StartUp Beat

Company: Small Bizeo

Website: www.smallbizeo.com

Founder: Kal Gullapalli 

Headquarters: Philadelphia

Year Founded: 2011

Brief Company Description: “Small Bizeo is a research platform that provides objective data, consolidated reports and insightful investment analysis to small business and franchise buyers.”

By Kal Gullapalli, founder

Company Overview

At its core, Small Bizeo is a franchise and small business research portal. When looking at a franchise, we look at average store economics, failure rates, growth rates, litigation issues and specifics within the Franchise Disclosure Document (300 page Annual Reports created by franchisors). Second, we have a listing platform people can use to search existing businesses for sale.

How It Started

I grew up with many of my close family and friends involved in small business. In my close network, we had owners of gas stations, convenience stores, Subways, Dunkin Donuts and other small business enterprises. I actually managed a top pizza concept during high school. After graduating from the University of Michigan, I spent eight years working on Wall Street. I was a buy-side analyst focused on the industrial sector but also invested in restaurants. I remember specifically investing into Outback and Sbarro’s high yield debt for a very short period of time. During my time on Wall Street, I constantly saw tremendous value in small business so I frequently would attend trade shows, meet with industry veterans and speak directly with various franchise concepts. There was a big problem in the space—lack of transparency. Unlike on Wall Street where you can find information on just about every stock, people blindly invested into franchise systems sometimes purely based on passion. I felt the need for an objective third party research platform to rate and review each franchise. Hence, Small Bizeo was born.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

We have several things that we are working on:

1.       Key partnerships to distribute our content via their platform

2.       SEO/SEM

3.       Newsletter campaigns

4.       Public Relation via SS PR

5.       Trade shows

6.       Affiliate program

How we differentiate from the competition

Currently there are many franchise portals out there but none that actually provide in-depth analysis. The sites that exist are your typical lead generation sites that aggregate information that can be found on a franchisor’s website. They then take that lead and sell directly to the franchisor or franchise brokers. While this model is good, I wanted to create something that could be even more helpful to our user—real information that can be used to make an informed investment decision. We provide this information in our Get Smart platform.

Business Model

Currently, we are charging $99.98 a month to access our entire database of analysis. That is a huge bargain to gain pretty insightful data. Also, considering that franchises cost 100s of thousands of dollars, why not spend a little money to gain the extra edge?

Current Needs

We aren’t looking for capital in the very near term but that may be an option in early-to-mid 2012. At this point, we are looking for strategic partnerships and key personnel that may help push our brand to mainstream America.

Small Bizeo – www.smallbizeo.com

Posted by startupbeat at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Social Media

Ebuzzing Secures $25m To Expand European Social Marketing Platform (via TechCrunch)

Enterprise Software

IBM Buys Crime Prevention And Data Intelligence Software Developer i2 (via TechCrunch)

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

Company: nanoRep
Website: www.nanorep.com
Founders: Doron Herzlich, Aviv Dror, Amit Ben Shahar, Ofer David
Headquarters: Herzliya, Israel
Year Founded: 2009
Twitter: @nanoRep

Brief Company Description: “nanoRep is the instant-answer, self-service help-desk solution and ticketing system promoting rapid business growth and minimizing customer support costs.”

By Doron Herzlich, co-founder and CEO

Product Overview

nanoRep is the only help-desk solution capable of instantly answering between 80-92 percent of incoming customer support queries, enabling startups, SMBs and enterprises enjoying rapid growth to keep support costs flat. It does this via a self-learning, Q&A tool that integrates to a company’s website one of three ways—(1) as a floating widget, able to follow customers across every page of the site, (2) embedded within a company’s support page, (3) or via a Facebook application. Companies input their FAQ into a single knowledge base, and with every customer question asked and response provided by a support rep—across all channels: email, live chats, Facebook, Twitter and more – the knowledge base automatically builds itself up. Within three months, nanoRep is able to accurately answer up to 92 percent of customers’ questions, leaving only 8-15 percent to be escalated to support reps via an intuitive ticketing system. Try it here.

nanoRep doubles as a sales tool, instantly answering questions about merchandise and promotions, and generating leads. Companies using nanoRep see their sites’ conversion rates climb 15 percent on average.

nanoRep’s high rate of accurately answered queries is due to the fact we have developed (patent pending) self-learning knowledge base powered by four dimensional NLP (Natural Language Processing), while the industry standard uses single dimensional NLP. This means nanoRep can provide 90 percent accuracy of understanding the meaning of users’ questions, while other solutions provide 30 percent accuracy.

More than just a solution for frustrated customers, nanoRep is the first help-desk software and ticketing system that enables rapid growth for businesses without the equivalent expansion of support costs.

Founder’s Story

I’ve been called a “serial entrepreneur,” and indeed, nanoRep is my sixth startup after previously founding and serving as CEO for a number of successful companies. My co-founders and I launched nanoRep in Q1, 2009 with the goal of providing web-users seeking support with an easy, intuitive and fast way to get the answers they need. We also wanted to solve the problems of website and shopping cart abandonment for site owners.

During the development process, we came to understand the market’s need for a support tool that could learn from both users’ questions and reps’ answers to automatically build a knowledge base and provide accurate answers in real-time. This realization became our beacon as we evolved nanoRep into a first-of-its-kind help desk tool—the only support solution that relieves growing companies from the need to hire additional support reps. That’s right, every other ticketing system encourages increasing the size of the support team—except for nanoRep.

What’s so special about nanoRep?

I’ve already mentioned two of our primary differentiators—we are the only help-desk solution that doesn’t promote increasing the size of the support team, and we have developed a (patent pending) technology which provides 3x the industry standard for accurately understanding the meaning of users’ questions.

There is a third core difference between nanoRep and other support offerings. nanoRep stores its information in free text rather than in categories, as all other ticketing vendors do. As a result, only nanoRep enables search within free text, which is what allows us to provide accurate answers instantly—vs. requiring users to select categories and read all the documents based on entered key words.

Marketing and Promotion Strategy

End-users are our best promoters. nanoRep is grateful to already be installed on nearly a hundred ecommerce, SaaS, telecon and service providers’ websites. When customers have an extraordinary customer service experience, they investigate who’s behind it, and some of them become our next clients.

nanoRep is also working to build strategic partnerships and integrations with complimentary applications and web-platforms to increase our availability among mutual customers.

Business Model

nanoRep has recognized the opportunity in implementing the SaaS model and thereby simplifying the integration process while reducing costs for our clients. Our business model is based on monthly subscriptions. Pricing is based on the amount of accurate, instant answers nanoRep provides to a client’s customers each month. The ticketing system, Facebook application and Twitter integration are included free of charge.

Current Needs

nanoRep is currently looking for channel partners in the CRM and ecommerce platforms for expanding our sales globally. Additional leads are always welcome.

NanoRep – www.nanorep.com

Posted by startupbeat at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Mobile

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

Gaming

NASA MMO Gets Kickstarter Funding, Beta In 2012 (via TechCrunch)

Cloud

Investors make $20M bet on MapR to win Hadoop war (via gigaom)

Gaming

Tween Virtual World Maker Woozworld Raises $6M; Former Disney Exec Joins Board (via TechCrunch)

Advertising/Marketing

Sequoia Leads $9.5 Million Round In Interactive Video Advertising Startup Innovid (via TechCrunch)

DG Buys Limelight’s Rich Media Ad Unit EyeWonder For $66M In Cash (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

PolitiPick matches up voters and candidates based on political opinions and their political “DNA.” The company was founded earlier this year and the site is currently in Beta.

SUB: Please explain what PolitiPick is, and the value proposition you offer to voters and politicos.

Sweeney: PolitiPick is a free website that matches voters to candidates based on opinions each gives about how government should be run. If you’ve ever wondered who to vote for, this site is for you.

It gives voters an easier way to determine which candidates will best represent their views in office. Campaign slogans can be vague and researching all candidate platforms just takes way too much time, especially when there may be a dozen or more candidates running for a single office.

Voters and candidates give their opinions on short statements about a wide range of election issues and how a society should be governed. There are three opinions: Disagree, Neutral, or Agree for each statement—which becomes the user’s PolitiPick “DNA.” Voter DNA is matched to candidate DNA.

Statements cover election issues, current events and philosophical foundations on how a society should be governed, such as government’s role, individual’s role, rights, privileges, and entitlements. There are 14 statement categories including the economy, taxes, education, housing and health care.

The matches are added up and candidates are displayed from highest to lowest by the number of matches. Voters can learn more about each candidate’s opinions on the candidate’s profile page. Candidates can embed YouTube videos and other hyperlinks to provide voters with more information explaining their opinions and platform.

Voters have complete access to PolitiPick’s matching engine without having to sign up. Entering a zip code and giving a minimum of ten opinions is all that’s required to be matched. However, the more opinions given, the better the match results will be.

Signing up allows voters to save their opinions to be matched with future candidates for years to come and to be notified as new candidates in their area create profiles. Voters can choose favorite candidates, send a “Like” to a candidate to show support, and request more opinions from a candidate. Sign up is free and only requires a valid email address.

For candidates, the site offers a new way to build their voter base by connecting them with like-minded voters who will support their campaign and show up at the polls. With the costs of running a campaign drastically increasing, especially advertising, PolitiPick opens the door for candidates who may not have otherwise run for office.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competitors?

Sweeney: There’s no other site out there exactly like this that I know of. I’ve seen a couple of sites with questionnaires that match you to candidates but not in the unique way that PolitiPick approaches the problem.

SUB: What do you offer that differentiates PolitiPick from the competition?

Sweeney: What makes this so unique is each candidate creates their own profile and gives their opinions directly to the statements. There’s no third party interpreting a candidate’s opinion.

Also, PolitiPick is designed for elected offices in all levels of government from city, county, state or national; and all offices from council member, mayor or president. The site is very easy to use and the statements are kept short so giving opinions is as quick as possible.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind PolitiPick?

Sweeney: I actually got the idea for the site a couple of years ago while giving my wife a foot rub. There was an election going on at the time and I’ve always felt it was a burden to figure out which candidate to vote for, especially for the lesser known offices. It just goes to show, good things happen when you give your wife a foot rub.

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

Sweeney: The site hasn’t formally launched. We’ve just started Beta in June and are inviting voters and candidates to be among the first to create their profiles. This is being done through some social media, SEO, and news releases.

SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building the business?

