VentureBeat |
- The Fab.com story: 10 tips on when to change your game
- Businesses turn to college kids for social media lessons
- Lymbix’s ToneCheck pre-screens the tone of your emails — before you send them
- Group-buying startup Offermatic pulls in $4.5M
- Electric car showdown: Nissan Leaf vs. Chevy Volt, by the man who owns both
- Nissan ups electric car production: every third car a Leaf
- RIM taps 7digital to help its BlackBerry PlayBook take on iTunes
- Maker of super-fast memory modules Fusion-io files for IPO
- OpenFeint and The9 will fund game developers’ move to Android
- Personal finance tool CreditSesame nabs $6.15M in new funding
- 8 problems every startup should anticipate
- Q&A startup Stack Overflow gets new name, more funding
- Widgetbox becomes “cloud” ad company Flite, raises $12M
- Another leaked iPhone prototype: iPhone 4 with 64GB of storage
- Zite delivers personalized news to your iPad
| The Fab.com story: 10 tips on when to change your game Posted: 09 Mar 2011 09:07 AM PST
Last October, I wrote a blog post titled 57 Things I've Learned Founding 3 Tech Companies. At the time I had founded two startups and was a year into the third, a gay social network launched as Fabulis that was later rechristened Fab. A few weeks ago I followed up that post with an essay on the difference between year 1 and year 2 of your startup. Now that we're relaunching Fab under an entirely new business model, I figured it might be a good time to share what I've learned about the stay/go/pivot decision to help others facing the same critical choices. I have run this particular gauntlet three different times:
The pivot strategy we're following has plenty of precedents. As Greg Tseng pointed out in January, tech leaders like YouTube, Twitter, Groupon and PayPal all began life in different incarnations. It also has admirers like superstar investor Mike Maples, who lectured a Founder Institute event in October about having the courage to dismantle a mediocre business and rebuild it into one that has the potential to hit a homerun (this is a must-watch video for any/every entrepreneur btw). Be warned startup guys and gals, pivoting isn't easy. It is a huge decision to stop doing what you're doing, throw away tons of code, risk fragile user and customer relationships, and essentially start over. And the word "pivot" itself is a leading candidate for overused term of the year. Pivoting is not a strategy unto itself. You need to really know where you want to go, why you want to go there, and have a plan for how you are going to get there. But how do you know when it's time to take the plunge and change your game? In our case, which may be instructive to others in our shoes, there were three compelling reasons to change the game. Fab's Pivot Decision First, we couldn't do the math. Even though Fab attracted 50,000 members in our first three months, we only doubled in size over the next five, and our updated projections showed that we would never pass the $10 million revenue mark with our business model. We had raised $1.25 million in angel financing and an additional $1.75 million from VCs with the expectation that we would be building a $50-$100 million business, and we clearly couldn't deliver. Our team signed up for building a big business, we are passionate about building a big business, but the math no longer added up. Second, our market had shifted. Gay rights progress over the past year had a positive impact on the gay community but a negative impact on the demand for our services. With developments like the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, the court victories over California's Proposition 8 gay marriage ban, the Obama administration's tacit rejection of the Defense of Marriage Act, and the anti-bullying It Gets Better Project continuing to integrate gays into the mainstream, we saw a diminished need for a gay Facebook or a gay Yelp or a gay Foursquare or a gay Groupon. Third, our maniacal focus on customer input drove us to a new opportunity. From selling daily deals we discovered that the idea of a design site had legs. We found that out when we introduced a Gay Deal of the Day program that sold more than $40,000 of goods in the first 20 days alone. The biggest sellers weren't gay-focused, nearly half of the buyers were straight, and the response showed that there was a demand for good design available online at affordable prices – sexual orientation notwithstanding. Suddenly we heard the siren call of a new and better business idea loud and clear. The market for good Design is a $100 billion industry that cuts across multiple product categories. Our team has a collective passion for design. There is no web-native e-commerce brand today for design products, particularly at discount pricing, so we could fill that void. We get social and we get great UX, and there's a legit opportunity to replace consumer online shopping experiences that are uninspiring and overwhelming with experiences that are curated, social, exciting and addictive. We had already proved we had the skill and taste to find merchandise that people wanted. Better yet, we still had the vast majority of the funds we had raised in the bank. So we moved fast. We decided to change our business on February 23, got our board of directors' approval on March 1, and are starting to roll out the new Fab.com today – just two weeks later. I want to emphasize the importance of speed in such a decision. In our case, we didn't want to spend $1 more, let alone $millions more pursuing an idea that we were no longer convinced could succeed, especially when we saw a much bigger and better opportunity in front of us. Stay? Go? Pivot? All of the steps that lay behind our decision to transform Fab were rooted in the lessons learned over seven years in the startup world. Here, based on our experience, are the top 10 reasons to alter course.
