Dear David -

Last night we had the pleasure of attending the TechStars demo day in Boston where we saw 10 great companies present to 250 mentors, investors, and members of the tech community.  Wow, what an impressive evening and showcase for TechStars.

I’d like to respectively submit for your consideration New Orleans as the next city for TechStars.

You and I have had several conversations over the last year, facilitated by Andrew Hyde, about my desire to launch a mentorship-based seed fund in New Orleans.  We’ve done our homework: studied the models, attended your session at SXSW, and talked to mentors, entrepreneurs and investors all involved with TechStars. You said to me last night “New Orleans is on my radar…” to which I respond: I’m making it my mission to do what it takes to attract TechStars to launch in New Orleans in January of 2011.

I believe we can demonstrate to you that the tech startup community in New Orleans and Louisiana is activated and it would be a winning move for you to launch your Winter session in New Orleans.  Here is what I plan to demonstrate:

• we have a roster of local and national mentors ready to commit
• we have sources of capital that will get behind a TechStars New Orleans
• we have an startup ecosystem of intelligent, passionate, creative, driven entrepreneurs who will provide the core of and be impacted greatly by TechStars
• we have a favorable climate for tech startups with the 35% digital media incentive which makes Louisiana one of the best places for software and Internet companies in the country
• we have a collaborative workspace, Launch Pad, ready to house TechStars companies
• we have activated local leadership lined up to get behind TechStars and make it a success

I have been passionate about the need for a mentorship-based seed fund in New Orleans for the last two years, and I fully believe that the stars are aligned to make it a reality right now with TechStars.  We are committed to making our case to you, learning what we need to know, and answering your questions to make as convincing an argument as possible.

Please make space on the TechStars calendar next January for New Orleans. Thank you for your hospitality in Boston and your consideration. We will be in touch.

Who’s with me?  If you are a startup or entrepreneur who would love to see a TechStars New Orleans, holla back in the comments!

Sincerely,

Chris Schultz

[PS: for those who wonder who I'm writing to here: David Cohen is the founder and CEO of TechStars, a mentorship-driven seed stage investment program for Internet startups.]

This post has been coming together for a while, and I’m excited that I am finally getting a chance to share the coming capital options for startups in NOLA.  My feeling for a while has been that the seed capital gap and lack of VC in general in Louisiana has been one of the biggest challenges facing startups.  The Receivables Exchange had to go raise its capital outside of Louisiana.

As far as local angel funding, here’s what I wrote to Ben Rosen after his visit to New Orleans last week during Launch Fest:

The next step is to develop a strong, active, angel community to fund these companies, and keep them in New Orleans, rather than needing to go to Austin, NY, Boulder or the Valley for capital & talent.

A big part of our mission at Launch Pad is getting the investment community familiar and comfortable with these types of investments, which may be non-traditional for the region where wealth has traditionally been generated through oil and gas and the port.

It appears that we are on the verge of a tidal shift in the availability of capital for startups locally (fingers crossed).  Here are some of the things that are happening now and on the horizon.

