StartUp Beat

MomentFeed is a fully-integrated platform for businesses to manage social media channels across multiple locations. The Santa Monica, CA–based company was founded in 2010.

SUB: What is the value proposition MomentFeed offers to both merchants and customers?

Reed: MomentFeed offers an integrated solution for managing Foursquare, Facebook Places, Twitter Places, and Gowalla across hundreds or thousands of locations. In a nutshell, it maximizes the efficiency and efficacy of utilizing these platforms for companies with more than 20 locations. There is a lot of secret sauce involved in synchronizing all of this data and activity across so many locations and services, such that a brand can have a comprehensive, holistic, and accurate view of how consumers are engaging with their locations at the local and global levels.

For consumers, there isn't a direct value prop. But when businesses can better leverage services like Foursquare and Facebook Places, there is more value and engagement for consumers.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Reed: While there are a few companies doing similar things in the LBS space, none so far are addressing the same problem in the same way as MomentFeed. Furthermore, we are entirely focused on the enterprise market. That's where we have the greatest strength in terms of existing relationships and those of our investors. We have great traction already among the Fortune 1000. 

SUB: How are you marketing your services?

Reed: We are a direct sales model to both large brands and marketing agencies. In addition, our platform can be utilized by independent consults who wish to pitch and sell their value-added services of data analysis, campaign management, and CRM. For example, if you’re a marketing consultant and have a relationship with a large brand, you might propose to setup and manage the company's location-based marketing efforts by utilizing the MomentFeed solution. We provide the tools and reporting features that one needs to do so effectively. This is a program we'll be building out.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind MomentFeed? Was there an “aha” moment, or was the idea longer in developing?

Reed: I was looking deeply at the LBS space from the consumer perspective in 2009 and first considered building a consumer LBS application. The “a-ha” moment came when I saw how crowded the space was becoming. Given the premise that “Location-Based Engagements (LBE)” like check-ins and on-the-spot reviews were supremely valuable to brands and my belief that the space would continue to fragment as opposed to consolidate, the case for MomentFeed became pretty clear. This was well before Facebook, Google, and Twitter entered the market. So our overarching mission now is to report to our clients whenever a consumer engages with one of their locations via any smartphone application, together with the ability to reciprocate those engagements. We approach the space from the brand perspective, which is a unique way to view it. They don't care which apps consumers use; they just want to understand and leverage LBE activity on a comprehensive basis. 

SUB: When was the company founded, and what were the first steps you took to establishing it?

Reed: I formed the company in April of 2010. The first steps were to design the product, sign up beta customers, and deliver the MVP (minimum viable product). So we launched our beta in January with about 10,000 locations participating. 

SUB: You recently raised a $1.2 million seed round. How do you plan to use the funds?

Reed: We're growing our engineering team first in order to deliver v1.0 of the product. The first hire is a Front-End/UI Developer with Ruby experience if you know of anyone in the Santa Monica area! Then we'll build our sales and marketing team.

SUB: What have the biggest obstacles been so far to building MomentFeed and making it what you’ve envisioned it to be?

Reed: MomentFeed represents a new paradigm in social media monitoring, campaign management, and CRM. The old paradigm is based around keywords as the primary signal...monitoring for brand mentions or conversations. The old paradigm is PC and browser based. The new model is smartphone and application based. It uses place as the primary signal. And place is much more complex. You have the latitude and longitude where it exists, which is permanent; the physical structure and the business/brand associated with that place, which is temporary, and then all of the digital representations of that place in so many databases. Plus, it's in a constant state of flux as businesses close and open. So it's a tremendous challenge to pull all of this data together and make sense of it for marketers. We're blazing new ground.

SUB: What are your goals for the company over the next year? Where do you see MomentFeed in about a year from now?

Reed: The goal is to build and awesome service for our clients that moves the needle and delivers clear ROI. We couldn't be more bullish on the LBE channel and its marketing potential. What's missing are the proper tools, and that's what we're building.

MomentFeed – www.momentfeed.com

Posted by startupbeat at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Web Content

Yext Raises $10 Million To Double Down On PowerListings For Local Businesses (via TechCrunch)

IT/Website Management

CA Buys Website And App Monitoring Startup WatchMouse (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Cloudware Hosting

Website: www.cloudwarecity.com

Founder: Keith Hall

Headquarters: Warrington, UK

Year Founded: 2010

Twitter: @cloudwarecity

Brief Company Description: “Cloudware Hosting Ltd. provides an easy way to offer paid subscriptions to web apps, service and content websites, via Cloudware City”

By Keith Hall, founder and CEO

Product Overview

Cloudware City is designed to provide a pain-free way for website owners to include subscriptions and recurring billing to their sites, and can plug into popular web content management systems like Joomla and WordPress. The service utilizes a combination of the latest technologies to offer a one-stop platform from marketing and selling subscriptions in its web app store through to cloud-based end user subscription authentication, and can be up and running within three minutes.

The service works as a way to outsource sales, subscriptions billing, authentication and user management in order to build those features into almost any website with the minimum of fuss. Simply put, a vendor registers with Cloudware City, and creates a listing from which users can purchase and subscribe (in the web App Store). On the vendor’s website, there is a hook into the Cloudware City API (Application Programming Interface) either via existing plug-ins or with one of the integration kits. Users enter the credentials used when purchasing the subscription and this is securely passed to Cloudware City in the cloud, for authentication. If valid, the user is granted access! Various other fields are returned in the API call such as time to expiry, other vendor products that the user may have subscribed to (in cases where a vendor may have different levels of access, etc.). Nothing is set in stone at this stage and the service is very much open to improvement and development via client feedback.

Founder’s Story

I’m the founder and CEO of Cloudware Hosting Ltd. With a background in IT and data communications since a very early age and an entrepreneurial spirit always looking for opportunities to generate money when a good idea comes about, it’s usually worth pursuing (if you don’t, someone else will, or you’ll forever be wondering ‘what if’)!

So, whilst I was previously holding the role of VP/Director of IT & Infrastructure for a UK-headquartered global Plc, experiencing and pushing the evolution of the Internet in terms of Software as a Service and Cloud technologies, I was having a discussion with a friend over how the recently formed Apple App Store was working nicely to bring in fresh new ideas for the iPhone (and bringing developers relatively risk free revenue). Web technologies had evolved to making web apps a reality, but there was no parallel, easy way to monetize developers’ wares like the App Store (especially if you just had an idea to throw out there without risking many up-front costs). Just about anything can be a web app these days, therefore the idea to create an easy way to enable monetization of web apps was born.

It also quickly became apparent that web content is just as important, hence the decision to develop plugins for popular Content Management Systems (CMSs) like WordPress and Joomla. If there’s interesting, desirable unique content available, then it’s worth charging for!

The name came about when thinking about what general term could be applied to software like web apps, or content consumed through the Internet, and Cloudware was coined. The ‘store’ and community aspect was then developed in to Cloudware City, with the company named Cloudware Hosting (leaving the name open to other possibilities involving web hosting offerings to complement the Cloudware City service).

I have other potentially profitable ideas that would fit well within the Cloudware Hosting brand but Cloudware City is the main focus at present, consuming the most energy and attention—that is not to say that it would receive any less in the future!

What’s so special about Cloudware City?

Whilst there are plenty of individual solutions (for payment, subscriptions billing, account management and more) to piece and integrate together to form a subscriptions based website, Cloudware City is the only place to find all under one easy to use system with a simple API. One of the key differentiators and most powerful aspects is the Web App Store, which not only provides a simple straightforward shopping experience for the user, but also significantly promotes vendors’ offerings through recommendation algorithms and offers sales, SEO and marketing angles to help a new idea come alive.

Marketing and Promotion Strategy

There really isn’t any one strategy in mind and is continuously evolving, through direct marketing, PR, social media (although we probably ought to be a little stronger in this area!). One of the main aspects is the Cloudware City Web App Store itself; by which its very design that helps vendors to market and sell, also helps market and sell the Cloudware City concept, and the more various and interesting vendors that sign up, the diversity of marketing reach increases accordingly. There are plans in the pipeline for referral and affiliate marketing, and various other fun things like Cloud Credits which may be earned and spent within the platform.

Our Joomla and WordPress plugins have also generated a lot of interest, as potential customers creating membership based sites have never had it so easy to begin offering subscriptions.

Business Model

Vendors save significant time and effort (and henceforth cost) in outsourcing their subscriptions strategy to Cloudware Hosting. In return for this, the business operates on a revenue share model—vendors are paid 70 percent of net sales revenue on fulfillment of a subscription subject to a threshold due to money transfer costs (as the business scales, these costs should fall and therefore savings can be passed on in due course). Recurring subscriptions capabilities provide the opportunity for that ever important repeat revenue, and a Cloudware City membership fee is payable (although for a limited period, new members will pay nothing). Further products like all-inclusive hosting platforms to complement the Cloudware City service are in the pipeline.

Current Needs

The immediate needs—at time of writing—are focused around the marketing and PR, along with development and support opportunities opening up as the business expands.

Cloudware City – www.cloudwarecity.com

Posted by startupbeat at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Social Media

NEA And Sequoia Put $18M In Brand-Focused Social Media Platform Hearsay Social (via TechCrunch)

Crowdtap Raises $7 Million To Help Brands Connect With Their Influential Customers (via TechCrunch)

Finance

Hummingbird Ventures raises new €30 million fund for early stage EMEA startups (via TechCrunch Europe)

eCommerce

Snapdeal, India’s Fast-Growing eCommerce Platform, Raises $40 Million From Bessemer And More (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 09:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Editor’s Note: The following article is part of a new series of guest articles on StartUp Beat by experts on startups/entrepreneurship who have something to say about any and all things related to the technology startup world. This article is not a sponsor post and the writer has not paid for space on StartUp Beat. This series is intended to serve as a point of discussion and consideration of issues that affect the technology startup sector.

By Laura A. Schoppe

Laura A. Schoppe is president of Fuentek, LLC, a consulting firm she established in 2001 that provides intellectual property and technology transfer services with a specialization in technology commercialization. Fuentek: www.fuentek.com.

“Crowdsourcing” is a trendy term these days, and like all trends, has its positive and negative aspects. Although trendy terms tend to take on several meanings, the ones I’m referring to are web-based systems where organizations with a technical need (seekers) can post their problem (challenge) and allow “the crowd” (solvers) to offer up their ideas for a solution. It is basically the open innovation or “spin-in” equivalent of posting technology licensing opportunities on your organization’s website or through online services to achieve “spin-out” success.

As an example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently experimented successfully with crowdsourcing to develop a new combat support vehicle. In this case, innovation from solvers allowed a company called Local Motors in Arizona to select the best out of 162 designs submitted through crowdsourcing, and then build the vehicle in only 14 weeks. Victor Garcia (the solver) received $7,500 for his Flypmode design, and Local Motors (the service provider) received about $350,000 from DARPA (the seeker) for the project.

Other crowdsourcing successes exist but they are not always as simple as stories such as this would suggest. For example, crowdsourcing may provide a low-cost means for your startup to get its technology (or need) “out there” in the hopes that someone looking for (or offering) a technical solution will find your posting and connect with you. However, crowdsourcing comes with a cost and can have significant limitations.

Hidden Issues Affect Both Solvers and Seekers

While crowdsourcing can provide inventors with a way to take their research or discovery to the next level, there are hidden issues that affect both the solver and the seeker.

The most likely solvers to participate are individuals, who may not have the right expertise or industry knowledge to create relevant or commercially viable solutions for the seeker. And yet, the seeker still has to read through all those submissions to find if there is a single gem in the lot.

If any further development is needed to prove a technology or ensure its commercial potential, an individual solver is less likely to have the resources to provide this value to the seeker.

The solver is asked to warrant ownership of the idea, and few individual solvers will have the capacity required to see if intellectual property (IP) rights such as patents or industrial design rights already exist. So the idea may be an infringement and the solution unusable unless the seeker incurs the additional costs of analyzing that IP landscape and possibly obtain a license for the prior invention.

Few solvers will hire a lawyer to review the terms of the contract they must sign before submitting their idea, with the result that they may later sue the seeker—either because the seeker makes significantly more from their idea than the solver received in compensation or because their idea was not selected but they think the seeker has implemented a version of their idea. Therefore the seeker risks being the target of frivolous lawsuits, which can be expensive and can cause a public relations nightmare.

Solvers contribute their time and creativity without adequate compensation and are the least protected in the crowdsourcing arrangement. There is no room for negotiation or additional compensation for the solver who has invested in the solution. For instance, one solver has an idea but no patent, while a second solver has an idea with a patent in which he has already invested $15K, yet both will get the same award and lose all rights to the intellectual property.

What About Crowdsourcing Services?

To offset some of these limitations of the crowdsourcing model, we are seeing the rise of crowdsourcing service companies such as InnoCentive or yet2.com, which bring buyers and sellers of technologies together and enable organizations to solve their key problems by connecting them to the worldwide solver marketplace.

The seeker is typically paying a significant fee for the service and they are the crowdsourcing company’s client; therefore, all terms are set up to be in the seeker’s favor. If your startup is participating in crowdsourcing as a seeker, this might sound like good news. Yet the reality remains that for this primarily passive approach to innovation to be implemented, the seeker either has to commit significant internal resources to filtering through all of the responses and vetting their IP status and viability, or pay one of these crowd sourcing services (usually well into the six figures) to do it for them.

Organizations seldom factor in all of the cost aspects of the crowdsourcing model because anything posted on the web seems free. For out-of-pocket expense, there are several layers of payment to the service providers. In addition to the setup costs, there are fees for each challenge the seeker posts, a fee for a solution having been found, and the prize due to the solver (sadly, this is usually the smallest cost of all). And don’t forget one of the biggest expenses—either as a fee to the service provider or internal man-hours—of sifting through and analyzing the submitted solutions. Plus additional investment is almost always needed to further develop, implement and commercialize the solution, if found.

Put simply, crowdsourcing may not be all the hype is telling us it is. Often the same solution or a better one would have been reached—likely at a lower cost to the seeker—through traditional licensing and partnership mechanisms by proactively seeking organizations working on similar issues, though not necessarily in the same industry. Plus, a contractual relationship pays the solver better for a solution, provides the resources to create a relevant solution, and protects IP as well. In these cases, the seeker is more likely to be working with companies that understand contracts and the cost of doing business. Furthermore, these companies are more likely to have the multi-disciplined expertise to provide a more integrated and complete solution.