Some people say great entrepreneurs just make it happen. I can tell you from experience with my own companies and in serving as an advisor to other startups: that is rarely true. Good businesses need inspiration as well as perspiration. If at first you don't succeed, try again. The next time, you might get it right. People: Jason Goldberg
      |
| Businesses turn to college kids for social media lessons Posted: 09 Mar 2011 09:02 AM PST
Unbeknownst to many, companies have increasingly turned to universities for research on social media. This isn’t highly unusual, as traditionally manufacturers have given financial support to universities conducting research relevant to their companies. In the past though, support has been given to "hard" sciences, for example to the research of pharmaceutical drugs. Companies had never partnered with universities to better understand social media. However, this appears to be changing. Programs at Northwestern, Emerson, Arizona State, and the University of Florida have been partnering with businesses to specifically research how social media can be used effectively. "It's allowing for a new kind of research that just wasn't even possible a few years ago," says associate professor Dmitri Williams, the Wall Street Journal reports. In a world where social media continues to be a buzz word, businesses are looking for every advantage they can get. As an example of how social media is being examined, the Wall Street Journal reported that at one class at Arizona State University, the students divided into teams to generate buzz around FoxSportsArizona.com. Fox Sports Net, a group of regional sports channels, will be working with 10 schools as part of a program it calls Creative University. Despite the successful results from the companies thus far, is it a good idea for companies to conduct social media research at the university level? Although there are advantages, as seen above, there are hidden costs as well. The time needed to establish a partnership with a program and the commitment the company gives to a university and its students; these may not always be financially related, but they are important nonetheless. Even with this commitment, in return the company would receive students who spend a limited amount of time per week on the project and who have multiple sources competing for their attention. As creative as students can be, they are not working 9AM to 5PM on these projects. The lack of time and attention is particular true in the examples above, where businesses partnered with undergraduate programs. Traditionally, companies that have lent financial support to "hard" sciences have supported graduate programs, namely PhD students, and these students, in addition to having more time to spend, are under strict supervision. A PhD student, it could be argued, is more similar in their commitment to a project to a full-time employee than to an undergraduate student. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and perhaps the costs, hidden or explicit, of conducting social media research at the undergraduate level outweigh the benefits. Companies: sprint
   |
| Lymbix’s ToneCheck pre-screens the tone of your emails — before you send them Posted: 09 Mar 2011 09:00 AM PST
Lymbix has figured out a way to head off those moments of unintended passion. It uses artificial intelligence to decipher the emotional tone of your sentences and alerts you about the “negative message” that they’re going to have on whoever you are sending the message to. The company’s ToneCheck program is like a spell checker, fixing the tone of your messages so they match your intentions. The second version of ToneCheck is launching on March 9 for Microsoft Outlook users. The Lymbix technology is an interesting application of AI. It’s a smart one because the task it fulfills is both limited — so that it doesn’t outstrip the capabilities of AI — and useful, since the ToneCheck software is kind of like a sounding board, or a second opinion, raising concerns about the communications you are about to send. If it works, processes will work better, customers will be more satisfied, and employees will be happier. "What's worse than an email full of misspelled words is an email that conveys the wrong tone,” said Matt Eldridge, chief executive and co-founder of Lymbix. Getting help with communications is increasingly important because people are using email and other non-direct communications more frequently. And since the emotion behind written text can be misunderstood, people need more assistance in the form of a gut check or reminder in order to safely send a higher volume of email messages. It offers feedback in real-time and it can offer guidance in a granular fashion on tonality related to friendliness, enjoyment, amusement, contentment, sadness, anger, fear, and shame. The new single-use version of ToneCheck will be available free for download on March 9, while corporate enterprises could sign up for an enterprise license. Lymbix will also license its ToneCheck to others in the form of its Sentiment Applications Programming Interface (API). A company could conceivably use ToneCheck to screen incoming customer support messages for irate customers and forward those to the customer service representative with the best ability to calm a person down.
