We are pleased to announce that Servinity was recently accepted into the CapVenture program. 

CapVenture is a selective program by which the influential investors in the Atlanta technology community teach rising entrepreneurs how to raise money.  It is a joint program run by ATDC, the technology business incubator at Georgia Tech, and TAG, The Technology Association of Georgia.  In the words of ATDC, CapVenture is “a comprehensive fundraising bootcamp that will educate and equip early stage CEO’s and executives for smarter and more productive capitalization of their businesses.”

The timing of the CapVenture program is excellent for Servinity, as we are just beginning our next round of fundraising.

You may have noticed a box on the right side of our blog asking “What Should I Write About?  This is your opportunity to let us know what you would like to hear about from Servinity.  You can vote on the topics listed in the box, or you can suggest your own. 

The product which provides this cool functionality is called Skribit and it is the result as last year’s Atlanta Startup Weekend.  (”Startup Weekend is an idea, an experiment, a chance gather the tech community and create a company over one jam packed weekend.”)  A bunch of smart guys in Atlanta built this business in one weekend.  Pretty cool. 

So stand up and be heard.   What have you been dying to know about Servinity?  And if you want to add Skribit to your own blog, it’s free and easy.   Just go to www.skribit.com to sign up.

It’s been a while since my last post.  That can only mean one of two things:  we’ve been too busy or I’ve ran out of things to say.  I know some of you are hoping it’s the latter, but alas, it’s the former.  Nonetheless, I’m happy to be back online sharing more of the Servinity story.  

Two months ago, as some of you may recall, I presented at Startup Riot and posted a timeline of my experience there.  In that post I expressed concern over the quality of my pitch.  Well, here’s the video of my presentation.  You can now judge for yourself.  Feel free to keep your comments to yourself :) 

My car, shoes and dog.

The newest addition to our advisory board is George McKerrow, Jr. 

George is currently the president and CEO of Ted’s Montana Grill, the restaurant chain he founded in 2002 with his partner, media entrepreneur, philanthropist and environmentalist Ted Turner.  Ted’s Montana Grill has 57 locations and over 2700 employees nationwide.

George is a 30-year veteran of the restaurant business with a history of success in both fine dining and casual concepts.  Nation’s Restaurant News has called him a “dinner-house legend” and credits him with giving “birth to an entire casual-dining segment” 20 years ago when he founded LongHorn Steakhouse Inc.  In 1996, he co-founded We’re Cookin’ Inc., a restaurant group which now has two award-winning, fine dining restaurants in Atlanta:  Aria and Canoe. 

McKerrow served on the board of directors for the National Restaurant Association from 1997 until 2003.  In 2007, he received the first Lifetime Achievement Award from the Georgia Restaurant Association for his years of service in the Georgia restaurant industry.  As if recognition from his peers wasn’t enough, the Georgia General Assembly actually issued a Senate resolution commending McKerrow for his many contributions to the restaurant industry. 

George is the third service industry veteran to join our advisory board.  Along with Rick Sherman and Hank Clark, George rounds out the service universe for us.  We now have expertise in QSR, local casual dining, and nationwide restaurant chains.  We look forward to working with George to help Ted’s Montana Grill and other enterprise level clients achieve Servinity.

As many of you know, Startup Riot was this past Monday.  I gave a three minute presentation, on behalf of Servinity, along with 53 other startups.  Chris Morris, our CTO, joined me at the event and we both agree it was a great day.  I want to extend a personal thanks from myself and Servinity to Sanjay (pronounced “sun-jay”) for putting it together.  

Many people have already given terrific recaps of the event, including Lance Weatherby, Paul Freet, Paul Stamatiou, Stephen Fleming, Angus McRae, Dan Greenfield, Ashish Mistry, LenderFlex, Mathew Sweezey, Buddy Ray and Anand Amin, Scott Burkett, and event organizer Sanjay Parekh.    I purposely waited for others to post first because, rather than repeating what these guys have said, I thought I’d try something different.  Here’s a timeline retrospective of the experience of one entrepreneur (me):

Mar 10:  Startup Riot announced.  I apply to pitch immediately - and immediately volunteer to help in whatever way possible.  I have no idea why I do either, it just seems like something I should do.  

Mar 10 to May 10:  Sanjay sends many long, threatening emails to those presenting.  Anyone not scared about breaking his rules, especially going over 3 minutes, is illiterate.  Of course, the event went off without a hitch and right on time, so I commend his methods.

May 10:  I complete and submit Servinity’s slides (prepared to exact specifications).  The slides were modified from a deck I prepared to pitch to investors several months ago.  As I create the “Startup Riot Goals” slide, and bullet point Servinity’s needs for employees, customers and money, I start to understand why I’m doing this . . . at least why I am doing this for Servinity.

