I had the pleasure today of speaking with Mandi Leman, the founder of a promising startup in San Antonio called Blellow. While not traditionally known as an entrepreneurial hub, San Antonio has recently been attracting attention in the startup community. See http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/local/Recession_spurs_startups.html which also profiles IncSpring, another startup I’m following.
Blellow is a recent entrant in the virtual coworking space, which also includes Yammer and the recently defunct QikCom. Competitors in the physical coworking space, such as Conjunctured, should take note. Blellow allows users to crowdsource solutions or more generally, work together remotely in a groups. I find this space particularly interesting because: (1) companies want to reduce overhead and travel, (2) there is a general trend toward the acceptance of working remotely, (3) the “social web” encourages sharing and the gratuitous exchange of information, and (4) the multitude of potential applications (e.g. student groups, founding teams, discrete development units, etc.) yields a large and diverse user base.
Not only does the functionality appear impressive but the site, which has been bootstrapped to date, will be revenue generating on day one. Mandi generously shared the various sales verticals and they all seem viable. Look out for Blellow’s beta launch in early March.