Analyze the real costs and calculate your return on investment for crowdsourcing before you go that route. Despite being trendy, make sure that it is as cost-effective as a targeted, strategic, proactive approach to finding sources of external technology solutions. And if your startup has a solution to a technical challenge, there are ways to get your invention into the hands of those that need it without short-changing yourself.

Posted by startupbeat at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Mobile

Phizzle Secures $3 Million in Series A Financing

Azumio collects $2.5M to turn smartphones into health monitors (via gigaom)

eCommerce

AHAlife Raises $6M To Curate And Sell Hard-To-Find Products From Around The World (via TechCrunch)

Groupon Pays At Least $10.2 Million For Zappedy (via TechCrunch)

Cloud

Nodeable, The Twitter For Machines, Raises $2 Million From True Ventures (via TechCrunch)

Web Content

Smartling gets $10M to expand crowdsourced translations (via gigaom)

Data Management/Applications

Concurrent raises $900K to make Hadoop easier (via gigaom)

SaaS

TribeHR Raises $1 Million To Help Small Businesses Manage Human Resources (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 08:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: BiteHunter

Website: www.bitehunter.com

Headquarters: New York City

Year Founded: 2010

Twitter: @BiteHunter_com

Employees: 6

Brief Company Description: “BiteHunter.com is the first real-time search engine helping frugal foodies locate great dining deals in their area from one website.”

By Gil Harel, co-founder

With more than 10 years of online management experience in the hospitality and restaurant industry, I was hungry for my own business venture in the dining industry. While working on my first startup in the industry, I saw a problem in the market. It was fragmenting and users had to spend too much time trying to find the great specials and deals everyone was offering to them. We wanted to alleviate having to go to multiple sources just find that $5 off. So, my business partner and I put our heads together and came up with the idea of helping consumers dine out without the guilt of spending money AND make it easy. Thus, BiteHunter was born. Although it was founded in early 2010 by myself and Ido Shillon, BiteHunter did not release its official beta version of the site until March 2011. From there, we rapidly grew.

The site was first penned as “the Kayak.com” of the restaurant world, the first real-time search engine for restaurants and dining deals. Whether a consumer is concerned about saving a buck or finding out if their favorite eatery will deliver right to their doorstep, BiteHunter scavenges the web for all of the best deals and information necessary to help make those dining decisions. We pull the info that restaurants are promoting via Twitter, Facebook, blogs, websites, newsletters, daily deal sites and more and compile it in one easy-to-navigate website. Its search capabilities allow consumers to find listings by delivery options, location, specific kinds of food you might be craving and more.

Only three short months after the official launch, we saw such success in our first three cities (New York, San Francisco and Chicago) that we expanded and announced the unveiling of our new iPhone mobile app. Based on location and time of day, BiteHunter shares all the greatest specials, offers and daily deals right to your mobile device. With a few weeks, BiteHunter’s app made the “New and Noteworthy” Featured list on the app store, as well as top dining apps, “What’s Hot” and “Top-Rated” free apps. While the website still ran in only three cities, the mobile app expanded BiteHunter to nationwide coverage.

Today, both the website and the mobile app are available to cities nationwide. With our first round of seed funding, we are able to continually update our database with information pertinent to those seeking deals and dining information right to their computer or phone. Consumers are always looking for convenience, so we’re giving them just what they’re looking for.

In an effort to continually build BiteHunter’s consumer base and database, the company focuses on four major aspects of marketing and promotional strategy. The first being partnership and syndication. Our dining deal platform provides an API that can feed many players such as directories, mobile apps, travel websites and more, which can then power the dining deals section of many of these mentioned players. The second is having a product in which we are constantly improving users’ engagement and experience by providing social and viral tools embedded within the product such as Facebook and Twitter connect. The third is focusing on public relations and social media to help spread the word about our service and generate positive buzz about using BiteHunter when dining out. Lastly, BiteHunter focuses on smart, paid marketing tactics to help increase awareness about the website and mobile app.

BiteHunter.com differentiates itself from its competitors because of its constant updates of data in real-time. By offering more to the consumer than the ordinary—location, business hours and menu—we are sure to constantly give more than a business card. With everything from delivery options, deal offers, daily specials and more, BiteHunter brings everything you need to know to one comprehensive tool.

BiteHunter’s current business model has two major revenue streams: an affiliate fee from transactions that BiteHunter produced – such as purchasing daily deals, reserving tables via OpenTable or ordering food – and an ad network that provides the option for advertisers to bid on search result keywords and receive exposure on BiteHunter’s mobile devices, websites and its partners’ websites. BiteHunter also released an application programming interface (API) which enables third parties to integrate a live stream of restaurant updates, specifically creating websites and applications for specific deals and events. Our first partnership is with LocalPAGES.com. The LocalPAGES.com Local Food Deals feature simplifies the process of scrounging for grub on an empty stomach by displaying geo-targeted results based on the user’s IP address. They obtain all their information via BiteHunter.com. Most of the restaurants on BiteHunter were already included in the extensive LocalPAGES registry; therefore, the partnership seemed like a natural fit.

Currently, BiteHunter is in the process of raising additional funds to help build upon the already rapid growth of the company, as well as continue to improve its service and technology for its consumers. Our goal is to provide users a way to help find and experience great restaurants while still living within their budgets. Plans for the future include developing more apps for Android and the iPad, pushing more real-time offers from multiple sources and personalizing the user experience.

BiteHunter – www.bitehunter.com (get the mobile app)

Posted by startupbeat at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Web Content

Eying An IPO In The Next Year, LegalZoom Raises $66M From Kleiner Perkins And IVP (via TechCrunch)

Design Sales Site Fab.com Hits 350,000 Members, Raises $8M To Celebrate (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 07:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Blue Jeans Network has developed a video conferencing solution that works across multiple platforms—bringing an unprecedented level of functionality to the medium. The Santa Clara–based company was founded in 2009 and just emerged from stealth mode with $23.5 million in funding.

SUB: What is the value proposition Blue Jeans Network brings to the video conferencing market?

Ramakrishnan: Video conferencing adoption has traditionally been plagued by complex, incompatible, and expensive solutions, while the alternative, audio conferencing, is typically easy, open, and affordable. As a result, the vast majority of multi-site business meetings today use audio conferencing instead of video. According to Wainhouse Research, in 2010 alone, there were only 200 million minutes of video conferencing consumed worldwide, while there were 80 billion minutes of audio conferencing.

Blue Jeans Network is aiming to expand the video conferencing market for all players, by tapping into the 80 billion minute audio conferencing market. Our belief is that if we can make video as easy, open, and affordable as audio then it becomes a no brainer for a significant percentage of audio meetings to convert to video. Just converting 2.5 percent of the audio conferencing market would grow the video conferencing market 10x.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Ramakrishnan: To our knowledge we are the only interoperable multi-vendor, multi-device, multi-party video conferencing service. We don’t really see any direct competitors at this point. In fact most companies in the video conferencing space are actually more partners than competitors who we work with on interoperability. In our view Blue Jeans Network is good for everyone in the industry. Today, all the different end point vendors are fighting each other for a slice of the video conferencing pie, but by providing a solution to make video conferencing as easy, open, and affordable as audio conferencing, we think Blue Jeans will expand the whole pie for everyone. We are endpoint agnostic and will let the endpoint vendors compete for their slices of that pie. We’re like the pan underneath the video conferencing pie. We just keep it all together.

SUB: What differentiates Blue Jeans Network from your competitors?

Ramakrishnan: Interoperability is the power of the Blue Jeans Network—it’s something no other video service provides. Other vendors in the video space like Skype group video conferencing (GVC), FaceTime, Google+ Hangouts, etc. only allow multiparty video calls between users within the specific service—i.e. Skype users can only talk to other Skype users. Blue Jeans Network helps extend the reach of these services beyond the original network by enabling meetings between people using different video conferencing solutions—someone using Cisco / Tandberg can meet over video with someone using Lifesize, Skype, etc. While networks like Skype have a large and growing installed base, we believe that there will always be a strong need to interoperate between these services and other video conferencing endpoints.

SUB: How are you marketing the service?

Ramakrishnan: We have a wide range of customers, including SMBs and enterprises, across a wide range of industries. While our value proposition is applicable for everyone, everywhere, our initial focus has been on business customers rather than general consumers. We find that many businesses already have a number of video conference rooms at their main site but are looking for a way to expand the reach of video conferencing to employees, partners, and customers that don’t have access to those rooms—e.g. telecommuters, employees at smaller sites, etc., but do have access to desktop and mobile video conferencing technologies such as Skype. Until Blue Jeans Network launched this past June, there was no solution to bridge consumer video solutions with high-end video conference set-ups that are found in many large companies.

SUB: As a new competitor in the videoconferencing space, what do you think about Facebook’s collaboration with Skype and Google Plus’s Hangouts? Does this present a particular threat to emerging services like yours?

Ramakrishnan: The video conferencing landscape is rapidly expanding and changing—we could not be more excited! Now, more than ever, there is a palpable need for a service like Blue Jeans Network to help make video meetings be as easy, interoperable and affordable as audio.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind Blue Jeans Network? Was there an “aha” moment, or was the idea longer in developing?

Ramakrishnan: Ask anyone and they will tell you that video meetings are better than audio meetings—unless you’re driving or in your PJs. Yet less than 1 percent of all multi-site meetings are conducted over video today. It’s because historically video conferencing has been complex, incompatible, and expensive, while audio conferencing is easy, interoperable, and affordable.

We noticed three fundamental trends taking place in the marketplace: penetration of HD video—customers and consumers are beginning to demand HD features in everything they do; increase of broadband worldwide; generation V entering the workforce—the GenV’ers have grown up using video and are extremely comfortable with it.

Additionally, we recognized that the video conferencing market was extremely underserved. In the business world, video conferencing was used as an intercom solution with limited reach and capabilities. For the most part, video conferences were used for internal company meetings between one office conference room and another office’s conference room. There was no way for other people in different offices or locations to “video-in.” We realized there was a huge opportunity for us to provide a service that brings interoperability to the video market while at the same time making it easy and affordable for people and businesses to use.

SUB: When was the company founded, and what were the first steps you took to establishing it?

Ramakrishnan: The company was founded in 2009. Our initial focus was on creating a video conferencing service that reached the masses. The first thing we tackled was determining the architecture to support video conferencing at this level.

SUB: You recently emerged from stealth mode, armed with $23.5 million in outside funding. Why was now the right time to emerge from stealth mode?

Ramakrishnan: A number of factors are aligning today to drive people to demand video conferencing: increasingly geographically dispersed business and social networks and a growing desire to collaborate within them; desire for travel avoidance—whether it’s based on time, money, fear, or carbon; the proliferation of video enabled mobile devices—smartphones, tablets, laptops; generation V entering the workforce; rapid growth of Skype.

You combine that with Blue Jeans’ ability to address the traditional complexity, incompatibility, and cost issues and the time is finally right for video conferencing.

SUB: Do you plan to raise more funding in the near future?

Ramakrishnan: We just wrapped up our Series B funding, so at this point we are well funded for growth and expansion for the foreseeable future.

SUB: What have the biggest obstacles been so far to building Blue Jeans Network?

Ramakrishnan: The biggest obstacle for us so far is finding the right people to help us grow our vision. We’re looking for people who have a fervor for startups, a passion for solving and improving the user experience, and an untainted view of the video conferencing world. We think it’s an advantage to be an “outsider.” We believe you can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.

SUB: Where do you seen Blue Jeans Network in about a year from now?

Ramakrishnan: A year from now we hope to have transformed the idea of “video conferencing” form hardware focused to a cloud-based industry.

Blue Jeans Network – www.bluejeans.com

Posted by startupbeat at 09:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Web Content

AirBnB gets $112M in new investment (via gigaom)

Mobile

Mobile App Development Startup Canvas Raises $1.2M From Motorola And Others (via TechCrunch)

Finance/Web Content

Former Microsoft Exec Raises $20 Million For Motif, An Investment Vehicle For Ideas (via TechCrunch)

IT/Analytics

Atomico, Conway, And Founders Fund Put $10 Million Into Quid; Max Levchin Joins Board (via TechCrunch)

Web Development

CloudBees Zooms To $10.5 Million In Funding For ‘Java-As-A-Platform’ (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 08:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: CPAlead

Website: www.cpalead.com

Founders: Robert Reynolds and Troy Krzyston

Headquarters: Las Vegas

Year Founded: 2006

Twitter: @cpalead

Employees: 20+

Brief Company Description: “CPAlead is an online marketing company enabling web publishers to monetize their premium content.”

By Robert Reynolds, co-founder and CEO

Product Overview

The CPAlead Widget is a web content monetization tool that provides consumers and web publishers with a payment alternative to traditional advertisements and paywalls. It works like this: when a person visits a website with premium content, they complete a brief survey, quiz or game, which unlocks the content they wish to view. These incentive-based offerings are sponsored by advertisers who then pay the website publisher for each one that is completed.

The CPAlead Widget is fully customizable for publishers so they may change the parameters, colors, background and font, and be more specific with their offers. This allows publishers to seamlessly integrate it into their website.

Founders’ Story

The concept for CPAlead was initially conceived in 2006 as a solution for online video gamers with limited financial resources. Our solution, at the time, allowed gamers to have advertisers pay for in-game rewards in exchange for the player’s interaction with advertisements. With this solution, we created the online virtual currency space. Streets-of-LA.com, the first online game to implement this technology, experienced a substantial revenue increase when the number of players utilizing our technology quickly and dramatically grew.

Having experienced such success with Streets-of-LA.com, my fellow CPAlead co-founder and then Streets-of-LA.com owner, Troy Krzyston, and I decided to commission this technology to third-party online games, such as Outwar.com, and create the first CPA network that specifically allowed online-games to build their in-game currency directly with advertisements. 

With this success, we took CPAlead one step further and introduced the concept to Second Life, one of the largest online economies in a virtual world. For each time a player interacted with an ad, the advertising company paid out a specific amount of real revenue. From these funds, CPAlead retained a portion and the player received a specific amount of virtual currency to purchase in-game content.

Having built a strong foundation in the virtual currency space, CPAlead sought to expand into the market with an offering that could be utilized on a larger scale. In 2008, CPAlead released our current solution, the CPAlead Widget.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

We have mostly acquired customers through word-of-mouth marketing and our sales team, but we also have a strong presence in the online CPA community. However, we also run several campaigns throughout the year, like our current “Win Big with CPAlead” referral contest where web publishers can earn money from referring publishers to our solution. 

Differentiators

We set ourselves apart by maintaining a high moral and ethical standard in everything we do, with a unique adherence to industry regulation. The foundation of our business is trust and transparency so our customers, both on the publisher and advertiser side, know that they’re receiving quality service and payments they can stand behind. Not only do we monetize only content that web publishers legally have a right to publish, but we also provide the best payment options possible. 

