Tech Crunch Italy rocked it.
This blog post is written by Mario Fontana, Microsoft Architect Evangelist in Western Europe.
On 27th September, the inaugural TechCrunch Italy kicked off in Rome, giving some of the country’s coolest startups a chance to showcase their talents, as well as bring together some of the key influencers in the industry to talk about what’s driving innovation and entrepreneurship in the region right now. Just like other TechCrunch events, this was a lively, informative day that was also a great opportunity for networking. And venues don’t get much more impressive than the Globe Theatre at the Villa Borghese!
I’m personally very delighted that the local Microsoft community is very involved in the event, which is also supported by the Mind The Bridge Foundation and the US Embassy in Italy. And I don’t just mean Microsoft sponsoring the event and providing speakers and experts (though we’re pleased to be able to do that). What I’m really proud to see is that some of the top start-ups belonging to the Microsoft BizSpark program in Italy are among the companies that presented.
What a diverse group of startups these are, showing that innovation comes from all kinds of sources. Here are some of the start-ups delegates at TechCrunch Italy:
Appsbuilder – a DIY platform for mobile applications development. No coding skills are needed! Through a single build process users can create an app for multiple mobile platforms.
Paperlit – a finalist in our own European BizSpark Summit 2012, Paperlit provides publishers with a simple way to get their content online and mobile, supporting branded apps and digital services across all main mobile and social media ecosystems.
Risparmiosuper – this online service compares grocery store prices helping consumers save money and retailers and brands check competitors prices in real time
Save the Mom – a great name for a web and mobile platform that simplifies the communication among family members (or to connect with other families) making it easy to share important information.
Stamplay - helps marketing professionals create and manage engaging marketing campaigns and loyalty programs, through a catalogue of white label software solutions, with ready-to-use apps that are easy to customize and simple billing.
Stereomood – a music service that delivers curated playlists from independent artists and labels to best suit the user’s current mood, while making it easy to find fresh sounds from the top 150 music blogs from across the web.
Yoodeal – an online shopping platform for personalized deals and offers that users a clever search and ranking algorithm to gather and personalize offers for each shopper.
Michael Ocansey, CEO, Kuzima is one of ten entrepreneurs we are featuring during our run up to DEMO Africa, October 26, 2012 in Nairobi, Kenya.
Who is your mentor, and what was the last great thing he or she told you and your team?
Mark Davies is the CEO of eSoko and a great user interface, information design and user experience architect.
He has been my mentor since 2005. I learnt a lot of user experience and information design stuff from him.
Last week I presented him with a prototype of product and he said "You have really improved. I love the experience. This is clean."
It was great hearing that from someone who had taught me mostly all I know today as far as design is concerned. I felt encouraged to raise the bar.
BizSpark company WhoAPI in Croatia just got word they are going to be only the second company in Croatia invested in by 500 Startups, the investment firm and startup accelerator run by Dave McClure. We were alerted to this by Goran Duskic, a friend of ours, and one of the founders of one of the many BizSpark companies in that part of the world. Way to go, Goran.
Here's the screenshot of the McClure tweet. So, apparently, McClure is hanging out with the Croatian president. Nice!
Microsoft BizSpark has scoured the globe for a group of hot teams on the ground. We are calling these hard-working entrepreneurs our Ambassadors. Because they see things first, and because they know first hand what it feels like to put it all on the line, we asked them to volunteer what they see to show you all how it really feels to be in a startup.
These are the people who look into the lives of startups and give us their first glimpse and personal views on what makes them tick. To start this off right, we are going to introduce you to them, one by one.
Dimitar Georgiev, Founder of Source Realms, shares what has been happening to him these past few months.
What was the most difficult challenge your business faced this year?
Our biggest problem was founding. In this part of Europe the economic crisis came little bit later. We had to work on other projects in order to found our own. It was a good test to prove how strong we believe in our idea.
What has overjoyed you in the past month?
The first release of our portal.
When was the last time you fell in love with a product?
Before several months when I played with Win 8 on a tablet :)
Has starting your own company provided any answers about your life? Have you discovered something about yourself that you didn’t know before?
I found that I can`t hardly live without this anymore. My life would be so empty. I have discovered that an idea can push you beyond any limits.
If you're company is less than five years old, bringing in less than one million US dollars in revenue and in search of growth strategies, you can apply for Microsoft BizSpark. We truly love startups, and we will give you free software, support and exposure so that you can grow as fast as you can.
Today, CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer, dropped by RocketSpace on Fremont Street. He came to show support for developers and to announce that Microsoft would be creating a Windows 8 App Lab there, so that developers can get cracking on building Windows 8 apps for the expected market boom when it is released.
Here are some photos, taken by our colleagues Claire Lee and Darryl McDade.
With 525 million Windows 7 licenses sold, millions of people await Windows 8 apps. The think goes -- and this is very accurate -- that in addition to wanting the same apps that they love in Windows 7, which will be operable in Windows 8, people also want new apps that encapsulate a completely different experience.
One of our audience and marketing evangelists, Brett Raffel, sent me this, about 30 to Launch in San Francisco. (you will see another link further down, but you should visit this, it's the most important thing in the blog post).
To help them, we have a Windows 30 to Launch program, which exposes developers, hackers, and other rock star app builders to the Windows 8 methodology and puts them in touch with Microsoft evangelists and engineers who can help them build an app that can get into the app store. There's even a blog all about the Windows Store, in case any of you want to know how the Windows Store can be used and what is in it now.
To brief you on what this opportunity means, here's a blog post about the things you need to know as a developer, and why the opportunity is so big for developing Windows 8 apps-- How to get something in the Windows 8 app store. So what happens at these 30 to Launch events? Well, you basically get all the information you need to have in order to make a Windows 8 app.
One of our audience and marketing evangelists, Brett Raffel, sent me this, about a new 30 to Launch series they are running in San Francisco.
Create a Windows 8 app in 30 days and then attend a Microsoft App Excellence Lab to get your app ready for the Windows Store. If your app meets our quality criteria, you’ll receive a token to register your account and then submit your app to the Store.
To help you get there, we’ve organized a series of 30 to Launch events across the US. Join us over Five weeks to make your app idea come to life.
*Official rules for the Windows 8 events.
30 to Launch is powered by Microsoft Platform Ready (MPR), a partner program designed to help you get your applications compatible with the latest Microsoft technologies. MPR offers the latest tools and resources to help you develop great applications and target them to the right audience. By signing up, you are enrolled into the MPR program and receive partner benefits for no charge. Learn more about MPR here.
Audience: Developers, Designers, Architect, CTO, Hackers and Hustler
Registration Link - http://30tolaunchsfo.eventbrite.com/
From Microsoft in Bangalore, a world record has been broken.
