The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Google, Facebook Spent Record Amounts On D.C. Lobbying In Q1 2012
- New iPhone Unlock Should Work With Any Model
- Tips For Flacks From A Former Hack
- The 10 Biggest Mistakes Made With Amazon Web Services
- More Anti-Trust Woes Ahead For Apple?
- Microsoft Israel’s Best & Brightest on Parade at ThinkNext Tel-Aviv
- Dollars, Sense, And 40 Billion Facebook Credits
- How Niche Content Sites Can Build And Keep Audiences
- Take Credit For The Jobs You Create With SmartRecruiters’ “Got Jobs?” Campaign
- Quora Is Raising At A $400M Valuation, With D’Angelo Putting In His Own Money
- Seven Gmail Add-ons That Make Email Suck Less
- Online Video vs. Music – Different Game, Same Rules
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- The Rise of Smart Mobile Services (Not Apps!)
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- Startups: Time For Another One-Sentence Pitch Competition With The Founder Institute
- Gillmor Gang: Scoble’s Magic Penny
- NY Tech Day: “Justify Your Startup’s Existence In 20 Seconds”
| Google, Facebook Spent Record Amounts On D.C. Lobbying In Q1 2012 Posted: 22 Apr 2012 09:15 AM PDT  More dollars were poured into the Beltway from technology companies in the first quarter of 2012. As shown through previous lobbying spends, each quarter, Facebook and Google continue to spend more and more on lobbying efforts in Washington D.C. In the most recent disclosure reports filed in the U.S. Senate's lobbying database, both of the companies hit all time highs in terms of lobbying dollars. Google's lobbying spend hit an all-time high again this quarter, with spending coming in at a whopping $5.03 million, tripling its spend from the same period a year ago. Last quarter, Google spent $3.76 million on lawmakers. Microsoft only spent $1.8 million on lobbying for the quarter. In 2011, Google spent $9.7 million on lobbying, and has already surpassed half of that spend in this past quarter alone. So what issues are Google pushing in D.C.? This past quarter, Google's lobbying strategy focused on SOPA, patent reform, data privacy and accountability, online advertising regulation, intellectual property and trademark issues, cyber security and online privacy, renewable energy, freedom of expression and censorship, immigration reform and the Startup Visa Act, science, technology and math education, free trade, broadband access, freedom of expression and intellectual property in international trade agreements, "openness and competition in the online services market," cloud computing, tax reform, internet standards of service and more. In fact, this quarter brought the most variety of issues Google has publicly tackled in Washington D.C. so far. We know Google had been ramping up lobbying spend with the SOPA issues from earlier this year. Antitrust and consumer privacy are also areas where Google has faced scrutiny from the government. And Google recently named former congresswoman Susan Molinari as head of the search giant’s Washington office, signaling a more experienced presence in the Beltway to navigate through many of these regulatory issues. Ahead of its IPO in May, Facebook has been doubling down on lobbying efforts. The social network spent $650,000 on lobbying in Q1 2012, up from $230,000 in the same quarter last year. From the fourth quarter 2011 to the first quarter 2012, Facebook increased spending by $200,000. Last year alone, Facebook spent a little over $1 million on lobbying and has already spent nearly half of that in the first quarter. Policy areas of focus for Facebook this year include global regulation of software companies and restrictions on internet access by foreign governments; internet privacy regulations, do not track issues, discussion of location-based services; education regarding Facebook’s tag suggest features, patent reform, online safety measures, education regarding online advertising, immigration, cyber security, and lobbying for Oregon power and water needs to support high-tech growth and investment in Oregon (Facebook opened a new, energy-efficient data center in Oregon last April). Facebook has faced regulatory scrutiny around privacy, and we know the network must be lobbying hard for patent reform regulation in light of its recent legal issues with Yahoo. And as the company prepares to enter the public markets, Facebook has ramping of fundraising through a new political action committee. Last year, Facebook is deepened its ties with D.C., hiring more influential lobbyists, and even partnering with the current administration on policy issues. Photo Credit/Flickr/Fovea Centralis
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| New iPhone Unlock Should Work With Any Model Posted: 22 Apr 2012 09:01 AM PDT  iPhone unlocks are usually a tetchy experience – you have to have the right firmware on the right model iPhone at the right time. Now, however, thanks to a method that spoofs the activation server, you can unlock almost any iPhone semi-permanently. The system, called Subscriber Artificial Module or SAM, requires a jailbroken iPhone and Cydia. To run it, you de-activate your phone, insert a new SIM, and then activate SAM. SAM spoofs the activation process, convincing the phone that it has been unlocked properly and without issues. Built by hackers Loktar_Sun and Laforet, the process isn’t for the faint of heart and it takes twenty-eight steps. You can follow along at iClarified where they’ve outlined the entire process in meticulous detail. Because you’re not really unlocking the phone but in fact activating it using an unsupported SIM, expect some wonky server issues. You will also have to go back and reactivate the device later if you decide to switch SIMs. It’s a small price to pay for freedom.
