By Nigel

Three weeks ago today we launched Hubdub into public beta at DEMO. DEMO was an amazing event, the organization was slick and there were some great companies launching there are as well. It was an honor to be there launching with them. It is difficult to really pick one or two out as the selection was so diverse. Tech Confidential did a great write up listing all the companies in order of best investment opportunities (well we particularly like it because it placed us third!)

Off the launch we managed to get some great PR online, in print, on radio and even on local TV. We put together a sample of some of the press coverage on our Press page. A big thanks goes to Miiko Mentz and Brian Solis from our PR company, Future Works, who did such a fantastic job. Thankfully when the TechCrunch surge hit the site held up. Like a lot of start-ups we have found that TechCrunch drives a ton of traffic however the engagement and conversion levels are much lower than other traffic sources. All in all however, we’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much of the initial surge we have retained. Thanks again to all the journalists that covered us.

After DEMO we travelled up to Silicon Valley and San Francisco to suck up the vibe and meet up with lots of people. We managed to meet up with some seasoned entrepreneurs who gave us excellent advice (my measure is how many pages of notes do I take in a meeting - these guys are all four pagers plus). Steve Larson, at Krugle, is I believe on his fifth start-up so knows a thing or two about them (and also advised me to walk instead of taking a taxi, I’ve never had an American suggest that to me before!). We also caught up with Mark Fletcher, formerly of Bloglines and now at Startupping, who previously knocked out development at Hubdub for a day after a late night bender with the team in Edinburgh! Finally, we managed to see Dave McClure of 500 Hats who in passing introduced us to Kiva which is a great service that lets you lend money to entrepreneurs in developing countries.

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