"Thousands of developers from all over India and beyond attend Windows AppFest to build apps for Windows 8 and made history by setting a Guinness World Record for the Most Participants in a Software Development Marathon in One Location."
Here's a video of the event:
How do you know you are winning with consumers? It's not as hard as you think. If you are building a startup, Urban Cargo founder Krishna Gullapalli, a Startup America member, gives us three clues in this interview we did with her this week.
Urban Cargo delivers hair care and skin care products to men in a monthly subscription service. It's utilitarian, handy and makes you look handsome.
The Urban Cargo Team, with Krishna Gullapalli in the middle, smiling. Courtesy Krishna Gallapalli
What have you learned about managing a technological business that you would pass on to the next generation?
Krishna: One of the hardest parts of building a technological business is focus. There's so much that we wanted to build out with our company including algorithms and dynamic ecommerce tools, but the best strategy for us has been to strip away all that we want to be to focus on the highest impact tasks in the short-term. It's hard to stay focused on just 1 or 2 key objectives when you have this much broader vision of everything your company could be and all the cool technology that you want to incorporate, but we've always found the greatest return for our time and investment has been by keeping everything simple and digestible for our customers.
What signals from your consumers do you look for to signify that you are winning?
We're constantly talking to our customers to hear what they want to see and what they'd like to see improved. And we try to talk to them in a multitude of different ways including UX testing, product feedback surveys, and even just one on one conversations. We know we're winning when our customers are (1) recommending us to their friends, (2) coming back to us to buy more or (3) just straight up telling us they're happy! We have a great emphasis on customer service, so we want to hear directly from our customers when they're happy and more importantly when they're not happy so we can fix the problem. We also look closely at engagement metrics, such as online conversion rates, email open rates, frequency of visit, etc. to monitor that we're constantly relevant to our customer base. It's this combination of quantitative with the qualitative that we use to make sure our customers are excited about our company.
When you need to ask questions on your team, who do you go to? Who do you usually turn to outside of your organization to ask questions?
We've built up a network of resources that we turn to when we have questions. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and we believe that's true for start-ups as well. As a Dream-It accelerator alum, we've been fortunate enough to have different mentors to turn to whether it be investor questions, product development issues or even just general sanity checks. Beyond this network, we turn to our customers and our business partners as well, as they can provide the best product/industry specific knowledge. Ultimately, we turn to the experts within our own network or we look to find the expert when we have questions that we need answered.
What came first for your company – the product idea or your existence on the internet?
The product came first. I learned from my past start-up experiences that it's important to test if you have customers for the idea before sinking a lot of time into building the product. With Urban Cargo, we actually created the boxes and sold product while our site was still in progress. We had a very bare bones site that couldn't even accept recurring payments, because we wanted to make sure we had customers before investing too much into the tech. This has allowed us to stay lean and really focus on the customer and the product before building out technology that our customers don't want.
From now on you can build a Windows 8 app before the release of Windows 8 on October 26th. How's that for Bazinga!?
The original blog post by TheAppBuilder CEO James Scott about their release of their Windows 8 app, can be found at their website. Here are the money quotes:
Imagine this – its October 26 and the most hyped Windows operating system launch in years has just gone live –Windows 8. All media focus will be on this – news programs on TV, magazines, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, the entire internet – everything! Windows 8 will deliver a radical change to the way in which you will use Windows on PCs, laptops and mobile tablets. Windows 8 ushers in an intuitive new touch interface which takes its lead from last year’s hugely impressive Windows Phone 7 tile user interface..
Ahem (cough, cough), we have an announcement. From today you can now create your own native Windows 8 app in minutes using TheAppBuilder. We are pleased to announce that we are the only do-it-yourself app building service which has risen to the challenge to enable you to publish your own Windows 8 app (even before the store has gone live)!
The company also issued a standard press release in an email to fans. Here's the announcement in full:
DIY mobile app building website TheAppBuilder.com (www.theappbuilder.com), has today launched its hotly anticipated Windows 8 service. With just a few clicks, anyone can now easily and quickly build a Windows 8 app and submit it to the Windows Store.
TheAppBuilder was launched in March of this year as a means for businesses, organizations and individuals to rapidly and easily create mobile apps, without knowing how to code. Windows 8 is the latest platform to be added to TheAppBuilder’s roster, adding to iPhone/iPad, Android, Windows Phone and HTML5. In the short space of time since launch, over 40,000 apps have been created by customers of TheAppBuilder.
James Scott, CEO of JamPot Technologies, the company behind TheAppBuilder is excited by the latest announcement, “When Windows 8 was announced we felt it was an important step to enable customers of TheAppBuilder to be able to publish a native Windows 8 app as the platform opportunity is going to be huge. There is a real sense of industry excitement building for the launch of Windows 8 and given the number of customers we’ve had asking for a Windows 8 service from TheAppBuilder, we’re looking forward to seeing a diverse range of apps created ready for its launch in October.”
With the countdown on to the launch of Windows 8, TheAppBuilder provides the perfect tool to quickly create an app for the Windows Store. Using the simple drag and drop interface, an app can be created by anyone in minutes. Businesses, organizations and individuals that have already created an app using TheAppBuilder will also be able to easily submit a Windows 8 version to the Store by accessing their account on TheAppBuilder.com.
“There is a lot of excitement around Windows 8, especially the Windows Store and the opportunity it presents,” said John Richards, Senior Director, Windows Apps Marketing at Microsoft Corp. “With this huge opportunity in place, it’s great to see TheAppBuilder enabling anyone to easily and quickly create and submit exciting Windows 8 apps using its simple interface.”
We asked two members of the SoundCloud team to talk to us about product development and management of the platform in the context of culture and community. This is the second in that series of interviews. The first was with Matas Petrikas, a Product Manager for HTML5 apps. Here is Jami Welch, Community Manager, SoundCloud.
BizSpark: Does the input from individual users using the product create a community? Or, did the team look for a community to deliver them the product? In other words, is there a chicken and egg thing here? Does the product come first, or does the community?
Jami: At SoundCloud the product comes first, we know the main features and usage patterns that we want to develop. We might use the input from the users to decide on which variation of a particular feature is more likely to work better (A/B, multivariate tests) But that's one of our product development instruments, not modus operandi.
I'd agree with [what Matas has said], mostly feedback is used to identify pain points in the user experience, so that existing features can be refined. The community comes from people finding engaging ways to use the product and platform to reach others.
BizSpark: How do you tell the difference between a community user base’s appreciation for the media delivered by the product and the product itself? I am wondering if there is any way of tracking what people love about a product as differentiated from something as simple as “there’s great music here.”
Jami: We know that we can't be better than the sounds our creators put on the site, so some of our main challenges are: how we can accommodate as much great content as possible? how does a listener discover the content they would love to listen and share? The magic happens when we perform better than the user's expectations. We do measure which aspect of SoundCloud attracts users and encourages them to recommend us, using NPS survey's. So some users recommend us for the content, and others for the ease of use etc. We can then use this data to understand motivations and how well the product works for them.