Sweeney: For any new website, getting initial traffic is always a challenge. This site has an obstacle of needing candidates to create profiles for it to work for voters and voters to use the site for it to be of value to candidates. Kind of becomes a catch-22, but I guess it’s no different a challenge than many others sites such as Twitter and Facebook have had to overcome.

SUB: What are some of the particular challenges to being a startup in the political space?

Sweeney: I would say for users to understand that the site is unbiased. PolitiPick is non-partisan and is not affiliated with any political party, government agency, or corporation. Any candidate running for elected office, or considering running, can create their profile. Users can even suggest new statements for matching.

As a matter of fact, PolitiPick doesn’t even ask candidates for their party affiliation because when it comes down to it, I don’t think it matters. Candidates are individuals that have their own opinions which vary greatly and often times cross party lines. In addition, some elections are not party specific.

It guarantees it has no bearing whatsoever on the match results. Matches are made purely on the opinions given. Besides, since you can see all results, there’s absolutely no way this process can be manipulated.

SUB: What kind of boost do you hope to receive as a result of the 2012 U.S. elections?

Sweeney: With things heating up on all kinds of issues from the economy, unemployment, health care, and the wars, I think many voters will start taking a greater interest in who they vote for and will need a resource like this. These issues and the 2012 campaigns will receive even more media coverage as the elections approach so hopefully that will all bode well for PolitiPick.

SUB: Where do you hope to see PolitiPick in a year from now?

Sweeney: I hope to see it starting to take off and on its way to becoming a household name. I’d like it to become a valuable resource for both voters and candidates. Once established, it has the potential to become a new form of social media between the two.

I hope it draws uninterested or undecided voters into the election process and become more involved with supporting their candidates. Given how many different election issues there are and individuals’ differing opinions on them, this site does what computers do best: sorting through a bunch of data quickly and giving the user a nice, clean result.

I also hope it encourages people who never thought of running for office to become a candidate based on the like-minded voters they connect with on the site. Eventually, I’d like to see one in three voters use the site as one of their resources in making their decision on who to vote for.

PolitiPick – www.politipick.com

Posted by startupbeat at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Mobile

NFC Mobile Advertising Startup Tapit Raises Seed Funding (via TechCrunch)

Quixey raises $3.8 million for smart app discovery (via gigaom)

Gaming

Zeebo Raises $17 Million For Interactive Entertainment, Education Platform (via TechCrunch)

Cloud

Kleiner Perkins, Salesforce, Put $10.5M In Supply Chain Management Platform Kenandy (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Brian Kovalesky, StartUp Beat Editor

On a week where natural disasters, an unnaturally bad economy, an almost unthinkable retirement (to some, at least) and a run on HP touchpads dominated the headlines, there was still some significant news in the tech startup world.

The biggest news of the week was arguably two new IPO filings: from online video platform Brightcove and social commerce platform Bazaarvoice (watch the spelling). According to the filings, Brightcove hopes to raise up to $50 million, while Bazaarvoice is aiming for a whopping $86 million. Who knows if this is a good sign for a faltering economy, but these filings certainly suggest some overall confidence in the health of the public markets in light of the recent turbulence.

There were also some significant (in terms of money, at least) acquisitions this week. They were highlighted by Skype’s acquisition of group messaging GroupMe. It’s a pretty good exit, to say the least, for GroupMe, a company started just last year that grew out of the 2010 TechCrunch Hackathon. The companies have not disclosed the terms, but sources have said it was valued around $85 million, according to AllThingsD. Also notable was Cisco’s $31 million cash acquisition of Comptel’s software assets. It’s a complicated deal as Comptel is a Cisco “sister company,” but it’s noteworthy for the sheer amount of cash involved.

Finally, Bleacher Report raised an additional $22 million in honor of the start of football season. The site has seen amazing growth and is really an up-and-coming star. And check out CouchSurfing, which secured $7.6 million this week. Could it be a serious AirBnB competitor? It may depend on how comfortable people are with the idea of renting out couches (do loveseats or recliners also count?).

On StartUp Beat this week, we flashed back to last year with NorthSocial, which has since been acquired by Vocus. We also launched a new feature—the Startup Test Drive, and featured a Q&A with the co-founder and CEO of brick-and-mortar data collection and analytics startup BVI Networks.

Check back starting Monday for more startup news, featured companies, and the results of the first ever StartUp Beat Startup Test Drive!

Posted by startupbeat at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Ecommerce

Customer Reviews And Social Commerce Platform Bazaarvoice Files For $86M IPO (via TechCrunch)

Cloud

Verizon acquires enterprise services provider CloudSwitch (via DealsBeat)

Web Content

Ex-PayPal, Intuit CEO Raises $25M For “Next-Generation” Financial Advisor (via TechCrunch)

Russian Search Giant Yandex Acquires Social News Startup ‘The Tweeted Times’ (via TechCrunch)

DoughMain Raises $5 Million For Gamified Financial Education Platform For Kids (via TechCrunch)

Advertising/Marketing

Accel Puts Over $30M In Digital Marketing Platform For The Auto Industry Dealer.com (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

BVI Networks offers its RetailNEXT product, which utilizes in-store technology advances to enable a level of data collection and analysis previously only available online. The San Jose–based company was founded in 2007 and has raised $14 million in two rounds of fundraising.

SUB: Please briefly describe what BVI Networks is, and the value proposition you bring to retailers.

Agratchev: BVI Networks is the leader in the emerging Real-Time In-Store Monitoring space. Its RetailNEXT product is designed and purpose-built as a highly scalable platform that enables retailers and manufacturers to collect, analyze and visualize data about in-store customer engagement. RetailNEXT is an open system that takes advantage of rapidly improving sensor technologies (e.g. cameras and RFID) to bridge the enormous data gap between on-line retail and brick-and-mortar stores. Traditional retailers can now apply a similar data-driven approach used on the Internet to ensure they provide the best possible shopping experience and stay ahead of constantly evolving customer needs. For the first time, retailers that run stores and manufacturers that sell through those stores can get real-time visibility into how their customers shop. RetailNEXT is transforming the way information inside retail stores is collected and applied.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Agratchev: There are no other applications that provide a comprehensive in-store monitoring platform, like BVI Networks does. However, there is competition at some levels with traffic counting solutions and various other point solution providers.

SUB: What differentiates BVI Networks from your competitors (or from those who have similar offerings)?

Agratchev: Many of the technologies offered by other providers in our space are narrowly focused and quickly becoming commoditized. However, the real value of data comes with critical thinking and application–that’s where BVI Networks stands out as the ideal solution for gathering in-store performance data, analyzing findings and visualizing key insights that make immediate improvements to retail performance.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind the company?

Agratchev: Over the past ten years, online stores have made significant advancements using enhanced data analytics to understand how shoppers interact with web stores, allowing online retailers to radically improve the shopping experience and increase sales. However, physical stores that generate 95 percent of all retail sales have had terribly inadequate intelligence tools when compared to ecommerce. We set out to change that by taking advantage of recent developments in in-store sensor technology and creating an open platform that integrates key information from the entire store, analyzes store performance, and visualizes key insights. This process enables retailers to reduce cost and significantly increase sales.

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

Agratchev: BVI Networks was started in 2007. It has been acquiring and integrating advanced technologies since the very beginning—delivering proven technology within the solution from day one, and making continuous additions and improvements since then.

SUB: Have you raised outside funding to this point?

Agratchev: Yes, BVI Networks raised $6 million in Series A financing from a group of private investors. In Series B, it raised $8 million, which was led by August Capital with participation from initial investors.

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

Agratchev: BVI Networks’ client portfolio is comprised of many of the most successful retailers and brands. By nature, these companies tend to be larger organizations with proven methods of operations and retail management, and it can be difficult to lead technological advancement within large organizations. As such, BVI Networks has focused considerable resources and energy in partnerships and tools that help retailers quickly incorporate new technology into the everyday management of their business.

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

Agratchev: BVI Networks is continuously building new features that make retail operations and execution easier and more profitable by adding tools and advancing our technology. In addition, we constantly monitor the market for new and improved technologies to be integrated within our platform. BVI Networks will also continue to expand its portfolio of leading retailers and brands utilizing RetailNEXT, partnering closely with them to optimize operation and strategic execution, and develop previously unavailable shopper insights.

BVI Networks – www.bvinetworks.com

Posted by startupbeat at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Web Content

Benchmark plops down $7.6M to make CouchSurfing into a for-profit (via VentureBeat)

As Football Season Kicks Off, Bleacher Report Raises $22 Million More (via TechCrunch)

Vizibility Raises $1.3M, Makes You Look Good When People Google You (via TechCrunch)

eCommerce

Tinypay.me Raises $1 Million, Moving HQ to San Francisco (via TechCrunch)

Enterprise

TST Media Secures VC Funding To Fuel Company Growth

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

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

Web Content

Online Video Platform Company Brightcove Files For $50 Million IPO (via TechCrunch)

ePals Acquires Media Personalization Platform Newstogram, News Site DailyMe (via TechCrunch)

Wine wars: Lot18 gets new funds as Gilt debuts wine site (via gigaom)

Data Management

Sequoia And Nexus Invest $12 Million In Laptop Backup Startup Druva (via TechCrunch)

Mobile

Mobile Enterprise Apps Developer Taptera Raises $2 Million From Salesforce, Angels (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Advertising/Marketing

The Smart Money Pours $1.5 Million Into Moat (via TechCrunch)

Mobile

Phone Radiation Measurement App Maker Tawkon Raises $1.5 Million (via TechCrunch)

Enterprise Software

Engine Yard goes PHP with Orchestra acquisition (via gigaom)

Desktop Virtualization Company Wanova Raises $10M From Greylock And Others (via TechCrunch)

Health/Medicine

AliveCor Turns Mobile Devices Into Low-Cost Heart Monitors, Raises $3 Million (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Editor’s Note: Once in a while, StartUp Beat re-runs Featured Startup Pitches from the past based on relevant news or to revisit a cool startup that has continued to build momentum. Today we’re re-running one from a full year ago from North Social founding partner Alex Bernstein from shortly after the company was founded. It was a eventful first year for the company, which was acquired in February for roughly $25 million by Vocus, which provides cloud-based software and services for media, marketing and media relations. Under the terms of the agreement, “Vocus paid $7 million in cash at close and could pay up to an additional $18 million of contingent cash consideration over 24 months based on the achievement of certain milestones.” North Social still runs as separate division of Vocus. Check out the business and the strategy that successfully led to the company’s acquisition...  