Based in Moncton in New Brunswick, Canada, Lymbix was founded in February, 2009, and it has 13 employees. Rivals include Lexalytics in sentiment analysis, but there is no direct competition for ToneCheck itself. The company has raised $2.4 million in seed and angel funding. Eldridge co-founded the company after he had a bout of trouble getting his tone right in email communications. When he wanted to appear excited, he was often coming off as pushy or aggressive. That was particularly true when Eldridge was trying to close franchising deals for his former employer. His co-founder is Josh Merchant, chief technology officer. The AI has been taught natural language used in emails and social contexts. It evaluates the level of ambiguity where many other sentiment technologies break down. Eldridge said that one of the keys is to make the AI adaptable so it can stay up to date with all of the slang that people use. The AI tries to identify the real emotion in any section of text. Users see a Tone Alert indicator light up on their screen when an otherwise pleasant or neutral email takes a negative turn. It identifies the offending sentence to the user and allows an opportunity for correction. The company launched the first version of ToneCheck in July, 2010, and it was downloaded more than 25,000 times. But some people thought it was too complicated. So Lymbix has simplified the app with the new version. Eldridge admitted, “Our first version wasn’t very good.” But the new version is streamlined in that it only alerts the user when there is a red flag associated with a section of text. As you can see below, you can click on the red bars in the lower right corner to view a larger drop-down menu with the offending sentences highlighted. Companies: Lexalytics, Lymbix People: Matt Eldridge
   |
| Group-buying startup Offermatic pulls in $4.5M Posted: 09 Mar 2011 09:00 AM PST
The company, which came out of stealth mode in December, bills itself as “the love child of Groupon/Mint.com/Blippy" that doesn't share user information publicly. Offermatic says it uses a new model that improves conversion rates of return customers by 10 to 100 times over existing methods by linking "virtual coupons" directly to consumers' credit cards. Groupon and other group-buying competitors sign members up to receive deeply discounted offers from local merchants looking to grab new customers and hip reputations online. Mint.com, acquired last year by Intuit, helps users track their finances online, while Blippy allows users to show recent credit-card purchases to friends. Offermatic enables online targeting of offline purchases – where it says 94 percent of all commerce happens – bringing the hyper-targeting of Google Adwords to real world commerce. The average redemption rate for online coupons is only half a percent, so tools that help marketers find a more efficient way to reach new customers are in high demand right now. Offermatic lets retailers reach people who have opted-in to receive relevant offers based on purchase history. The company currently has partnerships with more than 150 merchants, up 100 percent from 75 merchants at its launch Dec. 7. Its members get more valuable offers by progressing through different "levels" within the Offermatic platform, unlocking better offers by using their points. Members can also earn points by adding more debit or credit cards to Offermatic, for transactions made using those cards, for inviting others to use Offermatic, and by sharing offers on Twitter and Facebook. The company said it will use this funding — its first institutional round — to build its team and expand its services for consumers and retailers. The funding was led by early-stage venture capital outfit Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. A group of leading Silicon Valley investors including SV angel investor Ron Conway, former CEO of AdMob, Omar Hamoi, and early executives from Facebook and Mint.com also participated in the round. In addition to participating in the round, Hamoui will join Offermatic’s board of directors. Companies: Blippy, Facebook, Google, Groupon, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mint.com, offermatic, Twitter People: omar hamoi, Ron Conway
   |
| Electric car showdown: Nissan Leaf vs. Chevy Volt, by the man who owns both Posted: 09 Mar 2011 09:00 AM PST
It seems most readers are in one “camp” or the other. In our household, after studying the technical strengths and features of both cars as they moved from concept to production, I ended up ordering…one of each! We had been driving a Toyota Prius and a 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid, enjoying the technology and economy of those designs since mid-2006. Our Prius had around 64,000 miles and the Camry Hybrid had just 40,000, so we didn’t need to replace them. But I enjoy new “toys,” and cars are almost the ultimate consumer toy. Our 2011 Volt arrived on January 13, delivered to our house by the Chevy dealer in Fairfield, Calif., 40 miles from our home. I couldn’t find a closer dealer who would sell the Volt at MSRP and order it with the configuration that I wanted. We now have 2,300 miles on the Volt, including two road trips of 200 to 300 miles, and considerable general driving. Our computed overall gas mileage is right at 107 miles per gallon, which is way better than even the newest Prius might achieve. The Volt has been a true attention-getter in parking lots, and hardly a trip goes by that someone does not remark on it. The ride and interior is more European than Japanese or Detroit in feel, and the dual display screens are almost hypnotic. The seats are quite comfortable and the optional heating is nice on cold mornings; the range of height adjustment for shorter drivers is much better on the Volt than the Leaf. The GPS mapping appears totally up to date, and the Onstar feature and traffic updates work incredibly well. In the Sacramento metropolitan area, we got the Coulomb ChargePoint charging station and installation free with a DOE/Volt program. On the negative side, the Volt lacks passive locking/unlocking which was standard on our Prius and Camry Hybrids and is fitted to the Nissan Leaf, and it does not have a rear window wiper (which the Leaf includes) for the frequent rainy days here in Northern California.
