Well, not entirely. But we built this web app that makes it easy to identify interactions between drugs and supplements you are taking. It's pretty cool. This is one of many small companies with good ideas we've worked with over the past few years.

Yesterday, someone asked me why we enjoy working with small companies and startups like this. “They have no money” he said. “Big brands have cash - why don't you work with them?”

Of course, we do work with big brands. They are nice. Sometimes. The problem is that they seldom dare to innovate. You bring them ideas. They have meetings. You bring them more ideas. More meetings. Eventually, they decide that they want to water-down the best idea - making it a shitty one. Not very innovative. Just playing it safe.

If you work in interactive, web, or mobile and you want to do something cool and innovative - you have to work with startups. The only way to get better is to break old models apart, innovate, and lead. Who does that better than startups?

On Monday, we launched Bidzilla - a new entertainment auction site from a Florida start-up. We always knew it was going to be a challenge. Of course, that's partly why we did it, but we really got our hands dirty on this one.

Auction sites are tricky to architect and build. Here's why:

1.    “BETA” is not available

You can't do a “BETA” and make excuses as you fix bugs and errors. Why? People don't like to pay for BETA products. You can Alpha and BETA all you want with small-time applications such as Twitter - but this is about money.

2.    Good experience = conversions

Your user experience and interaction design has to be really good. Unless it looks and works really well, people won’t trust you and they won’t be excited about getting into it. If you look at a lot of the penny auction sites out there, you'll see what I mean. For instance, look at Bidblink. That looks a bit cheap to me. You’ll notice the same problem here Edubli. The design does not breed confidence. That's a big problem for conversions. Keep in mind, people will look at five sites at a time. You want to stand out as the most trusted brand. You can't let design get in the way.

3.    Web auctions are mission critical business systems

If your content management system fails, you just republish. Had a misfire in your video player? Just fix it and people forgive you. People are a bit more sensitive about their money. Once that credit card is in, you have to deliver.

4.    Your system must scale

Auctions are real time and every second counts. Data processing is high volume. The system needs to be efficient and it must scale. Your profit is probably going to be on volume, so you'll want to serve a lot of users. What happens if you get hundreds of users entering any one auction at one time? You have to be prepared or you go out of business.

We’re excited to have built Bidzilla. It was a real test for the Fabric development team. Thanks to everyone who made it happen!

Someone just asked me what I'm focused on right now. Answer: I'm mostly focused on social (graph) and geo-location on the consumer side. On app/product, I'm looking at innovation and disruption in transportation, education, health/wellness, and mobile transactions. I think The Locker Project from SF based Singly is interesting. I look at semantic web stuff that impacts transaction, commerce, and mobile/local. Advertisers have a lot of challenges ahead and tool companies that help buyers and sellers connect will have a bright future. There's just so much going on right now - it feels like 1999… but very different in that the opportunities and business models are real, the platforms and networks are established, and we've already told everyone what we will do when you let us (thank you TIVO, Netflix, and Google).

Are you awake?

It's really fantastic to see that people are pouring energy into the LA startup scene. Several new incubators have popped up and some, such as LaunchPad LA, are offering serious cash for young startup entrepreneurs. Thanks to people like Mark Suster, who has become a top five VC blogger over the past few years, the energy in LA is real and it seems as if the city might just explode with tech startups.

Working with entrepreneurs in the early stages (pre-seed) is very exciting. We're super lucky to have the chance to work on some interesting products with some amazing people. Watch this space for the next few months. I think you'll see a few strong companies unveiled. Thanks!