Today, Apptive announced that Steve Semelsberger, Founder of Alder Growth Partners, has joined their board of directors. Apptive provides a platform to enable easy mobile apps for e-commerce providers. 

Here's Steve's quote: "I've known and worked with members of the Apptive founding team for more than seven years," said Semelsberger. "Along with deep fondness and respect for their innovation and execution, I love Apptive's current focus on e-commerce. I'm honored to join the board and excited to help with various growth initiatives."

The press release, along with more information on Apptive, is available on their website.

From my first meeting with CEO Chris McClelland, I was intrigued by Brewbot. In a nutshell, Brewbot is beer brewing appliance that is controlled by your smartphone. Not only is the reclaimed wood and polished steel look of the "robot" beautiful, but the application experience and supplies subscription model are clever. 

And the beer is good. When Chris and I sat down to discuss the Brewbot business, he was kind enough to pour me a few ounces of an IPA that he had crafted for the Austin Techstars program. The beer had an elegant blend of sweet and bitter. It clearly had been made with good hops and a smart overall recipe. While I'm not a beer expert by any stretch, I had trouble discerning any drawbacks from a top end regional craft brew.

And there was the genius: Brewbot enables any of us with a flair for experimentation and a bit of floor space to make awesome beer. Gone is the bathtub fermentation. So long to plastic buckets and tubes. With Brewbot, everything is wrapped into one modern, integrated system. Felt to me like the Tesla of beer brewing.

If you're at all interested, check out Brewbot on the web (where you can order one) and read what Fast Company and Wired are saying about the device. And if you're lucky enough to grab a Brewbot beer at some point, let us know what you think!

Cheers,
Steve

(Disclosure: I am a small investor in Brewbot).