BizSpark: How does community management work with product development, and are there certain systems or software you have in place to make that type of communication effective?
Jami: We are working very tightly with our community team. We use both software tools for that (Lighthouse, email, etc.) and regular personal syncs. On the products that are in very active development (public beta etc.) we do daily monitor on the user sentiment and feedback in relation to new features and product changes. In every product development iteration we have at least one bigger story that is prioritised from the community sentiment perspective. Also we do regular quarterly user surveys where we measure our NPS rating.
BizSpark: How do you identify a member of your community as an ambassador of your product, and do you use this type of “soft” marketing of Soundcloud?
Jami: We don't have a concrete definition of what makes a SoundCloud user an ambassador, or evangelist, but those that are active on site, and engage with us through social channels are often a close match.
I like to think we take quite an organic approach to cultivating the community. By providing a safe, welcoming environment where people feel able to express themselves freely, through natural word of mouth SoundCloud finds it's fans. The community team is a separate team from Marketing, with different goals.
That being said, we do have some more active programs running, where we assist and elevate users in creative and collaborate projects that involve sharing sound online.
When I was in Berlin two weeks ago, I wanted to know how SoundCloud, the massively popular sound collaboration platform, managed its product development cycle. So, I asked Matas Petrikas, a product manager for html5 apps, some questions about his work. Here is the result:
Interview with Matas Petrikas, product manager for html5 apps at SoundCloud
Matas: At SoundCloud the product comes first, we know the main features and usage patterns that we want to develop. We might use the input from the users to decide on which variation of a particular feature is more likely to work better (A/B, multivariate tests) But that's one of our product development instruments, not modus operandi.
Mattas: We know that we can't be better than the sounds our creators put on the site, so some of our main challenges are: how we can accomodate as much great content as possible? how does a listener discover the content they would love to listen and share? The magic happens when we perform better than the user's expectations.
Matas: We are working very tightly with our community team. We use both software tools for that (Lighthouse, email, etc.) and regular personal syncs. On the products that are in very active development (public beta etc.) we do daily monitor on the user sentiment and feedback in relation to new features and product changes. In every product development iteration we have at least one bigger story that is prioritised from the community sentiment perspective. Also we do regular quarterly user surveys where we measure our NPS rating.
BizSpark: How do you identify a member of your community as an ambassador of your product, and do you use this type of “soft” marketing of SoundCloud?
Matas: Maybe Jami from our community team could answer that? [Note: Jami did, and you can find his answers right here.]
Soundcloud, the popular music-sharing platform, integrates community development with product development. This is something every startup in the web ecosystem -- mobile or browser-based -- should be thinking about. For many startups working in the developing markets, there is not a ready and web-hungry audience, so you have to think about creating the culture to consume the app that you want people to consume, even as you have to create the app that people need to solve a problem. That's a difficult task.
Here are some thoughts about how that can happen. I interviewed Matas Petrikas, Product Manager for HTML5 apps at SoundCloud, and I interviewed Jami Welch, Community Manager at SoundCloud, to get their perspectives about where culture, community, interaction and product development collide.
This blog post is written by Douglas Crets, Community Manager and Social Media Editor at Microsoft BizSpark.
This is not Jami and Matas. These are the founders of SoundCloud, courtesy Creative Commons License
Iteration as a Community, Product Development as a Culture
I'm going to be honest, to start. I had imagined I could write a four part series about community management and design, product development and customer development, but some of the things that came up in the interview with Soundcloud html5 apps product manager Matas Petrikas made me sharpen my focus, so I scrapped that idea, and now I am going to focus on how listening to the community and producing something for the community are integral puzzle pieces that must be considered together if you are to make a successful startup.
Soundcloud enjoys success. In the early part of 2012, they surpassed 10 milllion users, and this Germany-based startup has the perfect mix: host awesome, community created mixes, and let people comment on them, offer feedback and iterate and collaborate with each other. Seems an easy sing to do, right, because this is the heart of music-making. And it is, but to make an entire company out of it, that's something else. Here's how community management and product development work. I asked Mattias four questions. Here is what he said.
There are four skills I have found useful in building community. They are 1. Listening 2. Reflecting and Creating 3. Choosing and 4. Giving in to spontaneity. When I spoke to Matas, and his colleague Jami Welch, the Community Manager for Soundcloud, about what it means to build community into products and products into community, what struck me was the healthy symbiosis of the two. I am going to publish the difference responses to the same questions on other parts of the blog. You can get them here (community management) and here (product developer).
What I have learned is that what you say to your community can prompt behavior just as much as reading and listening to behavior can create iterations to your product. The two teams have to work together simulatneously with the community to make sure the cycle is being fed and being kept, for lack of a better word, culturally positive.
What I mean about culturally positive is this: consumers on the the app feel like they belong to the app and that their feedback will go straight into the lives of the people who congregate with them on the app, but also in to the development of the product. a good product development team depends on a community manager to make sure that happens, and a good community manager makes sure that product development is always aware of how things are shaping up behavior wise on the site, in ways you can't get from just reading traffic analytics or user statistics.
Reflecting and Creating -- Community Critique is Marketing (When there is response and creation embedded into the product, you can't lose)
One of the skills that makes this possible is something I call Reflective Awareness.
This is different than listening, but, like listening, depends upon a close interaction with your customers and community. I think that a lot of products with incredible momentum fall into a cycle of thinking that because it's working, people love it, and the product sells itself. This may be true for a really hot sports car, but for products on the web or on mobile, people's lives change the direction of the app's usage, and it can make the difference in whether an app is useful to someone or not useful.
To get there, you have to stand back from telling people what to think about the app, and you have to see how people live with it. You become the neutral ghost in the machine that puts the user first. That's my take. Others may have a different take on it.
One of the hardest things I struggle with is breaking out of the reflecting part, though, and turning the things I have learned into the product itself. I find that if I don't force myself to move from reflection to creating something based on a reflective thought, I get trapped into inactivity. So, for me, it's essential to take time out of the day, every day, and think about what I want to achieve, or to think about what I am observing.
It turns out that this works very well with relationships, too. The more you reserve time for yourself, the more you are able to see your partner more clearly. Apply that to how Soundcloud works. I find the listening to tracks and commenting on them is both a metaphor for how product development works and shows how Soundcloud's community works.
At this moment in the beats from Nishin's Showtime EP teaser, you see the community jump in and give praise. For almost every break, every insertion of some tripcore or some kind of Skrillex-inspired beat and dubstep loop, Nishin can give feedback. But look at it more intensely: people are listening and reflecting on what the music does for them, and then they are creating. Feedback is creativity and creation. In a media-rich app like Soundcloud this is the product just as much as the music platform is the product. Without either, they would be dead.
