By Michael Girdley
Special contributor to Silicon Hills News

Pitch your idea. Pitch some more. Then keep pitching. Do it perhaps hundreds of times.
That’s the only way for entrepreneurs to get their product and technology pitch up to a level that will impress potential investors, according to Cole Wollak. He gave a presentation at Geekdom in San Antonio on Wednesday night.
Cole helped run the most recent Techstars Cloud program held at Geekdom earlier this year. TechStars Cloud had the members of the program repeat their pitches dozens, if not hundreds of times. The results showed.
Here, the CEO of TechStars Cloud program member Keen.io shows that even engineers can pitch:

Why do we care, anyway? Investors care about the idea and technology, right? Well, the initial pitch is the most important interaction an entrepreneur will have with an investor. It’s where a first impression is made. Ultimately, an investor knows that an entrepreneur unable to organize him or herself to present a coherent, persuasive, concise pitch will also be highly unlikely to create a good, profitable business.

Some tips from Cole:

Minimize the use of gimmicks or jokes. One per pitch if at all.
Keep it short and high-level. Notice Techstars pitches are 5-7 minutes in length.
Don’t presume anything about your audience.
Stories are a great way to personalize a talk and get people’s attention.

Resources are available at Geekdom for budding entrepreneurs and technologists honing their pitch.
The new office hours of the staff members are one example. As demonstrated by the discussion amongst the attendees at the talk, the other members of Geekdom can be a great resource as well.

About Michael Girdley: He’s an entrepreneur, budding technology investor, reformed programmer and author, part-time Crossfit instructor and writer living in Southtown San Antonio. He can be reached at Michael@girdley.com and his personal website is Girdley.com.

This morning, I spoke with Dan Graham, co-founder and CEO of BuildASign.com, about the Austin-based company’s expansion into the consumer market.
BuildASign.com, launched in 2005, makes signs, bumper stickers, magnets, banners and more for the business market. Realtors are chief among its customers. The privately held company expects to do $40 million in revenue this year, up from $30 million in 2011.
This week, BuildASign.com launched Printcopia using its internal resources to produce a home décor site focused on the consumer market.
“We really noticed a growing market in the home and consumer space,” Graham said.
Printcopia allows consumers to upload photos from their computer or other site like Facebook or Instagram and to convert those snapshots into artwork to put on a wall. That means it can be as easy as a few clicks of the mouse to create unique wall décor featuring pets, family, vacations and more.
Printcopia started “almost by accident” because BuildASign began to get requests for home décor products, Graham said.
“We looked at the market online,” and saw opportunity, he said. The core competencies of its BuildASign.com business complement the consumer space as well, he said. That means BuildASign.com can print all of the Printcopia products at its headquarters and warehouse in North Austin. It doesn’t need to hire additional staff or buy new equipment, he said.
As the site grows, Graham might add a team more focused exclusively on the consumer market but right now, they can handle the expansion with the existing staff of 230 employees.
“It’s an exciting time for the home décor space,” Graham said.
The home décor market is a multi-billion dollar market but consumers haven’t been able to print their own wall art and create other unique photo décor products online until recently.
“We are seeing a general market awareness grow rapidly,” Graham said. “This kind of website didn’t make any sense until a few years ago. It’s only recently that it has become mainstream.”
That’s because new technology has made printing and ordering the products less expensive online.
“The machines we print our home décor products on didn’t exist a year and a half ago” Graham said. “The ability to produce these products affordably didn’t’ exist.”
Printcopia competes with some other online competitors but by and large its biggest competition comes from local photographers and photography shops that charge four to six times what it would cost to purchase items from Printcopia, Graham said.
“The challenge that is facing the market right now is one of awareness,” Graham said. About 90 percent of the market still doesn’t know they can purchase photo home décor products online, he said.
Printcopia follows a similar path in educating consumers as BuildASign.com did in educating businesses about the ability to order print products online cheaper and faster than traditional brick and mortar outlets, Graham said.
So far, consumers have reacted positively to the Printcopia products, Graham said.
“Customers light up when they see the finished product,” he said. “Repeat business is a big part of the business.”