Our standards translate beyond day-to-day strategy as we strive to make our mark in the community. As a socially-conscious company, CPAlead supports Kiva, a global organization that connects people through lending to alleviate poverty. We’re also active in our local Las Vegas community, recently receiving an award for helping with the local Children’s Cancer Foundation.

Business Model

CPAlead earns money through advertisers who opt-in to our services and through the deployment of internal products that allow us to monetize web traffic. CPAlead’s current focus is on the development of organic monetization tools that will allow us to enhance user experiences while providing both publishers and advertisers with a powerful solution.

Current Needs

We’re looking to educate web publishers and advertisers on the benefits of CPA, specifically, how they can use this technology to capitalize on their premium content, while simultaneously showing advertisers all of the benefits they can reap.

CPAlead – www.cpalead.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Gaming/Social Media

Social Gaming Startup Diversion Raises Funding From Eric Schmidt, Michael Eisner, Others (via TechCrunch)

Social Media

Google Buys Social Media Firm Fridge To Bolster Google+ (via Mashable)

Posted by startupbeat at 07:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: aisle411

Website: www.aisle411.com

Founders: Nathan Pettyjohn and Matthew Kulig

Headquarters: St. Louis, MO

Year Founded: 2008

Twitter: @aisle411

Brief Company Description: “aisle411 is the premier mobile shopping platform allowing users to navigate to products down to the specific section of an aisle.”

By Nathan Pettyjohn, co-founder and CEO

Product Overview

Approximately 24 percent of all retail revenue is lost because consumers cannot find the products they want, or information about it.

aisle411 is a mobile in-aisle shopping platform that empowers anyone with a mobile phone to find and navigate to products and promotions quickly and easily in retail stores. With intuitive voice recognition technology powered by Nuance, we offer a unique in-store search and comprehensive mobile retail shopping solution. With the aisle411 app, users can instantly locate products in stores down to the specific section of the aisle, manage shopping lists, find offers and share experiences with friends via social media integration.

Annually, billions of shopping trips to a store start with planning or research online, and end in a trip to the store. Over the next few years, we anticipate the majority of all pre-planned digital shopping trips will be executed on a mobile device, while in a store. aisle411 is focused on creating the best in-store shopping list execution platform, allowing users to check-in, route their entire list through the most efficient path through the store, and discover things digitally while navigating the aisles that shoppers may not find otherwise, like a special offer in the next aisle, a recommended item by a friend, or a healthy alternative. We are making this shopping platform available for integration into all other digital shopping tools, both online and mobile, retailer branded and other third parties within the space.

Founders’ Story

The concept for aisle411 came about in October 2007 when I was in a Big Box hardware chain and spent 20 minutes looking for a surge protector on my lunch hour. I had my light bulb idea.

I teamed up with Matthew Kulig, a serial entrepreneur in the area. Kulig and I formed a corporation in April 2008, came up with name "aisle411,” worked together to write and file a patent, and built out the company’s technical team.

We strategically launched the service with Ace Hardware in St. Louis, MO and Southern Illinois, and with Price Cutter, a regional grocery chain in Springfield, MO. These early strategic customers allowed us to build the system with real customer data and to study the consumer use interface to best enhance the system in a real-world environment. This strategy also served to announce us as the inventor and authority in the retail product location assistance space. The strategy worked and we are now in available in over 1,700 retail locations and in discussions and pilot stages with four of the top 10 retailers in the U.S. regarding an implementation strategy in their stores.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

Viral and social marketing has facilitated rapid user adoption rates by consumers. The benefits are simple for the consumer: save time and save money using aisle411. We offer a seemingly limitless marketing opportunity for advertisers to increase sales, build loyalty, generate new revenues and enhance productivity in ways unimaginable in the past.

The integration of our in-store navigation platform into retailer branded and other shopping applications will facilitate rapid user adoption rates by the retailer’s consumers. This is being supported by some forms of traditional media including in-store signage, shelf-talkers, hand-outs and in-store circulars. Additionally, we leverage retailers’ and product manufacturers’ current loyalty programs to market the service. By utilizing their current consumer databases, we can create instant consumer awareness through email, text-message, direct mail and other loyalty program communication vehicles.

How We Differentiate from the Competition

aisle411 is the only voice activated navigation system that allows users to find products down to the specific section of the aisle in the store on their mobile phone. We transform the customer experience by offering product searches, in-store navigation, digital shopping lists, in-store coupons and a proprietary ad engine that targets users based on shopping intent and location information.

We offer significant value for advertisers by providing unique business intelligence on what shoppers are searching for moments before they buy it. Consumer shopping metrics, including insights at point of decision, unique shopper segmentation analytics and a consumer footprint across retail segments can be aggregated and delivered to retailers; an unprecedented level of detailed information that was previously inaccessible.

Our mobile marketing channel opens an opportunity for retailers to offer relevant mobile marketing directly to consumers based on their search request. The system offers retailers and product manufacturers the ability to place mobile offers and product recommendations.

Business Model

We are a mobile marketing technology company providing innovative services to multiple industries. We are generating revenues from Fortune 50 brands. Our sales pipeline is a who’s-who of top retail and product companies.

Through marketing revenue, we offer a seemingly limitless marketing opportunity for retailers to increase sales, build loyalty, generate new revenues and enhance productivity in ways unimaginable in the past. We believe that the aisle411 product offers one of the biggest mobile marketing opportunities and employee productivity enhancements available for retailers in the coming decade.

Current Needs

We are growing aggressively and are looking for key talent with experience in product management, engineering, retailer and shopper marketing and platform and app developer business development.

Aisle411 – www.aisle411.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Cloud

Cloud Storage Company CX Raises $5M From Eric Schmidt And Others, Acquires FileDen (via TechCrunch)

Acer buys iGware, makes a $320 million bet on the cloud (via Engadget)

Cloud-Based Game Streaming Service Gaikai Raises $30M From Qualcomm, NEA And Others (via TechCrunch)

Finance

ZestCash gets $19M to offer data-driven loans (via gigaom)

Gaming

Unity Technologies Takes $12 Million For 3D Gaming Development, Looks To China For Big Growth (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 07:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Editor’s Note: This is a new Q&A series from StartUp Beat that features entrepreneurs who have successfully guided their startups (or multiple startups) to maturity. It is meant to complement StartUp Beat’s coverage of early-stage startups and an effort to provide further insight into the experiences of tech entrepreneurs.

Bio: PV Kannan is the founder of 24/7 Customer. He was among the finalists for the ‘Ernst &Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award’, 2010.

PV was featured as a thought leader in the field of global sourcing in 'The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century,' a book by Tom Friedman, and also in 'Outsourcing Thought Leaders: Managing Business without Borders' by Booz Allen Hamilton. Prior to founding 24/7 Customer, Inc. in 2000, PV served in various leadership roles at KANA Software, Inc.

SUB: What was your first entrepreneurial venture?

Kannan: My first entrepreneurial venture was Business Evolution—an online customer interaction company that became one of the leading providers to one of the top online retailers. In 1999, the company was acquired by our competitor, KANA Software.

SUB: What prompted you to start 24/7 Customer?

Kannan: On a holiday, after we sold Business Evolution, I started thinking about what my next venture could be. So in December 1999, my friend and business partner Shanmugam Nagarajan (Nags) and I decided to combine our earlier experiences. One was offshoring with programming, which we had experienced during our tenure at TCS. The other was when we were leading Business Evolution, where we had to train our customers regularly about the software that we had developed and implemented at the customers’ site. We would train them repeatedly, because of the high attrition levels of the staff who managed chat and email, at the customers’ site. Also, the call centers were very frustrated with finding people who could write proper English for email and chat.

We got the idea of how advantageous it will be, if these people were based in another country, educated in English and able to provide repeated support at a lower cost. It would be beneficial for the customer and also an attractive employment opportunity for the graduates in that country.

In April 2000, we set up 24/7 Customer in Bangalore and started off with our first customer, doing their customer service with email. Today, we have over 9,000 people worldwide with centers in India, Philippines, Guatemala, China and Nicaragua. 

SUB: Was there a point at which you knew 24/7 Customer would hit it big?

Kannan: In 2003 as customers started knocking on our doors—and we could not take all of them—we realized 24/7 Customer had turned the corner and we were onto something big.

SUB: Was there a “tipping point” when 24/7 Customer really picked up steam and where it started growing exponentially?

Kannan: There were two points in time where 24/7 Customer picked up steam—first, when we moved from focusing exclusively on the U.S. market and added Europe. The other, when we entered the Philippines and Latin America as delivery regions. It was the tipping point.

SUB: What were the first steps you took to establishing 24/7 Customer?

Kannan: The first step was to focus on building a strong team and our own ethos and culture that resonated with all the stakeholders—our clients, our employees and the board. Our focus is on clients we love working with and having people in the team who genuinely enjoy working together. When there is no fit whether with clients or people, we do not hesitate to part ways.

SUB: If you had it to do over again, what would the first concrete step to establishing 24/7 Customer have been?

Kannan: More focus on hiring the right cultural fit for early employees. We had to let a few employees go within 18 months of establishing the company.

SUB: What were the most significant obstacles to growing 24/7 Customer to maturity?

Kannan: Nothing that you would not find in a normal startup. We learned who not to hire and what kinds of clients to go after. We got rid of some early employees where the values were not meeting the high standards we expected of them and we waited patiently to get the right investors and board members. Our high standards in who we like to work with—whether it is clients, people or investors—means investing in equal amounts of persistence and patience to get what we want.

SUB: What kinds of outside funding did you raise?

Kannan: We have been funded by the founders, Sherpalo, and Sequoia Capital.

SUB: What were the metrics/milestones that indicated to you that 24/7 Customer had moved past startup stage?

When we grew from a single geography to multiple geographies; when we crossed 3,000 employees across geographies; when we set up multiple centers in a single location; when our clients approached us to provide support in multiple geographies; and when we had Fortune 500 clients visiting Bangalore and making it a point to visit 24/7 Customer as part of their agenda.

Posted by startupbeat at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

IPOs

Zillow Soars 200 Percent In First Trade With Over $1 Billion Valuation (via TechCrunch)

Web Content

Beepl Scores Seed Funding, Aims To Build A Better Q&A Mousetrap (via TechCrunch)

TripIt Owner Concur Invests $5 Million In Flight Price Tracker Yapta (via TechCrunch)

Kleiner Perkins Doubles Down On FindTheBest (via TechCrunch)

Social Media

Facebook For Latinos Quepasa Buys myYearbook For $100 Million In Cash And Stock (via TechCrunch)

Mobile/Advertising

IDG Ventures Pumps $3 Million Into Indian Mobile Ad Network Vserv (via TechCrunch)

GreenTech

SynapSense Raises $16 Million To Help Data Centers Save On Energy Bills (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 07:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Pikimal

Website: www.pikimal.com

Founders: Eric Silver

Headquarters: Pittsburgh, PA

Year Founded: 2010

Employees: 13

Twitter: @Pikimal

Brief Company Description: “Pikimal is a decision engine, using only facts, that allows users to sort, compare and determine the most important products for them.”

By Eric Silver, founder and CEO

Product Overview

Pikimal is a decision engine that allows users to sort, compare and determine the most important products for them. We use only facts—no marketing, bias or opinion—to help users find the best product or choice for them.

Our mission is to help consumers make the best buying decisions. From data that is scattered, vast, and technocratic, we gather it all in one place behind an intuitive interface aimed for use by everyday shoppers. We help users choose amongst brands and types of products, allowing users to find the product that best suits individual needs and preferences. Through our website, consumers interact with product Pikis, or web applications, which convey each product’s qualities, specifications and features. The Piki allows the user to select how important each feature and specification is to the user, and, upon adjustment, the Piki determines the products that best match the user’s preferences. Behind each Piki is a current, comprehensive database of products generated from available information.

We feature a collection of more than 200 product Pikis, and seek to build accurate, up-to-date Pikis that address a wide range of products. We aim to suit the needs of various demographics of consumers and looks to grow and change to best address users’ needs.

Founder’s Story

My name is Eric Silver and I am the founder and CEO of Pikimal.

While studying marketing at CMU’s school for business, I came to the realization that we are all kind of being hacked by marketing. This insight offended me and I was surprised that everyone was so used to it. In an attempt to change this, I came up with the idea that would eventually become Pikimal—to get more facts available to people and allow them to identify what’s right for them with those facts. The idea stewed while I finished school and worked at both McKinsey and ModCloth. Eventually, the idea couldn’t be contained, and Pikimal was founded with the hope of making money helping people make better decisions, in February, 2010.

When people talk about good places to start a fledgling company, not many think of Pittsburgh. It still suffers from an “old world” feel—at the junction of three rivers, Pittsburgh was a place for industry, unionization, Pinkertons, coal and steel—a legacy writ so large that it looms over the city like the smog it has displaced.

The truth, though, is that as coal has left, the legacy of the magnates of the past has remained in libraries, hospitals, companies, universities and museums. The rich history of Pittsburgh has created an ecosystem of talented businessmen, numerous and talented small-company incubators and a rich class of brilliant students. I stayed in Pittsburgh to start the company because I like the culture and I like the people.

I named the company Pikimal for a few reasons. We’re building Pikis to be like Wikis. Right now on the site users can use their own preferences to build their own decisions. They can share with other users and we learn what is most important to our users and are able to give better recommendations. Pikimal can also be thought of as “pick all of everything” or “pick them all.” This shows that we have a wide scope of what people value, from amusement parks to universities. And it was available, so that counted for a lot.

What Makes Pikimal Different?

It’s not like there is a shortage of ways to find things online, right? That’s kind of the problem in itself. With so many ways to find a new dishwasher—from Google, to reviews, to social recommendations and back to Google—why make a new one? Well, what makes Pikimal stand out from the competition is the ability for users to navigate products and search for the right one using only facts. No bias, marketing or hype can affect Pikimal’s rankings when it comes to products. Our algorithm looks at facts and that’s it! Even a step above, we actually allow users to determine how important a fact is to them, overall, using sliders that alter the weights of facts in the algorithm. It’s the first time someone has ever been able to seek out products not by sorting or comparing, but saying just how important certain features or specifications are in comparison to others.

Marketing and Promotion Strategy

Here at Pikimal, we don’t employ any single, specific marketing strategy. Instead, our company focuses on adding features and optimizing the site to offer the greatest benefit to users. Our employees engage in outreach to niche communities to ensure that Pikis have the best possible information and offer the most to their visitors. Soon, we plan to implement an award system to let manufacturers know in what categories their products are winning in relation to their competitors.