Another negative on the Leaf is the smaller range of seat height adjustment for short drivers, along with the frustration that the GPS map software is at least five years out-of-date for our neighborhood. A further frustration for early Leaf adopters is that the “Carwings” service, which is supposed to show charging stations regionally, is not functional at all for the first three months of delivery and is only “promised” to be updated quarterly. Nissan’s “customer service” at the corporate level seems somewhat disconnected from really providing the support advertised for this cutting-edge vehicle. On the plus side, the Leaf has room for five passengers, and the rear seat is quite comfortable with very good visibility. The proximity locking/unlocking is most appreciated, as is that rear window wiper. I even like the “mouselike” shift controller and the light-colored fabric interior. It would be hard to be a Leaf one-car family, but we will use the Leaf for all our shorter local errands and my wife’s regular daily commute. The Volt will complement the total gas-free economy of the Leaf for infrequent longer trips, and for my less regular work commuting. Switching from the Prius and Camry hybrids, I project that our annual car upkeep costs (fuel, and regular service) will drop from around $2,600 a year to around $300 a year. Written by George Parrot, this article originally appeared on Green Car Reports, one of VentureBeat’s editorial partners. Companies: Chevrolet, GM, Nissan
   |
| Nissan ups electric car production: every third car a Leaf Posted: 09 Mar 2011 08:00 AM PST
That should change, however, with the announcement that the Japanese factory responsible for making the five-seat family hatchback is set to double production over the next month. At the moment, one in every six cars coming off Nissan's Oppama production line is a Leaf. By the end of March, Nissan has promised every third car will be a Leaf. Just like its rival, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the 2011 Leaf is produced on a production line alongside non-electric cars such as the 2011 Juke, and the 2011 Cube. This method of production enables new cars to be gradually phased in, without disrupting the plant production schedule. The process also allows for minimal financial risk, meaning unpopular cars can be made in lesser volumes. While there are over 20,000 reservations in the U.S. for the Leaf, only 10 cars were delivered in December. In January 173 Leaf orders were fulfilled, but in February only 67 cars were delivered. The delays have been caused in part by the success of the Leaf in its native Japan, where generous government subsidies and nationwide charging infrastructure have driven an estimated 95 percent of Oppama's Leaf output to domestic customers. The company expects that doubling production from Oppama will clear the backlog of orders in both the U.S. and Europe. But with only an estimated 10,000 units produced by the end of March this year, demand is still dramatically outstripping supply. It’s nice to see the output of the Leaf increase, but until Nissan's Smyrna plant in Tennessee comes on line in 2012, the wait to own a Nissan Leaf may be a little longer than consumers would like. [Nissan] via [Wards] Written by Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield, this article originally appeared on All Cars Electric, one of VentureBeat’s editorial partners. Companies: Nissan
   |
| RIM taps 7digital to help its BlackBerry PlayBook take on iTunes Posted: 09 Mar 2011 07:52 AM PST
The deal is clearly a move to keep the PlayBook competitive against the iPad, which has access to Apple’s massive iTunes music and movie store. 7digital is one of the most popular music stores on BlackBerry devices, so it’s not surprising that RIM is making its store an integral part of the tablet. That RIM is making sure to lock down essential functions on the PlayBook is a sign that it’s ready to compete against the more media-rich iPad as well as tablets running Google’s Android 3.0 software. In the past, RIM hasn’t had to worry too much about the media features on its smartphones. Now it’s clear that RIM is well aware that it can’t compete purely on the enterprise level — it needs to make sexy devices with rich media features that consumers will want to use for play, as well as work. RIM is expected to launch the BlackBerry PlayBook later this month, or in early April. The most recent rumor indicates the PlayBook will launch on April 10. Companies: 7digital, Apple, RIM
   |
| Maker of super-fast memory modules Fusion-io files for IPO Posted: 09 Mar 2011 07:06 AM PST
