Today Bing Fund and Sonar announced that Bing Fund has reached across this great land of ours to invite Sonar into its portfolio of startups. And they made at least part of their announcement via Vine. We think it really may be the first ever press release via Vine. 

Sonar and Microsoft actually have a storied past. 

Over the years, we have crossed paths with Sonar across the land of tech probably more than any other startup. Whether it was TC Disrupt NYC, PSFK NYC, at our own epic pop-up gallery, SMW, and most recently Xconomy NYC, wherever we went, it seemed that the cool little periscope was right there with us. We would bring each other up to speed, and talk about “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to work together?” And go our separate ways until the next serendipitous encounter.

Well, now it's on. Congratulations to both teams. No word yet on whether that means the Sonar team will be moving to Seattle for a few months. 

Speek.com, a platform for easy conference calls, started as a way to permanently rid the world of PINs and elevator music. As corporate employees, founders Danny Boice and John Bracken were fed up with how stale business communication was, and set out to re-think an industry that hasn't seen innovation in over 20 years.

This blog post was written by Developer Evangelist Ashish Jaiman.

And right out of the gate, the team is at work developing a Windows 8 app to take advantage of the rising number of downloads from the ecosystem. 

"We're putting out our Windows 8 app even before Android," said co-founder and CEO Bracken. "We feel it's important to reach the Windows 8 demographic early and be at the forefront of the innovations the Windows 8 platform has to offer." 

"The ability to write a single code base that runs on any Windows 8 device from the phone to the tablet to the desktop is key, and that's exactly what we intend to do. Not only will we support the Windows 8 phone, but look for Speek on the Windows 8 tablet and computer as well,” said co-founder and CTO Boice.

This graph from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week shows how intense the rising rate of growth is for Windows Phone downloads. 

Super simple and visual conference calls wins pitch competition

Boice and Bracken left their corporate jobs to build the beta version of Speek, and presented at Distilled Intelligence 2.0, the pitch competition created by Fortify.vc and sponsored by Microsoft. The company took first place at the competition, which allowed Speek to add new investors, attract talented employees, and shined a spotlight on the work the team was putting in to revolutionize the conference calling experience for their users.

Speek solves traditional conference call annoyances with a visual interface that allows you to:

- see who’s joined the call
- see who’s talking
- share files directly on the call
- raise your hand on a call
- and mute loud callers

But where the company's secret sauce really comes in, is that they've taken phone numbers and PINs completely out of the equation. Speek's biggest differentiator is that you don’t need to hand out a phone number that no one will remember, or a PIN that you put in wrong five times out of six.

With Speek, every user has a memorable personal link, (i.e., http://speek.com/YourName)  that you distribute for a call. To join a call, you just click the link, and put in your number. Two clicks, that’s it. And the conference calls you. You’re connected to a visual conference room on the web, where Speek gives you the tools to run a productive meeting.

A Windows 8 app for conference calls on-the-go in 30 days

Since its beta launch last year, Speek has experienced rapid growth, reaching tens of thousands of callers in a few short months. The founders quickly saw the need to reach business users who were on-the-go, whether taking a meeting while stuck in traffic or on vacation. Building a mobile app was the next logical step, and a Windows 8 phone app became a priority.

"We're putting out our Windows 8 app even before Android," said co-founder and CEO John Bracken. "We feel it's important to reach the Windows 8 demographic early and be at the forefront of the innovations the Windows 8 platform has to offer."

The company set out to build the app - and with a short timeline. The goal was to get the Windows 8 phone app ready for launch at March's SXSW conference. After talking with the resources available from Microsoft's Biz Spark team, Speek was able to quickly connect with qualified and cost-effective developers who were eager to get started building Windows 8 apps.

In a short thirty days, the Speek Windows 8 phone app was ready for launch and distribution, and just in time for SXSW.

Looking forward, co-founder and CTO Danny Boice sees many advantages to working with the Windows 8 platform. "The ability to write a single code base that runs on any Windows 8 device from the phone to the tablet to the desktop is key, and that's exactly what we intend to do. Not only will we support the Windows 8 phone, but look for Speek on the Windows 8 tablet and computer as well."

The Speek Windows 8 phone app is free and available here:

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Last night, we had about 100 people come by the Microsoft BizSpark Lab to talk about Using Community and Design to Build a Business Model. That link takes you to a livestream archive that I will embed below. 

From left to right: Michael Staton, Learn Capital; Jenna Meister, Airbnb; Zachary Zorbas, Babelverse

Sahana Ullaggadi, Klout; Sumaya Kazi, Sumazi; Douglas Crets, Microsoft  BizSpark (Photo Credit: Christina Tsakona)

Design, Listening, Community and Startup Knowledge

Rather than go through the entire event, I am going to embed a video and then pull out some highlights. Here are some tweets that capture some of the thoughts from our panel.