May 18:  I sit down to finalize my remarks for the event.  First run through I was at 7 and half minutes.  Uh oh.  Perhaps I should have done this before I turned in my slides.  Several hours later I’ve got my pitch down to three minutes even.  The fun is gone but the substance remains.  I’m a little concerned that I will need to speak fast to keep it to three minutes, but so be it.  I am not going to be the one kicked off-stage.

May 19, 6am:  I wake up considerably earlier than usual to go over my remarks, eat a full breakfast drink enough caffeine to speak in front of 250 people.  

8:45am:  Arrive at Twelve pursuant Sanjay’s instructions.  After reading the list of companies presenting six times while waiting for others to arrive, I make a mental note:  Next year, don’t arrive so early.

10:29 am:  Really enjoyed the keynote by Drew Curtis of Fark.  Drew is a fantastic public speaker.  This is unfortunate for the first round of presenters who have to follow him.

10:30 am:  Crap.  I’m in the first round of presenters.

10:30-10:48 am:  I am sixth to present.  As I watch the first five, I can’t stop thinking:  “Am I better than him?  Am I better than him?”  Not the right attitude, I know, but sometimes I can’t help it.  

10:48 am:  My turn.  I usually enjoy public speaking.  Not this time. I couldn’t hear myself talking and have no idea what I said - hopefully it was what I planned to say.  That meant that I was nervous.  I was nervous because I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been.  Or maybe I was just too concerned about running over 3 minutes.  Either way, I finished with over 30 seconds to go which means I spoke way too fast.  Oh well, I just hope I made it clear that we are not another niche social network.  They filmed the presentations, so as soon as the video is available I will post it here for you to decide for yourself.

11:15 am:  First break for lunch.  Too hungry to network now.  On the way to lunch someone tells me about a Tweet following our presentation:  “Servinity doesn’t suck.  Watch them.”   I’ll take it.

12:45 pm:  I take my seat as the timekeeper for the next round of presentations.  As mentioned above, I had volunteered to help for the day.  Timekeeping for one round was my meager penance.  I was ready and willing to do much more, but this was all Sanjay asked.  Of course, given his military disposition towards time enforcement, perhaps this was the most important job of the day.  

1:00 pm:  Presentations start.  I break out my stop watch and cue cards, and put on my enforcer face.  I really hope no one goes over the time limit.  Most are fine, but there is one presenter who gets close.  He looks down at me right as I drop the 15-second sign.  I nod my head and look him in the eye as if to say, “Yes, your time is up.”  It startles him.  He abruptly ends his sentence and walks off stage.  I felt bad.

Once I’d given my pitch and performed my volunteer duties, I was able to relax and enjoy the rest of the event.  We met some interesting folks during the networking sessions, some of whom I’m sure will prove to be valuable contacts.   I enjoyed many of the other presentations and regretted not bringing a laptop to follow the now infamous “snarkiness” on BackNoise.  (Btw, if anyone wants to let me know what was said during my pitch, I’d love to hear it).

Later in the day, as I stood talking to people whose names I’ve seen repeatedly mentioned in the Atlanta  startup community, I finally realized why I was so quick to get involved with Starup Riot.  It’s wasn’t for the obvious incentives I had bullet-pointed in my powerpoint slide.  Rather, Startup Riot helped me realize that I, too, want to be a meaningful contributor to the startup community.   Granted, I have a long way to go to establish myself as a credible business resource (although I am working hard on Servinity to do so), but that doesn’t mean I can’t contribute in other ways.

All in all it was a good day.  I made some valuable connections.  I got the Servinity name out there a little bit.  I even got my own name out there a little.  And I learned some things about what kind of entrepreneur I want to become.  With a better understanding of the “why”, I’m already looking forward to next year’s Startup Riot - and each and every event until then.

We are pleased to announce the newest addition to our Advisory Board, Hank Clark.

Hank is a partner with Greazy Spoon Development Company which owns several entities in Atlanta, including five Marlow’s Taverns (a restaurant/bar concept), Aqua Blue (fine dining), and Sterling Spoon Catering (contract foodservice).  Hank currently sits on the Board of Directors for the Georgia Restaurant Association where he is Vice Chair of the Government Affairs Committee.  Hank has been in the restaurant industry for 18 years and has worked as a General Manager for Brinker International and Darden Restaurants, among others.

Hank’s diverse operational expertise, knowledge of the local market, and personal drive for progress, plus access to his professionally run establishments, have already proven to be invaluable resources for Servinity.   Hank shares our vision for how Servinity can change the service industry for the better and we are excited to have him on our team.

Welcome, Hank.  

