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With Speeksy, Facebook Users Can Meet New People (Just Don’t Call It “Online Dating!”)

2012-02-08T12:39:00.001+04:00

That’s right – at its heart, Speeksy is a new-fangled dating service, built on top of Facebook profiles. But just don’t call it online dating, pleads co-founder Barry Cassidy, a former Adobe engineer who previously worked on Adobe Connect.

“We’re going for the people who are alienated by the social stigma of online dating,” he says. “Even today, something that gets identified as online dating turns off 85% of singles – it’s essentially a dating agency. It’s analogous to going to an office and saying, ‘I’ve really failed in the social environments that I go to, so I’d like to get put into a database to try and get matched with somebody.’”

See source: With Speeksy, Facebook Users Can Meet New People (Just Don’t Call It “Online Dating!”)

Accel And SV Angel Back Endorse With $4.25 Million To Close The Loop Between Shoppers And Brands

2012-01-26T12:52:00.001+04:00

Brands and businesses can track their reputations online and connect with consumers through social media. But what about in the real world? One of the biggest prizes in Startupland will go to whoever can figure out how to connect real-world shopping to brands and businesses. Steve Carpenter is going after that prize with his latest startup, Endorse.

“The coupon turns 125 years old this year,” notes Carpenter. “It was designed by the first Coca Cola CEO—it was a free trial. The mechanism of the coupon hasn’t changed.” Endorse is trying to reinvent the coupon by rewarding shoppers (mostly networked Moms) for not only endorsing brands, but proving that they went out and bought the products.

Carpenter tested out his concept in classic Lean Startup fashion. During a 3-month private beta trial, shoppers went to Endorse.com to pick the brands and products they liked, and then actually sent in their receipts for 10 percent cash back. Endorse sent them a Netflix-like mailer, and they stuffed it with receipts. Endorse set up a scanning process to scan the receipts and record their purchases. In addition to the cash back, brands could reward loyal customers with discounts for themselves and their friends.

The results of this market test were fairly impressive. Endorse seeded the service with five women across the country. With no marketing, it spread to 15 thousand beta customers in three months (86 percent of them women in places like Indianapolis, North Carolina, and Sacramento). Just like Pinterest, Endorse kept this stealth by focussing on middle America.

Those 15,000 customers turned in 150,000 receipts and made 1.5 million brand endorsements. By the time Carpenter ended the trial, the service was growing by 10,000 receipts a week. These numbers are small, but that’s the point. He and his team learned enough about their customers to start designing the real product, which will launch later this year.

The real product will still include the Netflix for receipts, but there will also be a mobile app which will allow consumers to snap a photo of their receipts instead of mailing them in. Endorse tested this as well using just camera phones and email, and it was seeing a new proof of purchase pop in every 90 seconds over a period of 3 days.

Endorse is trying to solve two problems: recognizing shoppers for product loyalty and giving brands product-level data currently unavailable to them. In addition to cash back, brands can use Endorse to craft other types of incentives, such as paying extra to get you to try a product. Or, if you are Oral B, you know that someone who buys a set of replacement heads for a spinning electric toothbrush is 90 percent likely to remain a lifelong customer. It might be worth it to reward that person $25 or even $50 for making that critical purchase. Or a loyal customer might get a nudge to influence her friends by letting her gift them a 30 percent discount. Endorse can also lead to buying circles. Each endorsement can be shared via the equivalent of an affiliate link for the real world, which then associates the new Endorse members to the person who referred them.

For brands, it is all about the data. Most real-world retailers are stingy with the data they share with brands about who is buying their products. Web startups like Endorse see an opportunity in bypassing the retailers and simply connecting brands and consumers directly. But that is easier said than done. You might remember that previously social shopping startups such as the defunct Blippy tried to get consumers to broadcast their credit card purchases on Twitter or Facebook with the intention to later pan in that stream for data nuggets. The challenge was that nobody really wanted to broadcast how much money they were spending, and even if they did, the data wasn’t at the product level, it was at the basket level.

Endorse collects the actual receipts, with each product listed line-item by line-item. It’s a printout of the retailer’s cash register information, which Endorse then scans and redigitizes to put back into its own database. It is an inefficient process, but barring big retailers like Walmart and Target opening up their data warehouses to brands and startups (ain’t gonna happen), the physical receipt in the customer’s hands is the only way to reassemble that data. It’s somewhat of a hack, but if Endorse makes it easy enough it could have a business.

See source: Accel And SV Angel Back Endorse With $4.25 Million To Close The Loop Between Shoppers And Brands

1-Month Old BuzzDoes Scores $750K For Mobile App Marketing Platform

2012-01-23T23:54:00.001+04:00

Essentially, BuzzDoes is trying to kickstart the typically organic viral recommendation process where users tell friends about great apps they should try. To do so, app developers using BuzzDoes can choose to reward users who share an app with friends. The rewards come in the form of BuzzDoes points that users can redeem for cash (via PayPal), or users can donate the points to a charity instead. The secret sauce for this startup, however, is not just the sharing feature – it’s that BuzzDoes is also able to detect when a new user downloads and app because of the recommendation.

At first glance, the idea for a “recommendations-for-rewards” type mechanism feels like it could get a little spammy, but the way it’s implemented sounds rather smart. When a user enters the section of the app where they can make the recommendation, they’re also able to see which apps their friends are downloading, something that adds a social element to the app discovery process. If they’re interested in downloading one of the other apps here, they just tap the app in question and their friend gets the points. For developers, it’s a win because they get new users, but for the app customers involved, this sort of in-app discovery feature feels far less intrusive than mobile ads. In fact, it doesn’t really feel like an ad at all – it feels like a feature.

Developers are offered the BuzzDoes SDK for free, and don’t have to pay unless they actually gain new users through the word-of-mouth recommendation network. That’s a different take than what traditional “incentivized” install companies (e.g. TapJoy, W3i, etc.) provide. In most cases, developers pay upfront for a set amount of downloads which are acquired through “marketing actions,” like offers or through downloading other 3rd-party mobile apps. According to BuzzDoes CEO Assaf Kolirin, the cost to acquire is as low as $0.20 per user, versus today’s averages of $1.50-$3.00 per user.

See source: 1-Month Old BuzzDoes Scores $750K For Mobile App Marketing Platform

Six Hotel Giants Team Up To Launch Hotel Search Engine Roomkey.com, Buy Hotelicopter

2012-01-12T12:11:00.001+04:00

In an unexpected move, six of the largest hotel companies in the world have partnered to launch a hotel search engine of their own, dubbed Roomkey.com. The hotel companies hope that offering a ‘personalized experience’ and ‘accurate information’ will make travelers choose for them when they search for accommodation.

Choice Hotels International, Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott International and Wyndham Hotel Group teamed up to start Roomkey.com to, in their own words, “provide travelers a search and book experience tailored for ease of hotel shopping through an uncluttered and trustworthy site”.

Roomkey.com users can look for and book properties at all – but only those – six hotel chains involved, including their affiliates. Later on, the hotel companies say, the site will also offer independent reviews, and the ability to compare, plan and share with friends and family.

The site is not just limited in scope, but also up against a plethora of hotel search websites and aggregators, so it remains to be seen if it will get any traction. For now, it’s focused on serving travelers in the United States, but it should be expanded to include other English-speaking regions soon.

See source: Six Hotel Giants Team Up To Launch Hotel Search Engine Roomkey.com, Buy Hotelicopter

Here We Go Again: DC Taxi Head Says Uber Is “Operating Illegally,” To Be “Dealt With”

2012-01-12T12:10:00.001+04:00

Uber is once again getting attacked by a crusty local bureaucracy, this time in the federal capital of crusty bureaucracies — and its newest city — Washington, DC.

In case you don’t remember, the first attack was back in 2010, when San Francisco’s city transportation agency threatened the private car company’s executives with jail time and fines because it was operating an alternative transportation service. The differences got worked out, but Uber’s expansion into new cities means it’s running into more of these types.

The antagonist now is DC’s notoriously shady Taxi Commission. Its head, Ron Linton, made an offhanded claim during a public hearing today that Uber “is operating illegally,” adding that “we plan to take steps against them.”

Asked what he meant by local Gothamist publication DCist after the hearing ended, he replied ”We license public vehicles for hire under two arrangements. One is a time and metered distance, that’s a taxicab. The other is a fixed rate by appointment, and that’s a limo. [Uber doesn't] qualify under either circumstance.”

See source: Here We Go Again: DC Taxi Head Says Uber Is “Operating Illegally,” To Be “Dealt With”

In Greece, chocolate bars convey personalized messages via augmented reality

2012-01-09T15:32:00.001+04:00

Much the way recipients of German Qkies can scan the QR code on each cookie to be directed to a video, photo or personalized message, so Greek consumers can use augmented reality and a Lacta chocolate bar to convey a secret message to a friend.

Thanks to a free Android and iPhone mobile application by OgilvyOne Worldwide, Athens, Greek consumers can use their phone to send a message to a friend via any chocolate bar from Kraft Foods’ Lacta brand. They begin by composing the message on the Lacta app, which also shows how it will appear on a Lacta bar. Next, they select the name of the friend they’d like to send it to from their list on Facebook. Finally, the recipient receives a Facebook notification, and once they download the app, the camera of their phone automatically turns on and can be used to reveal the message on any Lacta chocolate bar. The video demonstrates the Lacta app in action:

It’s one thing to offer a service whereby consumers can order personalized products for each other, but using augmented reality for entirely private messaging opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Consumer brands around the globe: be inspired!

See source: In Greece, chocolate bars convey personalized messages via augmented reality

Why Bootstrapping Is Just As Over-Rated As Raising Venture Capital

2012-01-08T17:47:00.001+04:00

Бутстраппинг в одной фразе: "So in a best case scenario, you’re operating with one foot on the pedal with another in the grave."

There is an undeniable appeal to the notion of bootsrapping your company to success without venture capital. While bootstrapping has many advantages aside from control and ownership—such as being master of your domain and giving you the freedom to build your own Xanadu for all stakeholders—the reality is that the disadvantages may be greater.

Throwing money at problems is usually a short term fix. By lacking capital, you’re forced to tackle issues head-on and generate real solutions. But with no safety net on your balance sheet, you can’t really pivot if your business is hitting a wall. Even if you’re doing well, money is your lifeline, so lacking it may starve even the most promising of bootstrapped companies, preventing you from investing in growth or supporting your clients. So in a best case scenario, you’re operating with one foot on the pedal with another in the grave.

Mind you, we only hear about the wildly successful pivots such as Groupon, not about the hundreds of pivots that fail. Undoubtedly, some of those earlier models may become successful with time; albeit not big enough by VC definitions.

Fundraising is an art, and in Silicon Valley, conventional wisdom suggests that you “raise as much money as you can”. Except raising as much money—or diluting—as much as one can is good for investors but bad for entrepreneurs. No wonder investors say that!

While businesses should be valued on their financials, the historical valuation that investors place on your company may play a role in at least determining a floor price in a worst case scenario or a framework, at least. Conversely, I have been told at least a dozen times that not having raised any venture capital values my company at a discount.

Moreover, not raising money from professional investors is—in all honesty—a potential red flag. It’s rare for an entrepreneur to run a business and spend millions of dollars without having any outside help. When that is the case, it’s a normal reaction to wonder: why? Why hasn’t outside money been raised? It’s unfair, but saying that it’s never come up would be a lie.

See source: Why Bootstrapping Is Just As Over-Rated As Raising Venture Capital

Apptopia’s New Marketplace Will Help Broker Sales Of Mobile Apps

2012-01-06T19:09:00.001+04:00

Remember the news from earlier this week about a mobile app developer who turned to eBay to unload his underperforming iOS app? (Update: the app is now up to $15,100+!) Well, there will soon be an alternative to eBay auctions for other developers looking to do the same. A new marketplace called Apptopia will launch in February, allowing developers to sell their mobile apps, source code and all.

Pre-launch, Apptopia has a couple of hundred thousand in seeding funding, including $110,000 from Expansion VC. The rest is bootstrapped by the founders themselves, Jonathan Kay and Eli Sapir. Kay spent the past three years the “Ambassador of Buzz” at Grasshopper.com and Sapir was the Entrepreneur in Residence at Greatpoint Ventures and the founder of the once popular iOS app GPush. Sapir knows first hand about the difficulties of selling mobile apps – he experienced them himself when he wanted to move on from GPush.

The company has already brokered the sale of one mobile app valued at over $15,000 (no, not the one on eBay!) and have 30 more lined up for February’s launch.

The site will handle the app sale process from beginning to end, including connecting the buyer and the seller and working with app store in question to make the actual transfer. Apptopia will take 10% of the transaction price, of which it expects to keep about 8% (the rest goes to credit card fees). Kay says that from what they’ve seen so far, their expectations are for sale prices of $5,000 to $50,000, with most apps realistically selling for $6,000 to $15,000.

In other words, it’s not for the Camera+’s and Instagram’s of the app world, but for the B-tier. ”I would expect that apps selling the $100,000 range will be more likely to want to broker the deals themselves, and involve their own legal team,” says Kay.

There will also be a listing fee, a mechanism Apptopia has put in place to help keep the so-called “bs” apps out.

See source: Apptopia’s New Marketplace Will Help Broker Sales Of Mobile Apps

STARTUP IS VISION

2012-01-05T23:18:00.001+04:00

FIRST THING DISRUPT SELF

EVERYONE GOOD AT SEE CAN'T. EVERYONE LIVE IN WORLD FULL OF IMPOSSIBLE.

EVERYTHING THAT MATTER IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL SOMEONE DO IT ANYWAY.

STOP BEING EVERYONE. STARE AT WHY NOT UNTIL IT GIVE UP AND BECOME HOW TO.

STARTUP IS DO THING EVERYONE HAVE EXCUSE NOT TO.

VISION IS STOP EXCUSES, MAKE FUTURE INSTEAD.

See source: STARTUP IS VISION

incubators are a ghetto

2012-01-05T00:16:00.001+04:00

The fundability is also a function of how the opportunity is represented. Raising a round of funding is telling the story of your company to a particular audience. If you can’t connect the right dots for the investors, they probably can’t connect them for you. I literally grimace when I meet founders who have come through these programs and don’t understand how to discuss the addressable market, the go-to market, let alone term sheets. The point is that a company is only as fundable as they are able to tell the story that they are fundable. And that skill is something that many incubators fail to teach. Which is a segue to what has to be in place to accomplish the second: get them an audience with investors interested and able to fund.

incubators are a ghetto

Keep The Spark Alive With BeCouply’s Epic Date Night Subscription Service

2012-01-05T00:08:00.001+04:00

Imagine a candlelit dinner, a private art gallery tour, and round-trip black car service for you and your significant other. Now imagine how nice it’d be if you didn’t have to plan any of that awesome date. BeCouply is a new subscription service for couples where each month they get a unique, all-inclusive date set up for them. It’s like ShoeDazzle for romantic experiences. With pre-seed funding from Mitch Kapor, BeCouply Dates launches today in San Francisco with plans to expand to more cities and a mobile date idea app soon.

BeCouply was founded by real-life couple Becky Cruze and Pius Uzamere (an MIT computer science grad) after they had difficulty coming up with fun new date ideas. The 2-person company solves a big problem for more financially secure couples, and especially guys who are often tasked with impressing their significant others. These couples have the money to spend on the occasional big night out, but don’t have the time or creativity to plan memorable dates.

