Foundry Group is a venture capital firm focused on making investments in early-stage information technology, Internet and software startups. Their passion is working alongside entrepreneurs to give birth to new technologies and to build those technologies into industry-leading companies.

Slice of Lime was responsible for the strategy, design, and development of the new Foundry Group website. We started the project with a strategy meeting. From there we highlighted the major goals of the website; to establish the team as approachable and friendly (which they are) and to be a valuable source of information to those seeking venture capital. We agreed that the site should allow for a great degree of transparency into their business.

In order to achieve Foundry Group’s goal to become a valuable resource, we created “The Foundry Group Blog” using Movable Type. Using the blog, any one of the partners can create articles related to the venture capital world. Alongside the blog, we also included the latest articles from “Ask the VC”, another website designed and developed by Slice of Lime, which fields questions posed to the Foundry Group team. Both blogs can easily be searched by leveraging one of Foundry Group’s investments, Lijit.

Another way to achieve transparency was to put Foundry Group’s team front and center. A photo of the entire team is featured on the homepage and the “Team” page offers each partner’s direct email address and full bio.

Foundry Group has already raised a $225 million early stage Venture Capital Fund and has begun making investments.

This was a rewarding project for us to work on and a great opportunity to work even closer with the extremely intelligent folks that make up Foundry Group.

TechStars is an organization that accepts 10 startup companies every summer and offers seed funding, mentorship, and great connections. Slice of Lime is a 2008 TechStars sponsor and we will be offering our time to each of the accepted companies to talk about their web strategy, design, and development. Additionally, we were brought on to create a new website for TechStars.

We started the project by sitting down with David Cohen, the founder of TechStars, and discussing the overall strategy and target demographic of the website. It was clear that a strong call to action to apply was the most important. Featuring the amazing TechStars mentors and organization details were a close second. We also felt it was important to use pictures from the previous year to help show what the summer is really like. We decided to stay away from polished photos and leaned towards photos showing the 2007 TechStars in action.

We established a simple information architecture and spent time refining the homepage wireframe, the most important page of this site.

Since one of David’s requirements was to manage the content on most of the pages, we agreed that WordPress would be the best tool for the job.

Slice of Lime configured WordPress so that David could manage mentors, for example, in one place. The website would then instantly create an individual mentor page, a page that listed ALL of the mentors, and a scrollable mentor list on the homepage.

Leveraging the same features of WordPress that we used for mentors, Slice of Lime configured WordPress so that David could also manage previous TechStars companies. With a few clicks, company descriptions, images, Flickr photos, graduation year, RSS feeds, and even Slice of Lime’s job listing application, TopShelf, can be added to the site.

The site was fun to work on and reinforced our appreciation for WordPress as more than just a blogging tool. We’re looking forward to getting to know the new 2008 TechStars!

The Van Heyst Group (VHG) is a full service creative agency that transforms intellectual content into high-level forums and conferences. The hallmarks of VHG are its abilities to convene the most respected individuals within their fields and to integrate diverse perspectives, ultimately driving meaningful conversation across all disciplines.

Slice of Lime was brought on to help create a website that showcased VHG’s services as well as its impressive client list and speakers. We started the project with a kick-off meeting to discuss their overall goals and target demographic.

From there, we compiled the information architecture and page wireframes. These acted as our roadmap as we jumped into design.

One of VHG’s goals was to have fresher, dynamic content on the site. We achieved this in two places; the “VHG Dashboard” and the “Speakers” page. The “Speakers” page, shown above, dynamically pulls relevant news articles from the web using the speaker’s full name. We leveraged the Google AJAX Search API to implement this functionality.

The VHG Dashboard is driven by WordPress and will grow over time as VHG adds articles and categories referencing their numerous projects and activities.

Arcstone Partners provide the highest quality, most thorough and defensible valuations in the industry. Slice of Lime was brought on to create a website that reflected Arcstone Partners’ professionalism, passion, and expertise in valuations.

We kicked this project off by bringing the Arcstone Partners team through a simple questionnaire. Issues such as their target demographic, goals of the site, differentiators, and competitors were explored. After this exercise, it was clear that the site needed to state clearly that they were valuation experts and appeal to financial professionals (CFOs, Corporate Attorneys, Venture Capitalists, etc.).

While the homepage greets you with “Valuation solved,” we felt that it would take more than just strong copywriting to establish Arcstone Partners as an industry expert. Slice of Lime built a “Valuation Articles” section, which serves as their blog. This is where the Arcstone Partners staff can shine by voicing their opinions in real-time on what is going on in the industry.