In a previous post, I mentioned that we had entered a business plan competition. The winning company is to be awarded $100,000 in cash and $200,000 in services.  Not a bad boost for a startup.  We entered - full of equal parts hope and certainty that we would win.  After all, we’ve been working on our business idea and business plan for over a year.  We quit our jobs and ditched our careers to stake our futures on this idea.

45 companies submitted business plans.  15 companies were chosen to advance to the next round.  We were not one of them.  Wow.  Shock to the system.

I am tempted to use this space to explain why we should have made it or why we believe Servinity has greater potential than companies that did.  But I won’t do that.  It’s a waste of time and energy, and frankly, it’s unbecoming.

The judges of the business plan competition decided that Servinity was not one of the 15 “best new companies that will strengthen and expand Georgia’s strategic technology industry segment of Internet Technologies” (direct quote from competition website).  Obviously we disagree and are disappointed that we weren’t given the opportunity to present Servinity to the judges; but that doesn’t mean we won’t continue to build the company and present Servinity to actual customers.

Still though, the news of our rejection did cause some degree of heartache.  Over the past 16 months we have shared Servinity with countless people - service industry members, investors, entrepreneurs, business people, friends and family - and actively solicited honest and genuine feedback from each and every one.  And you know what?  Not a single person told us our idea wasn’t worthy.  In fact, almost without exception, Servinity has been received with great enthusiasm, particularly by those within the service industry.  No one has said ”Sorry, we think you will fail.”  But that is exactly what it felt like when we were given our walking papers at such an early stage of the competition.

It took about five minutes to shed that feeling, though, and realize:  It’s ok.  It’s ok that the business plan judges weren’t receptive to our idea.  It’s ok that not everyone shares our passion and unwavering belief in Servinity.  Doubters strengthen our resolve and help us sharpen our execution. 

So don’t feel too badly for us.  As Vince Lombardi said, “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get back up.”  Well, we’re back up and working harder than ever.  Each day we are one step closer to turning our business plan into an actual business.  We know that the sooner we can get Servinity into the hands of our customers, the sooner we will hear from the decision makers that matter most.  

The process of creating our slogan (Uniting the Service Industry) was enlightening in many ways.  For one, it was formative in setting our core goals.  Since then, we’ve been operating under the following mission statement:  Simplify life for the service industry by uniting it. 

With a name, logo, slogan, and mission statement, the next step was sales and marketing materials.   Initially, I thought I might go at this one alone.  We’re a startup I told myself; gotta save money where we can.  Heck, I came up with “Servinity Now!” - I can do this.  So I tried my hand at a few sales sheets, a few ad designs, even a T-shirt.  Bad idea.  You want your company to scream “amateur” - do it yourself.

The problem with hiring an agency, however, was two-fold:  relevance and money. The service industry is not mainstream and our product is bleeding edge (they tell me this is beyond cutting edge).  We had to find an agency that naturally understood our customer and product. It wouldn’t work if I had to explain either one.  In our search we certainly came across those who failed to meet this standard.  I had one firm tell me they were excited about working with our “e-company.” Seriously.  Even if I found an agency that “got it”, though, I wasn’t sure we could afford it.

Enter Chair 74.

Former big agency guys, without the big agency mentality, I could tell from the moment I pulled up to their non-descript loft office that these were our type of guys.  It didn’t take more than 10 minutes into the meeting to confirm.  Web business?  Check.  Service industry?  Been there. Social network?  Of course.  They were spinning out new ideas before I could finish explaining the old.

But here’s the big one:  Money.  Chair 74 recognized that as a startup, money is an issue for us.  So they structured a success-based performance contract with us, based in no small part upon their belief in our idea, and have allowed us to pay as we achieve our own sales goals. With money out of the way, and confident Chair 74 was the right fit for Servinity, all that was left was the work ahead.  

The final validation of our decision to hire Chair 74 came in the very first piece they created for us, our brand statement (see below).  I think you’ll agree, they “get it.” 

We are excited to have Chair 74 on our team and look forward to more great work as we continue to develop The Servinity Brand.

Well, almost.

Servinity entered a business plan competition - GRA/TAG Business Launch ‘08.  As part of the competition, we had the opportunity to film a one minute “pitch” video.  Rather than having me bore the camera with an explanation of our comprehensive employer-employee managerial tools, we chose, instead, to use that time to create a psuedo-commercial.  Our good friend, Mandy, offered to help out and be the star of the shoot.  I’ll think you’ll agree, she was the better choice.

Our commerical is listed along with 24 other companies.  When you go to the link to find our video, we are number 20.  Check it out.  And vote for us!   The winning company receives a nice gift that we’d like to give to Mandy for her work.

Here is the link:  www.Servinity.com/video

After the competition, we will take the raw footage, put a restaurant background behind Mandy, and use it online to help spread the word.