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StartUp Beat featured companies in the news recently:
Yak About It: Founder Jeff Gawronski featured in the LA Times’ “Small-Business In Box” – http://bit.ly/bU45oT
Replay Solutions: Has announced the release of hosted version of ReplayDIRECTOR™, its “DVR-like solution” for security issues, performance problems and application defects – http://bit.ly/bZnkDr
As a follow-up to its company pitch (KODA-March 11, 2010), StartUp Beat conducted a Q&A with KODA CEO Jeff Berger. KODA is a new player in the online job resource sector, and describes itself as a pioneer in “social recruiting”—utilizing social networking tools to connect job seekers with employers. The company was founded last year and recently raised a $1.5 million round of funding.
SUB: You’ve written that the idea for KODA originated from your frustrations with finding employment as a recent college graduate. Was there a specific “this is it” moment of inspiration where you came up with the idea for the business?
Berger: There was never one “ah-ha” moment. What turned Tony (my co-founder) and me onto the space was that regardless of who you spoke to, everyone has or had experienced the same problem. It didn’t matter if you were 40 years old or a senior in college, everyone could relate to the challenge of trying to find a job post-college. Communicating and networking has become so much easier through the web and it was amazing to us that connecting with employers was still so difficult.SUB: The job site business seems like a tough sector to break into. You are really targeting younger job seekers—do you consider this your target niche or is this a way to gain a foothold in a business dominated by established giants like Monster?
Berger: Sure, it is a tough sector to break into. But, let’s face it, the last time we saw significant innovation in this space was with the introduction of the “job board.” No one has really captured the way young people communicate (through social sites and networks) and applied it to the job search space.We have worked closely with employers in building our site and the support has been amazing. They are ready to embrace innovation. Our focus is on young professionals, people with 0-5 years of work experience. While this is one of the ways that we are different from the big job boards, this is the demographic that needs our service the most. More experienced people have developed a professional network and can use their resume to paint a picture. People at the entry-to-mid-level market have a small network and limited work experience to display on a piece of paper. We believe that focusing on this particular niche in the employment sector will help us “plant seeds” in developing a new way that all job seekers and employers find one another.
The job market has lacked innovation for so many years that it has almost been forgotten in the technology world. We are excited to bring something fresh and new to the forefront.SUB: What do you hope the hiring of Michelle Slagle, a veteran in the online job site business, as COO will bring to the table for KODA, moving forward? As a young startup, how important is bringing experienced leadership or advisors on board?
Berger: Michelle served as an advisor to KODA for 9 months prior to joining. She brings decades of relevant industry experience to KODA having served as CFO at both CareerBuilder and Jobfox. She has also worked with many startups in her career and understands the importance of protecting the “fresh” approach in our idealism and creativity while lending her experience to help KODA grow out of its start up phase. We have been successful “shooting from the hip” but we recognize it’s a good time to bring in her strategic thinking and depth of experience.SUB: How rapidly are employers adopting multimedia technologies like video into their hiring process? In other words, are we (finally) moving definitively away from the standard resume and references in the employment market?
Berger: We are finding that there are employers who are early adopters of the latest trends in recruiting, from screening video to attending conferences like SXSW, to using social websites like Facebook to look for candidates. And, particularly in today’s economy, most employers are looking for new, inexpensive ways to recruit outside of laborious job boards.Candidates really embrace video and they love to speak about their experience whether it’s in the work force or personal (like travel and hobbies). Younger candidates are eager to use whatever they have in their arsenal to launch their careers. There is a change happening in the marketplace where candidates are creating the dialogue about their desire to be open to many opportunities and they do not want to be pigeon holed into an old process.
As for replacing resumes, KODA has no interest in redefining the classifieds job board space. KODA wants to create a community of candidate expression and direct interaction between both sides of the equation. Employers like our platform because it let’s them learn more about the candidate but still presents the information in a simple and easy to review format.SUB: Where do you see KODA in a year from now, in terms of employers/job seekers using the site, site traffic, revenue, features, etc.?
