Being a start-up is never easy but some markets are particularly challenging. The healthcare sector is arguably one of these, because of the (understandably) often complex layers of legislation and scientific validation required, so adoption of new innovation can be lengthy.
MiMedication attended health2con.com, held in San Francisco over the past three days. They are a healthcare start-up based in Belgium that has developed a simple and easy way for patients suffering from lung disease (more formerly known Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease or COPD) to manage their symptoms more effectively. While MiMedication is experiencing some strong early success, it has encountered some hurdles along the way. CEO and founder Mitchell Silva describes some of the challenges of innovating in the healthcare sector and how MiMedication is trying to tackle these.
CEO Mitchell Silva writes:
“We launched MiMedication in early 2012. We are in the position of being able to view the market from both the patient and the medical profession’s point of view: I’m an entrepreneur who happens to have a rare lung disease, while my business partner, Erard le Beau de Hemricourt is a medical doctor in nuclear medicine, with an impressive track record. I’ve also got a PhD in bio-science engineering (specifically on cough sound analysis of COPD and asthma patients.
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) affects between 4-10 per cent of people in the developed world. While many of them have yet to be diagnosed, managing the healthcare of this group of patients is a big issue for the medical profession and has a big impact on the cost of the healthcare system. One of the biggest challenges is to minimise ‘exacerbation’ through self-management.
This is where miMedication comes in, providing a simple and easy way for patients to record and monitor their symptoms, be aware of the impact of medication and of course, providing healthcare professionals with patient data that they can in turn use to support them more efficiently. The service is free to patients and our revenue model is based on working with the B2B healthcare market, such as home care and pharmaceutical companies.
Healthcare market is hard
Having a great idea for a healthcare application is just the first step. Working with the healthcare and public sector in general can be challenging, for several reasons: the decision making process is complex and length; independent scientific or medical validation or endorsement is often required in order for a product or service to be considered seriously; and medical legislation varies widely across European countries. All this means that launching a medical-based start-up can involve lobbying as much as it does traditional sales and marketing.
To help address all this, we focused from our very early days on partnering with the right organisations. For instance, we have an advisory board, which includes academics, doctors, pharmacists, the Belgian lung COPD patient association and Microsoft. The challenge is to translate the needs from the care providers into understandable actions for the patients that also motivate them to become empowered patients. All these contacts have been a great help at all stages of our evolution to date.
So given the hurdles, would I discourage a start-up from focusing on the healthcare sector? In fact, I say the opposite. Commercially, healthcare IT is a huge growth market and while it can be challenging for small organisations, there are some great opportunities for innovative start-ups. From a philanthropic point of view, using IT to help eliminate or minimise the impact of disease and illness is a great aspiration.”
Mitchell Silva’s top tips for other healthcare IT start-ups:
If you are a startup founder who wants to contribute to an improving economy, you can pitch at Reboot America, an inaugural event created by the folks at Startup America. Though the economy is creeping along slowly, our best chance for great economic growth lies in feeding innovation. This contest is open to members of Microsoft BizSpark, which provides support and visibility, and free software to entrepreneurs around the world.
This Guest Blog Post is written by Evan Burfield, Startup DC
Chairman and Founder of Synteractive. Chair of Startup DC. Co-Founder of the National Piggy Bank. Social and technology innovator.
Are you one of America’s Hottest Startups in education, health, energy, media, advocacy, politics, government, or national security? Come and join leaders from America’s leading corporations, other startup founders, and national leaders on November 8 and 9 in Washington DC, as we look for the bold solutions that our country needs. Apply to pitch and you could get on stage to pitch your idea or startups to the corporate partners you’ll need to scale.
Apply to pitch here.
Rather than help a consumer become more efficient, it's important to help them solve everyday, basic problems in their day. Simple, right? But this is the kind of statement that really bring value to having a mentor.
