When Jeb Ory describes his startup, 5degrees, it’s easy to think it’s just another contact management app on the surface. But as you dig deeper, there is something powerful to their approach.

While 5degrees is based in Chicago, we caught up with Jeb, who is CEO of the company, while he was in town recently.

LAUNCH DFW: Jeb, I saw you pitch at the “ Municipality + Symposium” in Lewisville last week. Since you came in from Chicago, how’d you find out about the event?

Jeb: Well, I was coming to Dallas to visit my mother and decided to reach out to the Dallas tech community while I was in town. I Googled “Tech Events in Dallas” and came across LAUNCH DFW. The Symposium was one of the events that I found on the calendar. I thought it would be a great opportunity to practice our pitch and network in Dallas… and it was!

LDFW: That’s really awesome you were able to use our site to find out about the DFW tech scene. It’s definitely our goal to the most comprehensive resource for the local community and it’s great that people outside DFW can find value in it as well!

What’s your Dallas connection?

Jeb: I am a Dallas native… I grew up in East Dallas and moved to Highland Park for high school. In a previous career, I called on a number of enterprise clients, including GameStop, Blockbuster, and JC Penney. Dallas is one of the best places in the U.S. to service enterprise accounts. We’d love to open a sales office in Dallas when we have product ready to support it

LDFW: Awesome! So you tell us a bit about 5Degrees?

Jeb: Sure. 5Degrees is a startup technology business with a focus on creating great mobile tools for salespeople.

LDFW: “Great mobile tools for salespeople.” What does that mean?

Jeb: Our view is that selling is hard, and the tools that salespeople use to sell more effectively should be easy to use.

LDFW: We’ve sold stuff before. I understand how salespeople would appreciate sales tools designed specifically for how they live, and work, in today’s mobile society. But how do you actually make tools easier for salespeople to use?

Jeb: That’s actually the simple part. We design our software with the salesperson, not the sales manager, in mind. We’ve started by building features that salespeople want, and will use, to help them sell more. Our iPhone app lets salespeople categorize leads, send follow-up emails, and create reminders in seconds. These are the things that we, as salespeople, spend an inordinate amount of time perfecting, but no software out there focuses on.

LDFW: Ok, that sounds cool. You’ve built software with the end-user in mind. How do you know what salespeople want?

Jeb: My partners and I have more than 30 years experience in sales and sales management. Much of the core of 5Degrees stems from the personal pains my partners and I have felt in our careers. In my previous corporate job, I led a business unit focusing on selling in-store merchandising solutions to Fortune 500 retailers such as GameStop, Blockbuster, Sears, and OfficeMax. We designed and improved their store environments, making it easier for customers to shop.

My success in that role was directly correlated with the time I would spend in stores, interviewing sales associates and observing customers shop. But the more time I spent in stores, the less time I had to report what I was doing back to our corporate office. We didn’t have great mobile tools that made it easy to capture key insights while we were in the field. So critical details, over time, would get lost.

LDFW: What about the number of existing tools out there that are designed for salespeople to use to record their insights?

Jeb:  You must be referring to Customer Relationship Management tools. Yes, there are a number of them, but most are designed for the sales manager, and rooted in early 2000’s technology and design. What is missing completely are CRMs that are mobile-first, and social at their core. 5Degrees solves this mobile relationship management problem by giving salespeople powerful tools that save them time and make them more productive while they are on-the-go.

LDFW: Sounds exciting! That also may be the first reference I’ve hear to early 2000s tech and design being outdated!

Is 5Degrees currently available? If people want to use it, where can they find it?

Jeb: Well, we have a mobile app currently available in the iPhone App Store. Here’s a link: http://5dg.us/5islive. We will be releasing a web application that syncs with the mobile app in the coming weeks. We’d like to extend an invitation to join our private beta site for the first five people that tweet at 5Degrees (@Get5Degrees) with the hashtag #DFWSalesNow.

LDFW: Great! Thanks for taking the time to sit down with us. We wish you great success. Please reach back out when you are coming back to Dallas!

Jeb: Thanks! I will!