Berger: KODA’s goal over the next six months is to continue to invest in building the community and creating features and tools for the candidates and employers to interact. KODA’s ultimate goal is to build organic candidate traffic and allow the community to define itself. We have been very successful in engaging employer interest during our beta period and over the next six months we plan to evolve those relationships as we build the community.SUB: Do you plan to seek more investors/funding in the short term?
Berger: KODA is always assessing its business needs and while we just raised money, we do expect to look for investors and strategic partners in the development of our on-line community.SUB: Finally, what advice do you have for budding entrepreneurs that are where you were when you came up with the idea for KODA, especially in this challenging economic environment?
Berger: I think it’s important to have a mix of advisors from varied backgrounds that can help you navigate through the early startup phase through the execution of the business plan. You’re going to make mistakes and it’s great to have experienced advisors to mitigate the risk of those mistakes. We are thankful for the great team of advisors we have.KODA – www.koda.us
Company Description: “Friendgiftr is the first social media and mobile-based e-commerce company in the world.” | Company: Friendgiftr Website: www.friendgiftr.comHeadquarters: Hollywood, Calif. Year Founded: 2008 Founder: Rob Carpenter Investors: Tech Coast Angels Employees: 22 |
E-commerce 2.0 is here, and Friendgiftr is proud to lead the way. We are the first social media and mobile based company in the world to offer real, purchasable brand name company products—currently virtual and physical gift cards—to be bought through social networking sites like Facebook and mobile phones like the iPhone. We have partnered with over 135 big names in the retail and restaurant businesses—players like GAP, Starbucks, Chili’s, Banana Republic, Sephora, Regal Cinemas and others—specifically with the intent of enabling consumers to shop from anywhere. In other words, we have started to commercialize both the social media and mobile platform spaces for the first time in the U.S. but are also moving into other profoundly innovative areas so people can quickly and conveniently make purchases (most of this is still secret for now).
The idea behind this entire concept occurred in late 2008, as there was a realization that the then novel social media and mobile application platforms would become huge commercial playgrounds if you leveraged them properly. In other words, there was an increasingly palpable feeling that a company could market and sell real brand name products to the existing users in these communities just like they had on eBay (as an aside, one of the brilliant parts of eBay’s business model, for example, has been that they have allowed smart companies to set up online retail storefronts on their website, adding great value for customers, businesses, and eBay itself). When Facebook and Apple created their own application programming interfaces (APIs), it became clear that, just like on eBay, companies were willing to establish large footprints on these platforms. But they were only doing so with virtual goods and virtual games. And that is when Friendgiftr was born. We realized that these companies were doing a great job at monetizing items like virtual smiley faces and cupcakes but that the market was much bigger for real products, which is the void we wanted to fill as the first company to offer real products through these APIs.
So in October 2008 I tossed the idea around with several friends and we began to do our startup homework on the who, what, when, where, how, and why of the company, our first targeted industry (gift cards), the available developer platforms, and everything else we needed to know. The original Friendgiftr team was pretty diverse—we had several skilled programmers, a serial entrepreneur, and myself (somebody who had previously worked at the White House, as a business op-ed columnist, and as a social entrepreneur)—and worked pretty hard on the idea. But in the first few months all of the original team left even before any working prototype was produced, leaving me on my own (I surmise these members exited our project because of the very physically, mentally, and financially stressful nature of creating a never-before-tried company—or any company for that matter). However, it has all worked out for the best and I wish the original team that helped me research the concept all the best.
Friendgiftr is now backed by Tech Coast Angels, has scaled to 22 employees, and is pursuing a business model with multiple viable revenue streams. First, we get a percentage of every gift card sold through our various platforms. Second, we receive slotting fees from merchants who are featured on our growing virtual commercial network—currently at six e-commerce storefronts and rapidly expanding to many more (most e-commerce companies only have one website or e-storefront from which to offer their products). Third, we have a creative affiliate marketing program (and this phrase is used deliberately for lack of a better term, because we are turning this concept on its head and are not really pursuing traditional affiliate marketing). And finally, we receive traditional ad-based revenue. So in other words, Friendgiftr has built a business model with many sources of income, across many platforms, and with many partners not only because we want to diversify our risk profile, but more importantly because we want to maximize our potential reach and opportunities.
