MEGA Support: Matt Oguz Of Istanta Capital On Their MEGA Investment
nterviewed by: Ahmed Siddiqui
Matt Oguz comes from a professional background in ecommerce, analytics, behavioral economics and decision sciences. Earlier in his career, he built big data solutions for a number of Fortune 500 companies such as Dow Corning, Coca Cola and General Electric. Matt started CostCaptain.com in 2005, a leading ecommerce company that caters to the education buyers from K12 to Universities. In 2006, Matt wrote a negotiation management software platform for car dealerships and licensed out to leading dealership chains. In 2008, he built an independent stock rating platform that extracts large buy and sell transactions of mutual funds and calculates stock ratings based on this information. Having invested as an angel investor since 2005, Matt started Istanta Capital in 2012, an emerging fund that focuses on early stage startups.
Istanta is offering $25K in seed investment to a MEGA Startup Weekend Winner, and Matt answered some questions about their investment:
AS: How did you hear about MEGA Startup Weekend?
MO: Industry news.
AS: What made you want to get involved with Startup Weekend?
MO: This was my first time attending the event. I was amazed by the breadth and depth of the startups there vs. other hackathons. The entrepreneurs in all three categories seemed serious about turning their ideas into startups then to real businesses. We are in talks with more than one team already.
AS: Have you/Istanta made a similar offer at any other Startup Weekend event?
MO: This is a rare offer, but yes, we have offered something similar at two other events, including Stanford’s eBootcamp 2012, in which we were the only fund that offered seed stage funding.
AS: Who have you chosen to reward?
MO: The robotics winner team, Eyes on Demand – an on-demand remote human assistance, conceived for visually impaired people.
Mobile Apps, Gamers And Robots, Oh My: MEGA Startup Weekend 2012
This is a guest post by talkTECH Communications Public Relations and Social Media Director, Kelly Byrd.
#swbayMEGA caused a disruption in Silicon Valley with technology and innovation coming out of the Microsoft office in Mountain View.
As Douglas Crets of Microsoft BizSpark noted, we started the weekend with ”the entrepreneur spirit that gets us fired up enough to get mad about problems–and create solutions”, thanks to Dave McClure‘s riveting keynote welcome speech.
Scott Case from Startup America, John Cabrera, Writer of Warner Brother’s H+: The Digital Series, and Hiten Shah, of KISSmetrics also welcomed the crowd.
MEGA Startup Weekend Bay Area focused on three tracks: mobile, gaming and with the help of Andra Keay - robotics! The weekend brought together people with different skillsets – primarily software developers, graphics designers, roboticists, and business professionals – to build applications, robots and gaming platforms, and develop a commercial case around them in 54 hours. In total, 28 teams that built their idea and pitched to a panel of judges.
MEGA participants were given exclusive access to the Windows 8 experience using the tablet and phone that run on Windows 8 – both not yet available to the public - to create their projects.
There was also support from 50 mentors including: Hermione Way (The Next Web, BRAVO “Silicon Valley” TV Show), Patrick Vlaskovits (“The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development“), Jeff Gibboney (Transition Robotics, Inc.), Ross Ingram and Adam Wilson (Sphero), and Melonee Wise and Tully Foote (Willow Garage).
The winners:
- Robotics: Eyes on Demand - An on-demand remote human assistance, conceived for visually impaired people.
- Mobile: Predict Gaze - Helps companies better understand their customers through facial recognition on mobile devices.
- Gaming: Stinky Da Vinci - Competitive photo sharing mobile app game.
The prizes: See Claire Lee’s post for the full list.
Can’t wait to do it again!
Was it Mega? Yes, it was!
This is a guest post by Claire Lee of the Microsoft BizSpark team.
What an awesome experience.
Today I am still drawn, like a bee to honey, to the #swbayMEGA Twitter stream and smiling as I can feel people’s joy and optimism, and looking at the pics.
Thank you to all the (300+) creatives and geeks, developers, designers and enthusiasts, mentors, experts, partners and friends, for showing up and making cool stuff. We just get to bask in all that energy and help you on your path to greatness.
Microsoft Silicon Valley is delighted to host this ground-breaking innovation station.
Alongside a number of of photo sharing apps and social games, we’re just so fired up to see such fantastic mobile apps like (mobile track winner) Predict Gaze and other impactful solutions to real world problems such as managing the fostering process, or enabling blind people access remote human assistance.
Not to mention the robots.
HUGE congrats to every single entrepreneur who formed teams and pitched their ideas.
Hard to argue with the quality of apps at this Mega – the largest Startup Weekend ever, anywhere. Kudos to the Startup Weekend folks: Marc, Franck, Ahmed – you deserve a lot of credit for creating and executing this model. Anyone who has facilitated a Startup Weekend knows the intense organization, and the myriad moving parts.
