterday, and we had a great time.  We had found out last week that FundingUniverse would be one of the top 25 and we ended up at number 19!

After hearing about the top 5 companies, I think that I could’ve guessed all but the #1 company.  The top 5 were:

  1. Agel (www.agel.com):  Agel Enterprises, LLC has created a nutritional supplement in single-serving gel form packaging that is not a burden to consume, is convenient, tastes good, and quickly absorbs into the body.
  2. Control4 (www.control4.com):  Control4 is the platform for today’s digital home and makes whole-home automation a practical option for any residence. They believe that home automation is not just for the rich and that fully customizable solutions are not just for luxury homes.
  3. SkullCandy (www.skullcandy.com):  Skullcandy was founded in 2003 by CEO Rick Alden.  It is the fastest growing consumer electronics company on earth, specializing in audio & gaming headphones, audio accessories, integrated audio devices & mp3 players.
  4. Seastone (www.seastone.com):  Seastone Consumer Products Group is the market leader in specialty gift card packages and gift card promotional programs.
  5. Mindshare Technologies (www.mshare.net):  Mindshare’s business monitoring survey tools gather continuous real-time threads of customer feedback that can be immediately transformed into actionable intelligence.

I’m going to be honest, I was a little disappointed to find out that another MLM was at the top of the list. I really would’ve like to see MoveNetworks at the top of yesterday’s list.  From everything that I hear, it sounds like they are the real deal.  They must be, they just raised another $46M that was led by tier 1 VC Benchmark Capital.  It should be fun to see the company grow.

Anyway, congrats to all of the companies that were on the list!

UPDATE:  Because of a few misunderstandings (on the way that my original entry read), I have edited the current entry to better reflect my thoughts on the subject.

July 11th 2008 Posted to Entrepreneurship, FundingUniverse

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LivePitch + Chris Pirillo = LiveStream

I’m up in Seattle today getting ready for tomorrow’s Northwest LivePitch event.  Carolynn has been working her tail off up here to host the event and things are coming together quite nicely.  As of earlier today, we had around 100 people that had RSVP’d for the event.  We also have 15 companies that have been selected to pitch with a Rockstar panel of judges that include:

In addition to the event, we are excited to announce that Chris Pirillo, the well-known technologist, will be broadcasting the event live!  For those that want to check things out, go to http://live.pirillo.com at 2 pm PST (3 pm MST) and check things out!

FYI… spent the evening with Chris & his wife, Ponzi.  They are amazing individuals and have built an incredible business together.  I’ll have to write the details of the trip when I get back.  See you tomorrow!

June 20th 2008 Posted to Angel Investing, Entrepreneurship, FundingUniverse, Interesting

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Props to “Hundred Dollar”

Any of you know the Hundred Dollar entrepreneur?  Those of you on twitter know her as @hundreddollar, and others know her by her real name (Carolynn Duncan).  No matter what you know her by, I’ll have to say that she has been a great addition to the FundingUniverse team.

About 6 months ago, we recruited Carolynn to do some of our Venture Consulting (helping entrepreneurs through the fund raising process).  Immediately, she began going above and beyond her role and led efforts to make a complete overhaul of systems, processes, and operations of the Venture Consulting Arm.  Since then, we’ve kept her very busy on several other areas of our company (sales, marketing, geographic expansion, curriculum development, etc.).

Currently, she is leading our geographic expansion and has opened up our Northwest region.  In a short 9 weeks, she’s developed relationships with angel groups, entrepreneurs, universities, networking organizations, business magazines, and VCs in the region.  Let’s just say that the region is on fire right now.

Not only is Carolynn talented, she understands the world of a startup.  She completely understands the fundraising process and has a bootstrapper’s mentality. She’s done a great job adding value to FundingUniverse and the clients that she serves.  We’re stoked to have her on board!  :)

May 27th 2008 Posted to Angel Investing, Entrepreneurship, FundingUniverse

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Come one, come all to our LivePitch Event

Over the past year, we’ve had many requests by entrepreneurs to come and attend our SpeedPitching events. While we’d love to have everyone there, part of the value for the entrepreneur/investor is to have an intimate environment where you can focus on relationships, etc. However, the good news is that we have just announced our upcoming LivePitch event — a pitching/networking event for all entrepreneurs.