Users sign up for BeCouply Dates, and each month’s $149 per couple fee covers fine dining, drinks, an experience, and black car transportation. That means no reservations or designated drivers necessary. For its first package, “Couples will visit local food purveyors in San Francisco’s Mission District, meet the chefs, owners and industry experts while noshing on their artisan specialties.” Future packages hinted at include helicopter tours and spa visits. Some are more intimate experiences for two, while others include several couples in a group format.

Keep The Spark Alive With BeCouply’s Epic Date Night Subscription Service

AngelPad Looks Back: 37 Companies, 31 Funded, $25 Million Raised

2011-12-31T01:01:00.001+04:00

Для тех, кто в теме, в тексте скрыто несколько очень важных мыслей.

AngelPad, the startup incubator launched by seven ex-Googlers in August 2010, is taking a look back at how far it’s come in the months since and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. So far, AngelPad has helped 37 companies get off the ground, but it wasn’t until this year that things really got going: 29 of those 37 startups emerged from AngelPad’s incubator in 2011 alone.

Out of the 37 companies, 31 have received funding, totaling just over $25 million. But the vast majority of the startups have raised somewhere in the $500K – $1 million range, and 10 AngelPad companies have raised over $1 million each in 2011.

Not all companies make it, though. AngelPad has seen three companies fail out of the 37 launched – something that Korte says was not due to lack of funding or traction. “In early stage startups, the number one reason for failure is the founder relationship, he explains, “all three failed because of a founder breakup.” He says the program now looks at the founders applying to see how long they’ve known each other, if they’ve worked together and what sort of issues they’ve overcome in the past.

There are few other insights the AngelPad team gained over the past year and half of operation. One is that founders need to have an extremely large vision. ”And not an artificially inflated vision, but truly a great vision of what you want to do,” says Korte. “That’s when a lot of investors, and people who want to work for you, and even advisors, get excited about your company.”

But a vision alone is not enough. You also have to have the first tangible steps. Korte says he often sees startups with the tangible steps and a smaller vision, or people with a huge vision, and no tangible steps as to how to achieve it. You have to have both those things together.

He also stressed that growing a company takes time. It seems an obvious point, but in today’s instant gratification age (and corresponding news cycle, ahem), what’s often not reported is how long it took for a company to achieve its success, funding, or whatever other metric is being touted. “We don’t see how much work or how much time has gone into it – we don’t see how many iterations it took, how many years it took, how long it’s being going on,” says Korte. And it’s a problem that’s affecting everyone. “Investors become impatient, founders become impatient, employees become impatient…but building great companies takes time.”

Finally, Korte says that AngelPad learned that even a small amount of money early on can have a big impact on how founders approach the product. It takes the pressure of raising money off founders’ shoulders, allowing them to focus not on impressing VC’s with what’s being built, but more on building the product itself.

AngelPad Looks Back: 37 Companies, 31 Funded, $25 Million Raised

College students earn cash by running each other’s errands

2011-12-23T00:02:00.001+04:00

Модель, на первый взгляд похожая на оплату добровольных курьеров. Не маленькая деталь делает ее, с моей точки зрения, совсем другой.

Focusing primarily on fast food and grocery delivery, NeighborFavor lets college students see where their friends are going shopping and then request that one of them pick something up while they’re out. Along the way, they must indicate not just what they need and when they need the items, but also how much of a “tip” they’re willing to pay for that convenience. Once a neighbor has accepted the request and delivered the needed items, payments are made via PayPal and neighbors can rate each other’s performance. A 3-digit PIN is assigned to each favor to ensure that payments are made accurately as agreed.

College students earn cash by running each other’s errands

Giftmeo Debuts Social Group Gifting Service

2011-12-16T00:29:00.001+04:00

Wrapp and a host of others are betting on group gifting as a new way for users to collaborate over giving gift cards to friends. Giftmeo is throwing its hat into the group-gifting platform ring, debuting a new service that allows groups to ‘chip in’ towards a gift for a friend.

Users simply create a profile on Giftmeo.com, set up gifts for one or more friends and then begin the “fundraising” by spreading the message on Facebook and Twitter. You can connect to Facebook to Gift-givers can pay in increments as small as $1.00 or has high as $2,000.

Unfortunately, the actual options for gifts are limited. For now, Giftmeo only allows users to gift Amazon.com Gift Cards. The startup will also soon introduce an API that lets developers add gift cards as rewards. And it can be used as a fundraising tool as well. For now, Giftmeo is in private beta but will soon be opening to the public.

Giftmeo Debuts Social Group Gifting Service

In Singapore, loyalty card rewards coffee fans for being disloyal

2011-12-14T17:18:00.001+04:00

Coffee shops around the world have employed loyalty card schemes for many years, but now we’ve come across an interesting twist on the idea. In Singapore, a collaborate scheme aims to benefit eight of the city’s best independent cafés with the Be Disloyal disloyalty card.

The Be Disloyal disloyalty card — created by digital creative agency Antics, blogger Cortadito.sg and eight of Singapore’s independent coffee shops — was designed to encourage consumers to discover different coffee venues while bringing businesses together to grow as a vertical. From September until the end of this month customers can pick up a disloyalty card from one of the eight participating cafés. The card is stamped each time they purchase a coffee from one of the other seven cafés and, once the card is full, they return to the original café to receive their free coffee.

Competing with large chain brands can be difficult for small businesses, but teaming up with similar smaller companies can create stronger competition. Inspiration here for independent businesses in any industry!

In Singapore, loyalty card rewards coffee fans for being disloyal

Social platform creates network of trusted recommendations

2011-12-13T15:12:00.001+04:00

Commonly, the personal value of a social media platform is measured by the number of friends, contacts or followers. However, when it comes to recommendations, startup Vineloop believe the smaller the network the better, and this month launched a platform that enables users to create an exclusive network of friends to facilitate trusted recommendations.

Vineloop is the brainchild of long-time friends Lou Vastardis and Darren Pulito. After years of making recommendations to each other and often acting on these tips, they realized the opinions of a few trusted friends are more valuable than the opinions of many people with potentially dissimilar tastes. To begin using the platform, individuals send Vineloop requests to the friends whose opinions they value most on specific subjects — for example, restaurants, wine or music — with a limit of five friends per subject. The user will then be given access to the recommendations of these trusted friends, as well as recommendations from the people those friends trust most. Vineloop call this network a “Trustline”. Recommendations are given using a “True10” floating slider rating system, which acknowledges opinions change over time and allows for ratings to be adapted, keeping them accurate and relevant. Those giving recommendations can also add brief commentaries to their tips, and reviews can be posted on Twitter and Facebook.

Social platform creates network of trusted recommendations

Y Combinator Vs TechStars: Whose Companies Are Bringing In More Funding?

2011-12-12T16:06:00.001+04:00

Total Companies

Y Combinator is growing the size of its classes almost every year. There are two times more companies at it than at TechStars companies, based on the dataset. Quantity does not necessarily reflect in the quality of the portfolios, so let’s keep digging.

Y Combinator: 135 TechStars: 72

Total Raised By Companies

Raising a lot of money is not my definition of success, but it’s a good indication of the health of a startup in a lot of cases. Y Combinator companies as a whole raised ten times more money than TechStars companies, according to the data.

Part of the reason for this great distance are the massive rounds raised by DropBox and AirBnB. Those companies distort the data, yes, but that’s quite relevant: seed-stage investors want the huge hits.

Y Combinator: $627 million TechStars: $61 million

Total Rounds Raised

But in terms of how more typical startups do, the ability to raise rounds of funding shows they’re both doing about the same. While Y Combinator has more total rounds raised, but it also has more startups.

Y Combinator: 231 TechStars: 131

Money Raised After Seed Funding

To look at how the average company does, though, we need another metric. So, we computed the median amount raised by companies in the subsequent round after the acceleration process. Half the Y Combinator companies raised more than $800,000 in the next round and half raised less. Half of TechStars raised more than $500,000, half less. In other words, Y Combinator companies appear to be valued more highly than TechStars by early-stage investors.

Before you read too much into that, remember that other factors can impact this metric, too — the types of companies funded by each accelerator, the proliferation of deal-hungry angels near the program, etc….

YCombinator: $ 800,000 TechStars: $ 500,000

Y Combinator Vs TechStars: Whose Companies Are Bringing In More Funding?

I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words

2011-12-11T00:32:00.001+04:00

My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better.
—CNNMoney.com/Fortune, February 2008

It’s painful when you have some people who are not the best people in the world and you have to get rid of them; but I found my job has sometimes exactly been that—to get rid of some people who didn’t measure up and I’ve always tried to do it in a humane way. But nonetheless it has to be done and it is never fun.
—Smithsonian Institution Oral and Video Histories, April 20, 1995

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.
—Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, May 13–16, 1997

Let’s go invent tomorrow rather than worrying about what happened yesterday.
—D5 Conference: All Things Digital, May 30, 2007

Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you’re doing. Picasso had a say- ing: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macin- tosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.
—Triumph of the Nerds, PBS, June 1996

Actually, making an insanely great product has a lot to do with the process of making the product, how you learn things and adopt new ideas and throw out old ideas.
—Playboy, February 1985

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
—The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, 2011

Objective: I’m looking for a fixer-upper with a solid foundation. Am willing to tear down walls, build bridges, and light fires. I have great experi- ence, lots of energy, a bit of that “vision thing” and I’m not afraid to start from the beginning. Skills: That “vision thing,” public speaking, motivating teams, and helping to create really amazing products.
—Steve Jobs’s resume, a placeholder ad to promote iTools, on me.com, January 5, 2000

I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year.... It’s very character- building.
—Apple Confidential 2.0, 2004

My dream is that every person in the world will have their own Apple computer. To do that, we’ve got to be a great marketing company.
—Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple, 1987

To former PepsiCo executive John Sculley, whom Jobs was trying to woo to Apple: Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?
—Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple, 1987

It’s better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.
—Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple, 1987

I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else won- derful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.
—msnbc.com, May 25, 2006

People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing and it’s totally true. And the reason is because it’s so hard that if you don’t, any rational person would give up. It’s really hard. And you have to do it over a sustained period of time. So if you don’t love it, if you’re not having fun doing it, you don’t really love it, you’re going to give up. And that’s what happens to most people, actually. If you really look at the ones that ended up being “successful” in the eyes of the society and the ones that didn’t, oftentimes it’s the ones [who] were successful loved what they did, so they could persevere when it got really tough. And the ones that didn’t love it quit because they’re sane, right? Who would want to put up with this stuff if you don’t love it? So it’s a lot of hard work and it’s a lot of worrying constantly and if you don’t love it, you’re going to fail.
—D5 Conference: All Things Digital, May 30, 2007

The thing that bound us together at Apple was the ability to make things that were going to change the world. That was very important.
—Smithsonian Institution Oral and Video Histories, April 20, 1995

You don’t need to take notes. If it’s important, you’ll remember it.
—Inside Steve’s Brain, 2009

Victory in our industry is spelled survival. The way we’re going to survive is to innovate our way out of this.
—Time, February 5, 2003

Well, I gotta tell you—we don’t do it because it goes down well or not. We have a problem, and our problem was that people had forgotten what Apple stands for. As a matter of fact, a lot of our employees have forgotten what Apple stands for. And so we needed a way to communicate what the heck Apple’s all about. And we thought, how do you tell somebody what you are, who you are, what you care about? And the best way we could think of was, you know, if you know who some- body’s heroes are, that tells you a lot about them. So we thought we’re going to tell people who our heroes are, and that’s what the “Think Different” campaign is about. It’s about telling people who we admire, who we think are the heroes of this century. And—some people will like us, and some people won’t like us.
— Macworld Expo, March 13, 1999

Once you get into the problem...you see that it’s complicated, and you come up with all these con- voluted solutions. That’s where most people stop, and the solutions tend to work for a while. But the really great person will keep going, find the underlying problem, and come up with an elegant solution that works on every level. That’s what we wanted to do with the Mac.
—AppleDesign, 1997

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living some- one else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s think- ing. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown our your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intui- tion. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
—Commencement address, Stanford University, June 12, 2005

I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words

Groupon Buys OpenCal, Launches Online Appointment Booking Service ‘Scheduler’

2011-12-07T20:38:00.001+04:00

Now this makes a lot of sense. Groupon this morning announced its latest product, dubbed Groupon Scheduler, an online appointment service that makes it easier for both end users and merchants to go from offer to actual booking.

Groupon Scheduler is based on technology from OpenCal, a Vancouver, Canada-based startup Groupon apparently – quietly – acquired in September 2011. The new product will become available to Groupon merchants and consumers in Sacramento and Miami beginning on December 7, 2011 (i.e. today) and be rolled out in other markets “soon after”.

The service can be used to take appointments for Groupon features or as a freestanding tool to manage a merchant’s entire calendar.

Once they’ve purchased a Groupon deal, consumers can schedule or cancel appointments through their Groupon.com accounts. Both consumers and merchants get immediate email confirmation of each booking, as well as automated email reminders 24 hours before scheduled appointments.

Merchants also have the ability to add “Book Now” buttons on their own websites and use Groupon Scheduler to manage online bookings for all their services – not only those offered through Groupon.

In other words, this marks Groupon’s entry into the online booking services market. The company is trying hard to become much more than just a pure-play, daily deals site that’s too ‘easy’ to clone.

Groupon Buys OpenCal, Launches Online Appointment Booking Service ‘Scheduler’

Social game rewards users for performing and photographing real-world tasks

2011-12-07T20:37:00.001+04:00

Users of Onefeat begin by signing up via Facebook, Twitter or their email account. They then browse the site for a “mission,” or challenge. Thousands are currently listed — “ride a roller coaster,” “visit your grandma” or “find the best Happy Birthday cake,” for example — or users can create their own. Either way, to win the points assigned to the challenge, they perform the task in question and take a photo to prove it — a free iPhone app is available to facilitate that. Once the photo is uploaded, users earn points and trophies based upon the number of users who like their photo, allowing them eventually to progress on to the next level of the game.

Social game rewards users for performing and photographing real-world tasks

Poshmark Brings In $3.5 Million To Bring The Clothing Swap To Your iPhone

2011-12-07T15:39:00.001+04:00

You know that whole “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” thing? Well, that’s the concept behind clothing swaps, a type of gathering that’s recently become popular, where people (mainly women) get together and exchange used clothes. If you’ve ever been to a clothing swap — and of course you have, tech blog reader — you know that they’re high energy, giving everyone the feeling like they just got something for nothing.

Poshmark is an app that wants to bring the experience of clothing swapping to your phone. The app allows sellers to seamlessly upload an image of an item they want to sell, make it look fancy with a filter and fill out details like Original price, Listing price, Category and Size. After they press send, the item gets posted to the Poshmark feed and other users can bid on it.

To even further the sense that you’re experiencing a real live clothing swap, Poshmark lets users to hold themed Posh Partys, where users can upload and buy across themes in realtime, anything from “leather and sparkles” to warm winter coats.

Poshmark Brings In $3.5 Million To Bring The Clothing Swap To Your iPhone

A List Of Startups Goldman Sachs Thinks Will Most Likely IPO

2011-12-07T15:30:00.001+04:00

Very very quietly (there is almost no Google footprint), investment bank and securities firm Goldman Sachs held its “Private Internet Company Conference” this week in Las Vegas. During the two-day conference, which lasted from November 29-30th, a gaggle of companies presented their business models to an elite audience composed of bankers, investors and peers.

See the full list by clicking the link...