This is incredibly interesting to me because in SoundCloud, not only do they have the platform
Microsoft announced today that they have launched YouthSpark, a citizenship program that will create opportunities for 300 million young people over the next three years.
You can read more about this effort at the Citizenship News Center, where you can see an interview about the launch initiative with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Below is a list of questions and answers about why Microsoft is doing this.
What is the problem?
“We see a growing opportunity divide between those young people who have the access, skills and opportunities to be successful and those who don’t.”
“The rate of youth unemployment is double that of rest of the population. That isn’t just an issue for future economic prosperity – it’s a personal crisis for a growing number of young people who are being left behind.
What is our Commitment?
“Microsoft YouthSpark is a companywide initiative to create opportunities for 300 million youth around the world in the next three years.”
“Our next generation of citizenship programs and partnerships focus on the world’s next generation of people.”
Why Microsoft?
“We’re a global company, with Citizenship programs underway in over 100 countries. That gives us a unique perspective, a broad scale, and deep partnerships to bring to bear on this crisis.”
“We have a thirty year commitment to philanthropy, we’re mobilizing our company and our partners. We know we can use this experience to make a difference”.
What defines our approach?
“YouthSpark is about creating opportunities for youth in education, employment and entrepreneurship”.
“This is about empowering young people to imagine and realize their potential. We are committed to using our technology, talent, time and money to help tackle this crisis.”
“YouthSpark is a cross-company initiative which goes beyond philanthropy. We’re mobilizing the whole company, and through the Microsoft YouthSpark hub we are helping young people find all the resources they need to pursue education, employment, and entrepreneurship.
Why is this important?
“Microsoft believes that addressing the challenges facing youth is one of the most important actions that we can take together to secure the future of this generation and, the future of our global economy.”
Can you really succeed?
“It’s a big challenge. But we’ve seen the amazing things young people can achieve when they get the opportunity. We need to work together to give them that opportunity.”
Good times are rolling for Hungarian startup Tresorit. After impressive participation at a series of competitions and events last year – they were a finalist at the Global Security Challenge in Israel last September, and won the Central European semi-final at last year’s Intel Challenge in Poland – they incorporated, sat down and immersed themselves in coding. The result: a product in Beta phase, a substantial investment from a local VC fund, and a $60,000 BizSpark benefit to name a few.
This blog post is written by Monika Mork, in Hungary.
Tresorit’s team consists mostly of university students, who invented a smart way of file sharing over insecure channels and on insecure storage. Their solution is unique in providing access control without the need to reissue keys and re-encrypt the files whenever a new user is added or somebody denied access. Tresorit storage is especially convenient for small to medium sized companies who work with many clients, like law firms or accountants, who can share documents with their clients without security concerns or the need for infrastructure investments. What makes the solution special is its ease of use for collaboration scearnios at corporations as opposed to the limited file sharing capabilities that most of the competition offers today.
The Tresorit solution is compatible with some of the major free storage providers, but it was felt that public providers like Google might scare off traditional companies like law firms. Offering their own secure storage was a logical next step – enter Microsoft Azure. As high-potential members of the BizSpark program, Tresorit was recommended to and accepted into BizSpark Plus, and now they can explore various solutions without incurring high infrastructure costs at this volatile stage of the company.
The Hungarian incubation team is fully signed up for beta – you can do so yourself at www.tresorit.com. We’re very proud of this partnership and eager to hear the next wave of good news from the team.
Our champions in DC area, Ashish Jaiman and Ed Donahue, were mentors at StartupWeekend Blacksburg just last week (Sept 14th - 16th ) held at Rackspace in Blacksburg.
The event was a huge success, and our guy Ashish says “Wow, what a great event. We learnt a lot to learn about the students and team’s passion, community mentors and coaching support… and we saw unbelievable entrepreneurial energy”.
Ed also hosted a dev camp in Virginia Tech, where participants of the Startup Weekend were able to get to know Windows 8 (and Microsoft BizSpark) prior to the kick-off of the event on Friday. More than 90 entrepreneurs and students registered – with a great line up of mentors and judges:
Teams that built a Windows 8 application in the coming two months were offered a shiny new Windows Phone and the chance to participate the awesome investor day that The Fort is hosting on December. Read more about this new accelerator in DC.
After the initial pitches on the Friday evening, 9 teams formed to build products over the weekend. Here they are:
ORZUPORZUP.com allows our customers to create beautiful custom renditions of satellite imagery of an area at a given point in time. Our process modifies satellite imagery into beautiful works of art. Some of the wonder is in the customer’s ability to personalize the art by specifying a place and time they deem meaningful. We have seen the wonderful connection this allows our customers to have with such works. A much deeper connection than merely selecting a piece from an art gallery.
ImagiPrint 3DImagiPrint 3D’s mission is to provide the ability for anyone to bring their ideas to life. No experience with 3D modeling is necessary. Simply send us your sketches, pictures, or any idea and our capable design team will be reproduce a 3D model and 3D print it into life. Custom jewelry, figurines, accessories, you name it; we print it! Targeting the everyday imaginator, ImagiPrint 3D. Imagine. Print. Done.
Sign TravelerSign Traveler’s goal is to help all of the historical sites that most people pass by become better integrated into our society. This mobile service would sent historical information to your phone that is normally found in small, unreadable print on roadside signs. Our company will tailor to two different customers; the traveler and the advertiser. Our advertising plan allows for a small area in the application to be designated to corporate sponsorship.
Home Grown TradeHome Grown Trade is basically an online farmers market. We want you to be able connect with you clients and gain more clients outside the market on Wednesday and Saturday, by creating a profile online that you would enter in all of your produce so people could do online shopping either to pre-order for the market or for you to be able to meet up with clients one-on-one.
ResumeXCreating an enterprise application that will facilitate the digital transfer of resumes between applicants and business at career fairs. Applicants will upload resume then scan a QR code for the job they desire and this will transfer their resume to the business. The business will then pull up the resume on a tablet or other mobile device and they will be able to see the resume and take notes on the applicant while discussing the position.
InVille.coGamification of company culture and workspace to produce health and culture reports and info-graphics based upon social network LinkedIn and internal health reports/surveys. This will tie the company internals to the likes of FarmVille to show health by village.
QuizzTakerQuizzTaker improves student classroom interaction and response collection at an industry unique price point. A proprietary software application allows teachers to seamlessly integrate technology enhanced items into their daily lesson plans to better engage students with important material.
Project Free AirfareDon’t let a plane ticket stand between you and a great travel experience. We partner with businesses in your destination to subsidize your airfare. This is can also help you plan for you trip as you save by getting coupons for businesses where you are going to travel. Let’s make airfare free!