• Idea Village – open – an eight year old non-profit that provides grant funding & educational curriculum. The 2010 class has just completed, and the application process for 2011 will be open towards the end of this summer.
• Leap Frog Ventures – projected launch Q3 2010 – a non-profit evergreen fund that Leslie Jacobs, Rick Rees, and Ben Allen are putting together in conjunction with GNO Inc.  The fund is based on the JumpStart program in Cleveland OH. Projected to raise $5-8 million from public and private sources and make seed investments of $250,000 – $500,000.
• GNO, Inc Opportunity Fund – projected launch Q3 2010 – this is a fund that will package CDFI funds from local banks into an evergreen investment fund that will make low interest convertible debt loans to local startups.  I am unsure of projected raise, the average size of loans is likely to be around $250,000.
• South Coast Angels – open, currently accepting pitches – this is a local angel fund managed by Clayton White and Choose Taurman.  This is a member managed angel fund, so it is different than an angel network like the events we do at Launch Pad.  My understanding is that they have $2-3 million committed and they are currently seeking investment opportunities of $250,000 to $500,000. They are using AngelSoft software to manage the application process and you can find out about it here.
• National VC Activity – starting – one of the best opportunities I see is to build strong ties to the national VC community, particularly NY, Boston & Austin.  The Kraft Group investment in NakedPizza led to Steve Schlafman’s participation in Launch Fest.  In addition, David Safaii of Windspeed Ventures came to Launch Fest and is getting connected with the local community.  Nurturing and strengthening these ties is critical.
• Barrett Vernon Montgomery LLC – open - Disclosure: Investor in Launch Pad.  Currently managing two funds.  Funds under management: $30 million. General size of investments are seed investments of $100,000 to $300,000 with follow on capital of up to $3 million.
• Long Branch Ventures – open – Michelle Oaks has been an active angel investor in the New Orleans community over the last two years.  Long Branch invests in early stage companies with an investment criteria that includes the company be based in Orleans Parish.
• Trumpet Ventures – open – Spun off from Trumpet Group in 2009, Trumpet Ventures invests financially and also by providing services in exchange for equity.
• Launch Pad Angel Network – open – We host quarterly angel pitch events at Launch Pad at the IP.  We hosted the last one during Launch Fest where we had ten 5 minute pitches by entrepreneurs.  70% of the startups were invited to contact an investor following the pitches.  Range of capital has been early stage prototype to seed capital.
• Voodoo Ventures – open – Voodoo recently made an investment in Jackson Square Group.  I am open to other strategic investment opportunities.

I am particularly excited about the new funding sources coming online listed above.  While I still believe that we’d benefit greatly from a seed accelerator program, and Launch Pad has some things underway to launch one, I think the capital is going to be flowing locally in the next 6 months to a year looking for deals.  If you have a startup idea, now is the time to get your business plan, or better yet, prototype together.

If I’ve made any mistakes above, feel free to contact me.  If you are a source of capital, and would like to be listed, please add a comment, and I’ll add you to the list.  Here’s to solving the seed capital gap in New Orleans!

Yesterday I was reflecting on the inclusion of Launch Pad in this NYTimes article.

Meanwhile, LaunchPad — a k a  LaunchPadNola — which was started by Chris Schultz, offers co-working space and business classes in New Orleans. It has 43 tenants today.

As much as it’s great to be recognized, it does piss me off that it says I started Launch Pad.  I didn’t.  I co-founded it. With Barre Tanguis and Will Donaldson.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur is not to go it alone.  It’s too lonely of a game to try to start a company yourself. And there is evidence that shows that having co-founders is much more likely to lead to business success. As a serial entrepreneur, I’ve embraced the fact that I like to have different things going on, its what gets me fired up, and I’ve been able to pull my passions together under Voodoo Ventures.  I very deliberately have made a decision that unless I have a strong partner or co-founder on a project, I won’t do it.  It is the only way I scale.

I’m proud of my partnerships and acknowledge the fact that my endeavors wouldn’t be where they are without them.

• Flatsourcing – Oleg Kurnosov, Timur Vafin, Alex Mamaev, Peter Bodenheimer
• Launch Pad – Barre Tanguis & Will Donaldson
• TribeCon – Tiffany Starnes
• Even my recent investment in Jackson Square Group is reflective of this.  Patrick Comer brought me on as a co-founder, alongside his brother Walton Comer.

It took me a while to get to this point.  Having a partner can be hard.  One of the most serious strains on a personal relationship I’ve ever had came when I faced challenges with my partner  and best friend in the first company I ever started.

But, reflecting on my career, the successes have come when I have a partner-in-crime, someone deep in the blood and the mud with me.  And I’m grateful in all my ventures that I great co-founders and partners right now.