Slice of Lime also gave Arcstone Partners the ability to attach relevant whitepapers with their posts to further engage their site visitors. Lastly, comments can be left for each post to encourage discussion and connect Arctone Partners with their audience that much more.

Return Path is an entire company devoted to one thing: keeping the world safe for email marketing.
They look at the problems facing the email marketing industry and work to solve them. Sometimes that requires innovative technologies. Sometimes it just requires thinking about things in a different way. Usually, it requires both. That’s why they offer a range of different solutions.

To communicate all of their solutions as belonging to one parent company, Slice of Lime worked to move Return Path’s various websites under one roof. We started by creating a Strategy Document, Technical Specifications, and Information Architecture. One decision we arrived at early was that we needed to allow visitors to browse Return Path’s content both by Industry and by Audience.

By allowing visitors to state “Who They Are” or “What They’re Interested In”, navigating Return Path’s solutions became much more intuitive. We also added a pull down menu and search box on every page that makes it easy for a visitor to jump to other areas of the site quickly.

Next, we set out to achieve Return Path’s other goal, to be an information leader in all things email. We created the “Email Marketing Water Cooler”, a blog that hosts a steady stream of useful articles by the various members of the Return Path staff. Prominent links to sign up for the blog via RSS and Email are located throughout the site.

To power the front-end, a robust management tool was created by Slice of Lime. The blog was built using Movable Type. All page content, whitepapers, events, careers, and other items are managed through a custom built password-protected administration tool. Most areas of the site, including documents available for download, can easily be managed by non-technical staff at Return Path.

The new Return Path website has opened to much praise from industry leaders with comments such as “Simple, clean layout, easy to navigate, and I particularly like the interactive quiz/contact forms.” and “This site is the new poster child for how a B2B site should be.”

Slice of Lime provided the strategy, design, and web-standards-based code for the new British Antarctic Survey website.British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is one of the world’s leading environmental research centres and is responsible for the UK’s national scientific activities in Antarctica.Slice of Lime created the framework in which BAS could integrate all sorts of dynamic information such as research projects, information on Antarctica, and a photo gallery. This project is the 2nd of Slice of Lime’s projects that focus on research around global warming. The 1st website, International Polar Year was completed earlier this year.

Application Experts is a professional consultancy providing technology and process improvement services. They combine expertise in Salesforce.com with a thorough understanding of their clients’ business processes to deliver high-quality, on-demand solutions designed to achieve lasting results.Slice of Lime delivered the strategy, design, and development of the website. We focused on communicating Application Experts’ wide range of services and solutions and providing easy ways for visitors to request more information.

Shareholder Representatives Services (SRS) solves the problem of the of continued management between shareholders and the buyer after closing. SRS serves as the representative so that you can close your transaction quickly and with confidence.Slice of Lime created the logo and website for SRS with the goal of communicating what they do and how the process works in a straight forward manner while encouraging visitors to contact the team for more information.

Slice of Lime worked on the design and development of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado website. Since entrepreneurial success is uncertain and the vast majority of entrepreneurial endeavors fail, Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado decided to approach the problem in a unique fashion. Rather than wait for success to encourage philanthropic activity, they created a new program to help all entrepreneurs contribute early in the creation of their companies to the long term health and sustainability of Colorado. The site may look familiar as it is meant to be viewed as part of a larger “family” of sites including Feld Thoughts, Colorado Startups, and Ask the VC.

Slice of Lime provided the strategy, design, and development for the Taligen Therapeutics website. Taligen Therapeutics is a development stage biotechnology company with novel technology to modulate and regulate activation of the “complement system”. Complement is a critical component in the initiation of inflammation. Although complement activation and inflammation are a normal part of the body’s defense against infection and injury, inappropriate complement activation leading to inflammation is a major contributor to a large number of human diseases. Because the product is still in development, the website is designed to highlight the technology behind the product as well as the credentials of the people involved in the project. Additionally, Slice of Lime developed a content management system that allows non-technical staff at Taligen Therapeutics to easily add, modify, and delete news, press releases, and announcements.

Slice of Lime provided the strategy, design, and development for the new Valtus website. Valtus removes the traditional steps required to find, access, display and use aerial and satellite imagery. Whether you are new to imagery or a seasoned professional, Valtus can provide you with the tools to manage and distribute imagery throughout your team or your entire company. The website showcases Valtus’ products, services, and partnerships and serves as a launching point for the Valtus store and image search features. In addition to the front-end design, Slice of Lime also build a content management system that allows non-technical staff members at Valtus to easily add, modify, and delete press, news, and upcoming events.