Originally ran on August 26, 2010

Website: www.northsocial.com

Headquarters: Oakland, Calif.

Year Founded: 2010

Employees: 15

Company Description: Simple Applications. Powerful Facebook Pages.

By Alex Bernstein, Partner

Facebook has become a marketing must for any brand, whether a global corporation or an indie band.  But not anyone can take advantage of the offerings on Facebook due to budgetary and technical limitations.  How many brands have the budget of Red Bull and the engineering savvy of Google?  The most compelling, engaging fan pages on Facebook were built with thousands of dollars by the most talented developers and agencies.  What’s a smaller brand to do?

Shortly after Facebook launched pages for businesses, we were meeting with clients who wanted to enhance their presence on Facebook but couldn’t afford the cost to build and maintain custom applications and didn’t have the time or technical knowledge to outsource developers.  We immediately recognized a need and engineered a way that we could enable all brands, big and small, to overcome the financial and technical challenges of Facebook by offering a full suite of easy to use applications that were both affordable and powerful.

When we set to build the largest platform of Facebook applications for businesses, we first conducted an exhaustive research process of what applications consumers seek on Facebook, cracked the whip on our developers, and finally unveiled our initial platform of fifteen (and growing) custom Facebook applications.  The best part?  We offer each user access to all (yes, all) of the apps for just $19 per month.

We deal with hundreds of brands of all sizes every day.  Whether it’s the start up companies we’re helping to incubate (we run the Oakland, CA based incubator North Venture Partners), the major national brands we service (like SanDisk, Disney, and AEG), or the coffee shop across the street from our offices in Oakland, everyone needs a level playing field and Facebook, and our platform, can provide that.

We can’t wait to see what people can create when not encumbered by a lack of budget or an engineering degree.  With those two major obstacles eliminated by the North Social suite of applications, there’s really no stopping the flow of ideas and viral marketing on Facebook.

We’re keeping a watchful eye on what new marketing tools, technologies, and strategies will evolve across social media as it overtakes all other media platforms.  We’re even more excited to put the most powerful tools on earth within reach for every business.

North Social – www.northsocial.com

Posted by startupbeat at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Web Content

Skype Acquires Group Messaging App GroupMe For $85 Million (via ReadWriteWeb)

Former Expedia Employees Raise $8 Million For Travel Search Startup Hopper (via TechCrunch)

Cloud

6fusion Raises $7 Million For Cloud Infrastructure Management Software (via TechCrunch)

Enterprise Software

NextDocs Raises $10.3M To Provide Microsoft SharePoint Software To Life Sciences Industry (via TechCrunch)

Cisco To Buy Comptel’s Axioss Software Assets For $31 Million In Cash (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 08:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Brian Kovalesky, StartUp Beat Editor

It was a week that saw harrowing ups-and-downs in global markets, and talk of economic doom-and-gloom. But it was generally business-as-usual for technology startups. The theme of the week was acquisitions, led by Google’s Motorola buy…and then HP’s massive $10 billion acquisition of software firm Autonomy. But some smaller names got into the act as well, proving that (at least some) nimble tech startups may have a brighter outlook on the economy than Wall St. and the punditry.

Perhaps the most notable buy was Chegg’s acquisition of homework help site Student of Fortune (which gets this month’s “Best Name” award). But startups Evernote and HubSpot also opened up their wallets to bolster their product lines. Finally, daily deals startups continued to make news in their quest to compete with Groupon with deals site BuyWithMe’s acquisition of Scoop St. (what’s with the names of these daily deals sites?). In funding news this week, highlights included Chinese luxury brands shopping site Xiu.com’s $100 million round, and cloud-based video licensing platform Thought Equity Motion’s $25 million..it’s a tough sector to play in, but having an additional $25 million helps.

If you haven’t already, check out Jim Anderson’s guest column here on StartUp Beat about Spotify and the freemium business model for music. And check out this week’s StartUp Beat Q&As with with the CEOs of decision making and comparison engine FindTheBest, the ‘Priceline for pet service providers’—Pet It Forward, and SMB ecommerce platform BigCommerce.

Check back on Monday for a new week of featured startups and startup news!

Posted by startupbeat at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Web Content

Chegg Acquires Homework Help Site To Expand “Student Graph” (via Mashable)

Evernote acquires image-sharing app Skitch (via DealsBeat)

Social Media

Twitter app store Oneforty acquired by HubSpot (via VentureBeat)

Posted by startupbeat at 08:30 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. The series is intended to serve as a point of discussion and consideration of issues that affect the technology startup sector.

By Jim Anderson

Jim co-founded About.com and is an adviser and inventor of innovative technologies, specializing in artificial intelligence and neuro-linguistic programming. He is currently a part of Spotify’s U.S. technology team.

Spotify finally said “hello” to the United States on July 14, 2011. After years of staring enviously across the Atlantic, our American friends could now enjoy Spotify.

It was also a defining moment for everyone who works at Spotify. Another huge step towards realizing our ultimate goal—to give everyone instant access to all the music in the world.

Before Spotify

The basic idea of listening to music for free isn’t new. The ability to discover new music from the comfort of your own home has existed for a long time. Early implementations of this concept, like Napster, Kazaa, DC++, The Pirate Bay, generated a large amount of negativity amongst the artist community, and for a good reason—they weren’t getting paid for all of their hard work!

Of course, this presented challenges for us when we tried to sell a free model. Why would artists and rights holders willingly give away music for free? Interestingly enough, the answer is quite simple: they don’t have to.

Piracy is so old fashioned

The free model isn’t just about giving music away, but rather a way to introduce the service to users and prove its value. By doing so, we can show them the wonders of having instant access to a large chunk of the world’s recorded music, and convince them to sign up for a subscription.

As it turns out, this view isn’t a mere assumption anymore. Since launching in Sweden in late 2008, all our business data points to one thing—people sign up for the free plan, try it out for a while, and then upgrade to one of the paid plans.

There’s free, then there’s Spotify Free

It’s true that not all of our users have signed up for a paid plan, nor will they ever. But since the free model generates revenue through advertising, listeners are actually contributing just by listening for free. That alone is a huge step in revolutionizing the music industry.

Sharing music is one of life’s real pleasures

Of course, a sound business plan is needed to ensure success, but financial number crunching will only take you so far. Another aspect of our game-changing efforts concerns the social side of music. What could be more sociable than listening to music with friends?

We believe that people want to explore new music, but they also want to share their favorite tracks and playlists with their friends.

Extensive support for social

With Spotify, users can collaborate on playlists, instantly share tracks and playlists to Facebook, Twitter and Messenger directly from the client. In fact, our Facebook integration makes it possible to see and listen to friends’ playlists.

At the same time, this is an area with very high potential. It‘s one of the areas of the music experience that hasn’t been developed before, mainly because there hasn’t been a way for us all to explore music together from the comfort of our own homes (unless you live next door to a music arena!). We really hope to develop this further.

Our goal

What we want to do is inspire millions of people to find, enjoy and share music in the same way that Wikipedia has inspired millions to share their knowledge. Sure we might be talking about utopia, but why not aim for the stars?

However, with millions of Spotify users worldwide, and social media literally expanding by the hour, we believe our goal is at least theoretically feasible. To us, sharing everything, including music, with our friends and loved ones is a trend that will continue to grow. It makes for a very interesting future.

Just imagine waking up in your hotel room on the last day of a dreary business trip to find this present in your Spotify inbox: The Coral – Dreaming Of You.

About Jim...

Throughout his career, Jim Anderson has created a variety of innovative and disruptive technologies. Starting early at age fifteen, Jim spent much of his youth working on the early versions of speech recognition for IBM. Among the first pioneers of the online industry, Jim was a key developer at Prodigy, one of the initial consumer online services, and later went on to become a founder of About.com, playing a key role in the growth and development of the company.

Jim has developed and filed many patents that are held by IP holding companies in the security, mobile, social science and technology industries. He has helped a number of Fortune 500 companies develop and create innovative solutions to various technological issues. Jim has also designed and built numerous leading technologies and patented solutions in computing, security and telephony through his privately held IP companies, most notably, Standard ID and Augment Communications. Jim’s area of expertise further extends to providing technological solutions in the areas of security, artificial intelligence, telecommunications, social networking, search, software and systems architecture. Specifically, Jim has worked on intelligence and design systems relating to the U.S. Patriot Act, KYC (“Know Your Customer”), and anti-money laundering solutions. Over the course of his career, Jim has become a respected authority on homeland security, terrorism and counter-terrorism solutions and has given a variety of lectures and keynote addresses on such topics. Most recently, Jim has presented lectures on innovation, entrepreneurship, telecommunications, networking, artificial intelligence/machine learning, Internet security and safety, security, mobile technologies (including, banking, commerce and next-generation solutions) and social networking.

Jim’s expertise and passion for his profession has led him to donating his time and research to a wide range of non-profit organizations and educational institutions, including, University of Syracuse, Tufts University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kids for World Health and The Alliance of Guardian Angels. Jim serves as an advisor and board member for several different companies, including the Board of Directors for The Alliance of the Guardian Angels.

Additionally, Jim has authored and co-authored several books on Java and JavaScript computing technology. He holds a number of patents both issued and currently pending.

Posted by startupbeat at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Cloud

Andreessen leads $15M investment in GoodData (via gigaom)

eCommerce

Kleiner Perkins And Warburg Pincus Put $100M Into Chinese Luxury Shopping Site Xiu.com (via TechCrunch)

Health/Medicine

Drchrono Raises $650K From Yuri Milner; Launches Patient Check-In iPad App For Doctors (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Big Commerce is an ecommerce and online marketing platform for  small and medium sized merchants. The company’s headquarters is split between Austin, Texas and Sydney, Australia. BigCommerce was founded in 2009 and recently completed a $15 million Series A funding round.

SUB: Please briefly describe what BigCommerce is, and the value proposition you bring to ecommerce.

Harper: BigCommerce is the only ecommerce marketing platform in the world. Some offerings make it easy to setup an online store, some help you drive traffic and sales. BigCommerce is a single solution that does both. It’s fully managed by us, so you don’t need any technical knowledge and it’s as easy to use as Facebook.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Harper: There are varying levels of competition depending on how you define the space. We have Etsy for micro-merchants, eBay via auctions and BIN, Yahoo/Amazon/GoDaddy that offer (limited functionality) ecommerce software and also the handful of players that let you sell through specific channels such as Facebook.

SUB: What differentiates BigCommerce from your competitors (or from those who have similar offerings)?

