Be sure to follow me on Twitter @isabellarmeyer and my http://about.me/IsabellaMeyer
Also, email me at isabella@nameremind.com if you have any questions. Please email me with your email address if you would like to be added to a list to be a part of the first group for a pre release of NameRemind when it’s ready and if you want updates with our progress! NameRemind is going to change the way you interact with people you know.
The Energy of the Silicon Valley Area
This morning I am sitting at a Café on university ave in Palo Alto and it really makes me realize how much energy there is in this area especially with the entrepreneurial spirit. The first day my dad and I arrived in Palo Alto we were at lunch at the University Cafe and had no plans except for the Summit on Saturday and Sunday, and just as we were wondering how we were going to set up meetings, we see a man wearing a La Dolfina polo shirt. Now, only people who play or know polo would wear a La Dolfina shirt, and so my dad said hi to the guy and asked if he played polo. (Side note: my dad is a little bit of a polo fanatic. He plays and is on the USPA board so he loves talking to other people about polo.) We started talking and ended up meeting both him, John Vermes, and the guy he was eating lunch with, John Eden, the director at Zynga. Both Johns loved my NameRemind idea and we decided to meet further separately to discuss it. A few things amazed me that first day. 1) The way that polo revolutionized this trip and very well the rest of NameRemind’s future. 2) How there’s a common link between people in the same communities due to something like polo which can bring complete strangers together. This actually inspired a recent improvement I brainstormed to include in NameRemind’s features. 3) How seemingly everyone I have met in the valley is excited to help others because all of us entrepreneurs have been in the same place before and we’ve all failed.
WeWork: Day 2 of Under20 Summit
Today was the second day of the Summit and it was a collaboration day at WeWork in SanFran. WeWork is an awesome incubator lab and I will post some pictures because it’s a really cool place. I love these sorts of places that encourage collaboration, and WeWork was great with all the tables, comfortable design, white boards, and breakout rooms that are fully equipped. I couldn’t stay for very long, but we all sort of chatted and brainstormed by working together on all of our ideas. I worked a lot with a new friend Diwank who lives in India and he taught me about coding and how I can begin to learn to code myself. I have always wanted to and he was so generous and spent about an hour showing me how to get started. Meanwhile, Josh, who started Josh’s toys and games, was teaching everyone some awesome new card games. Everyone was having a great time and loves to try out any of the goodies Josh pulls out of his backpack. Another great day.
Lenny Raymond: Investors, Incentives, and Alignments (An Under20 Talk)
I went to a break out session talk yesterday with Lenny Raymond. Here are my notes from our 40 minute session:
With your investors, you have to align goals
You both want your company to succeed
Entrepreneurs: necessity, lifestyle, social, professional, financial, classical
“big ideas want to change the world, work with cool people, and make money doing it”
Classes of investors: friends and family, angels, incubators, super angels, early stage VC, expansion stage VC, mezzanine, private equity, public markets
Money= fuel for an entrepreneur, but blood for a VC
Find out the fund life cycle before proposing, see if in the past few years they got a new funding round
The Best Restaurants of San Francisco and Palo Alto
Okoze Sushi (Russian Hill, SF)- This was the absolute best sushi I have ever had, and trust me I’m a sushi fanatic. Go in and sit at the sushi bar and talk to Jason, the head sushi master. He is amazing and if you’re feeling adventurous, tell him and he will set you up with a night to remember of sushi trying.
University Café (University Ave, Palo Alto)- Great for lunch, I got the salmon stuffed with crab cakes and it was absolutely amazing. We ran into two amazing contacts the first day we arrived in California that have revolutionized our visit. Great place for the Silicon Valley community.
Café Venetia (University Ave, PA)- Awesome place for coffee meetings, sit in the upstairs area. Also another great place to meet incredible VC and tech connections. When we went we ended up meeting three other people that could help with NameRemind other than the original person we were meeting with.
The American Grilled Cheese Kitchen (SF)- The name says it all. Gourmet grilled cheese, right by the Giants stadium.
