We’re pleased to announce that we are opening another set of “office hours” for those interested in our Summer/Fall 2010 session of AlphaLab!

The response to the previously announced office hours has been terrific – so much so that they have already “sold out”!

Monday, April 5th from 12:30-2:00 PM is when we’re holding the additional office hours session here at AlphaLab. The meetings will be 20 minutes in length with members of the AlphaLab team to talk about your concept as well as ask questions and discuss the AlphaLab program.

While we encourage you to attend them in person, we also would like to welcome those who aren’t located in Pittsburgh to participate via conference call.

To register, please visit our registration website. Two slots are available for a given 20-minute time period. If a particular slot is grayed out, it has already been reserved. Please limit your team to one time slot.

Good luck!

Following up on Sean Ammirati’s talk to the AlphaLab companies, we had an elevator pitch workshop with the AlphaLab companies to help them create and hone those important introductory sentences that describe their business to their target audience. We were fortunate to have Dave Mawhinney and Frank Demmler lead the workshop with the companies. Dave is a close friend and Advisor to the AlphaLab program, has been a serial entrepreneur in the region for over 20 years and is currently an Executive in Residence at the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse and an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Frank has managed several seed funds and mentored numerous companies, currently heads up the Entrepreneurial Services group at Innovation Works and also teaches entrepreneurship at CMU. Frank has also created an online toolkit that is a valuable resource for entrepreneurs as they build their business.

The workshop was very valuable and pretty entertaining. I had a chance to role play meeting the entrepreneurs for the first time and hearing them tell me about their companies. Frank pointed out that the elevator pitch is “an arrow in the quiver” that entrepreneurs can use to communicate with investors, just as an executive summary, business plan and slide deck are other quivers. Dave emphasized that the pitch needs to include a definition of the target customer, what pain they’re feeling/what problem you’re solving and a quantification of the unique benefit being provided.

Thanks again to Dave and Frank for helping the companies hone their pitches!

Our AlphaLab companies tell us that one of the most valuable aspects of the program is the opportunity to meet and learn from fellow entrepreneurs, our advisors, and other domain experts in our network. We do this in many different ways, ranging from AlphaLab alumni group and our Interim Demo Day to networking events, but a core component of our program is the weekly group sessions with these guest speakers.

Recently, Sean Ammirati, the COO of ReadWriteWeb and an AlphaLab Advisor, talked with the companies about a variety of topics, centered around the theme of “Demo or Die.” Sean stressed the importance of reducing risk from an investor perspective during the AlphaLab program and that a key way of doing so was developing an initial release of the product and iterating rapidly on user feedback. Sean shared five tips with the companies on how to “Release Early & Often”:

1) Be “embarrassed by your first release” – LinkedIn’s founder Reid Hoffman’s quote is a great way to capture this sentiment of releasing early.

2) Go “anti-stealth”. Sean stressed the importance of developing relationships early with the people who can help your business and that a good way to do so was to be transparent about your ideas and plans so that they can provide feedback/help early on.

3) Get really good at the elevator pitch. Usually one thinks of elevator pitches with talking to investors, but Sean emphasized that the companies need to have an elevator pitch for any interaction they’re going to have.

4) Use agile development techniques. Even with a two or three-person startup, it is important to be able to estimate and manage development. Sean talked about the notion of “velocity” and how Scrum (as a technique) could help companies measure their velocity.

5) Measure, Measure, Measure – Sean emphasized the importance of measuring the business and identifying what matters the most to measure.

Sean has been a great advisor to AlphaLab and we thank him for continuing to be a big part of the program!

As mentioned previously, we will be holding “office hours” that will allow applicants to meet the AlphaLab team and ask questions about AlphaLab and the application process. In order to ensure we spend some 1:1 time with each applicant, we are asking interested applicants to schedule a timeslot with us in advance. The “office hours” are current scheduled for the following dates/times:

• Thurs, February 25th  1:00-2:30 PM
• Friday, March 19th  9:00-10:30 AM
• Weds, March 31st  5:00-6:30 PM

We’ve provided a method to allow interested individuals to schedule themselves for a meeting slot via online reservation. Two slots for a given 20-minute time period exist. If a particular slot is grayed out, it has already been reserved. Please limit your team to one time slot.