Harper: The ease-of-use and 25 built-in marketing features. Once your store is open for business BigCommerce makes it really easy to drive traffic. You can setup a store on Facebook, push your products out to eBay automatically, create Google AdWords ads in a few clicks, optimize your store using SEO to rank in the search engines and you even get a mobile-optimized store out of the box.

SUB: How are you marketing your services?

Harper: BigCommerce has enjoyed huge word of mouth and ranks #1 in all side-by-side reviews, such as those conducted by Top10Reviews. We also invest heavily in search engine marketing, display advertising, email marketing, trade shows and direct marketing.

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

Harper: We had a licensed ecommerce offering that you could install on your own servers but our clients said they wanted us to manage it for them. After thousands of requests for a hosted version, that was our “aha” moment and that’s when the idea for BigCommerce came to be.

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

Harper: It was launched in September 2009 so it’s not even 2 years old. We focused early on building out the infrastructure to support thousands of clients as well as the payment system and then marketing and positioning around what was on offer back then. Eddie and I have been involved in marketing for 10 years now so we really understood the pain points to focus on and the demographics and psychographics of the clients we were after from day one.

SUB: You recently closed a $15 million funding round. How do you plan to use the funds?

Harper: As per the blog post, we’re focusing on product, people and marketing. Adding functionality to BigCommerce that takes it from software to a platform, building out our senior leadership team and engineering teams and also significantly increasing our marketing spend to attract more clients. Everything we’re doing leads back to our goal which is to be the leading e-commerce platform in the world for small businesses.

SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise outside funds?

Harper: All markets–including the stock market, real estate and financing—work in cycles and at the moment capital is readily available to businesses that have demonstrated fast growth and a solution to a real problem with a large total addressable market. Over the last few years we’ve been approached by dozens of VCs but wanted to raise capital on our terms. The only way to do that was to first validate BigCommerce was successful and then grow at a rate faster than anyone else in the space so we could raise money in a manner that was favorable to Eddie and myself as founders and also to our staff and company as a whole.

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

Harper: It’s an option but for now we’re very well capitalized.

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

Harper: Having the company split between Austin, Texas and Sydney, Australia is a challenge, but it’s something we spend a lot of time thinking about and so far it’s been great.

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

Harper: A lot closer to our goal of being the market leading ecommerce platform for small businesses. In a year from now we’ll more resemble a true software platform, we will have well over 100 awesome people on the team and we’ll have helped tens of thousands more small businesses achieve growth they didn’t think was possible—until they found BigCommerce.

BigCommerce – www.bigcommerce.com

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

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

eCommerce/Finance

Square Co-Founder And Others Put $17M In Online Merchant Lender Kabbage (via TechCrunch)

Cloud

OpenLogic scores $2M for new open PaaS (via gigaom)

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

Pet It Forward is a platform for finding and saving on pet care service providers. The New York City-based company launched earlier this year.

SUB: What kinds of products and services do you offer?

Dreher: At the core, we provide a seamless process for booking pet care appointments—either through posting requests and receiving offers, or using our direct booking method. The platform provides pet owners the ability to find local pet care providers you can trust, save 50 percent off with pet care professionals or save 100 percent by exchanging pet care with other pet owners. Pet It Forward is an ideal platform for pet owners looking for boarding, walking, and day care services from either boarding facilities, pet care professionals, or even other pet owners. We plan to start expanding the service offering soon to grooming, training, and other pet care services.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Dreher: Pet It Forward is both a social network and a solution network, built on top of a powerful appointment and ecommerce platform. Pet It Forward doesn’t have direct competition, but indirect competition includes other social networks, such as Dogster, and solution networks, such as Care.com. Fortunately, many of our indirect competitors are also potential partners, and we are excited about how we can work together.

SUB: What differentiates Pet It Forward from your competitors (or from those who have similar offerings)?

Dreher: Pet It Forward is positioning itself to be the “Priceline.com” for pet care. We differentiate ourselves with our appointment and ecommerce platform, as the central place to book and pay for all your pet care appointments, while also offering the ability to save 50-100 percent on services as a pet owner, and as a service provider the ability to make more money by filling vacancies in your schedule.

SUB: How are you marketing the site?

Dreher: The traditional ways, and non-traditional ways: Viral marketing through socially activated campaigns. Sponsoring events! Passing fliers out on the street. Working with pet adoption agencies, we make it more affordable to adopt a 2nd or 3rd dog. Word of mouth is huge, can’t pay for that, and we have some huge fans.

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

Dreher: Like every great idea, it evolves over time. Pet It Forward started out with a “free exchange” model, to help young professionals build local networks of like-minded people, and save on pet care services. Then we developed a virtual currency, which could be bought, traded, and cashed out to facilitate the exchange of pet care. We priced the currency, as 50 percent less the cost of average pet care in major cities. All of this evolved into an extremely powerful appointment and ecommerce platform, which is very complicated in the backend, but very simple from a user experience perspective.

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

Dreher: Pet It Forward was launched in early 2011, but has been in development for the past 2 years. We have organized an amazing team of programmers and designers, and couldn’t have done it without a lot of up front planning. We took a few months to brainstorm, and work out some of the hurdles to creating a dynamic platform like this. I also worked closely with my now finance, who does venture capital, to see if I could pitch him on the business, and he helped organize some potential advisers including economists, top virtual currency lawyers, and founders of prior top tech companies such as About.com and Expedia.com. Prior to launch, we prepared New York by building a base of individuals interested in joining the site, and then launched allowing them all to sign up at the same time. We are in the process of identifying our next one-to-two cities to launch based on individuals requesting an invitation.

SUB:

Posted by startupbeat at 11:39 AM | Permalink

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

eCommerce

BuyWithMe Buys New York City’s Scoop St. (via TechCrunch)

Web Content

Thought Equity Motion Scores $25 Million For Cloud-Based Video Platform (via TechCrunch)

Mobile

Zoove Raises $15 Million, Offers ‘StarStar’ Vanity Phone Numbers For Brands (via TechCrunch)

Enterprise Software

Acquia Expands Drupal Product Suite With Purchases Of Cyrve, Growing Venture Solutions (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 07:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

FindTheBest is a web-based decision making and comparison engine for consumers. It was founded by Kevin O’Connor, the founder of online ad giant DoubleClick (eventually acquired by Google). The Santa Barbara, California–based company was established in August of last year, and just closed a $6 million funding round.

SUB: Please briefly describe what FindTheBest is, and the value proposition you are offering consumers.

O’Connor: FindTheBest is a powerful tool to make quick and informed decisions, without the marketing hype. It presents the facts and provides easy-to-use filters so you can find what is best for you.

FindTheBest is like a personal assistant for all the big decisions in life. The web has become riddled with clutter, scams and advertising hype. We remove all of that and give you apples to apples comparisons on products and services. We compare everything from venture capital firms to dog breeds to auto insurance.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

O’Connor: The thousands of niche decision engines.

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

O’Connor: FindTheBest has a powerful engine. In the same way DoubleClick built one of the most powerful platforms to help advertisers make better decisions, we’ve now created a powerful platform that helps consumers make better decisions.

What consumers will notice is that FindTheBest is a consumer advocate; a site they can trust to help them make decisions. Right now, I’d say that’s pretty rare on the web.

SUB: How are you marketing the service?

O’Connor: We’ve done very little marketing. FindTheBest’s belief is that if we build a site that is easy to use, cuts out the clutter and brings consumers the facts, it will become a standard tool in their search box.

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

O’Connor: A couple years ago, I became increasingly frustrated and disappointed with the Internet. I could find endless amounts of information on any subject but when I had a complicated decision to make, I found myself wasting hours, or even days, compiling information I could compare. Or, I found sites offering their “top 10” recommendations, only to discover they were secretly getting “kickbacks” from the sites they were recommending.

While compiling excel sheets to make decisions on everything from college for my kids to what dog to buy, I realized the process in making a decision is basically the same for everything. That’s when I realized I could probably build a platform to assist human curation in bringing all this data together in an easy to consumer format.

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

O’Connor: We launched about a year ago, August 2010. A year prior to that is when I had my aha moment and started working with Scott Leonard, the Deputy CTO at DoubleClick, to build the technology.

SUB: You recently raised $6 million in outside funding. How do you plan to use the funds?

O’Connor: We’re growing quickly—we’ll be hiring more engineers, researchers and product managers as well as enhancing our technology.

SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise additional outside funding?

O’Connor: You raise money when you can. This was the second tranche of the funding we received in December 2010.

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

O’Connor: Probably not.

SUB: What have the biggest obstacles been so far to building FindTheBest?

O’Connor: FindTheBest has taken on a big challenge—organizing comparison search across a wide variety of verticals, and I hope to have an impact on making comparison search better and better for consumers. A lot of people said it can’t be done. I questioned it too, but we’re doing it.

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

O’Connor: Every day we refine the decision-making process, making it more and more intuitive, adding topics and tools that will assist consumers.

At DoubleClick we learned that considered purchase is the most valuable point for an advertiser. FindTheBest has lots of valuable advertising real estate and lots of valuable content. We’ll definitely be looking at how to best move towards a revenue model but we’ll always be 100 percent transparent. Similar to Google, ads will have an obvious spot and FTB content will stay free of marketing hype.

FindTheBest – www.findthebest.com

Posted by startupbeat at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Mobile

Google ups its Android patent defense with Motorola purchase (via MobileBeat)

Social Media

Buddy Media Raises $54 Million To Fuel European Expansion (via Mashable)

Posted by startupbeat at 09:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

TribeHR is an SaaS application that enables social human resources management for small-and-medium sized businesses. The Waterloo, Ontario–based company was founded in 2009 and closed a $1 million funding round in late July.

SUB: Please briefly describe what TribeHR is, and the value proposition you offer small-and-medium sized businesses.

Fung: TribeHR is the first truly social human resources management software for small and medium business. The SaaS-based solution is designed to engage employees and managers in the HR process, minimize stress and automate a number of internal procedures that save time and money.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Fung: Our competitors are slow, antiquated, and frustrating HR processes and the tools that reinforce them. Many customers are switching from Success Factors, Taleo and other enterprise HR systems, or simply moving away from frustrating paper and Excel-based processes.

SUB: What differentiates TribeHR from your competitors (or from those who have similar offerings)?

Fung: Our solution was designed and built from the ground up for small and medium sized businesses . Unlike enterprise systems that were originally created just to support HR and finance teams, TribeHR’s easy-to-use tools are designed for everyone in the organization—we allow managers and employees to engage and share information easily and often among themselves.