And the reach and opportunities for our company are endless. While I cannot say too much more on our business model, strategic priorities, or where we are going next given the time-sensitive nature of our work—a lot of what we are working on are first-to-market projects—but I can say that we are obviously looking to grow our brand, expand our customer base, add new products and services, continuously improve, and, most importantly, add real value in this great financial ecosystem we call the private sector. We hope you will check us out when you get some time: www.friendgiftr.com.
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| Company: eJamming, Inc. Website: www.ejamming.com Headquarters: Orlando, Fla. and Valley Village, Calif. | Year Founded: 2001 Founders: Gail Kantor, CEO; Alan Glueckman, Chairman and President Employees: 13 |
Company Description in 140 characters or less:
"eJamming pioneered synchronizing high-fidelity live audio streams among musicians so they can play and record together online, in real time."
By Gail Kantor, Co-Founder and CEO, eJamming
All t
he activities musicians perform—playing, recording, writing, rehearsing, and arranging as well as learning, can now be done together live over the Internet. All they need is eJamming AUDiiO’s pioneering software, a broadband connection, an audio interface device and a microphone.
You may be surprised to learn that until now, musicians haven’t been able to collaborate online in real time like other creative people have. Technology has been the obstacle. Bandwidth, speed and latency have made it difficult, and musicians have been patiently waiting for technology to catch up.
Our company, eJamming Inc., has spent the past decade pioneering live, synchronized, high quality audio-streaming technologies that bring musicians together to play and record online across the world. eJamming co-founder Alan Jay Glueckman and I formed eJamming in 2001 to develop software that fills the void that kept musicians from participating in the online revolution that has connected most other people over the Internet. Previous online collaboration solutions for musicians did not address real time or synchrony. Yes, collaboration tools and games exist, but none are appropriate for music-making.
For musicians, timing is everything. eJamming AUDiiO’s Jam Mode facilitates playing online from multiple locations by providing the fastest possible transmission speed and full pristine audio to inspire the session participants and satisfy their requirement for the highest fidelity reproduction of their instruments.
And eJamming AUDiiO’s VRS (Virtual Recording Studio) mode allows the estimated 150 million broadband-enabled musicians and singers in the world to join four-player recording sessions and build songs track by track live, with everyone “in the room” together hearing playback and recorded tracks synchronized at each location.
Importantly, musicians and singers can now also find just the right musician to play, write or record with using eJamming AUDiiO’s feature-rich social networking system.
Back at DEMO ’07, we showcased and announced the upcoming eJamming AUDiiO beta release and we’re proud to say we were named a DEMOgod. Other accolades followed: OnHollywood 100; AlwaysOn 100; and South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Web Awards. Alan and I were named among the “24 Top Technology Innovators” in Fortune magazine and eJamming AUDiiO was featured last December as one of Forbes’ “Top Ten ‘BreakOut!’ Business Ideas of 2009.”
Some background: I have been a vocalist and entertainment industry entrepreneur for more than 30 years. I’ve collaborated with many leading musicians but am probably best known for having been one of the original Harlettes—Bette Midler’s signature background trio. I’ve also collaborated with longtime friend Barry Manilow, hit songwriter Barry Goldberg and Grammy and Emmy-winning composer Patrick Williams, and have sung background for artists as diverse as James Brown and James Taylor. Twenty years ago, I began a string of entrepreneurial successes with the formation of The Kantor Company, which created numerous national commercial jingles for a variety of clients.
