news

Just a reminder that our Web and Media Meetup is tonight, May 15.

Come out and chat, talk about your business issues, new web technologies, or anything related to Internet media.

Jenicca’s
6:30PM-8PM

I talk about web, tech and health care startups frequently but as of yet I haven’t spoken much on food industry startups and growing businesses. Let me rectify that by telling you about J Gumbo’s regional expansion. Louisville has a great restaurant scene and food culture. Perhaps that’s why the city seems to be a breeding ground for innovative and successful food ventures. Obviously Yum! and Papa John’s come to mind but there are also companies like Texas Roadhouse and Bourbon Barrel Foods.

J. Gumbo’s is the latest Louisville restaurant concept to grow into franchising. The company has 7 stores in the Louisville area. The 8th store for the chain, which will be operated by a franchisee, is located in downtown Indianapolis. It seems like the Indianapolis store is just the first of many. According to the company’s website they are actively seeking potential franchisees in many different parts of the country.

The Spring 2008 application period for Kentucky Enterprise Fund awards and grants opened yesterday, May 12 and runs through June 12. Available awards range from a $25,000 award from the ICC Concept Pool Fund to the $400,000 Gap Fund.

Guidelines for the awards and who can apply vary from award to award. See the Kentucky Enterprise Fund website for more details.

We recently discussed Vibrant Nation. I was intrigued by a social networking site aimed at women over fifty. Seems like things are going well for the startup since they’ve just hired a new community manager. The blurb I got from Vibrant Nation is as follows:

Beth Blakely is assuming a new position as Community Manager at VN to help grow and build loyalty among its members.

VN is the social recommendation site that offers accomplished women in the second half of life a place to ask and answer questions from women like them.

Blakely, like VuPal executive editor Jay Garmon, is entering the startup world after leaving CNET.

It’s not exactly late breaking news but VuPal has recently-ish hired Jay Garmon, late of CNET, as Executive Editor. In the interest of full disclosure: I am on the VuPal content staff. My involvement removed VuPal is an interesting startup and its staff developments are of interest to the local startup community.

I asked Jay to describe his position at VuPal and to tell me a little bit about his background.

I joined VuPal in April of 2008, about two weeks after I left CNET. The main focus of my job is threefold: I run a small writing staff of bloggers and script writers which will grow as we build out the site; I’ll help cultivate the online community at VuPal, once we’re ready to open the doors to members; and I’m one of the guys that brainstorms the “concept” of the site, from the business model to the feature set. Since we’re a startup, that third part is the most exciting, because I really get to help lay the groundwork for something I believe in.

So far as what VuPal does? To my mind, video is the next big content frontier online. Dial-up is dead, WiMax is coming, and Apple is putting reliable video players on phones now. Video online is common today, and will be ubiquitous soon. That’s what YouTube and sites like it have done, mainstreamed online video. It’s an important first step, but I think we’re ready to go beyond it, to do something with video besides just consume it. Let’s do more than just watch TV on your computer. Let’s actually be interactive. That’s what I want for VuPal–to pioneer Web video as an interactive medium.

Now, before all this, I spent seven years and seven days at CNET Networks, working for one of their Web properties, TechRepublic. I started out as an e-mail newsletter editor, and quickly graduated to writing some of the newsletters as well. One in particular, Geek Trivia, I wrote for over six years. That’s where I learned about online community. Geek Trivia had a loyal audience, and on a lark I “outed” myself as the writer of the newsletter, and started appearing in the TechRepublic forums to get to know my readers. They audience loved it. That led me to experiment with more community-generated and community-directed content in other newsletters, which led to me forming a team with Shawn Morton (co-founder of Profilactic) and Beth Blakely (newly of Vibrant Nation) which was charged with designing and developing community features on TechRepublic. That’s where I got my feet wet with project management and product design, and four years later I think I’m pretty good at it. Along the way, I started a blog on TechRepublic which eventually evolved into a content franchise called Geekend, which focused on the non-professional interests of IT pros. It was one of TechRepublic’s most successful ventures during my tenure with company, largely because I learned what the audience wanted to read and watch by talking to them. As for my time working on community enrichment, user-generated content and activity went from an afterthought to a primary pageview driver for TechRepublic, and a core of the site’s SEO strategy. It touches everything. I still write Geek Trivia and for the Geekend as a contractor, mostly because I’ve invested so much of myself in those brands that they’re hard to give up.

Continuing my obsession this week with building strong communities around startups allow me to share this really cool video with a couple members of the team behind t-shirt company Threadless. [click to continue…]