SUB: How are you marketing your service?

Fung: In addition to online marketing and advertising opportunities, we consider exceptional customer service to be a key component of our marketing mix. We believe it provides a strong competitive advantage.

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

Fung: The original “aha” moment came when two of our cofounders, coming from very different backgrounds, met to discuss areas within the small business process that needed help. In their experience, many HR processes were breaking down because technology was simply not keeping pace with the Internet. Their desire to fix what was broken in HR, by applying more modern approaches to web and social software, is what led to the founding of TribeHR.

From idea to launch took approximately 18 months and was focused squarely on the HR process within small-to-medium sized companies. We conducted interviews, focus groups and numerous prototypes based on customer feedback, and completed two distinct beta trials that spanned several industries and geographies.

SUB: You recently closed a $1 million funding round. How do you plan to use the funds?

Fung: The company will use the funds to drive product development and expand sales and marketing programs.

SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise outside funds?

Fung: Adoption of SaaS-based software in SMBs is growing rapidly and demand for our HR solution remains strong. With a significant increase in new customers in recent months, our new funds will allow us to hold firm to our commitment for superior service and support and to rapidly build out the roadmap of new features our customers need and want.

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

Fung: Although I can’t comment on future funding plans, I can say that we always keep our eyes open for good growth opportunities.

SUB: What have the biggest obstacles been so far to building TribeHR?

Fung: Because HR practices are so ingrained, yet in many respects so antiquated, our greatest challenge is to constantly think outside the box and keep our software simple and elegant.

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

Fung: It’s hard to predict with any level of accuracy but believe we are in the early stages of extreme growth. In addition to maintaining the highest software standards, we are also committed to integrating third party solutions. Doing so will allow our customers to easily share personnel data between their applications and across their organization.

TribeHR – www.tribehr.com

Posted by startupbeat at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Social Media

Go Try It On Raises $3M, Brings Gap And Sephora Personal Stylists To The Masses (via TechCrunch)

Web Content/Applications

Google Ventures funds RelayRides, again (via DealsBeat)

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

Canvas is a platform that allows businesses to build and find cross-platform mobile data collection applications. The Reston, Virginia–based company was founded in 2008 and recently raised $1.2 million in Series B funding.

SUB: Please briefly describe what Canvas is, and the value proposition you bring to the mobile apps market.

Quigley: Canvas makes it extremely easy to find, customize, build from scratch and publish data collection apps for smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices like bar code scanning equipment. Canvas replaces paper forms and surveys, improving paper consumption, eliminating redundant data entry and reducing excess processes for businesses and mobile professionals. The Canvas software service enables mobile workers to collect information using their mobile devices, analyze that data on the Canvas website, or share information across their business community. We offer two solution components: the ability to use our online app builder, easy to use with no software experience needed to get started. Once built your Canvas app will work as an app on nearly every smartphone and tablet in the market today. We layer onto this the first mobile app store of its kind with a fast growing catalog of apps populated by some of the leaders in the paper form space. In many cases these apps are improved replacements for part numbered currently sold paper forms.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Quigley: Our biggest competitor is paper forms—90 percent of our customers today are looking at doing things the way they were before or moving forward and turning their smartphones or tablets into powerful application tools.

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

Quigley: Canvas is a powerful offering that supports with one application framework nearly every smartphone and tablet in the market. This includes Android, Android Tablet, BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, Windows Mobile devices and even Windows XP+ devices. On top of that we have partnerships that are providing valuable content to our application store—the Canvas App Store is the first application store where you can download an application, have it work on nearly every device your company could own, and modify them to best meet your needs.

SUB: How are you marketing the service?

Quigley: SEO, and through our expanding partnerships including some of the well-known device manufacturers, wireless carriers and content providers like paper forms companies.

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

Quigley: Our team has been in the mobile application space since the early days of the PALM platform, we were involved as one of the first BlackBerry resellers—we have been selling mobile and wireless solutions to businesses for a long time. Companies were looking for a solution that would give them the power and flexibility of a mobile application without the cost, complexity or time to implement. Canvas was a long time in the making—it took the right solution but it also took the general industry to recognize the word “app” and for the rapid proliferation of mobile and wireless “smart” devices to make Canvas more viral.

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

Quigley: We were founded in late 2008, literally weeks before the market crashed. We boot strapped the company for some time and with the support of our earliest investors who believed in our vision, mission and team in early 2009 we started to fund the company for growth.

SUB: You recently raised $1.2 million in outside funding. How do you plan to use the funds?

Quigley: The funds are going to be used to start to create a brand for Canvas and make our solution the app for businesses who are looking to start their entrance into the mobile app space.

SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise a Series B round of funding?

Quigley: Our product was proven, we were growing quickly and it was time to further enhance our ability to grow our capability to expand Canvas throughout the market.

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

Quigley: We raised $1.2 million of our $1.75M round, so we will be finalizing this round over the next few months.

SUB: What have the biggest obstacles been so far to building Canvas?

Quigley: Early on, when we first started Canvas, it wasn’t as easy a time to raise money. We had to sell the vision without a product all during one of the worst financing points in my career. We were able to sell that vision with some investors who have stood by us from those early days and continue to participate in our growth.

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

Quigley: Canvas has seen rapid growth in the market to date, growing at a rate of 100-to-300 percent quarter-over-quarter in all of our key metrics. We continue to see this growth rate as being possible.

Canvas – www.gocanvas.com

Posted by startupbeat at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Mobile/Web Content

Voxy Snags $2.8M To Help People Learn A Language Via Smartphone (via TechCrunch)

Web Content

MediaCore Raises Seed Funding, Launches Platform To Let SMBs Create Their Own YouTube (via TechCrunch)

August Capital, Google Ventures Put $18.5M In Online Legal Service Rocket Lawyer (via TechCrunch)

Finance/Incubators

Former Virgin Digital Execs Raise $20M For Los Angeles-based “Innovation Factory” (via TechCrunch)

Data/Broadband

Airband Raises $20 Million, Announces Plans For Mergers And Acquisitions (via TechCrunch)

IT/Applications

AppFog lands $8M for PHP Cloud (via gigaom)

Posted by startupbeat at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Mobilecause

Website: www.mobilecause.com

Founders: Douglas Plank and Danny Scalisi

Headquarters: Calabasas, CA

Year Founded: 2009

Twitter: @Mobilecause

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mobilecause

Brief Company Description: “Mobilecause, currently serving more than 900 nonprofits in the U.S., is the leading provider of Mobile Communication, Mobile Data Gathering and Mobile Donations to the nonprofit sector.”

By C. Douglas Plank, founder and CEO

Product Overview

Mobilecause is leading the way in mobile technology designed to serve the nonprofit sector. Empowering charities with mobile tools that enable them to easily communicate, build mobile lists, gather important CRM data, and raise money through various mobile means—from carrier billed to traditional credit card pledge fulfillment. In 2010, the U.S. nonprofit sector raised $211.7 billion in donations from individuals. When you include corporate, public and private foundations, it totals $290.89 billion. During the 2008-09 economic crisis, giving dropped 13 percent according to the Center on Philanthropy. This fact alone has accelerated the need for nonprofits to better utilize traditional and new tools like mobile to address donor attrition including lower response rates for direct mail, email, telemarketing and event participation. Given the explosion of mobile smart phone technology, the fact that consumer donors are accessing their email, looking at the nonprofit’s web page, texting and viewing rich media through their mobile device—it is imperative that nonprofits act quickly to take advantage of this new bustling technology explosion in order to reach current and new supporters via mobile.

Mobilecause provides those mobile solutions via our platform which is a SaaS model designed to enable nonprofits to easily create and manage mobile campaigns—whether communication (text), polling, event planning or mobile fundraising.

We wanted to create an easy to use, three clicks and you’re done management tool that would enable nonprofits to stay ahead of the fast paced changes impacting the way their current and future supporters are being communicated with. Our system allows nonprofits to integrate their various calls to action with all the social media—Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Haiti became the tipping point for our company. During a six week period approximately five million individuals made micro donations of $5 and $10 to support that tragedy and this event woke up the nonprofit market regarding the potential of mobile. Mobilecause was perfectly positioned to respond with our state-of-the-art platform and software model. In 2010 our client base grew 400 percent.

Founders’ Story

The idea of utilizing mobile was on the forefront of my mind since the spring of 2004 when one of the nonprofits I started had an opportunity to be presented during a live concert that was also being taped for TV. It occurred to me that my wife and kids were voting for American Idol and for many there was a cost to vote, so obviously there was a financial transaction occurring. Also you could purchase various services through your phone anyway, so why not a donation. It turns out my business partner and I weren’t the only ones looking into this and late in 2008 we made a decision to purchase one of the early entrants in the mobile giving marketplace. We utilized our acquired carrier and aggregator licenses and developed a new platform that we launched in late summer of 2009 with 12 clients. By December 31 we had 115 clients and realized we were quickly proving our model. Within ten months of our first full year of operation we were cash flow positive. Within 16 months we had more than 600 clients and were developing new mobile applications. In addition, if running a startup isn’t in itself all consuming—my partner and I started a foundation to educate the nonprofit marketplace about all things mobile. We had our first conference in Los Angeles in September 2010 and 150 nonprofits attended. In the spring of 2011 we held our second conference and had attendance of more than 250 with more than 40 leading experts addressing the attendees on all things mobile.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

Initially we utilized traditional outbound calling to nonprofit organizations. We then added SEM and SEO marketing and started attending conferences. We hired two individuals who loved the nonprofit market and turned them into our sales people—then Haiti happened and we were flooded with inbound calls. Additionally we hired a PR firm and started positioning ourselves as experts available for interviews which resulted in TV, radio, and print opportunities that further exposed our brand.

How We Differentiate from the Competition

From the beginning we have been committed to focusing on the nonprofit market solely. Unlike our competitors, that is our only focus. We are not distracted by serving commercial sectors.

I personally have more than 30 years of experience in the nonprofit sector and have helped raise more than $500 million dollars in individual donations. I have co-founded two nonprofits and built them to $20 million and $30 million respectively. Our team at Mobilecause has a combined 110 years of experience in the nonprofit sector. We know Nonprofits, understand the culture, already had a good reputation in the sector. Our DEV team is the best in the mobile arena. They have worked with dozens of wireless carriers and implemented hundreds of carrier connections even prior to joining Mobilecause. We also enacted a structure that created significant efficiencies resulting in higher reimbursement rates and accurate reporting for our clients. Lastly, we disrupted the marketplace by driving down costs to the nonprofit clients.