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| Tips For Flacks From A Former Hack Posted: 22 Apr 2012 08:00 AM PDT  Editor’s note: Nick Gonzales is a web entrepreneur and former journalist for TechCrunch. Nick has seen the PR business from both sides; first while at TechCrunch and later working with Covered Co., a Silicon Valley PR/Marketing agency that has worked with companies like Dropbox, WhatsApp and Secure.me. Nick currently resides in Dubai, where he co-founded Nervora, which represents MENA region ad sales for the world’s leading publishing brands including Conde Nast, CBSi, Hearst, Gawker Media, and more. He can be found on LinkedIn. There are two kinds of stories: great ones and the ones that have to be pitched. This article isn't about great stories. I have a lot of fond memories from TechCrunch — being there when the YouTube acquisition broke, covering the rise of Y Combinator, and generally speaking to people a recent college grad had no right chatting with, let alone interrogating about their company. However, getting pitched wasn't one of them. Pitching the press is a lot like trying to close any other business deal — sans the excitement of any money changing hands. In fact, “selling” a pitch means creating more work for the writer, who has to dig into the details of your pitch and craft a story. That being said, let me help the inquisitive PR professional or budding startup CEO with some perspective on how to help the stories that need to be pitched make it through the process. Know the Type of Story Before you even bother picking up the phone, know what kind of story you're pitching. While creativity makes a story interesting, most follow a pretty standard template. There are financing stories (Company X raised Y from Z), traction updates (X is growing like a week), product launches (X wants to be the Y of Z), the counterfactual (you'd think X, but really it's Y), wow numbers (Did you know that X,XXX,XXX do Y?), and many more. Notice the patterns. Be the patterns or break them with a thoughtful opinion piece. Be genuine I always preferred talking to founders over their PR handlers. They could not only answer the questions more completely, but also conveyed a real excitement about what they were doing. Also, founders garner a lot more empathy because not so secretly everyone writing at a tech blog wants to be them (Paul Carr, Ben Parr, Eric Eldon, need I go on…). If you're not a founder, you'll need to figure out how to get a lot nerdier quickly and network with all those wanna-be founder writers. Know Your Writer Each writer has their own perspective and style. Get to know them and it will help guide who to approach and how. Follow up with writers that covered similar companies. Share an intelligent perspective based on their previous stories. In other words, don't pitch MG on anything other than Apple. Find Free Cycles TechCrunch now has a lot of writers. You may want your story to be written by one of them in particular, but you'd be better served by realizing they all reach millions of readers each month. Mostly likely the top writers are busy on pressing stories or pet projects, so you could do yourself a solid by reaching out down the lineup to find someone with some free time, the kind of free time that can be spent vetting your story to write-up themselves or pass on to someone covering your beat. Writers are Lazy It may not be so much that writers are lazy, as they are pressed for time and starved for the kind of attention that only writing yet another story about the Facebook acquisition of Instagram can sate. But what I really mean is that writers are the curators of interestingness. News is by definition what is now novel. You make your story infinitely easier to get picked up by doing some of the heavy lifting and placing it in an interesting package. Story vehicles like industry studies and info graphics educate while letting the writer take care of the rest of the exposition. Exist At the end of the day, it's all about trusted relationships. By staying in the industry, your longevity lends some credibility to your competence and ideally more solid connections. If you know a writer well, it's not a guarantee of a story, but it's the best shot at getting written up. Also keep in mind that it's a small industry. So try not to be this guy.