Business Model

At Pikimal we help channel users to vendors that offer the products that they choose to be the best. No products are ever recommended above others and, eventually, we’d like to not even prefer specific vendors where possible. Beyond the affiliate relationship with vendors, we employ minimal site advertising, and are looking forward to someday working with product manufactures to help better understand the needs and wants of the consumers. We also hope to find how important certain things are when making decisions.

Current Needs

Right now we need brilliant people that feel the same way we do. We need people who are passionate about saving the web from marketing and want to build something great.

Pikimal – www.pikimal.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Reading, UK-based DataSift has built a platform for organizing and analyzing the social web for business intelligence. The company was founded in 2007 and recently closed a $6 million funding round led by IA Ventures and GRP Partners.

SUB: What is the value proposition that DataSift offers?

Patterson: DataSift solves two problems. It allows for the curation of content and business intelligence and data mining. It does this on a pay per use basis, by aggregating and augmenting the social web. This provides economies of scale and access to data which has never been available before.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Patterson: We have related, but not direct, competitors at this stage. Gnip also has a re-syndication contract for Twitter Data, but we don’t believe their business model and product is in the same category as DataSift. We are all about augmenting and filtering data sources, not keywords.

SUB: What differentiates DataSift from your competitors (or from those offering similar services)?

Patterson: We expose the meta data behind all our real time sources and allow our customers to data mine based upon this. This is unique in the market.

SUB: How are you marketing the service?

Patterson: A combination of PR, direct sales and outbound marketing.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind DataSift? Was there an “aha” moment, or was the idea longer in developing?

Patterson: We built tweetmeme.com and were having to manually curate the content into channels, i.e.: sports, finance etc. and quickly realized we need a filtering tool to allow us to do that. Hence DataSift was born.

SUB: When was the company founded, and what were the first steps you took to establishing it?

Patterson: Founded in 2007 when we raised angel investment.

SUB: You just closed a $6 million funding round. How do you plan to use the funds?

Patterson: To expand our global sales operations, to continue to innovate on the platform.

SUB: Why was now the right time to raise outside funding?

Patterson: We are about to launch and open the platform which takes resources. We were lucky to secure the types of VCs we did, being based in the U.S. and with a deep understanding of big data and social. So this was a good fit.

SUB: Do you plan to raise more in the near future?

Patterson: No current plans. We are focused on putting the Series A round to good use and to get to break even asap.

SUB: What are some of the challenges of working with giant data/content producers like Twitter?

Patterson: We have had a long relationship for the past four years, so we have grown with them from when they were just 30 people. The market is moving very quickly and there is a lot of pressure to monetize, so this means change. We have been fortunate to have been able to change and adapt and to maintain and be on the inside with Twitter.

SUB: What have the biggest obstacle been so far to building DataSift?

Patterson: It’s a platform, so there is a lot of heavy lifting to do before you even have something to show. So dealing with the amount of data we do in a scalable way meant we have invested heavily in our architecture, and are now getting to the point where we can focus on the customer experience.

SUB: Where do you seen DataSift in about a year from now?

Patterson: At the center of the data processing world, having successfully allowed enterprise customers to open their data silos and expose this to developers and consumers to gather insight.

DataSift – www.datasift.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Games/Social Media

SupersonicAds Raises $4.3 Million From Greylock For Social In-Game Advertising (via TechCrunch)

eCommerce

JOOR Raises $2.25 Million For Private Online Fashion Marketplace (via TechCrunch)

Gaming

Live Gamer Buys GamerDNA And BrandPort To Add In-Game Ads To Monetization Platform (via TechCrunch)

Mobile/Advertising

Komli Media Acquires Mobile Advertising Platform ZestADZ (via TechCrunch)

Mobile

Sequoia Capital Leads $10 Million Series A Funding For MoboTap (via AllTop Startups)

Posted by startupbeat at 07:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Sentigo

Website: www.sentigo.com

Founders: Gadi Shvadron and Omri Braun

Headquarters: Ramat Gan, Israel

Year Founded: 2009

Brief Company Description: Sentigo’s Wall St. Scanner enables users to make wise investment decisions by providing a one-stop source for information affecting the stock market.

By Gadi Shvadron, co-founder and CEO

Product Overview

Wall St. Scanner is a free smartphone app which uses sophisticated text analysis and proprietary algorithms to aggregate and capture the online sentiment of publicly traded companies and market data. Its unique method combines information gleaned from both traditional news media and corporate websites and opinions expressed on social networking sites, chat rooms and blogs. The application enables users to make wise investment decisions by providing a one-stop source for all of the information affecting the stock market.

Founders’ Story

Sentigo was founded in 2009 by partner Omri Braun and myself. Prior to establishing Sentigo, I was the founder of AllJobs.co.il, the leading job recruitment website in Israel. With experience in working with mobile phones and marketing, along with former members of the Israeli military intelligence, I was able to develop unique software that can gain information from market data, online news and social networking sources to give users an easy-to-use financial dashboard for the top 2,500 U.S. stocks.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

When releasing a new product, multiple approaches to marketing and promotion should be taken. As a startup company we focus on building awareness of the product in consumer driven outlets and in-the-know technology blogs. We also focus on building name recognition as an innovative tech company. Our four-part approach consists of the following:

-In-App advertising

PPC campaign using mobile ad networks and ad reference sites to build brand awareness.

-Search Engine Marketing/Search Engine Optimization

Every business understands the power of search engines, building up your presence on them is vital. We set out on a keyword campaign that would drive traffic to www.wallstscanner.com and www.sentigo.com.

-Public Relations

Word of mouth is always a great way to drum up downloads, but given the sophistication of the app we want to ensure that the right messaging was received. We are utilizing a PR firm to reach out to consumer, financial and technology media.

-Affiliate Marketing

License real time content (text links, banners and widgets) as a platform for “trade now” referrals.

How We Differentiate From the Competition

Unlike our competitors, Wall St. Scanner leverages market place sentiment from multiple sources—social networking sites, traditional news media, analyst reports, etc., in total over 16,000 online sources and provides users with a forecast for the following day’s stock performance. This feature is based on a sophisticated historical statistical correlation model proven to top industry analysts’ estimates. The app provides users with all the pertinent data to manage their portfolio in one place.

Business Model

-Subscription Fees: Premium content and functionality for individual consumers on mobile apps and web site.

-Advertising: Ad sales on web sites and mobile apps.

-Data syndication/license fees: Content access and distribution to online financial publishers and professional platforms.

Current Needs

We are currently looking to achieve over one million downloads by the end of the year. Today, after seven weeks from launching the first product, we have over 70,000 downloads and buzz about the app is spreading. As our business is picking up rapidly, we will be looking to open a U.S. office and hire additional business development and marketing talents. Right now, the app is available for the iPod/iPad but will be released on a website and the Android and Blackberry platforms later this summer. By the end of the year we plan to expand the coverage to the Canadian stock market, the Forex market and the ETFs.

To summarize all the major objectives mentioned, expanding to new platforms ,new investment categories and acquiring new customers till the company reaches cash flow positive, the company, has just started its round A of capital raising.

Sentigo – www.sentigo.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Social Media

Move Buys Interactive Profile Creation Tool SocialBios (via TechCrunch)

Web Content

Adobe Acquires Electronic Signature Startup EchoSign (via TechCrunch)

Blackboard Buyer Providence Equity Acquires Personalized Online Learning Platform From PrepMe (via TechCrunch)

Mobile

Aegis Takes $11m Stake in TigerSpike (via MobileMarketing)

eCommerce

BuyWithMe Acquires Card-Linked Loyalty Company Edhance (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 07:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Creaza

Website: www.creaza.com

Founding CEO: Jostein Svendsen

Year Founded: 2011

Employees: 6

Investors: Founders

Brief Company Description: Everybody has a story to tell, and Creaza enables the world’s stories to come to life via video with its intuitive, socially engaging and affordable cloud-based video production platform.

By Jostein Svendsen, CEO

Product Overview: Creaza is the cloud-based online video production platform designed to enable users to collaboratively produce, share and store user-generated video. By combining the power of broadcast-quality HD and the vast reach of social media, Creaza is in an unrivaled position to “make video social.”

Creaza is about to become the cloud’s video production platform of choice for consumers, businesses and professionals who want to produce and collaborate on self-generated, broadcast-quality video content. Creaza is affordable and easy to use, yet it gives video content producers creative freedom.

Founders’ Story: Creaza’s founding team is Norwegian and has known each other for a number of years. This year, they have come together to launch Creaza, which has roots in a video editing platform with more than 160,000 users in the educational market in Europe.

I’m a serial entrepreneur in Europe and North America, having founded and grown several successful companies in digital media, digital financial services and digital commerce. Creaza was a natural next step for me. I founded two of Norway’s leading digital media and Internet companies, both of which went on to become successful publicly traded issuers in Sweden. One of them grew to become one of the largest Internet development agencies, with 2,000 employees worldwide.

Apart from digital media, online financial services have also been a focus for me. In London, I founded Sharepeople, one of the world’s first multi-market online stockbrokers. With investment from Goldman Sachs, Soros, GE Capital and others, Sharepeople grew to become the second best-known financial services brand in the UK after Barclays Bank. The company was acquired by American Express and renamed American Express Financial Services Europe, as a part of Amex expansion into new financial products in Europe.

I also helped launch a new credit card and savings bank in Norway, the first bank in the cloud and with no physical branches. It was later acquired by the third largest bank in the world, Banco Santander, when they wanted to expand into Scandinavia.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy: All you have to know about the market potential for Creaza is that 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. The vast majority of that video is unedited, primarily because there has not been a user-friendly and affordable editing tool widely available. Creaza is at the vanguard of a rapidly emerging market in which millions of users in thousands of communities are beginning to continually interact via user-generated online video.

Our cloud-based platform helps consumers, groups and enterprises make video social. We foresee it being adopted by literally millions of users in the next 12 months. When we launch more formally in the next few months, we will make Creaza available for very low cost in order to attract users.

How We Differentiate from the Competition: Creaza is the only cloud-based video editing platform that enables you to easily and affordably shoot, individually or collaboratively shape, share and store broadcast-quality video. Users can generate, edit and store video on mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and PCs. Creaza enables users to upload video and playback video-mixes on mobile phones and tablets, as well as on PCs and laptops.

Most video editing tools are desktop-bound and designed for professional videographers. Creaza actually has superior functionality even while it is immediately accessible, inexpensive and easy to use. Even beginners can shoot raw footage with a mobile phone, quickly produce a broadcast-quality video and share it with their friends on their favorite social networks.

Business Model: We will divulge this more completely when we launch. However, we will offer a combination of free usage and tiered subscriptions.

Current Needs: We are always looking for excellent people.

Creaza – www.creaza.com

Posted by startupbeat at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cloud9 is a cloud-based, collaborative Integrated Development Environment. The Amsterdam-based startup recently raised $5.5 million in Series A funding.

SUB: Please briefly describe Cloud9, and the value proposition you bring to the market.

Daniels: Cloud9 IDE provides the first commercial cloud-based Integrated Development Environment for JavaScript incorporating HTML5, and supporting Python, Ruby and PHP. Developers can access, edit, and share projects anywhere, to build, test, debug, and deploy web and mobile applications in as little as half the time, with fewer technical skills.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Daniels: As the first commercial Development as a Service, or DaaS, platform featuring debugging, collaboration, and mobile access, we are in a unique position. Our main competition comes from legacy desktop tools, such as TextMate, VI, and Emacs. The core of developers still follows the Eclipse/Java model, which doesn’t directly compete, since it lacks cloud-based development and integration. Other cloud services out there at this time are simply projects, not commercial platforms.

SUB: What are the primary differentiators Cloud9 offers that distinguishes you from the competition?

Daniels: None of the aforementioned competitors come remotely close to our refined UI and the number of developers both creating the product and using it. Furthermore, these competitors seem to have a much less aggressive roadmap for collaboration, partnerships and actual features than Cloud9 IDE. As of now, these others are not competing, however they do aim for a similar space as we are.

SUB: How are you marketing/promoting Cloud9?

Daniels: We started out with a very successful kick-off at Demo Spring this year. We are using a mix of progressive media coverage and word-of-mouth buzz with targeted social coverage. Thus far we received a fair amount of thought leader and enthusiast blog recognition, a growing presence of passionate followers and fans on Twitter and Facebook, that have been leading to actionable clicks, paving the way for broader recognition.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind Cloud9?

Daniels: Building applications for the cloud on local computers required developers to simulate cloud environments locally and to do that be system administrators rather than developers. We saw the need for a cloud-based IDE for which web development and JavaScript were the core focus. We wanted to create an alternative to Eclipse variants and other Java or C++ IDEs, where extending and customizing applications is done in either Java or C++, and is generally very difficult to use. We figured that if you develop web applications to run online, why shouldn’t your application development be online too?

SUB: When was the company founded, and what were the first steps you took to establishing it?

Daniels: Rik and I started out with Ajax.org a couple of years back. Ajax is a group of technologies combining HTML and CSS to mark up and style information. The resulting document object model (DOM) is accessed with JavaScript to dynamically display information and allow the user to interact with it. Cloud9 IDE, Inc. is the company that creates Cloud9 IDE. Cloud9, in effect, builds on top of Ajax.org’s UI technology to offer a cloud-based IDE. We saw the need for a cloud-based IDE for which web development and JavaScript were the core focus. We wanted to create an alternative to Eclipse variants and other Java or C++ IDEs, where extending and customizing applications is done in either Java or C++, and is generally very difficult to use. On March 1st 2011, we launched the fully commercial DaaS platform, featuring debugging, collaboration and mobile access.

SUB: You recently closed a $5.5 million Series A funding round. How do you plan to use the funds?

Daniels: We will employ the funds to consolidate our leadership in the emerging cloud-based Development as a Service (DaaS) segment of the $8 billion application development market. The new funds will accelerate support for multiple languages, platforms, and cloud/mobile SDKs. To reach the ambitious development goals, we will expand our Amsterdam development team and open a new U.S. headquarters in San Francisco.

SUB: Why was now the right time to raise outside funding?

Daniels: We had a core team ready to tackle an ambitious development plan. The added funds enable us to step on the gas by again expanding our Amsterdam development team, and by opening our new U.S. headquarters in San Francisco.

SUB: Do you plan to raise more funding in the near future?

Daniels: While I wouldn’t rule that out should new opportunities arise, our current funding round, together with revenues from our growing customer base, should be sufficient for the foreseeable future.