I’m at FOWA in Miami today w/ Peter and Alex from Flatsourcing.  The first presentation was from Fred Wilson who makes amazing investments in great companies:

Fred Wilson – 10 Golden Principles of Web Apps

1. Speed – The most important feature, if its not fast, users will leave.  Early adopters are forgiving, the mainstream is not.
2. Instant Utility – It has to give people something immediately.  If you have to spend an hour loading data into the app before you can actually do something, people will leave.
3. Have a Voice – Stand for something, have a voice, don’t be bland.  The Twitter Fail Whale ending up on t-shirts, meant that something about their voice was connecting w/ society.  It sounded like a human being talking.
4. Less is More – Start by being simplistic. Delicious was a great example. People used it every day.  You do one little thing but you do it all day, its quick, easy and fast.
5. Programmable – Make your app programmable.  Make it possible for others to add to and build on top of your application.  If your API is not read/write its not an API, its RSS.  When people can add value to your application, they can add energy to your app, more data, and more richness.
6. Personal – Infuse your application w/ your users energy.  People feel more ownership when your app is personal for everyone.  Backgrounds, avatars, user generated content.   Makes people care about your app.
7. RESTful – In a REST architecture, your resources have a URL, and can be called by that URL.  Make the entire application have a clean URL.  Every component has its own URL that people can remember and type in.   Everyone can understand what a URL stands for, and it also is crawlable by search engines.  The web can get access to your app in deep ways.
8. Discoverable – When you launch a web app, its a needle in a haystack.  How is anyone going to find yours.  You must understand SEO, and build your application from the ground up to be optimized for Google.  It also needs to be optimized for social media, meaning virality.  The product itself must push itself out into the web and social media.
9. Clean – The application itself must be clean on the page.  Whitespace.  Big fonts.  Not too much functionality on each page.  Anyone landing on the page should know immediately what to do. (Tumblr login.) People underestimate how important it is to be efficient w/ the features on each page.
10. Playful – The ability to play in an application is important.  The game dynamic is something you can use to get users to do what you want.  Weight Watchers is a good example.  Set goals, and get rewarded for meeting goals.  Create a game dynamic in all apps to make it “fun to play.” Foursquare uses game dynamic as a way to power the development of a local information service.  Users will have more fun, and you can incent the kind of behavior you want in the application.

The marketing for an app has to be in the product.  Don’t hire a marketing team.  Guerrilla, street, or stunt marketing.  It’s not a coincidence that two of Union Square Ventures  apps (Twitter and Foursquare) broke out at SXSW.   It’s authentic, and not expensive.

The Union Square Ventures, five of the six keywords they believe in: Mobile, Social, Global, Playful, Intelligent.

Here are his slides:

The 10 Golden Principles for Successful Web Apps

Fred emphasized that these are his 10 principles, but there is a lively discussion going on over on his blog, where many other opinions are being expressed about what core tenants are important to an successful app.

Peter Bodenheimer and I went up the the Web 2.0 Expo the week before Thanksgiving, and spent the week hanging out with some pretty impressive folks. It’s clear there is a lot of energy in the NY startup scene right now, it reminded me of the first FOWA conference in 2006 where the Web 2.0 energy was palpable in San Francisco.

It’s important for me and Flatsourcing, TribeCon, and Launch Pad to be connected to New York. As strong as the New Orleans startup movement has been, its critical we maintain our direct ties to innovation hubs like Silicon Valley & New York. We need to know what they are up to and vice versa. In this post, I’ll summarize some of the exciting things we saw and people we met. In addition, I’ve got a proposal that I want to float to continue to build our ties to NY.

First, what we did and what’s happening in NY:

• Monday night we went to Ignite NYC and ran into Elliott Adams (good to see the state going to these conferences). This was my first Ignite, and we saw some great presentations in preparation for the launch of Ignite NOLA in February which Adele Tiblier and Chris Boudy are leading the charge on.
• Spent Tuesday hanging w/ Andrew Hyde, he’s just ran the NY Marathon and is hard at work on his new startup which I’m trying to twist his arm into locating to NOLA. (He hates winter weather. Advantage: NOLA)
• Watch the keynote by Tim O’Reilly for a great overview of the state of the web. He’s concerned that we may be entering another “closed garden” period.
• Chris Brogan was surprisingly Zen in his presentation, but and great. It reiterated to me how great it was to have his co-author of Trust Agents at Tribecon. Favorite quote: “The difference between audience and community, is which way you turn the chairs”
• Having the tweets running on the screen behind the speaker blew up with the final keynote. IMHO this is a bad idea, and I was glad we didn’t do it at TC.
• Tuesday night Pete and I went to the Net Neutrality Tech Debate at IAC. It was fascinating to see the policy makers who will shape the FCC legislation debate in this forum. Thankfully, the need for net neutrality won the debate with the more convincing argument.
• On Wednesday we went to the Launch Pad to watch startup pitches by 5 companies: Foodspotting, Apstrata, Earth Aid, Neighborhoodr, & Set Jam. All the pitches were strong, and it really pounded home to be how tight a pitch needs to be and how well the constraint of 5 minutes worked.
• Baratunde Thurston brought down the house with his keynote on Wednesday: “There’s a hashtag for that” If you watch one thing I’m posting, make it this.
• The conversation with Caterina Fake (founder of Flickr) was interesting for her commentary on the NY tech scene, and the reasons why she chose to locate her new startup Hunch in NYC.
• I really enjoyed the conversation with John Borthwork, founder of Betaworks. This is probably the most startup company/incubator going right now, and is an inspiration for me for where I want to take Voodoo Ventures. If you like Tweetdeck & Bit.ly, you’ll like where he thinks the web is headed.
• Wednesday night we met up with Mike Karnjanaprakorn, its exciting to hear about the success of By/Association and his understanding and use of the importance of mystery, human curation, and exclusivity.
• He soon spotted a check-in from Foursquare founder Naveen Selvadurai at a nearby bar. The power of Foursquare to connect people was quickly evident as it seemed every startuper in the city was there within 15 min. Chatted with Tantek Celik and Richard Blakeley. I think I finally grokked hype-local from Richard. Basically, the concept behind Neighborhoodr, is that the more granualary you slice a community the more you care about it. You may not care about everything going on in New Orleans (perhaps just the tech scene), but you care about everything going on on your street.
  

All in all a great week. I know the bullets review like an itinerary of “here’s what we did,” but I’m trying to convey the energy we felt being up there. Some of the clear concepts were mobile, hyper-local, and simplicity of concepts. I heard on more than one occasion from people that they hear “New Orleans has something going on…” but they all wondered “who was our signature startup?” Who is our signature startup? Not just a company that we all know about… a startup that everyone knows about.

So, what about the NOLA -> NYC connection you mentioned?

Well, we’re conjuring up an idea, and though its not ready for launch yet, I am interested to get feedback on it. It is based on a conversation that Brian Oberkirch, Perry Chen and I had at TribeCon. The idea is theirs, I’m just hoping to help implement it:

A visiting scholar program for startups.

The idea would be to bring startup CEO’s down from NYC to NOLA to work here, interact, mentor, and learn about what people are doing down here, and then take that gospel back to NY with them, spreading the seeds of what is happening here. Basically a direct, personal, mentorship and marketing program.

Take it a step further, and reverse it, sending Louisiana startup CEO’s up to NY to work, learn, and engage. Then we’ve got the sharing going both ways.

Economic development agencies like GNO & LED are already spending a lot of money on familiarization tours. I wonder if a program like this would qualify under that kind of budget? My guess is that using the lean, mean, startup fundamentals we all know so well, that we could create a very effective program.

What do you think? Would you support a NOLA-to-NYC visiting scholar program?

I’m excited to share more details about TribeCon, a conference about communities – both online and offline.  Tiffany Starnes and I have been working for the last six months to put it together along with a lot of help from our Tribal Council and a lot of friends from Net2NO.

We’re producing the conference in partnership with the Voodoo Experience.  TribeCon will be the official interactive component of the Voodoo Experience.  This is a tremendous opportunity for TribeCon. The Voodoo Experience has grown into a huge annual music festival, and together we can build TribeCon into a integral part of the experience and a major interactive conference.

So let’s get to the details:

• What: TribeCon is a conference about building communities, online and offline.
• When: October 29-30, 2009
• Where: Voodoo Experience – City Park, New Orleans, LA
• How much: $169 for TribeCon includes single day Voodoo Experience ticket. $269 for TribeCon includes three day Voodoo Experience Ticket.
• Who: The speakers are all people passionate about building communities.
• Why: Building a community around your brand, cause, or mission is the most powerful way to grow.  Today’s social networking tools make it possible to reach your audience in powerful new ways to build a movement.  At TribeCon you’ll learn how to build community online to effect action offline.