We'd like to introduce another African entrepreneur. Patrick Ndjientcheu, who created DJOSS TV, received some very strong advice from one of his mentors recently, and it's one of things I am always keeping in mind about the way consumers choose -- or don't choose - a product. This thinking states that consumer are more concerned with how the product fits into their lives, and helps them complete actions.
It reminds me a lot of how Clayton Christensen's Jobs to be done works. People don't make choices based on what you tell them a product does. They make choices about a product based on whether or not the product does something for their lives. Here's a brief interview with Ndjientcheu, who will be presenting at DEMO Africa on October 24. I've also included his pitch video, because it demonstrates what DJOSS TV does.
Patrick
BizSpark: Who is your mentor, and what was the last great thing he or she told you and your team?
We currently have 2 mentors : 1. Ismael NZOUETOM, founder and CEO of the award winning french startup I-Dispo. 2. Rebecca Enonchong, AppsTech CEO and a seasoned entrepreneur. Some months ago, while we were preparing our pitch for a challenge, Ismael told us :
"Don't forget: people don't care about your product, the only thing that matters to them is how it is going to change their life." This really struck us, as we were too focused on the product. From that time forward, we devoted more time to better understanding our users in order to be able to actually change their lives.
When was the last time you fell in love with a product?
Some months ago...with Evernote.
Our affair began via the web clipper. These days, I am so frustrated that I have to bookmark entire pages, although I am just interested in a paragraph or a sentence...In a search for a better web companion, I discovered Evernote and I was immediately delighted by the frictionless web clips capturing experience. Some web clips later, I also stopped using my desktop and iPhone notes software and switched to Evernote. Overnight, I found myself really "remembering everything". At this point, I realised I was going to spend my life with Evernote.
The product:
When Microsoft first offered me a job at Microsoft to help them manage 50,000 startups that had joined Microsoft BizSpark for the free software and the community support, I had to admit, I wasn't sure what to think.
but I talked to the woman who would eventually become my boss, and that entire conversation, which I will remember forever, was about having hustle, and being able to change the world through startups. I was inspired. I was inspired, in no small part by the idea that something so big, so gargantuan as Microsoft would be open to hundreds of thousands of developers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and risk-takers wanting to use our free software, free Azure cloud hosting, and more.
Everyone knows Microsoft. It's the world's largest software company. It has a reputation for being a big giant of a company that moves not too fast, and has pretty much created how the world uses software.
But did they really support startups? It took some questions, and then six months of working here to realize that not only do they support startups, there is a group of people behind the walls at Microsoft that are certainly very human, and very passionate about innovation. And they are using Microsoft BizSpark to not only change the way people think about the company, but to make sure that the future global economy is the one created by startups in the digital space. And that's no BS.
This blog post was written by Douglas Crets, Community Manager at Microsoft BizSpark.
there is no greater testament to the power of being in a startup and the ability to affect change than the cold-call. Calling someone out of the blue, because you have an idea, and you want to see it realized. Be it to sell someone something, to pitch an idea, or to ask for money and support, the startupper, as he or she is affectionately called, must perfect the cold call.
I've got evidence for this claim. And I want to share with you a classic example of what a BizSpark company needs to do -- and does -- to make their way in the world. I want to show you and share with you a prime example of a cold call email.
Why? Because all startuppers need inspiration, because the hubris of the startup founder is that he, in all of his insane risk-taking and world changing thrill-seeking, believes that really, anyone out in the world would LOVE to hear this idea, and should.
The truth is, maybe people will not want to hear this idea, but there is a saying, "Hope attracts opportunities and chances."
That's the startup credo. This is the same credo shared and lived by the humans who work, and breathe Microsoft BizSpark literally 24 hours of the day.
I present to you, The Startupper.
This is Scott Hasbrouck, founder of a new education startup and Microsoft BizSpark company. He emailed me, out of the blue, to tell me that he remembered something that I wrote several months ago. His startup is Gingkotree. He writes code for Ginkgotree in an abandoned warehouse. He writes:
How do you get inspired?
