The Hatchery

I was finally able to check out what the Hatchery VC collaboration was all about after being invited a few times by Yao Hui Huang and numerous times I was going to go but something came up.

Dr. Yao Hui-Huang who is the CEO of Gigapixel Creative, a New York-based design and branding firm has been in charge of the Hatchery since 2007.

My first gauntlet took place at F.I.T. and they seem to have their events in different places throughout New York. I had no clue what to expect but they had a pretty good turn out at of about 150 people when I arrived and you are given a name tag and they had food & drinks where you can meet other folks that attended.

Within 30 min. you are directed toward the sitting area where they begin the gauntlet and introduced 4 panelists:

Perry Allison - VP of Social Marketing Innovation, Eon
Christian Busch - Vice President, Marketing, Takkle
Dan Porter - Senior VP, Corporate Development, Virgin
Sarah Tavel - Associate, Bessemer Ventures

I was only able to see the first company who presented which was a company from Portugal - Wizi which the company allows people to share their location with friends, family, and let people know where you are. One cool feature was that since they are already in Europe, if you are stuck in traffic, it can give you alternate routes.

One thing that bothered me about this idea was privacy because they are targeting the mobile market and currently they are building Wizi on the following Platforms:
- Android
- iPhone
- JavaME
- Blackberry
- Windows CE

If they succeed on finding investors they will definitely target the U.S. next which would be interesting to see.

Miguel I believe is the CSA of Wizi and is currently looking for people to join the company.

Feel free to contact him via email.

I know that Sarah Tavel did mention privacy and also how it would be an issue. Christian questioned the presenter on how are you going to generate revenue with the weak advertising going on in the mobile market and Dan Porter just thought in general through his experience that if they want to succeed they better come up with better metrics and have them ready in case investors are interested since these days you need your metrics and know your target market.

Unfortunately I was only able to catch the first presenter. I know that Tech Crunch was next but I think I will check out the next event which will be on Wednesday, August 6, 2008, 6:30 PM - Of Interest Hosted at HSBC.

For those that are looking for investors, I strongly suggest you checking out one of these events because it is the real deal and you definitely will learn something out of this.