Happy 1st Birthday, Zilker Ventures!

Zilker Ventures, the parent web publisher behind brain child ChooseWhat.com, celebrated its first birthday this past Friday, October 3, 2008.  In celebration of the fact that Zilker Ventures is now old enough to nibble and swallow solid foods, the office received an assorted box of Austin, Texas's favorite delivered cookies from Tiff's Treats.We weren't sure if Zilker Ventures was entirely ready for solid foods, especially after a mid-week scare that involved much beloved office manager April Coburn having choked a little bit on an unusually dense piece of pita bread and having had to be saved via Heimlich Maneuver from Zilker Ventures CEO Gaines Kilpatrick.By Friday, however, April was happily munching on a chocolate chip cookie, as were the rest of the Zilker Ventures team. The carousing continued with Zilker Ventures watching the ingenious video from “misheardlyricsguy” who has splendidly synched the lyrics of Pearl Jam's classic song “Yellow Ledbetter” with hilarious images of Bill Clinton and Mr. Potato head, among others.Check it out. “Yellow Ledbetter”It wouldn't have been much of a fiesta without some TexMex food from Matt's El Rancho, another Austin standard, which fully satiated the hungry mouths of all the ZV babies, more eager than ever to get the word out about fax services, email marketing, cheap business cards and virtual PBX.“I can't believe that we've been around for one year and are still going strong,” said ZV staff member Koby Wong, his eyes shining with childlike glee.In an apropos manner, the birthday celebrations gave everyone a chance to marvel about Zilker Ventures and ChooseWhat.com. And perhaps more importantly, it has given everyone a renewed sense of pride in the service that the company provides to small businesses and entrepreneurs looking to optimize their online efforts.One year ago, co-founders Leo Welder and Gaines Kilpatrick started a website for Internet fax reviews, simply prompted by their own frustrations experienced in researching internet fax services and choosing the wrong one. That website has since grown into the nationally successful review website FaxCompare.com, which boasts over 10,000 monthly visitors. The success of the website has allowed the company to branch out into other entrepreneurial web resources for businesses, which can be found on ChooseWhat.com and which are still expanding.What's going on with Zilker Ventures this week?“Not much,” says Gaines Kilpatrick, “just living the dream.”