Why does TribeCon need New Orleans?

One of the things I’m most excited about is bringing the conversation about authentic online communities to New Orleans.  Having the Voodoo Experience has a partner enables us to make this truly a world-class conference.  TribeCon connects with New Orleans because we have such a deep sense of community here.  From the Mardi Gras indian tribes to front porch neighbors, New Orleans culture is rooted in community.  Andrew Larimer, Tim Soslow and Matt Tritico will be curating a special panel presentation that will be a celebration and exploration of community in New Orleans.

Inspired by SXSW, and now TribeCon is just six weeks away.

The idea for TribeCon was inspired on the Y@ Pack trip to SXSW organized by the Net2NO community.  We had such an amazing experience together, and it was truly amazing what a motivated community can accomplish.  On the bus ride back from SXSW in March, we hatched the idea for TribeCon.  We pitched it at the GNO Inc Digital Media Alliance meeting in May, and though I regrettably made a couple of miscues in my pitch (ugh), we started to line up support and Robbie Vitrano helped us line up meetings with Rehage Entertainment.

So after a long summer of laying the ground work, here we are, just six weeks away from the inaugural TribeCon, with a supportive partner in the Voodoo Experience and a tremendous slate of speakers. Tiffany and I are both getting much less sleep these days, but we’re doing it, and really excited about producing TribeCon.

TribeCon is important to the tech community, and important to New Orleans.

So, you’re interested in getting involved?

Fantastic.  We need your help to make this a success.

• We’re bouncing a lot of ideas off our friends and supporters in the Tribal Council.  Everyone on it has been tremendously helpful and it has really shaped what this conference is, in addition to helping us make decisions on branding, marketing, content and more.  Membership is open to all, so join the Tribal Council.
  
• We will be looking for volunteers to coordinate a number of things for TribeCon.  If you’re interested getting to TribeCon for free, please contact us.
  
• We’re also looking for sponsors to support TribeCon and connect with an audience of community activist and online influencers.  We have a sponsorship package that we can send you, please let us know if your interested, or know someone for us to reach out to.
• Stay updated with all of the latest, follow @tribecon on Twitter.
  
• Ready to sign up? Great, head on over and buy a ticket to the conference.

Thanks to everyone for all your support.  We’re excited to present TribeCon and connect with the community.

Have more questions? Hit me up in the comments! Thanks.

The last few months have been invigorating in New Orleans. There have a ton of exciting things going on in New Orleans, and the momentum in the entrepreneurial ecosystem is swelling to a head.

One thing that I’ve noticed myself slipping into, that I’m calling myself out on is the human tendency to lift yourself up by pulling others down. Something we’ve all known about and experienced since grade school. It’s a human tendency to compete, but I think its so important to understand that we are competing globally and nationally. The work we are all doing is to expand the pie, not slice it up in ever smaller pieces amongst ourselves.

With that in mind, I pledge to:

• Support my tribe, New Orleans entrepreneurs (and not just those in Launch Pad).
• When I have something nice to say, I’ll sing it to the world. When I don’t, I’ll keep my mouth shut.
• Focus on family, work & friends. Balance.
• Help people achieve, succeed, and go further than I have.
• Not succumb to the petty or get sucked into squabbles.
• Give what I can when I can, and be honest when I can’t.

I’ve been so inspired by working around the Launch Pad family. It is such a great vibe here, and we’re just getting started. I know that a big part of that is the support that we all provide for eachother and the successes we do and will celebrate together.

Negativity is such an energy suck and so unproductive. Positive energy is all I have time for right now. So, I’m brushing it off and ready to rock n’ roll.

Ford has asked me and Greta Perry to host a “blogger dinner” for a Ford executive Sunday night in New Orleans. This is part of their social media strategy. I am looking for 2 bloggers to join us.

