Christopher V. Sherman's blog

4 Days Left to Register for Engage Expo At the Discounted Rate (Rate ends on Monday)

Early registration for Engage! Expo (March 10-11 in NYC) ends this coming Monday, leaving only 4 days to secure your attendance at the earlybird rate. The price goes up from $595 to $895 on Tuesday morning. Engage! (formerly the Virtual Worlds Conference) is the event for youth and young adult brands, media and agencies to meet and learn how to combine their existing online efforts with the unparalleled engagement opportunities and new revenue streams of attention-based media. View the full schedule (inlcuding a track dedicated to Virtual Goods) and speaker list list.

For a keynote, we have FremantleMedia Enterprises (*American Idol*) and Sulake (*Habbo*) together to talk about their recent partnership and the new ways one of the most popular TV brands in the world is finding to interact with its audience online. We'll also have a fireside chat with Jack Buser, Director of PlayStation Home, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) regarding PlayStation®Home, a 3D social gaming community available on PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3).

Have Startup? Need Mentorship? Need Capital? Welcome to Capital Factory

I wanted to make you aware of Capital Factory, announced today.  Capital Factory, is a new Austin-based technology incubator program with a heavy emphasis on mentorship. The program, founded by local Austin-entrepreneurs and lead by Joshua Baer, Sam Decker and Bryan Menell, will select 10 finalists from a pool of applicants, and eventually three winners. Winning companies will receive a long list of benefits including up to $20,000 in cash, and weekly mentoring sessions with a select group of proven, successful technology entrepreneurs. I am pleased to be participating in the program as a mentor.

The deadline for startups interested in applying to be part of the Capital Factory program is March 30, 2009 (application can be found here). While the focus is primarily on early stage technology companies, there is no official limitation on the type of company that can apply for consideration. Capital Factory will announce the three winning companies on April 13th, and then kick off a 10-week summer program on May 22nd. During the 10-week summer incubator program, Capital Factory will provide the selected companies the following resources and benefits:

Up to $20,000 in cash
Weekly mentoring sessions
Investor introductions
Basic IT infrastructure for email, website, version control
Office space
Company formation and legal documents
A logo and coporate identity if needed
Service provider introductions
Recruiting support
Press support

Full press release after the jump

Austin Tech Happy Hour Tonight, Say Hi If Your There

The Austin Tech Happy Hour is tonight,Thursday January 29th at Molotov Lounge. If you are in the neighborhood, stop by and say hi. Oh and there's this from the ATHH site:  Everybody has at least one really great idea for a new company in the back of their mind, but most don't have the resources to make it a reality. That will all change on Jan 29th. We'll be announcing details on how three (3) startups will receive up to $20,000 each in seed funding, along with many other benefits that will help get their new company off the ground. I'm delighted to be involved in this new program. More on that here tomorrow.

From 2001 to 2006 I ran the Texas Entrepreneur Initiative. TEI published the daily email newsletter AustinXL and produced events designed to bring together Central Texas entrepreneurs and investors. At the time we ran AustinXL Happy Hours off and on. I think, outside of AGC, the last time I went to an Austin-networking HH, was my own in late 2005.  When the Austin Game Conference and Show Initiative took off I suspend TEI operations to focus on the video game industry (my first love) and have been out of the Austin networking scene ever since. Therefore, now, 4 years later, it will be fun to head back out into the fray (although I'm not running this HH).