I missed the Stanford Summit (AlwaysOn) this July, but I am registered for the Venture Summit West coming up next week. I look forward to catching up with some friends on the VC side of things and comparing notes with some friends who are CEOs who will be at this conference. I usually attend the AlwaysOn Summit in July at Stanford, but I missed it this year, being in the intense startup mode still at WorldVitalRecords.com.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that World Vital Records' India page ranks #3 in MSN for "india genealogy." I'm still trying to convince FundingUniverse.com to roll out 6 regional web sites in India, as suggested by an Indian entrepreneur who explained to me how startup funding might naturally happen in that country. I don't know if I've blogged about it, but 3 years ago I read "India Unbound" by the first venture capitalist in India, Gurcharan Das. It is an absolutely incredible look at the economic revolution that has been occuring in India since 1991. I am very optimistic about the future of India, which will be the world's most populated country by about 2030.

FundingUniverse.com now has about 1,000 angel investors in virtually every state. The company, which I helped found in early 2005, is holding its 5th speedpitching event today in Sandy, Utah. It has held events in 6 or more states and has plans to continue to expand.

I've attended several of these events representing the small fund we have at Provo Labs, as a potential investor.

The coaching and practice sessions have been extremely helpful. Imagine trying to get your entire business plan onto a 1-page summary that will be distributed. And then imagine being forced to tell your story in 4 minutes. That's what all the entrepreneurs learn how to do.

After the 4 minute pitch, the investors get 3 minutes for Q&A. Then you go to the next table and give your pitch again. You do this 5 times before lunch, and then 5 times after lunch.

Most VCs don't have time to look at the thousands of unsolicited deals that are sent to them "over the transom," an interesting phrase defined by Wikipedia. Most only look at deals that are referred to them by people they know and trust.

So when VC Forum comes to your town looking for local deals that are promising, the Forum requires them to be submitted by a local VC firm that has of course screened the deals.

So local companies that want to pitch at the VC Forum events will need to have already gotten in front of credible people and started telling their story. You have to get noticed, you have to have a good team and a good story, and then you get the referral you are looking for.

I thought it was interesting to learn on the same day that both Robert Scoble, the pre-eminent Microsoft blogger, and Om Malik, the top writer at Business 2.0, were leaving their positions to join startup companies.

vSpring Capital's top 100 Utah venture entrepreneurs (the v|100) met today at Thanksgiving Point's Garden Room for a lunch and social.

Congratulations to Infopia for closing on an $8 million funding round from Hummer Winblad and Trident Capital. Infopia is an ecommerce platform that helps customers get their products onto sites such as eBay, Amazon, Google, Overstock, Shopzilla and others. Bjorn Espenes and his partners have made some very powerful breakthroughs in e-commerce automation. This funding round is great to see.

Sling Media raised another $46 million to make your home entertainment content accessible wherever you travel.

I wonder what this means to Orb Networks, which I first saw at Always On in 2005, which also offers a way to access your home PC content (including TV) on your internet-connected PDA or mobile phone.

Here's an Alexa chart that shows how much web site traffic these companies are generating:

A Business Week article (thanks John and Steve!) discusses that angel investors are banding together more often and investing larger amounts in less risky deals. The author mentions that more than 200 organized angel groups exist in the U.S. served by the Angel Capital Association.

I like seeing the growth from the organized angel groups.

FundingUniverse.com (one of our portfolio companies) helps by providing free online software (the DealFlow Suite) to help angel groups find quality business plans and growing companies that they want to learn more about.

Wikipedia is providing "semi-protection" to articles that get vandalized often. New users won't be able to edit these pages.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia co-founder Larry and serial entrepreneur Joe Firmage (who has Utah roots) have raised $10 million to create an expert-driven open source encyclopedia called Digital Universe.