QuitWaitingQuit waiting in line at fast food restaurants, grocery stores, sporting events, bars, cafes and ANYWHERE else! We are building a mobile app that allows consumers to order and pay… leaving you to simply pick up your purchase.
Winners:
First Prize went to ResumeX; Second Prize – QuizzTaker (Public Sector); Third Prize - ORZUP
Here are some pictures from the event, view more photos on the Microsoft BizSpark site:
From Mongolia to South Africa to London to Brazil, people around the globe are coming together for weekend long workshops to pitch ideas, form teams, and start companies. Startup Weekend is a global initiative which started in the USA and over 500 events have been held in 90 countries to date.
On August 31st Cape Town hosted the 54-hour idea fest, for the second year running. Of course Microsoft BizSpark was there in force as a platinum sponsor. This year’s event was held at Bandwidth Barn and saw 39 participants pitch 29 ideas on Friday night kick-off, which then became 9 teams.
Winners of the competition (top two teams) were offered the chance to having mentoring and support via Microsoft BizSpark and receive a scholarship to attend DEMO Africa taking place in Nairobi, Kenya in October. How exciting for them!
Read about the winning team Virtual Firehouse: “Brandon Wilson, an emergency services veteran, who has experienced the inadequacies of current solutions first hand created a system aiming to overcome the management and reporting challenges that emergency services teams face due to outdated systems”.
The second-placed entrant, WiselyDone, aims to provide an employment portal for retired individuals to leverage their experience and skills.
"The winning solution addresses a clear need in the market, and despite the impressive output and creativity displayed by all teams, the judges were pleased with their final decision” said Invenfin’s Executive Director Stuart Gast who was on the judging panel.
Here are some pictures from the event.
Startup Weekend Cambodia took place on 22 – 24 of June, with 80 registered participants becoming 8 teams. Microsoft Student Partners co-organized the event and participantswere able to take advantage of Microsoft BizSpark.
Congratulations to the three winning teams (and to Piseth and our local team for organizing a great event).
Here are some pictures from the event:
One of the greatest social equalizers of the modern era was public education, or, education in general. You put people in a system that trained them to think, or taught them ways to approach problems, and you could put them to work and create jobs.
This blog post was written by Douglas Crets, Community Manager for Microsoft BizSpark.
That old way is broken, mostly because the industrial revolution is for the most part over, and even the information age has plateaued to bring us to another level of labor and creation -- you might call this the Innovation Economy.
Michal Hrabi (right), MIC Manger of Czech Republic innovation center MIC Bruno, stands with Ravi Rajagopal (left), Vice Chairman of Vishnu Universal Learning in Hyderabad
In an era such as this -- when new jobs and wealth are created when you use Internet and cloud server technology to link disparate peoples together and press different ideas into a conversation between people far apart -- one of the Microsoft models, the Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC) model, is quickly proving itself to be the kind of catalyst operation that can generate growth.
Dave McClure at 500 startups wrote recently about getting over the search for "black swans," and pointed to comments that likened his approach to investing as more of the Oakland A's model, rather than being an operation like the Yankees. Here is the money statement, one of the most concise metaphors for a new way of investing, something you might call utilitarian investing:
Put bluntly: we are both ambitious and we both play baseball, but YC is quite clearly the Yankees, while 500 is more like the Oakland A’s. Though i don’t profess to be Billy Beane (or Jerry Maguire), 500 is ideologically more focused on being an organization that teaches great hitting & fielding, rather than one that aims to find the best hitters & help them negotiate the best contracts. In other words, we’re happy to discover we have a few black swans, but our MISSION is to groom ugly ducklings.
This may sound like 500 is aiming for the minor leagues rather than the majors, but on the contrary, it’s more a difference in philosophy and style. We may not always swing for the fences, and we may not always win gold medals, but our athletes put in their hours at the gym & on the field, and they will be just as ready for battle whether on a local or global theater.
However, our role models are Ichiro, Steve Nash, Allen Iverson, & Michelle Kwan, rather than Barry Bonds, Joe Montana, Michael Jordan, or Serena Williams. We’d love to bankroll Michael or Serena, but we know they’re probably going to YC and not 500. But maybe we’ll go to Canada and find Steve Nash, or go to Germany and find Dirk Novitzki, or go to Japan and find Ichiro before YC does. (note: it’s not lost on me that ironically, Ichiro now plays for the Yankees… sigh).
Now, I know that baseball is a clearly American metaphor, but there is sometihng you can extract from McClure's comments. It is: that no true innovation happens when all you do is look for the black swan event, or the super hero. Why not be the maker of a very strong, global team? I was sitting around the dinner table last night with MIC managers from India, Tunisia, Belgium, Armenia, and Croatia. we were talking about how the real new information economy is really the one that helps people get things done.
Ben Picquard, MIC Manager, MIC Mons, Belgium
Just having a brand, or just having the technology doesn't solve any one problem for very long, but MIC thinking is truly innovation thinking. Based on my conversations with them, I can say that the MIC managers truly are linking centers, putting the right people together with the right resources to stimulate the local economy around them. That's a simple plan of coaching, communication and cooperation. MICs are local, embedded centers, literally born out of innovation, that create this communication and conversation. They link up people to technology that works, models that scale, and education that improves their standing in life and in the economy.
MICs are kind of the Dave McClure's of Microsoft, and the software industry. Since everything is stored in the cloud, they can link people to each other to get information passed to vital people, and they can teach everyone from the schoolchildren in Uganda, to the entrepreneurs in Barcelona and Madrid how to innovate and iterate.
And whose to say the schoolchildren in Botswana or Uganda are not entrepreneurs?
Guest blogger Louise Donnelly-Davey is 40 years old, and founder of web startup Scrattch. An active member or our Facebook community, she read recently that famous investor Vinod Khosla thinks that investors should only listen to the young -- implying that you can't succeed in startup culture if you are over 30. She sounded off. Here's her response. Enjoy and make sure to leave us some comments here or in Facebook.
Louise is from New Zealand, where she lives only a very short distance from some great skiing, by the way. Or so she tells us.
Age Ain't Nothing But a Perfect Opportunity to Build a Startup
by Louise Donnelly-Davey, Founder- Scrattch- Search.Store.Share - launching October 2012 in beta. Currently has open seed round.
This article did not make me mad... it kind of made me smile wryly.
The quickest adapters may be the younger people in the room when it comes to new technology but that does not mean that these people are necessarily the best people to be leading the fight.
I am a 40 year old female, currently working on my new start up here in Queenstown, New Zealand. The odds are stacked against me in more ways than one when it comes to securing funding. To be honest my age is 3rd on the list when it comes to barriers to funding. Being so geographically isolated is the first, being a female is a very close second and the fact that I am 40 is somewhat a distant 3rd.
