Greetings. I’m Matthew Burgess, founder of SBE and Blogger-in-Chief.
When I started this blog last October, my plan was to create a site that would highlight the entrepreneurial spirit of Santa Barbara and the surrounding community by writing about the companies and entrepreneurs that I’ve met.
In my work, I’ve had a chance to meet some incredibly bright and driven entrepreneurs, and I’m blown away by the vibrancy of the business community in Santa Barbara. Not just the startups, but the ecosystem that services and supports business: angel networks, venture capital, accounting firms, law firms, IT and technology development firms, marketing experts, and so much more.
This site–SBEntrepeneur–is not a business. It was set up as a fun side project, often attended to between the hours of midnight and 2 am, after long days of working on building my business. I wasn’t sure how often I’d have to update it, but I saw it as an opportunity to give something back to the community that has been so welcoming to me and my wife, Shana, as well as to my business.
Well…Sixty-some blog posts and forty-some Events Calendar entries later, it’s taking on some life and has become a lot of fun. Michael Neville, who I’m sure many of you know, is my partner in this project. And we’ve recently brought on Emily Throckmorton to write, research, and help with social media marketing.
We’re excited about what lies ahead for SBE.
Our next push will be to follow through on the original vision: writing more frequently about great companies and their hard-working founders and leaders.
Many companies have submitted our “Tell Us About Your Company” form. If you haven’t already, please tell us about your company. We’ll do our best to look into each and every entry that comes in, and write about as many as we can.
We believe in hard work and serious thinking, but we try not to take ourselves too seriously. So please feel free to let us know what we can do better. We’re big believers in improving through humility and openness to feedback.
So, to get things rolling, here are four local companies that we took a look at. Enjoy. And thanks for visiting.
– Matthew
Data Backup and Storage Solution – Centripetal Software
Centripetal Software is an early stage, micro-ISV startup, which is an independent software vendor with one software developer. In this case, Centripetal creates software that interacts with and supports use of Basecamp, a project management system from 37Signals.
Founded by software industry veteran Mike Davis, Centripetal Software’s goal is to help businesses maintain control of their data that is stored in online hosted applications, by providing backup and archive services. They have a comprehensive backup solution on the market for business users of 37Signals Basecamp product. Their first product backs up data, files and writeboards from Basecamp and delivers them to you via Dropbox or FTP. They are also in the process of building out plugins for backing up data stored in many other cloud based applications.
As a one-time power-user of Basecamp, I was interested to see this solution. I look forward to give it a spin, and we wish the company well.
When asked what he loves about building a business in Santa Barbara, Mike tells us:
The lifestyle here is awesome. I can surf in the morning and work late into the night. There is a thriving, but sort of hidden tech scene here that has been interesting to begin to see.
Sounds right to me, Mike. Let’s do what can, together, to make it less hidden.
Follow Centripetal Software on Facebook
Follow Centripetal on Twitter
The Search Engine Pros
If you’re interested in learning more about how to market your business in the ever-changing world of online marketing, and you haven’t seen Taylor Reaume’s weekly free Web Marketing 101 class, you owe it to yourself to check this out.
Taylor’s company, The Search Engine Pros, offers a wide range of online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) services, while promoting your site or running your business.
A very important part of any online marketing strategy is content. You need a plan to develop the right kind of written content for your site, and then execute on that plan. This can involve a great deal of copywriting. Taylor can help with the plan, and then, by utilizing a decade of offshoring relationships, The Search Engine Pros claim to offer solid copywriting at a great price. As a budget SEO provider with very low cost search engine optimization pricing, The Search Engine Pros’ goal is to make SEO a reality for many small businesses on a shoe string budget.
Taylor Reaume has been practicing, studying and teaching advanced search engine marketing strategy and techniques for over ten years. As mentioned, he holds a weekly SEO webinar online as well as a free Internet marketing course at the Eagle Inn every Thursday from 5:30pm-6:30pm.
Follow The Search Engine Pros on Facebook
Follow The Search Engine Pros on Twitter
Accounting a la Carte
We’ve met with a number of excellent bookkeeping services in the Santa Barbara area, and we hope to write about many more of them.
What a great idea! If you hate bookeeping, but know that you need to do it, and have it done right, and also for an affordable rate, call Accounting a la Carte. We know we would rather be hiking, biking, or hanging out at Hendry’s beach, than sitting behind a computer dealing with invoices and taxes. Also, if there are certain parts about bookkeeping that you don’t mind so much, Accounting a la Cart can do the parts you don’t enjoy. They provide bookkeeping, accounting, payroll, CFO, and QuickBooks services, that are designed to help you focus on more important things, such as growing and managing your business.
Founder Andy Carnaghe, who was raised in Santa Barbara (lucky!), and attended Dos Pueblos High, is not only a successful business owner (she started, ran and sold a staffing firm in SF), she was trained by Price Waterhouse, where she earned her CPA license. Additionally, Andy taught accounting at Brooks and at Golden Gate University.
Walpole & Co., LLP
Walpole & Co., LLP is a local accounting firm which also specializes in the implementaion and support of information management and accounting software systems.
We spoke with Chris Smith of the IT group, who told us about the firm’s traditional accounting services, business consulting, financial planning and business management & accounting software solutions. Their IT group handles major software implementations, including QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions (QBES), Sage MAS90, MAS200, MAS500, ACCPAC, ERP, CRM software systems.
They have been in business since 1974, and have had a successful 36 years serving Santa Barbara and beyond.
Chris shared with us the following:
Walpole is a great group to be apart of as a client or employee. The firm is very respectable to the lives of its employees and the same respect is passed on to our clients.
The firm is structured to handle individual and small to large business clients. I always tell clients not to judge by the big building or our number of clients: we still have a small business, personable approach with our clients.
The firm was founded on the principle of “going where our clients needs take us”. This motto has been the driving factor in our value added services and success.