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| The 10 Biggest Mistakes Made With Amazon Web Services Posted: 22 Apr 2012 07:00 AM PDT  Editor’s note: Zev Laderman is the co-founder and CEO of Newvem, a service that helps optimize AWS cloud infrastructure. Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides an excellent cloud infrastructure solution for both early stage startups and enterprises. The good news is that AWS is a pay-per-use service, provides universal access to state-of-the-art computing resources, and scales with the growing needs of a business. The bad news – AWS can be very hard for early stage companies to onboard, while enterprises usually spend too much time with 'busy work' to optimize AWS and keep costs under control. We launched a private beta of 'KnowYourCloud Analytics' a tool that helps AWS users to get to the bottom of their AWS cloud. By gathering data streams from multiple compute resources and crunching this data with its state-of-the-art analytics engine, Newvem enables AWS users to discover potential cost savings, identify security vulnerabilities and gain more control over availability. Since our private beta's launch, we've watched over 100,000 AWS instances and have seen users make repeated mistakes over their cloud operations. Ssome are simple, but can result in massive security, availability and cost issues within an organization. Here are the ten most common mistakes you should avoid in order to make the most out of your AWS cloud footprint.
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| More Anti-Trust Woes Ahead For Apple? Posted: 22 Apr 2012 06:00 AM PDT  Editor's note: Charley Moore is a lawyer and the founder of online legal service Rocket Lawyer. Follow him on Twitter @charlesmooreesq. When John D. Rockefeller was told about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to break up Standard Oil, the founding titan turned to his golfing partner and said, "Father Lennon, have you some money?" The priest first said, "No," but then asked, "Why?" Rockefeller replied, "Buy Standard Oil." It was good advice. Being subjected to stern anti-trust regulation was proof that Rockefeller had indeed built the most valuable private company in the world — one that would ultimately be even more valuable broken into parts. This week, the Justice Department announced new monopolist targets as it slapped Apple and five of the largest book publishers with an antitrust lawsuit. Attorney General Eric Holder accuses the companies of price collusion in connection with e-books. Already, three of the five publishers investigated, the Hachette Book Group, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, have agreed to a settlement that is likely to overturn the their "agency" pricing model. Macmillan and Penguin Group USA, also named in the suit, have not yet settled. So what is all the fuss about in particular? We previously detailed the controversy surrounding e-book pricing:
This appears be a major victory for Amazon, who has seen its market share erode from nearly 100% to 60%, and for Kindle owners, who might soon benefit from lower e-book prices. But Amazon may not want to gloat. The fact that the Kindle only supports purchasing content from Amazon's store, and no other, may be ipso facto cause for review (unlike the Apple devices that support several competing book store apps). Like Standard Oil before it, Apple has been the most valuable company in the world (a distinction that it alternately exchanges with Exxon Mobile, itself a product of the original Rockefeller oil break-up). But is Apple really monopolistic? What an ironic question, given all the years that Apple struggled against the domination of Microsoft and "Wintel." Here is what the figures say about the Cupertino company's market share:
These numbers certainly indicate that Apple has built an incredibly strong experience linking the hardware it sells (iPhones, iPads, Macs) to valuable content. But Apple's strength in music and apps must be combined with the fact that, with the exception of tablets, it still isn't the biggest player by unit sales in either phones or personal computers. This indicates that, in contrast to the Microsoft of the past, Apple is just better at designing the user experience on its hardware (both of consumers and content developers) to spur transactions. It has created the longed for "virtuous cycle" where more commerce begets more commerce. On the other hand, when Microsoft faced a series of civil actions by the Department of Justice and 20 states back in the 1990s, the central issue was whether Microsoft should be allowed to bundle its browser, Internet Explorer (still the most widely used Internet browser), into its Windows operating system. At the time, Microsoft Windows was the standard operating system for over 90% of personal computers. As we disclosed above, Apple does not enjoy such platform domination. By their very nature, iTunes and the App Store are selling mostly third-party content to Apple's users, not content created by Apple, of Apple and for Apple consumers, as Microsoft was allegedly doing by exclusively bundling Internet Explorer by Microsoft with Windows, of Microsoft, on Wintel computers – for Microsoft consumers. As Rockefeller alluded, at some point, isn't an anti-trust suit just a sign that a titan has reached the highest level in capitalism's ultimate game? Should such winners wave the subpoena's like big "we're number one" foam fingers? It certainly seems so, as the largest and most successful companies of the current era take turns under the klieg lights of regulatory scrutiny. For example, Google is also currently under pressure on Capitol Hill and in Europe. The Washington Post editorial states the situation thusly: "Getting grilled on Capitol Hill has become a rite of passage for many big companies that draw scrutiny." In Google's