Slice of Lime designed and developed the Ask the VC blog. Ask the VC, co-authored by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson, discusses relevant issues in the venture capital and entrepreneurial ecosystem. Brad and Jason have been working together since 2000 when Jason joined Mobius Venture Capital, a venture capital firm that Brad co-founded. They started writing together on Brad’s Feld Thoughts blog (another blog designed and developed by Slice of Lime) sometime in 2005 with their Term Sheet Series. After several other series about issues facing venture capital backed companies, Jason and Brad decided to start AsktheVC.The site features “speech bubble” design elements to highlight the back-and-forth dialogue encouraged on the site. An AJAX form on the homepage makes it easy to submit questions without leaving the page. Since its launch last week, the site has already received an overwhelming amount of questions for Brad and Jason. Ask the VC should prove to be a valuable resource for those wanting insight on the venture capital world.

Slice of Lime designed the new Return Path ISP advertisement. The goal is to educate financial decision makers about the importance of email reputation and to build familiarity with Return Path’s Sender Score service. The target audience is the 49,000 senior level executives in financial industries such as banking, investing, and insurance.

This ad encourages people to visit a custom landing page for a free Reputation Monitor report. Information collected through the landing page is then stored in SalesForce. The custom landing page can be viewed here.

Slice of Lime strategized, designed and developed the new concept3D website. concept3D Inc. is the leading authority in the creation and implementation of high quality, cost effective 3-D designs. Leveraging its extensive background in SketchUp™ modeling and global team of in-house designers, concept3D offers the best value in 3-D modeling services on the planet.The web site is coded using web-standards, making it fast-loading, simple to update, and easy to find via search engines. The gallery section uses DHTML that shows the larger image for each thumbnail without leaving the page.

Slice of Lime strategized, designed, and developed the new Collective Intellect website. Collective Intellect specializes in comprehensively tracking, filtering and ranking media content for the Fortune 500. The founders have worked in Business Intelligence for years, creating tools to solve the problem of filtering unstructured information. Customers use their technology to track information related to stocks and investing, support public and investor relations, and facilitate customer support programs.In this second iteration of the website, Slice of Lime updated the look and feel and added an easy to use blog with constantly updated information to keep customers coming back to the site.

Slice of Lime designed and developed the new Feld Thoughts blog, one of the recent recipients of Business Week’s “Best of the Web” awards. This regularly updated blog is authored by Brad Feld, Managing Director of Mobius Venture Capital, and has close to 75,000 regular readers.

When he’s not trying to run a marathon in every state, Brad serves on the boards of a number of private companies, including ePartners, FeedBurner, Gold Systems, Judy’s Book, NewsGator, Rally Software, and StillSecure. In addition, he is on the board of The National Center for Women & Information Technology, The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County, and The Colorado Conservation Trust.The blog touches on a variety of topics, but mainly focuses on his experience in the Venture Capital world. The new design helps focus the eye on Brad’s posts while continuing to offer supplemental content and links in the two sidebars to the right.

Slice of Lime strategized, designed and developed Eco-Advantage, the companion website for the new book, Green to Gold.

In Green to Gold, both the tremendous pressure companies face about their environmental impact, and the enormous opportunity waiting for those companies best prepared to handle these new pressures is discussed.

The website provides additional resources for readers of the book, but also stands alone as a hub of information. Meant to inspire community partipication, it includes a frequently updated blog and many links to organizations and websites dedicated to the environmental issues businesses face.

Slice of Lime designed and animated the new SkyeTek website. A recent recipient of the Boulder County Business Report’s IQ award, SkyeTek develops reader technology that allows customers to embed Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) as a feature into their products, applications and solutions enabling increased security, safety, productivity and competitive differentiation.

Slice of Lime was asked to create a design and interactive Flash animation that helped highlight the different markets in which SkyeTek’s technology can be utilized. SkyeTek then implemented those designs into their DotNetNuke content management system.

Phiar’s low cost, nano-scale devices take performance beyond the physical limits of semiconductors.

Slice of Lime re-thought the existing Phiar site and chose to communicate their business through three different perspectives- products, applications, and technology- each of which speaks to a distinct group of customers. Now, no one is left out of the amazing Phiar story.The website serves as a source of information as well as a lead-generation tool for Phiar. Slice of Lime worked on the strategy, design, and development of the website.

Click here to see a larger versionSlice of Lime designed the NewsGator product logos to represent NewsGator Online, NewsGator Inbox, NewsGator Private Label Solutions, NewsGator Enterprise Server, NewsGator Media Center, FeedStation, and NewsGator Mobile.The project brings a common design theme to all of their various offerings. Now, it’s easy to identify one of NewsGator’s products as part of a larger family.

Slice of Lime designed and developed the Sender Score website. Since 2002, Return Path’s Sender Score platform, the industry’s pioneering delivery assurance service, has helped thousands of mailers increase their email delivery success.