Business Model

Mobilecause is a SaaS model. Therefore we receive revenue from monthly fees. Separately we charge transaction fees for mobile donations and offer upgrades of our system that increases the types of mobile fundraising available and volume of SMS broadcasting a nonprofit can initiate. Basically we provide an affordable scaling opportunity for our clients to build larger and larger text broadcasting and donor solicitation lists.

Current Needs

We are looking for sales people with experience in nonprofit software/services sales. We need Rails and Java developers. Always seeking sales leads!!!!

Mobilecause – www.mobilecause.com

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

Web Content

Armed With $7M In New Funding, Movieclips Lands Deal With YouTube To Be The Vevo Of Film Clips (via TechCrunch)

KidZui Launches ZUI.com, An ‘Internet Experience For Kids’, Raises $2 Million (via TechCrunch)

Trendyol takes Turkey with $26m from Kleiner Perkins (via gigaom)

eCommerce

BVI Networks Raises $8 Million in Series B Funding 

Software/Applications

NoSQL, Yes Funding! Couchbase Raises $14 Million (via TechCruch)

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

Palm Beach Gardens, FL-based OneUp recently launched in order to coincide with the start of the NFL football season and baseball playoffs. The company was a GamesBeat 2011 Mobile Startup of the Year finalist.

SUB: Please briefly describe what OneUp offers.

Trousdell: OneUp Games makes live sports more fun and rewarding through casual, social sports games. It’s a mix of Zynga—social games—and ESPN—sports and big data. Our first two games are Baseball and Football Connect. We have a few more games coming soon too.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Trousdell: Initially, we thought we would be competing with the fantasy sports networks—CBS Sportsline, Yahoo, ESPN, etc.—as we shared a focus and similar customer group. However, as our product has evolved we see ourselves as an addition or extension to the fantasy sports world. We have been really fortunate to be one of only a few entrants into the live-social-gaming space. However, no one group or games has made enough of an impact with users to make an impact. We hope to do this rather quickly as we’re learning from their mistakes and lack of understanding of the live-gaming market and user.

SUB: What differentiates OneUp from your competitors (or from those who have similar social gaming offerings)?

Trousdell: There are a number of factors that we think set us apart from current and prospective competitors. Our games are fun, competitive, can be played from anywhere, and unlike traditional fantasy sports games, players do not need advanced knowledge of the teams, players or league to enjoy or succeed in the game. It’s also very quick to set up a game, players can jump right in and play instantly at live-games, in sports bars, or at home by simply signing in with Facebook Connect and selecting the current live games they want to play. From a user experience and design standpoint, we are developing the best looking social games in the space and staying away from the traditional ‘cartoony’ social game style by creating a premium game experience with familiar pro-sports tones that we believe fans want. We are also going to be offering our players the ability to earn real goods for their success in our games; no sweepstakes or contests like some of the others in the space.

SUB: How are you marketing your games?

Trousdell: For our first two games we have the benefit of having two very important events; baseball is almost into the post-season and football is benefiting from an increase in popularity. We believe we can immediately take advantage of the relevancy and use PR, influencer marketing and sports blogs to generate awareness and competitive play. In addition, we also benefit from the lack of social sports games competition in the app store. Lastly, the viral loop we have built into our game has an incredible effect on our player’s friends as we’re using real game events to draw friends into the experience.

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

Trousdell: The “aha” moment came when I started and stalled in yet another fantasy football league…I just never had the time or interest to devote to the constant upkeep and management that fantasy sports requires. It turns out the majority of sports fans experience the same thing. Also, I was regularly texting with my friends amongst the live games—usually trash-talking and predicting events. I went searching for something that could facilitate our live competition and it just didn’t exist. I saw an opportunity that couldn’t be ignored. OneUp Games was born.

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

Trousdell: We established the company in the beginning of 2011. The first thing we did was to see how fast we could build our first game and how many users we could generate for little to no money. The result was the first and only Super Bowl Squares game on Facebook. We built the game in less than five days and spent only $400 on Facebook ads. We generated thousands of users in one day and cemented that we were on to something with our casual, live-play formats. We learned quickly that Facebook offered some unique benefits but mobile is the area with the largest void and opportunity. 

SUB: You recently launched the company, and will be launching your football game with the beginning of the NFL season. Why was now a good time to launch?

Trousdell: Now is a good time to enter because there are millions of digitally and socially connected sports fans (100m+ in the US) without a real-time way to get more into their favorite sports, leagues and teams.

SUB: Have you raised outside funding?

Trousdell: Not yet. We decided to self-fund our start to avoid early equity dilution and distraction. We are currently in the process of raising our first round of financing and hope to complete this within the next few weeks.

SUB: What have the biggest obstacles been so far to building OneUp?

Trousdell: The biggest obstacle in the beginning was choosing where to start. We came in at an odd time where we would miss the beginning of baseball season and a looming NFL lockout. However, we now look at the timing as beneficial as we learned so much through the beginning of baseball season that has helped us in shaping the product. Since then we have had such incredible momentum we are working to avoid the typical pitfalls and obstacles of start-ups that fail.

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

Trousdell: We think there will be millions of sports fans flocking to our games to amp up the fun while watching their favorite live-events. Also, we are building our games and platform to scale globally. I am really looking forward to offering the same fun and rewards for the passionate fans of amazing global sports like cricket and rugby.

OneUp – www.1up.me

Posted by startupbeat at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

eCommerce

Daily Deals Giant Groupalia Scores $26M In Funding, Raises 2011 Turnover Target To $175M (via TechCrunch)

Bloomspot Raises $40 Million To Prove Their Local Offers Model Works — And They Guarantee It Does (via TechCrunch)

GreenTech

GE Invests Up to $40 Million in eSolar (via TechCrunch)

Web Content

SinglePlatform Raises $3.3M To Help Local Businesses Create Online Storefronts (via TechCrunch)

SAY Media Continues Acquisition Spree, Buys Home Design Website Remodelista (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

PriceAdvice offers a tool for pricing and comparison of used items. The Austin, TX–based company has raised $500,000 since the start of 2011.

SUB: Please briefly describe what PriceAdvice is, and the value proposition you offer to both buyers and sellers.

Williams: PriceAdvice is the ‘Bluebook For Everything Else’. Our objective is to be the most comprehensive source of fair market prices for used consumer products. This allows buyers to make more informed decisions when buying used items and it will enable sellers to more accurately price their goods for sale.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Williams: While there are other sites that offer price estimates for used products, we believe that the most important hurdle for us to overcome with consumers is their own inertia. By that I mean most people, and I would have included myself in this group not too long ago, think that the best way to find good prices on the web is to open up a bunch of browser tabs or new windows and look at a variety of websites. This is not only inefficient, but it doesn’t always produce the best result for the shopper. We’re making the shopping process simpler and more effective.

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

Williams: We have spent over five years developing proprietary algorithms and data analysis processes that allow PriceAdvice to pore through terabytes of data, clean it and normalize it, then make it available to consumers in an easy-to-use format. More importantly, we base our valuations on actual transactions on millions of items, not just what their asking price was. That makes our pricing more accurate and valid for comparisons.

SUB: How are you getting the word out about PriceAdvice?

Williams: We are deploying a combination of press and public relations strategies, along with a social media plan that leverages our unique insights about the secondary market. We’ve found that once people hear about the service and give it a try, they immediately understand the value and are willing to tell others about it. We’ve also begun establishing relationships with influential bloggers and folks who are knowledgeable about the product categories we’re covering. They not only recognize the value of a service like ours but they also lend credibility that helps consumers quickly get comfortable with us.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind PriceAdvice?

Williams: Since 2006, we’ve operated a site called iTaggit.com that was specifically designed to help collectors sell their items on eBay. We realized that many of those iTaggit users were using our tool to check the prices for the items they were planning to upload and sell.

Keep in mind that roughly $400 billion in used products are sold each year, and about $30 billion of those transactions are done online. So this is a massive opportunity for us to pursue. After we did some additional market research, and better understood the needs of our target audience, we made the investments to leverage our data acquisition platform to provide the underpinnings for PriceAdvice. We now have the ability to curate a wide variety of products across hundreds of categories.

SUB: How much funding are you raising this round? How do you plan to use the funds?

Williams: We have raised $500,000 since the beginning of 2011, and this most recent infusion will help us accelerate our marketing and business development efforts.

SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise outside investment?

Williams: Our lead investor, G51 Capital, has been incredibly supportive of our efforts to get PriceAdvice off the ground and on a steep growth trajectory. They realized that we have a unique window of opportunity to establish our brand and our service as the place to find accurate prices for used consumer products.

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

Williams: While we are constantly evaluating our capital requirements, we don’t anticipate the need for additional funding in the next several months.

SUB: What have the biggest obstacles been so far to building PriceAdvice?

Williams: What keeps me up at night aren’t necessarily obstacles but opportunities. The uncertain economy has made people pay more attention to the market for used products, whether used cars, used iPads or used golf clubs. We are well positioned to help consumers make smart decisions as they buy used products. So we know that there is a great deal of open field running for us to do. At the same time, we have to be smart, focused and execute extremely well so that we establish a reputation for accuracy and quality. This, in turn, will help us build loyalty and repeat visits from consumers while also making our services attractive to prospective partners.

SUB: What are your goals for PriceAdvice over the next year?

Williams: We have fairly aggressive growth targets that will allow our consumer-facing services to grow in terms of the product categories we cover and the revenues we expect to generate. We are pursuing a series of strategic partnerships that will allow us to expand our reach and allow us to augment the services offered by other sites. Stay tuned for more details on those.

We also have plans to enable us to direct consumers to local partners with whom we have aligned. Our goal here is to help the consumer find the right price for what she’s looking for, then get it to her as quickly as possible. That could mean a link to an Amazon Marketplace seller. Sometimes that will mean connecting them with a retailer in their area that will be expecting her and will close the sale “offline”.

We also believe that there is an opportunity to help manufacturers monitor and, in some cases, participate in the secondary market for their products. In the auto business, most premium brands make a point of touting the way that their cars maintain their resale value. There are several other categories where a similar statement of quality and value retention would be brand-enhancing for their products. In some of my previous roles, I’ve seen first hand the tangible and intangible benefits of being attuned to the secondary market for our products. I believe PriceAdvice can help demystify the pre-owned market for a number of companies.

