Standing Out in a Crowded Market with DropCard

BusinessWeek (via partner GigaOM) recently posted an interesting article on modern networking tools, particularly in light of the current economic downturn. Celeste LeCompte writes, "As the hordes of job-seekers descend upon trade shows, conferences, and meet-ups around the country, a few mobile startups could be poised to profit from their misery: digital business-card services."

Featured among iPhone only applications like beamMe, Nameo, Handshake, FriendBook and iCard as well as BlackBerry/Android solution Dub is TextID, rmbrMe and our own DropCard.

DropCard, rmbrMe and TextID because they are universal services and do not require "matching phones" to work. "I've found services like rmbrME and Dropcard to be simple to use, and I could easily send my data to smartphone-carrying folks via shortcode. Better yet, people could send info to me, without even knowing that I still carry a Stone Age-era device," jokes Le LeCompte.

To read the full article, click here.

Counting Green Beans

Beanstockd was selected as a finalists for the WeMedia Game Changer Award, an award recognizing people, projects, ideas and organizations leading change and inspire a better world through media. If you think Beanstockd fits the bill, show your support by making Beanstockd the Community Choice Winner by voting online. The competition is tough. Beanstockd is up against giants like Twitter, Digg, NPR and BlogHer.

Meet Us at the Founder Factory

Questions about DreamIt Ventures? Join us at the Founder Factory tomorrow in Philadelphia where Steve Barsh will be joining Vadim Telyatnikov (Director of Advertising Operations at myYearbook) and Colin Evans (Founder and Managing Partner of Sandwith Ventures and Co-Founder of StubHub) to serve on the Fishbowl Panel (don't miss Tal Raviv and DropCard!)at the inaugural event.

Also being featured are former speakers Josh Kopelman (Half.com and First Round Capital), Lucinda Holt (Commerce360 and TurnTide), Gil Beyda (Real Media, TACODA and Gencast Ventures), and Steve Goodman (Morgan Lewis).

Tips for Innovation

We were contacted by a national magazine on entrepreneurship last week for tips for innovation. I polled the team for their thoughts. Here are our top three tips.

#1 Talk to Outsiders
A great way to innovate is to ping your ideas off really smart people outside your company as well as inside. All of our companies work in an open floor plan, giving each entrepreneur access to more than 50 other startup people to bounce ideas off and get reality checks. Every day these entrepreneurs drive innovation with input from one another.

#2 Feed Your Passion for Learning
When experts talk, listen! People have been where you are. You can get innovative ideas listening to them talk about their experience and expertise. For example, every week DreamIt Ventures brings in top speakers on topics such as marketing, software development, venture capital financing, user interface and experience design, PR, and more. The objective is not only getting entrepreneurs to learn information critical to the success of their business, but also to expose them to ideas that will stoke their innovation mojo.

#3 Experiment Quickly, Encourage & Reward Risk Taking
Innovation must be sown into a company’s culture. The only way to ensure this is to reward successful risk taking and accept the occasional failures as part of the creative process. All innovators fail at one time or another, but you can’t innovate if you don’t try. The key is to iterate on ideas quickly and make sure you are being as capital-efficient as possible. Burn up your intellectual capital faster than your financial capital, and reward risk taking.

BarCamp Philly

Just returned from BarCamp Philly, a loosely organized (but like LORE, loosely organized in a good way) conference hosted at the University of the Arts. Participants were invited to attend or host session on the topic of their choosing. The event is completely participant driven, and there were a number of familiar faces from the summer in the crowd-- Chris Cera (Vuzit), Jason Laan (SnackFeed) and Alex Hillman (IndyHall and Anthillz).

Waiting for applications from all of you in the "Quit Your Job" session...