I’ve been meaning to write about my friend Dave Schappell’s startup TeachStreet since it launched back in April.  With TeachStreet’s launch into it’s second market – Portland today – now seems like the perfect time.

First a little background – I met Dave last year at Seattle Ignite summer 2007.  I was introduced by now TeachStreet board member Dave McClure, once again proving in the Web 2.0 space if you don’t know McClure you might not exist (sort of like a tree falling and no one around to hear it).  In fact, a little TeachStreet history occured in my dinning room as Schappell wrapped up his immigration issues with his co-founder and CTO for TeachStreet.  Glad I could play my small role.

Getting to know Dave over the last year has shown me that Dave is a rock star and why I expect the same from TeachStreet.  TeachStreet’s real genius is much like the genius beyond super successful startups like Yelp.  Yelp’s success is that it owns SEO for restaurants especially on the West Coast.  TeachStreet not only has the opportunity to own SEO for personal instruction, but also the directory and potentially web presense for a sector of the personal services industry that without TeachStreet would ever exist.  Startups that figure out how to own SEO and the web presence for a economic sector have the real potential to do very well for their users, customers (the businesses they help market) and themselves.

So if you’re looking for a tutor, instructor or a personal enrichment class – TeachStreet is the site to try.  If you’re looking for a startup doing something that is very real and has some very interesting potential in a sector that I expect to see a lot of cool things (ie. call it SEO 2.0 startups for lack of a better cliche) then pay attention to Dave Schappell and TeachStreet.