Here’s how it works: we are inviting all entrepreneurial companies to apply to pitch. However, this isn’t necessarily a place to pitch for money. You can pitch for feedback, partners, help, fun, and/or for investment dollars. Yes, investors are invited — in fact, we’ll have a few of them on our “panel of experts.” But, the majority of the audience will be other entrepreneurs that are coming to have a good time and network.

Here’s the kicker: everyone in the audience will have $100 in “funny money” that they can use to “invest” in their favorite pitch. At the end of all the presentations, we’ll have 2 winners: one chosen by the panel of judges & another “chosen” by the audience’s investment dollars.

Each company will have several minutes to make a presentation, after which, they’ll answer questions posed by the panel of experts and/or the audience. It should provide a valuable learning experience for the presenters and allow some great exposure to the community. We previously hosted one LivePitch event in Boulder, CO and it turned out to be a huge success. Come and enjoy the opportunity to network with other entrepreneurs in the State.

Here are the details of the event:

When: Friday May 2, 2008
Venue: Miller Business Innovation Center
Building: Karen Gale Conference Center
Rooms: Wasatch and Cottonwood
Time: 9 am – 10:30 am
Cost: FREE! ($10 to apply to present)
Click here for more information or to register.

Also, for all of you Utah bloggers, please spread the word. We’ll announce our panelists (most likely angels & VCs) in the next few days.

April 24th 2008 Posted to Entrepreneurship, FundingUniverse

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10+ Things that I Should’ve Blogged About…

I’ve never been so busy at FundingUniverse.  Things are going better than they have ever gone before and I’m super excited about the future.  With the growth and opportunities, I’ve been over loaded with new projects and meetings which means that I’ve neglected to write as much as I’d like on the blog.  So here is a list of things that I would’ve liked to blog about, but didn’t:

  1. FundingUniverse named #2 Startup to Watch on the UV50 list
  2. Participating on the Advisory Board of the yet-to-be-publicly-announced Utah Pulse — the site for “all things business in Utah” — led and sponsored by Zion Bank’s CEO Scott Anderson
  3. Recent FundingUniverse SpeedPitching event — 12 awesome companies, 30+ legit investors, 1 great location (Noah’s in Lindon)
  4. Recent “hot companies” in Utah that I’ve seen or met with recently:  Lumiport, Open Floor Technologies, Sendside, Velosum, Mangia, SimpleStartup, and Neutron Interactive (there are probably more, but I can’t think of them all right now).
  5. v|100 list was announced — though it can sometimes just seem like a popularity list, I’m honored to represent FundingUniverse because the recognition comes from the Utah Business Community
  6. Lots of thoughts on various types of financing for businesses including, but not limited to:  unsecured lines of credit (680+ credit score & 2 years of business will go a long way), Dell business credit (an easy $25,000), Google credit line (an easier $125,000), Equipment leasing, etc.
  7. The parting of Jeff:  total stud.  We’ll miss him.  In the end, will work out best for everyone.
  8. Following up on Entrepreneurship & the Family… for those of you that are entrepreneurs and have a family, I’d love to get your feedback via a quick survey that I set up.  It’s a fun side project for me.
  9. Read the book The Illusions of Entrepreneurship and loved it.  You can learn more about it here and here.
  10. Being a judge at the BYU Business Plan Competition — a lot of fun.  Went to the final event today and the final 3 winners are:  1.  Klymit (previously Argon… raised $375k through one of our SpeedPitching Events), 2. SchoolTipline (founder is Justin Bergener… one of my Junto Partners), and 3. Greeting Call.  Congrats to each of them!
  11. Hiring of our new VP of Sales Jason Emett.  Jason is a rock-star that I’ve known for over a year.  He used FundingUniverse for a separate company and was invited to pitch in front of the Utah Angels.  We’re stoked to have him on board.
  12. Looking to hire the following positions in the near future:  COO, CMO, Affiliate Recruiter, Internet Marketing Specialist, Business Loan Specialist, Investor Account Manager, and a few more.

Anyway, I know that there are a bunch of other things that I should be blogging about, but that’ll suffice for now.

April 04th 2008 Posted to Entrepreneurship, Family, FundingUniverse, Learning

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Recent pub for FundingUniverse

FundingUniverse has received some great publicity over the past couple of weeks.  Last week, we had a fantastic article published in the Wall Street Journal about how we are able to connect entrepreneurs with investors.  Now, this week, we had a blog entry posted on the Logoworks/HP blog about the when/how to raise capital.

January 15th 2008 Posted to Entrepreneurship, FundingUniverse

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