A List Of Startups Goldman Sachs Thinks Will Most Likely IPO

Farmers’ cooperative pairs up singles to share leftover food

2011-12-01T11:05:00.001+04:00

Recent variations of the online dating game have included dating in pairs and matches based on social media activity. Now in Sweden, farmers’ cooperative Lantmannen pairs up singles to share leftover dishes or ingredients, creating an environmentally-friendly dinner date.

According to Lantmannen, every fifth bag of food in Sweden is thrown away, which prompted the creation of Restdejting in an effort to reduce waste. Members are encouraged to combine their left over ingredients and create a meal with another person. They begin by visiting the website and entering up to five ingredients they have left over. This list is then published to Facebook for other Restdejting singles to browse. There is also a speed dating option, where users can select the ingredient they are looking for to complete their meal, before choosing whether they wish to set up a “dinner for two, three or four”. For example, a user may enter “Sea bass looking for crunchy fennel. Meal for two?” Lantmannen also provide recipe suggestions using the listed leftovers available, for those lacking culinary inspiration.

Farmers’ cooperative pairs up singles to share leftover food

Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining

2011-11-28T19:59:00.001+04:00

If you work at a startup and you think you’re working too hard and sacrificing too much, find a job somewhere else that will cater to your needs.

Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining

Spam Friends, Earn Money With Social Affiliate Ecommerce Platform Shopcade

2011-11-22T22:26:00.001+04:00

Полезный социальный спам, дающий возможность спаммеру заработать. Неплохая сделка.

We’ve all built up a ton of connections through networks like Facebook and Twitter. Now there’s a way to greedily exchange that social capital for real-world dollars. Shopcade is a new affiliate ecommerce platform where users create a personal store and feature products from a catalog of 40 million item. They can then blast store links to their social networks and earn affiliate kick-backs when their products sell. When used for good, Shopcade helps people structure the shopping recommendations they give friends to aid product discovery, and give to charity. But when used for evil, Shopcade incentivizes social network users to spam their friends.

Shopcade has the potential to give everyone an incentive to spam. Maybe it will help cash-strapped teens avoid crappy summer jobs. But more likely it will degrade the social network experience if it gets popular.

The way the model works is Shopcade aggregates all the affiliate product feeds it can. Users create and customize a personal store and feature products they’d recommend — i.e. that they think their friends will want to buy. When someone buys a product, Shopcade gets an affiliate fee, but then rewards both the store owner and the purchaser by adding a small cash reward to their accounts. Users can cash out through PayPal or by donating their reward to charity. In addition to keeping a portion of the affiliate fees, Shopcade will monetize by selling custom themes and virtual goods that users can display on their stores.

The redeeming property of Shopcade is the product recommendation feed on its home page. When shoppers visit, they’re shown what products their friends are adding to their stores or buying, as well as products based on their own activity and Facebook Likes. These could become a good way to discover relevant products if enough friends are on-board.

Spam Friends, Earn Money With Social Affiliate Ecommerce Platform Shopcade

Sony Ericsson’s Vscreens Moves Your Mobile Content To The Big Screen

2011-11-19T19:47:00.001+04:00

Getting content from your Android device onto a bigger screen has never been terribly hard, but Sony Ericsson’s Vscreens service makes it an absolute cakewalk. There’s no fiddling with DLNA settings or fumbling with cables here — just QR codes.

Once you’ve downloaded the Vscreens app from the Android Market (which works on any Android device running 2.1 later, not just SE handsets), point your browser at vscreens.com and scan that QR code. Your device and the website will forge a connection, and allow you to quickly throw photos up onto a bigger screen. Scrolling back and forth between photos was fairly smooth, and to my surprise, pinch-to-zoom worked nicely as well.

Sony Ericsson’s Vscreens Moves Your Mobile Content To The Big Screen

Backed By Former Google Exec & More, Twigmore Brings Travel Networking To Facebook

2011-11-19T19:46:00.001+04:00

Smyth says that, with Twigmore, he wants to put people, not places, at the heart of a travel platform; while most travel websites focus on places, offering pictures of hotels, restaurants, etc., Smyth says that it’s not only friends and people we inherently trust that give us the best travel recommendations — the best insight and tips come from people who actually live at these destinations.

The problem is, however, that it’s hard for travelers to find trusted locals who can answer questions, show them around, or just help when things come up. Twigmore wants to tackle this obstacle by connecting travelers with locals through friends. That’s where the co-founder thinks they can gain a leg-up on other travel sites: By helping travelers find real people on the ground wherever they travel.

Twigmore also wants to offer its own recommendations for things to do when people arrive at their destination, a starter kit, if you will. They’ve just begun adding features there, and have started with Groupon Deals for some discounted activities for people to during their stay in 100+ U.S. destinations.

Smyth also said that he wants the product to be 100 percent personalized, and thus far users can only interact with friends or friends-of-friends in Twigmore — no strangers to be found. He also said that he sees an opportunity (a la Airbnb) for the platform to become a place where people can find homestays with trusted friends (and friends-of-friends) while they’re traveling so they can save money on hotels and lodging.

Backed By Former Google Exec & More, Twigmore Brings Travel Networking To Facebook

Klout: Talk-Up a Startup, Get Some Equity

2011-11-18T21:56:00.001+04:00

Klout is partnering with a startup called Wahooly to offer high-ranking members the ability to become investors in startups in return for helping publicize the young companies.
In about two weeks, Klout will approach users with a score of 45 or more to check out Wahooly. In January, those users who opt in will be able to choose from 200 startups in which they’d like to invest. Dana Severson, founder of Wahooly (the name refers to the wahoo, arguably the world’s fastest fish, which travels in schools), gave the following hypothetical example of how the service will work:

“Say Startup A wants to offer a 5% equity arrangement to 5,000 users. We’d give 25,000 the opportunity to join and choose 5,000 among them.” Once that cutoff is reached, Wahooly will track the investor’s social media activity. Severson says investors don’t have to talk about their startup, but “that’s what our model is all about.” Their equity stake will increase or decrease based on their perceived brand advocacy in social media channels. “If they choose to do nothing and don’t mention word one, then their share is diluted,” Severson says.

Klout: Talk-Up a Startup, Get Some Equity - Technology News - TechNewscast — Technology News

Are We In A Series A “Crunch”?

2011-11-10T12:18:00.001+04:00

Well, we pulled some rough funding data from CrunchBase (which come to think of it should be a National Treasure), and, as it turns out, more and more companies are raising seed and angel rounds (we’re counting both as the same) and less and less companies are raising Series A. In fact the number of seed deals went up 33% from 2008 to 2010, while Series A deals were down 9.6% during the same period.

So what the hell is really going on? While a lot has been written about the subject, I think the reality is the Series A Crunch is bullshit and people are misreading the signals here.

There is no Series A Crunch. There is a huge supply of seed capital but a significantly larger percentage of angel-funded startups are not needing significant capital and thus not seeking Series A financing.

We’re seeing a lot of two and three person startups that raise $500,000-$1 million in angel funding (for anywhere between 10-20% of the company). Back in the day, that would allow you to buy some servers and equipment, rent some space, and take you to the point of the initial iterations of a product. With the advent of Amazon web services, communal working space, and an increased skill set of product development (at a younger age—we’re seeing founders as young as 18), today’s team’s are cranking out products that can start generating traction and even revenue.

As a result of these lowered costs and rapid development, you’re seeing businesses that have either scaled quickly to cash flow positive or to a point where they are $10 million acquisitions for larger players like Facebook, Google, and Groupon.

It means that a larger than historical percentage of companies are getting seed funding (and we’ve been seeing companies that, in my opinion, shouldn’t be funded—but then again, I’ve been wrong a lot). However, the assumption that a huge percentage of these companies are getting screwed since the same number of Series A deals are getting done is just flat out wrong. A significant percentage of these firms don’t need to raise a Series A.

Are We In A Series A “Crunch”? What CrunchBase Says …Calling Bullshit On The Series A Crunch | TechCrunch

Value Of Tech M&A Deals Up 22 Percent In Q3 2011 To $56.4 Billion

2011-11-10T12:11:00.001+04:00

Ernst & Young says that growth in the aggregate value of private equity transactions drove the overall sequential increase in value. PE aggregate value increased 82 percent sequentially to $14.6b in quarter and increased 86 percent year over year. PE firms contributed 6 of the 11 third quarter deals valued above $1 billion.

Big-ticket deals dominated in quarter with the top 11 deals totaling $40.1 billion in value, or 71% of all disclosed in the quarter. This was only the second quarter since 2008 where the top 11 deals all had values of over $1 billion.

Average values per deal also climbed, and were up 14 percent over the previous quarter and 26 percent year over year to $221 million, the highest level in 11 years. The aggregate value of the top 11 deals represented over 70 percent of the total deal volume for the quarter.

In terms of volume, the number of M&A deals dropped 2 percent for the second consecutive quarter, to 759 deals in third quarter. Cross-border deals declined 11 percent each in volume and value in 3Q11, compared with the second quarter 2011.
Outlook clouded by global trends

So will the values continue to grow in technology M&A deals. Ernst & Young cautions that market and economic volatility could cause a dip in value and amount of deals. But the disruptive technologies that continue to be developed (and are in demand) could mitigate this.

Value Of Tech M&A Deals Up 22 Percent In Q3 2011 To $56.4 Billion

The Rise Of Pinterest And The Shift From Search To Discovery

2011-11-08T00:14:00.001+04:00

Надоело искать – хочется находить.

Despite the hockey-stick growth, doubts exist. Where’s their revenue? It’s likely they won’t make this a focus until the product and backend systems are complete, but note that they already route affiliate links to online shops and are believed to drive incredible traffic to Etsy. Why did Pinterest raise so much money? It was a very competitive round, and the team needs much more technical talent, and in this environment, they’ll need to be aggressive about finding that talent. And, what exactly is Pinterest? It’s a site about discovery and data. On the front-end, users can discover things that they like and organize things they like. On the back-end, it’s a data company, where the company can capture rich metadata around each image.

The Rise Of Pinterest And The Shift From Search To Discovery

App connects those in need of a bathroom with locals willing to share one

2011-11-03T14:55:00.001+04:00

Серьезно?

Working from the premise that it can be difficult to find a clean and available bathroom in many urban areas, CLOO’ — short for “community” plus “loo” — hopes to build a community of registered host members who are willing to share their bathrooms in exchange for a small fee. After downloading the CLOO’ app, those in need of a restroom will be able to use it to see the registered hosts nearby. Along with basic details, the app will also indicate whether those hosts share any social networking friends in common with the user, as well as the host’s community rating and the price of their loo. Users can then send a request to see if the host is home; if they are, the user is then invited to use the host’s loo and a payment equivalent to roughly “the cost of a latte” is deposited into the host’s account. Afterwards, ratings for each party can be submitted through CLOO’.

App connects those in need of a bathroom with locals willing to share one

HighScore House!

2011-11-01T13:50:00.001+04:00

Дожили. Родители воспитывают детей с помощью он-лайн игры с наградами за выполнение заданий. Воспитание детей с элементами игровой механики :)

HighScore House is an online game that is powered by the real-world. You and your children decide on a set of tasks, like walking the dog or mowing the lawn, and rewards, like an extra hour of TV time or a new game. Then as your children complete the tasks, they earn points that they can redeem for the rewards

HighScore House!

Private Stock Transactions Up 73 Percent This Year On SecondMarket

2011-10-27T13:38:00.001+04:00

Большую часть покупателей акций на SecondMarket составили частные инвесторы. Рынок частных инвесторов, как я утверждаю уже давно, один из самых перспективных рынков сбыта.

Despite a couple big-name companies like Groupon and Zynga lining up for IPOs, the demand for private company stock on alternative exchanges keeps rising. Private stock transactions on SecondMarket in the first three quarters of 2011 totaled $435 million, a 73 percent increase over the same period last year. In the third quarter alone, there were $167 million worth of transactions on SecondMarket, up 49 percent from the second quarter.

Who is buying all of these shares? SecondMarket breaks it out in its third quarter report. Wealthy “accredited individuals” made up the largest share of buyers (63 percent by dollar amount), followed by asset managers (22.3 percent of transactions), hedge funds (7.8 percent), and venture capital funds (5.1 percent). VC funds became much more active on SecondMarket in the quarter, accounting for 17.5 percent of the transactions by number. Last quarter, VCs made up less than 1 percent of transactions (and only 0.2 percent by dollar amount).

Private Stock Transactions Up 73 Percent This Year On SecondMarket

Geekli.st Gets $600K To Give Geeks A Place To Brag

2011-10-27T13:35:00.001+04:00

Твиттер для программистов? Я всегда утверждал, что главное свойство подобного продукта – это желание похвастаться...

Developer communication network Geekli.st has raised $600K from angel investors Keith Richman, Nick Wilson, Neal Rapoport, Max Clark, Brian Tu, Sean Knapp, Jeff Fluhr, Joseph Shieh and Great Oaks VC.

Relying heavily on Twitter OAuth, Geekli.st lets developers create profiles to house “cards” for programming-related achievements and micro-achievements like “I helped build Google Reader from the ground up,”"Helped grow Skype from zero to first few hundred million users,”"Redesigning parts of the SimpleGeo site to scale for more products,” etc. Users can view a stream of other user’s cards by clicking on the Geekli.st logo at the top of the site.

Geekli.st Gets $600K To Give Geeks A Place To Brag

Local Recommendations App Alfred Now Does Group Recommendations

2011-10-27T13:33:00.001+04:00

Во-первых, групповые рекомендации, позволяющие выбрать нечто, устраивающее всех – это отличная фича. Во-вторых, это отличный способ рекрутировать новых пользователей из числа друзей пользователей сервиса.

Clever Sense’s local recommendations app Alfred was already doing a great job suggesting restaurants, coffee shops, bars and nightclubs using its artificial intelligence-based system. But today, it’s going to do something even more extraordinary - it will make suggestions based on who you’re with. This new feature, rolling out today through an app update in iTunes, will combine your personal likes and interests with those of your friends in order to suggest places you will all agree on.

The group recommendations feature, however, only works if your friends are also Alfred users. To encourage your friends to try the app, so you both can use the new feature, the app now suggests you send them a text or email invite.

Local Recommendations App Alfred Now Does Group Recommendations

Why Diversity Is Bad For Startups

2011-10-24T15:34:00.001+04:00

A startup is not just a smaller version of a big business. A startup is a company that doesn’t know what business it’s in. A startup is doing something so big, reaching so far outside the box, that the people running the company are not totally sure what they are doing.

Why Diversity Is Bad For Startups

BrandTable Concept Shows NFC At The Food Court

2011-10-21T21:42:00.001+04:00

Australian design firm S-Digital has created an interesting concept application for the use of NFC (near field communication) in food courts. Yes, food courts – like those found at your local mall. The project, dubbed “BrandTable,” involves circular stickers containing NFC tags secured to the tabletop that, when tapped with an NFC phone, launch a menu and ordering page for a particular restaurant.

Using the mobile site, customers can place their order and even pay, without having to visit the counter or wait in line. When the order is ready, the phone buzzes so you can go pick it up.

BrandTable uses NFC in combination with Java and the Android SDK to pull up menu ordering system, and is demonstrated (see below) using Google’s Samsung Nexus S.

S-Digital built and designed the concept in conjunction with the University of Sydney, Mojo and Amnesia Razorfish.

BrandTable Concept Shows NFC At The Food Court

“Project Z,” Zynga’s Independent Gaming Network, Announced Today

2011-10-12T14:53:00.001+04:00

Рамки Фейсбука стали тесны. Интересно, какую аудиторию удастся собрать в эту независимую игровую сеть?