Rightly or wrongly, the venture capitalist (or Angel) who favours the young college graduate over the older, more experienced entrepreneur is discounting a rather large and experienced pool of potentially highly successful investment opportunities. I am not saying all older entrepreneurs are better, nor am I saying all younger graduates are not up to par. I am however saying that with age comes a myriad of traits that only experience can bring.
I have a Masters degree, experience in both public and private sector corporations and 3 successful (non tech) exits under my belt. I also have 3 children and a husband who is more than able to support our family while I work on my start up. My strategic thinking skills are honed, my ability to anticipate problems and quickly pivot is finely tuned, and my tenacity is well exercised. I have had a myriad of experiences and faced a multitude of roadblocks. Each and every milestone hit over the past decade has enabled me to learn through experience.
I don't have to adapt to change- I anticipate it before it comes ! ... there in lies the difference between me and my younger counterparts. I have insight and forethought. I am able to focus on my mission all the while being responsive to the environment. The quick adapters may be amongst the smartest people in the room, but those who anticipate the environment prior to these changes are streaks ahead of them. :)
In Leo Tolstoy's great, and epic, novel Anna Karenina, he starts off his tome by stating: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." For Croatians, there's a lot of history in quoting a Russian like Tolstoy.
And if you ask any Croatian what it's like to be in a world that coined the term, Balkanization, they each will tell you some version of the truth: that there is always something broken, and you can either sit around on your butt and experience it, or set to work to fix it.
For seven-time startup founder Jereslav Bobic, a BizSpark entrepreneur in Zagreb, Croatia, there is always a little bit of the sting in his words, because he feels that not enough Croatians -- and really, not a lot of entrepreneurs in Central and Eastern Europe -- have what it takes to keep moving, work with hunger, and iterate. We sat down for espresso in an outdoor cafe in Veradzin, Croatia, and talked of many things -- from Nikola Tesla, to Anna Karenina, identity and the lack of privacy, but what I got on tape was him saying that all startups are like "broken families." They have unique problems that are each their own, and they are setting out to fix problems that only they can fix.
Here's the clip:
Jack Dorsey is right about one thing, there is a bubble, but riding the bus may not be the most efficient means to disrupting the country's -- and Silicon Valley's -- biggest problem. It is far too aware that it is a source -- if not the source -- for innovation in America's economy.
Does riding a bus help solve America's, and the world's global economic problems, and lead to disruptive innovation? It is a good question, but Dorsey's descriptoin of why he does it, and what he hopes to achieve with it probably did not set the proper tone, and it may have actually done more to describe the problem Dorsey says he wishes to fix than show us a way to fix it, something that Dorsey admitted to when he tweeted with Microsoft BizSpark community manager Douglas Crets recently, after an article was written about a keynote he gave at TechCrunch Disrupt.
During last week's TechCrunch Disrupt, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey said that he took the bus through the Tenderloin every day to keep in touch with the real Americans and their troubles. This comment sparked off a discussion in the blogosphere about whether this sentinment was genuine, and whether American problems really were a centering force in guiding entrepreneurs in their search for disruptive product-market fits.
Our regular guest blogger Ahmed Siddiui, a developer living in the Bay Area, has written his reaction to this.
---
I’ve been thinking a lot about the recent TechCrunch article talking about Jack Dorsey riding the bus. It is quite interesting having him locate both Twitter and Square in the Tenderloin, but honestly speaking, it isn’t a great representation for what “Real America” looks like. First of all, I must mention that the Tenderloin has an excessive fecal matter problem that doesn’t exist in any major city outside of San Francisco. Also, the average American doesn’t have the LUXURY of taking the bus to work, because of urban sprawl. Most normal people in the United States have to drive to work; and most of them are driving Dodge Caravans or Toyota Camrys.
To get a good sense of the strange bubble we live in in the Bay Area, I’ve put together a simple comparison with some typical midwest sentiment (I’m originally from Minnesota, and I currently live in the Bay Area, and by no means am I knocking either, just comparing).
In true engineering style, I've created a table to go over some comparisons:
Bay Area
Midwest (real america)
News
What did you think of Jack Dorsey's Speech?
What did you think of Bill Clinton's Speech?
Transportation
Bart or Caltrain?
Minivan or Sedan?
Clothing
I'm rocking my Startup Weekend T-Shirt
I'm wearing my polo shirt from Macy's
Coffee Shop
I only drink Blue Bottle Coffee
Wow! McDonalds has a Café now!
Discussion at a coffee shop
I can't believe startup XYZ got such a high valuation
Did you know that your aunt got hip replacement surgery?
On Twitter
Did you see my #awesome tweet?
WTF is Twitter?
Places to work
Square, Twitter, Google, Facebook
Best Buy, Target, 3M, Cargill
Definition of Small business
Something Social/Local/Mobile tech thingy built over a weekend that doesn't make money
Restaurant or convenience store that makes mad money but took years to build
Places to eat for lunch
Senior Sisig food truck, Osha Thai, Sushirrito
Panera Bread, Jimmy Johns, Potbelly
Real America is the Midwest, where people still use Windows and Dell laptops, wear decent clothes, talk about politics, build businesses that make money, and quite frankly don’t give a *** what TechCrunch says.
And to cap it off, disruptive innovation really is not as simple as observing how people interact in the world. You really need to find someone who has "bought" or "hired" a product and been frustrated with it. It's one thing to sit next to someone on the bus and feel like you are living something of their miserable existence. It's another to talk to them, to ask questions and to listen for the emotional physics that go into the choices they make, or don't make.
The interseting thing about Dorsey's point of view is that it's really about him stating the obvious in a rhetorical way -- he is not like the guy he is sitting next to on the bus. His product doesn't come from that guy's perspective or his experience. His product, Square, in this case, is really a disruptive innovation that he hopes will make life different than it is now.
That's a far cry from lean startup methodology, disruptive innovation, or cracking a market. What's really at play here is a class statement. Silicon Valley is a cultural hub, but also a bubble. It's a cultural milieu that is missing a little bit of the milieu.
Further reading: "Petty Inconveniences"
Belfast built the Titanic. They can build apps -- or an app builder -- too. An app store model that lets you build complicated apps without developers has made something of a splash in Northern Ireland. JamPot has amassed 25,000 users building an untold number of apps. JamPot Technologies was a winner at the EU Summit back in May, and they have come up with a way to build apps without developers. Perfect for anyone who wants to build a Windows Phone app, but has no developing experience.
You can read more about JamPot Technologies here.
JamPot Technologies, Northern Ireland
Fast Facts
Build your own app for any platform – without any code or development experience
The Big Idea
Using JamPot Technologies’ product, TheAppBuilder, users can bypass the need for developers and build fees, and can instead build their own mobile apps today, without requiring any technical expertise, simply, quickly and cost-effectively. Users (businesses, organisations, personalities) use TheAppBuilder’s online editor to create fully customizable native Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad and Android apps which are published to the major app stores, in addition to HTML5 web apps.