SUB: What have the biggest challenges been so far to building Cloud9?

Daniels: Deciding what to do first. In moving to a cloud-based development model there are so many exciting ways to make developers more efficient, that we’re like kids in a candy shop. For that reason, it was critical to lay out a comprehensive development plan, while keeping a close eye on user feedback.

SUB: Where do you see Cloud9 in about a year from now?

Daniels: We want Cloud9 to be the premier online development environment for JavaScript and HTML5 developers, providing DaaS (Development as a Service). Cloud9 aims to be more than an IDE by providing the entire infrastructure a developer needs to start, run and debug a project, without hassle. We have a huge roadmap for Cloud9. There is language analysis so you get autocomplete, warnings, templates, refactoring and so on. Collaboration, with Google-docs style multi-user experiences is coming up, and many integrated services for different languages, testing and rollout. We have a lot of work to do.

Cloud9 – www.cloud9ide.com

Posted by startupbeat at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

IPOs

Zillow Ups IPO Pricing To $16 To $18 Per Share With Nearly $500 Million Valuation (via TechCrunch)

Web Content/Services

SupportSpace Lands $12M For Remote Technical Support Services (via TechCrunch)

Video

Shelby.tv Raises $1.5 Million To Give You Personalized Channels Of Online Video (via TechCrunch)

Mobile/Wireless

Getyoo Raises A €600,000 Seed Round For Interactive NFC Solutions (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 08:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Tip It Girls
Website: www.tipitgirls.com
Headquarters: Louisville, Kentucky
Employees: 2
Investors: Founders

By Christian W. Hahn, co-founder

Product Overview:

Tip It Girls was created to make discovering and sharing the things girls love easy and fun. A simple separation of followers and friends allows for either private or public/open communications. Anyone can see public tips, but only Tip It Girls (friends) can view private tips.

Users of the Tip It Girls network don’t have to search for friends, but rather can make new friends by watching what they tip on the tip scroll. Tip It Girls shares every new public tip on the tip scroll, which is on the site’s homepage and the iPhone application’s front page. Every few seconds, when a new tip is added, the other tips scroll down.

Olivia, a teenager who loves to shop for the newest trends at all the hot spots in the mall, finds a perfect pair of leather boots. She is so excited that she calls her best friend Nicole on her cell and tells her all about the boots. She wants her friend’s opinion, her advice, her positive feedback to make the decision to buy a little easier. So, Olivia takes a photo of the boots and sends it to Nicole, who then tells Olivia that she should buy them.

If she were a Tip It Girl, Olivia could have gotten public or private feedback on her potential purchase and tipped other girls with similar taste to the availability of the new boots.

Tip It Girls is a place that makes the sharing that girls do when they shop easier, more fun, and more social. Tip It Girls is also a place for shoppers to find and make friends with other girls who have similar tastes and interests.

However, sharing is only part of the fun—discovering like-minded girls is just as important. So, the tip it scroll page was born. Now, Tip It Girls not only can take photos and share the things they love, but also can browse all the public tips from other Tip It Girls. The “hunt” for a special purchase or perfect piece for a room’s décor is a major part of the fun, but so is finding new friends.

Lastly, we all like to achieve milestones. Tip It Girls are not any different. The more people who decide to follow a Tip It Girl because she tips fun stuff, the higher she climbs on the ladder of top Tip It Girls and the more status and badges she earns. The badges are yet another way to make tipping fun and to engage users of the site.

BENEFITS

·         Girls only—no prying eyes. Be yourself.

·         Browse tips from girls all over the world. Search the database for keywords and find Tip It Girls who you want to follow.

·         Follow Tip It Girls that you like, and invite the best matches to become a VIP member of your personal Tip It Girl circle.

·         Discover new decorating and fashion trends.

·         Get instant feedback on everything from what to wear to what to buy from your trusted circle or from fashion-conscious girls who are part of the site.

·         Earn badges by gaining more followers. These badges give you discounts on our daily specials and from other participating retailers.

Tip it Girls makes sharing the things girls love fun, quick and easy. Each user of the site gets a visual blog to keep track of all of her tips. On the My Tip Page, other users can view any Tip It Girl’s public tips and learn about her style, follow her, or comment on her tips.

Founder’s Story:

The idea for Tip It Girls came from my observations of my lovely wife and her friends. My wife loves to shop and to decorate. She talks to her friends and family about fashion, decorating, and the best vacation spots. They share photos, ideas, opinions, and then make buying decisions. So, I decided to create a website and iPhone application to make this type of sharing easier and more fun.

Marketing and Operational Strategy Overview:

Initially, the goal is to create an experience for the user. Free downloads, no distracting sponsor ads, just fun. The iPhone application will have iAds integration as well as a unique advertisement section in a prime position that can be easily controlled. We will place specials, limited time deals, etc., into that advertisement section on top of the scroll page.

We will launch the site and the iPhone application with a contest that will run for approximately two months. The winner of the contest will receive a significant prize.

Advertisement will be limited to Facebook and other social media sites, app review sites, and blogs devoted to the site’s target audience. Video marketing Tip It Girls will be promoted on YouTube.
Our initial goal is to develop relationships with retailers that serve our target audience so that they can tip into the network.

We are not able to disclose the second phase of Tip It Girls yet.

How We Differentiate Ourselves from the Competition

Tip It Girls is a niche company. We are not everything to everyone. Our target market is specific, and our experience is geared towards that group.

We are the first application of its kind and offer several new and unique functions.

Tip It Girls will capitalize on the important “first to market” philosophy and on its user-friendly interface.

Lastly, Tip It Girls has a team of talented experts who understand the competitive landscape and target audience.

Business Model:

Initially, Tip It Girls will focus on building a network of users.

Minimal revenue will come from the iAds integration in the free application.

A limited number of sponsor advertisement slots are available on the website and the iPhone application will allow for relevant sponsor advertisement directly into the tip it scroll page on an hourly basis.

Other revenue models exist but cannot be disclosed yet.

Current Needs:

Tip It Girls seeks relationships with retailers that sell to our target market—girls between the age of 13 and 30 who use mobile devices.

We are also beginning to seek out investment partners for future growth. Currently, Tip It Girls is funded entirely in house.

Tip It Girls – www.tipitgirls.com

Posted by startupbeat at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Mobile

Crittercism Raises $1.2 Million From Kleiner Perkins And Google Ventures For App Support (via TechCrunch)

Cloud/Mobile

Apica Raises $2 Million To Expand To The U.S. And Make Your Web And Mobile Apps Speedier (via TechCrunch)

Advertising/Marketing

WordWatch Raises $1.4 Million, Helps Companies Maximize Their AdWords Campaigns (via TechCrunch)

IT/Storage

Nimble Storage raises $25M to bring flash to SMBs (via gigaom)

IT/SaaS

Domo Secures $33M from Benchmark Capital (via AllTopStartups)

Posted by startupbeat at 07:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Giraffic

Website: www.giraffic.com

Founder: Yoel Zanger, CEO

Headquarters: Tel Aviv

Year Founded: 2008

Employees: 7

Company Description (in 140 characters or less): “Fully-distributed VOD acceleration and delivery cloud.”

By Yoel Zanger, CEO

Product Overview

We offer the Giraffic Fully Distributed Video Acceleration Cloud, which has been adopted by more than 500,000 users across the world in less than 3 months, with over 10,000 new users joining daily, accelerating and offloading 70-80 percent of customers’ video traffic.

Our technology has proven its ability to save online video distributors over 50 percent of their bandwidth costs, delivering video content with a smooth playback and virtually eliminating the annoying re-buffering pauses.

We developed our Giraffic video streaming and distribution technology that guarantees high availability and smooth viewing experience for all variations of content consumption—niche, “long-tail” content (the audience consumes a more diverse set of content), as well as highly popular blockbusters.

Giraffic’s Video Acceleration Cloud, based on a unique low level data encoding technology, is an extremely efficient cloud storage technology, as well as an asynchronous and robust streaming protocol. It is based on the fully distributed cloud architecture, where content is delivered from multiple cloud peers (other network members) simultaneously. The Giraffic Video Accelerator application can be downloaded for free at select customer sites or at http://giraffic.com/index.aspx?banner=4.

Founder’s Story

I headed sales and business development in 2001 for one of the first companies in the world to develop video-on-demand services over broadband Internet and IPTV. I was exposed to the enormous potential of video delivery on the Internet. In 2008 I co-founded Giraffic together with my partner, physics and mathematics algorithm expert Dr. Gil Gat.

Having been a former executive at Phonetic Systems, a startup which was acquired by Nuance Communications in 2005, I joined forces with Dr. Gat who has gained his unmatched expertise in encoding, streaming protocols and storage algorithms working for numerous high-tech companies and academia.

Our vision is to enable the video everywhere boom by lifting the bandwidth congestion barriers and cost constraints for high definition (HD) smooth video delivery. We have also identified the opportunity to utilize our customer install base in the future in order to increase revenues for our customers by generating new reach and monetization opportunities for their video content.

Business Model

Our company is focusing on VOD streaming content
(as opposed to live or downloadable content), having the highest consumption and growth volumes in the Internet.

Giraffic’s business model is based on a premium performance acceleration fee, as well as splitting customers’ cost savings, insuring a mutual interest with the client. Giraffic will also offer its customers new monetization opportunities based on its global end-user footprint and share this revenue with the customers.

Giraffic offers solutions for three market segments:

Media Companies and Content Distributors

Giraffic’s strong VOD capabilities enables it to also support other types of media—such as games, software updates or other data transfer. Giraffic’s solution can be bundled with customers’ existing software such as video players, premium content offerings, toolbars and gaming platforms.

Social Networks and Video Sharing Sites

Even though most of such customers’ content is of extreme “long-tail” nature, even the initial views can be delivered exclusively from the Giraffic fully distributed cloud, with very little dependency on the content origin servers or CDN, regardless of how popular or “long-tail” they are, and regardless of the geographical location of the user.

OTT (Over the Top) TV Operators (IPTV & Satellite) and Device Manufacturers

Giraffic’s solution is compatible with set-top-boxes, connected digital video recorders and other media devices so it can stream content from other devices in the network and help OTT operators overcome Internet congestion and reduce bandwidth costs.

Our customers include leading online video and music publishers such as Craze Digital (www.OnlineMoviesBox.com) which owns over 5,000 full-length features with over two million views daily, AudioTube music, as well as several leading broadcasters who cannot be disclosed at the present time.

Current Needs

Giraffic is currently in the process of closing a new round of capital which will be used in order to grow its engineering and sales resources.

Giraffic – www.giraffic.com

Posted by startupbeat at 09:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

TechCrunch Disrupt 2010 winner Soluto makes “anti-frustration” software that utilizes crowd sourcing to find solutions to PC problems and for maintaining healthy systems. The Tel Aviv–based company was founded in 2007 and recently closed a $10.5 million funding round.

SUB: Please describe Soluto and the value proposition your software brings to the PC market.

Dvir: Many PC users are frustrated by their PCs, and Soluto’s goal is to make them happy. The burden of supporting the unhappy people falls on the shoulders of a very small group of PC techies, who put a lot of effort into helping their family, friends and co-workers. Soluto helps these super-users help themselves and others, in an easy, quick, fun way.

Soluto’s “anti-frustration software” is a downloadable Windows application. At the heart of its technology is a learning system that automatically finds solutions for PC frustrations, based on crowd sourcing. Soluto detects various problems affecting the PC user experience and, based on advanced technology, pinpoints and analyzes what obstacles are standing in the way of the user.

Soluto uses the same technology to determine which actions users took that had a positive effect on their computing experience. For example, terminating a certain processes or reconfiguring certain applications can dramatically improve the behavior of a particular piece of software. This knowledge is learned automatically by Soluto’s technology and is then shared with other users suffering from similar problems.

Insights from the data gathered by Soluto are stored in the PC Genome, Soluto’s knowledgebase of PC frustrations and solutions, built for the benefit of all PC users. This data will not only help Soluto’s users, but will also help software and hardware vendors to build better products, for the benefit of all.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind Soluto? Was it just the result of many frustrating experiences with PC technical issues?

Dvir: We founded Soluto in 2007 with the goal of bringing an end to the frustrations PC users encounter, using advanced technology combined with collective user wisdom. As PC users from a very young age, we were simply tired of being so frustrated with our PCs. And it’s not just us–many of the PC users around as were unhappy with their PCs.

A few basic things just didn’t make sense to us: why our PCs didn’t do what we asked them to, when we asked them to; why our PCs became increasingly sluggish and unresponsive, the more we used them and so quickly after we bought them; and why we had to think twice before installing additional software, for fear that it might have a negative effect on our PC performance.

We realized that we could build a technology that could undo this state of affairs. And so we did.

SUB: What are your target markets and how are you marketing Soluto?

Dvir: With over 1.5 billion PCs in the world, Soluto’s main target market is the far too common unhappy PC user.

Until today, Soluto didn’t invest even one cent in advertising or PR. Winning first prize at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2010 gave us initial recognition, and since then our marketing has been based on word of mouth.

Soluto is spread by computer techies. Representing just a small percentage of the PC consumers out there, techies, the ones charged with supporting the rest of the PC-using population, have taken to Soluto as a tool to help them support the users they support. Just by installing Soluto and solving his own problems, the tech-savvy user can bring happiness to friends, family, coworkers and millions of frustrated PC users around the world. For techies, this often means no more putting out fires, no more troubleshooting, no more long (and frustrating) phone conversations, and no more emergency house calls. They can help all the users they support with two words: “install Soluto”.

SUB: When was the company founded and what were the first steps you took to establishing it?

Dvir: We founded Soluto in 2007. It all started I got together with my old friend Ishay Green (our CTO) for a beer on the beach in Tel Aviv. The stars aligned, the idea was born, and the rest, as they say, is history. Since then we started developing the technology that three years later won us the title at TechCrunch Disrupt NY. We have continued to develop and recently launched a new version of the software with new features. We intend to keep on developing new and interesting stuff and we don’t intend to stop until PC users the world over are happy.

SUB: What is the PC Genome, and how is it different from the standard PC knowledge base?

Dvir: The PC Genome is Soluto’s unique knowledge database of PC frustrations and solutions, built automatically through the usage of Soluto software, for the benefit of all PC users. The PC Genome automatically gathers the anonymous statistical data at the heart of each “frustration” (i.e. each time a user gets frustrated with his PC because it’s slow, becomes unresponsive, or in some other way upsets him).