Every person on this panel last night represents one facet of the startup ecosystem. Let's say you are having coffee and you think of an idea for a startup.

If you start with Sumaya Kazi -- her startup, Sumazi, helps people find the people they don't know they know. This is especially good for when you are interested in working on an idea, but you don't have the resources or the immediate network to find the people you need to find to get started. 

Once you find a group of people to work with, you can then use Klout to find out which of these people have the kind of resources and impact in social media and in their industry to get your marketing or your word of mouth off the ground. 

Then it's time to code, or its time to do some business model generation, so you need to talk to your consumers or the engineers that will help you get your work done. If they speak another language, then you use Babelverse to communicate with them in real time. 

And then, when its time to bring the entire distributed staff together to build, code, and generate business, you can rent a home from Airbnb and house them there for a month. 

When you have proven that your MVP has legs, and it is building traction, then you have Michael Staton and the VC fund he is a partner in, Learn Capital, to turn to. 

This kind of realization made me think that we are not living in a world where working for a corporation has to be someone's first choice. As one of our audience members put it: 

30-40% of workforce is #gighopping. # of contractors on the up. People are becoming more talented and less loyal #bizspark

— Lloyed Lobo (@lloyedlobo) February 26, 2013 

the entire process of building a startup is one of careful listening, and a constant engagement with the consumer. The thing you are building is in some ways them, because any startup is really building a reaction to a massive group of people's problems. 

Michael Staton said that you need something called "market empathy." You may have explosive growth, but you should ensure that the explosive growth is happening because you have adressed a concern that comes directdly from the market. He went so far to say that it's not even a "tactic." It's a commitment to a form of discipline. 

"Market empathy is not a tactic, it needs to be a commitment." - @mpstaton #bizspark #bzlabs

— Jesus Gonzalez (@jgbeanr) February 26, 2013

This is something I riffed off, when I said that many people in what I would call traditional marketing try to sell the product first. It's all about the product. In a startup mentality, you often don't really know what you are making, because so much is dependent on the people who use it. In that case, you can't put 100% of your marketing efforts into selling the product by its features. You have to create something like an emotional space that enables people to want to help, and to want to use what they are not sure they want. It's something entirely new. 

To me this is the fundamental design trait that is inherent to a startup. It is not something big and bold that overwhelms you and makes you want it. The startup gene is the gene that expresses the trait of cooperative creation. In the space where a startup is trying to figure out what to be in order to achieve the product market fit, the startup team's adaptive skill sets and reasoning powers will make the difference between an Airbnb and a Second Life. 

The best use of this trait is in using community and design as the startup grows. 

When it comes down to incorporating the design and the community function into your business model, two things are important:

1. Your design is going to make people understand what you do, but it will also invite them to participate in what you are doing

2. The community function should be run by someone -- often called a community manager -- who has an excellent skill set that can incorporate design sense, listening, business sense, and an ability to articulate to a massive following what the company is doing and how it is going to do that WITH the community.

As Sahana at Klout says, there is no standard model, or "in the box resume" that person brings to the interview. Look for the person who understands and can execute in the social space. Everything, anyway, is improvisation.

In the past decade, we have witnessed a steady transition of content and media from our physical world to the online digital one with the most marked transformation happening in books and music. But in the publishing world, there has been a radically absent player in this metamorphosis -- recipe and cookbook publishing.

This post was written by Sari Louis, Founder and CEO of YumvY.

Last year, a hundred million unique users in the US alone took to the Web in search of the perfect recipes to cook. Although some sites and applications today offer added functionality (such as the ability to change the number of servings or substitute ingredients), advancements have largely been limited to improving the discovery process—what to cook—as opposed to the cooking process.

And this is precisely where YumvY comes in. The transition to a digital online medium affords us the opportunity to provide new functionality that would have otherwise been difficult or outright impossible to achieve in the offline world. Whereas the transition in the industry has been limited to a mere translation from printed to digital “dumb” recipes, YumvY’s vision is to transform and greatly enhance the user experience in the kitchen by rethinking the digital recipe from the ground up.

So how can YumvY’s digital recipe format, SmartRecipe™, enhance your experience? One benefit is that it makes cooking at home a less stressful or intimidating proposition if you are a beginner. Just like the GPS system in your car, YumvY will walk you through the process of cooking a recipe, step by step start-to-finish without getting lost. It will tell you when to turn the oven on, chop the vegetables, or drain the pasta; when you complete a step, it will figure out what you should do next; and, if a timer is needed, it will automatically create one for you.