Users can build and preview apps for free. TheAppBuilder generates revenue when users submit their apps for publication. TheAppBuilder is the leading service of its kind. JamPot Technologies CEO James Scott says, “We think that the ease-of-use combined with a sophisticated feature set means that TheAppBuilder beats the competition hands down. A stand out feature which elevates TheAppBuilder above its competition is that the app content and structure can be updated in real-time, around which we hold Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).”
Over 25,000 users have used TheAppBuilder to build an app in the three months since launch at Mobile World Congress 2012, with around 80% based in the USA. JamPot Technologies is currently building partnerships to support its global ambitions.
Now an interview with JamPot Technologies Co-Founder Andrew McCarthy, part of our Experience project series, where we look into the life and choices of startup founders and developers.
You must have an amazing team behind the technology business that you are building, as there will be days that it all goes wrong and you need a strong team with full faith in the technology to rise to the challenge of sorting it. It is easy to deal with customers being unhappy, deadlines creeping or technology not working when you have a team that do not judge the situation but just get on with fixing it with full conviction.
Also whenever you have a great idea and want to create that technology and form a business make sure that you have a strong mentor to support you in the areas that you are weak and have honest criticism so you can improve in that area.
I was very lucky to take on an investor and friend, Stephen Gunning from the very start of the building of JamPot Technologies who has mentored me at every level of the business and been available at the other end of the phone any time day or night.
It is hard to single out a particular comment or phrase that has stood out. Rather, it has been Stephen’s actions that have been so inspirational. He has always been very supportive of the team, the vision and myself. He has continued to invest in the future of the business even when the agenda of the business has changed.
And despite all the twists and turns along the way he still tells the team, “You Guys Rock”.
Who inspired you the most this week, and why?
This is very simple to answer; the JamPot Team in Belfast, Ireland. As we work towards growing the business to meet global demand, we are meeting many new challenges. Our current business and technical model is under going fast--‐paced change. Every single member of the team has risen to the challenges with excitement and worked tirelessly, going way beyond what could be expected of them to
Facilitate this.
Specifically I would like to highlight James Scott (CEO), although we may not always see to eye to eye about where to focus our resources, I greatly appreciate his hard work and candor as he takes on the
Pressure of growing the company. And secondly, Michael Barr (CTO & Co--‐founder) who is leading the
Tech team in pushing back the boundaries of what is possible always with a ready smile and constant
Stream of Irish banter.
Definitely growing the business. We did not anticipate such a rapid expansion in our user base.
Things seemed to explode after we launched our product www.theappbuilder.com in March 2012. We knew that we had great technology but as soon as we made it public the user base grew quickly and with it the demands on the technology.
This meant that we could no longer have a small team of software developers in Ireland but had to start making room for all that was required to grow the company to support this new demand at a global level.
The area that has always amazed and excited me is the ability to communicate from anywhere in the world in so many ways, text, video, pictures, sound, etc. from mobile, TV’s, game consoles and even now
In car systems. Honestly, I am very thankful to be working on the technology that I really love in this arena of cloud integration with TheAppBuilder.com.
This technology has given me the ability not only to experiment with the capability of cloud computing but to demonstrate what is actually possible now. How cool is it that anyone; from a large Fortune 100 company to an 80--‐year--‐old DJ can now interact with his audience in minutes through any cloud--‐enabled device!
I love this technology!
You can read another interview with Andrew here.
Further Information
The Team
Belfast-based JamPot Technologies has three founders, with varied business and software development experience. CEO James Scott has worked for a decade in the mobile industry. The company currently employs 12 people and is 100 per cent seed and angel funded. TheAppBuilder has been featured as a stand out service by Fast Company, Engadget, ZDNet, BBC, as well as being invited to present at both Mobile World Congress and SXSW.
The Technology
TheAppBuilder supports multiple platforms, including Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, Android and HTML5 web apps. Regarding the future, the company will be looking to strengthen their relationship with Microsoft. Scott comments, “We’ve had great support from Microsoft so far, including people’s time, access to handsets and technology for development, and help with introductions. Microsoft has been great at getting us connected to the right people quickly.”
A global nomad, Sindhu Joseph has created a company that uses machine learning from previous business agreements and customer service interactions and makes complaint resolution more efficient.
Microsoft Evangelist Ruud DeJonge interviews CogniCor CEO Sindhu Joseph on an application that could transform how businesses interact with customers.
When we sponsored the inaugural Tech All Stars Europe competition earlier this year, it was open to any start-up, but of course, we were pleased that some of the finalists who made the grade were either part of BizSpark or had been supported by Microsoft in one way or another. So we were delighted when we heard that the CEO of the overall winner, CogniCor, attributes some of her early success to fast-track business incubation program run by Microsoft in Spain.
Photo Courtesy: Sindhu Joseph, Via Twitter
CEO and founder Sindhu Joseph took time out of her busy schedule running her very successful business to tell us her story, talk about working with Microsoft, winning Tech All Stars and what it’s like being an entrepreneur in a tough economy.
“I’m originally from India, but we also lived in the UK and have been in Spain for the past seven years, so I like to think of myself as a global citizen. Following several years working for a large multi-national in India, I came to Spain as part of family relocation. In an year I was into a PhD program from the prestigious Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC). After my thesis I started my own business when I had the idea for CogniCor.
The idea is simple but fills a very big gap in the market and, according to Sindhu, is pretty unique. Using artificial intelligence (AI) technology, CogniCor provides an automated complaint resolution service that minimizes the need for human intervention in resolving complaints.
To give that some context, it means that customer complaints get dealt with immediately and that resolutions – for example about a product order – are resolved much more quickly, when compared to manual procedures that can take weeks or months to deal with. As a result, customer satisfaction improves and companies have a more efficient and cost effective resolution process.
But having a great idea is one thing – putting into action is quite another, as Sindhu explains: “I had little experience of running a business and it can be very hard to know where to start. By becoming involved with the Microsoft BizSpark pre-incubation program that the company had in place with Barcelona Activa.” (This has subsequently evolved into a much bigger program called Emprendedor XXI Digital” in conjunction with other partners.)
“I found out how to create a business plan and learnt the basics of marketing, human resources, finance and everything else that is essential to running a business. It gave me a fast track into entrepreneurship."
“Over the past year, we’ve come a long way and we have pilot systems with some big global brands, which we cannot discuss just yet but hope to be able to soon. In the meantime, being named the 2012 Most innovative European Startup Award Winner at the Tech All Stars event in Brussels in June has given has a great boost. It also gave me the chance to network with lots of very interesting people, including potential investors.”