We’re here at the Zynga Unleashed event in San Francisco this morning and one product we hear they’re launching, among others, is “Zynga Live” — their long-awaited platform where people can play games without going through Facebook or another social network partner. The name may have been changed since then, but the concept, an independent gaming network, is still the same.

“Project Z,” Zynga’s Independent Gaming Network, Announced Today

A First For Home Shopping Network: Selling An Online Storage Product. Guess Which One!

2011-09-24T22:08:00.001+04:00

Наступает переломный момент, когда интернет-сервис становится коммодити – продуктом продаваемым по телевизору. Обратите внимание на забавный момент – продаваться должен реальный продукт. Кстати, одним из первых продаваться как реальный продукт попробовали Xobni, правда через оффлайновые магазины и, правда, у них это не получилось.

Starting today, Home Shopping Network will begin selling – for the first time – an online storage product on air. With a reach of about 89 million households per week in the United States, this could be quite a big deal for the online storage provider in question.

So who is it? Dropbox? Box.net? Mozy? Carbonite? No Sir Ree Bob, it’s MiMedia (earlier coverage)!

Sure, HSN has sold electronics before, but this is actually the first time they’re selling an online file storage service on the air, so consider this a sign that this type of product is going mainstream.

MiMedia tells me Home Shopping Network had a number of parameters they needed to adhere to, namely: a ‘lifetime’ service that costs no more than $50.

Also, the product needed to be tangible and shippable. Wait, what?

Yes, it’s kind of ridiculous to sell a 100% digital service as a physical product, but HSN knows its audience very well, so MiMedia complied with everything they asked.

What they came up with is an offering that comprises 25 GB of storage, ‘for life’, which will be sold for $49.95. To achieve a shippable product, MiMedia will be sending buyers a USB drive with a software loader pre-installed. Yes, still kind of ridiculous, but who knows, it might just work for them.

A First For Home Shopping Network: Selling An Online Storage Product. Guess Which One!

Startup Incubator TechStars Raises $24M, Increases Funding For Each Company By $100K

2011-09-24T22:02:00.001+04:00

Второй пошел… Вслед за Y Combinator, Юрием Мильнером и Роном Конвеем.

Startup incubator and network TechStars has raised $24 million in new funding from the Foundry Group, IA Ventures, Avalon Ventures, DFJ Mercury, SoftBank Capital, SVB Financial Group, RRE Ventures, Right Side Capital Management, TechStars Alumni, and several individuals. TechStars is actually already directly funded by over 75 venture funds and angel investors, but this new funding will be used to offer every single new TechStars company an additional $100,000 in funding in the form of a convertible note immediately upon acceptance into TechStars.

Startup Incubator TechStars Raises $24M, Increases Funding For Each Company By $100K

Piictu Launches, Grabs Seed Funding To Grow Its Game-ified Photo Sharing App

2011-09-24T22:00:00.001+04:00

Это вам не Твиттер с фотографиями. Это общение на языке фотографий.

Piictu Founder Jonathan Slimak says that photos are traditionally static objects of memory, so with his new photo sharing app, he wanted to transform pictures into a conversation medium, and objects of interaction. But what does this mean exactly?

In terms of the daily Piictu experience, for starters, a user uploads a picture, gives it a caption, and immediately receives picture-based responses from other Piictu users, which forms — yup — a picture stream. Where this differs from the pack is that Piictu’s streams are set up in such a ways as they can then be made in the form of a sequential game or center around a question like, “who’s your favorite Ninja Turtle?” As to the former, Slimak cited the example of a number game that focuses on picture-based replies that continue the sequence in a game. For instance, I upload a picture of a vanity license plate that reads “Number 1″ and you might respond with a picture of a two dollar bill, and so on.

Piictu Launches, Grabs Seed Funding To Grow Its Game-ified Photo Sharing App

Elon Musk: Starting A Company Is Like Staring Into The Face Of Death

2011-09-15T19:32:00.001+04:00

Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and founder of Tesla Motors and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) described starting a company like “staring into the face of death. If that sounds appealing, go ahead.”

Elon Musk: Starting A Company Is Like Staring Into The Face Of Death

The Gamification Of Working

2011-09-14T17:07:00.001+04:00

А хорошая идея, если довести ее до полнейшего завершения:
- обеспечивать сотрудников всем, что ему нужно, используя корпоративные скидки
- делать это в непринужденной игровой манере.

What’s better: an employer giving you $500 or an employer giving you an iPad? At first, you may think it’s better to get the cash. But often, that money is used on things such as paying bills — important, but not lasting. The iPad will last. Every time that person uses it, they’ll remember who gave it to them.

“Employees value the non-cash rewards three times over the cash value,” BetterWorks co-founder and CEO Paige Craig notes. But doing perks can be tricky for a small company to manage. It’s often easier simply to hand out cash. That’s where BetterWorks comes in.

The service, which has been in testing in the Los Angeles area for several months, in now launching in the San Francisco Bay Area to coincide with TechCrunch Disrupt. BetterWorks focuses on working with companies with anywhere from 2 to 1,500 employees. In other words, small businesses. And what better place to offer this than the Bay Area, startup haven.

BetterWorks gives small companies an easy way to reward and incentivize employees. They give these small businesses access to corporate rates on things like gyms and salons, which those businesses can then offer to their employees as perks. Gym memberships and the like are standard for large companies like Google, but startups don’t have the time or resources to deal with such things.

f you’ve heard of BetterWorks, it may have been because it was also co-founded by a co-creator of Farmville, Sizhao Yang. Yes, that Farmville. Why is he doing a employee perk startup? Because there will also be gaming elements to it. While BetterWorks hasn’t yet moved into the intangible world, eventually there will be ways for employers to encourage certain types of behavior (such as getting work done in a timely manner, responding to email, etc) with perks. The gamification of working.

BetterWorks Brings Big Company Perks To Bay Area Startups — Coming Soon: The Gamification Of Working

With Bitcasa, The Entire Cloud Is Your Hard Drive For Only $10 Per Month

2011-09-13T15:31:00.001+04:00

Убийца ДропБокса?

The company is launching a new cloud storage, syncing and sharing service that blows away its competitors, including hard drive manufacturers and online services like DropBox and SkyDrive, with ease. In fact, beyond the pricing and limitless storage, the most disruptive thing about the service is its complete integration with your device. You don’t see it, it’s not an icon on your desktop, you don’t drag-and-drop files or folders into it. Instead, you write to the cloud when you save a file on your computer. The cloud is your hard drive, and your actual hard drive is just the cache.

Bitcasa is not like any of those services. It doesn’t move files around. It doesn’t sync files. It deals in bits and bytes, the 1′s and 0′s of digital data.

When you save a file, Bitcasa writes those 1′s and 0′s to its server-side infrastructure in the cloud. It doesn’t know anything about the file itself, really. It doesn’t see the file’s title or know its contents. It doesn’t know who wrote the file. And because the data is encrypted on the client side, Bitcasa doesn’t even know what it’s storing.

And the pricing! How on earth is it so cheap?

With Bitcasa, The Entire Cloud Is Your Hard Drive For Only $10 Per Month

Gowalla Is Reborn As A Beautiful App For Travel And Storytelling

2011-09-13T15:27:00.001+04:00

Gowall решила, наконец, отпозиционировать от FourSquare, попытавшись придать смысл чек-инам. Мне нравится этот ход. Очень интересно, получится ли это у них?

When you load up Gowalla, the first thing you see is still a main activity feed. Here you’ll find the activity from your friends. Because Gowalla isn’t completely pivoting away from their core location functionality, much of the data and social connections remain intact. But instead of a stream of check-ins, you’ll notice people hanging out together. They’re checking-in, but they’re also taking pictures and talking to one another in clusters that are known as “Stories”.

The main middle tab is now “Guides”. Here you’ll find curated travel guides for various places around the world. For example, if you load up the app in San Francisco, you’ll see the San Francisco guide, as well as the East Bay guide and the Stanford guide. You can quickly scroll through other guides not near you as well. And Gowalla has the ability to make special guides on the fly. For example, they made a TC Disrupt guide for event-goers.

So will this small pivot work for Gowalla? Well, they’re certainly focusing on the right areas. Check-ins are now a commodity, the real value of location lies in both augmenting personal experiences and providing useful information. Gowalla is trying to find the sweet spot between both. They’re a mobile travel guide and a well-conceived location-based sharing tool.

Gowalla Is Reborn As A Beautiful App For Travel And Storytelling

Breezy Launches Partner Network, Lets You Print On The Go At 1,000 Locations

2011-09-07T22:41:00.001+04:00

Я встречал много стартапов, которые пытались сделать агрегатор печатных салонов. Но простой агрегатор не очень полезен. Но совмещение этого агрегатора с мобильным телефоном и поиском ближайших печатных салонов сразу придает идее большой смысл. Красиво, просто, изящно.

Breezy, the Oakland-based mobile printing startup, has been awfully busy since last we heard from them. What started as a BlackBerry-only solution to one man’s mobile printing headache has gone mass market today with the announcement of their new Breezy Partner Network, which allows users to print documents from their smartphones to nearly 1,000 local printers.

Here’s how it works: fire up the the Breezy app on your device, and it will bring up a list of recently opened documents. Once you’ve selected the document to be printed, just tap the Nearby Printers option to see all the participating printers nearby. Most of the Partner Network’s 1,000 printers are located inside hotels, although Breezy CEO Jared Hansen says that Breezy is making some in-roads with print and copy shops.

Breezy Launches Partner Network, Lets You Print On The Go At 1,000 Locations

Impressive List Of U.S. Investors Drops $180 Million Into Chinese Startup Incubator

2011-09-01T16:59:00.001+04:00

Китайский инкубатор поднял суммарно 295 миллионов долларов на программу по коучингу и инвестированию в молодых китайских антерпренеров. В свое время, когда Innovation Works только появился я уже про него писал, потому что его схема мне очень близка: поиск и обучение наравне с инвестированием.

Инвестировали они в 34 стартапа, из которых 9 получили финансирование следующего раунда – в принципе вполне обычные результаты.

Судя по всему огромные размеры потенциального рынка привлекли столько инвесторов из разных стран. Да уж, Китай большой.

Lee bowed out of Google seemingly at just the right time to turn his focus from the behemoths to the little guys, founding Innovation Works, an early-stage incubator for Chinese startups. Since 2009 the incubator has been solely focused on investing in and coaching young entrepreneurs in the Chinese market, and today the incubator announced that it has raised $180 million to create the so-called “Innovation Works Development Fund” (IWDF).

According to the Innovation Works’ announcement, corporations, family funds, and institutions participated in the fund, including investors like WI Harper, Silicon Valley Bank, Sequoia Capital, IDG-Accel, Foundation Capital, Foxconn, SAP, Bertelsmann, Motorola, Autodesk, and pension funds from the U.S. and Canada.

Ron Conway and Yuri Milner were also part of the list of investors, as well as executives and former executives from top Internet companies like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, and Yahoo. While American tech companies have largely struggled to expand into the Chinese market, it’s nice to at least see American money working its way into China to support startups and the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. Hopefully, it will encourage Chinese founders to build businesses unique to the region and not Facebook/Twitter ports.

The incubator had previously raised $115 million and, to date, Innovation Works has invested in approximately 34 startups, nine of which have successfully obtained sizable Series A financing from third-party VCs, according to Lee. Innovation Works, like its American brethren TechStars and Y Combinator looks to help early-stage startup teams grow quickly with the help of mentoring services and an infusion of cash. Lee manages the fund alongside WI Harper Group.

Impressive List Of U.S. Investors Drops $180 Million Into Chinese Startup Incubator

E La Carte Raises $4M From Groupon Co-Founders To Bring Tablets To Restaurant Tables

2011-08-30T19:51:00.001+04:00

Ребята делают меню на специализированных планшетах, которые поставляются в рестораны и позволяют заменить обычные бумажные меню.

Интересная цитата, почему для этого изначально не были взяты, например, iPad: "As for why E la Carte didn’t just create an iPad app with similar functionality, Suri says that the device just wasn’t optimal for the company’s goals of creating a smaller, more lightweight, hearty device for tableside dining. Anecdotally, the startup actually exchanged emails with Steve Jobs when deciding whether to go iPad or build the hardware, and unsurprisingly Jobs advised them to build off the iPad and iOS platform."

E La Carte Raises $4M From Groupon Co-Founders To Bring Tablets To Restaurant Tables

Munch On Me Is A Groupon For Food, Done Right

2011-08-24T15:30:00.001+04:00

Интересная мысль по нишевой конкуренции с Групоном. Интересно, насколько это сработает и будет интереснее, чем Групоновский вариант.

First of all, Munch On Me focuses on giving discounts on specific dishes, instead of on anything in the entire restaurant. Any business who’s been a victim of the Groupon effect knows why this is important, namely because restaurants can prepare for the demand in advance, overloading on the inventory they expect will sell out.

The Munch On Me discount focuses only on one item, and restaurants can upsell after the initial sale (“Would you like fries with that free milkshake?) and can keep offering up deals. Customers can redeem their deals immediately, a food industry-specific convenience that Groupon seems to have caught onto with its Groupon Now concept.

Because it takes less of a cut than Groupon, Munch On Me can get merchants to give out larger discounts as well as items for free in hopes of bringing more people into the store.

Says co-founder Jason Wang, “We were surprised in the beginning too, but merchants are willing to give out ‘freebies’ since we focus on dishes and not the entire menu. It drives a significant amount of traffic to the establishment. For example, when we ran King Pin Donuts in Berkeley, CA for a week, 1,573 people claimed a free donut when it was limit 1 per person.”

Munch On Me Is A Groupon For Food, Done Right

Y Combinator Demo Day: The Ultimate Roundup

2011-08-24T15:25:00.001+04:00

Описания проектов из последнего призыва Y Combinator. Интересно, а что понравилось вам?

Y Combinator Demo Day: The Ultimate Roundup

StumbleUpon Delivers Half of U.S. Social Media Traffic

2011-08-22T15:01:00.001+04:00

Полузабытый StumbleUpon оказывается генерирует больше 50% реферального трафика из социальных сетей, периодически обгоняя Facebook. на график можно посмотреть по ссылке.

StumbleUpon Delivers Half of U.S. Social Media Traffic

Editing Community Kibin Helps You Proofread Your Writing Fast And For Free

2011-08-19T18:49:00.001+04:00

Мне нравится эта модель

Важен взгляд другого человека на то, что делаешь ты
Ты делаешь для других столько, сколько другие делают для тебя
Нет времени или желания делать что-то для других – плати

Причем нравится настолько, что у Главстарта уже есть один проект, который реализует аналогичную схему только в другой области :)

Well the way Kibin works is that users can accumulate points for editing other people’s work, and use those points to get their own work edited. If you don’t have the time to edit other people’s work, or just suck at it (eh, hem) you can pay 50 cents for a Kibin credit (founder Travis Biziorek tells me that credits average out to one cent a word, so that a 1,000 word essay costs around $10 with the option to pay more if you need a faster turnaround) and use those credits to buy editing time. Biziorek says that edits usually get done in under 24 hours.

It is invaluable to have another pair of human eyes on your work — spellcheck can’t tell the difference between “complimentary” and “complementary,” for example. That kind of attention to detail is worth its weight in gold. I’m sure there at least 20-30 mistakes in this post even but I just don’t have the time to figure out which ones they are. Also, I am typo-blind. Anyways my point is there’s a market for this.