Joel Fontenot is Managing Partner at Trailblazer Capital, the only Texas VC firm to consist solely of entrepreneurs. I met with him recently to get a better idea of what makes VC’s tick. We began the discussion talking about the Dallas investment market. Many are already aware of the difficulty getting funding in today’s world, especially in DFW. Over 75 percent of the capital coming to local companies comes from outside of Texas. It’s certainly encouraging that money is coming in, but dismaying to discover the lack of belief that sources in our own region have about investing locally. Trailblazer is a breaking this pattern and focuses its energy only on deals located in Texas and Oklahoma.

We then talked about the great Bob Metcalfe, who Fontenot paraphrased as saying, “Art” is part of the word “startup”. So true. You can’t use a formula to build a successful company. It takes many pieces falling into place. Great idea, excellent team, viable market, among others. Fontenot actually quipped to me “Do you know how hard it is to create a $100 million company?” It was obviously rhetorical. But knowing plenty of startups that have struggled to get off the ground, it’s hardly surprising. It seems that many folks Fontenot has spoken with don’t completely appreciate that difficulty.

Do you know how hard it is to create a $100 million company?

Not surprisingly, Trailblazer receives pitches and business plans all the time, over 400 deals through the end of September. So how does a startup founder get Trailblazer’s attention? Despite the apparent overload, Fontenot assured me that the management team does well to triage the transactions at the “top of the funnel”, to get to a more manageable selection worth further scrutiny. As a transaction makes it’s way down that funnel, it receives more and more attention.

For those reaching out to Trailblazer for feedback on their idea or business, Fontenot offered some words of advice. One is that not all deals/transactions can be venture-backed. You must understand that the expected rates of return must be high enough for a VC firm to be interested in investing. You may have a great business, but firms are looking for a significant rate of return along the lines of 2 to 10 times invested capital in two to three years. So called “lifestyle businesses” simply don’t offer that return multiple. Another is to not form an LLC — but rather, form a C corp. Many choose an LLC for simplicity. But for the ease of stock classification and allocation necessary during fund raising, a C corp is the way to go. Fontenot also recommends using restricted stock to incent employees because they offer the greatest after tax benefit and it avoids the new reporting and valuation regulations for stock options implemented by the U.S.

I asked Fontenot some of his pet peeves about entrepreneurs, especially ones that ask for a meeting. The first thing he said was “Be Prepared”. Know who you’re meeting with. Learn about them. What is their domain expertise? Find out about their hobbies. What do they do on their personal time? Seek to establish that rapport before heading to that initial face-to-face meeting. He then mentioned that founders shouldn’t get too emotionally attached to their own idea or strategy. While he wants to see purpose and conviction in your eyes, he also wants flexibility to adapt. Fontenot acknowledges there needs to be a “healthy tension” between the management team and whomever is writing the checks. Pushback will happen, and is expected. But seeing your reasoning behind a task or strategy will go a long way towards convincing him. He adds that even if you reached out to him via phone or email, and haven’t heard back, don’t be afraid to follow up. Sure, he’s busy. But don’t let the fact that he hasn’t returned your initial call or email discourage you. Maybe he just forgot.

Nurture the relationship. Be prepared. Don’t get emotionally attached. Follow up.

I asked Fontenot for some parting words of advice. He suggested that entrepreneurs look at the MoneyTree Report (PWC Moneytree.com) for help with analyzing their market and valuing their company and NVCA.org for further insight into the VC business regarding deal sizes and standard documentation.

I joked to Fontenot about how busy he must be, fielding questions from people like me, and pitches and ideas from dozens of entrepreneurs. He acknowledged he sometimes struggles with the email overload. He added that he tries to get to inbox zero every Friday evening, but will settle for “inbox 20″.

SocialDish has officially launched since the last story LaunchDFW posted about the startup. I was able to catch up with James Canington of SocialDish to find out how the startup is doing after launch.

James tells us about the response.

The response has been tremendous.  We have users in all 50 states and we get inquiries from other countries trying to sign up.  We don’t accept users outside the USA yet. Traffic has been great,  When we started our Alexa Traffic Rank was 3,097,307 World / 321,161 US, on 04/05/2011 it was 210,542 World / 25,885 US.  Deals were the hardest part because nobody knew who we were.  Now that people are receiving emails and they see a working website that looks clean we have more businesses approaching us to do deals.

James also gives us some insight on what the client/advertiser response has been.

They have been wonderful, understanding that we are a small company just getting started.  Most of them are very excited about the concept and see the long term vision.  They are thrilled to be a part of something that could be big.