Just in time to decorate dorm rooms and renovate empty nest homes, BuildASign.com has launched Printcopia, a new home decor site.
Austin-based BuildASign.com, has grown quickly since its launch in 2005. But mainly, it’s growth has been organic with a few acquisitions along the way.
The company now has more than 230 employees and $40 million in revenue projected this year.
This move into home decor with Printcopia is taking the business into the next level, according to Molly Wilson, its spokeswoman.
Printcopia lets customers create artwork from their photos. The printing options range from “basic and framed prints to stretched canvases, panoramic and acrylic prints.”
“Printcopia is all about bringing high quality, personalized home decor to consumers at a really accessible price,” Matt Hawkins, brand manager for Printcopia, said in a news release. “What’s more, we’re focused on making the design process fast and easy, so that anybody with a photo and a few minutes can create something really special.”
The site allows people to upload from files, Facebook or Instagram. The site also has built-in editing tools allowing shoppers to size, crop and alter the image such as converting images to black and white or sepia.
For more on BuildASign.com, read the profile Silicon Hills News did on Dan Graham, its founder, last month.
Also, the creative people at We Are Austin Tech, posted this interview with Graham recently.

It’s the doldrums days of August and lots of people are getting ready to go back to school.
So we figured we should get into the learning mode too.
And who better to school us in the ways of startups than Austin’s Jason Cohen, founder of WP Engine and multiple other startups. Thanks to the great folks at We Are Austin Tech, we’re going to share Cohen’s words of wisdom on the startup scene in Austin. The biggest mistake he sees startup founders make is not surveying their customers before creating their product. It’s so important to talk to customers about what they are interested in and to meet their needs. While creating a cool technology product might impress your friends and family, you’ve got to find out if the market wants or needs that new technology application.

Have you dreamed of having a private cloud?
San Antonio-based Rackspace seeks to make that dream a reality.
Today, the company released its private cloud software, code named “Alamo” and available on the OpenStack platform. It is available as a free download from the Rackspace website.
The software can be used in Rackspace’s data centers or in other data centers. Rackspace is also offering support services. The software provides companies with greater controls in a public cloud environment. “We believe that the majority of our customers and cloud users will be running hybrid cloud environments for a long time,” Jim Curry, general manager of Private Cloud business at Rackspace, said in a news release. “Today’s announcement allows businesses to utilize their existing investment in their own datacenter resources to run an open cloud solution for additional control and customization and also take advantage of Rackspace’s datacenter options.”
Tonight, Rackspace is having a launch part at Capital Factory in Austin to celebrate its new software. The party features product demonstrations, giveaways, food and beverages as well as music provided by DJ Sean Anderson of Rackspace and Andrei Matei of AppFog. The party starts at 7 p.m. and runs until 9 p.m. To find out more, check out Rackspace’s invitation.

It’s that time of the year again when your social media news feeds get clogged with people asking you to vote for their panel.
South by Southwest PanelPicker, in which votes and comments count for 30 percent of the decision making on whether a panel makes it, went live this morning. SXSW uses a crowd-source method to winnow the not so great ideas from the great ideas. Voting runs through Aug. 31.
And if you’re looking for something to vote for you could cast a vote for Silicon Hills News’ presentation “The Myths and Reality of a New Media Entrepreneur.”
It’s one of those tell it like it is talks. I’ll let it all hang out and talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of being a new media entrepreneur.
Here’s my pitch: “On the Internet, anyone can publish a blog, become a video star or take amazing photos. But running a business is another story. Making a buck from online publishing takes a lot of time and work. It’s possible to earn a living as a new media site, but it takes a lot of skills and connections and time to make it work. In this session, I’ll share the lessons I’ve learned during the past year and a half creating SiliconHillsNews.com, a regional technology publication covering technology entrepreneurs and companies in the Austin and San Antonio region known as Silicon Hills.”
But enough about me, let’s talk about you. If you’re in Austin or San Antonio or parts in between (heck we’re in Wimberley – that’s Texas Hill Country living at its finest folks) and you’ve submitted a panel for 2013 SXSW Interactive then leave a comment or send me an e-mail and I’ll plug your panel. Right here. We reach thousands of Central Texas’ most plugged in people so let us know and we’ll spread the word. It’s SXSW panel picking time right here in the Silicon Hills of Texas.