Salt Lake City, Calif.-based Fusion-io (a DEMO veteran) has had great success selling its devices into financial institutions that can benefit from its five-fold increase in memory data transfer. The company’s partners such as IBM are carrying Fusion-io into a wider variety of data centers, thanks to the benefit that Fusion-io brings in energy efficient computing. With the better memory module designs from Fusion-io, companies can reduce power consumption, cut cooling expenses, and eliminate expensive storage solutions. At the same time, they can vastly improve performance. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are handling the IPO for Fusion-io. The price range for the shares hasn’t been set yet. The company’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission says it pioneered a next-generation storage memory platform for decentralizing data in a data center. It relocates critical data from centralized storage (where its stored in banks of hard drives) to the server where it is processed in the form of flash memory modules within the server itself. To date, Fusion-io has shipped more than 20 petabytes of enterprise-class memory to more than 1,000 customers. (That basically means a lot of storage). The success is driven by the exponential increase in data storage required in the age of the internet and strict compliance regulations necessitating the storage of corporate records. Roughly $52 billion will be spent on high-performance storage and networking and memory-rich servers in 2011, according to market researcher IDC. The SEC filing shows that Fusion-io is losing money. It generated $58.2 million in revenue for the six months ended Dec. 31, up from $11.9 million a year earlier. The net loss was $8.2 million, down from a loss of $13.1 million a year earlier. The company could definitely use cash, as it has just $3.5 million on hand. Most of its assets are in $48.4 million in inventories and $39.7 million in working capital. The company has 348 employees. Among the risk factors listed is that “ineffective management of our inventory levels could adversely affect our operating results.” Fusion-io recently said that IBM will now offer eight versions of input-output adapters based on Fusion-io's ioMemory technology across a dozen different IBM servers. That's a big expansion and a bigger endorsement by Big Blue for Fusion-io. The new adapters will be available on March 1. Supermicro is also using Fusion-io in a new line of server and storage devices. The Fusion-io flash memory speeds the process of transferring data from temporary memory to permanent memory by placing data closer to the processor that needs it the most. A single ioMemory module has the capacity of 100 traditional dynamic random access memory (DRAM) memory modules and the performance of 1,000 hard disk drives. The Fusion-io products are memory modules that can be added into servers housed in racks within a big data center. Fusion-io says its performance increases range from three times to 10 times, depending on the application. Fusion-io was founded in 2006 and has more than 370 employees. The company was started by David Flynn and Rick White. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak serves as its chief scientist. Rivals include LSI and other memory chip makers. Fusion-io's customers include Zappos, MySpace, Wine.com, Answers.com, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. The company has raised $115.5 million in three rounds. Investors include Meritech Capital Partners, Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Triangle Peak Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Dell Ventures, and Sumitomo Ventures. Dell and HP are also partners. Competitors include Samsung, Seagate, STEC, Toshiba, Western Digital, Intel, LSI, Huawei Technologies and Micron Technology — and that’s just in chips. In enterprise storage, rivals include EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, and NetApp. People: David Flynn, Rick White, Steve Wozniak
   |
| OpenFeint and The9 will fund game developers’ move to Android Posted: 09 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PST
The move will help independent game developers defray the cost of rebuilding an iPhone game to run on the Android mobile operating system from Google. That, in turn, could help Android make gains on the iPhone, since games are a critical part of the app ecosystem. Under the deal The9 and Burlingame, Calif.-based OpenFeint will select the game companies to receive funding. Those companies will adopt OpenFeint’s mobile social network, which adds social features such as achievements, challenges, and sharing games with friends, and The9 will tap part of its $100 million internet investment fund (called Fund9) to finance the cost of porting games to the Android platform. The two partners will also pick which games can be localized for sale in China. The games will be chosen based on quality, past download performance in other app stores, and the strength of the game developers. Interested developers can send an email to androidfund@openfeint.com.
