Brian Dear, a former regular on The Well has launched EVDB, the events and venues database.
EVDB, Inc. helps people find relevant events and share their discoveries with others. We’re building a worldwide repository of event and venue data that the whole world can use. Our goal is to help people discover all kinds of events they might have otherwise missed, and to profitably be the best at what we do.
It was intro’d at PC Forum on March 21, a chic private affair. Shortly thereafter, they closed funding.
Note to entrepreneurs: See how they closed the $2.1m Series A VC round, at the same time that they completed their “seed funding” with well-known insiders? What this means is that EVDB gets to pick the brains and meet the friends of these high-network people because they’re invested, literally, in EVDB’s success. For their “effort,” they get in at the “pre-money” valuation, meaning that if EVDB is successful, their (customary) $50,000 investment will be worth millions. I know of someone who put $50,000 into Ask Jeeves (because a friend said, Hey you should do this) and it turned into $7 million. Why do the Series A VC’s put up with this? Hey, everyone is friends here – it’s not about the money, we want to get the right experience on the team. Etc.
So, how did they get the “pre-seed” funding which actually built the product? I think Brian financed it, in the usual guerilla manner. Great job, and I’m excited to see it bear fruit. It happens to be a domain I’m interested in, but I also enjoy observing how products come to life inside the gritty capitalist machinery.
Also note their approach to “release early and often” explained in the first blog first. Hey, check that out: They have a product blog linked right from the main menu, right there with the FAQ and the Privacy Policy. Are blogs ready for prime time? Well, no – this is a tiny three-person startup, not GM. Oh wait, GM has a blog. Anyway, what the geeks are doing now, you’ll be doing soon. And what the geeks are doing is releasing products that are not “done” to get actual customer feedback, and telling you openly about the problems and current status, without the usual pablum from the corporate communications office.