Fino (Russian Hill, SF)- One of the best Italian restaurants I have also ever been to. If there is one thing about San Francisco that is amazing, it is the food. I got the most amazing salmon and ate way too much. They make their own homemade pasta in house. Attached is a picture of the french fries which are to die for, a huge mound of gooey cheesy garlic-y french fries. Yum.
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NameRemind: My Venture
So I have finally gotten around to writing about my own app and why I was at the Thiel Summit in the first place. My app is called NameRemind, a way to remember people’s names. One day, my dad and I were at a restaurant in Florida when we saw a guy on the US Polo Association board that my dad knew, but couldn’t remember his name. He needed to go and say hi and shake hands to be courteous and polite and catch up with his friend, but needed to be able to have his name for his introduction. I thought “hmmm… there should be an app for this.” On the plane ride home, I looked for a similar app and couldn’t find one. I decided I would develop my own.
I proposed the idea to my dad, and he told me that he would fund my project, but I had to be the full-time project manager. This was during the end of my junior year of high school. I went on and used http://www.elance.com, and hired my first developer to work on my iPhone app. The way it works is through mental categorizations and associations. When you can’t remember someone’s name, oftentimes you can remember how you met the person or what they’re involved in. The problem that my app solves is that if you meet someone at an event, for example, but you don’t remember their name afterwards, there is very little hope you are able to find them later by using Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. However, with NameRemind, as long as you remember a few ‘tags’ or ‘groups’ which are associations that these people are categorized with in your mind, then you will be able to find their name to reconnect later.
Here’s a short pitch paragraph:
Have you ever been somewhere where you recognize someone, but you just can’t remember their name? You generally can remember little things about them, for example they may be the parent of another boy on your son’s soccer team, or a member of a board you sit on, but the name is simply escaping you. Name Remind is the program that will help you remember all of the people in the groups of your life in one easy place. Name Remind revolutionizes your social connections and contacts and allows you to work backwards when seeing a person, based on what you can remember about them, in order to retrieve their name. Name Remind is simple enough to be used by anyone, from top corporate executives trying to keep track of all of their clients, employees, and co-workers, to parents headed to a school parent social event. Name Remind will be your own personal assistant, always there to whisper someone’s name in your ear.
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I am looking for investors currently and am in the Palo Alto area meeting with people. Stay posted for more updates on NameRemind and an updated launch date!
Check out our logo! Do you like it? See how someone is whispering into the other person’s ear?
Cool new apps to download from people I have met at the Under20 Summit
OohLaLa- A college campus social event organizer app. Started in Canada, coming to mor US schools soon. Awesome app, and I met Jake Housdon, a part of the team. He’s a really cool guy and he even helped create a game through the app that works through using geo location to grab a treasure along with other users and peers. They drop a virtual “treasure box” on the map and then whenever someone is within 50 meters of the treasure, they can click the “grab treasure” button. Then for the 3 day period that the game goes on, you must run away from other players to keep the treasure, all while using your iPhones geo location to do this. www.gotoohlala.com
Nixter- A private way to share your nightlife experiences without them being spread all over Facebook. “What happens in Nixter stays in Nixter.” www.nixter.com
My Social Cloud- “MySocialCloud.com is an online web application that allows you to manage your online life in one simple “cloud”—your secure entry point to the online world.” I met Stacey the founder today and she’s awesome. She was also just featured on the front page of Yahoo! www.mysocialcloud.com
Thiel Fellowship: Under 20 Summit
Today I am attending the first annual Thiel Fellowship under 20 Summit. It is the first day and we are going to be attending lots of breakout groups, listening to keynote speakers, and meeting all sorts of people. I am here to pitch my idea, NameRemind, and to find people that are interested who could potentially be partners, investors, developers, designers, and mentors. The first keynote speakers included Chris McCann, from Startup Digest, Danielle Fong, from Light Sail Energy, and Sahil Lavingia, from the founding team of Pinterest and Gumboard. To me, Sahil was my favorite speaker, he has such a unique and sort of dry personality, but hilarious at the same time. They all sort of told their life stories. One really interesting thing for me was how Chris stressed using your .edu email address when you’re in college. Someone mentioned creating a thielfoundation.edu email address for those who join since you can’t go to college. Interesting. More to come!
Here’s a picture of Sahil giving his keynote.
Isabella Meyer 