Matt Galligan joins Foodtree Advisory Board

I’m happy to announce that Matt Galligan has formally joined our advisory board. I’ve know him for awhile and he has always been helpful, but it is great to be able to rely on him more regularly. Matt is a stellar entrepreneur, having founded both Socialthing and SimpleGeo. He’s fantastic with product advice, gets scaling and fundraising and basically lives and breathes start-ups. In addition to being a Techstars mentor, he has also just started his next company, Circa. As an aside, Matt happens to be one of my favorite people to drink beer with, given our complementary wine and beer geekery. And, ladies, he is pretty.

Prize Winners & Twitter Followers

Two Friday’s ago, we asked our community to have a little fun with us.  It was spur of the moment…I felt like sending food to a few of the wonderful people who were following our twitter account.  I tweeted the following:

Without even mentioning a specific prize, in a few short hours our followers had retweeted and recommended us over and over.  We crossed the six hundred mark easily.  What I found most compelling was that it wasn’t a handout spree; the people who started following us all seemed (and continue to be) interested in food and our relationship with it. 

As promised, the next day I used a random follower tool (twitrand, if interested) to pick out two lucky winners from our community:

Congratulations to LovelyAnomaly and Hilary and thank you both for following us!  I’m looking forward to finding some great local snacks to send your way.  I’ll reach out to you both soon, or you can email me (if you get hungry!) at derek@foodtree.com.

After all the fun I had, I’m wondering if we should make small food giveaways a regular thing?  We spend a lot of time here researching local food systems, and this could be a fun way to introduce you to the food being made near you. 

What do you think? 

Our Acceptance Into Bootup Labs

Our team is extremely proud to announce that Foodtree has been accepted into Bootup Labs!  Hundreds of companies from around the world applied to participate in Bootup’s startup accelerator, and we are honored to have been included in the cohort.  We’ll be joined by five other exciting new companies.  This is a wonderful vote of confidence from a group of successful entrepreneurs and investors, and we really believe that our company will be a better company with their input going forward.

Below is our official press release:

(PRLEAP.COM) foodtree, inc. is proud to announce their inclusion in the 2010 January cohort at Bootup Labs, a venture capital firm and startup accelerator headquartered in Vancouver, BC.

Foodtree is aiming to bring the community and transparency of farmer’s markets to your web-browser and mobile phone. Within foodtree, digitally rich stories from farmers and fishermen lay on top of a social web marketing platform, connecting consumers to the backstory of their food.

Boris Mann, Managing Director at Bootup Labs, said of the Foodtree team, “I have a personal passion for food. Seeing Anthony’s team build, integrate social media tools, and create a following convinced me that there was an opportunity to further connect the social web with something that everyone can relate to: food.”

Grounded in open data and transparency, foodtree will power a comprehensive food web connecting producers, restaurants, retailers and citizens, ultimately enabling consumers to make conscious food purchasing decisions.

To request an invitation to Foodtree’s private beta release, please visit the foodtree homepage.

Really, we couldn’t be more excited.  This, along with some additional milestones we will announce in the coming weeks, will enable our team to focus all of our time on delivering a phenomenal experience for all of our users. 

If you’ve just found us, you should hop over to the main page to sign up for our upcoming email updates and private beta offers.  You can also catch us on twitter!

 

UPDATE: Here’s the story in TechVibes http://bit.ly/8D7x34