Editing Community Kibin Helps You Proofread Your Writing Fast And For Free

The Series A Squeeze

2011-08-18T12:50:00.001+04:00

В США уменьшается доля посевных инвестиций и инвестиций Раунда А в общем объеме инвестиций. С моей точки зрения это показатель определенной заполненности рынка. Хотя по нашему рынку таких цифр нет – по сути своей из-за отсутствия этого рынка – мне кажется, что у нас пока ситуация обратная. У нас как раз ожидается бум посевных инвестиций и инвестиций Раунда А. А потом, значит, будет похожая ситуация. ОК, надо учесть в своих планах :)

VCs are less inclined to lead or participate in follow-on rounds unless the company is a clear winner in its class. Furthermore, VCs have had to support their perceived winners longer because exits have been fewer and farther between. Even with the rise of the Series Seed (the nomenclature of which is not used uniformly), Seed and Series A deals collectively accounted for nearly half of all equity financings in 2006, and now account for less than one third.

So where has all the money gone? Companies that make it to Series B tend to live on, and unfortunately for VCs, they’re living longer and longer before an exit. Silicon Valley’s “undertaker” summed it up nicely, “Once it gets to the Series B round, you see people really trying to pull that coach through to the next depot.” That’s why Series C-E, which only accounted for approximately 20% of all equity financings in 2006, are on pace to be double that this year.

That being said, institutional investors have long-term time horizons and need to be investing in early stage deals to keep up their deal flow. Even when things were seemingly at their worst in 2008, there was more Seed and Series A investment as a percentage of all equity financings than there has been to date in 2011. The pendulum will swing back. It has to.

The Series A Squeeze

TheStyleCure Provides A Simple Social Shopping List | TechCrunch

2011-08-17T21:45:00.001+04:00

Вот хороший пример того, как можно построит абсолютно вменяемый, хоть и простой продукт меньше, чем за 30 дней. Что-то я не могу припомнить аналогичных сроков построения вменяемых продуктов здесь.

The startup lists over 1 million products from 300 stores, and 7,000 brands online via ShopStyle’s API. You can search for brands, clothes, shoes, accessories and more, and you can like any product, which will be shared via Facebook Connect. You can also see a profile of all the clothes you like and a stream of all of your friend’s likes as well.

The site is extremely simple (Sit built TheStyleCure in less 30 days) but it does add a social shopping list which not like all os your favorite clothes and accessories in one place (as opposed to scattered across the web). You can also click through the products to buy them.

TheStyleCure Provides A Simple Social Shopping List | TechCrunch

Pew Survey: Half Of U.S. Mobile Consumers Use Cell Phones For Realtime Info Retrieval

2011-08-15T22:36:00.001+04:00

Меня убили две фразы из этого исследования

1. Another 40 percent used their phones for emergencies. While about as many, 42 percent, use their phones to “stave off boredom.” For 18-29 year-olds, that percentage is 70 percent.

2. A full 13 percent of survey respondents admitted they have “pretended to be using their phone in order to avoid interacting with the people around them.”

Pew Survey: Half Of U.S. Mobile Consumers Use Cell Phones For Realtime Info Retrieval

YC-Funded MobileWorks Aims To Be A Hands-Off Mechanical Turk

2011-08-13T18:32:00.001+04:00

Интересно, заработает, когда-нибудь этот перспективный краудсорсинг? Пока все тормозится по целой куче причин. Начиная от отсутствия реальных людей, готовых качественно и в течение длительного времени выполнять короткие однотипные задания. Заканчивая бухгалтерскими проблемами: как эффективно распределять мелкие деньги десяткам тысяч людей: стоимость персонализованного бухгалтерского учета может по издержкам сожрать всю прибыль.

И еще фраза очень нравится: "MobileWorks is promising a service that’s so hands-off that developers can use it as a sort of API — you make your data request, and a human ‘returns’ the result, with no intermediary steps." Так и представлется куча людей, работающих в качестве API...

If you regularly have to deal with a lot of repetitive data entry or sorting, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with services like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The promise is appealing: you can hire workers to complete basic tasks for a relatively small amount of money. And, in theory, everyone wins. You get your tasks completed on the cheap, and your outsourced workforce gets to make some supplementary income from the comfort of their computers.

Unfortunately things are a little more complicated than that. Coordinating these jobs requires quite a bit of effort to ensure you’re getting quality results — you need to choose workers, figure out what price to set, and so on — and it isn’t necessarily easy for newcomers to get started. And then there the concern that Mechanical Turk workers aren’t getting paid enough.

Now a Y Combinator-funded startup called MobileWorks wants to provide an alternative to Mechanical Turk — one that’s as easy to use as possible, with no hands-on management required once a task is submitted. In fact, MobileWorks is promising a service that’s so hands-off that developers can use it as a sort of API — you make your data request, and a human ‘returns’ the result, with no intermediary steps. And they’re promising that its workers will be paid better than they are on Amazon.

Of course, Mechanical Turk and similar services require hands-on attention for a reason: you’re dealing with real people, many of whom are untrained, and aside from their modest pay they don’t have a particularly strong incentive to produce work of the highest quality.

MobileWorks knows this, but it thinks there’s a better solution than micromanagement. The company has set out to build a workforce comprised exclusively of workers who output consistently good results, to the point that users don’t have to worry about managing their tasks.

YC-Funded MobileWorks Aims To Be A Hands-Off Mechanical Turk

CapLinked Partners With Microsoft To Help BizSpark Startups Raise Cash

2011-08-09T18:02:00.001+04:00

Я лично уже достаточно давно считаю, что самый перспективный рынок будущих инвесторов – это частные инвесторы. Суммарный объем денег, которыми они владеют, больше чем у фондов. Их большое количество – залог потенциального многообразия интересующих их тем, а также то, что они будут инвестировать, невзирая на личные пристрастия (или отвращения).

А то недавно мы с одними знакомыми попытались назвать фонды, которые реально вкладываются в интернет-проекты в России на Раунде А – в смысле не заявляют, а уже вложили. Нам хватило пальцев на одной руке. Даже лишние остались…

А для работы с большим количеством инвесторов нужен хороший рабочий инструмент.

CapLinked, the LinkedIn-meets-SalesForce for private investing, has landed a significant deal today, helping Microsoft BizSpark startups raise cash via a new capital raising tool. As we’ve written in the past, CapLinked launched to allow entrepreneurs to raise capital and sell or buy assets, manage and contact investor prospects, centralize document flow on a secure platform and connect with new investors, advisors and companies. Investors can use CapLinked to manage deals, build public profiles, leverage LinkedIn contacts and connect with promising startups.

Startups enrolled in the Microsoft BizSpark program will have exclusive access to new feature Deal Rocket, which allows them to submit their ‘deal room’ to dozens of angel groups and early stage venture capital funds around the country.

Here’s how Deal Rocket works. Companies can create secure, viral deal rooms on CapLinked to manage their capital raise or asset sale. The deals can then be shared with prospective investors and advisors, who can then invite others to view the deal. And companies can submit their deal to over 100 angel groups and venture capitalists pre-aggregated into Deal Rocket for review.

CapLinked Partners With Microsoft To Help BizSpark Startups Raise Cash

Lessons HealthTech Startups Can Take From ZocDoc

2011-08-06T20:36:00.001+04:00

Отличные уроки по развитию бизнеса. Потому что интернет-бизнес – это в первую очередь бизнес, а уж потом интернет.

ZocDoc just announced a $50M round from DST. Where many have failed, ZocDoc has shown that a disruptive new model executed properly can actually work in healthcare. Healthtech startups can take several lessons away from the ZocDoc experience observing from the outside what they have accomplished.

Scrappiness matters. ZocDoc’s CEO & Co-founder, Cyrus Massoumi was tenacious in getting close to his first customers and doing whatever it took to close his first customers. He has shared that he waited in a doctor’s waiting room for 5 hours to speak with one doctor he wanted. In another case, he was escorted out of the building by security due to his persistence.

Focus pays off. ZocDoc appears to have ignored the siren song of any number of diversions from their core. This could have included getting into pricing elasticity or electronic health records. They do one thing exceptionally well — they fill open slots on doctors’ and dentists’ appointment calendars. Now that they’ve proven this, there’s logical places for them to extend. For example, think about what happens after scheduling an appointment (insurance eligibility, reminding patients about appointments, etc). With the credibility they’ve established, they can increase revenue per customer if they offer those services to a doctor.

Great investors help. While I’m sure their investors would give the ZocDoc team most of the credit, it can’t hurt to have Vinod Khosla, Marc Benioff and Jeff Bezos as early investors followed by the Founders Fund and SV Angel.

Honing their sales model. It appears they don’t use their website for sales to clinicians. Their website is almost entirely focused on consumer acquisition. Their strategy to acquire their paying customers may be viewed as “old school” (i.e., field and inside sales) but it has been effective. It sounds like they make a significant investment in sales development which is a great way to maximize the value of a salesforce.

Word of mouth still works. Doctors and dentists talk with each other and by providing them a great experience, they are getting plenty of inbound lead generation. Too often, startups rush growth and it bites them back with a bad customer experience and negative word of mouth. No doubt, this is helping drive inbound interest.

Start small to go big. As Salesforce.com and others have shown, starting with small customers is a great way to get initial traction. In ZocDoc’s case, they went to individual doctors rather than pursuing hospitals and large clinics. No doubt, that opportunity exists if/when they want it but they’ve shown you can build a business with small providers first. This can open up later opportunities with hospitals.

Stage rollout by geography. This is particularly critical in their model but I think it will matter for many healthtech startups. Having critical mass in a particular geography makes sense from a sales and marketing standpoint helping compress the sales cycle and learning curve. An alternative to this would be staging by specialty – i.e., focus on one specialty before moving to another.

Lead with the doctors. As Google Health’s failure demonstrated, leading with the consumer and expecting them to pull in physicians isn’t likely to be successful. ZocDoc focused first on getting doctors on board to have a critical mass of available appointments. While they have done consumer marketing, my impression is that doctors are now encouraging their patients to schedule appointments this way creating a virtuous cycle. If a doctor (or any business) tells you the preferred way to interact with them, most consumers will do it. In contrast, most doctors wouldn’t heed a patient or two telling them to use some new tool.

Technology-enabled services appeal to healthcare. Doctors, for the most part, don’t care about the technology. I doubt they think about the underlying architecture of ZocDoc’s solution. Rather, they care about the outcome ZocDoc provides – filling empty appointment slots. For many of their customers, they are the #1 source of new patients. WhiteGlove Health is another startup providing a technology-enabled service having success — their IPO is this week. Technology as an enabler, rather than as the centerpiece, matters more the smaller the target customer as a general rule.

Lessons HealthTech Startups Can Take From ZocDoc

StyleSeat Is Yet More Proof There’s A Market For The “Opentable For X”

2011-08-06T20:29:00.001+04:00

Как минимум три российских проекта занимаются системами он-лайн записи. Как минимум один сфокусирован на организации записи в салоны красоты. Как минимум один получил инвестиции Главстарта.

А это у них.

Earlier today when we wrote about UrbanSpoon trying to get a piece of OpenTable’s pie, this quote from Urbanspoon VP Kara Nortman really struck me, “Two years ago, an online reservation system required a massive upfront investment,” she said, now claiming that building a similar platform is as simple as setting up an iPad/iPhone app.

Perhaps this setup ease (and reduced customer acquisition cost) is why we have seen an outcropping of investor interest in “OpenTable for X” services lately, the most notable being DST’s $50 million investment in ZocDoc. Just yesterday I sat in on a demo for Pencil You In, a platform that pitched itself as a OpenTable for salon appointments, not the first time I’ve heard this.

Perhaps the OpenTable model has even more potential when made even more niche? After all, there are 30K restaurants in the US that take reservations, versus two million salon professionals.

Pencil You In competitor StyleSeat, which launched at TechCrunch Disrupt NY in May, now has over 75K appointments booked, representing $3.5 million in spend. StyleSeat, which allows hairstylists and salon representatives to set up simple online profiles to showcase their wares, now boasts 14K salon professionals who’ve created accounts, with 50K clients added and 1,700 promotions (deals) created.

StyleSeat Is Yet More Proof There’s A Market For The “Opentable For X”

YC-Funded Parse: A Heroku For Mobile Apps

2011-08-05T16:54:00.001+04:00

f you’re a mobile developer designing applications for iOS or Android, you’re probably intimately familiar with Objective C and/or Java. But there’s a decent chance you’re not so experienced with the backend server code that’s required to enable things like data syncing or authentication. Now Parse, a YC-funded company that’s launching in private beta today, has a solution: it’ll take care of all of those server-side features, allowing you to focus exclusively on making the mobile client better. And the first 200 readers to sign up here with the code ‘techcrunch’ will get in. And yes — they own Parse.com.

Cofounder Tikhon Bernstam — who was a cofounder and COO at Scribd up until three months ago — explains that many mobile app developers aren’t deeply familiar with the server-side code required to manage databases, user authentication, notifications, and other common features. Granted, they can usually figure these things out, but the time it takes to learn and implement these features is far from trivial.

Which is where Parse comes in. After dragging and dropping the Parse SDK into your IDE, you can access features like mobile data storage, push notifications, and user management with a few lines of code (you can see a rundown of the current features right here). Bernstam says that one common usecase for the service is to integrate syncing, so that users can access the same content across multiple devices. You can choose to build your app from scratch with Parse integrated, or you can import existing applications and use it to layer new features on top of existing functionality.

And Parse is only getting started. Bernstam acknowledged that Parse can’t build out the server-side features that will be needed by all developers, but he thinks they can get 90% of the way there. One other important thing to note: while Parse will take care of all of your server-side data for you, it’ll let you export it if you ever want to leave the service.

YC-Funded Parse: A Heroku For Mobile Apps

AppGrooves: App Recommendation Engine Combines Social With “Hot Or Not” Feature

2011-08-05T16:53:00.001+04:00

The more mobile apps come out, the bigger the discovery problem gets for users: Apple, for example, recently announced they have 425,000 apps in the App Store. Rankings, recommendations from platform providers or search often bring unsatisfying results – a pain that an app called AppGrooves [version 2.0, free on iTunes] now tries to solve.

There are quite a few recommendation engines out there already (i.e. Chomp or Frenzapp), but AppGrooves goes in a different direction: the idea is to combine a proprietary recommendation algorithm with a “Hot or not”-feature and a social element to discover unknown cool iOS apps.

The way it works is that AppGrooves first detects what kind of apps you have installed on your device. In order to find new ones that fit your taste, AppGrooves then lets you choose between various pairs of apps it pulls from the list of apps you have on your device in “Hot Or Not” style (i.e. “Which do you like better: Pandora or Spotify?”).

What’s interesting is that AppGrooves allows you to let your Facebook friends vote on apps as well: after voting on a pair of apps, you can not only share your decision but ask your Facebook friends which app they would have chosen for in that specific case, too. AppGrooves also collects votes from all your friends using the app and accumulates these social votes in order to produce more personalized recommendations over time (you can access this social hit list from within AppGrooves anytime). And if social isn’t your thing, you can also use the app’s search function to find apps with similar descriptions, from similar users etc.

AppGrooves: App Recommendation Engine Combines Social With “Hot Or Not” Feature

Lightbank Invests In Location-Based Mobile Social Network WhosHere | TechCrunch

2011-08-03T19:59:00.001+04:00

After backing Babbaco, Lightbank is making another investment today. The investment firm has funded myRete, the developers of WhosHere,a location-based mobile social network. This is the first outside investment for myRete.

