We are involved in a great contest over at How to Split an Atom and we are in the final week of voting so do you’re share and VOTE ZAMBINO and let’s bring this trophy home!

Zambino is making its first formal pitch to an Angel Investor this Friday in New York and I have never realized what a long and stressful process it would be to make the perfection pitch presentation to put us in the right place to possibly get funded. We have spent numerous hours each and every day over the past 2 weeks toying and practicing our presentation, and we are still nervous about how well it is going to go. Atleast I can’t say we didn’t give it our all, considering the fact that we broke into the air condition room in our office building to keep us cool while working on our pitch over the weekend.

I am a young entrepreneur who will be a Freshmen at the University of Arizona this fall and I have yet to realize the difficulties of running Zambino — my startup from my dorm room. Wednesday May 28th my first day of Freshmen Orientation was the first  time it hit me “whew it is going to be extremely difficult to manage my time between course work, partying and Zambino”. I believe I have the drive and endurance to keep going forward with Zambino but I hope my coursework, and college life do not provide large enough obstacles to take me offcourse. We will see.

There is a post on Valleywag entitled “Why does Madison Avenue have to beg its way into Web videos?” and it shows exactly why there is a need for Zambino. “Just placing ads like prerolls are not a big interest to us, frankly,” Digitas EVP Carl Fremont told Silicon Alley Insider. “That’s just taking the old TV model and adapting it to a new screen. We would rather work with a producer and develop custom content.”

That is the exact philosophy that caused us to begin working on Zambino. Glad to hear it is shared by a key person in the industry.

The rest of the article can be found here

Zambino’s trip  to San Francisco for the Web 2.0 EXPO last week was defiantly a memorable one. Not only did we make awesome contacts but we also learned a great deal. Here is a full play by play:

• We stayed at the Clift Hotel. The Clift had the best hotel service I have ever witnessed and had a terrific bar that was OUT OF CONTROL on Friday night. Next time you’re in San Fran. Do yourself a favor and stay at the Clift (if you book in advance Expedia gets great deals)
• We got a tour of the Digg Office. Our buddy Matt Van Horn (Head of Business development @ Digg) gave us some feedback on Zambino and some good info for next year as he is an alumnus of Arizona. The Digg Office is one of the coolest working environments I have ever witnessed – THEY HAVE A BEER FRIDGE
• We Demo’d at VCtini—VCTini was an awesome event put on by the Woodside Fund—they took over an art gallery threw in 2 open bars and about 9 MAC computers. Entrepreneurs’ were let into the wild where they were encouraged to talk to potential investors and then get them to come checkout a demo on one of the MAC’s. We made some awesome contacts.
• We partied hard over at CHI.MPs/Mashable’s party where we met some awesome people: Roddy from StartupSchwag and Andrew Wise from Grooveshark
• We twittered at the  Blogtropol.us Lounge which included such perks as FREE massages, WII bowling, food and REAL wifi. Shout out  to Amy Beth Hale who was captured by Jake’s University of Florida  sweater (Jake and Amy are both alumni of UF).
• We partied REALLY hard at the NetVibes party in where we met some really cool people including Pete Cashmore (Mashable) he is EXTREMLEY nice, he friended me on Facebook right there on the spot (iPhone) and even had his photographer snap a photo with us. We also met Zach Coelius of TriggIt—the star of the weekend – EXTREMELY nice guy who just built one of the coolest applications I’ve seen in a while. Shout out to Greg @ NetVibes
• We hung out with Sam Purtill. Sam is an engineer at YouNoodle who I met online about 8 months and has provided invaluable help with Zambino. This was our first time meeting and it was INSANE. He passed out on our couch at the Clift Friday night after some intense partying at the RedWood room
• We spent quality time with Karin Klein of SoftBank. Karin is a very a good family friend and really took us under her wing while we were out there. She introduced us to tons of great contacts and provided terrific insight regarding Zambino from a VC’s perspective.
• Jake lost his IN and Out Virginity

It was most definitely an AWESOME trip!

We are involved in a contest over at How to Split an Atom in which they are helping 5 startups out. They recently brought in Dan Rua a Managing Partner at Inflexion Partners, a seed and early-stage venture capital fund to share his experet opinon on each of the startups. He had some very kind words to say about Zambino

Here is what he had to say

Zambino: I like the Magic here: in-video marketing offers unique ROI potential. My investment in IZEA comes from a strong belief that advertising and content will grow more and more intertwined as the world moves to on-demand content consumption (e.g. skipping commercials and/or ignoring display ads). This also suggests a very large market and company potential, if done right. Revver is a close comparable and their difficulties of late are a bit of a puzzle to me.

I would ask, “why will Zambino succeed given some other video marketing stumbles?” This leads directly to your Model. How will you, the publishers and advertisers get ROI that keeps everyone happy? It sounds like you’re already dodging the hosting expense of a Revver model by leveraging YouTube. Like Siphs, the distribution model here (good vids = more publishers/advertisers) is inherently viral.

Biggest question: Do you have the cred or the early unique publisher relationships to get content early? Just as good content can drive viral goodwill, bad content can drive viral bad will.

This is a HUGE boost of confidence for us! Thanks Dan!

The orginal/full post can be found here

– “We thought we could make money on the Internet. But while the Internet is new and exciting for creative people, it hasn’t matured as a distribution mechanism to the extent that one should trade real and immediate opportunities for income for the promise of future online revenue. It will be a few years before digital distribution of media on the Internet can be monetized to an extent that necessitates content producers to forgo their fair value in more traditional media”.

– Kyle Broflovski

We are heading out to the Web 2.0 Expo (http://sf.web2expo.com) in San Fran next week (April 23-26) got an awesome deal thru expedia to stay at the Clift Hotel (http://clifthotel.com) . Will just be attending the EXPO not the conference itself, also registered to attend Chimp and Mashable’s event: Evolve– http://evolve.eventbrite.com/

Looking to network so if anyone would like to meet up please drop me an email (Adam.Richman@Zambino.com)
Does anyone have any good resturant reccomendations?

Today is Feb. 25, 2008.  We are pleased to announce that we are just a couple of days away from releasing Zambino in Beta.  Please check back often, as we will keep you informed of Zambino’s progress.

This is our first post and we would like to welcome you.  We are currently in the developmental stages and will hopefully have a beta site up and running by the end of January 2008.  We are currently looking for individuals who are interested in becoming some of the first users of Zambino, if this might be you, please enter your email address on our home page.  We at Zambino will keep you, informed of our progress.  Thank you for looking and please check back often.