 

Canington shares what the ultimate goal for SocialDish is.

We want to set the standard for Social Referral Marketing, by making buying social and profitable for everyone involved.  We want people to see the value they bring to the table by sharing their purchases with friends and demand companies compensate them for helping build their business. We also want people to make money, enough money to make a difference in their lives.

What is next for SocialDish?

Expansion. We are looking to cities outside of D/FW.  We Also are very excited about SocialDish for Good, it is our program to help Non-Profits.  We hope they see the benefit in promoting us to their supporters.

iChair is the creation of Vindi Sedey, who saw a market for an advanced stand + case for Apple devices. The iChair design was inspired by the passion that Apple consumers have for their devices, keeping simplicity and functionality in mind. It utilizes the highest quality materials, with locking mechanisms and advanced manufacturing techniques, to produce a product that provides ultimate functionality and sleek looks. The company is currently looking to raise capital through their Kickstarter campaign for the iChair Ipad 2 product line.

We were able to catch up with iChair’s Director of Marketing, Shefali Sedey, and get more familiar with iChair. Take a look at their story and help kickstart their project!

iChair’s Shefali Sedy explains how the iChair idea came about:

The idea for iChair came from my husband, Vindi Sedey,  about a year ago. After struggling to find a case with a stand that both protects your phone and does portrait and landscape, he thought iChair would help solve those problems. After a lot of research, we got a design together and he went overseas to China where he oversaw the production of the cases. We launched in January at CES 2011 in Vegas.

How did you and Vindi get started down the entrepreneurship path?

My husband actually started his own commercial real estate company, and continues to manage it. However, the economy is another reason we started iChair. So far, its a two-person team, my husband and I, but, we’ve found some solid contractors to help in areas we’re unfamiliar in such as web design or graphic design.

What is the funding strategy for iChair?

We are completely self-funded, which is why we needed help from KickStarter to produce the iPad 2 and iPod Touch cases. If we reach our goal, we’ll be able to produce a mold for the iPad 2 and iPod Touch 4G allowing us to increase our product line and keep up with newer technology.

The tablet space exploding this year, will you be supporting other platforms?

Right now, we’re really just focused on Apple products. With Apple, they only produce one phone or tablet per year so it’s easier to keep up with producing a case. With other companies coming out with new products every month, it makes it difficult to keep up -especially for a start-up company.

What is next for iChair?

We are working on getting our products to retailers and distributing globally. We want to continue growing by manufacturing cases for newer products.

Mobile MUM is a subscription-based video streaming service designed to empower both the parents (via parental control) and the kids (who get to select the type of content they view after each video). To a degree, it’s a set-and-forget type of system since parents get to choose the subscription and don’t have to worry later about what their child is viewing or playing. Currently, the service will work on Android, iPhone, and iPad, with plans for Windows Mobile soon. Customers can choose from either a $3.99 per month plan for a single child, or a $4.99 per month plan for up to 4 children.

Like the name suggests, Mobile MUM was founded by a Brit; but Tim Capper took a roundabout way before arriving in Dallas. When Capper originally came to the US, he spent time in California, in the movie business. As the saying in Texas goes, he wasn’t born here, but he got here as fast as he could. Capper started with Vision Wise, and in late 2010 he created Mobile MUM, which is now managed by a core team of six — including Capper, Ryan Hartsell, Wes Martin, Missie James, Scott Ticer, and Stacey Yates.

To help determine what is appropriate for the given age range of kids, Mobile MUM has sought the help of local schools and groups to use as guides. And on the hardware front, Mobile MUM has been in talks with large manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung to get their service bundled with mobile phones and tablets.

The biggest challenge thus far has been getting visibility for MobileMUM in an already crowded market. As Capper put it, “everyone wants their baby to be loved.” Entrepreneurs know that what is considered a great idea to some, may just as easily be dismissed by others, but he is confident that the unique kids environment that Mobile MUM provides, coupled with brand name shows and advanced technology, will bring brand awareness. The company is already seeing a great response in sign-ups for the 30-day free subscription.

To see some of the content already licensed, click here.