WhosHere is a location-based social networking application (an iOS app for now) that allows you to see who’s in your near location and message people. The app introduces a user to others with whom they have something in common and when a user finds someone they are interested in engaging, they can message the individual. You can chat with people nearby, send free text and image messages, and make free VoIP calls without giving out any personal information. You can also send virtual gifts to other users.

For a bootstrapped company, WhosHere has an impressive user base and is profitable. The iOS app has over four million registered users who have sent over 2 billion text messages in 14 languages. The startup says users sending an average of 10 million messages a day.

Lightbank Invests In Location-Based Mobile Social Network WhosHere | TechCrunch

Mr. Number Dials Up $3.5 Million From Menlo Ventures To Give You More Control Of Your Phone

2011-08-03T13:49:00.001+04:00

We now live in a world of robust communication tools. Facebook, Twitter, IM, Skype, FaceTime, etc. But the one that still connects nearly everyone, the phone, remains rudimentary. Sure, phone communication has gone completely wireless, but a call is still a call. It requires dialing a number and connecting. Mr. Number’s goal is to add new layers of usefulness.

As a mobile app available for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry, Mr. Number allows you to do things like let friends know when it’s a good time to call you. Or you can tell them that you’d prefer a text message at the moment. Or you can say you’re busy and ask for a voice message instead. People waste a lot of time doing these things right now because it’s basically a guessing game as to what the best way is to get ahold of someone at any time. Mr. Number removes the guessing game.

The app does a number of other things as well, such as lookup-based caller ID. And they offer the ability to block calls and messages from certain numbers. You can also quickly report spam calls. Mr. Number is all about giving you more control over your phone-based communications.

Mr. Number Dials Up $3.5 Million From Menlo Ventures To Give You More Control Of Your Phone

DST Invests $50 Million Into ZocDoc So They Can Finally Get A Decent Logo

2011-08-02T18:44:00.001+04:00

The company has raised $50 million in a new round with DST. The company was valued at $700 million or more in this round, we’ve heard from various sources. ZocDoc won’t comment, though, on valuation.

They started off with just a few dentists and 5,000 appointment slots. It took them two years to get to a million available appointments. They now have 5 million over the next 90 days, up from 3 million in February. They’ve also more than doubled the number of employees in the last six months, to 150.

Doctors pay $250 per month to be part of ZocDoc. I’ve tried every way possible to get to a good revenue estimate for the company. It’s simple math once you know the number of doctors in the system, but they won’t disclose the number of average open appointments per doctor, or otherwise reveal revenue.

DST Invests $50 Million Into ZocDoc So They Can Finally Get A Decent Logo

Start Fund And SV Angel invest $9 Million In New Y Combinator Startups

2011-08-02T16:00:00.001+04:00

At TechCrunch Disrupt in New York a couple of months ago SV Angel said they were making the same offer to the most recent batch of Y Combinator startups.

The terms are the same – $150,000 in convertible debt with no cap and no discount on conversion. If you don’t speak venture capitalist, here’s what that means – other than gifting someone money, this is the most favorable a startup can raise money. It’s very easy to say yes to this.

And “yes” is once again what the startups are saying. All but three of the 63 new Y Combinator startups have accepted, and SV Angel’s David Lee says he expects one or two more to accept soon. That means the total size of the investments will be $9 million or more.

Unlike before, SV Angel and Yuri Milner are investing separately. Previously SV Angel wand Milner were each limited partners in Start Fund. Now, Start Fund is completely controlled by Milner, and SV Angel is investing separately. $100,000 of each investment comes from Start Fund, $50,000 from SV Angel.

Start Fund And SV Angel invest $9 Million In New Y Combinator Startups

Halo Effect: All AngelPad Companies Will Get $100K Investment Offers From 2 VC Firms | TechCrunch

2011-08-01T22:20:00.001+04:00

Previously, AngelPad gave their startups $20,000 to get started with (money that came from AngelPad itself as a small investment). With the new $100,000 offer, this means that startups will be able to exit AngelPad with $120,000 in funding. $50,000 will come from one VC firm, $50,000 from another. AngelPad’s Thomas Korte is declining to give the names of those firms right now, but says that they should disclose their affiliation soon.

To be clear, just as with Start Fund, the AngelPad startups will not have to take this money. They can still get started with the usual $20K investment from AngelPad, if they don’t believe they want or need the money. If they do decide to take the money, they will need to take the full $100K (meaning, they can’t just take $50K from one of the VC firms). But the two firms offering the deal have enough faith in AngelPad’s judgement in startups that it will be offered to every startup in each class going forward, if they do want it.

And again, this is a more straight-forward investment than Start Fund. It’s a convertible note with a cap, Korte tells me. He says that it’s quite startup-friendly, but it is a proper investment, “not the free money floating around,” he says, clearly alluding to Start Fund.

Halo Effect: All AngelPad Companies Will Get $100K Investment Offers From 2 VC Firms | TechCrunch

Jumio Turns Webcams Into Credit Card Readers – And Why Merchants Will Welcome ‘Netswipers’

2011-07-27T13:37:00.001+04:00

Jumio is finally unveiling Netswipe, a technology solution that enables e-commerce site owners and Internet retailers to process online and mobile payments by having customers ‘swipe’ their credit cards using virtually any webcam. Think of it as Square for the Web, without the need to purchase and install additional hardware. Watch the video below to see how it works, in a nutshell.

Jumio is introducing three products for online merchants: Netswipe Start, Netswipe Scanning and Netswipe Processing. Additional products, including a mobile solution, will be released later this year.

The idea of processing digital payments by scanning credit card information isn’t entirely new, we should note. Last month, for example, saw the launch of Card.io, a startup that is developing mobile applications also capable of scanning credit cards using smartphone cameras, and some other applications like AisleBuyer include similar features.

Netswipe will, howevever, allow merchants to securely process payments both on the Web and mobile – and like Card.io, Jumio intends to enable third-party developers to integrate the technology into their own apps and services. It’s also worth noting that Jumio claims its technology is patented.

Jumio says credit cards that are used to pay for goods and services via Netswipe are not ‘photographed’ – rather, the scans are made using videostreaming technology, which enables the company to recognize and verify the card details without storing any data on the client side.

The main benefits for merchants to implement such a solution are: reducing the time between a customer’s decision to purchase something online and effectively making a transaction, minimize the friction (entering credit card information by typing can be tedious and distracting) and reducing fraud.

Jumio CEO Daniel Mattes says that, during the pilot phase, a survey with a focus group showed a decrease in churn rate from 52% to 21%. This may well have been more of an exception than the rule, but for most businesses even a 5 percent decrease would have a big impact on the bottom line.

Jumio Turns Webcams Into Credit Card Readers – And Why Merchants Will Welcome ‘Netswipers’

SendTheTrend Allows You To Create A Curated Online Store of Accessories

2011-07-26T00:42:00.001+04:00

Send the Trend, a recently launched e-commerce site that brings personalization to the world of fashion accessories, is launching a new way for shoppers to curate their favorite items and make money at the same time, MyStyle.

For background, Send the Trend offers its customers personalized, affordable accessories such as fashion jewelry, sunglasses, scarves and more. The site takes you through a very short survey of what kind of accessories you may want, and it then provides stylist-curated customized recommendations for five different accessories for you. You can then buy any of the items for $30, with free shipping included for U.S. customers. The startup, which just raised funding from Battery Ventures and Founder Collective, was founded by Divya Gugnani, Mariah Chase and Project Runway winner Christian Siriano.

The key to Send The Trend is the element of curation and personalization. And today, the startup is empowering its users to be curators with the launch of MyStyle. The feature, which is the brainchild of the startup’s tech lead, Abishek Sachdeva; allows you to create an online Send the Trend store filled with your favorite accessories from the site. You can upload your picture, choose the words that describe your style and Send the Trend will pre-select products based on your preferences. You can also manually add items you like to your My Style page.

You can then socialize your MyStyle page and share it via Facebook, Twitter and email. Every time a friend buys a product, you get an automatic $10 credit at Send the Trend that you can use toward buying accessories. The top stylists can win more prizes, including $500 in cash.

SendTheTrend Allows You To Create A Curated Online Store of Accessories

Incentivised sharing on three-day deals platform

2011-07-26T00:34:00.001+04:00

No end in site to innovative spins on the deal-a-day concept — or three-days in this case! Combining the community spirit of Keepio with group discount schemes seen in services such as Friendsurance, we recently came across 72hDeals. The new platform incentivises visitors to share posted deals with their friends in return for earning discounts.

Both physical and digital products — such as PDFs or Zips — can be sold through the website, and sellers are able to increase sales by, in the company’s own words, offering “customers an incentive to share an offer around them.” Visitors to the site share the deals with their friends, thus earning coupons which are redeemable for money off the product being sold. The more people they involve, the greater the saving. The seller, on the other hand, is able to decide starting prices and lowest prices, as well as how much a customer saves based on each visitor he or she brings to the deal. The service is free to use, and 72hDeals will also create coupons for web developers looking to sell subscriptions to their web apps.

There is an ever-growing number of e-commerce platforms harnessing online collective purchasing power for the benefit of both consumers and businesses themselves. Time to put your own spin on the concept, or apply to a specific niche market?

Incentivised sharing on three-day deals platform

Former Microsoft Exec Raises $20 Million For Motif, An Investment Vehicle For Ideas

2011-07-26T00:25:00.001+04:00

Motif Investing, a new vehicle that allows you to invest in ideas, has raised $20 million in Series B financing led by Ignition Partners with participation from Norwest Venture Partners and Foundation Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to $26 million.

Motif, which is in private beta, was founded by former Microsoft executive Hardeep Walia and hedge fund analyst Tariq Hilaly to give individuals a new way to invest based on themes. Instead of choosing to buy stock in specific companies, Motif allows investors to invest in different portfolios of stocks, each called a “motif,” that are centered around everyday ideas. For example, motifs can be built around themes and ideas ranging from cloud computing to democracy in the Middle East. In addition, each motif can be customized to meet an individual’s ideas or needs.

Walia gives the example of “cloud computing” or “mobile internet” as growth areas that have seen significant gains over the past few years but he says most people don’t know how to map these ideas into an actual investment.

For example, there’s a lot of current buzz around the impact the debt ceiling negotiations is going to have on interest rates in the US. Suppose you were reading a news story about how interest rates are likely to rise and decided that you would like to invest in rising interest rates. How would you do this? If you have a money manager, you could call him or her, but it’s not an easy task.

Motif says that the challenge to investing in rising interest rates is that these rates have a negative impact on corporate earnings because they result in increased short-term borrowing costs. So rising interest rates can typically hurt stocks.

But the startup’s Rising Interest Rate Motif would include the small number of companies that hold very large sums of customer cash, and where interest rates rise they can actually increase their earnings. Specific examples of companies that hold large sums of customer cash include online brokerages such as Charles Schwab or E*TRADE, payment solutions companies such as Western Union or Heartland Payment Systems, payroll processors such as Paychex, prepaid cards such as Green Dot, and custodian banks such as Northern Trust.

Ignition’s John Connors, who was formerly Microsoft’s CFO and is a board member at Motif, said of the investment startup, “when introduced to Motif Investing, I recognized its potential to have a major impact on how people invest…I am excited about the experienced team assembled and their approach to disrupting the financial services marketplace.”

Former Microsoft Exec Raises $20 Million For Motif, An Investment Vehicle For Ideas

Goshi Debuts Hyperlocal, Mobile Marketplace

2011-07-26T00:17:00.001+04:00

Goshi, a marketplace that aims to disrupt Craigslist by adding a local and mobile component to buying and selling items in your community, is debuting its service in Chicago today.

Basically, Goshi’s iPhone app allows you to take a photo of an item you want to sell, describe the item, put a price on it and then post it to the marketplace. Instead of picking up items at people’s homes or workplace, Goshi has created “hubs” at local coffee shops where transactions take place.

For now, Goshi, which was incubated in Excelerate Labs, is mobile focused and has no plans to create a web presence. The startup says that the convenience of being able to post an item for sale wherever you are make the service distinct from Craigslist. And another differentiator, says Goshi, is the safety of completing transactions in public places or “hubs” and the buyer protection of seeing the item in person before you have to pay money for it.

The company is also working with local artisans and art fairs to provide a selling channel for Etsy-like products.

Goshi Debuts Hyperlocal, Mobile Marketplace

More Evidence There’s No Bubble: VC Investments Were Flat in Q2

2011-07-23T22:27:00.001+04:00

Dow Jones VentureSource released its second quarter numbers for the venture industry today, and there’s a reason they’re not dominating the headlines. They’re pretty boring: Overall investors put $8 billion into 776 deals in the US in the second quarter, a decrease of 5% in terms of invested cash and 2% in terms of deals. The median amount raised per deal was $5.2 million, up from $4.6 million a full year earlier. Yawn, right?

But the fact that the numbers are so unremarkable is what makes them interesting. It reinforces what people like me have been arguing for months: A handful of hot companies does not a bubble make.

The venture business has always been an outrageously lopsided one: 95% of the returns come from 5% of the deals. But while that was still true in the late 1990s, the overall numbers soared astronomically. That’s what happens in a bubble: A rising tide lifts all boats.

More Evidence There’s No Bubble: VC Investments Were Flat in Q2

Y Combinator Taps Into Its Alumni Network, Announces Ad Innovation Conference

2011-07-23T22:17:00.001+04:00

My, how Y Combinator has grown. It wasn’t that long ago that the prestigious startup incubator had a dozen or so startups per batch. These days, class sizes are more like 60, and the alumni network is huge: in total, Y Combinator has invested in some 317 startups.

Given how many YC startups there are, it isn’t really surprising that a lot of them have some overlap, or are at least tackling similar problems. Today, YC is announcing an event that’s taking advantage of that fact: the Ad Innovation Conference.

The event, which takes place on September 14, will feature fifteen YC companies involved in building new ad-related technologies. Among the topics that will be covered:

NFC advertising; the use of Twitter and Facebook content in display ads; ad/game hybrids; embedding ads in the 3D space of videos after they’ve been shot (i.e. retroactive product placement); geolocal ads and offers; audience polling; the evolution of SEO; marketing on Facebook; monitoring competing AdSense campaigns; landing page optimization; ad-based alternatives to paywalls; and the future of QR codes.

The event is free to attend (you can request an invitation using the link on this page) — but you’ll need to be involved with an ad agency, big advertiser, or publisher to do so.

YC cofounder Paul Graham says that this is the first conference revolving around YC startups that’s been open to the public, but that it’s previously held internal conferences that have focused on issues like SEO and fundraising. It also sounds like we’ll be seeing more public-facing conferences focusing on different topics in the future.

YC is best known for its Demo Days, where it brings together top-notch investors for a whirlwind series of startup demos from its portfolio companies, and it’s also orchestrated other startup-related events including Startup School (a crash course in entrepreneurship), AngelConf (a similar crash course, but for prospective angel investors), and Work at a Startup (a rundown on what it’s like to be an employee at one of these fledgling companies).

Aside from being informative, these events have a nice side effect for the participating YC companies: they’re also great for recruiting.

Y Combinator Taps Into Its Alumni Network, Announces Ad Innovation Conference

We&Co: These Are The People In Your Neighborhood (Bar, Coffee Shop, Etc.)

2011-07-22T18:31:00.001+04:00

Are you friends with your local barkeep, barista, or leather salesman? We&Co is a way to let them know you care. This iPhone app, launched on July 15, allows businesses to register their employees and then visitors can rate those employees (with an emphasis on positive criticism) and add them to your “favorite people” collection. Think of it as Yelp with considerably more granularity.