Is inspiration random and accidental? I don't think that it is. I think that if you can create a structure, or a source, for finding inspiration, you can then expose yourself to a potential inspiration, or inspirations, every day.
At its heart, an inspiration comes from matching a historical occurrence with someone experiencing a moment in the present, especially if during that moment the individual is struggling to complete an action, or find enough energy to carry him or her over the hump to success.
You are an entrepreneur looking for an idea. You are a business owner driving for greater sales. You are a mother raising a family while holding down an executive position at a law firm. But finding yourself pinned between the odds you are set
against and the goals you want to achieve, there is little room there for variance and for straying off the committed path. It would be great if there was a way to mainline inspiration. But how can you do that without really artificial means?
It turns out, that what you need is exposure to another person's story. If you were able to find someone else who has also suffered, achieved, set out against great expectations or difficult circumstances, would you reach out to that person?
Would you readily consume that story? A Startup Weekend team out of Perth seems to be grappling with this idea, and they are building something very interesting that you might find valuable, especially if you are also a startup looking for inspiration. Aren't we all?
This blog post was written by Douglas Crets, Community Manager, Microsoft BizSpark. Microsoft BizSpark is a global program offering free software, massive support and high visibility to startups at early stages of growth.
The secret ingredient that drives inspiration is its human element. It's a person's story. it's not really about the goal. The goal is a figment. It's an abstract notion that you create out of the expectation of completion of that goal. But the truth is, the human animal doesn't really know
until it has something tangible to know.
If you thought of people in a purely mechanical way, you might think this is true. People's stories are actually entry points into knowing someone deeply, and knowing yourself in a way that you can't imagine on you rown.
We're really excited about Team Gainspiration, led by James Mitchell. James and his team Gainspiration were at the Startup Weekend in Perth in September of this year. We caught up with them to ask them a few questions about how they wish to interact with other entrepreneurs out there, and to find out what is the driving force behind their app.
You can follow Gainspiration on Twitter. This very brief interview with James is a way of introducing the team to you, and to exposing you to what they are working on, in the hopes that you can help them, connect with them, and encourage them.
BizSpark: What kinds of people would you like to meet in the network?
I would love to meet influential people who truly believe in the concept enough to share there experiences that made them who they are today and become evangelists to help the mainstream user see the value in a service like this
BizSpark: Who inspired you the most this week, and why?
While we were conducting market validation of our concept on the street i decided to speak to an older gentleman who's name was Keith. He was in his 70's and when I told him what the team and I were building. His eyes started to well up as he said "Thankyou" and "You need to do this asI don't want my story to die with me" He continues on to tell me about his life. I left completely awestruck and totally inspired by what I had just heard and was now more motivated then ever to make sure that people like Keith have a place to be able to share there story and inspire others.
BizSpark: Who would you like to be your mentor, and what would you ask him or her?
I would have to say James Sinegal, The former president and co-founder Costco. His get the job done mentality, morals and the way he treats other people really sit well with me and if i could emulate anyone it would be James. As for questions i wouldn't know where to start, but i would certainly ask if he thoughtwhen he was packing at fedmart, that he would be the cofounder of one of the largest retail chain in the world. I would also ask what were the defining points in his life that help him get to where he is today
Startup outlook in Brazil
Being an entrepreneur in Brazil is a lesson in how to accept excitement and the roller coaster of dismay, elation, frustration and success. Despite the fact that there’s a lot of local problems (most of them well known), there are also a lot of opportunities and good initiatives coming from all sides.
Our BizSpark Brazil Ambassador Carlos Eduardo Pinto, who is co-founder at BizSpark startup Pratical One, writes about Brazil, from Brazil.
Let’s take a look at how it’s going.
There are several incubators growing in the main cities. One of them is MIDI, in Florianopolis, Santa Catarina state, where my startup Pratical One is hosted.
In the beginning, I was not sure about it, especially since I could not figure out how it could help my company. My main focus at the time was on acquiring customers, so I didn't see how an incubator would work to my benefit in this case.
