Janis Machala is the founder and partner of Paladin Partners. We just came back from a meeting with her to understand the possibility of working together.
If you have a startup in Seattle you probably should meet her. She is by far the most connected person on the Puget Sound area. From investors to consultants, from engineers to executives, she has an impressive rolodex.
The meeting was well above my expectations. Paul (Sampa's Chairman) and I came out with a dozen work items (mostly contact people).
We have three things on our high-level to-do list: Hire a VP of Marketing, hire a User Experience guru to help us with the service usability/learning-curve, and hire another developer to help us get features done quicker.
All of those boil down to one thing: money. Believe it or not, but we have strong candidates for all those positions. The only reason impeding them from joing is a salary. Most people cannot afford to live without a salary and we understand that.
So, we are on the quest that most startups face on their existance which is to raise money. We have about a dozen or so investors on the loop. We know for sure Sampa is not for some of them at this moment. And we know a few others that are very intrigued by what we are doing.
How will that pan out? If I knew I would be playing the lottery. 
I'm the Co-founder & CTO of 