I suppose the question then is “Why?” Why use an app when you can thank them yourself? Well, presumably, the aggregate score will encourage others to frequent the employee’s place of business, thereby gaining them more tips and potential creepy stalkers. It also puts a name to the faces you see every day at your local eateries, drinkeries, and provisionaries.

Based in Atlanta, Georgia, the small company’s technology is based on work by founder Marc Mathieu’s company, BeDo. You sign in with Twitter, Facebook, or a distinct We&Co account. The app picks up current locations (and employees) and allows you to add locations and employees to various locations. You then select the employee in question and give them a high five or whatever, virtually.

The system allows you to follow your favorite employees (bartenders, for example, or hair dressers) from location to location and employers could choose to reward you for your ratings.

We&Co: These Are The People In Your Neighborhood (Bar, Coffee Shop, Etc.)

Heyzap Brings Location Awareness And Netflix-Style Recommendations To Mobile Games

2011-07-21T12:43:00.001+04:00

Heyzap, the social discovery platform for mobile and online games, has been hard at work adding pieces to its mobile experience. The startup recently brought check-ins to its mobile platform, allowing users to check-in to their favorite games to share scores and achievements on Facebook and Twitter. This also included, a la Foursquare, a badge rewards system, in which gamers can become the “boss” of a game by checking in with gusto.

And, like Foursquare, Heyzap has been collecting data on those check-ins, and is today offering free, personalized game recommendations and locations on game check-ins for Android. (The iOS update will be available at the end of the week.) This update continues to add functionality to Heyzap as a mobile platform: With the ridiculous amount of games out there in the mobile market, game discovery — especially personalized discovery — is essential.

Heyzap Founders Jude Gomila and Immad Akhund think that collaborative filtering and serving users recommendations based on the number of times they’ve checked-in to a certain game is a more effective method than, say, purchase history. Instead, Heyzap’s collaborative filtering algorithm takes a user’s play history account, so if you’ve been checking-in aggressively to Angry Birds, Heyzap will take this info (and how many times you play the game, for example) to recommend games to you based on people with similar gaming preferences. It’s not unlike Netflix’s recommendation system for movies, but in this case, Heyzap is employing your social gaming graph.

Another interesting addition to Heyzap’s Android app is location data. If a user is willing to give permission to their friends, they will be able to see not only that their friends are checking into certain games but where. Unless you have friends that will be checking-in from the moon, this may not seem particularly mind-blowing at first, but Heyzap plans on bringing this data to its APIs, which will allow developers to create location-based tournaments and multiplayer sessions.

Heyzap Brings Location Awareness And Netflix-Style Recommendations To Mobile Games

SV Angel, True Ventures And Others Put $1 Million Into Interest-Based Connections App One

2011-07-20T20:03:00.001+04:00

The best way to visualize One, which will launch an iOS app in the Fall, is that the app is a way to ask the people right next to you thousands of questions and get notified if they answer yes enough times. When you sign into the app, your interests and information is pulled from Facebook (and you can manually , and the app will track your location to determine who matches your interests nearby who have also downloaded One.

Levy explains to me that the startup is launching on college campuses as a way for students to meet each other in a close proximity. Currently, it looks like One may make its initial debut at UC Berkeley this Fall.

The idea behind One could be compelling in certain setting like college campuses or even conferences. Levy says he plans to expand the app to Android as well as will create a web presence as well.

SV Angel, True Ventures And Others Put $1 Million Into Interest-Based Connections App One

Sensors turn everyday activities into a game

2011-07-14T17:31:00.001+04:00

All the world may have once been a stage, but today it’s becoming more of a game. We’ve already noted the gamification of everything from the mundane to-do list to public transport, and recently we came across GreenGoose, which aims to bring it to virtually any aspect of everyday life.

Now in beta, GreenGoose seeks to help consumers have more fun doing everyday things. Toward that end, it’s gearing up to offer gaming apps along with kits including a wide array of sticky, wireless sensors and a base station to keep track of them. Consumers can stick a sensor on virtually anything — pet food scoops, frisbees and water bottles are some examples GreenGoose gives — and the base station will keep track of their use, awarding points in an online game each time a player performs a desirable activity. The company’s forthcoming Petagonia app, for instance, is a game that tracks dog walks, feeding and other activities associated with pet care.

Each GreenGoose sensor offers a 250-foot range and includes a tiny battery that lasts a full year; they can also be recycled by the Oregon-based company when consumers are finished with them. To play using GreenGoose equipment, users simply need a broadband connection and a spare Ethernet port — used to connect the base station — on their router or hub. GreenGoose kits and games are not yet available, but interested consumers can sign up to be notified when they are

Sensors turn everyday activities into a game

Hold Your Applause: Ovation Lets Your Live Audience Rate You In Real Time | TechCrunch

2011-07-14T17:29:00.001+04:00

Uh oh. Now you’ve done it. You’ve lost your audience. The crowd that was once hanging on your every word and gasping for breath between laughs is now sending back nothing but vacant stares. A few people just snuck out the back door, and you’re pretty sure that dude in the back row is snoring. Where, oh where, did things go so wrong?

A new app called Ovation is trying to help productions of all sorts (both live and online) figure out exactly where things start to suck, with a tool much like that used to gauge audience responses to TV pilots. It requires no downloads, and no sign-ups on the user’s part. Oh, and it’s totally free right now.

First, you create a URL for your event. You give your audience that URL, which they load up on their smartphone. This is what they see (here’s an interactive demo):

Members of your audience then use the on-screen slider to provide feedback. If they’re loving a certain section, they slide the bar up. If they hate it? They slide it down. Simple. There’s no signup process, and, as it’s a web app, it works across a ton of smartphones and mobile devices without any sort of installation.

As the event unfolds, users see a real-time time line of their feedback thus far, with a second line showing the averaged response of everyone participating. After the event wraps up, you can peruse all of the feedback data in an interactive, second-by-second plot graph (demo here) like the one below:

Hold Your Applause: Ovation Lets Your Live Audience Rate You In Real Time | TechCrunch

Series A Whopper: Benchmark Invests $33M in New BI Company Domo

2011-07-14T17:25:00.001+04:00

Domo is also building a product for a very defined, large market space: Business intelligence is a $10 billion industry today and expected to become a $14 billion industry by 2014, according to Gartner. And although companies spend loads of money on the basic problem of trying to figure out what is going on with their business at a glance, nearly everyone is unhappy with current market solutions

Series A Whopper: Benchmark Invests $33M in New BI Company Domo

Visually Launches To Automate The Making Of Infographics

2011-07-13T16:31:00.001+04:00

The whiz kids behind Mint’s infographics, Stewart Langille and Lee Sherman are today launching the first startup that solely focuses on mass producing infographics, Visually. Users who visit Visually this morning can see over 2000 infographics uploaded by designers like Jess3 and Dave McCandless as well as upload their own in a myriad of topics ranging from Science to Sports to the Economy.

In its first launch iteration, Visually has partnered up with The Atlantic, GOOD Magazine CNNMoney.com, Ebay, The National Geographic and others to provide infographics content in exchange for sharing links — On Visually each participating publication gets to upload its own graphics, which are embedded and shared using an code generated by Visually.

Visually plans on monetizing eventually by letting publications subscribe to its offerings via a monthly fee. “Everyone needs to create a graph or a chart or something, and the software that’s currently out there is more focused on business intelligence” Langille says. “There is a definite need to create simple visualizations for people. Within three clicks you can create visualizations for the sites.”

Langille hopes with Visually to create a community of designers a la Dribbble or Forrst, but also hopes to rope in infographic producers that are concerned with issues like exposure and monetization. If and when the basic infographics part of the site includes advertising he wants to incorporate artist friendly business practices like revenue sharing.

In addition to letting people upload and download infographics today, Visually has created a Twitterize Yourself widget that allows Twitter users to compare themselves against celebrities like Lady Gaga and Michael Arrington and create an infographic out of the experience. While there isn’t much practical benefit from this, it is pretty delightful.

This automated process is a harbinger of Visually product developments to come, as eventually Langile is about to introduce an interface where customers will be to be able to enter in data and have the visuals come out, with the choices of various artist’s styles baked in to the service.

Visually Launches To Automate The Making Of Infographics

Gogobot Brings Game Mechanics And Rewards To Online Travel

2011-07-07T22:04:00.001+04:00

Gogobot is today rolling out a game layer built on top of Facebook Places check-ins (the first of its kind that I’m aware of), as well as Foursquare, to turn both networks into a source of gaming mechanics that encourage travelers to compete with friends and other members of the community to earn points and badges by going about their daily Gogobot activity. Users can earn points simply by checking-in, but they earn a greater number of points by writing reviews, answering questions posed by other travelers, and commenting on other users’ reviews.

The Gogobot badge system is very similar to the commenting reward system used by The Huffington Post, as well as the badge system in place for content producers on Bleacher Report. Obviously, while game mechanics and badges are by no means a new idea, it is very definitely a novel feature for the travel industry.

Thus, if you’re someone that loves adding stamps to your passport and loves competing with friends and family for those stamps — if the idea of making travel into a game has some appeal — Gogobot has your number.

Gogobot Brings Game Mechanics And Rewards To Online Travel

Grocery shopping via smartphone on South Korean subways

2011-07-06T15:56:00.001+04:00

The virtual stores, constructed from large backlit billboards, displayed images of all the items one would expect to find in a standard Home plus shop. QR codes were then placed next to the image of each product, enabling smartphone equipped commuters to automatically add the merchandise to their virtual basket by scanning the code. The total order was then delivered to the commuter’s door once they returned home from work. During the campaign Home plus online sales increased by 130%, with over 10,000 customers trying the stores.

According to Home plus, Korea is the second hardest working country in the world, making the need for a convenience-focused solutions particularly pressing. Any idea that saves people time and effort however, is ripe for adaptation anywhere.

Grocery shopping via smartphone on South Korean subways

The Google/Slide Quiet Launches Continue With Prizes — Social Contests For Money

2011-07-04T19:51:00.001+04:00

Found at Prizes.org (which DotWeekly reported that Google secured back in April for Slide), Prizes is still in beta testing. But it is available for the public to use right now — though contest creation is still invite-only. You simply sign up with Facebook or Twitter (no Google options) and you’re ready to go.

Once you sign up, you’ll be presented with a stream of activities you can do — such as creating a soul mixtape — for money. You can follow any of these contests, or drill down into them for more information. And you can submit entries (solutions) for each contest.

Each contest has a time limit for completion. And they can get votes from other users. Users of Prizes can also get messages from other users, and get notifications for the contests they’re following.

The money aspect is currently only open to users with a “credit history”, meaning users have participated in contests in the past or created their own. The transactions are handled through PayPal (again, not a Google service — Checkout).

The Google/Slide Quiet Launches Continue With Prizes — Social Contests For Money

Fitocracy Brings Games And Social To Your Workouts (Invites Within)

2011-06-29T13:37:00.001+04:00

Well, for starters, Fitocracy brings role playing game mechanics and a social aspect to online fitness — and it’s got a great name. What’s more, Fitocracy blew up on Reddit and a few fitness forums because it has a backstory that a lot of people (especially the nerdly-inclined) can identify with. Fitocracy Founders Brian Wang and Richard Talens are college friends and are both currently fitness buffs and have been known to even compete in a body-building competition or two.

So, the founders decided to approach fitness exactly as they did their favorite RPGs: Give people a reason to get excited about, or addicted to, fitness by bringing the gaming reward system to workout routines. For example, when you join, it won’t be long before other users are offering you Fitocracy’s version of a workout plan, called “quests”, in which you are encouraged to do a certain number of squats, lifts, crunches, etc.

Fitocracy Brings Games And Social To Your Workouts (Invites Within)

Card.io’s SDK Makes Entering Credit Card Information As Easy As Taking A Snapshot

2011-06-23T23:47:00.001+04:00

Card.io is a new startup making its public debut today that’s looking to make lives easier for developers and users alike — by making inputting your credit card information as easy as holding your card in front of your phone’s camera for a few seconds. You can see the feature in action in the video below — the app recognizes the card, uses server-side OCR to scan it, then gives back the results in a couple of sconds. Better yet, it’s releasing the technology as an SDK to mobile developers, so that they can bake it into their own application.

The technology is not unique — some other applications like AisleBuyer include a similar feature. But cofounder Mike Mettler says that Card.io is the only service that’s offering the functionality to outside developers as an SDK (he notes that this model worked very well for RedLaser, the barcode scanning app that has been integrated into many other mobile applications).

Card.io’s SDK Makes Entering Credit Card Information As Easy As Taking A Snapshot

Flurry: Time Spent On Mobile Apps Has Surpassed Web Browsing

2011-06-23T17:26:00.003+04:00

Flurry: Time Spent On Mobile Apps Has Surpassed Web Browsing

GameAnalytics.com: The Name Says It All

2011-06-23T17:26:00.001+04:00

Game Analytics is a startup that’s looking to level the playing field, by giving all developers game-specific analytics tools similar to those being used by the big dogs. The startup is currently in private beta, with plans to launch publicly in the next five months or so. For the time being you can request an invite from their homepage.

Game Analytics won’t be alone in this space — we’ve extensively covered Mixpanel, a real-time analytics company that can track any sort of data in realtime, and is already being used by some large game developers, including Slide. Kontagent is another service with powerful stat-tracking features.

So what makes Game Analytics different? CEO and cofounder Morten Wulff says that because the company is focused exclusively on games, it will be able to offer some features that more general solutions don’t, like preset settings depending on the game engine (like Unity 3D) or genre a developer is working on.

GameAnalytics.com: The Name Says It All

Brand-To-Fan Connector, Crowdtap, Hits $1 Million Revenue With 115,000 Members

2011-06-17T22:39:00.001+04:00

A New York City startup that helps brands connect with and reward their fans via Facebook, Crowdtap, recently crossed the $1 million revenue mark for 2011, with 115,000 active members and about 50 major brand clients, chief executive officer Brandon Evans reported today.

Crowdtap members earn redeemable points for taking “brand actions” like: completing “quick hit” surveys, voting in a poll, participating in a live-online discussions or sharing brand-related content with a few friends via social media and the Crowdtap platform. The points that Crowdtap gives its members can be redeemed for an array of real world incentives, among them: an Amazon.com gift card, or a cash donation to a charity chosen from the company’s list of approved organizations. These range from environmental non-profits like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and The Nature Conservancy to The American Red Cross, Autism Speaks and Invisible Children.

Crowdtap requires that users donate five percent of their points to a charity of their choice. They can give more if they choose. Since launch, users have racked up $20,000 worth of points in donations to these charities (not all of that has been paid out, yet). Evans said his company aims to give users more and more choices over time; he is constantly adding causes and charities to the list.

To prevent Crowdtap members, who are brand fanatics, from turning into spammers the site only rewards points to users for sharing brand-related content that they “like” with up to four friends online. The points are doled out to the sharer once the recipient rates the content they’ve received.

Users who agree to either create content about a brand — like a video they made about their latest shopping trip to Old Navy— or who volunteer to host a party where they’ll pass around sample products provided by the brand, can gain a stronger reputation (and badges) within Crowdtap. Users with a higher reputation score become eligible for product freebies and other incentives that new or lighter users won’t get.