Alan’s background is business, marketing and more than 25 years in show business. He has created, produced and managed projects as a screenwriter, lyricist, producer and director, and his business projects have spanned movies, television, theater and the Internet. Among Alan’s many accomplishments are producing eight movies and writing for Disney, Universal, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Viacom, New Century, NBC, CBS and ABC. An Internet pioneer, he co-created the ground-breaking MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE THE WEB ADVENTURE for Apple Computer/Paramount Pictures, and developed Internet projects for Microsoft and Bill Gross’ first ideaLab startup, EntertainNet. He earned a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Columbia University.
The talented eJamming engineering team, Alan, and I have focused on overcoming major technological challenges that had prevented such collaboration in the past. The result is nothing less than a breakthrough: patented peer-to-peer synchronization technology that addresses the latency—the time lags and Internet traffic jams—associated with online transmission. In addition to the stunning audio quality, eJamming AUDiiO technology alleviates dropouts that would disrupt the enjoyment and productiveness of a jam or recording session, solving a common multi-participant symptom of streaming audio among disparate distances. Musicians can play, record and collaborate over the technology and hear their music the way they intended it to be heard, both in live sessions and when recorded (in CD quality) over the software.
Since coming out of beta in mid 2009, eJamming AUDiiO has surpassed major milestones, including transitioning from a free beta offering to a paid service, exceeding subscription projections and validating the company’s business model.
Seeking VC funds in 2010
Since our founding, we’ve operated eJamming in an extremely lean fashion, having relied solely on angel funding to get to this juncture, but we intend to seek institutional funding in 2010, now that we have proven the business model is viable.
eJamming currently makes money from member subscriptions. Earlier this year, we unveiled significant enhancements to our technology and website—improving quality, adding new functionality and making it significantly easier to use—and embarked on an aggressive strategy to partner with leaders in the music and technology industries. Our first partner is the undeniable leader in the musical instruments category: Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. We are thrilled to have entered 2010 with the best live, online collaboration service for musicians and an exciting relationship with Fender, which is truly one of the legendary names and innovators in the music business.
The Fender partnership—as well as additional relationships we’ll be unveiling with other music and technology companies in the months to come—will extend eJamming’s reach into the sizeable worldwide community of musicians, representing a $7 billion industry.
Thus far, eJamming’s membership roster has grown substantially since partnering with Fender. We are conducting a major promotional push this week at the SXSW Conference in Austin that promises to dramatically increase interest in eJamming AUDiiO, followed by a massive email blast to Fender opt-in customers.
eJamming – www.ejamming.com
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| Website: www.koda.us Headquarters: San Francisco and New Orleans Year Founded: 2009 Founder: Jeff Berger, CEO Investors: Angel Investors Employees: 15 |
Company Description in 140 characters or less:
“KODA is the leading online community that introduces today's young professionals to the world's employers.”
By Jeff Berger, CEO
Finding a job in this economy may have just gotten a little bit easier. Our San Francisco and New Orle
ans based social recruiting startup, KODA.us, is making waves in the private investment community for our innovative approach to helping people find jobs. We just received an additional $1.5 million in private angel funding to support KODA’s growing user base and continued community expansion.
I see KODA challenging traditional resources like classifieds and job boards by getting “back to the basics” of the job search. The recruitment industry doesn’t work for today’s young job seekers. I know, because I was one of them. The unemployment figures are staggering for recent college grads (with national rates topping 17 percent). I truly believe that part of the problem is that recruiting sites aren’t paying attention to how young people communicate and what employers are really looking for.
Born out of job search frustrations as a recent Tulane graduate in a post-Katrina New Orleans, we designed KODA to fill the gap left by social and professional networks and job boards:
-Social networks are for socializing, not for finding a job.
-Online professional networks only work for those with already-existing contacts after several years of work experience.
-Traditional resumes and job boards are impersonal and static—a growing frustration for a generation that is accustomed to wide-open communication channels.
I see our team as pioneers in the “social recruiting” space. We define it as using an online social medium to find your best candidate. KODA is the first online community where young professionals and companies can come together in a professional environment that encourages self-expression.
What’s different about KODA vs. online job boards or classifieds is that job seekers create profiles on KODA that highlight their strengths, their passions and features about their personality that make them a great fit for a job. In turn, employers can provide a complete picture of their organization, culture and strategic differences on their own profile page. KODA uses technology to match the right candidate to the right job.