The deal is:

• we get to check out the new Ford Taurus
• they treat us to dinner Sunday and we’ll share things going on in NOLA w/ a Ford exec
• if we want, we can meet them on Mon and give a tour of things we feel they should see in NOLA
• we are under no obligations to blog (but obviously thats a bit of the idea)
• we may or may not get exposure on a Ford social media campaign

Here’s how to play:

1. comment on this blog post w/ your name, blog URL & the 1 or 2 spots that you think are important for them to see in NOLA (with potential for exposure).
2. tweet me @cschultz and tell me you’re interested

Should be fun, and I’ve agreed to co-ordinate a group and participate. Full Disclosure: I get $250 for my time. (I’m pretty sure you just get a free dinner)

On a personal note, I’m going to try to use this to get an LPTV interview with Noah, the Ford exec. I also want to showcase some of the things I am passionate about in NOLA. Thinking Carver HS (future site of 9th Ward Field of Dreams).

In case you’re wondering how I got into this, last week I got an email (posted below) from Ovilgy PR reaching out on behalf of Ford inviting me to host a blogger dinner and check out the new Ford Taurus. I must note, that shilling in social media can be delicate, and I thought the email was genuine and that they “got it”. Do check out the Outreach Code of Ethics, its one of the things that really convinced me.

Hi Chris,

I’m writing to you on behalf of Ford to ask you to be the official co-host from New Orleans for Ford Executive, Noah Mass, Manager of Systems Architecture on Sunday, July 12 and Monday, July 13.

This summer, Ford Executives are hitting the road to introduce everyone around the country to the new 2010 Taurus and its story. On Sunday, Noah would like to take you and some other New Orleans bloggers out to dinner to hear from you what makes New Orleans special. Then on Monday, Noah will host an event at the dealership that’s open to the public and you and any of your readers would be more than welcome to attend. Schedule permitting, Noah will take the Taurus out to the places you and other bloggers have recommended.

We’re interested in you because you know the area and can help us find the right place to have dinner, invite other bloggers, and spend time with Noah; we’re eager to work with you to share the very best of New Orleans with the Ford community.

If you’re interested in being a co-host, we would promote you and your blog across Ford’s social media properties and compensate you $250 for your time. (Note that this not in exchange for any positive vehicle review or Ford testimonial, but rather for your guidance and expertise as a New Orleans social media insider!)

If you’d like more information, please let me know. If you’re not sure you can co-host, but would like to attend Sunday’s dinner or any of Monday’s events, we’d love to have you join us as well. I know it’s a holiday weekend, but I’d love to hear back from you by Tuesday of next week so we can begin to firm up the day!

Thanks so much. Hope to talk to you soon,

Karen

PS- Ogilvy Public Relations is a governing member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association andour outreach is governed by the Ogilvy PR Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics.

Karen Untereker
Digital Strategist | 360 Digital Influence

If you’re still reading, maybe you want some Ford factiods:

• Sounds like the new 2010 Taurus is a big deal for Ford.
• Taurus sales peaked at 409,000 and last year were at 52,000.
• Looks like Ford dealers are getting onboard with Twitter too, which is cool.
• I remember the original Ford Taurus as being cool b/c it was round. My prediction is that this one is going to be cool b/c it is techie. Look forward to seeing it.

Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret gets it.

In one fell swoop, after hours of wrangling on Monday at the Louisiana State Legistature, Moret was patched in on a crackling cell phone connection. After listening to all sides, he said that the most important thing to him for a company to qualify for the Digital Media Tax Credit is that 80%-90% of it’s revenue come from out of state.

It’s interesting and revealing to note, this has nothing to do with who does the work, where the work is done, or what the work is. Now, I’m not saying he doesn’t hold opinions about these things, and they will be codified in the bill, but his primary focus was that this work is export work.

Why?

Because, building websites and applications by Louisiana businesses for Louisiana business is going to happen anyway. It’s already happening now, people need this stuff, but it doesn’t expand the fiscal pie. So why incentivize it? On the flip side, if we can build businesses here that have clients in New York, San Francisco, London, LA then it gets interesting. Sound familiar?

Let me submit what I recognize is a controversial argument, but is in line with Moret’s 90% rule: My company, Flatsourcing, is good for the state of Louisiana.

Now, many readers know, but for those who don’t, Flatsourcing is a software development firm, based here in New Orleans, with production offices in Kazan, Russia. I just returned from a trip there last week with Peter Bodenheimer and two clients. We have a team of 21 people over there, and the business is growing.