This is, I have discovered, a typical response to the growth of new incubators in a startup hub (or in a place that is quickly becoming one, like Brazil). But I went into it asking questions. Now I realize that incubation doesn’t put you in touch with customers, as I thought. They teach you how to do that, how to understand the market, how to be prepared to face investors and also brings some “facilities” on the day-to-day, like marketing and legal consulting and office rental. It's a place to learn. Or, more accurately, it's a place to put you in the space to learn, so that while you are growing your business, you are also constantly fine-tuning the mechanism that makes you a better startup.
There are other opportunities in Brazil that help in this process. Here are a few:
The Anjos do Brazil (Angels of Brazil) is a non-profit angel investor network "dedicated to foster angel investment for supporting innovative entrepreneurs." Among their many tasks, besides joining investors, they also organize competitions among startups that could showcase their projects in order to receive investments.
CONAJE (National Council of Young Entrepreneurs) has the target to articulate and disseminate practices that strength the dissemination of new and solid business. Quite often there are meetings per verticals to discuss about market, taxes, best practices etc.
For those who also look for some fun, Endeavor (global nonprofit that transforms emerging countries by supporting High-Impact Entrepreneurs) organizes happy hours around the country to join startups, investors and media. It’s a good chance to meet people, exchange cards and have some beers.
If my objective was to write a list about all those things we can use in Brazil to boost startups, I would waste a lot of space. Endeavor, FIESC, FIESP, SEBRAE and so many others has programs to help the “business dreamers”.
With all that said, I can assure that entrepreneurs are not alone, and they must not be. The chances to learn and improve business are around us, and it’s just about to choose one and use it the best we can.
Brazil Startups should also look into Microsoft BizSpark, a global initiative created by and run by Microsoft for startups, which provides free software, support and marketing visibility so that startups can grow to scale.
BizSpark has grown so big that now it's time to say goodbye to a rather limited blogging strategy. It used to be that we would run a couple of interviews every week and then have guest blogs from about three or four Microsoft staff and some startups each month.
But BizSpark continues to grow at triple digit percentages each year. It's successful. People know it's successful, so....
The BizSpark story cannot be just one point of view, and it isn't. With about 50,000 startups in it, it only makes sense to have ambassadors in almost every country we are growing in to showcase what they see in the countries where they innovate and iterate their products and companies. Welcome to our new program. We will be putting blog posts up every week from over 20 countries, where entrepreneurs and developers are creating new stuff. We will have blog posts from Uganda, Tunisia, Brazil, Korea, Mexico, and more.
Today, we turn to Brazil, and Carlos Eduardo Pinto, who has been consistently providing reports from Brazil for his startup Pratical One, which is in the shipping and logistics category. If you think you have a hot startup, and you want to have your startup showcased, or if you want to have your views on the market in your area showcased, you should join Microsoft BizSpark, offering free software, support and visibility for thousands of entrepreneurs around the world.
BizSpark: What was the most difficult challenge your business faced this year?
Carlos Eduardo Pinto:
In 2012 we are facing our first year at Pratical One, what make it a bit harder because there are some questions without answers, such as: early in January we still did not know the value we added to customers; and the software was on it first steps, as we were developing basic functionality and fixing problems.
BizSpark: What problem are you facing now?
Pratical One has shown progress. We know better our place on business world, how to deal with our customers and how to advance on the software. Actually, we face a problem of lack of time because we have limited resources (people) to get things done. There’s a lot of good things happening but we are only two partners (my partner as general manager and selling and me as IT manager and a little bit on marketing), one IT developer and one financial intern.
BizSpark: Who are the people you work with, and can you introduce them to our community?
My partner is Rejane Scholles, who has worked logistics for more than 20 years. She lives in Florianopolis/SC (city in the south of Brazil), which is one of the most exciting cities to a startup in Brazil. In Maersk Line, the biggest container shipping company in the world, Rejane was responsible for the sales department, moving forward on operations and so on.