Brand-To-Fan Connector, Crowdtap, Hits $1 Million Revenue With 115,000 Members

Social Fundraising Platform Piryx Is Reborn As Rally.org With Top Investors In Tow

2011-06-16T19:36:00.001+04:00

Rally cofounder and CEO Tom Serres says that one of the issues with fundraising platforms is that many of them only work with non-profits. Rally, in contrast, can support both large-scale charitable causes in addition to less ‘official’ groups — like an initiative to renovate a local park. Serres says that the site is looking to help broaden the definition of what a ’cause’ is, and to use social sites like Facebook and Twitter to help each cause turn their supporters into activists.

The company is describing the old Piryx as something of a proof of concept, and the new Rally.org will incorporate existing features as well as new ones. In addition to handling the payment processing, Rally is also looking to help causes build strong online presences, with well-designed websites (both for desktop and mobile). The result, as you can see below, looks a lot like Tumblr (note the ‘Donate Now’ and ‘Fundraise’ buttons though). Fans of each cause will be able to create their own blogs associated with the cause. Another key change: the homepage for each cause will now be hosted at Rally.org/CauseName, which means that Rally is looking to build itself into a brand that’s synonymous with fundraising and cause communities.

Social Fundraising Platform Piryx Is Reborn As Rally.org With Top Investors In Tow

Google Ventures Backed-Copious Launches A Social Marketplace For The Facebook Era

2011-06-15T19:43:00.001+04:00

Copious, which has raised $2 million in funding from Foundation Capital, Google Ventures, BlackBerry Partners Fund, and a number of Facebook angels; is trying to disrupt the marketplace industry in a number ways. First, the site allows buyers and sellers to see if friends in common, which friends have bought or sold from a seller, bought from you, etc. As Copious co-founder Jonathan Ehrlich tells me, the site is centralized around using social data as a signal to help users understand and trust other parties.

Another component of the marketplace is that sellers can integrate a variety of content and social components to show communicate their expertise, whether that is a Twitter account with thousands of followers or an eBay account with positive reviews. And lastly, the site aims to give buyers a more personal, relevant experience with recommendations and more.

Here’s how the site works: The marketplace acts similarly to eBay, in that everyone creates a profile and can then search items to by and/or upload product to sell. All buyers and sellers on Copious are linked to their Facebook identities. For example, buyers can see whether anyone in their networks has purchased, shared, or commented on an item from a specific seller. They can also see more information about a seller, rather than just anonymous aliases or profiles.

Using a proprietary set of ‘signals,’ Copious allows sellers integrate information from profiles on Twitter; other marketplaces like eBay; relevant product forums; personal blogs; and more. Copious will also recommend product to buyers based on their “likes” on Facebook and what their friends have bought.

Copious will also allow sellers to integrate a social pricing mechanic that enables a seller to offer buyers discounts for sharing listings on Facebook and a following mechanic that enables sellers to offer buyers discounts for following them on Copious. For example, seller x could offer me a $25 credit to purchase a handbag if I follow the seller or share the listing in my stream on Facebook.

Google Ventures Backed-Copious Launches A Social Marketplace For The Facebook Era

Y Combinator Brings On Alumni To Be “Part Time Partners”

2011-06-14T21:16:00.001+04:00

Y Combinator has just announced its “Part Time Partner” program, which will bring in former YC alumni to mentor the most recent cohort of startups, like regular partners, but only 1/5 of the time.

Joining the prestigious ranks of Paul Graham, Paul Buchheit, Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, MIT professor Robert Morris, and Harjeet Taggar are Loopt’s Sam Altman, Posterous’ Garry Tan and Justin.tv founders Emmett Shear and Justin Kan. Altman, Shear and Kan are from the first YC batch in 2005. “They’re good eggs and it’s nice to have them around,” Paul Graham wrote in the “Welcome” blog.

Y Combinator has funded a total of 316 startups to date with 64 in the current class. In a recent post on the value of a Y Combinator startups, Paul Graham pinned the total value of the top 21 YCombinator startups at $4.7 billion, which puts the averages out to around $22.4 million a startup.

“There is massive value creation happening through mentorship, the passing of knowledge, the value of the YC brand, and the community of hundreds of founders,” said new part time partner Tan. “I consider it a rare opportunity to help make YC the Harvard of this kind of value creation.”

Paul Graham explained the rationale behind the program, “These guys are more like the founders’ peers. They went through what the founders are going through, and perhaps still are dealing with more advanced versions of the same problems (e.g. raising money). So their advice is hard to ignore.”

Y Combinator Brings On Alumni To Be “Part Time Partners”

Heyzap Brings Social Discovery And Check-In For Games To The iPhone

2011-06-05T17:27:00.001+04:00

In spite of the success of its partnerships with social game makers like Aeria Games, Game Duell, and TheBroth, to name a few, Heyzap Co-founder and President Jude Gomila told me recently that significant deficiencies still exist in today’s online and mobile gaming communities. Chief among them is the lack of an easy and trustworthy method by which to discover new games that target the individual’s specific interests. Gomila saw an absence of viral channels and secure communities for mobile games.

To address this issue, the startup’s new iPhone app will detect recent gameplay and lets people check-in to their favorite games. Once checked-in, users can share scores and more on Facebook and Twitter and see what games their friends are playing.

Mobile gamers can check-in to all 65K games on iOS and all 10K games on Android. And, what’s more, the Heyzap SDK, which launched along with the Android app in March, already has 130 game developers integrated. The Heyzap SDK is designed to provide deeper functionality for developers’ users and to quickly increase the virality of a game by allowing users to check-in (and broadcast) to Facebook, Twitter, and the Heyzap graph by way of a simple button.

The SDK also enables users to more easily find the games played most recently on the Heyzap app and to check-in both at the end of a game’s level and when gamers unlock achievements.

But one of the coolest features of Heyzap’s apps is its ability to detect what games users have been playing, which makes it quick and easy for them to find and share games they’ve played to their gaming graph. It also tracks a user’s checkins to enable them to find niche games and those that aren’t on the app store.

Heyzap also uses an algorithm to track trending games so that you can see what games are trending among your friends, specifically, not just the gaming masses. Since a group of teenage boys is likely to be playing different games than a 45-year-old woman, basing the discovery process on your friends (rather than total aggregated users) is something Heyzap thinks is going to be a better way to find games you’re more likely to play — and enjoy.

A la Foursquare, Heyzap is also adding a badge, or “mayorship” feature, which allows users to become “The Boss” of a game by checking in with gusto. You can compete with your friends to be the boss of a certain game, so even if you can’t beat them at the game, you can still be the boss of checkins.

Heyzap Brings Social Discovery And Check-In For Games To The iPhone

Social Listing Lets You Create Instant Classified Ads Right From Your Phone

2011-06-05T17:26:00.001+04:00

Social Listing is offering a rich mobile app that combines a few of the key ingredients in Foursquare, Instagram, and Craigslist. Say you’ve got something to sell, for example, whether it’s a device, a car, or you have a service to offer, or a job that needs to get done, Social listing is a location-based app for iOS and Android that connects buyers and sellers all speedy-like via your mobile device. This means that you can snap a pic with your iPhone and then instantly shareit with nearby buyers on Facebook and Twitter. Geotagging takes place automatically behind the scenes, so that users don’t have to manually input their location.

Basically, within 15 seconds, you will be able to list the item you want to sell, which solves a pain point in the selling and sharing of services and goods to people just down the street. No longer do you have to snap a pic, copy to your computer, go online, and post. Not that you would grow old doing this, but in today’s world, faster is always better.

Social Listing also allows nearby buyers to launch the Social Listing app and view items that have been sorted by location using a mileage metric. If the buyer is interested in what’s being sold, he or she can tap to call or email the seller. Then Social Listing bows out of the transaction and the rest happens between buyer and seller.

Social Listing Lets You Create Instant Classified Ads Right From Your Phone

FR Interview with Paul Graham

2011-06-02T15:53:00.001+04:00

F|R: I read that when you call Y Combinator winners, the founders have only five minutes to accept. ("If people turn us down," he says, "as far as we're concerned they've failed an IQ test.") Have startups turned you down? Are there any that have turned Y Combinator down and still gone on to succeed with a liquidity event?

Graham: You're confusing two separate things. The reason people are supposed to decide quickly whether or not to accept is that they already know everything except the percent we'll ask for. They've already seen the deal terms, and they already know as much as they're going to know about YC before actually working with us. So they should already know when we call what percentage they'd be ok with. Since all they have to do is subtract one integer from another, five minutes should be enough.

The (Actual) FR Interview

Y Combinator Numbers

2011-06-02T15:44:00.001+04:00

How do you measure how well a company is doing? The standard test of that is its value. So the best measure of something like Y Combinator is the average value of the companies it funds.

Ultimately you want to measure the values at "exit," meaning either acquisition or IPO. The valuations of funding rounds before this point are effectively attempts to predict it.

The problem with measuring exits is that they take a long time, and the most successful companies tend to take the longest. Even 6 years is not long enough to generate accurate numbers. We've now had 25 companies acquired, 5 of them for over $10 million, but the total value of the remaining companies dwarfs the total value of those 5. [2]

So the best we can do at this stage is to use the acquisition prices of the companies that have been acquired and try to estimate the current values of the rest. That's not as hard as it sounds, because like any portfolio of startups ours has a pretty steep power law distribution. If we can produce accurate estimates of the values of the top 10%, we'll have a sufficiently accurate estimate of the total value.

10% of what pool though? I found in practice it was pointless to consider companies we funded less than a year ago. Most of the startups from winter 2011 don't even have valuations yet, because they raised money on convertible notes. So the last batch I considered was summer 2010. We'd funded 208 startups up to that point.

The combined value of the top 21 companies is $4.7 billion. Which I admit surprised me. [3]

$4.7 billion / 210 = $22.4 million, so the average value of startups we've funded is about $22.4 million.

Y Combinator Numbers

Inspired By The Start Fund, New World Ventures Offers Chicago Excelerate Startups $50K

2011-06-01T19:14:00.001+04:00

Earlier this year, Yuri Milner and Ron Conway’s SV Angel announced a new fund that offers all Y Combinator startups $150,000 in convertible debt. Not only is The Start Fund a brilliant investment strategy, but the news was also a big win for Y Combinator and the startups housed and developed in the incubator. And it was only a matter of time before other incubators and funds caught on to the idea and emulated a similar strategy. Today, New World Ventures, one of the Midwest’s largest early stage funds, is partnering with Chicago incubator Excelerate Labs to offer their own version of the Start Fund.

Excelerate, which launched its incubator last year, will now offer its entrepreneurs $50,000 in convertible debt from New World Ventures, with no discount or cap. The money is available for Excelerate’s 2011 class of ten startups. Roughly one-third of the money is available for draw down during the Summer and the remainder is available after Demo Day in August.

Similar to The Start Fund, terms are company-friendly (no discount to the next round, no warrant coverage, and a below market interest rate). Plus, the nature of the convertible debt provides the companies with access to capital without locking in valuation terms today.

Inspired By The Start Fund, New World Ventures Offers Chicago Excelerate Startups $50K

Hedge fund makes predictions based on the mood of the Twittersphere - Springwise

2011-05-31T13:59:00.001+04:00

Successfully predicting the patterns of a financial market has always been a job for skilled fund managers relying on their own knowledge and experience. Now, Derwent Capital Markets have just launched a hedge fund that uses Twitter to monitor the mood of the market — giving their fund manager an added resource to inform investment decisions.

The London-based investment boutique recently launched the social media-based hedge fund which will consist of liquid equities and equity indices. Software with the ability to analyze the mood and sentiment of tweets will be used in combination with pre-existing trading algorithms, according to a report in the New Scientist. This analysis will then be able to provide Paul Hawtin, the Founder and Fund Manager, with a better understanding of the overall mood of tweeters, which in turn has a knock-on effect on the market. For example, the New Scientist reports that after a few days of high levels of anxiety on Twitter, the Dow Jones usually falls. In Hawtin’s own words, “For years investors have widely accepted that financial markets are driven by fear and greed but we’ve never before had the technology or data to be able to quantify human emotion. This is the 4th dimension.”

As we emerge from recent economic troubles, any hedge fund claiming to have greater insight into a financial market’s activities is sure to attract investors. Although the tweets of many individual Twitter users may be of questionable worth when approached in isolation, examining the Twittersphere as a whole can lead to valuable and intriguing insights. How else could you tap into this accumulated wisdom?

Hedge fund makes predictions based on the mood of the Twittersphere - Springwise

What Makes A Startup Successful? Blackbox Report Aims To Map The Startup Genome

2011-05-29T22:03:00.001+04:00

Founders that learn are more successful: Startups that have helpful mentors, track metrics effectively, and learn from startup thought leaders raise 7x more money and have 3.5x better user growth.
Startups that pivot once or twice times raise 2.5x more money, have 3.6x better user growth, and are 52% less likely to scale prematurely than startups that pivot more than 2 times or not at all.
Many investors invest 2-3x more capital than necessary in startups that haven’t reached problem solution fit yet. They also over-invest in solo founders and founding teams without technical cofounders despite indicators that show that these teams have a much lower probability of success.
Investors who provide hands-on help have little or no effect on the company’s operational performance. But the right mentors significantly influence a company’s performance and ability to raise money. (However, this does not mean that investors don’t have a significant effect on valuations and M&A)
Solo founders take 3.6x longer to reach scale stage compared to a founding team of 2 and they are 2.3x less likely to pivot.
Business-heavy founding teams are 6.2x more likely to successfully scale with sales driven startups than with product centric startups.
Technical-heavy founding teams are 3.3x more likely to successfully scale with product-centric startups with no network effects than with product-centric startups that have network effects.
Balanced teams with one technical founder and one business founder raise 30% more money, have 2.9x more user growth and are 19% less likely to scale prematurely than technical or business-heavy founding teams.
Most successful founders are driven by impact rather than experience or money.
Founders overestimate the value of IP before product market fit by 255%.
Startups need 2-3 times longer to validate their market than most founders expect. This underestimation creates the pressure to scale prematurely.
Startups that haven’t raised money over-estimate their market size by 100x and often misinterpret their market as new.
Premature scaling is the most common reason for startups to perform worse. They tend to lose the battle early on by getting ahead of themselves.
B2C vs. B2B is not a meaningful segmentation of Internet startups anymore because the Internet has changed the rules of business. We found 4 different major groups of startups that all have very different behavior regarding customer acquisition, time, product, market and team.

What Makes A Startup Successful? Blackbox Report Aims To Map The Startup Genome

Uber CEO: I Think I’ve Got 20,000 Years Of Jail Time In Front Of Me

2011-05-27T01:41:00.001+04:00

Today at our TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky took the stage with our own Erick Schonfeld to talk about the disruption they’re offering up in their markets. Notably, both have products that are so disruptive that they have legal challenges from not just other companies, but governments (on the city and state level).

“I think I’ve got 20,000 years of jail time in front of me,” Kalanick half-joked when Schonfeld asked him about Uber’s highly publicized legal challenges (which actually made them change their name from UberCab). Kalanick came to that number because the city of San Francisco is threatening Uber with 90 days of jail time for every ride they offer. Oh, and there’s a several thousand dollar fine for each ride as well.

Obviously, Uber is fighting that threat. The state of California has also since threatened Uber.

Meanwhile, Chesky noted that New York City also raised issue with the basic Airbnb model. The issue really is that you’re not supposed to rent out your own space for more than 30 days (if you’re not a hotel, obviously). After a 500-person rally in support at NYC city hall, the city looked into the issue and realized that what Airbnb was doing was actually pretty interesting.

Chesky says that Airbnb just has to make sure people are renting out their primary residences and not working some loopholes to create de-facto hotels.

Uber CEO: I Think I’ve Got 20,000 Years Of Jail Time In Front Of Me