The Dallas Angel Network is a non profit organization that connects entrepreneurs with angel investors. The DAN is run by volunteers and financial professionals interested in investing their own capital and meeting like-minded individuals within the Startup Community. The DAN does not charge entrepreneurs for its services which allows maximum  participation by entrepreneurs and increases the stream of opportunities for both startups and angels.

Launch DFW was able to catch up with The Dallas Angel Network’s CFA, Sammy Abdullah, to get quick profile of the organization, and found a great story of how The DAN was formed.

So the idea to start The DAN was really inspired by an angel deal that Kevin, James, and I were involved in.  James and I have been close friends for years and we invested in a bar/restaurant concept opening in Houston with a group of friends and other angels. We structured the deal, did the due diligence, closed the transaction, and at the end of it all, I thought to myself that I couldn’t be happier with the deal.  I mean, here we are making a good investment in a well structured transaction with a management team we love; not to mention, management was also happy with the deal. Overall, it was a win-win-win for everyone and if you said to me Sammy, what are you most comfortable with: your investment in Houston or any stock you own? The answer by far is the investment in Houston.  I knew right then I had to figure out a way to see more deals like this. The first thing that came to mind was to look for an angel group in Dallas I could join.  I did a lot of research on local groups and talked to a number of entrepreneurs about the angel community here in Dallas. I came to the conclusion that it would be best to start a group from scratch that would incorporate the best practices of angel groups all over the nation.

At this point, it was time to sign the documents for the deal in Houston, and sure enough, the attorney representing the management team was Kevin Vela over at Vela Keller PC. I talked with James and said “James, instead of faxing in our paperwork, let’s go meet Kevin” because after all, this lawyer was our adversary and after some strong negotiations that all ended well and amicably, I wanted to meet our nemesis. James and I walked into Kevin’s office, we sat down for some small talk, and Kevin asks us what our professions are. My answer was something along the lines of “I work for a big institution and my job is to invest their money in safe debt securities, but really, what I want to do is get an angel network going.”

Right then The DAN was born. What should have  been a 5 minute visit with Kevin to sign some documents turned into an hour long conversation about how Kevin, James, and I could work together to make  The DAN the strongest angel group we could make it. As we did our research, talked to other angel groups, talked to VC, and talked to entrepreneurs about how best to structure The DAN, the time finally came to get a website going. James and I have a good friend, Chris Koller, who builds beautiful sites.  I went to Chris asking his company, Ideal Growth, to build us a website at the friends and family price. Being a dear friend, he of course agreed. I began to tell him what it was for and began talking about The DAN with him, and he came to me and basically said “Sammy, I love the idea of The DAN, and I will build the site for free as long as I can be involved.”

Even if he wasn’t building the site for free, Chris is an incredibly smart guy and would be a great addition to the team, so I agreed right there on the spot. That is the story of how Kevin, James, Chris, and I formed The DAN.

The DAN’s founders are investors themselves and Sammy offers a couple of examples of investments made and some background on the co-founders.

James Austin and I invested in the bar/restaurant concept in Houston and represented a substantial level of the overall $405,000 investment. Chris Koller bootstrapped his own company, Ideal Growth, and Kevin Vela graduated law school and immediately opened Vela Keller PC. I have also been a part of four start-ups and loved working in high risk, small companies. We created The DAN to do deals, so there will be plenty more to come, hopefully.

The DAN recently had its first pitch night in January,  Sammy tells us the feedback was excellent and offers an update on one of start-ups that presented.

The feedback we got was excellent and we actually have assembled an investor group to pursue one of the transactions (Digital Proctor). The presenters really stole the show as both Digital Proctor and SMART OES killed it, and everyone was very impressed with the caliber of entrepreneur we had. We got lucky finding them, and just hope the next meeting can have entrepreneurs who are as well polished and astute as those two are. Overall, everyone appreciated the meeting, liked the format, loved the presenters, and liked the fact that The DAN isn’t trying to collect money from either entrepreneurs or angels; we have strictly assembled the group to do deals, and I think people really appreciate that.

We are pursuing a transaction with Digital Proctor, although the discussions are still preliminary. We are spearheading the transaction, the investor group has met, and we are currently finalizing a term sheet to submit to DP (Digital Proctor).

As for future pitch nights, He tells us.

