New Name: Kapost (plus a release)

Posted on 10. Jul, 2010 by Mike Lewis in Company Updates, Releases

Welcome to Kapost!

Many of you know us as Grogger but as of today we’re officially rebranding ourselves as Kapost. You can now find us on Twitter at kapostful and on Facebook here.

In addition to changing our name, we did a big release of our plugin and add-on service today. You can now:

  • Categories. If you have WordPress categories, you can choose to use those in your contributor’s posts.
  • Custom URL. If you want to use your own URL with Kapost, you can do that by simply changing your A-Name record
  • Auto-Promote. You can set the Kapost service to auto-send content to your blog if it receives a certain number of votes. This empowers your community to tell you what content is the best. Also, if you set this value to 0, content will flow immediately into your blog

As part of our new name change, you’ll need to install the new Kapost plugin. You can find that inside WordPress by simply searching for “Kapost”

As always, let us know if you have any problem or suggestions by either contacting us or placing that info into our forum

Grogger as an Add-on Service

Posted on 25. May, 2010 by Toby in Company Updates

Most every time we talk to a publisher about Grogger they get excited. They recognize the power around letting their audience contribute posts, how that can drive engagement, better content and more content. And they see how Grogger’s tools to help them attract and filter that content are key to making it all happen.

But then there’s the leap they have to take: switching from their existing system to the Grogger system. And while many folks continue to sign up for Grogger, we’ve concluded that many more would–particularly those with existing sites–if we could reduce the leap.

Thus, we’ve started to work on “Grogger as an Add-On Service.” If you’ve ever used UserVoice or GetSatisfaction you’ll know how they allow you to quickly add “user feedback” on to your existing site. Grogger is going to do the same thing for user contribution / posts. And instead of a CMS migration, it’ll just take the install of a plug-in or some javascript. With no disruption to your site or even work, you’ll just be able to try out the power of social publishing, for free.

You can see the beginnings of what we’re doing in these rough wireframed use cases.

We would be eager for your feedback. We’re putting together a list of early beta users. If you’re interested, please let us know, and we’ll keep you in the loop as our development progresses, learn from your requirements, and give you early access to our system.

The plan for the first release is a Wordpress plug-in as well as an API that will allow integration for any platform. Over time we’ll build more plug-ins for other CMS platforms. We’d appreciate feedback on this as well.

We’re really looking forward to making it much easier for publishers to bring the power of social publishing into their sites.

New Grogger Commercial

Posted on 13. May, 2010 by Toby in Company Updates, How-To's

Check out our new Grogger commercial. What do you think? We’d appreciate your feedback!

Grogger in Italia

Posted on 09. Mar, 2010 by Toby in Company Updates

Grogger was recently featured on the program “IO Reporter” on Italy’s Sky TV channel. Go to minute 19:

Our thanks to our boy Matteo for the tip. His coming grog on the Italian streetball basketball scene is going to be sweet dolce.

Pitching at OAF

Posted on 04. Feb, 2010 by Mike Lewis in Company Updates

We pitched last night the OAF.   What was it like?  Here are some thoughts:

One part of the the pre-pitch environment stood out: this was a small group.  One great part of the OAF is that the crowd consists of investors only.  There were 17 investors and the qualification was the each one had to have made 4 investments in the past year.  These are people who are looking to invest and not just network or be part of a scene.  They in-turn are rewarded by seeing quality, pre-screened startups.  Over 100 companies applied to OAF in Boulder and 6 were selected.

The pitch itself was short but sweet.  The format calls for a 7 minutes pitch followed by 7 minutes of Q&A.  One interesting part of the process is that the six startups all stay in one room separate from the dinner and investors and we’re taken out one by one to pitch and then retreat back to the room once we’re done.  We joked that it was similar to the “Green Room” in American Idol where we each nervously waited for our chance to show what we got. I actually enjoyed this time in the Green Room as it gave me an opportunity to meet some of the companies and entrepreneurs who were all great people with interesting companies.

After the pitch it was time to mingle and get feedback from the angels. Different angels had different takes on how our presentation went but overall I think we did a good job and were able to get our message and value proposition across.

Overall, the OAF is a fantastic event. Hands down it is the best fundraising event I’ve ever been to.  I feel fortunate to have been selected and thankful for its existence.  This is the kind of event that enables startups to happen.

OAF: Things Getting Better for Entrepreneurs

Posted on 04. Feb, 2010 by Toby in Company Updates

So we’re fundraising right now. As anyone who has done it knows, it takes a gigantic amount of time and effort. The most frustrating part about it is the inefficiency. There is so much energy spent in the travel, the coordination and scheduling, the networking (and the networking and networking) to put it all together relative to the actual meeting, pitching and communication itself. Then, when you have the meetings, they are isolated, one-on-ones while you’re actually trying to develop market buzz and demand for your venture.

We were fortunate to be part of the Open Angel Forum last night, which held its inaugural Boulder edition. It was a great event with great fellow entrepreneurs and great investors. For someone who’s running around fundraising, what a blessing! Instead of the worthless networking and scheduling efforts, this cuts right to the chase: one night, one pitch, 20 quality investors. Furthermore, because you are pitching to a marketplace of investors, you are much more capable of generating momentum around your raise.

Which all makes you wonder: why doesn’t this thing happen more often? Why is this the new exception instead of the rule? Well, in order to be able to put together a quality forum with quality companies and quality investors, it takes a strong network in both of those communities. And the people (investors) who have such networks, well, by definition their deal flow is already good so they don’t need to put any angel forum together. Along some lines of thinking, they’d be much better off keeping that flow to themselves.

That I think would at least be the stereotypical perspective of old school VC. Fortunately, however, there’s a new tide of investor in our industry, investors who are much earlier and who are by in large former entrepreneurs themselves. This group is starting to reinvent the industry and, in the process, dominate it. But beyond fund performance, they also have a fundamental, personal appreciation for entrepreneurship. And that’s why, I think, the OAF is happening.

Our hosts last night–David Cohen, Brad Feld and Jason Calacanis–are all investors who have plenty of deal flow. More deal flow isn’t the motivation behind OAF. But they’re also entrepreneurs who care deeply about entrepreneurship. (Don’t get me wrong: they’re capitalists, not philanthropists about all of this–they don’t necessarily “care” about individual entrepreneur’s fates–i’d imagine they feel the market should take care of that–but they care deeply about the phenomena of entrepreneurship).

So I think this is a rising tide, part of an improving landscape for entrepreneurs, as venture investment heads back to its roots, is driven and run by entrepreneurs, and thus trends towards serving entrepreneurs–and thus entrepreneurship–better and better.

It served us well as we received lots of interest from a number of great investors. Our thanks to everyone involved, particularly the organizers and the sponsors. Best of luck to the OAF going forward.

This is Grogger’s first grog post

Posted on 04. Jan, 2010 by admin in Company Updates

Here is the first post as we get the site up and running.