We participated in the NH Speed Venture Summit

Posted by JC Cameron on October 30th, 2008

This past Tuesday, we participated in the first NH Speed Venture Summit.  It is a “speed dating” event for entrepreneurs and investors to sit down and see if a valuable connection could be made in a very short time (12 minutes to pitch company and discuss opportunity). 

There were 25 investment groups and approximately 50 companies looking for financing.  It was my understanding that more than 100 companies requested to participate so we were pleased to be one of startups selected.

We met with:

• Matt Fates from Ascent Venture Partners
• Jesse Devitte from Borealis Ventures
• David Safaii from Windspeed Ventures
• Roger Walton from Castile Ventures
• Joe Caruso from Bantam Group
• Rod Van Sciver and David Speltz of eCoast Angel Network

The event was very well run and they even managed to find fill-in investment firms when a few investors cancelled at the last second.  Though all six were not perfectly suited to our market space, we received valuable feedback and ideas on our B2B venture from each one.  We want to thank them for taking the time to meet with us and to listen to our proposals.

Lastly, a big shout-out to Hollis McGuire, Heidi Dunn, and Matt Benson for their tireless work in making this event happen and for running things on the day of the event.  Of course, many more people were involved including all of the committee volunteers.  Thanks again for this great event!

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Let us know if you have a Twitter account!

Posted by JC Cameron on October 27th, 2008

We have recently launched our twitter service where you can receive updates on the most highly recommended B2B firms and other critical SMB news and resources.

You can access our twitter account at: http://twitter.com/vendorcity

It’s a great way to keep up-to-date on the best firms in our database and to be aware of other time-sensitive small and medium-sized business news.  Just follow us and we’ll be sure to start following you as well!

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All recommendations are now reviewed before being posted

Posted by JC Cameron on October 24th, 2008

What helps make VendorCity unique is our unbiased and honest reviews of business-to-business vendors and service providers. Our goal is not to have the most reviews; instead we strive to have the best and most trusted word-of-mouth B2B referrals on the planet. 

Towards that goal, we have just added new functionality to our site which enables us to review each and every recommendation before it is posted to our community of users.  We check to ensure that there is (or was) a relationship between the two firms and flag any self-recommendations or other reviews that don’t meet our “trustworthy” rules. 

If we are not certain that the review is valid, we will contact the two parties (the client and the vendor) to determine if there is indeed a relationship between them.  If we cannot verify it that they did business together, we will not post that vendor review.  So far, this has only been necessary with approximately 5% of the recommendations posted on VendorCity.

As business owners ourselves, we know the value of having a trusted source to go to when you need to find a quality vendor or service provider.  You can be sure that we are working hard behind the scenes to ensure that the B2B recommendations you read at VendorCity can be trusted. 

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Our New Recommendation Wizard

Posted by JC Cameron on October 9th, 2008

One of the single biggest complaints we have received since launching our site is that it takes too long to add recommendations.  Our original goal in designing the recommendation process was to make it a simple step-by-step process where you search to see if the vendor exists and if not, add the info for that vendor. Then, once added or selected, you are able to add your rating for that vendor.

However, what has become crystal clear is that the process was simply too long and time-consuming.  Based upon your feedback, we have created a much simpler recommendation wizard that requires less information and allows you to enter recommendations much faster.  In the past, if you had 10 vendors to add, it would require you to go through 50 or so total screens.  It was relatively easy to use but took time loading each of those screens. 

We have some great news! Now, 10 vendors only requires 11 total screens!

So, if you haven’t seen the new recommendation wizard, be sure to log in and check it out. 

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