case, its dominant share of the search market leads to questions whether it has undue influence over what users find and don't find on the Internet. Further, as Google branches out into other services — including maps, travel, shopping and deals, other companies are accuse the search giant of favoring its own content in search results. Yet, if anything, the rise of Facebook and social "likes" for product discovery probably does as much as anything to evidence the dynamic nature of creative destruction in business and the challenge faced by any regulatory attempt to engineer markets. While the government goes after Apple, recall that it is Amazon that actually has 60 percent market share in the e-book category. It was Amazon, not Apple, that was the first mover to successfully generate significant e-book sales, with its Kindle readers. Apple actually stepped into the e-book breach late with its iPad and attendant e-reader apps. A real head-scratcher in all of this is the fact that Apple, unlike Amazon, enables all of the various competitors (including Amazon!) to sell e-books on Apple devices via third party apps. So, isn't the private market sorting this out on its own? The answer is "yes" and "no." The Justice Department has a point regarding collusion and price fixing. But it is a mistake to read this action as saying that Apple is a monopoly and in line for gilded age trust busting, ala Standard Oil. The most dominant companies will often eventually attract anti-trust scrutiny. That is as it should be. The question for Apple and its investors is how much worse will it get? Is Apple the Microsoft of this generation, or does constant innovation and investment in the next new thing limit the danger posed by any one fearsome giant of a company? Whether or not the government wins the e-book case, Washington would be wise to tread carefully down the path of interfering with dynamic, technology-driven markets. A little more than a decade ago, Apple was down and Microsoft was up. At that time, Google didn't even exist, Amazon was a tiny startup and the Facebook founders were school kids. Now, the tables are turned and what was up (Microsoft) is back to down to Earth — and that has almost nothing to do with regulation and everything to do with invention and competition. Eva Arevuo also contributed to this article.
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| Microsoft Israel’s Best & Brightest on Parade at ThinkNext Tel-Aviv Posted: 22 Apr 2012 05:57 AM PDT  Slowly but surely, Microsoft Israel is making itself more and more relevant for the local startup community. In fact, we recently covered its latest major push, the Windows Azure Accelerator. Then there’s the annual ThinkNext conference which has become one of the local tech community’s staple events. The more interesting portion of the event (in my opinion at least) is the demo area, where startups chosen by the the local Microsofties showcase their goods. So unless you happen to be at the event in the port of Tel-Aviv this afternoon, here’s what you’re missing out: Everything.me (formerly TechCrunch Disrupt finalist ‘DoAt’) is a search product that empowers users by putting everything they need at their fingertips. It's simplicity of search with the mobility of apps. Just say what you need and get your results immediately from fully mobile ‘Instant Apps’. PointGrab provides hand-gesture recognition software for Windows 8, where users can control a PC, applications and popular games from a distance. TouchApps makes casual and social mobile games that have reached millions of downloads worldwide. iOnRoad develops apps that improve driving in real-time using state-of-the-art machine vision algorithms and augmented reality. Photoccino understands photos and their context. Using computer vision and image processing technologies Photoccino classifies, groups, and selects the best photos, then turns them into photo-based products. Umoove’s technology allows the control of user interfaces of mobile devices using natural head & eye movements, in real-time and with no additional hardware. Webydo let’s users create websites by converting any kind of graphical design into a functioning website without any programming knowledge whatsoever. VMP provides intelligent, personalized, interactive and humanized self-service kiosks retailers and service providers. Fooducate helps people make healthy food choices. Using Fooducate’s app, shoppers can scan supermarket product barcodes and see their “nutrition score”. The app also suggests healthier alternatives to low scoring products. Kinvestix is a new fitness platform based on the concept of adding adjustable and linear resistance to the user's gaming movements. Loudlee is a social music network that gives you easy and unlimited access to music, and helps you discover music with friends. Play My Tone is creator of Tonify, an app that lets users mix their favorite music into multi-layered, personalized hi-fi mixes in less than 30 seconds and share it with his friends. Overwolf is a software client that adds a rich layer of functionality to games, without touching the game code. For game publishers, Overwolf is a tool to integrate social media within their games, Vodio is a video discovery magazine iPad app that keeps users up-to-date by matching their personal taste and preferences. Xtendi lets users design their own augmented reality experience for mobile devices, based on natural human behavior and the proximity of a user from an object. MetalCompass delivers a mobile gaming experience for real world games DVP provides real-time make-up software for mobile video calls on smart-phones, tablets and laptops. EPOS provides digital input solutions that rely on ultrasound to enable high-resolution and precision positioning in both 2/D and 3/D. The company's technology is embedded in mobile devices, enabling pen/stylus input.
