Girish Raja's Dynamic(s) Thoughts : Startup

CRM Incubation Week Part2 - Roundup

girishr — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:55:21 GMT

The second CRM Incubation Week was another great success with 5 innovative XRM solutions built during the week.

During the week, I advised SmartRedPen from the Boston area that is working on a solution for second language teachers. Though it sounds like a simple solution, Jennifer and Bolivar from SmartRedPen explained to me the intricacies involved and how huge the market potential for their solution is.

What is most interesting to me about the XRM platform is the grassroots innovation it brings about. All that SmartRedPen did to begin with is pick up David Yack’s XRM book and download the CRM VPC to get started in building a business application on the XRM platform. They didn’t have to go through lots of training or complex processes to start building their application!

Luckily for them, we found several Microsoft platforms built on XRM, WPF and Silverlight that gave them a head start for their solution. Couple of interesting ones we discovered during the week include

Microsoft Semblio – A .NET based educational toolkit allowing you to create rich, immersive multimedia learning material.

SCE Starter Kit – Remember the amazing New York Times Reader built on WPF? Now what if you had the source code to that application platform? That’s exactly what SCE starter kit is. It includes the SDK to build great reading (& multimedia) experience in your application. A recommended download for all .NET & WPF developers. BTW, NYTimes Reader has a free edition, so that’s a recommended download for everyone!

Below are the companies that participated in the Incubation Week and built a functional solution in a week’s time.

Startup	Solution
FourthLink	Project Management and Resource Scheduling for Professional Services Organizations
Smart Red Pen	OnDemand educational portal for learning 2^nd Language (Spanish)
Skyline Vertical Solutions	Project Management and Cost Control for AEC Market
myStaffingCRM	HR Staffing, Recruiting and Leasing
Hippamatic	Automate Mobile Radiology including Order Entry, Dispatch, Billing and Reporting for Health Care Providers

So if you are a developer working in a startup or wish to join/create a new startup, I strongly encourage you to checkout XRM platform to quickly build and deploy your business application/solution. Also check out the Bizspark program that offers tons of software and resources for startup companies.

Sanjay Jain has detailed blog coverage of the entire event here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sanjayjain/archive/tags/Incubation+Week/default.aspx

Please feel free to leave a comment or use the email form to send us any questions you have or if you wish to participate in a future CRM Incubation Week.

Videos from first CRM Incubation Week

girishr — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 02:57:29 GMT

Recently Nikhil Hasija pointed me to the videos that were recorded during the 1st CRM Incubation Week.

DubMeNow: A very cool contact management mobile solution that integrates with Dynamics CRM. I was their advisor during the week and very impressed with them. A very professional startup company.

Highland Martin: A customizable portal solution sitting on top of CRM with some cool Silverlight work.

Channel Blade: An online solution for the Marine (Boating) industry.

Prime Time Software Solutions: Sales methodology solution targeted towards the media industry. They have vast industry experience and I was surprised by their fantastic progress with limited technology background.

Support4U: A social collaboration solution that tightly integrates with CRM and produces excellent analytics around documents. A good example showing how Silverlight can light up the UI.

The next CRM Incubation week (Part2) is coming up shortly and I’m betting it’ll be even more fun and productive for the participating companies.

CRM Incubation Week – The Sequel

girishr — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:04:56 GMT

Every blockbuster in this world has to have a Sequel coming up. The mega hit CRM Incubation week is no different either :-) That’s right, 2nd CRM Incubation Week is coming up soon and will be starring your favorite CRM stars.

The 2^nd CRM Incubation Week will be held at Microsoft Technology Center, Boston, MA from Mon 4/20/2009 to Fri 4/24/2009. There’ll be half a day of CRM training, three and half days of active prototype/development time, and a final day for polishing your solution and presenting to a panel of judges for various prizes.

If you’re part of a startup company and would like to participate in this, please submit your nominations to Sanjay Jain. You can find more details about submitting your nominations here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sanjayjain/archive/2009/02/25/startups-announcing-2nd-microsoft-dynamics-crm-incubation-week.aspx. If you’re nominated, all you have to do is just show up with your brightest minds.

The show is on us and we’ll even get you the popcorn and soda for free :-)

CRM Incubation Week – Roundup

girishr — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:22:41 GMT

It is not usual to see pouring rain in Virginia and heavy snow fall in Seattle at the same time. The CRM incubation week happened during this same time and like the weather, the event was definitely extraordinary.

As I blogged earlier, the CRM Incubation Week was conducted on a very simple idea. The idea of startups using Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a Rapid Application Development Platform for building business applications.

Five startups were chosen from over 50 applicants. There were given a short training on the CRM platform and from there on, the teams worked feverishly for the next four days and nights putting their solution together. The focus was not just the technology but we had lunch presentations on business aspects like how startups can pitch their ideas and how they can validate their business model, etc. This is very critical for startups as it is not just good enough to have a great idea but you need to be able to convince others and gain the backing to make your ideas successful.

Each startup team was assigned an advisor and I was honored to be advising DubMeNow who had an innovate mobile based solution for business cards.

The advisors were not all from Microsoft. Jim Steger from Sonoma Partners and Dan Blake from CourseMax sacrificed their revenue generating hours and volunteered to be advisors to help the community. Their presence clearly thrilled the startups. We gave 3 CRM development books to every team and Jim co-authored 2 of the 3 books. When you have a question while reading a book, walking next door and clarifying it directly with the author is not something you get everyday and when you can do that at 1AM in the morning, that is when startups realized that Incubation week is special. Dan Blake was in the same situation as every other team couple of years ago when he started CourseMax. Dan’s insights and experience as a startup was sought by every team.

You can see me twittering different activities of the week here http://tinyurl.com/9q7g8u but with the amount of white boarding and development we were doing, you can imagine why we hardly had time to even go out for dinner. Nevertheless, with Xbox 360 console and the nice food arranged by MTC, we had plenty of fun.

Day 5 was the climax with all teams presenting their solution to a panel of Venture Capitalists (VCs), Angel Investors and CRM experts such as Paul Greenberg who also happens to the CRM blogger for ZDNET.

I can keep going for another 3 pages of content but I’d rather point you to Sanjay’s excellent blog coverage of the event. On closing, I’d like to quote Paul Greenberg on his thoughts about the CRM Incubation Week.

“I have to hand it to Microsoft here. This kind of program not only encourages and supports emerging businesses - small and new or even established and moving in other directions - but also showcases their platform in a good way. As a far better development tool than I thought it was.”

CRM Platform Incubation Week

girishr — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:57:00 GMT

Wouldn’t it be great to build a functional business application in a week’s time. That is exactly what my colleague and good friend Sanjay Jain is aspiring for startups and students to do.

The 1st CRM Incubation Week is being held at Microsoft Technology Center, Reston, VA from Mon 12/15/2008 to Fri 12/19/2008. This event consists of ½ day of training, 3 ½ days of active prototype/development time, and a final day for packaging/finishing and reporting out to a panel of judges for various prizes.

This will give you chance to pitch your ideas in front of VC panelists and get valuable feedback.The event is free of charge and if you and your buddies wish to participate and create an application based on the CRM platform in a week’s time, please contact Sanjay Jain and let him know you’re interested.