I talked about Flatsourcing when I testified before committee at the State Senate this week. Of the six or seven of us, I was the only one asked a question, and it was clear that “shipping jobs to Russia” went over like a lead balloon. I was asked whether Flatsourcing would qualify for the Digital Media Tax Credit and I said no. I know the company would have more of an economic development impact if those 21 jobs were here in New Orleans, but for a variety of factors (too many for this post), they are not.

The economy of the 21st century is based on knowledge work, the creation of stuff that can be broken down to 1’s and 0’s and therefore done anywhere. Because of this, borders are pourus and its close to impossible to understand, much less regulate, where the work is done. The value chain is long and distributed, often globally. The most important factor of who wins this race is where the value is captured. Value capture = wealth creation = profit. If a company is based in Louisiana, and those profits are captured here, they will be taxed here and spent here. This is certainly the case in terms of Flatsourcing.

The fact that more than 90% of our revenue comes from outside Louisiana, flows into a company that is based here, is distributed here as profit, and gets spent locally very clearly economic development for the state.

When I speak to people about the stigma of outsourcing, I often bring up what the rest of the world calls it: competing. While I certainly agree that in an ideal world, all the people we employ would work in the same office here in New Orleans, this simply isn’t the way the world works anymore.

When I work with entrepreneurs who are starting businesses, one of the first questions I ask is: are you locally or globally focused? I believe you must be looking worldwide for customers.

It was refreshing to hear Moret focus on this idea of expanding the economic pie with the simple metric: does 90% of your revenue flow from out of state. We see it happening right now, right here.

Benjamin Reece with Deltree has national level clients through Deltree, has a partnership in New York that drives this business to him, and yet bases his company in New Orleans. Kyle Berner may manufacture his flip flops in Thailand, but he markets them all over the country, not simply in a local New Orleans boutique. Naked Pizza may be a local pizza shop right now, but the vision is much grander, and I know Jeff Leach won’t rest until they’ve got franchises all over the country. I am confident that all of these businesses will soon meet Secretary Moret’s 90% rule if they don’t already. These are the businesses that will expand the economic pie for Louisiana.

Turning back to Digital Media, it is unlikely that this 90% rule can be codified in the law, and that’s probably a good thing. We don’t want the state having to audit accounting statements. But it was great to see this understanding at the State level.

We’ll see how the Digital Media tax incentive works out, but I am very enthusiastic to see this high level understanding of what economic development is all about from Secretary Moret.

I’m excited to announce that Peter Bodenheimer has joined Voodoo Ventures as our new Interactive Director. He makes a great addition to the Voodoo & Flatsourcing team.

Peter and I have known each other for a while and its been a pleasure working with him thusfar. He brings very technical project management experience to the team. Peter will be adding a layer of client strategy & support for our Flatsourcing clients and assisting with product development for Voodoo Ventures projects.

I’m thrilled to have him aboard and look forward to continued growth for Voodoo & Flatsourcing.

Peter Bodenheimer, Interactive Director, Voodoo Ventures, LLC
A native of New Orleans, Peter has over 15 years working in interactive development in markets across the country. From working in product development for software companies to providing leadership in interactive projects for Fortune 500 companies, local governments, and everything in between, Peter has been involved with software and web development since the infancy of the Internet age. Whether in Boston, Silicon Valley, or New Orleans, Peter has focused on using technology to solve problems for clients such as Olympus, Business Week, Visa, Hasbro, and Tabasco.

Prior to Voodoo Ventures, Peter served as Interactive Director at Trumpet Advertising. Prior to that he played a leading role in the strategy and execution that resulted in the dramatic rise of the City of New Orleans website from a ranking of 70 out of 70 in 2003 to being awarded the Center for Digital Government’s award for the Best City Portal in 2005. Aside from the project to overhaul the city website, he drove numerous other projects for the city’s Office of Technology, including bring the permitting system for the City of New Orleans online after Hurricane Katrina, working night and day his team built a system from the ground up that used the Internet and physical kiosk implementations to handle over 600 permits per day, up from roughly 40 per day before the storm. When he’s not building or exploring the online world, Peter spends his time honing his poker game, reliving his days as a professional chef, and trying to tire his dog out riding around Bayou St. John and City Park.