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| Dollars, Sense, And 40 Billion Facebook Credits Posted: 22 Apr 2012 03:00 AM PDT  Editor’s note: Dean Alms is the VP of Marketing & Business Development at social entertainment company Milyoni. Follow him on Twitter @deanalms. Roughly 16 billion Facebook Credits were distributed and consumed in 2011. In 2012, I predict that the use of Facebook Credits will soar by three times to over 40 billion Credits spent on virtual goods, digital goods and more. The growth will be fueled by new digital content available on Facebook, use of Facebook Credits to reward brand loyalty and better marketing of a social currency that is still in its infancy. The following chart shows the growth of Facebook Credits revenue reported by Facebook from 2009 to 2011. This chart demonstrates that with a growth rate of 300 percent in 2012 (lower growth rate than in prior years) the number of Facebook Credits in circulation will soon reach 47 billion. If 7 billion remain unused in consumer accounts by the end of the year, then 40 billion will have been spent on social gaming, social entertainment and new innovative applications. At 10 cents per credit, total revenue generated from the Facebook Credits market in 2012 will reach approximately $4 billion. Can Facebook Credits really grow to over 40 billion in circulation in 2012? The answer is yes. Here are some of the key assumptions and business drivers of this new international currency for virtual and digital goods.
Given this context, spending 40 billion Facebook Credits or $4 billion in virtual and digital goods is achievable. As music, movies and other entertainment content supplements an already growing base of social gamers, this number may end up being on the low side. The bottom line for all businesses with social media ambitions is: create a strategic initiative to leverage Facebook Credits; ignoring it means missing out on the massive market opportunity they represent.
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| How Niche Content Sites Can Build And Keep Audiences Posted: 22 Apr 2012 12:01 AM PDT  Editor’s note: Vikram Goyal is founder of CraftGossip.com. Follow CraftGossip on Twitter @CraftGossip. In Sept. 2007, I was on a well-deserved holiday, having spent an excruciating 11 months with a startup where 80-hour weeks were normal. I was the Chief Technology Officer and in my short tenure, I had gained new clients, setup the company infrastructure and trained a few interns. On the morning I came back from holiday, my office was packed up, and the bosses were in it to hand my stuff to me. They kicked me out of the door without so much as a thank you. I went through the various stages of depression, and then realized that I had to come up with an action plan quickly to pay for the massive mortgage and the new baby. With nothing more than an idea in mind, my wife and I started CraftGossip.com, a niche blog network covering everything that your grandma would be proud of, sewing, knitting, crochet. We also covered some new age favorites like indie crafts, edible crafts and home and garden. We decided to cover news related to the craft world (I explain later why we decided to start this site and not something else). Since then, CraftGossip.com has become the number one craft site to go to, if you like your news crocheted, knitted or sewn. In 2011, our traffic roughly doubled. We have been courted three times in the last year alone for acquisition. In this post, I will offer my thoughts on how a niche publishing site like ours can become successful. Understanding our audience The online world of Crafts/DIY is fragmented. On one end, you have the big players like the DIYNetwork.com whose web presence is part of a whole media strategy. On the other, you have a host of semi-independent sites like Craftster.org, Craftzine.com, and host of other mommy blogs. In 2007, if you wanted your information about new and interesting things in the paper making or jewelry making industry, you either read an off the shelf trade magazine or relied on main stream media to pick the information up in their supplements. Our audience were mostly women (97% or more) in their late thirties with at least one kid. They had spare time on their hands. And they wanted to indulge in some creative pursuits. And they wanted to know about everything new and interesting in their pursuit. We decided that this audience would be best served by a review site which would cover not only independent artists and their creations, but targeted industry behemoths. So, we started CraftGossip.com as a blog network, with separate sections to cover everything in sewing, knitting, crochet, paper crafts (since retired) and a few more. It helped that my wife had started an independent site (Craftbits.com) that provided free patterns and projects since 2000, so she understood her audience well. That site had always been sent free goodies from major suppliers in the hope that we would use them in our projects and therefore write about them. Coupled with the knowledge gained in running that site and the audience research we did plus the lack of competition at that time helped us to create a site where we could talk about everything new and creative. Understanding that it is all about the money The biggest question we had while creating the site was how we were going to find and curate all that information. With a net cast as wide as we could, we had decided to indulge several categories, but we couldn't ourselves find and write about them. We needed external people — our editors. To have editors, we needed to pay them. And