One of the cool things about watching Vator.tv every day is seeing startup companies grow after they become members of our community.
Some, like 222do, develop from a mere idea in a Vator.tv pitch into an actual business before our eyes. When founder Ellen Leanse first put her pitch on the site, she was just getting the company off the ground.
By the time we brought the former Apple executive in for an interview, the company's list application had been downloaded by hundreds of Facebook users. By that time, 222do also had been named one of the winners in our SDForum business plan competition.
Other startups, like Fun Little Movies, strike it big while we watch. When I first interviewed CEO Frank Chindamo by phone for a story in November, after seeing his pitch, he told me the maker of original film shorts for mobile platforms was working the game hard and "stalking profitability."
A few weeks later, his company was bought by the U.K. mobile content company ROK Entertainment, news that we told you about in this Vator.tv story in January.
Now we have another success story to share.
Clupedia founder and CEO David Saad put his pitch on Vator.tv in early November. It generated a fair number of comments from our community. Rather than just sitting back and reading them, Saad engaged in a conversation -- via our comment function -- with those who had questions or concerns about Clupedia's technology or business model.
You can follow the conversation by scrolling to the bottom of his pitch page.
Sure enough, Saad started to build some buzz around the company, whose Web site and tool bar makes it easy for people to virally spread their influence around the Web in the form of clues, which can be reviews, recommendations, suggestions, etc.
This past week, the four-month old company got a huge endorsement when it was named to the AlwaysOn 100 list of companies from a field of more than 700 startups. One of the main reasons AO judges chose Clupedia was David's active marketing on Vator. It was clear, with some 40,000 views to his company profile and a network of more than 100, he is a man who knows online marketing 2.0.
In this interview at the OnMedia event in New York, Saad shares his excitement about being chosen along with firms that have raised far more money and are "much further along" in their life cycle than Clupedia.
He also talks about his conversation with an investment banker at the conference who advised two of the 12 members of last year's AO100 that were acquired by strategic buyers.
"It was very encouraging," Saad says.
We wish all these companies continued success and the best of luck.
To all you other folks in the Vator.tv community, let us know when your firm hits a big milestone by posting a comment to your own company profile page. It will pop up in the newsroom, where we and everyone else on Vator.tv will see it.
For all entrepreneurs out there, here is a case where a "David" can indeed beat a "Goliath". The moral of the story though is that entrepreneurs must not leave it to beaver to get exposure. They need to focus on the "working" in "social networking". Things rarely happen by accident or by luck. Entrepreneurs must work their luck. The good news is that Vator levels the playing field by offering the necessary tools for small entrepreneurs to engage and get the necessary exposure for investors to take notice. In engaging, entrepreneurs must keep in mind not just their self-interest relative to their start-up but rather the "greater good" of the community, and in this case, it would be the community at Vator. So specifically, the best way to be noticed is to view other people's pitch, rate them, comment on them, comment on news reports and interviews, participate in different competitions, build the network for the pitch and for the entrepreneurs, etc. So, I would like to thank Vator and its community for the contribution that they all made towards the AO100 award that Clupedia won.