In 2008, she went to a company called Santos Brasil to implement a cargo shipping terminal at Imbituba.
I also had work for Maersk, where we met. A few years later, Rejane sent me a message, inviting me for a happy hour. In that occasion she told me about the project and invites me to start it together, so Pratical One started to grow.
BizSpark:
What does something in your business vertical need in order for the product to be successful?
Cost reduction in response of an efficient progress. My customers are going to evaluate things such savings, performance increase or better process response time. I need them to understand that my product can be successful to them on these terms.
You can find Carlos on the web here:
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
And if you want to look into the shipping and logistics software that Pratical One offers you can find them on Facebook here.
Get firsthand information from one of South and East Africa's up and coming mobile solutions, Kuza Mobile founder Pieter Nel. this guy helped create Africa's largest social network, and now he's on to a mobile e-commerce solution that will help entrepreneurs do all the most basic and important functions for launching a business using his or her mobile phone.
Pieter is presenting at DEMO Africa on October 24. From their Crunchbase profile:
Kuza is a mobile, location-based business platform for feature phones that helps buyers and sellers in emerging markets to trade goods and services in their area. Using any one of 6000 supported types of feature phones, a user can create a website, mobi site and business cards right from his phone in about 5 minutes. Our micro-ads, also created right from the phone, are broadcast to an audience in the entrepreneurs’ area, allowing him to reach a wider market. We monetize our product through airtime and micro-payments on a pay-as-you-go basis.
DEMO Africa is coming up in three weeks, and this gathering of the most innovative and ambitious startups from the African continent is your chance to see how Africa is leading in several industry sectors, especially in e-commerce and mobile. to help familiarize our global audience with BizSpark startups and leading entrepreneurs in the African economies, we are running a series of interviews with the participants in DEMO Africa. The interviews are very short, and they are populated with links, including links to the startup's Twitter handle, so that you can follow the startup and put it in your lists.
Here's Pieter talking about his growth as an entrepreneur.
BizSpark: Has starting your own company provided any answers about your life? Have you discovered something about yourself that you didn't know before?
Pieter: Starting a business is never easy. Starting a technology business in an emerging market is even more challenging. Only the most pioneering investors believe in backing you, and there are many structural challenges to overcome to get it going. As it is with us, so it is for our customers. Kuza Mobile aims to empower emerging market entrepreneurs with our mobile trading platform. We spend a lot of time with these business people - from the tradesmen and fishermen in Cape Town, to the jua kali in Nairobi, and we take tremendous inspiration from them in how they overcome challenges and how their inherent skill and business savvy shines through any barriers. Starting this business gave us the chance to meet some incredible people and we find the journey itself very enriching.
BizSpark: What came first for you company - the product idea or your existence on the Internet?
Pieter: Our backgrounds as co-founders are with Africa's largest social network. We decided that we wanted to apply our unique knowledge of mobile technology to address what is in our view a much more fundamental problem. Whereas services such as Wikipedia is now putting knowledge directly in the hand of anyone with a mobile phone, we didn't see enough solutions designed to encourage and assist entrepreneurs and trade in emerging markets. We wanted to design something with Kuza Mobile that will allow anyone with a mobile phone to have an Internet presence and to make himself and his products known as the first step in building his business and getting more customers.
If you are going to tinker with robotics, mobile app building and anything that a strong developer toolkit could produce, you are going to want to do it in Estonia, according to this TechCrunch report. Young people who get involved with these projects, and then turn to building their own apps and startups produce twice the amount of value for their economy than in other countries.
Estonia, a country of 1.3 million people, has numbers to back up that programs like this could help its economy. It’s produced stats that indicate that each IT job creates “twice the added value for Estonia compared to the average in other economic spheres.” In other words, it’s not a particularly wealthy country, and these skills contribute a much-needed boost to its GDP.