Similarly, each time a Soluto user successfully solves a PC frustration, that solution’s technical data is also gathered in the PC Genome. This knowledge is shared with the world via Soluto’s software and will be made available in much more detail via the PC Genome web application that we plan to release in the near future.

SUB: You recently closed a $10.5 million funding round. How do you plan to use the money?

Dvir: We intend to put the new funding toward the development of new solutions that will make people happier with their technology (both PCs and other platforms). We also intend to put some of the new funding toward the further development of the PC Genome.

SUB: Why was now a particularly good time to raise a second round of funding?

Dvir: We have several big products in the pipeline that we can’t wait to develop. We would have continued to grow with our former stream of funding, but at a slower pace than desired. This new infusion will enable us to develop and expand our offerings to users much more quickly and give us space and time to grow innovatively and creatively.

SUB: Do you plan to raise more funding in the next six-to-nine months?

Dvir: We don’t.

SUB: What have been the most significant challenges to building Soluto so far?

Dvir: The biggest challenge so far has been scaling our solution to suit the enormous number of unanticipated downloads we got a short time after TechCrunch Disrupt 2010. This meant we had to temporarily divert time and resources from developing new features. We were back on track after awhile, and we plan to release some exciting stuff soon.

SUB: Where do you see Soluto in about a year from now?

Dvir: We have some big plans for this year. Much of it I can’t reveal just yet, but I can say that something exciting for our techie users is on its way. Besides that, we plan to offer PC users more solutions to more frustrations, as well as offer solutions to frustrations encountered by users of other platforms. There are billions of frustrated technology consumers around the world and we want to make them all happy.

Soluto – www.soluto.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Mobile

Location-Based Q&A Platform Localmind Raises $600K (via TechCrunch)

Web Content

Evernote Lands New Funding, Thinks It Can Last 100 Years (via ReadWriteWeb)

Social Media

Google AdSense Founder Raises Cash From Lerer Ventures And Others For Stealth Startup Scopely (via TechCrunch)

eCommerce

eBay And Rubbermaid Put $6 Million In Order Fulfillment Company Shipwire (via TechCrunch)

IT/Data Management

GOTO Metrics Raises $3 Million, Relaunches As Zettaset, To Help Companies Manage Big Data (via TechCrunch)

IT/Software

Y Combinator Alum MemSQL Raises $2.1 Million From Ashton Kutcher, SV Angel And More (via TechCrunch)

Gaming

Badgeville raises $12M to lead the way in gamification (via VentureBeat)

Posted by startupbeat at 07:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: XYZ Interactive
Website: www.xyzinteractive.com
Founders:  Michael Kosic, CEO, and Andrew Lohbihler, CTO
Headquarters: Toronto, Canada. Silicon Valley office at Plug and Play Tech Center  
Year Founded: 2002
Employees: 3
Investors: Angel
Company Description (in 140 characters or less): “XYZ has a very low cost 3D positioning sensor technology enabling touchless and gesture control for all electronic displays and interfaces.”

By Michael Kosic, co-founder and CEO

Product Overview: XYZ is a software licensing company, the magic in what we do is not in the hardware sensors, but in the positioning method. Our method enables 3D positioning using common IR components like you would find in your TV remote control. Although our technology can be applied to many markets, (switches, appliances, industrial displays, toys, badge-tracking...) we expect it will find its way first to smartphones, e-readers, tablets, and associated peripherals.

Founders’ Story: The founders of XYZ Interactive are Michael Kosic and Andrew Lohbihler. We met in the 90s when Andrew was still working at Nortel and Andrew had come up with a method for accurately locating cell-phones for E-911 purposes using just base station software changes. We shared a passion and a core belief that as our systems around us inevitably became more complex, our precise location (down to the mm) would become more and more important and valuable. We believed that having a low-cost method of doing this would create huge opportunities and value and so founded XYZ Interactive.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy: There are some existing touchless and positioning technologies in the market ranging from simple distance based triggers on faucets, to advanced full-body immersive interaction systems. We are engaged with several key OEMs in the space (and looking for more through direct contact) to bring new interactions into their next wave of consumer electronics products and industrial applications. Like all markets there are companies more prone to seeking innovation and we are seeking those out first with direct contact—ones which see augmenting their interfaces with additional experiences for their customers as a key differentiator or part of their own strategic evolution. We also have a pull strategy that involves making demo kits available for companies and product engineers who are still in tinkering mode.

How We Differentiate From the Competition: There are now companies using optical, capacitive, and acoustic methods to achieve similar 3D positioning. We love that there now is competition, especially as it helps validate this somewhat nascent market to our potential investors. We also love that we deliver more for less. We deliver more performance: our technology works through glass, works outdoors, and without blind spots. We cost less: fewer components; less power required; and less supply and manufacturing risk—all for a lower licensing fee and total cost to the OEMs. The best known competitive technology is in the Microsoft Kinect and may be the right choice if the use-case you are looking to enable requires a very high amount of spatial information (say knowing the angle that a user’s elbow is bent at). If you believe, as we do, that the majority of the mass market use-cases will be driven from simple 3D positioning and gestures such as positioning your hand over and around a retail kiosk to navigate without touching, or “hushing” the GPS in your car by waving your hand at it, gaming on your smartphone, or adding precise temperature control by where you position your hand over a touchless faucet, then that system is over-engineered with unrecoverable cost.

Business Model: We have three revenue streams. The primary one comes from OEMs that pay a per-unit licensing fee for our enabling software. This software is optimized for their particular component and performance choices (accuracy, power usage, component choice). We have already cashed checks from some OEMs for exploratory project costs and prototypes, which are also great from a secondary revenue stream and validation perspective, but are negligible in the long run. In the next quarter we plan to launch some simple 1D (linear distance) and 2D (“AirSwipe” gesture) sensors through a major global electronics distributor—this is the third commodity component type of revenue we will get.

Current Needs: Funding: An immediate tranche of 750K—to accelerate the licensing discussions with the OEMs, as well as continue the evolution of our advanced prototypes and patenting, we may be looking for an additional round early next year depending on how the verticals develop. People: Industry and vertical specific experience—business development executives who are properly connected and can get us to deals faster; engineers both senior and junior that are passionate about this space and can help support internal evolution and next-gen projects as well as work with OEMs to optimize our solution. Partners: Organizations with wisdom to leverage—as a key enabling technology, our potential is huge—as a small company we should take help wherever we can get it.

XYZ Interactive – www.xyzinteractive.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Cloud

CloudFlare gets $20M to make the web safe — and fast (via gigaom)

Citrix buys Cloud.com to step up VMware competition (via gigaom)

Web Content

Accel And Others Put $19M In Female-Focused Personal Finance Guide LearnVest (via TechCrunch)

Social Media

Lockerz Acquires Major Social Sharing Platform AddToAny

Mobile

MoPub Adds $6.5M Series A

Intel And Others Invest $2.6 Million In Mobile Entertainment Studio skyrocket (via TechCrunch)

Gaming

Ignite raises $7.5 million for online racing games (via Vator.tv)

Advertising/Marketing

Ad Serving Technology Startup Adzerk Secures $650,000 (via TechCrunch)

Martini Media acquires London-based The Digital Partnership (via TechCrunch Europe)

eCommerce

Posted by startupbeat at 07:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bio: Mr. Bui is a consumer software veteran with over two decades of experience leading and developing technology for top consumer brands that focus on usability and mass market acceptance such as Amazon.com, Visto.com, JavaSoft, and Apple. While at Amazon.com, Hong’s division was the driver for development of their award winning consumer shopping experience used by millions each day. His division also helped develop Amazon’s platform that has been a model of worldwide scalability. Prior to Amazon.com, Hong co-founded Visto and was instrumental to creating widely accepted mobile computing technology to compete with the Blackberry. At JavaSoft, he is credited with development of the Java Servlet standard that has since been adopted industry wide. Hong spent 7 years at Apple where he led teams to develop highly regarded workgroup software solutions and networking technology that is today’s standard for consumer excellence.

Memeo, a leading Silicon Valley company, partners with some of the largest consumer electronics device manufacturers in the world to build innovative software and services that allow consumers to access their personal content from any device, including iPhone, iPad, Android Phone, Android Tablet, HDTV, Google TV, Windows, Mac and Web.

SUB: What was your first entrepreneurial venture?

Bui: Visto was my first entrepreneurial venture. However, back when I was nine I realized that I could multiply my investment by selling baby goldfish to neighborhood kids and local pet stores.

SUB: What prompted you to start both Visto and Memeo? What was the inspiration behind the companies? 

Bui: Visto was founded as “Roampage.” We wanted to offer a then unique push email service allowing corporate email to be accessed from outside the company firewall. In 1996, Visto offered what was the first complete synchronization PC to browser-based application suite, Visto Briefcase, which included email, a to-do list, calendar, address book, online file storage, and browser bookmarks.

Memeo was born out of necessity. My laptop was dropped by the security guard and I lost all files including my engagement and travel photos. The company co-founder later shared with me that his mother’s system had crashed and years of work files as well as cherished photo collections were lost. There were literally hundreds of back-up solutions out there; however, none of them addressed needs from a consumer perspective. Our experiences with file loss helped us design the basic pillars of Memeo. Memeo’s simple “zero-touch” back-up technology and flexible backup destinations eventually helped define the back-up industry standard.

SUB: Was there a point at which you knew both Visto and Memeo would hit it big?

Bui: Steve Jobs once said, “Software is the consumer experience.” With consumers moving rapidly to the digital world for everything from photography and music to finance and mobile communication, protection against loss of valuable data files had become paramount. Helping consumers safeguard and manage their digital files in a convenient and simple way was the focus of Memeo. It was a big validation of our success when Seagate decided to license Memeo software even after they had acquired Maxtor and Mirrar—both of which had their own versions of backup software. WD quickly followed since Memeo Autobackup was ahead in terms of simplicity and robustness.

Visto, in retrospect, was about 10 years ahead of the market. It had its fair share of highs and lows, but the turning point was when we won a patent infringement suit against RIM. It allowed the management to build out their plan to go after Enterprise and Government sectors in providing mobile security software and services. Visto/Good had positioned itself as a leader for mobile device management software, according to Gartner. And although I was one of the co-founders and co-authors of the court tested patents, it was the perseverance of the management, especially Brian Bogosian and Daniel Mendez, which made Visto’s success possible.

SUB: Was there a “tipping point” (for lack of a better term) when both Visto and Memeo really picked up steam and where they started growing exponentially?

Bui: For Visto I believe it was when the government adopted Visto’s secure mobile platform. Memeo paved the way for the back-up industry and worked with the world’s top companies to make backing up simple and affordable for millions of consumers and businesses. Memeo’s relationship with Google also catapulted it into the forefront of digital content management technology.

SUB: What were the first steps you took in establishing both Visto and Memeo?

Bui: Getting a focused, smart, and hard-working team of people together who were passionate about seeing the vision turn into a reality.

SUB: If you had it to do over again, what would the first concrete step to establishing your companies have been?

Bui: In general, I was blessed and very lucky to work with some of the most amazing people, and a culture fit is critical. Continue to be extremely vigorous on the hiring beyond the founding days.

SUB: What were the most significant obstacles to growing Visto and Memeo to maturity?

Bui: Growing pains are real and you confront them at all stages of growth. One of the hardest parts of developing your company is knowing when you have to build your team and bridge the knowledge gap. Finding and attracting the best people were the most significant obstacles.

SUB: What kinds of outside funding have you raised in your experiences with startups?

Bui: I’ve raised funds with NEA, Bessemer , Trinity, Foundry, G51.

SUB: What was the metric/milestone that indicated to you that the companies had moved past startup stage?

Bui: Visto was a startup when I left. Memeo is still a startup and it should continue to operate like one for the foreseeable future. Amazon operated much like a startup for most of the time I was there from 1998 to 2002. I don’t know if there was ever a metric or milestone that indicated when either moved past the startup stage. For me, it still feels like a startup when I get to spend most of my time building and producing.

SUB: What were the most important lessons you have learned about entrepreneurship through your experiences as an entrepreneur?

Bui: There are many lessons I have learned. One is that getting started is a tough step. So much is never accomplished simply because it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the to-dos and fear of the unknown. When feeling this way, I like to recall a Chinese proverb: “A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.” Only just thinking about your ideas will never amount to anything. You have to take steps and be proactive: do some research, talk to potential customers; build a prototype and seek advice. As you do this it is key to focus on the very few that are really vital to your customers and business. Before long you’ll realize how gratifying this journey is that you’ve embarked upon.

Posted by startupbeat at 08:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

eCommerce

Local.com Acquires Screamin’ Daily Deals For Up To $32.5 Million (via TechCrunch)

Web Content

DataSift Ingests $6 Million From GRP And IA Ventures (via TechCrunch)

Fab.com Claims To Be Profitable On $1.3M In Revenue After 30 Days, Raises $1M (via TechCrunch)

Finance

Industry Ventures Closes $400 Million Secondary Fund, Exceeds $1B Of Capital (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 07:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Editor’s Note: This is a new Q&A series from StartUp Beat that features entrepreneurs who have successfully guided their startups (or multiple startups) to maturity. It is a complement to StartUp Beat’s coverage of early-stage startups and an effort to provide further insight into the experiences of tech entrepreneurs.

Bio: Paul King, founder, president, and board director, Hercules Networks/GoCharge—maker of a self-service mobile device charging kiosk that contains multiple charging tips for a convenient, powerful and safe charge for cell phones, blackberries, iPhones and other mobile devices. Mr. King is the founder of Hercules Networks and a graduate of Carnegie Mellon, Magna Cum Laude. He was the founder of International Sales Team Realty generating more than $40 million in annual sales. He developed Chase Mortgage and New Wave Title Company in Sunny Isles Florida prior to commencing with Hercules. He was named in the top 25 Entrepreneurs under 25 by Business Week magazine 2009.

SUB: What was your first entrepreneurial venture?

King: I started a tennis camp when I was 18. It was a lot of fun. I got 20-25 kids per week for 6 weeks. We picked them up and dropped them off every day and worked with them from 10am-4pm. I was hooked after that experience.

SUB: What prompted you to start GoCharge in the first place?

King: My phone was always dying while I was out. My friends had the same issues. I knew there was a demand for it.

SUB: Was there a point at which you knew GoCharge would hit it big?

King: I was recognized as a 25 under 25 Entrepreneur by BusinessWeek. That, and when Bacardi launched a 50 bar NYC network with us.

SUB: Was there a “tipping point” when GoCharge really picked up steam and where it started growing exponentially?

King: Not really. It’s been a steady growth since we started.

SUB: What were the first steps you took to establishing GoCharge?

