Inigral/Serious Business Presentation Night

Tony Zanders

“Hvordan går det?” filled the air Monday night near San Francisco’s Montgomery street Bart Station, as Inigral and Serious Business presented their varying business models to a visiting group of Danish entrepreneurs. Serious Business Founder and CEO Siqi Chen, along with members from Inigral’s founding team including Michael Staton (CEO), Joseph Sofaer, and George Deglin, explained how startups are becoming fully sustainable on top of this emerging platform.

Serious Business discussed their wildly popular social games built on the Facebook platform. Happy Hour, which allows Facebook users to purchase virtual drinks and other gifts for other users in the game, has proven to be a great success. Siqi made it clear that alot of people were skeptical about such an idea as a sustainable business, asking “What person would spend $10 on a mixed drink that they can’t drink?” Several questions were asked, including “How many employees does it take to run a business on Facebook?” and “Does building a business on the platform breed more competitors than a typical web startup?

On the other end of the platform spectrum, we custom build Schools for each college or university client. So only the students at a particular institution (Arizona State University, in this example), will share that unique user experience. And ofcourse, all of the other trappings that come along with a B2B business strategy also apply for us, as opposed to Serious Business’ B2C strategy, where an individual Facebook user in Saudi Arabia for instance, can take out their wallet, and spend $100 cash on a limited edition dozen of virtual roses that Happy Hour releases.

The Danish entrepreneurs were fascinated that an entire world of business has been created before their eyes, as their primary use of Facebook up until this point has been to connect with friends and family, not to make money. Who knows? Thanks to Inigral and Serious Business, Denmark may become the next entreprenurial hub for Facebook applications. But only time will tell. To view other photos from Monday night’s event, visit our Inigral/Serious Business Presentation Night set on Flickr.