I wish that teachers did more in school to encourage students to work and study with a mind towards building their own country. I've often wondered if we exist in a weird historical bubble that has convinced those of is in the developed world to think that after school is a ready, able and willing group of companies that is eagerly awaiting laborers for the tasks at hand. I don't believe the world needs that.
That was then.
This is now.
Part of the YouthSpark initiative, which will invest $500 million to help 300 million children over three years to become conversant in technology, is set to put technology in the hands of students in a way that massively shift the mindsets they have in pursuing a future.
Microsoft's work here has already lifted many out of poverty, so this next three year initiative could have a dramatic global effect in how children perceive the work they can do to help themselves and help their communities. I may have a bit of a bias here. I do work for Microsoft, but I also generally and genuinely believe that technology use and creating apps, or building startups, is the single biggest savior we have to help economies around the world. This IS our future. We have to make it, as traditional systems just will not support the problems we don't yet know we have, and the current problems, for which we do not have solutions -- ie pollution, fuel crises, diplomatic impasses, etc..
The point is, innovation, and giving any individual continual help to produce new things, creates opportunity for countless others around her or him. Just going to work, or graduating from school to work at a place, just doesn't do much for anyone. There's no growth in something already grown, if you know what I mean. It must be constant innovation and small scale tinkering that ramps up into massively scaled enterprises or projects.
Aaron Stannard, who used to work with us at Microsoft, has written a great blog post about what it is like to build and ship real commercial software. When you read through it, you will wonder, like I do, why startup building is not taught more often. Many of the things that go into building a great company, or a great piece of software, depend on the specific skill sets that teachers already teach in the classroom -- focus, details, writing, communication, math, problem-solving, analysis, iterations, testing. Sure, this all exists in a world of work, but nearly every child given technology or the stack to play around on can do this.
Like Jeff Atwood says, your app is merely a collection of details. There’s really two classes of details that matter:
Marketing engineering, demo apps, copy writing, and graphical design are all investments we made into helping make our product easier to understand.
Documentation, support, and UX are all investments we made into helping make our product easier to use.
The bottom line here is that the auxiliary stuff needed to support your product, like documentation and support infrastructure, take a lot of time to do well. They’re as much a part of your user’s experience as the software is itself.
Software testing and app building can be a new set of skills that drive people to know each other better. When you work to solve other people's problems, you are really not very far away to bringing stability, reassurance, help, and human kindness to a society. I think of software as being another communication channel. It's like the friendly neighbor who can lend a listening ear, or who comes over with something you need, in your time of need.
The more people who reach out to others and build, or engineer, solutions for massive problems, the easier it is to build value, not just in economies, but in people's lives.
So far we've had a guy rap on stage, live, while collaborating with his partner across the country. Then we have this BizSpark company, PlayMyTone, making instant music in less than 30 seconds.
Here's a video of the CEO Ohad Sheffer, which he put together for ThinkNext. It's the same demonstration he gave at DEMO, but a little more polished.
"Powered by patent pending novel technology, Tonify, by Play My Tone, allows the most unskilled user to mix his favorite music into multi-layer, personalized hi-fi mix in less than 30 seconds and legally share it with his friends."
We walked around and talked to the founders of some of the incredible BizSpark companies presenting in the pavilion at DEMO Fall.
You can get inside information and a free peek at one of the most important conferences for startup, by visiting our live feed page (watch this instead of doing your work at your desk!), or by checking (and getting jealous about) all the great pictures people are taking at the parties, the presentations and during the chats in the hall.
Also, don't forget that Douglas Crets, Microsoft BizSpark community manager, is going around and finding other BizSpark companies to interview. He ran into Michael Jacobs and Jordan Syms, who are making iSocialite, at lunch.
Here's Victor Karkar, co-founder and CEO of Scrible, which is helping people do smarter online research using collaborative note-taking.
