At the shoutout intros around 9:30 there were about 30 people there.
I had an 8 am mtge scheduled with a quasi geek who was a no show so I got sucked into the early part of OpenCoffee when people gathered around my table. [note to young geeks... if you're "not a morning person," admit it and schedule a lunch meeting. I'd rather have you awake in a 1pm mtge than comatose at a 7am mtge.]
Lot’s of new faces and interesting stories.
Two guys just moved to the area, one from Ann Arbor and the other from Portland Oregon. Marshall Weir, the Michigan guy, writes code for a mobile apps company, Mobiata . Their most visible product is an iPhone App called FlightTrack.
A bunch of Tufts guys showed up to see whether OpenCoffee was worth their time. Artem Efremkin is working an energy startup, FutureEnergy, based in Tarrytown, NY and looking to start an R&D facility in Boston. Michael Kuznetsov (Kuz) is finishing up his senior year and has a startup called Syllaplus that helps college organize their coursework.
When Michael asked me if OpenCoffee was worthwhile, I told him that the productivity of the meeting depended on whether someone conducted a shoutout introduction session at the peak attendance point. I believe this practice was introduced by Karen Rubin (now at Hubspot) when she was an OpenCoffee regular in 2008. So without further ado, Kuz walks to the head of the table and starts a nice peppy shoutout.
Please note, Kuz exhibits four critical attributes of a successful Web 2.0 entrepreneur. He is the son of emigrants. He is bright enough to get admitted to one of the top colleges in the country. It appears that he can code (at least his demo site is functional). And finally, he appears fearless.
I got a chance to meet Evan Morikawa, an Olin College senior, co-founder of an educational software company, Alight, targeting high school and middle school students. He will be interning with Google in Sunnyvale this summer.
Olin is an interesting newish engineering college that sits adjacent to Babson College in Needham/Wellesley, Ma. The student body is small… around 325 but they all get a full 4 yr scholarship. Google recruits heavily from the Olin ranks.
And finally, I met Alex Hornstein who has a startup called Meetlie entered into the TechStars program. I first heard of Alex’s venture when I attended Founder Dating back December. Meetlie was a finalist at Startup Weekend back in November. Alex/Meetlie used Indian outsourcing for the code work during the sprint development at Startup Week. Alex told me he spent quite a bit of time in India and supported himself quite nicely by working for some of the Indian IT outsourcing firms.
All and all, it was one of the better OpenCoffee meetings I’ve been to.