PriceAdvice – www.priceadvice.com

Posted by startupbeat at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Cloud

BigTime Raises $2M For Cloud-Based Time And Billing Management Software (via TechCrunch)

eCommerce

E-Commerce Platform For Retailers Plimus Acquired By PE Firm For $115 Million (via TechCrunch)

IT/Web Analytics

Webtrends Buys Media Temple-Backed Realtime Analytics Firm Reinvigorate (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 07:40 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: Suren Ramasubbu is a co-founder of Mobicip.com, a leading online child safety service for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, PCs, laptops and netbooks. Mobicip’s mission is to provide a safe, secure and educational Internet experience for school-age children. Mobicip’s dynamic content filtering technology helps parents protect their children in the new era of Internet hazards stemming from anytime anywhere access on personal devices. Suren is a passionate advocate of mobile learning and Internet safety, and speaks or hosts panels at conferences and seminars on these topics for parents and educators. He has also served as a consultant for educational technology projects in K-12 schools and school districts. As an active member of the community, Suren has led successful United Way volunteering and fundraising campaigns. Before launching Mobicip.com, Suren was an Operating Manager at Agilent Technologies, responsible for a division’s enterprise web strategy. At Agilent, Suren has led the quality strategy, evangelized software engineering methods, and developed software used to design IC chips for mobile devices. He holds a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

SUB: What was your first entrepreneurial venture?

Ramasubbu: Growing up, I had always had an inclination towards standing on my own feet. My first entrepreneurial venture was in college when I decided to take on a reseller opportunity, selling kitchen knives, of all things. I had a successful run for a while and made some pocket money at the end of it, and I learned the highs and lows of making a sale.

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

Ramasubbu: I still remember that moment vividly. I was watching some kids walk across the street at a traffic light. These middle schoolers were carrying huge backpacks. It was 2005. I felt the backpacks were an anachronism, a throwback to an older era in education and how children learn. I remember feeling strongly that this was going to change. And I wanted to be a part of that change in education, if and when it happens. It was a gut feeling, an intuition, and it was validated at the Mobile 2011 Conference. There is significant change happening today in K-12 education, and it has been labeled “mobile learning”.

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

Ramasubbu: Mobicip’s first large-scale deployment in a school district came about due to a serendipitous meeting at the ISTE 2010 conference. I was part of the audience at a session on using iPod Touch devices in the classroom. There were many questions from the audience, and the presenters had a hard time answering them. I put my hand up and almost took over the rest of the session answering questions about the intricacies of mobile learning projects. After the meeting, a school administrator walked up to me and informed me right then and there that he was going to purchase Mobicip to protect the Internet access on thousands of devices at his school district. That was the best validation of Mobicip’s product-market fit that I ever got.

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

Ramasubbu: The first sign that we were on to something came from Mobicip’s customers, or prospective customers if you will. No sooner than the website went live, we started seeing tons of traffic and engaging conversations on the forum. We had no product at the time, no features, no testimonials. And we had thousands of people talking about Mobicip and what the product should look like and do. Since then, Mobicip has been experiencing exponential growth year-over-year despite being a lean and bootstrapped startup.

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

Ramasubbu: Mobicip was a product of our passion to participate in the mobile learning movement. However, my first step was to establish the need in the market by running a survey across parents of young children and school administrators. The survey results emphatically validated the need for online safety, parental controls, and content filtering on mobile Internet devices.

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

Ramasubbu: I wish I had met Jason Fried (founder of 37Signals) and followed his advice on bootstrapping and not spent time trying to raise funding for the startup.

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

Ramasubbu: Cash. I think this is true for any startup, especially bootstrapped ones. Building a product is one thing, and we engineers like to believe we are good at that. It costs money to acquire customers, and it takes time for it to happen.

SUB: What kinds of outside funding did you raise?

Ramasubbu: Mobicip was started with a small round of seed funding from friends and family. We have not had a funding round since.

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

Ramasubbu: I’m not sure if we have moved past the startup stage yet. But the steady triple-digit growth rate gives us confidence that we are on the right track. We are approached by VCs once in a while, and their interest and term sheets tell me that we have built something valuable for our customers and ourselves.

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

Ramasubbu: It is a long, windy, and sometimes lonely road with unexpected ups and downs. The trick is to enjoy the process, stay the course, and not give up, rain or shine.

Posted by startupbeat at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Mobile

Kinvey Closes $2M Seed Round For Its “Backend As A Service” Product (via TechCrunch)

HTC Buys Mobile Web Services Company Dashwire For Up To $18.5 Million (via TechCrunch)

Finance

On Deck Raises $19 Million To Connect Main Street Businesses With Capital (via TechCrunch)

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

Recently-launched Polkast, founded by serial entrepreneur Hong Bui, allows consumers to easily create a personal cloud to connect and transfer files between all of their devices, regardless of platform. The Capo Beach, CA–based company was founded in December of last year.

SUB: Please briefly describe what Polkast is and the value proposition you offer.

Bui: Everyone is talking about cloud services. Instead of sending your content up to the cloud, Polkast brings the cloud to you. Polkast creates your own “direct cloud” dynamically, letting your mobile devices directly access your home base (PCs). Polkast automatically detects your proximity to the PC and choose the fastest route: Wi-Fi or over the Internet. Polkast then opens a secure connection and encrypts all transmissions. So you can securely access all of your content directly.

By maximizing Wi-Fi bandwidth, Polkast allows users to retrieve any of their data files up to 10x faster than the traditional cloud. This “Direct Cloud” approach also means privacy and security are 100 percent under your control. And removing cloud storage limitations means access to 100 percent of your files. Using Polkast is as easy as downloading the free app and logging in.

For users—Polkast lets them skip the old routine of uploading, syncing and waiting for their data, as well as the storage limitations and costs that come with the traditional cloud solution. Polkast offers a ‘premier’ solution—access to 100 percent of user files, 100 percent control over the data, delivered faster than any competitor, and at no cost.

For resellers, the Polkast story is about giving consumers the ability to get the most out of their tablets—driving customer satisfaction and additional purchases. Modern tablet computers are meant to act in concert with a user’s primary computer, vs. in the past when most computers were purchased as a replacement for an old one. As consumers add these new mobile devices to their lives, data access and synchronization with their primary computers can be a real point of consumer frustration. Polkast makes it easy for users to share and transfer files to and from any tablet—meaning resellers can promise maximum consumer benefit with the lowest amount of consumer effort—a winning combination. Tablet plus Polkast equals a greater value and a greater consumer experience.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Bui: People are tired of messing around with the cable and negotiating with 2GB storage limits and the slow bandwidth.

Polkast is up to 10x faster, more secure, and no storage or size limits (than) even wire and cable vendors because you no longer need them to transfer contents to and from your iPad, iPhone, Android phone and Android tablet. With Polkast’s Direct Cloud framework everything can be transferred over the air.

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

Bui: We are customer-centric company; therefore, most of our time is focusing on customers and what can we do to make their digital living more productive and fun.

The typical cloud solution, (i.e. dropbox, box.net, even iCloud...) forces a typical user to siphon an ocean of digital content through the straw of the Internet. Furthermore, 2-5GB of cloud storage means accessing data is a challenge when the average person has several hundred Gigabytes of data on his PCs. So there is a huge disconnect between the current cloud offering and how much data people actually have.

Polkast was built from the ground-up to remove the cloud data storage limitation and allow users to have access to all the files across their PCs-at home or at work. Depending on your individual requirement, Polkast could be an alternative or complementary to those solutions.

SUB: How are you getting the word out about Polkast?

Bui: Right now mostly through grass roots word-of-mouth, and some bloggers have written about us. Even with the effort just beginning, Polkast was a top download in the productivity category.

SUB: What was the inspiration behind Polkast?

Bui: We have to admit that a tiny part of our inspiration for Polkast came from not wanting to get off the couch.

Ever since the tablet revolution hit we’ve been loving our new iPads and tablets. All this new technology is making our lives better and easier. With one exception.

These days, if you have a computer, a laptop, a tablet and a smart phone, moving files from one device to the next all the time is a daunting and frustrating task. The solutions for getting your computer files onto your mobile devices are still way too complicated, costly and incomplete. Frankly, it was giving us a headache.

Our mission—we believe you shouldn’t have to think, it should all just be there. Not certain files, but all of your files. And no waiting. No way. Just instant access to everything on your computer.

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

Bui: Finding and building the core team and working on the prototype as a proof-of-concepts.

SUB: Are you looking for outside funding?

Bui: We are not pursuing funding at the moment. If we were, it would be all about get-big-faster.

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

Bui: We will raise money as needed to fuel growth.

SUB: What have the biggest obstacles been so far to building Polkast?

Bui: To innovate you have to break a few rules. Our biggest obstacle was building a solution that avoided the pitfalls of the current cloud products—namely slow speeds, limited file availability, and expense. We found that a system in which the devices directly communicate with one another eliminated all three of these problems in one solution. Direct connection speeds between devices far exceed Internet download times and rival wires for overall convenience. And once devices are connected via WiFi, there is no limit to how much data they can transfer between each other. Eliminating costs-another obstacle, became easy when we no longer used the cloud and the data fees associated with that type of solution were removed.

SUB: What are your goals for Polkast over the next year?

Bui: Simple. That everyone with a tablet will use Polkast in some way.

Polkast – www.polkast.com

Posted by startupbeat at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

eCommerce

Rentcycle raises $1.4M from Andreessen-Horowitz, cast of internet stars (via DealsBeat)

Web Content/eCommerce

Elevate Snaps Up iOS Publishing Software Maker Zipadi (via TechCrunch)

Gaming/Social Media

Social Gaming And Developer Career Opportunity Platform Gild Raises $2.4 Million (via TechCrunch)

Sibblingz Grabs $1M From YouWeb To Help Developers Create HTML5 Games (via TechCrunch)

Advertising/Marketing

Monetate Raises $15 Million For Realtime Testing And Targeting Platform (via TechCrunch)

Mobile/Advertising

Posted by startupbeat at 09:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Adzerk is a publisher-side online ad serving tool that offers a different approach from the ad network model. The Durham, North Carolina–based company recently raised $650K in seed funding.

SUB: What is the value proposition Adzerk offers to both advertisers and publishers?