We want to have pitch nights as often as possible, but we will only do so when we have two presenters that we have diligenced on the front end and that are well polished and “presentation-ready”. The worst thing we could ever do is waste angels time with entrepreneurs who aren’t financeable, so while I would love to have meetings all the time, we will only do so when we have great presenters that are ready.

Organizations similar to The Dallas Angels Network charge companies for access to their investor network and to make presentations,  Sammy explains how it is able to offer the same services without charging startups for its services.

The DAN is bootstrapped. We set it up as a 501(c)3 intentionally so that people see we are technically a charity and therefore the DAN can’t distribute any proceeds to anyone. While we’re always happy to have sponsors for our  events to pick up the bar tab, we really don’t see any reason why we can’t  operate The DAN on time alone. Kevin, James, Chris, and I have each put in $200 to pay for expenses along the way and so far we’ve been able to get to this point and still have money in the bank. Don’t get me wrong though, we’ve had help in the form of donations of services. For instance, we couldn’t have set up The DAN without Vela Keller donating their legal  assistance, Idealgrowth donating the website, and numerous individuals in Dallas and at other angel groups outside Dallas taking the time to discuss  how best to structure The DAN. In addition, Hully & Mo’s gave us a room to present in at no charge and we hope they continue to do so. The support we’ve received to date has been great, and in an ideal world, The DAN will never have to ask angels for any money to cover operating expenses. And never, will we ever, ask entrepreneurs for a penny at point.

Follow The DAN on Twitter.

What is now Fig Tree Media, one of 9 teams in the Tech Wildcatters Spring 2011 class of startups, began as something called Mediarella. When co-founder Chris Abrams was talking with a friend he happened upon an idea that, since everyone seemed to be a photographer, perhaps those photogs needed a better management system to share their work with clients. And so Mediarella was born. Abrams got involved with Startup Weekend Dallas in November of last year to develop this idea. This is where he met the other co-founder, Tony Tomlinson. After creation and 3 days of constant refinement, Abrams demoed the product and won 3rd place. Gabriella Draney of Tech Wildcatters was one of the judges and asked Abrams to apply for the spring 2011 class at TW.

Since startup weekend, Abrams and Tomlinson came to the realization that gearing something towards only photogs would be limiting their market. So why not enable designers, architects, etc. to not only manage their digital assets, but also allow real-time collaboration with all parties? A new product called Frontside would be the underlying framework upon which Mediarella and any future products could be built. Frontside provides multiple users a simple way to develop a website collaboratively, which is what really separates Frontside from the rest of the pack of drag-and-drop website builders . It provides a drag and drop interface that easily allows for simple construction of a website at a fraction of the time that it would otherwise require to code it. When designing a site with Frontside, all users can see all changes live (similar to Google Docs functionality). There is no more “I wish I could see what you’re talking about” when multiple users are working on a site in different locations.

The team is now working to refine this framework and plans to demo a full product suite at the end of the program during Tech Wildcatter’s Spring Pitch Day in late May.

Fig Tree Media is currently looking to raise $250,000 as a bridge round until they secure series A funding.

LaunchDFW has always kept in touch with Alex Muse and ShopSavvy. It seemed like it was about time for an update, and coincidentally, ShopSavvy recently made a big announcement about offering an extension of Groupon’s services.

I caught up with Alex Muse – co-founder of ShopSavvy, late last week after they were voted as the best shopping app with a dominating 58% of the votes on Appscars (http://goo.gl/YXIHK).

ShopSavvy has topped the 12 million user mark, and according to it’s co-founder, is adding hundreds of thousands of users a month. Though the current membership numbers look impressive, because they are likely to continue following the cyclical trends of the retail world, there are high expectations for millions of more users this year.

These membership counts aren’t simply empty user numbers. Alex shared a bit of the magic behind what his app is allowing.

“What is tomorrow?”, Alex asked. “Saturday? And let’s see, it’s February?”

“There will be 5,500 scans of Call of Duty tomorrow”, he said matter-of-factly.

Fascinating.

Using the data collected since the launch of the app, he can actually say, with confidence, that over five thousand people will have the Call of Duty game in their hands tomorrow.

“Think of the possibilities”, I think to myself.

Alex quickly elaborated on some of those very possibilities.

Though I initially thought that most users of such an app would find push notifications to be intrusive, I was told that more than 62% of ShopSavvy users opt in for said notifications.