The idea was to create a website that wasn’t about finding a job–it was about finding the right career. We see ourselves as an ally in the process of bringing employers and young professionals together to emphasize their assets in a modern, appropriate context. KODA encourages individuality and self-expression, and then uses technology to introduce the right opportunities to the right people. It’s ideal for helping employers find entry to mid-level candidates who don’t yet have a meaningful professional network.
The latest investment underscores the significant business opportunity involved in using social networking tools to transform the online recruiting space. And, although the economy has taken a toll on some startups, we are lucky enough to have angel investors who believe in our innovative vision for the recruiting process.
And, community insiders are beginning to take notice as well. We recently announced the selection of Michelle Slagle, the former Chief Financial Officer for both JobFox and CareerBuilder, as the company’s Chief Operating Officer. Ms. Slagle’s role includes working with the executive team in implementing our plan to spend the $1.5 million for operations and product development that will enhance the seeker experience and make the KODA community more interactive.
Currently, the site offers features such as sharing videos, images and links to websites that showcase a job candidate “in action.” The site’s Explorer and Suggestions features not only match candidates to jobs that fit their characteristics, but they also allow candidates to explore job opportunities across professional fields. For employers, KODA has simplified the recruiting process by developing a crawler which automatically captures new jobs on the employer’s website and draws it into the KODA system. Therefore, there is no updating involved for the employer.
KODA is 100 percent free for people who wish to join our community. For employers, KODA has no upfront fees and no talent database fee. The site works on a pay-per-click model, so employers are charged when a candidate clicks to apply.
Since launching in mid-2009, KODA’s employer network has grown to more than 450 organizations including Fortune 500 companies. KODA currently has thousands of young job candidates using the site. We are a privately held company with 15 employees in the San Francisco and New Orleans area. New Orleans’ CityBusiness recently named us a “2009 Innovator of the Year.”
Koda – www.koda.us
As a follow-up to the company pitch that ran previously, StartUp Beat conducted a Q&A with Dialectic Networks CEO Lee Hansen. Comments are welcome below!
SUB: How many customers do you currently have?
Hansen: We currently have 5-to-10 customers.
SUB: What makes Dialectic Networks different from other solutions providers that offer similar services?
Hansen: We help our customers drive down costs while increasing performance in the data center by always keeping focus on key guiding technologies shaping a new data center paradigm: leveraging open source software and portable modular data centers to drive costs down in cloud computing solutions.
SUB: What size company is your primary customer target?
Hansen: We target $50 million to Fortune 1000, depending on the type of business for compute and storage capacity needs. A company whose business model requires large compute cycles and or data storage could have $50 million in revenues but be a target customer for us—such as oil and gas, web 2.0, and the film rendering industry. As we come on line with our own cloud computing services, the small and medium market on up is our target.
SUB: What is your business model? How do you make or plan to make money?
Hansen: As we are a startup, we are running almost entirely off of seed capital. That being said, our first goal is to sell an IBM PMDC and/or IBM iDataPlex cluster to the many prospects that we are currently communicating with. Dialectic Networks is currently working with over 12 groups who have needs at these levels.
It is through sales of IBM products and services that we plan to make our initial revenue. We are also actively seeking venture capital to build our own data center in Florida. There are 3 other projects like the one in Florida that are moving forward as well. In a nutshell, our expected revenue this year is actually quite conservative.
SUB: What do you envision for the company a year from now?
Hansen: Cloud services offered from Dialectic Networks, at least 10 new customers, 20-plus employees and $10 million in EBITDA.
SUB: Considering the down economy, what challenges have you faced over the last year or so?
Hansen: Raising seed capital was a challenge at first—decision time frames were longer than expected.
SUB: Finally, what tips do you have for other technology startups that are just trying to get things off the ground?
Hansen: Have a good business plan to raise enough seed capital to make it to profitability. The IT marketplace is picking up!
