Zach Coelius came to San Francisco at age 25, as a Minnesota native and Silicon Valley outsider. Within a month he crashed the high-profile Demo conference and charmed his way into a top-secret poker game among venture capitalists, where he won a thousand dollars in seed funding for a then-nonexistent company.
A little more than two years later, Coelius is CEO of Triggit, a new web service that helps bloggers easily add pictures, video and ads. And Coelius, 28, has hustled his way into the upper ranks of the Silicon Valley web scene -- thanks partly to his poker habit. When he first arrived, he played several nights a week, occasionally paying his rent with his winnings. He admits he's a "pretty good" poker player.
In a cut-throat business environment such as Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs use whatever tools they've got to get ahead. For Coelius an appetite for risk and fine-tuned poker skills helped him secure funding and get his startup off the ground.
Triggit, which officially launches to the public Thursday, has already attracted a couple of "big" companies interested in acquiring the startup, Coelius says. That's even though the company has been in stealth mode until today, with a tiny user base and an unproven business model. (Coelius thinks the company will eventually negotiate deals directly with ad networks.)
Triggit, which was literally conceived in Techcrunch co-editor Michael Arrington's backyard, lets bloggers link to products or photos on the fly. The idea is this: The easier it is for bloggers to link to advertisers, the greater the potential for generating revenue from affiliate sites such as Amazon.com or Shopping.com.
Coelius and his sister Susan Coelius Keplinger (Triggit's COO) are longtime entrepreneurs, having started three other businesses together. They've led a pretty charmed existence in Silicon Valley: Shortly after they arrived, a friend of a friend hooked them up with angel funding and raw office space in San Francisco.
A little more than two years later, Coelius is CEO of Triggit, a new web service that helps bloggers easily add pictures, video and ads. And Coelius, 28, has hustled his way into the upper ranks of the Silicon Valley web scene -- thanks partly to his poker habit. When he first arrived, he played several nights a week, occasionally paying his rent with his winnings. He admits he's a "pretty good" poker player.
In a cut-throat business environment such as Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs use whatever tools they've got to get ahead. For Coelius an appetite for risk and fine-tuned poker skills helped him secure funding and get his startup off the ground.
Triggit, which officially launches to the public Thursday, has already attracted a couple of "big" companies interested in acquiring the startup, Coelius says. That's even though the company has been in stealth mode until today, with a tiny user base and an unproven business model. (Coelius thinks the company will eventually negotiate deals directly with ad networks.)
Triggit, which was literally conceived in Techcrunch co-editor Michael Arrington's backyard, lets bloggers link to products or photos on the fly. The idea is this: The easier it is for bloggers to link to advertisers, the greater the potential for generating revenue from affiliate sites such as Amazon.com or Shopping.com.
Coelius and his sister Susan Coelius Keplinger (Triggit's COO) are longtime entrepreneurs, having started three other businesses together. They've led a pretty charmed existence in Silicon Valley: Shortly after they arrived, a friend of a friend hooked them up with angel funding and raw office space in San Francisco.
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