After thinking about it a bit more I reconsidered my stance and realized that, if I too, stood in a local retailer with a $50+ game in hand, I would welcome potential offers from competitors.

If you consider the amount of data that ShopSavvy currently has, it seems only natural for it to team up with a service such as Groupon. Just think of the custom offers that can be made to users when the two are teamed together.

In other news, you may have heard that ShopSavvy is opening an office out West.

I asked Alex what was up with the plans to leave D-Town. He replied simply, “Growth.”

Though they have checked out Twitter’s old space, there isn’t anything hammered out, just yet, as to where they’ll end up. There are key parts of the ShopSavvy team who live in California, and it simply makes sense for recruiting purposes to have a West side presence, though Alex and the current Texas-based team have no plans of leaving the metroplex.

Leon Campise and Leon Cho founded SparkCrowd a year ago after it became clear that mobile social apps would become a predominant player in the social networking market. Their product, a game called “Name Tag“, attempts to go beyond the model of Foursquare and Gowalla, which are well known for allowing check-in to a given place and seeing who else is there. Once checked-in via geo-location, the game is designed to unite people with common interests or themes — say, the game of basketball, traveling, or a favorite TV show. As you “tag” others with similar tastes, you’ll be prompted for a topic and guess how your new friend will respond to a related question, taking your conversation beyond simple small talk, and earn points and discounts to local stores in the process.

Prior to SparkCrowd, Campise had  reached out to Greg Flores, co-founder and Senior VP of MP3.com for a previous business venture. After success there, Campise discussed with Cho a possible position at their company for Flores. Campise and Cho were so impressed, they contacted Flores and convinced him to come on board as Executive VP of Business Development. So far, SparkCrowd has accepted no external funding, relying only on bootstrapping at this time. Name Tag is free, and SparkCrowd is focusing on the iPhone market for now, with plans to make it available on the Android platform in the near future.

SparkCrowd has recently been accepted into the Tech Wildcatters Spring 2011 program, and is busy preparing for their start in the 12-week accelerator “bootcamp. Tech Wildcatters just recently became part of the TechStars network, helping visibility for TW and its startups. In addition to participating in Tech Wildcatters, SparkCrowd is actively seeking investment capital to grow the company and expand into different social verticals.

Formally established in June 2002, North Texas Enterprise Center for Medical Technology, Inc. (NTEC) is a Frisco based Incubator/Accelerator focusing on medical devices.  NTEC provides everything early stage Start-ups need to operate as effectively and efficiently as possible—saving these new start-ups hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless staff hours.  Their 11.000-square-foot Enterprise Center includes 3,000 feet of administrative offices and shared space with meeting rooms and a lab, where Start-ups will have room for things like prototypes, bench testing, light manufacturing, as well as completely furnished offices and cubes space. Most notably working with companies such as Emfinders, Ergonurse, Oxysure and La Jolla Digital.

Executive Director Larry Carlton tells us NTEC is “portfolio company program, which includes infrastructure (space at NTEC facility) and management services support, is focused on medical devices, healthcare related IT and software, and cleantech.  Our infrastructure only program (space at NTEC) is open to early stage technology companies in most any industry as long as their facility use is compatible.” , is open to companies from Texas and around the U.S..

Carlton gives us some insight to the NTEC process for filtering start up applications saying the process is a “Rigorous formal vetting process that includes members of our 100+ member advisory board.  We have about 4 levels of screening with each screen getting more granular.  We look at the team, the market, the intellectual property, time to product, ability to manufacture and scale, customer need (pain) and willingness to buy, capital requirements, competition, and our ability to assist and add value to the company and their development.  Many other things in-between”  also noting that NTEC has a “deep network and most of the companies we see are referred to us by our network, which includes hospital systems, universities, bankers, accountants, VC’s, angel investors, etc.”

When asked about trends in VC Carlton offered this, saying “VC investment is down substantially from historical levels and investment is in much later stage companies.  Early stage companies are not receiving much investment as they are competing with a sea of much more developed businesses seeking funding that are already in the market with product and revenues.  This trend is expected to continue until the backlog of IPO’s and Acquisitions are burned off over the next several years.  VC’s themselves are having a tough time raising new funds due to poor historical fund performance (post bubble 2001) and the shrinking pool of limited partner investors due to over allocation in venture.”