King: Think a lot about the business plan, and then meet with investors to gauge interest. Luckily, those meetings turned from 'learning' to them actually wanting to invest.

SUB: If you had it to do over again, what would the first concrete step to establishing GoCharge have been?

King: Probably to focus on one market at a time, and execute it effectively before moving to the next market. For example, get machines into as many bars as possible, then move to coffee shops, etc.

SUB: What were the most significant obstacles to growing GoCharge to maturity?

King: Getting the right team together; Capital cost to build machines.

SUB: What kinds of outside funding did you raise?

King: About 2.5 million from private investors.

SUB: What was the metric/milestone that indicated to you that GoCharge had moved past startup stage?

King: Major brands like AT&T, Sprint, and Bacardi working with us.

SUB: What were the most important lessons you learned about entrepreneurship while building GoCharge?

King: That it’s a journey. Very tough. And you have to have stamina to make it. But it feels really good once you do.

Posted by startupbeat at 08:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Mobile

Kickanotch Raises $500,000 For Its Mobile Marketing And App Monetization Platform (via TechCrunch)

Devices

Mark Cuban-Backed Device Identification Startup BlueCava Raises $1.5 Million (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: BurstPoint Networks
Website: www.burstpoint.com
Founder: Tom Racca, president and CEO
Headquarters: Westborough, Mass.
Year Founded: 2010
Employees: Fewer than 50
Company Description (in 140 characters or less): “BurstPoint, a provider of video communications solutions, helps customers leverage video to communicate with constituents anytime, anywhere.”

By Tom Racca, president and CEO, BurstPoint Networks

Product Overview

Most organizations today have not yet leveraged video to its fullest potential and still do not realize the benefits of doing so. However, with the video and telepresence industries growing exponentially, the opportunities for companies to utilize this technology are virtually limitless. Cost and complexity are two major misperceptions of enterprise video that attribute to its lack of adoption, and we have made it our mission to prove these notions false.

BurstPoint’s flagship product, the BurstPoint Video Communication Platform (VCP), is an end-to-end video content management and distribution system that allows organizations to easily and effectively take advantage of the power of video by combining the elements to create and capture, edit and publish, distribute and deliver, and consume high-definition live and stored video content into a single, integrated platform. The BurstPoint VCP is designed to support small deployments and to cost effectively scale as needed, allowing companies to reach 10 people or tens of thousands with concurrent video streams.

This past June, BurstPoint extended the content management and distribution capabilities of the BurstPoint VCP to cloud-based environments, giving customers the flexibility to distribute rich media content internally, seamlessly add content to the cloud for large-scale outreach to audiences outside of company walls, or select a combination of both delivery methods. In addition, using BurstPoint’s technology, companies can reach target audiences through a number of consumption devices, including desktops, digital signs, smartphones, iPhones, iPads, tablets and more.

This powerful combination of functionality, scalability, and flexibility is unrivaled in today’s industry and makes it easier and more cost effective than ever for companies to reach key constituents with critical communications anytime, anywhere.

Founder’s Story

BurstPoint Networks was founded on the belief that video is a robust, yet underutilized, channel for sharing critical information, and we came to market with a mission to make it easier, more efficient and more cost effective than ever for organizations across industries to harness the power of video to enhance their corporate communications strategies and to reach millions of users around the world. 

We acquired the assets, including patented technology, of a previous video communications company that was known for its innovative technology, but lack of customer service and business strategy. In September 2010, when we officially launched operations, BurstPoint had not only leveraged and enhanced this technology to provide customers with a fully integrated, scalable end-to-end enterprise software platform, but we had also already established ourselves as a well-funded, brand new company with a stellar lineup of customers and experienced management staff.

BurstPoint is headquartered in Westborough, Massachusetts, and is led by a management team with extensive expertise in enterprise video, communications, digital media and infrastructure software. Members of my team include David Bundy, CTO and VP of engineering; Terenzio Volpicelli, CFO; David Safaii, VP of marketing and business development; and Don Kugler, VP of sales.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

To date, we have generated awareness for the company’s mission, values, and innovative strategy and technology through an integrated program that incorporates marketing services, thought leadership, and strategic analyst and media relations outreach.

Since the company launched on September 13, 2010, BurstPoint has implemented targeted public relations and marketing campaigns to communicate the company’s value, expertise, and thought leadership to reporters, analysts, customers, partners, and other key constituents. Almost a year later, BurstPoint has kept its launch momentum going and has clearly differentiated itself from other companies in the enterprise video industry. Marketing programs that have contributed to this success include email campaigns customized for each specific audience, participation in industry events, and ongoing development of sales tools and collateral ranging from company and product brochures to case studies and sales sheets.

BurstPoint sells its technology 100 percent through the channel, and we make it a priority to engage in marketing campaigns that target and include our channel partners as well – from joint webinars to attending industry events together to participation in company newsletters and blogs. We are always on the lookout for opportunities to exemplify our expertise and thought leadership as well and do so through tactics such as contributed articles and speaking engagements at industry events.

How BurstPoint Networks differentiates itself from the competition

According to figures from industry analyst firm Wintergreen Research, the worldwide market for enterprise video communications is expected to reach $14.4 billion by 2014. But until recently, the market was highly segmented and dominated by vendors offering point solutions that only address one piece of the communications puzzle, such as video conferencing systems or digital signage technology. Because of this fragmentation, organizations were forced to “cobble together” a variety of expensive point solutions in order to implement a comprehensive video communications strategy.

BurstPoint understands the limitations of these point solutions, recognizes the market demand for a comprehensive video communications platform, and has used this knowledge and insight to bring to market an innovative, scalable end-to-end video content management and distribution platform that enables organizations to create, edit, publish, manage, and distribute live or on-demand rich media content from a single solution. This comprehensive platform includes patented BurstPoint technology that enables customers to capture voice and video communications from multiple video conferencing systems. Using this technology, organizations can transform one-to-one communications to one-to-many or one-to-thousands by leveraging their existing investments in video conferencing systems to initiate live broadcasts, sync with PowerPoint slides, record content for future on-demand use—the possibilities are endless.

In addition to the ease-of-use of a single platform, the BurstPoint VCP provides customers with unrivaled scale and flexibility by enabling them to start small and grow as needed; choose whether to house video content on-premise, in the cloud, or both; and deliver video to a variety of consumption devices from PCs to smartphones to digital signs.

With BurstPoint, customers can truly customize their video communications strategies to fit their specific needs. And with our fault-tolerant, redundant platform, they can rest assure their video communications will be delivered on time to all audiences, whether 10 people or 10 million, located down the hall or around the world.

BurstPoint Networks – www.burstpoint.com

Posted by startupbeat at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

eCommerce

eBay Acquires Mobile Payments Company Zong to Boost PayPal (via ReadWriteWeb)

GreenTech

Clean Urban Energy Raises $7 Million To “Turn Buildings Into Batteries” (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Editor’s Note: This is a new Q&A series from StartUp Beat that features entrepreneurs who have successfully guided their startups (or multiple startups) to maturity. It is a complement to StartUp Beat’s coverage of early-stage startups and an effort to provide further insight into the experiences of tech entrepreneurs.

Bio: Nick started his career as a webcasting executive in 1998 when he founded NextVenue Inc., TalkPoint’s predecessor company. NextVenue was created as an off-shoot of CNBC/ Dow Jones Desktop Video (a joint venture amongst Microsoft, NBC, and Dow Jones). Nick has previously served as an executive within Williams Communications Inc.’s Vyvx Broadband Media division. He served as president of Enterprise Services at IBeam Broadcasting and was a member of the company’s board. He holds an MBA from the Rutgers Graduate School of Management.

SUB: What was your first entrepreneurial venture?

Balletta: My first startup venture was called Voyager Data Networks, which I started with a few friends in 1996. We had the idea that we could build a technology “hotel” for web servers. I was working for MFS communications as a sales rep at the time, and I pitched the idea to MFS. They were not receptive, so I parted ways with the company and started Voyager.

We rented a data center space at 60 Hudson Street in New York. At the time, the Internet had barely arrived, and 60 Hudson was a long distance carrier building. As an eight-person company, we were amazed to convince a company the size of Sony to allow us to host their gaming site, the Sony Station. Once we secured this anchor tenant, we were off to the races. Getting your first big client is the largest hurdle.

After Sony joined us, we then succeeded in adding other large clients such as Dow Jones, The NY Commodities Exchange and a few others. As with any new company on the precipice of success, we needed more working capital, and I began the arduous task of operating a business and raising money simultaneously. I reached out to a former colleague who was running Global Center, a similar business in California. They had a comparable story and were hosting Yahoo and a new startup called Netscape. Our two small companies were hosting some of the largest sites on the Internet. We merged the companies, filed for an IPO, and ended up selling the company to Frontier Communications for $180 million. This all occurred within two years; those were the good old days.

SUB: What prompted you to start TalkPoint in the first place?

Balletta: After selling Voyager, I was semi-retired and doing some consulting. While at MFS, I had worked with several large enterprises. One of the organizations to which we provided services was CNBC Dow Jones Desktop Video. This was a venture set up in the mid-1990s among Microsoft, NBC and Dow Jones. Their mandate was to distribute CNBC core television content over the Internet using Netshow, the predecessor to Windows Media. This group was way ahead of its time. We think nothing of watching video on the Internet today, but this was 1995. People relied on dial-up connections because broadband didn’t even exist in name. All of this was being done through an e-commerce site. Great idea, but bad timing.

I knew the venture was struggling, and I also knew that for political reasons they could not shutdown the business. I, along with two associates, approached NBC, and we pitched buying the assets, placing them into a dot.com startup, getting it funded and restructuring the business model. We purchased the assets of the venture and Microsoft, NBC and Dow Jones took a minority carried interest. TheTalkPoint predecessor, Nextvenue was born. We did several rounds of financing and raised over $40 million in private equity.

SUB: Was there a point at which you knew TalkPoint would hit it big?

Balletta: It took a while for us to gain sure footing because we were involved in several transactions and several economic cycles. In 2000, we filed for a public offering as Nextvenue. While on the road, the markets began to take a turn for the worse. We were approached by several public companies in our space, and we worked on a deal to sell Nextvenue to IBeam Broadcasting in late 2000. IBeam was the poster child for dot.com Silicon Valley high flyers. Great marketing, great hype, but no business model. However, we did have ads running during the Super Bowl.

In the Summer of 2001, as the capital markets dried up, we did a PIPE financing with the Williams Companies to keep the company alive. In December 2001, we merged the combined entity into Williams Communications. We saved the business! The investors weren’t happy, but the employees and customers were thrilled. Three months later, Williams filed for bankruptcy. This entailed another restructure and more uncertainly for the employees and customers. However, with every tectonic shift comes opportunity, and I had the chance to buy back my company. The good old days were over; the dot.com bubble had burst.

Churchill said “adversity introduces us to ourselves,” and I say it introduces you to the people around you. Once I got approval to extract Nextvenue from the clutches of the behemoth Williams, I was given 30 days for completion. This was happening in a post 9/11 economy when all the big carriers were restructuring their debt, Enron was imploding, Bernie Ebbers from Worldcom was going to jail and the capital markets were in turmoil. I pulled out the assets with the help of one of my Voyager associates. He was a partner at One Equity Partners, Bancone’s private equity shop, and they owned a public shell company. We moved the assets into the public shell and renamed the company TalkPoint.

SUB: What was the metric/milestone that indicated to you that TalkPoint had moved past startup stage?

Balletta: In the dot.com era, financing was easy, and it was all about topline growth. In today’s market, growth is important, but profitable growth is more important. We ran TalkPoint as a public company for almost two years. Running a technology company which is under-capitalized post Sarbanes Oxley is not fun. We took the company private in 2004, and that process was interesting. I may write a book about it. Suffice it to say, we have made Darwin proud!

After the roller coaster ride of the dot.com era, two private placements, an S1 filing, a merger, a PIPE, a sale, a balance sheet restructure, an asset purchase and a going private transaction, it was time to go to work. TalkPoint was out of transaction mode and back in startup mode.

Once a company is profitable, cash flow positive and self-sustaining, it is officially out of startup mode. We got there in 12 months and have enjoyed double-digit, top-line and bottom-line growth ever since.

SUB: Was there a “tipping point” when TalkPoint really picked up steam and where it started growing exponentially?

Balletta: In order to scale our business, we needed to develop a channel partner strategy. We focused on value added resellers, and looked for companies who were successful in specific vertical markets or had a horizontal application where we felt our technology would be a natural complement. We were initially very successful in medical education, publishing and investor relations. In 2007, we began to see a technology gap in the web conferencing market. Web conferencing technology is great for desktop sharing and small collaborative work group meetings, but it does not scale well to larger audiences. Web conferencing companies needed a product that scaled to larger audiences and included video. TalkPoint was the perfect fit. In 2007, WebEx began to resell TalkPoint services. That was a game changer.

SUB: What were the most important lessons you learned about entrepreneurship while building TalkPoint?

Balletta: The key component to success for any enterprise, and especially any entrepreneurial venture, is the people. I am surrounded by smart people who work hard. You need to have both ingredients. Hire smart people, direct them, empower them, give them responsibility and, of course, hold them accountable. We have several key members of our senior team that worked at CNBC Desktop Video, and they have been with me for 10 years. They could write a book, too.

Posted by startupbeat at 08:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Mobile

App Store Analytics Startup App Annie Gets Backing From IDG, Preps Premium Service (via TechCrunch)

IT/Semiconductors

Fabless Chip Company Valens Raises $14 Million (via TechCrunch)

Devices

Smartphone Maker HTC Buys S3 Graphics From VIA, WTI For $300 Million (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 06:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Editor’s Note: This is a new Q&A series from StartUp Beat that features entrepreneurs who have successfully guided their startups (or multiple startups) to maturity. It is a complement to StartUp Beat’s coverage of early-stage startups and an effort to provide further insight into the experiences of tech entrepreneurs.

Zephrin Lasker is the co-founder and CEO of Pontiflex. A serial entrepreneur, Zephrin successfully launched two start-ups prior to Pontiflex: The North Road Group, an interactive agency, and Beautility, an e-commerce company. He also worked as Vice President of Business Development at i33 Communications and at Commerce One Global Services, managing Sprint’s new web initiatives. He has helped clients such as Cendant, EarthLink and eFax start relationships with more than 8 million customers.

Back in the day: Zephrin has a finance background, and worked for Dresdner Kleinwort Benson in mergers and acquisitions. He began his career as an Equity Analyst at Creditanstalt in Prague.

SUB: What was your first entrepreneurial venture?