He was joined at the kiosk by another company that offers backend support via Azure for apps developers. Curvanade CEO Mikael Eriksson says that his support system is so good that they can theoretically support LinkedIn in the backend. He showed me how it worked, and I like the collaborative aspect to his company, as well as the blindingly fast speed, "nearly greater than realtime".
I thought I would also show you this very quick (and rather messy) photo I took of his app on the iPhone. Kind of cool to see the Metro design on the iPhone device.
We got a kick out of talking with Ami Gal, from Israel. He uses Windows Azure in the back end -- along with some other Microsoft Stack Technologies -- to process big data loads for banks and other institutions. SQREAM Technologies basically has a kind of set top box for the big data clients.
Lastly, we have Frank Chiang, of Phorego, a kind of trip-matching software for the mobile. This app works by connecting people who need rides with people who can give rides. Here's the pitch on this:
At DEMO Fall, there were a few trends, but culture as an app was the one that caught my idea. One of the companies tackling startups through culture is DreamWare, helmed by a sociologist and an anthropologist.
This post was written by Microsoft BizSpark community manager Douglas Crets.
DreamWare founder and BizSpark member Michael Jacobs and Jordan Syms talked to me about their app iSocialite.
We’ve decided that offering accelerator classes for startups using Microsoft resources will not be a fad. Starting today, we are launching the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure. All that means is that for the next 13 weeks, ten startups from all over the world will be working on mobile apps, cloud-based solutions and the next big thing using resources supplied by our Accelerator program in Seattle.
For more information on the accelerator class, please see this blog post written by Scott Guthrie.
The response to the program has been astounding; we received nearly 600 applications from entrepreneurs from 69 countries around the world, spanning a host of industries including retail, healthcare, banking, real estate, and more.
So, yes. We’ve said it before – and meant it – with the Microsoft Accelerator for Azure. You can track what’s happened with those startups on our Facebook group, and you can keep going to that Facebook group for updates on this class.
This accelerator movement proves two things: one that Microsoft is serious about helping startups grow to scale, and not just by giving them free software, which is a hallmark of the Microsoft BizSpark program (where we give free software to startups that are less than five years old, and bringing in revenue of less than US$1 million each year).
Two, it means that there is community associated with a startup’s engagement with Microsoft. Not only are they being introduced to a network that includes TechStars greats and the legacy of the companies that have worked with them in the past. But you are introduced to a startup community that includes 50,000 other entrepreneurs and developers just like you.
Here are the startups that are going to be in the new class:
If you want more information on this class, or more information on Microsoft BizSpark, in general, you can follow these startups along in their accelerator journey by following our blog and
following us on twitter: @bizspark and @windowsazure and by tracking the Accelerator hashtag at #msaccel.
Over the next few months, we’ll be doing interviews with the startups and posting their Twitter handles.
DEMO Fall starts this week and as before, the Microsoft BizSpark team is heading to Santa Clara with a group of BizSpark Startups and our friends from Startup America. DEMO serves as a launchpad for companies, helping them secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters.
Microsoft BizSpark teamed up with DEMO to offer select scholarships to DEMO Fall 2012 for startups to launch their venture: four lucky companies will be delivering a six-minute pitch on stage this week, and a total of twelve startups will be exhibiting in the BizSpark pavilion. Recipients of the scholarships for DEMO Fall have innovative solutions for Cloud, Mobile, Consumer, Enterprise and Infrastructure. We’ll be announcing the companies tomorrow. Stay tuned.
DEMO also makes a launchpad available to innovators at America’s finest colleges and universities through its Student Alpha Pitch program. Full scholarships have been provided by the Microsoft BizSpark team to ten deserving individuals and groups with meaningful new technologies ready for debut at DEMO Fall 2012. to the worldwide DEMO audience. These very early stage ventures and ideas are always well-received by the DEMO audience and Alpha Pitches at DEMO Fall 2012 will no doubt continue to inspire and entertain. Watch out for more information are they are unveiled on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, and appear in the DEMO pavilion.
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.
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.]