therefore, the site needed to make money to be able to pay these people. We have been slammed several times for having an excessive amount of ads. We have been slammed for having ads in the first place. But if you go to our site, you will immediately see where the content is and where the ads are. There are clear demarcations. You cannot confuse an ad for content. And this helps us to maintain integrity. Our design was changed just once in the last four years, and when we found that that wasn't working we quickly reverted back. So our design is the same it has been when we started because it was the best design to incorporate our seven ad types. Having to deal with different advertisers is a pain, but it helps us to keep afloat. It is a small price to pay. We accepted at the start of the site that the site needs to make money immediately, enough to pay our editors and for our efforts. In the process we created the go-to site for everything you wanted to find out about Craft/DIY. Finding and maintaining the balance with our editors I mentioned about our editors earlier. Each section on our site has its own editor as we found it impossible to maintain the site as well as find fresh and daily content to post. Between our 20 editors, we post nearly 30-40 new posts each day. Yes, each day our editors find 30-40 new items in the craft world that you wouldn't have found otherwise. We require our editors to post at least five new articles each week. This maintains the freshness of each blog. But most editors post more than that, as they love their job! Of course, the balance comes from almost complete independence in how they handle their traffic and content. They have editorial independence from us and in the last 4 years we have had to only pull content twice. This independence allows us independence as well from checking on them daily. We know that they are responsible for their content and we leave it at that. The editors have a visceral interest in maintaining this independence as well. When we started, we decided that the way we will pay them is via a revenue share arrangement based on their traffic, and that this revenue share would be balanced in their favour. No other site or blog network I know has this arrangement where the revenue is in favour of the editors. Paying them via a revenue share worked well for us as well. It helped us to start the network with the minimum of capital. We could only pay out what the site had earned – no more. In the years since, our most heavily trafficked site's editor regularly earns over $2500 a month. Not bad for finding 5 new ideas a week to post about (although that editor posts much more than that). Keeping our social media channels open and active We were very late on this one. It was perhaps our inability to recognize that social media channels could be a great source of legitimate traffic. The problem was compounded by not understanding each social media channel and how to leverage individual strengths. Even now, our Twitter account languishes with only 15000+ followers, and the traffic from Twitter is out of our top 10 sources. However, once we realized our folly, we increased our efforts in each channel. Mainly Facebook, and to a lesser extent, Twitter, we used for maximum participation from our audience. We organized Facebook giveaways that required users to like us on Facebook (this has been outlawed by Facebook since then). For example, we gave away a Kindle via Amazon in the race to get to 10000 fans. A prize like Kindle is a great incentive for our audience to participate (and a really easy prize for us to fulfill), so we asked them to not only like us on Facebook, but to leave a comment on the post to increase interaction. We got over 1000 entries for that giveaway and gained over 1600 new fans. One of the problems of organizing giveaways like this is that you gain audience that are not really into your product or service. Luckily, our attrition rate after organizing such giveaways has been minimal, as our target is women followers who genuinely like our site and the daily craft ideas that we provide. Lately, Facebook traffic has been surpassed in leaps and bounds by Pinterest. However, with the legal challenges facing Pinterest, we are approaching this cautiously. Besides, Pinterest doesn't encourage user participation in the way Facebook does. YMMV. Appearing bigger than we were This was always an ethical issue. We approached many suppliers, artists and publishing houses with offers of great reviews for their products, artwork and books in exchange for them sending us details of their wares before anyone else. We did this by pretending to be bigger than we were (at that time). This worked in probably 4 attempts out of 10. But each attempt, even failed ones, brought us closer to being in the good books of these people because the 4 genuine creative works and products that we featured made us look legitimate and big in front of the 6 who had refused to send us their products. One classic example was the use of LinkedIn to approach an industry leader for product samples and giveaway of their flagship product. This was audacious because we were a "nobody", and we were trying to use a dubious connection to request that resource. We had almost given up on that channel working out till eventually, we received a positive reply. The use of LinkedIn helped as it seemed a legitimate request via a trusted source. Most readers will want to trust you, if they think you are big enough. We mostly find and write about great ideas and inspirations in our vertical and we proudly display the number of people who already trust