What makes these possible? Strong partnerships
The beauty of Mega is all of the Bay Area ecosystem players coming together, and lending their support and expertise: their generosity and enthusiasm helps a great deal.
DEMO are enabling all three winning teams go to DEMO Spring and pitch on stage.
Shout out to Sharon at Astia (who is jumping up and down today with glee at the opportunity to help female entrepreneurs via their program); to Adeo Ressi and Founder Institute (and their pledge to offer two scholarships to the Fall SV FI program); to Chris Gill from SV Forum who is offering the winning teams the chance to pitch to hundreds of investors at Launch 2012 in June; to Max Bloom from the brand new co-working space down 101, Ground Floor SV, for giving away membership.
Companies with best-of-breed solutions and resources to help startups succeed – like Twilio, Xero, 9Slides, CapLinked, and more … are giving free services to winners and teams. Make sure you get yours!
To mentors and experts: without your advice people cannot reach their potential and do great things. Especially the ones who got on planes to be with us.
Major points to T Scott Case and the Startup America crew, for spending the whole weekend in the thick of it – and son Ryan for staying up late on Saturday to beat everyone at Black Ops on Xbox.
Shout out to the Microsoft SV staff, BizSpark team and SVC events team, for helping make it happen. To our friends at Silicon Valley Bank – thanks for the yummy wine (and the legendary headache this morning). To Gordon Biersch for the beer, and to all the other contributors: we are grateful for your assistance.
High Five to our friends in the Windows team: without you this event would not be!
Finally – don’t forget to get your premium Microsoft software (free) from BizSpark: Startup Weekend teams, use this URL to apply today: aka.ms/swbizspark
Our man Douglas has already captured some profound thoughts and, as he says, there’s more to come as we track the progress of those teams created this weekend, with hope and optimism.
Keep on Truckin’!
Mega is Back! Mobile + Gaming + Robots!
Please visit the official Mega Startup Weekend Webpage for complete details on this event!!!
It is that time again, Mega is back with a vengeance, and this time we are exploring the awesome worlds of Mobile, Gaming, and Robots! Mega Startup Weekend is the largest Startup Weekend in the Bay Area and in the world, hosting over 300 attendees in 3 different verticals. This is our annual Celebration of Entrepreneurship, hosted by Microsoft BizSpark, Startup America, and DEMO.
In keeping up with Startup Weekend tradition, this event is all about “Less Talk, More Action”, and the grand prize this year is to present at the DEMO conference. This time around, the winning teams from each “vertical” (Mobile, Gaming, and Robots) will be presenting on the DEMO main stage!
Last year’s Mega Startup Weekend was a huge success, and this year is going to be even bigger. You can see a short video of last year’s event here:
Each Vertical will have its own flavor, and bring together people of all types of backgrounds including: Hardware engineers, robot hackers, designers, software developers, mobile developers, marketers, gamers, game designers, game artists, game producers, and ENTREPRENEURS!!!
Here are the details on each Vertical:
Mobile
The Mobile Vertical will focus on building Mobile businesses. Are we going to find the next Zaarly at Mega? Bring your idea to pitch on Friday night, build and validate over the weekend and then prepare a 5 minute pitch for Sunday night!
Gaming
Have an idea for an awesome game? Pitch it on Friday night and then work on paper prototypes (card game, board game, turn based game) over the weekend! On Saturday night, we will be hosting a “Game Night” where all the teams will come in and play your game! On Sunday night, instead of pitching to the judges for 5 minutes, you will have 15 minutes to play your game with the judges!
Robots
How nice would it be to have Rosie (from the Jetsons) to do all your chores? In the Robot Vertical, we will be exploring how to use existing robots for other commercial purposes, or even building new robots to solve some existing problems. Pitch your idea on Friday night, build it over the weekend, and show off your badass robot on Sunday night to a panel of judges!
What’s It Like To Try To Build a Startup in 54 Hours?
Startup Weekend EDU participant Deborah Chang shared her experience on her blog Science Never Sucks. Here’s her take:
Most importantly, I’m thankful for the people I met over the weekend, many of whom I hope will stay good friends and mentors for years to come. A special heartfelt thanks to the Tiedot team, without whom none of this would have been possible.
Yogesh, Sim, Mike, Max, Gershon, Jamie (and Nihal), you guys ROCK. I miss you already.
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*Startup Weekend is all about launching a Startup in 54 Hours.
**All rises in the emotional roller coaster are strictly attributable to my team members and my mentors, all dips are strictly attributable to me. (=