"There's a treasure trove of great games on iOS waiting for the rest of the world to discover,” he said. “This fund will help make that possible for indie game developers." Only a portion of the $100 million fund will be used to fund Android developers. The fund was launched in December and is a collaboration between The9, China Rock Capital Management, Chengwei Ventures, and China Renaissance K2 Ventures. "Fund9 is focused on bringing the best mobile apps and platform technologies to China. Our partnership with OpenFeint is a great first step. We are excited to see some great games on Android devices in China soon," said Chris Shen, vice president at The9. OpenFeint already has spawned some top 10 Android hits, including Fruit Ninja, Super KO Boxing 2, and Flick Kick Field Goal Kickoff. The9, established in 1999 as one of the leading game developers and operators in China, has stepped into the mobile internet field and is now working with major telecom carriers and application distribution channels in China with high-speed growth. Rivals include Scoreloop, PapayaMobile, and DeNA’s Ngmoco. Apple also competes with its Game Center social network for the iPhone. Honestly, it looks like Apple might want to invest in getting developers to stay loyal to its platform. People: Chris Shen, Eros Resmini
   |
| Personal finance tool CreditSesame nabs $6.15M in new funding Posted: 09 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PST
Credit Sesame uses an in-house loan analytics engine to help users instantly view their credit and debt in one place. This lets users monitor and track often baffling financial information like their credit score, home value and debt-to-income ratio simultaneously. Launched in public beta in November, Credit Sesame already manages nearly half a billion dollars in loans. "U.S. households have accumulated more than $13 trillion of debt, and there is a tremendous potential for optimization and savings if every household could reevaluate their options with the right tools," Adrian Nazari, CEO at Credit Sesame, told me. "We give people the tools they need to do better financially. They can leverage advanced analytics and market intelligence to create wealth through savings." The company’s primary competitors are similar personal finance managers Credit Karma, Quizzle and Mint. Under the company's system, users are first asked to register their portfolios using the same security technology and encryption methods that banks and financial institutions use. Credit Sesame then automatically retrieves users' relevant data like debt, credit, and mortgages so that they don't have to enter their information manually. Users can fiddle with Credit Sesame's tools to set personal goal parameters, see and apply for a wide variety of loans that may fit their restructuring needs, and even view multiple scenarios for potential savings or loans based on changes to a their financial situation, such as a divorce or a job loss. By using complex algorithms and portfolio "depth" testing, the site creates 5,000 scenarios with thousands of lending products to help each user find the three best pre-qualified solutions, potentially saving a user hundreds of dollars a month as they streamline their finances via the web. Once registered, the site will continue delivering a free monthly credit score and instant alerts when more optimal savings opportunities become available. The latest round of funding was led by Menlo Ventures, while the lead investor in Credit Sesame's last round, Inventus Capital, also participated. The new infusion brings the startup’s funding to $7.35 million to date. Companies: Credit Karma, Credit Sesame, inventus capital, Menlo Ventures, mint, quizzle People: Adrian Nazari
   |
| 8 problems every startup should anticipate Posted: 09 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PST (Editor’s note: Martin Zwilling is CEO & founder of Startup Professionals. This story originally appeared on his blog.) Starting a business is a lot like starting a marriage. At first, all parties are in dreamland, with a vision of changing the world, having lots of fun and raking in the profits. But all too soon, reality sets in: Product development is stuck at that 90 percent mark, a key person leaves, and customers are talking but not buying. In his book Reality Check, Guy Kawasaki summarizes some of the key issues. I've seen them too often, and they seem to be the same for every company (and every marriage) no matter how great the team is. I challenge any startup to show me they have avoided all of these: One of the founders isn't delivering. Maybe he was the only guy around who could design the product you envisioned, but delivering a scalable, quality product is another story. Oftentimes, he or she is now more interested in designing the next product. The product is behind schedule. When I was a software development manager, I tried to get a "bottoms up" time estimate from the team, and then pad it by 50 percent. Invariably we were in crisis mode by delivery time, and the common complaint was that "management" always forced unrealistic schedules on developers. Sales aren't meeting projections. The team buys its own propaganda, and fully expects customers to leap tall buildings to get to your product. You never dreamed that customers would be slow to accept an unproven product from an unknown startup in the middle of an economic downturn. The team is not getting along. Things go wrong. People on the team haven't worked together before, and they don't fully trust any ideas except their own. As the top executive, you have to make some tough decisions, and spend much more time than you expected on communication and mediation. Your marketplace buzz is non-existent, skeptical or even negative. You may have been too busy with your own issues to be out there building the wave, but your competitors have been actively positioning you far below them. The press is focused on things that exist, rather than your early marketing hype. Requirements changed in the middle of the cycle. While everyone was busy building the product and business model you detailed in your business plan, early feedback from the field makes it clear that you were somewhat wrong. Or the economy has taken a sudden turn for the worse, so your high-end product no longer has a market. Investment partners are squeezing you. It may look like micromanagement, but they are just nervous that the milestones you promised have disappeared from your charts. Maybe you think they aren't "rolling up their sleeves," but that can't happen until you actually admit your failures and ask for help. Cashflow is killing you, with no new money in sight. You scaled up your infrastructure, to make sure early sales didn't swamp you. Nothing is coming in, money is going out, and you are too busy managing pennies to look for a new funding round. If you are a true entrepreneur, any of these issues should scare you, but they shouldn't immobilize you. As I asserted earlier, virtually every new startup experiences these problems. What separates the successful ones from the failures is how effectively they handle the problems, rather than how many they avoid in the first place. Take full control and responsibility for your company's destiny and learn from the challenges. Remember that when the honeymoon is over, that's when the real fun begins.