While it’s very exciting to win awards and get recognition, CogniCor has to face the same challenges as any other startup. “Because we’ve thought of ourselves as a global business since day one, we have not allowed the difficulties that are facing the Spanish economy to affect us. We’ve had a lot of great support, first of all we are a spinoff from IIIA-CSIC and hence great talent is within hands reach, and we are based at the Telefonica Wayra Accelerator, which means we have access to world-class facilities and great contacts. However, if I’d like to see governments change one thing, it would be to reduce the amount of bureaucracy and taxation that start-ups have to deal with in setting up and running in the initial years. And, for a Spanish business, it can be hard to attract customers and investors from elsewhere, so we really need to have offices in either the UK or USA.”
So what’s next for Cognicor? Says Sindhu: “We’re continuing to build our team of top talent and looking at expanding our presence on a more global scale. But that’s not to say that we don’t appreciate what Spain has to offer: Microsoft, other organisations and people here have given CogniCor great support and with its work/life balance, this country is a wonderful place to live. It’s hard to say what the next few years will bring, but these are exciting times.”
Microsoft's awesome developer evangelist Reza Alizadeh won the Facebook-Heroku hackathon a couple of weeks ago. This was a big deal. Reza went on to TechCrunch last weekend and participated in that hackathon with a team of about four other evangelist. That story is here, and here.
We were waiting to see if a Facebook blog post came out about this, but since I haven't seen one, here is the story. He created an app called Gut. You can follow him on Twitter @ralizadeh.
Here's what Reza tells us:
I teamed up with Chanse Arrington (@chansearrington) from Nokia to build a service that enables app discovery through social channels and a Pandora-like recommendation engine. It allows users to rate the apps that they have downloaded to create a personalized taste profile and compares that to profiles of other users to determine recommendations. In addition to the automated recommendations, it also uses Facebook to follow what apps your friends are using and allows users to make recommendations to their friends.
What inspired the idea was simply the sheer difficulty in finding great apps in such a crowded Marketplace. We recognized that recommendations from friends are one of the primary reasons that users download apps and wanted to enable users to do this more easily by leveraging social channels. We also wanted to supplement these recommendations by layering on automated recommendations tailored for each user – the more you rate the apps you download, the better and more accurate the recommendations. The Facebook/Heroku hackathon provided a great opportunity to build this out, given our use of the Facebook Open Graph and also Heroku to deploy our app.
The backend recommendation engine was built with Ruby on Rails on Heroku and we built a Windows Phone application to surface the app recommendations and allow users to rate their apps.
"The gummy bears are fed up with being eaten. They plot to destroy humanity. Who's side are you on?" That's one of the teasers for a social storytelling software Social Samba presenting at the Media Camp Demo Day on September 13 in San Francisco. MediaCamp is an accelerator program for media startups. You can follow it on Twitter by searching for #mcdemoday.
SocialSamba is a social storytelling software. You know all that fan art and all of that free-floating social media paraphenelia floating around in the social web? Why isn't anyone using that to create narrative? I mean, that's the ral problem with media these days.
Mostly, it's just collections of bits of things, of scraps really. Who is telling the stories? Well, we've got something for the narrative makers among us. Basically, by using SocialSamba, you can create stories using all the available social media available online, regardless of who created it. Literally, there are endless possibilities. This video explains how it works.
And to think this all started out with a beer (read the interview below to find out how).
How did this greatness happen, and what are the implications it brings to social, media, and the entertainment industry? We interviewed SocialSamba CEO and co-founder Aaron Williams to find out.
Aaron Williams, CEO and Co-Founder of SocialSamba, photo courtesy Aaron Williams and Turner MediaCamp
In March, we made an important pivot. While our traditional business of providing our platform to networks like USA and MTV was doing very well (we were nominated for an Emmy, we had hundreds of thousands of fans using our platform), we recognized that there was not hockey-stick growth serving just those large companies. We needed to go down the long tail, and get storytellers of all sizes and audiences to use our platform (ala YouTube) in order to see the explosive growth that we wanted. So, we shifted some of our resources and launched SagaWriter, our free tool for creating social stories. It was the right move, but it was very hard to let something successful go in order to try for something bigger.
We provide our customers with weekly reports on how their stories are doing on our platform. We can tell we're winning when our customer's executives start using those numbers in their public speeches and press releases. That means we've delighted them, and made them look good, and that is a huge win for us. Executives are always looking for the easy to consume, easy to repeat sound bites about how their innovations are going. They're not going to go dig it up, they may not even know enough about it to know what to look for, but if you show them their project is setting a new standard in the industry for fan engagement, you can bet they'll love to talk about it.
I rely heavily on my co-founder and CTO. He's a rock-star technically, but he's also been through start-up life and exit before, so he's got a great nose for tough decisions. We've assembled a board of advisors outside the company – 8 entertainment leaders that we rely on for advice, introductions and guidance. We're really blessed to have a smart, diverse team for me to leverage when I need it.
Fans are amazing, and their reaction to the stories that are built using our platform always make me smile. We spend our time behind the curtain, where we know all the tricks and it's easy to forget the experience that the fans have connecting with the characters and experiencing their lives. About once a week we see a tweet or a Facebook post from a fan of Teen Wolf on MTV talking about how they feel like they're flirting with the characters when they participate in Teen Wolf: The Hunt, the social story we built with the show. When we can give fans that deep of an experience, I'm overjoyed.
What does something in your business vertical need in order for the product to be successful?
The media and entertainment industry can be a little overwhelming, with a lot of large companies playing interlinked, well-entrenched roles within the value chain. Creatives write and act, studios produce, networks market and broadcast, and operators deliver into the home. In order to be successful, businesses need to understand this complex value chain, and target a specific link that has the rights, the need, and the money to use their product or service. Of course, the internet has only added to the complexity over the past decade, but I would caution small companies to not overestimate the pace of change. There are billions of dollars at stake, so no one in the chain will be ready for massive disruption until something new is proven.
Our product idea came first, from a great night of beers with my co-founders. (Like all good ideas, right?) We got to talking about how we were relatively late users of Facebook, but how much we liked it for connecting with friends and family. After a couple beers though, and looking at our news feeds, we were laughing about how boring our lives really were. We all had one or two friends doing really interesting things, lumped in with pictures of cobb salads and barely-coherent political rants. Until someone said, “Imagine if one of your interesting friends was Homer Simpson, or James Bond,” … and the idea for social storytelling was born. We spent the rest of the evening trying to one-up each other with a better character to friend. We didn't get a presence on the internet for another 9 months, after we looked at the data, and vetted the idea with friends and TV industry mentors.
You can follow SocialSamba and Aaron on Twitter:
@socialsamba
@_arw_
You can follow the #mcdemoday hashtag today on Twitter to take part in the Media Camp demo day.