Bootstrapper.com - Confessions of Serial Entrepreneurs

The 5th Presenter and the first in our Digital Media track at the BootStrapper Venture Summit was APParition Ads. *APP Ads)

APP ads is a yet to launch interstitial ad network that in tests have gotten $20 CPM’s within facebook and social media inventory. I’m the founding chairman of the company and we’re about to launch in public beta (been in private alpha making $$$ for a few months) and we’re very excited about it. We have a great team that includes 4 successful entrepreneurs. We’re not sure if we need to raise any money for this but i figured it would be good to pitch it since it was my conference (gotta love conflicts of interest

If you want to learn more, contact me!

So I’m overwhelmed by the range of social media sharing out there. There are simply way too much ways to get lost in the crowd. Whether people facebook, myspace, digg, fark et al. there are simply too many ways in which to connect to one another. I suggest another standard - let’s meet for lunch :)  Whoever wants to meet for lunch, let me know and let’s grab a bite. Fine, I’ll settle for a beer if you insist.

I really don’t care if you are walking up your stairs on twitter and I don’t have the patience to say you’re hot 165 different ways on facebook or to digg a story every time i go to the bathroom. People, let’s bring back real interaction. True promotion comes from interaction and user experience not how many ways you can take advantage of socially interconnected relationships. Don’t get me wrong “sharing” works but we often forget about the people underpinning the sharing and focus on the wrong things. We need to focus on real life human interaction if we want true advances.

So here’s the first brief interview from the RichmondEvents cruise. While I admit I’m not much of a journalist and don’t quite know how to interview (though under my belt are interviews with Eliot Spitzer & Paul Reiser - though are stories for another day), I asked a couple of questions to understand the attendees and the quality of the event so here goes…

Interview with Jon Winsett

RH: What’s your company?

JW: NPI

RH: How’d you get involved in the business?

JW: After a career of hi-tech vendor experience and years of seeing the great disparity in the pricing of
products and services, I decided to become an client advocate for IT purchasing. NPI has since grown to become a significant tool for bringing pricing transparency to corporate America — with over 200 clients ranging from Boeing to Hilton to Sears.

RH: What brought you on the Richmond cruise?

JW: It is a great forum to meet and share experiences with high level executives in the Global 2000.

RH: What was the most valuable thing you got out of the cruise?

JW: The networking — with not only prospective clients but industry experts
across business.

RH: Tell us a story from the cruise …
JW: NPI is launching a social networking site called OnTheHoot.com. It is tailored for financial services IT execs who want to discuss IT purchasing with their peers and comes with a price benchmarking component driven by NPI. This most recent cruise allowed me to meet with not only potential members, but I had dinner with a founder from another
social networking site, lunch with a Web 2.0 guru that helped shape our venture, and drinks with a marketing agency who focuses on online community promotion.

If this isn’t the superstar of conferences I don’t know what is.