   |
| Q&A startup Stack Overflow gets new name, more funding Posted: 09 Mar 2011 05:33 AM PST
The programming site supposedly received 95 million pageviews in February, so it may seem like a bad idea to rename a property that has already built a big audience. In fact, it looks like StackOverlow.com will continue to operate as a programming Q&A site. (It also recently launched a job-finding service called Careers 2.0.) The new name, meanwhile, should signal that the company’s goals are bigger than a single website, no matter how popular. Specifically, the Stack Exchange Network now includes 45 similar Q&A sites covering topics like cooking, photography, and physics. The company says the network received 20 million unique visitors last month. The new round brings Stack Exchange’s total funding to $18 million. Index Ventures led the funding, with participation from previous investors Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures. Companies: Index Ventures, Spark Capital, Stack Exchange, Stack Overflow, Union Square Ventures
   |
| Widgetbox becomes “cloud” ad company Flite, raises $12M Posted: 09 Mar 2011 04:40 AM PST
The idea is that Widgetbox is no longer focused on providing tools to build online widgets. Instead, it launched an ad-building product a year ago at the DEMO conference co-produced by VentureBeat, and Price said the ad side has been taking off. Price called Flite’s technology “cloud-based advertising.” Now, my kneejerk response was to roll my eyes (companies seem to slap the word “cloud” on to any concept nowadays), but Price argued that the there’s a distinction between what Flite offers and your standard displaying advertising. Flite cloud ads don’t just look good, they’re also interactive and include features like the most up-to-date content from advertisers and integration with social networking tools. “What we're really talking about are ads that are miniaturized Web pages, with all the functions that you can support,” Price said. “When an ad loads, it's essentially a blank shell, and it can query an API or other user agents and ask, ‘Do you have anything new for me?’” Publishing partners like LinkedIn, Forbes, and Yahoo have signed up to use Flite’s technology. One of the company’s big advantages, Price said, is that its customers can create customized units that they can offer to advertisers as something unique. At the same time, with Flite’s technology they don’t have to pay developers for weeks of work to build the ad units from scratch. Price said one of his customers told him, “If you're in the media business, if you sell impressions … you're in a commodity business,” and publishers relying on ad networks and similar services are going to see their rates driven down. Instead, they should offer advertisers “a customized brand experience on our properties that can’t be bought elsewhere.” In addition to changing its name, Flite also announced today that it has raised $12 million in a third round of funding led by General Catalyst Partners. Previous investors Sequoia Capital, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, and NCD Investors also invested in the new round. The company has now raised $26.5 million. You can see sample Flite ads here. Companies: DEMO, Flite, General Catalyst Partners, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, NCD Investors, Sequoia Capital, Widgetbox People: Will Price
   |
| Another leaked iPhone prototype: iPhone 4 with 64GB of storage Posted: 08 Mar 2011 11:05 PM PST
Another iPhone 4 prototype has surfaced in China, apparently leaked from a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen. The blog MIC Gadget published photos and videos of the device today, verifying that the device has a 64-gigabyte flash storage capacity. If it’s legitimate, it seems that Apple is doing what it can to differentiate its phones from the pack of Android followers. Selling a new iPhone 4 with twice the capacity of the former one with no change in price would be a nice bargain that could keep customers loyal. The blog said that the phone is real and isn’t a hacked version. It has the label “XXGB” on its back. The leak is reminiscent of the lost iPhone 4 prototype that Gizmodo got its hands on nearly a year ago. The device is running iOS version 4.1 (Apple’s mobile operating system is about to get its 4.3 update). And the phone is not locked to a single SIM card. Beyond the memory upgrade, there don’t seem to be many changes. A few small things: there are no plus or minus signs on the volume buttons. And there’s no silver ring around the camera lens. MIC Gadget said that the owner of the prototype said he got it from a source with a small quantity of the prototypes and they are “definitely leaked from Foxconn’s factory in Shenzhen.” Foxconn has more than 1 million employees, mostly in factories on huge sprawling campuses in China. It won’t be easy for Apple and Foxconn security to track down the prototype thief. I happen to be watching the documentary Last Train Home about workers in China and I can understand why someone might want to steal a prototype phone in order to get ahead in life. A worker in China could make a year’s worth of salary or more by stealing a phone and selling it to the highest bidder. That’s a very depressing thought. This prototype offers such a small update with added memory (compared to 16 or 32 gigabytes on current models) that it’s hard to figure why Apple has bothered making such small changes. After all, creating engineering prototypes isn’t a cheap endeavor. Companies: Apple
