Patriot Tickets, a $9 Billion Industry & Desperate Housewives: A #FutureM WebInno Recap

The Royal Sonesta saw another packed house for the Web Innovators Group as the 31st gathering (WebInno31) of entrepreneurs, students, web enthusiasts, and others was held last night as part of FutureM week here in Boston. Hundreds of people turned out to hear from some of the top start-ups including the main dishes, SnapApp, SocMetrics, and Yesware. As is tradition with WebInno events, attendees arrive and can tour through a group of “side dishes” or companies that are exhibiting but not presenting on the main stage. The side dishes included GoodTwo, Crave Labs, SyncTube, Addie, and Reptivity. Check out what each company represents when we announced the lineup a few weeks ago.

Once everyone has helped themselves to a cocktail and learned what these startups have to offer, the three main dishes take the stage where they have about 15 minutes each to walk the crowd through their project.

Seth Lieberman from SnapApp was first up to present. It should be known that the founder of WebInno, David Beisel, doesn’t allow presenters to use PowerPoint; he would rather have companies explain what market they’re addressing through more interactive demos. So what does Seth from SnapApp do? Took a screen shot of a PowerPoint slide to skirt the system. Pretty innovative, I guess.

SnapApp is a marketing platform aimed at customer engagement and acquisitions, which allows marketers and publishers to build quizzes, contests and more on their social media channels or right on their websites. He tested the crowd when he put up a Philadelphia Eagles website as a demo (why not the Pats?). He even used one with a built in quiz for the Desperate Housewives. To cap it all off, Seth tempted the crowd with Patriots tickets to an upcoming game as part of the team’s initiative to get people to check out the site.

Next up with SocMetrics a site that helps you find topically relevant influencers specifically geared towards brands. The one thing that I love about SocMetrics is how clean their user interface is. The team has done a great job pulling in relevant public information and customizing it to help brands target the right types of users for campaigns. A great product made for a pretty seamless pitch.

Matthew Bellows of Yesware capped off the presentations and explained how his company is aiming to help salespeople close more business. He really got people’s attention when he wondered aloud “why is it that B2B sales teams use the same email system that old people and kids use?” The CRM industry is a $9 billion dollar industry and Yesware is building a team to make that happen. Matthew even added (we still haven’t confirmed how serious this was) that for anyone that recommended a person for a position Yesware is hiring for and that person is brought aboard, the recommender will get a pair of championship tickets for the next Boston event. Sounds pretty sweet to me.

Overall there was some great presentations tonight. And consistent feedback about the event being jam packed into a short amount of time led to the #AfterInno party sponsored by CustomMade and PerkStreet Financial just down the street. In the end, SocMetrics walked away as the crowd favorite, but just barely getting past SnapApp and Yesware.

Another successful #Webinno in the books.