154th Roundtable Recap: December 20 – New Year Challenge Voting Round Begins

Today we hosted the last free public 1M/1M roundtable for 2012. In a characteristically international session, we had three presenters from Israel, one from India, as well as entrepreneurs from Chile and Malaysia.

Webbing
First Avraham Orbach, from Jerusalem, Israel, pitched Webbing, a social media concept that has at its heart a desire to help people discover new, like-minded people through a process of analyzing their social media profiles, the content that flows through them, etc. My strong feeling on a concept like this at this stage of the industry’s evolution is to focus on a specific community – options that Avraham presented ranged from brain sciences to Jazz music. I suggested to Avraham to look at the Tagged case study on our blog.

I asked Avraham about the business model, as well as how he plans to sustain his company while he ‘gets tons of users’. The rather clichéd answer came back: ‘Angel investors.’

In case you have missed this, I want to share with you a 1M/1M cartoon in this context. It speaks for itself.

Locification
Next, Yoram Nissenboim from Haifa, Israel, pitched Locification, a technology platform to enable location based apps on smartphones to be able to keep monitoring the location information without burning through battery power at a fast pace. Sounds great, except the chief competition for the technology comes from Google, who is making this part of the operating system’s core functionality. Currently, Google’s technology is behind the Locification technology, but unless there is serious IP protection around it, Google will catch up. I don’t see how this business can be defensible.

playrock
Then Tamir Rosenblum from Israel but pitching from New York, presented playrock, a gaming platform app that aims to assemble a large number of games from various developers and publishers, and offer better match-making among gamers. In addition, for game developers, Tamir’s solution offers the ability to turn single-player games into multi-player games, as well as viral cross-promotion – each of which are attractive value propositions. I liked the concept, and with 25-50 game developers on board, Tamir should be able to experiment with the concept pretty specifically. I also believe that this is a highly monetizable concept.

returnCABS.com
Finally, Switen George from Kerala, India, pitched returnCABS.com, a taxi cab service that comes with an interesting value proposition: cabs that go from one city to another, often, come back empty. Using this service, consumers can hitch a cab ride with one of these returning cabs at a third of the price. Switen, however, has no experience of building a web or a mobile application, and is currently offering the service to 1000 cab owners and 3000 consumers for free. The concept is ideally built as a mobile and/or web app, and it will require either Switen getting up-to-speed on what it takes to build such a business, or finding a technical partner.

You can listen to the recording of today’s roundtable here.

Also, there are only a few hours left for entrepreneurs who want to apply for the 1M/1M New Year Challenge. The deadline to submit your completed applications is today. You can check the official rules for the contest to find comprehensive instructions on what questions need to be answered to qualify for the voting round that begins tomorrow.

Everyone is now able to view the entries here and voting for worthy applicants opens on December 21. To participate, go to the contest page here, click on the Voting tab, select your favorite entry and click Vote. All applicants will start asking friends and colleagues to vote for their entries from December 21 through January 3. Each entrepreneur needs at least 50 votes to make it to the final pitching competitions on January 10 and January 17. It should be fun to see how this phase of the competition plays out.

As always, I would very much like to hear about your business, so let me invite you to come and pitch at one of our free 1M/1M public roundtables. We will be holding future roundtables at 8 a.m. PST on:

-Thursday, January 3, 155^th 1M/1M Roundtable, Register Here.
-Thursday, January 10, 1M/1M New Year Challenge Final 1, Register Here.
-Thursday, January 17, 1M/1M New Year Challenge, Final 2, Register Here.
-Thursday, January 24, 158^th 1M/1M Roundtable, Register Here.
-Thursday, January 31, 159^th 1M/1M Roundtable, Register Here.

If you want a deeper relationship with me, you are very welcome to join the 1M/1M premium program. If you have any questions about the program, please, first study the website, especially What to expect from the 1M/1M premium program and the FAQs. If you have additional questions, please email me, and I would be very happy to respond. Please note that I work exclusively with 1M/1M entrepreneurs.

I also invite you to join the 1M/1M mailing list for the ease and convenience of getting updates. This way we can stay in touch, and it will help you to decide if 1M/1M is a program for you.