   |
| Zite delivers personalized news to your iPad Posted: 08 Mar 2011 09:01 PM PST
The obvious reference point here is Flipboard, the popular “social magazine” for the iPad that allows users to browse their social networking content and news in beautiful, magazine-style layout. Zite seems to combine a Flipboard-style reading experience with content personalization technology that has a similar aim to companies like Gravity and My6sense. Users can automatically create their personalized magazines by connecting either their Twitter or Google Reader accounts to the app. When Davar, who is the company’s founder and chief executive, demonstrated the app for me yesterday, we used my Twitter account, and the app succeeded in examining my tweets and pulling in stories relevant to my interests — although I thought technology was a bit overrepresented in the contents of “my” magazine. I suspect that Zite would have done even better if we had used my Google Reader account (for example, I spend a lot of time reading about politics, but I try to keep political tweets to a minimum). More importantly, the application gets better the more you use it, learning from whether or not you give an article a thumbs up or a thumbs down, as well as more subtle signals like how much time you spend reading each article. There are other startups looking at user behavior to deliver personalized news, but the ones I mentioned above aren’t delivering that content in the form of a slick iPad magazine. Davar also argued that Zite’s personalization technology compares favorably to the competition’s — he was clearly a little exasperated that I didn’t own an iPad on which to test out Zite in more depth. (Hey, I’m exasperated by my iPad-less state too.) For example, he said that the app isn’t just looking at the topics that readers are interested in, but also the types of content — so it knows whether you prefer long, in-depth features or short news articles. Zite is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and it’s based on technology developed at the University of British Columbia's Laboratory for Computational Intelligence. The company is funded, in part, by grants from the Canadian government. Companies: Zite People: Ali Davar
   |
Jason Goldberg is founder and CEO of Fab.com, a private-sales site focused on design. Prior to founding Fab, which began as a gay social network, Jason founded Socialmedian and Jobster. In a prior life, he spent six years working 100 hours a week for Bill Clinton in the White House. This post originally 
Last year, Sprint gave students in a marketing class at Emerson College 10 smartphones with unlimited wireless access. In return, Sprint received free marketing work for their budding 4G network in Boston from students who blogged and tweeted, and more importantly were able to record firsthand how social media could be effectively used at the company.
Email is fast and quick, but it’s often tone-deaf. When we send a message in the heat of the moment, we don’t think about the consequences of what happens when the person receiving them misinterprets the tone of the text.
Messages can be screened with particularly concerns in mind, such as messages that might be interpreted as sexual harassment. Companies could use it to keep the tone of outbound emails and internal communications in check.
New group-buying startup 
Many comments are appearing on the internet taking enthusiastic positions for either the new 2011 Chevy Volt or the Leaf.
The 2011 Leaf, which arrived on Feb. 17, being fully electric, has a much larger battery pack and a daily range of nearly 100 miles between charge sessions. We’re actually getting almost that with totally local driving, but any freeway time at higher speeds reduces the Leaf’s range markedly.
The Leaf may be the first full-scale, all-electric production car from a major automaker to be sold in the U.S., but 
Research in Motion’s 
Eros Resmini, vice president of marketing at OpenFeint, said in an interview that developers were saying one big obstacle for adapting their games to Android was the cost of doing so. OpenFeint already has about 250 Android games that use OpenFeint (since OpenFeint launched its Android platform in September). But that could be better, considering it has thousands of iPhone game customers. Overall, some 4,800 games with 68 million players use OpenFeint.
Personal finance tool 
Stack Overflow, which runs a popular programming question-and-answer site, has raised $12 million in a second round of funding. It has also adopted a new name, 
It has been a year of big changes at startup Widgetbox, according to chief executive Will Price, and the company just announced a new name to reflect those changes — it’s now called 
You have to pity Apple. People want to know about its new products so much that having ironclad security around its new prototypes is all but impossible.
There are many, many newsreaders available for the iPad, but entrepreneur Ali Davar said his startup | You are subscribed to email updates from VentureBeat To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar