This is a little different than our typical blog post – We thought you might be interested in a "behind the scenes" look at Hello Vino: The Startup.

For the past 18 months, our team has been bootstrapping our way to helping hundreds of thousands of people with their wine selections. We just passed the 5.5 million recommendation mark, and our relationships with our users on Twitter and Facebook have helped us continually improve the Hello Vino mobile app. The best part: We’re just getting started.

A New Experience for Hello Vino

We are currently in the fundraising stage, and Hello Vino was awarded the opportunity to meet some of Boston’s most successful entrepreneurs turned investors at the Open Angel Forum this past Friday. A few weeks ago, we applied to pitch Hello Vino at the forum, which led to a Skype interview where we faced some rapid fire questions from Jason Calacanis (founder of Weblogs, Inc., which sold to Time Warner / AOL in 2005) and some Mahalo team members. The next day, we were honored and excited when we were selected as one of the six companies to present.

The other companies were made up of extremely smart and talented people who were presenting their innovative products and ideas. They included KeenKong (social media monitoring and response), Venalytica (consumer preference analytics), Textaurant (replaces restaurant buzzers with SMS alerts), TastedMenu (still in secret beta), and Zazuba (book appointments online). It was incredibly inspiring to meet and chat with this group of fascinating entrepreneurs.

The mission of the Open Angel Forum is to host an intimate session where startups have the opportunity to pitch their companies and concepts to a group of professionals who specialize in early-stage investments, and who are actively investing. The aforementioned Calacanis founded the event in an effort to combat groups who were charging startups thousands of dollars to pitch their ideas to investors. This latest Open Angel Forum took place in Boston, with previous OAFs taking place in Denver, New York, Los Angeles, and other cities.

An Amazing Opportunity

Aside from the graciousness of the angel investors by spending their Friday evening with us, the group provided valuable advice while inquiring about the business models and unique aspects of our companies. After our presentations, we were able to network and speak with the angels in an open environment where the conversations were completely transparent.

The format of the event is simple and straightforward - you get five minutes to demo your product, while also covering points which included the market opportunity, differentiating features, domain expertise, business model, and our strategy moving forward.  Yup... all that in five minutes, with a Q&A session immediately afterward.  The 5-minute time limit forced us to focus on the important aspects of Hello Vino, instead of getting side-tracked by explaining every little feature.  Our Q&A session actually turned into an open discussion, where ideas about additional revenue models and new product features were brought into the conversation.  This will help us tremendously as we continue discussions with potential investors.

During the session, we received some most appreciated advice about plans for the future, features within our app, and business considerations. It was also incredibly beneficial to be able to speak candidly with these individuals one-on-one in the networking session, as they provided insight gained from their successes.

Stepping It Up

There’s nothing more inspiring than conversing with smart and successful individuals. The startups’ innovative ideas and the angels’ inquiries have created new energy and focus for our team. It’s exactly what we needed to continue our 12-hour coding sessions and relentless grassroots marketing efforts.

We sincerely appreciate the opportunities created for Hello Vino by participating in the Open Angel Forum – many thanks to Jason Calacanis, Jason Krute, Tyler Crowley, and Tara Hooey for organizing, Jonathan Lim from Polaris Ventures / DogPatch Labs for hosting (and feeding) us, and of course, the Winter, Wyman Companies for sponsoring this Boston event, with Symantec and SVB Financial Group as national sponsors.

Thanks for reading, and sharing in this experience with us,

The Hello Vino Team

Rick Breslin, Jim McNamee, & Chris Mitchell