What other benefits does it provide? It makes cooking sophisticated, restaurant-quality meals at home fast, fun, and easy! Say you’re having friends over for dinner, celebrating a special occasion or simply the end of the work week. YumvY will combine the steps from all the recipes you want to cook, figure out how best to order them, split them among any number of cooks, and then walk each of you through the process, step by step. It will even estimate how long the meal will take to cook, or at what time it will be ready.

We have long dreamed of the kitchen of the future, from the Jetsons’ to Microsoft’s Home of the Future. And while personal robots are not (yet!) here to help us cook, the kitchen of the future is one step closer with YumvY. The examples above are but a few of the world of possibilities unlocked by rethinking the digital recipe and the role of technology in the kitchen. For example, integrating the SmartRecipe™ with your dietary restrictions or preferences, smart kitchen appliances, or even your local grocer is within reach. We have only just begun exploring these possibilities, and we at YumvY are very excited about the future that lies ahead. Most importantly, we are excited about helping you unleash your inner chef.

Happy cooking! 

The games app market is extremely competitive, so finding new ways to keep players captivated is the big challenge facing developers right now.  Finnish-based start-up Tuliotus has achieved just that, by introducing an exciting new approach to game-play with Haunted, which is also the first AppCampus-funded Windows Phone 7 (and now Windows Phone 8) app to be launched on the Windows Store.

The story starts in 2012 when Kimo Boissonnier and his long-time friend Sami Anttila decided it was about time they pooled their talents.  They’ve both worked in and around the games, mobile and tech industries for years (Kimo has worked for Nokia, while Sami has been a distributed computing programmer) but entering a Microsoft competition called Dream Build Play was the catalyst.  Along with Kimo and Sami, the other two team members were Matti Kotala (music) and Jyri Honkanen (graphics), also now working for the Tuliotus organisation.

Says Kimo: “We didn’t win, but it gave us the idea for Haunted.  We could see that there was room for more exciting and challenging game-play.  We did some brainstorming and thought, what if rather than having all the usual swords and other weapons, you could use your own logic to interact with whatever objects you can find, to protect yourself and complete the puzzle? Light keeps you safe from some monsters, others are drawn to the blazing fires of your torch. A rich game play could emerges from these simple elements.”

It is this kind of innovative thinking that led to Tuliotus’ successful AppCampus application. AppCampus is an €18 million open-innovation programme funded by Microsoft, Nokia and Aalto University that aims to help entrepreneurs and start-ups around the world bring breakthrough apps to market.  It is highly selective, focusing on the very best ideas only, so acceptance into the programme is a real achievement in itself. 

Kimo continues his story: “At the time I first heard about AppCampus, I was teaching students about developing apps.  Karl Ots, the Microsoft Student Partner Lead for Finland told me that AppCampus was open to applications, so we tried and were successful.”

During the application process, the team decided to officially form their own company and the result is Tuliotus, fast becoming one of Finland’s newest and hottest start-ups.  “Roughly translated, Tuliotus means ‘fire spirit’ - one of the characters in Haunted is a light-eater, which gave us the idea.”

Working with AppCampus enabled Tuliotus to accelerate commercialization of Haunted, through investment, coaching, marketing and training.   In December 2012, it was the first AppCampus funded Windows Phone app to hit the Windows Store.  Within weeks, it was number 28 on the Russian appstore and 49 on the US appstore, meaning that Tuliotus had scored rapid early success with two of its biggest potential target markets."

Haunted is available for Windows Phone 7 and 8 with two versions: a free trial, and a full version priced at 1,00€, with a free version supported by advertising planned for the future.  User feedback has been excellent, with the app getting 4 or 5 star ratings.  Kimo cites the fact that Haunted appeals to all levels of gamer experience and age groups as a big factor: “I let a six year old kid borrow my Windows phone and it was hard to get it back, he was enjoying playing Haunted on it so much! Equally, there is enough in there to keep more experienced gamers interested.”

Innovative game-play aside, was working with Windows Phone a contributing factor? Over to Kimo: “I was working at Nokia so it was a logical platform to use, but more than that I could see its potential. For instance, I was teaching high school kids how to develop their own games and with Windows Phone, they can create workable apps in just 48 hours. For developers, Windows Phone is game changer.”

Haunted is just the beginning for Tuliotus and it has grand plans for 2013.  Says Kimo: “Our aim is to launch an average of one app per month during this year, giving us a total of 12 and we are working full steam ahead to achieve that.  We are keeping an open mind to what the future might bring, but we’ve got some exciting plans we cannot discuss just yet and are talking to potential partners and supporters who will help us grow our business, so watch this space!”