Artificial ignorance

I’m off to Palm Springs this evening to attend DEMO09. The BizSpark team will be there, so feel free to come by our booth if you want an invite code, or if you want to play with Live Mesh or some of our other technologies.

Which one of these  companies do you think will win DEMOgod status (list borrowed from Brian Solis):

7 Billion People, Inc.; Austin, TX
Always Innovating, Inc.; Mountain View, CA
AppZero Corp.; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Asurion Mobile Applications, Inc.; San Mateo, CA
Avaak, Inc.; San Diego, CA
BitGravity, Inc.; Burlingame, CA
bluBuzz, LLC; Holland, MI
Cc:Betty, Inc.; Palo Alto, CA
Citrix Online, Goleta, CA
Coveroo, Inc.; San Francisco, CA
deskNET, Lausanne, CH
Document Depository Corp., LLC; Wayne, PA
eFormic, Ltd.; Stuttgart, DE
Ensembli, Ltd.; Sheffield, Great Britain
Evri, Inc.; Seattle, WA
Gazaro, Inc.; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
HAM-IT, Inc.; North Andover, MA
Home-Account, Inc.; San Francisco, CA
HowSimple, LLC; Huntington Beach, CA
Jadoos, Inc.; Sunnyvale, CA
Kutano Corp.; Burnaby, BC, Canada
Liquid Media, LLC; Arvada, CO
Ontier, Inc.; Portland, OR
Primal Fusion, Inc.; Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Promptu Systems Corp.; Menlo Park, CA
Purewire, Inc.; Atlanta, GA
Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Inc. San Diego, CA
Qubes, Inc.; Taipei, Taiwan
Silverstone Solutions, Inc. San Francisco, CA
Skout, Inc.; San Francisco, CA
SmartyCard; San Mateo, CA
Symantec Corp.; Mountain View, CA
Technicopia, LLC; Carmel Valley, CA
Transformyx, Inc.; Baton Rouge, LA
Vokle, Inc.; Santa Monica, CA
Xandros, Inc.; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
XMARKS; San Francisco, CA
Zipadi Technologies, LLC; Bluffdale, UT
Zuora, Inc.; Redwood City, CA Continue reading

The technoverse is buzzing with the announcement our CEO Steve Ballmer made yesterday at CES – the availability of Windows 7 Beta to MSDN and TechNet subscribers. BizSpark startups essentially get access to MSDN subscriptions, and therefore can start experimenting with Windows 7 today. Here’s what the MSDN site will look like for BizSpark startup members:

The Windows Team has a nice blog post on downloading and installing Windows 7 Beta on your machine. Continue reading

Since the launch of BizSpark in November, we’ve hit the road and spent time in several cities in the US.

We participated at the New York New Tech Meetup in New York City on 11/11/2008, where I got to present to pitch ‘BizSpark’ to 300 entrepreneurs, alongside Steve Barsh of DreamIT Ventures (a BizSpark Network Partner)

I want to send special thanks to Scott Heiferman and Dawn Barber from the New York New Tech Meetup. Continue reading

We officially launched BizSpark last week. Since then, we’ve seen a surge of startups and network partners requesting access to the program.

There are two types of entities that can join the program:

1. Startups – In BizSpark speak, a startup is a company that
   • is less than 3 years old,
   • has less than USD 1 million in annual revenue,
   • is privately held, and,
   • is creating a software product.
2. Network Partners – Network Partners are organizations that can provide startups with the software via BizSpark (and MSDN). Some of these organizations are chartered with providing services and support beyond just the software. These organizations can be one of the following types of organizations (not a restrictive list):
   • Academic Institutions that have entrepreneurial sub-organizations or venture arms
   • Community Entrepreneurial Organizations (either for profit or not-for-profit)
   • Startup Accelerators or Incubators
   • Investors
   • Government Agencies

   Continue reading

With the launch of BizSpark yesterday, we will be visiting a few cities in the US and partnering with Stephanie Agresta and Brian Solis of The TechSet, as well as local entrepreneurial organizations to talk about BizSpark. We encourage entrepreneurs, current startups, investors, business accelerators or incubators and students to come to our events.

• 11/11/2008 in New York, NY - we will be doing a pitch at the New York New Tech Meetup, followed by a reception at One Little West 12. Register to attend.
• 11/19/2008 in Phoenix, AZ – partnering with Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference to talk about BizSpark
• 11/20/2008 in Austin, TX – partnering with Austin Startup District where we will have 10 startups present each. Register to attend.
• 12/2/2008 in Los Angeles, CA (mark your calendars)
• 12/4/2008 in Silicon Valley (mark your calendars)

Continue reading