Slice of Lime designed the site to be clean and simple to navigate. Coding was done using CSS so that colors, copy, and navigation can quickly be modified moving forward.

Slice of Lime designed and developed the “Ignite for Oracle” demo for Confio Software. A user may view the demo slides linearly or jump to a specific chapter that interests them. To make the demo as flexible and as easy to maintain as possible, the demo was coded using DHTML and CSS. This will make it easy to add chapters and slides to the demo in the future.

Slice of Lime designed the Venture Capital in the Rockies brochure as well as all of the other collateral and marketing for the conference. Venture Capital in the Rockies is the largest and oldest capital conference in the Rocky Mountain region. Venture Capital in the Rockies showcases the region’s most promising emerging growth companies for an audience of over 200 venture investors, CEOs, entrepreneurs and service professionals.

Attendance rose by 16% this year, making the last two years that Slice of Lime has served as a sponsor of the conference the two most popular ever.

Slice of Lime designed and developed the new Collective Intellect website in one week - just in time for their presentation at Venture Capital in the Rockies. Collective Intellect enables its customers to quickly and easily collect, filter, analyze and trade on data that can enhance absolute trading returns.

The website was coded using web standards. This makes the site faster, easier to find on search engines, and a breeze to update both its design and content.

Slice of Lime redesigned the Return Path website to serve as their “corporate blog”. Slice of Lime customized the web log authoring tool, Movable Type, to keep the integrity of the Return Path brand while opening up powerful RSS publishing tools to their staff.Their homepage is now an ever-evolving source of data on the email space. This achieves their primary goal of being known as the industry leader in research and information in their field.

Slice of Lime designed and developed the SalonIQ website. This website offers services to both salons and stylists. Stylists can register for free, apply for jobs at salons, and pay to take online courses. Salons can administer qualification tests to potential new hires and have their salon information posted for customers to find via SalonQuest. Slice of Lime also setup a back-end content management system to facilitate the creation of tests, certification levels, and pricing.

Slice of Lime created an integrated marketing campaign for Return Path for use in DIRECT and B2B magazine. A full-page advertisement directed people to a specific landing page on the Return Path business site which collected leads and tracked the success of the campaign.

Slice of Lime designed the print advertisement and web landing page. Slice of Lime also coded the web landing page, back-end tracking and integration with Sales Force.

Training Online hired Slice of Lime to completely overhaul their web presence as well as reclaim control over their ever-expanding list of training classes.

Slice of Lime designed a new website for Training Online that speaks to their new markets, offers quick access to their course listings, and collects valuable information from their customers through various online forms.

Slice of Lime also built a custom back-end content management system for Training Online to manage all of their press releases, news, featured client logos, and course listings. Now Training Online can keep their site up to date without ever having to look at a line of code again.

Slice of Lime developed a print campaign for Return Path to use at tradeshows that incorporated a scratch-off game and directed people towards a web splash page. The splash page then captured leads through Sales Force.

Slice of Lime designed and developed the print piece and web splash page, including the integration with Sales Force. The campaign proved to be a huge success, boasting a 25% conversion rate.

Slice of Lime designed and developed the new Survey Direct website. Since 1996, the market research community has relied on Survey Direct for responsive and dependable solutions for their online sample and programming and hosting needs. Slice of Lime designed the site to be clean and simple to navigate. Coding was done using CSS so that colors, copy, and navigation can quickly be modified moving forward.

Slice of Lime updated the NewsGator website to better reflect their growing list of products. The new site is more consumer-friendly, offering some insight into what RSS is all about. It also speaks to business professionals and those looking for enterprise level solutions.In the first week of this design launch, the website subscription rate jumped up by 200%.

Slice of Lime redesigned the Windward Reports logo. The goal of this project was to create a professional looking, yet “light and friendly” logo that represented the ease-of-use of the Windward Reports application as well as the CEO’s personal connection to sailing.

Slice of Lime designed the Umbria Election 2004 website, which was featured on CNN. The site tracks 3.5 million weblogs to better understand what people are talking about and the characteristics of the people doing the talking. Opinions on various hot button issues between Bush and Kerry are reported on using Umbria’s amazing technology.

Slice of Lime designed and developed the Newmerix website. The goal of this project was to communicate Newmerix’s range of products, gather leads through SalesForce, and to give the Newmerix staff a way to easily update pages moving forward. Slice of Lime designed the “look and feel” of the website and built a custom back-end content management tool. Through this tool, non-technical employees at Newmerix can update news, press releases, and upload whitepapers. Slice of Lime then tied all data collection into Newmerix’s existing SalesForce account.