Avery: Adzerk is purely a publisher side tool—we offer the tools and technology that publishers need to best serve their ad campaigns. Adzerk has a number of advantages over the current crop of ad servers. The first is that we have been rewritten from the ground up with current technology, it’s fast, never blocks a page from loading, and can scale on demand. The second is that we believe enterprise software should be more friendly, we don’t have monthly minimums or contracts—you just pay for what you use.

We don’t sell directly to advertisers—but advertisers can use the Adzerk platform to view reports and work with publishers who use the Adzerk platform.

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Avery: Our primary competition is OpenX, Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers, AOL’s Adtech, and Real Media 24/7’s OAS.

SUB: What differentiates Adzerk from you competitors (or from those offering similar services)?

Avery: Adzerk is built on the latest technology and we plan on innovating very fast—most ad servers have been stagnant for the last decade as all of the innovation happens in 3rd party services or ad networks. We are also building a friendly enterprise software company—we don’t require contracts, monthly minimums, or have overly complicated pricing schemes.

SUB: How are you marketing your services?

Avery: We find and reach out to potential customers directly as well as by attending industry events. You can also expect some more value-added marketing efforts in the future.

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

Avery: Adzerk was originally built as a proprietary system for a number of ad networks I was running. In early 2009 as I was trying to start a third ad network I realized that I should really be offering this software to other people who want to build networks instead of trying to build every ad network myself.

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

Avery: Adzerk first started back in 2007/2008 when I was running ad networks but wasn’t spun out to other publishers until 2010.

SUB: You recently raised a $650K seed round. How do you plan to use the funds?

Avery: The funds will pay for the continued development of the platform as well as building our marketing and sales teams.

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

Avery: The first half of the year we were running on funds from the sale of one of our ad networks in 2010—raising money let us accelerate our development and growth plans. We could have continued to grow while bootstrapping off of current revenue—but I feel like there is an opportunity here that we need to seize.

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

Avery: I expect we will raise more money in the future—either later this year or early next year.

SUB: What has the biggest obstacle been so far to building Adzerk and making it what you’ve envisioned it to be?

Avery: The largest obstacle has been navigating all of the current conventions and limitations built into the current ad technology ecosystem—there are providers and servers we have to work with that were built in the ‘90s (which in Internet years is basically pre-historic).

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

Avery: Our goal is to build the best platform for publishers and ad networks—in a year from now I think we will be much closer to that goal and have a host of new ad networks and publishers running on our platform.

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

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

Social Media

Facebook burns a little cash, buys group messaging and digital book outfit (via Engadget)

Web Content

Get Satisfaction gets $10M for customer support tools (via gigaom)

Mobile/Social Media

Lightbank Invests In Location-Based Mobile Social Network WhosHere (via TechCrunch)

Mobile

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

Finance

With Record P2P Loan Growth, Lending Club Raises $25 Million Led By Union Square (via TechCrunch)

eCommerce

FinanceAcar raises funding for online car marketplace (via TechCrunch Europe)

Gaming

Social Learning Game Developer Airy Labs Raises $1.5M From Google Ventures, Others (via TechCrunch)

IT/Security

6Scan Raises Funding, Offers ‘Automatic’ Website Protection (via TechCrunch)

Advertising

Posted by startupbeat at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

LocalMind has created an application that allows a new level of interactivity with mobile check-ins and location-based services. The San Francisco–based company was founded in January of this year, and recently closed a $600K funding round.

SUB: What is the value proposition LocalMind brings to the mobile content market?

Rachitsky: We add real day-to-day value to the check-in, and location-based services. When you check-in, you become available to be sent questions about the location you are at. Other members can use that check-in to send you questions about what’s happening at that location in real-time, to avoid disappointment and wasted time. We’re already sharing our location with numerous services, checking in and earning virtual rewards. Why not help others and feel good at the same time?

SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?

Rachitsky: This is a totally new space that we’re helping to build. For our stage of company, the real competition is apathy.

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

Rachitsky: Our focus has always been location-based, real-time Q&A—giving you insight into what’s happening at a location you care about right now. We also sit on top of your existing behavior—i.e. checking in. These elements, and our current roadmap, are focused on providing as much value to our users as possible, based on what we’ve been hearing from them. We aren’t worried about our competition, or differentiating from them.

SUB: How are you marketing the service?

Rachitsky: Today, it’s been mostly word of mouth and press. We also have some viral components to our app, including sharing to Twitter/Facebook when you ask and answer questions, and inviting your friends. We’re working on some new things along these lines I can’t yet talk about.

SUB: How does LocalMind differentiate from or integrate with other mobile check-in services?

Rachitsky: We integrate with the three most popular check-in services (e.g. Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook). Our goal is to work with any services that share your location, and provide you with more value beyond the basic check-in.

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

Rachitsky: The idea actually came as a result of working on my previous site, Assisted Serendipity (www.assistedserendipity.com). I realized pretty quickly that there is tremendous value in knowing where people are, especially to people that want to know what’s happening in that location right now. It was pretty obvious what had to be built in order to accomplish that.

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

Rachitsky: It was founded in January of this year. I left my job, a job I had for just under 10 years, and moved to Montreal of all places. We worked with an incubator called Year One Labs, which gave us office space and connections and product support and all kinds of great things.

SUB: You recently raised $600K in outside funding. How do you plan to spend the funds?

Rachitsky: Mostly on hiring exceptional people.

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

Rachitsky: Most likely yes, probably early next year.

SUB: What have the biggest obstacles been so far to building LocalMind?

Rachitsky: Getting the word out about what we’ve built, that’s always the hardest part of any company.

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

Rachitsky: Creating a hive-mind of humanity.

Posted by startupbeat at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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

eCommerce

Google acquires Dealmap, the missing link between Offers & Maps (via VentureBeat)

Google Ventures Invests In Coupon Startup Whaleshark Media (via TechCrunch)

Chegg Rival CampusBookRentals.com Closes $20 Million Financing Round (via TechCrunch)

BetterWorks Aims for Top 20 U.S. Cities with $8 Million Funding (via ReadWriteWeb)

Web Content

DST Invests $50 Million Into ZocDoc So They Can Finally Get A Decent Logo (via TechCrunch)

File Sharing/Data Management

Minus Raises $1 Million From IDG Capital To Simplify File Sharing (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 08:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Weyrich Enterprises

Website: www.divaliciousapp.com

Founders: Andrew Weyrich and Rich Kessler

Headquarters: Fairfax, VA

Year Founded: 2010

Twitter: @DivaliciousApp

Facebook: www.facebook.com/divaliciousapp

Brief Company Description: “Weyrich Enterprises is the inventor of Divalicious, a revolutionary mobile shopping application for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, which was created to make mobile shopping easier than ever by featuring nearly one million fashion and beauty items from 300 popular brands in one centralized location.”

By Rich Kessler, co-founder and CTO

Product Overview

Divalicious is a new mobile shopping app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that completely changes the way you shop. By giving users access to 300 retailers, we put an end to driving from store to store, standing in long checkout lines, and having to search for the size you need only to find out it’s out of stock. The full day adventure at the mall is a thing of the past. Those hours you couldn't spare but had to, can be yours again with everything at the tip of your fingers.

We wanted to create the ultimate social shopping experience. Before the online social world exploded, people would call their friends and try to find a time and place to meet that worked for everyone, and then follow each other from store to store. With Divalicious, we make it easy to include all of your friends, and more, in your buying experience. With the ability to post items you like to Facebook, Twitter and email, you can receive opinions on a dress you were not sure about buying or share that new patio set with your wife or husband before you buy. We took the experience a step further with the revolutionary ‘Dress Yourself’ feature. You can take items from your wish list, or as you shop, and “try them on” on a virtual mannequin or a photo of yourself from your camera roll. With the ability to scale and move each clothing item and remove as much of the background as you wish, users can now see exactly what they would look like in an outfit. In addition, you can share this outfit, as well get instant feedback from your friends and family.

Founders’ Story

Divalicious literally came from a dream I had in which I was browsing and creating an outfit on my mobile device. When I presented the idea to my business partner, Andrew Weyrich, he immediately took it that one step further to shopping online from any store you could think of.

The idea that people don’t have enough time in their day to spend shopping from store to store, worrying about what they might wear on a particular night, imagining what it may look like with a piece from a different store, is what drove us to make this the best experience anyone could have. Being able to visit 300 stores, finding exactly what you need for your wardrobe, your living room or even your garden, and share it with your friends was something we could have used years ago. Everyone is pressed for time these days, especially young professionals and young parents. It’s challenging to make time for everything, so we created Divalicious to make life that much simpler for everyone.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

We took a strong approach to marketing this app and making sure that nobody missed out on the opportunity to experience the convenience it offered. A long form and short form video were created to give people an overview of Divalicious. The videos appear on YouTube, our Facebook page and have prominent placement on our website. Most app developers don’t go far enough with marketing, but we wanted to make sure no stone was left unturned and sent out a nationwide press release to every fashion blog, website and magazine that would cover something like this. Those initiatives along with our daily Twitter blasts have been amazingly positive.

How We Differentiate from the Competition

Unlike some previous shopping apps, we decided not to limit ourselves on what would be offered. With the full range of products available to us through the API Shop Sense, we felt that cutting out even one category could cost us potential sales and limit our audience. We are the only shopping app in the market today that allows the user to completely customize and ‘try on’ their outfits before purchasing them. No other shopping app gives you the chance to upload a photo of yourself and see just how you would look with the top you've had your eye on.

As guys, we know that we’re not always the best judge of outfits, which is why we took advantage of user created outfits within the API and added a feature—for both men and women—called ‘Related Looks.’ This allows anyone the ability to see what others have put together using any given item from within the app.

Business Model

Divalicious currently receives a percentage of each item click to that retailer's website. We are always looking to expand our revenue stream with sponsorship, as well as expand our brand and increase sales through endorsements.

Current Needs

Divalicious is currently looking at all options available to us. As previously mentioned, we are looking long and hard at sponsorship opportunities within the app itself, as well as hopefully bringing a corporate sponsor on board in the near future. Divalicious is currently funded in-house.

Divalicious – www.divaliciousapp.com

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

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

eCommerce

BigCommerce Raises $15 Million To Help Retailers Manage E-Commerce (via TechCrunch)

Telecom

Windstream buys business phone company for $2.3 billion (via gigaom)

Web Content

IncrediMail Buys Online Photo Album And Slideshow Creator Smilebox For Up To $40 Million (via TechCrunch)

Kimbia Raises $4M For Online Fundraising And Event Management Software (via TechCrunch)

Posted by startupbeat at 09:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)