UseAMap.com is a simple Google maps mashup service that has just been launched. Its pretty straight forward, you create a short name for a location and add directions to a place which is then marked on a map, e.g. http://useamap.com/jeebers. You can then email from the site a link to your new map for others to view.

Vincent, who also works in Jeebers and on 1time with me, created this service. Without being biased, I have to say I really like services like this for its simplicity and usefulness, similar to http://futureme.org

I recently attended the Enterprise Ireland Web 2.0 event hosted in the Helix, DCU. Thankfully the 200 yards I had to travel from the office meant I didn’t get caught in much traffic.

Very interesting speakers in particular; Jeff Clavier, the very entertaining Marc Canter and Judy Gibbons.

The event was strongly represented by venture capital people with some great advice for anyone trying to raise money for the next big web 2.0 show stopper. I’ve sumized some of my notes below:

• Have a sustained Differentiation i.e. the difference between your product and the next guy isn’t a feature they can have as part of there’s in a week or month.
• Build end user value. Ask yourself what is the value of your software to the end user or ROI for enterprise 2.0 applications.
• You need to build an image of trust.
• Show a steady 30- 35% monthly growth in sign ups, a huge frenzy of sign ups all at once is not always considered a good thing.
• A business plan is important but a VC will only be interested in your presentation and executive summary so make it stand out.
• Be sure when presenting your product to introduce yourself. Don’t just go off explaining how great your product is. They will want to know as much about you as they will about the product.
• They will also want to see what you’re personal ambitions are not just having a business road-map but a personal one as well. If you plan to sell early and get a quick few bucks and retire they more than likely won’t be interested.
• The management team is very important, a venture capital company are more likely to go with a smart person with a dumb idea than the other way around.
• Think Big
• It is often good to have a product where it is difficult for the customer to change horses because they feel tied to your product or service.
• Have a solid business model.

As a general rule these VC companies and people were looking for more B2C style web 2.0 ventures like facebook, delicious, flickr etc instead of the B2B apps i’d be interested in like basecamp, blinksale and salesforce but still most of it was very relevant and informative.

UPDATE:

Jeff has uploaded his slides from the event, highly recomended.

I love simple and and effective solutions. dole.ie definiatly applies the less is more philosophy brilliantly. The site is a job listing aggregate site for all the top job sites in Ireland. The well executed service makes me think “why didn’t I think of that”. I’ve been using staff.ie to post up job advertisements for a while and think they have spotted a market opportunity considering the prices of irishjobs.ie and the like charge for posting a job. Long term the money earned from advertising could be substantial for both these sites.

At the moment dole.ie doesn’t include jobs.ie and irishjobs.ie jobs but once they do I think people will get great use out of this site.

P.S. Great name by the way.