Lasker: I launched two start-ups prior to Pontiflex: The North Road Group, an interactive agency, and Beautility.com, an e-commerce company.

SUB: What prompted you to start Pontiflex? What was the inspiration behind the venture?

Lasker: Roshan Bangera, Geoff Grauer and I founded Pontiflex in 2008 because we wanted to start a technology company that helps make advertising relevant and useful, not intrusive and annoying. The initial idea was almost like PayPal for user data. Most online ads just take you to an advertisers’ site once you click on an ad. Those are what we call redirect ads. DoubleClick built a pipe for redirect ads. That is a well-understood, defined space with a solid infrastructure.

However, before us, there was no easy way to transfer data. People had tried XML but did not get broad enough adoption to solve the issue. We saw an opportunity for an advertising ecosystem oriented around user data. It is important to note that it needs to be 100 percent opt-in user data.

If a user is using a mobile application or website and sees one of our signup ads and opts in (meaning they type in some information into that ad) then that data must be sent from the publisher’s site to the advertiser. And the reality is that our ads are loading on tens of thousands of different publishers every minute. All of that data needs to be collated and delivered in real time to allow for rapid follow-up by the advertiser.

Our platform has processed over 45 million signups since we launched two years ago. That is rapidly increasing as we scale out into mobile. Our solution lets marketing folks worry about marketing and not technology. They don’t need to have various tech teams make their own custom, integrated solutions. They can just focus on getting new users and turning them into customers, fans, followers, etc.

SUB: Was there a point at which you knew Pontiflex would hit it big?

Lasker: Whether it’s Facebook, Linkedin or Living Social, it’s the user-focused companies that are prospering in this new social world. This year, more than three times the number of people will use the Pontiflex signup ads platform as compared to say, Foursquare. As more advertisers and app developers adopt the Pontiflex platform, we’ll continue to grow. The need in the marketplace for a way to do what we do via mobile has been a huge catalyst.

SUB: Was there a “tipping point” when Pontiflex really picked up steam and where it started growing exponentially?

Lasker: Since our start, we’ve seen tremendous growth, but the rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets has caused explosive growth for Pontiflex. Mobile is becoming a major market for us. We’ve had 45 million signups to date with over 30 percent now coming from mobile. That number should double by year-end.

SUB: What were the first steps you took in establishing Pontiflex?

Lasker: We bootstrapped for two years to show proof of concept and learn what the market really needed. Bootstrapping is great because the market really is the best teacher. Thought experiments have their place, but they can be deadly if used as the sole method of product envisioning. Especially in an expensive city like NYC, if you can survive and start out by bootstrapping it shows you have a business model, at least. It also sets your DNA for lean and focused execution.

We eventually raised venture capital. Our first round was in 2008, and the economic weather was bad. Now things are much different, thankfully.

SUB: If you had it to do over again, what would the first concrete step to establishing Pontiflex have been?

Lasker: We wouldn’t change anything. Really. From the very start we made a decision to be a technology company with a user-focus. Being a technology company has always been our goal—which is rare (or was) for a NYC-based startup. But, it’s critical to scale, sustainability and culture.

SUB: What were the most significant obstacles to growing Pontiflex to maturity?

Lasker: Over the past few years, we’ve seen a fundamental shift in the online advertising landscape—from impression-focused advertising to people-focused advertising. Marketers don’t want to buy just impressions—rather, they want to connect with real people, so that they can speak to them in a meaningful and relevant way. But it wasn’t always that way.

Google helped move the market from impressions to clicks, and signup ads will help take this evolution to actual users. As with any disruptive technology, our biggest challenge initially was to educate the market that there was a new way of doing advertising. Today, over 300 brands and thousands of app developers work with us. They are telling our story for us, so market education has been less of a challenge.

SUB: What kinds of outside funding have you raised?

Lasker: We have raised $14 million, and we have generated about twice that much revenue since launch. We are profitable month-to-month, but we will be investing a lot in the business this year. We may take on a bit more capital because there is such a big opportunity ahead of us. There has also been a lot of M&A interest, but we’re having fun and just getting started so we have no plans to sell.

SUB: During your experience building Pontiflex, what was the metric/milestone that indicated to you that the company had moved past startup stage?

Lasker: We are still a start-up. And, we don’t want to stop doing business the way a start-up does. We still have the ability to be flexible, to innovate, and we move quickly—very quickly. Granted, many start-ups in the early stages aren’t generating revenue. We’ve moved past that phase. Overall, I think the most important milestone was when we crossed the 30 million user mark, that’s a big number. You start to realize “wow, this is getting pretty big.”

SUB: What were the most important lessons you have learned about entrepreneurship?

Lasker: I think part of being an entrepreneur is never fitting in. I never fit in at any of my jobs, and as such was forced to create my own. It means that we, as entrepreneurs, make up a lot of things as we go, and that I believe is a big part of our success.

Everyone says it, but people truly are your only real competitive advantage. To honor that belief, we’ve aimed to create a culture where the development of the company is in many ways secondary to the development of the people who work here. We consider the happiness of our team to be as important as generating revenue. Ultimately, the circle is a loop and happy employees create success for the company.

We’ve won lots of awards—Always On, Inc 500, and others—but the one I am proudest of is winning the Crain’s Best Places to Work in NYC award.

Posted by startupbeat at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

IT/Wireless

LightSquared Raises $265 Million To Build High-Speed Wireless Network (via TechCrunch)

eCommerce

Dealised Powers Group Buying Sites, Raises $6.5 Million (via TechCrunch)

Finance

GSR Ventures Raises Fourth China Fund at $350M (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 06:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: LocalYokel
Website: www.localyokelmedia.com 
Headquarters: New Canaan, Connecticut
Founder: Dick O’Hare, CEO
Year Founded: 2011
Company Description (in 140 characters or less): “Local Yokel Media is the Internet’s first hyperlocal online ad marketplace.”

By Dick O’Hare, co-founder and CEO

Our Company Background:

With the tremendous growth of the Internet, consumers continue to migrate online for local information. More local businesses are moving their advertising spend online, to follow this audience. As a result, online local advertising is now a $16.1 billion market and growing rapidly. Meanwhile, “hyperlocal” content is booming—filling the editorial void left by the waning coverage from traditional local media organizations. This valuable, community-level content presents a compelling, targeted advertising opportunity. Research shows that 80 percent of consumer spending happens within 20 miles of home. Local Yokel Media (LYM) focuses on those 20 miles (and more) to help local marketers reach only those communities within their immediate service area on publisher content those community audiences know and trust. This level of granular ad targeting delivers “geo-contextual” relevance which drives overall ad performance and media efficiency.

Our Product Overview:

Based on proprietary ad serving and cartographic technology, LYM aggregates and organizes hyperlocal websites by zip code empowering local businesses to target local audiences within their immediate service area—all from one platform. LYM’s underlying technologies are Java and MySQL.

Key Product Features Include:

·        Easy, three step publisher enrollment process including ad tag implementation and full reporting

·        Proprietary, customized ad serving solution

·        Simple advertiser self-serve platform empowers local businesses to build “geo-contextual” ad campaigns targeting their immediate service area

·        Free ad templates

·        Full advertiser reporting

Founder’s Story:

I have been in the digital media industry for the past 15 years holding senior management positions at DoubleClick, AOL Media Networks and Yahoo, Inc. I was part of the early DoubleClick management team that built the industry’s first online advertising network. Over the past two years, I have been immersed in the local online advertising market developing a passion and a solution for the emerging hyperlocal advertising market segment.

Prior to this, I created and ran Yahoo’s first Global Strategic Partnership and Emerging Marketing Channels team. My team and I gilded strategic partnerships with Yahoo’s top 25 global accounts such as Sony Electronics, Intel and General Motors. In addition, my team and I developed and executed monetization strategies for video, mobile and social media.

Prior to Yahoo, I served as Senior Vice President, General Manager of AOL Media Networks responsible for two thirds of all domestic, non-search ad revenue. Before joining AOL, I was General Manager of the Business and Technology Networks at DoubleClick. My team and I drove publisher inventory acquisition and monetization in the business and technology verticals within DoubleClick’s Media Network.

I have over twenty years of experience in the media industry with prior positions at CMP Media including Publisher of Home PC magazine, leading it to the #1 position in the home computing category. During my tenure, CMP Media held an initial public offering and was subsequently sold to United News and Media.

Marketing and Operational Strategy Overview:

Currently in its seed stage, we launched Local Yokel Media on April 1st, 2011. LYM has been focused on building a deep offering of granular, hyperlocal websites in the NY designated market area (DMA) the largest local advertising market in the US. Over 60 hyperlocal websites have registered with LYM in its first 45 days of operation. LYM plans to scale to a footprint of the top 25 DMAs in the first 30 months of operation. Ultimately, LYM intends to serve over 200 DMAs in the continental US. Each of these DMA geographies will be broken down by DMA, state, county, and community composition for the purposes of publisher inventory acquisition. LYM is employing an aggressive social media strategy to penetrate the local blog and hyperlocal website market as well as more traditionally targeted digital media to reach and engage local online publishers.

LYM’s Unique Value Proposition:

Local Yokel Media is positioned to become the premium third party monetization channel for hyperlocal and local online publishers. As LYM scales, it will become the industry specialist in monetizing hyperlocal and local display and video ad inventory.

LYM offers hyperlocal and local publishers three key benefits not available in today’s market:

·        Full transparency and control of LYM provided advertisers

·        Premium revenue from direct advertisers looking to reach hyperlocal audiences on trusted local publisher content

·        A broader, more relevant advertising base

LYM offers local online advertisers the following benefits not available at any scale on the Internet today:

·        Easy access to aggregated and geographically organized hyperlocal ad inventory

·        Access to ad creative leveraging today’s ad performance best practices

·        Ad campaign performance reporting

Business Model:

LYM monetizes its aggregated hyperlocal and local ad impressions through three channels:

·        LYM’s proprietary self-serve advertising platform, including ad creative

·        Direct sales outreach to regional and national marketers looking to target hyperlocally

·        Reseller sales organizations currently selling digital media products to local businesses

Current Needs:

LYM is currently focused on the NY DMA. The company plans to secure series A investment in the first half of 2012 to further scale its offering into the top 25 DMAs and beyond.

LocalYokel – www.localyokel.com

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Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Mobile

SHAPE Services Acquires Developer Of ‘fone’, To Release IM+ Video App (via TechCrunch)

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Skimlinks co-founder and CEO Alicia Navarro is one of the few female tech entrepreneurs in London, having launched Skimbit.com in Australia before heading over to Europe to immerse herself in the world of tech startups, where she adapted her business quickly to launch Skimlinks.com.

Alicia's vision for Skimlinks is to see online publishers rewarded for the role they play in informing purchase decisions, by removing the technical and administrative complexities that hamper would-be affiliates. This, she believes, will help evolve affiliate marketing into a mainstream ubiquitous revenue model.

Alicia worked for over 10 years in internet applications, designing and launching mobile and internet-based applications in Australia and the UK. She has a Bachelor of Information Technology and the University Medal for Computing Sciences from the University of Technology, Sydney.

SUB: What was your first entrepreneurial venture?

Navarro: My first entrepreneurial venture involved a foray into the beauty industry, manufacturing and selling lip gloss! In Australia, where I grew up, there’s an initiative called Young Achievers, where high school students get together and go through a life cycle of a business. We came up with the idea for a lip gloss range for men and women, and I became the managing director of Pout Lip Gloss. Within six months, we’d made a 320 percent profit, and we won Venture of the Year in the program. I was hooked.

SUB: What prompted you to start Skimlinks? What was the inspiration for the company?

Navarro: Skimlinks was actually born from an entirely different business. I had started Skimbit—a social decision-making tool back in 2006, but it wasn’t getting the traction we had hoped for. In the course of conversations with my customers, I had identified a need for an automated revenue stream for online publishers wasn’t being met by the market. We had actually built a technology internally to monetize the content on our own site, and we realized it was a great product that we were in a good position to offer to other online publishers. The financial crisis was underway—it was the perfect incentive we needed to make a massive change and move quickly. We pivoted, and launched Skimlinks in late 2008.

SUB: Was there a point at which you knew Skimlinks would hit it big?

Navarro: It’s dangerous to assume you’ve ever hit it big, but there was a moment when I thought we had a viable business on our hands—during the first year, when we quickly started getting amazing traction with big-name clients.

SUB: Was there a “tipping point” (for lack of a better term) when Skimlinks really picked up steam and where it started growing exponentially?

Navarro: Opening an office in the USA this year was a big moment for us. It has really changed how we were perceived in the US market, and it’s coincided with a great amount of growth and traction we’re seeing now.

SUB: What were the first steps you took to establishing Skimlinks?

Navarro: Skimlinks was the easy bit – that was just a pivot. The biggest challenge was starting a business (Skimbit) in the first place. I had to make a conscious change in my career; like turning down permanent jobs to take up flexible contract work, and I curtailed my lifestyle so I could afford to run a business at the same time as working. Eventually I gave up my job entirely – that was a big step!

SUB: If you had it to do over again, what would the first concrete step to establishing Skimlinks have been?

Navarro: If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t necessarily do anything differently, but there is one thing I’d definitely do again: getting myself involved in the startup community. Building a company is a stressful and lonely process, and being involved in a supportive community makes a world of difference to your sanity. It was one of the best things I did.

SUB: What were the most significant obstacles to growing Skimlinks to maturity?

Navarro: Growing the team has been one of the biggest challenges. Every time we’ve had a significant expansion, it’s necessitated a change in how the company is run. So, going from seven team members, and then growing again from 15 was a pretty significant change, and each point of growth came with its own challenges, within the leadership, our processes, and our culture. I think we’ve done a good job of it, but it didn’t come without its obstacles.

SUB: What kinds of outside funding did you raise?

Navarro: We have raised equity financing from Sussex Place Ventures, NESTA, The Accelerator Group and a number of angel investors.

SUB: What was the metric/milestone that indicated to you that Skimlinks had moved past startup stage?

Navarro: Well, we hired a full time financial controller and we keep her busy, so I guess the day we hired her was that point of transition. That kind of role is a luxury that startups don’t usually invest in.

SUB: What were the most important lessons you learned about entrepreneurship while building Skimlinks?

Navarro: It never gets easy, but it never stops being fun.

Posted by startupbeat at 08:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s funding and acquisitions news roundup from across the web:

Finance

New Ignite100 accelerator launches with £1m fund (via TechCrunch Europe)

Web Content

Finnish music discovery service Hitlantis grabs $1.5 million funding (via VentureBeat)

Posted by startupbeat at 07:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)