Monday, March 3, 2008

BlitzTime launches 'speed dating' for execs

By Christopher Calnan

Two technology entrepreneurs have developed a webbased application they characterize as the business world's answer to speed dating.

Blitz Innovations Inc. combines telephone networking and Internet software to enable users to speak to as many as seven other people in eight-minute networking sessions.

The co-founders plan to market the application, called BlitzTime, as a complement to business events, trade shows and university alumni groups. BlitzTime uses the Internet to manage the names and profiles of session participants and to track the time remaining in each conversation. Blitz Innovations CEO Jeff D'Urso, who started to develop the concept last fall, said the technology is the convergence of the telephone and the Internet, and represents a new way of using voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP, in the workplace.

"This is something that's very different from (VoIP provider) Vonage and saving money on long distance calls," he said. "It's a different application of VoIP."

The company, which D'Urso co-founded in September 2007 with Mike Sachleben and no outside funding, has conducted sessions involving 170 users since October, D'Urso said. It generates revenue from a percentage of the fees participants pay event hosts. D'Urso is also the CTO of ArmyProperty.com, which is operated by Florida-based Inventory Management Solutions Inc. He was previously CEO of Conversion Associates Inc., an Allston-based web analytics consultancy; CEO of Destination Wedding Travel Inc. in Framingham; and COO of C-Quential Inc., the former telecom consulting venture of Arthur D. Little in Cambridge.

Sachleben, previously a director of Third Sky Inc., a San Francisco consulting firm with an office in Brighton, said the company is also pitching the application to employers and job seekers to use for preliminary interviews.

During a demonstration of BlitzTime last week, Waltech Inc. sales manager David Tenofsky said the blitz format is more efficient than yelling over blaring cocktail- party music. "It seems like a nice way to talk to other folks and get some referrals," he said.