Back from San Francisco

So I've arrived back from San Francisco, the Innovator's dinner was great. I've never seen so many respected professionals in one place.

I sat next to Nancy Dickenson, a senior director of eBay. It was funny, she was telling stories of Meg Whitman, and I couldn't help but contrast this conversation to my experiences on the East coast. In Virginia, I'll be lucky to talk to someone who recognizes Meg's name - and here I was having a conversation with one of Meg's good friends.

2006 Innovator's Dinner

So apparently I've been invited to the Innovator's Dinner, hosted by Creative Good. I'm not exactly sure why I was invited, but its quite an honor. I'm really excited, there will be executives from some of the companies I respect most there.

So I'm supposed to pick 5 people that I want to network with during the conference. The only one I've come up with is John Smith, the VP of Wikipedia. Any suggestions?

Here's an abbreviated list of the dinner's attendees:

• Dae Mellencamp - SVP, Product Management (About.com)
  
• Bob Baxley - Director of Design, Apple Store Online (Apple)
• Ralph Zazula - Director, Apple Store Online Engineering (Apple)
• David Schrieberg - VP, Content & Programming (AOL Europe)
  
• Scott Helbing - EVP, Entertainment Services (AT&T)
• Debbie Podberesky - VP (Banana Republic)
  
• Maheesh Jain - VP, Sales & Marketing (CafePress.com)
• Shawn Budde - VP, Enterprise Customer Management (Capital One)
• Teri Felix - SVP, Database Marketing & Customer Research (Charles Schwab)
• Andy Gill - SVP, Client Experience Group (Charles Schwab)
• Dawn vonBechmann - VP, Multi-Channel Experience (Circuit City )
• Jennifer Vos - VP, Online Strategy and Customer Experience (Citigroup)
  
• Justin Miller - Senior Director Product, Europe (eBay)
• Karl Wiley - Senior Director (eBay)
• Marissa Mayer - VP, Search Products & User Experience Design (Google)
• John McAteer - Head of Retail (Google)
• Chris Sacca - Head of Strategic Projects (Google)
• Alex Bard - President & CEO (Goowy Media)
• Gary Bennit - COO (Goowy Media)
• Marten Mickos - CEO (MySQL)
• Howard Tong - VP, Marketing (Newegg.com)
• Don Fotsch - VP, User Experience & Product Planning (Paypal)
• Stephanie Tilenius - VP & GM (Paypal)
• Doug Galen - SVP, Business & Corporate Development (Shutterfly)
• Ben Nelson - GM (Snapfish)
• Gail Griffin - VP, GM (Wall Street Journal)
• John Smith - VP, Product & Engineering (Wikipedia)
• Bradley Horowitz - VP, Advanced Products (Yahoo!)
• Entire list here
  

Resources for new entrepreneurs

This is a list of online resources for entrepreneurs. I use this stuff on a daily basis and find it extremely helpful.

• Office tools:
• Quickbooks Online - I do all my business accounting using QBOE. It's a cheap way to use the Quickbooks software. Downside: $20 / month & only works on Windows / MSIE.
• AnswerConnect - I get a lot of calls. I'm not always around to take them, but I want don't want the customer get the impression that no one is here. For $100 / month, AnswerConnect answers my calls 24/7 when I'm not around. Best part: when they pick up the phone, they act like they're OdioWorks employees. It might not be worth it unless you have high-paying customers that you really want to take care of.
• Harvest - Great for time tracking, but there's got to be something free out there that does the same thing. Plans start @ $5 / month.
• Vonage - I use vonage for business phone, comes with an toll free number for $30 / month. Today, you might be able to use skype for a lot less - although it doesn't have as many features. Downside: you need a rock-solid ISP.
  
• Advertising:
• Google Adsense - top of the list, of course. Great for PPC advertising.
• Overture - Google's main competitor
  
• PayPerPost - a cool site that will get your product / service mentioned in blogs
• SEO Tutorial - this how I got myTeks.com first for the search "virginia computer repair" on Google.
  
• Site analytics:
  
• Google Analytics - all I can say is, wow. I can't believe this is free.
  
• Alexa web traffic - a great way to evaluate the traffic of your competitors
• Site publishing / hosting:
• OSWD - Open source web design. It's where I get all my web templates these days. When making a new site, I start with a free template from OSWD and modify it in photoshop. Works great, costs nothing.
  
• NameCheap - I use them for all my domain name hosting. They're cheap ($8.88 / yr) and have a ton of features (like URL / Email forwarding).
  
• EveryDns - When I create custom DNS records, I use this place. It's free & reliable.
• Mosso - great hosting solution, if you have the money. Otherwise, use DreamHost.
• If you're interested in running your own servers, I love gentoo. Almost all my sites are run off my own servers, but fair warning: don't try this if you don't have time & money.
• BluWiki is great if you want to make a quick site for free (of course I had to put this in there!). See an example of what you can do @ http://ncstate.bluwiki.org/.
  
• News / other stuff:
• techcrunch - web 2.0 blog. A must read for any web startup
  
• paulgraham - a great resource for undergraduate entrepreneurs. This guy is my idol - he funds early stage startups, like reddit.com & wufoo.com. I suggest you start with his articles.
• Young Entrepreneur Journey - a cool blog of one entrepreneur's experiences