For any issues or questions, you can e-mail application (at) alphalab [dot] org.

We’re happy to announce that we are now accepting applications for the Summer/Fall 2010 Session of AlphaLab which begins June 14th, 2010!

We’re also pleased to let you know that we will be holding three “office hour” sessions for individuals who would like to meet and discuss their concept with members of the AlphaLab team. The dates and times are as follows:

• Thurs, February 25th  1:00-2:30 PM
• Friday, March 19th  9:00-10:30 AM
• Weds, March 31st  5:00-6:30 PM

We’ll provide information on the structure / format and how to register soon. Check in with the blog and our Twitter account for more information.

In the meantime, create your ID and start filling out your application today! The deadline for application submission is 11:59 Eastern Time on Thursday, April 8th.

Good luck!

(Don Charlton, seated center)

Don Charlton, the creator of The Resumator, has written about some of his most important takeaways from participating in the AlphaLab program during the Winter/Spring 2009 cycle. We love having Don as a member of the AlphaLab family and The Resumator continues to grow, attracting customers including some high-profile Web companies such as Dropbox, Posterous, 37 Signals, and Evernote.

It’s that time of year!  We are excited to announce that AlphaLab is now accepting applications for its Winter/Spring 2010 cycle!

AlphaLab is a catalyst for launching the next generation of software, web, mobile, and entertainment technology companies.  Created by Innovation Works, one of the nation’s most active seed-stage investors, AlphaLab provides funding, free office space, expert business advisors and services during its biannual program in Pittsburgh.  AlphaLab helps companies rapidly develop their technology, gain user feedback from early product releases, develop go-to-market strategies, and move towards a successful commercial launch.

For more information and to access the application, visit: www.alphalab.org.  The application deadline is October 20th and the program begins on January 5th.   You can also learn more about Pittsburgh’s entrepreneurial scene and AlphaLab’s role within it in the following blog entry from Center Networks: http://www.centernetworks.com/why-i-love-pittsburgh-startups.

If you would like to learn more about the program, you can attend the next Open Coffee Club meeting at AlphaLab (2325 East Carson Street in Pittsburgh’s South Side) on October 1st starting at 9 am.  AlphaLab team members will be at the Open Coffee Club meeting to answer any questions you may have about the program and to help you determine whether your business idea is a good fit for the program.  You can also meet others who are interested in the program and a few of the current AlphaLab teams.

Congrats to Showclix - an online ticketing solution for event organizers – for closing on a round of funding from Pittsburgh Equity Partners! They were featured in this Techcrunch article discussing the funding round.  We look forward to seeing how Showclix grows as a result of this funding and are just very happy for Josh and Lynsie (Showclix’s cofounders in the photo above) for this accomplishment!

When I told my friends in the Bay Area that we were moving from Palo Alto to Pittsburgh, many of them asked me about the tech scene in Pittsburgh. I tried to describe to them what I knew then about the city and the potential it had to become a tech region. Seven years later, that potential has become more evident and I am even more excited about the future of Pittsburgh, especially in technology. Sean Ammirati, CEO of mSpoke (an Innovation Works portfolio company) and an AlphaLab advisor, does a great job of describing why we love Pittsburgh in a post today on Center Networks. And he was able to make the case without even once referring to the Steelers, Penguins, or the fact that Pittsburgh is a great sports town.

Vivo – a current AlphaLab company  - was featured in today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  Vivo is a web-based video broadcasting service that provides users with a private, customizable environment for sharing events.  The article about Vivo is the featured story on the Post-Gazette website and is on the front page of the business section in the print edition.  You can access the article by clicking on the following link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09197/984226-96.stm.  Congrats, Vivo!