us via our Facebook, Twitter and Newsletter count. “Hey, if CraftGossip is a great source of daily ideas for 25,000+ other Facebook fans, then it is good enough for me too.” Whenever we approach new sources, we proudly declare what we have already done for other similar sources in the past. Giveaways – how we have used them to gain audience I mentioned hosting a giveaway earlier. Hosting giveaways was one of the biggest ways we gained new audiences and kept bringing them back for more. In the process, we retained audiences that were genuinely interested in our content and therefore, decided to stick around. The strategy we used was to request a review product or sample from a manufacturer and then to propose to them that either the editor reviewing the product offer up her product sample for a giveaway at the end of her review, or the manufacturer send the winner the prize directly. 9 times out of 10, the manufacturer agrees to send the prize directly, which saves our editors time and (company) money. Tying up the giveaway along with the social media channels helps. We recently hosted a KitchenAid Mixer giveaway on our edible crafts blog that drew nearly 4000 entries. In part, it was due to the popularity of this mixer, but more importantly, it was because KitchenAid agreed to post the giveaway on their own Facebook page, which had a much more substantial following than overs. During the days we hosted the giveaway, we saw a 100% increase in the daily Facebook likes, and around 75% increase in engagement. It ties in neatly with the other ideas I have presented earlier – social media engagement + appearing bigger than we were. Always make sure that the giveaway prize that you pick is easy for you to fulfil. There is nothing worse than a disgruntled winner. In conclusion These are some of the main ideas that have helped us to get to where we are today. We are a niche vertical blog network, and we have found our happy place. We found passionate and dedicated editors who write about new and creative ideas in their fields, we give our readers what they want and we get advertisers to pay us so we can continue to be profitable. This is no magical formula and we believe anyone can create the same within their own vertical. [image via flickr/Amit Chattopadhyay]
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| Take Credit For The Jobs You Create With SmartRecruiters’ “Got Jobs?” Campaign Posted: 21 Apr 2012 09:00 PM PDT  Thanks to an election year and a high employment rate, jobs seem to be dominating the headlines even more than usual. Now SmartRecruiters, a hiring startup recently backed by the Mayfield Fund, is trying to tap into that interest — and maybe do some good in the process — with a campaign it’s calling “Got Jobs?” The company says that its technology is can help small- and medium-sized businesses, in particular, cast a wider net as they try to fill open positions. Rather than just posting their job listings to a few sites like Craigslist and Monster, SmartRecruiters customers can post to more than 100 job boards, including LinkedIn and Careerbuilder, then track applications and feedback. And SmartRecruiters is free to use. (It takes a percentage of the fee when you post to a paid job board or buy background checks from third-party vendor.) With “Got Jobs?”, SmartRecruiters has paired its technology with a job creation message. Businesses looking to hire someone can visit the campaign site to quickly create a job listing and post it through SmartRecruiters. They can also grab an “I Hired” badge for their websites, showing how many positions they’ve filled through the service. Oh, and if you think this is just empty marketing, and that a recruiting startup isn’t going to do much to fight unemployment, SmartRecruiters points to a recent government report showing that there are still 3.5 million unfilled job openings. So by making it easier for businesses to hire, the company argues that it can make a real difference.
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| Quora Is Raising At A $400M Valuation, With D’Angelo Putting In His Own Money Posted: 21 Apr 2012 07:28 PM PDT  It’s really beautiful outside. Like so beautiful if San Francisco is like this more often it will become really expensive to live here. Also, Quora is raising money according to the multiple people in the past week. From what I’ve heard, the startup wants to raise between $30 to $50 million in its Series B, at a $400 million valuation — an amount which strangely enough seems modest in light of the billion dollar rounds being thrown about willy nilly. While there is some prominent investor interest (and a lead, who I’m still digging on), co-founder Adam D’Angelo will also be investing his own money — Up to $20 million according to one source. While Quora isn’t as splashy as, lets say, Pinterest, former Facebookers D’Angelo and co-founder Charlie Cheever are super geniuses who are slowly and meticulously building a world-class engineering team and culture — the smartest people want to work for either them or Palantir is something I hear all the time when I’m hanging out in Palo Alto on beautiful days like this. “Very few realize how ambitious the opportunity is,” power user and TC Contributor Semil Shah tells me, “They are the ultimate outliers, a totally weird product that still in beta and not really fit for generic metrics. If I could put my entire 401K into Quora, I would. No questions.” Quora (who declined to comment about the funding rumors) is now 30 people strong and currently expanding its offices to further scale and move its mobile app into Android. So at least we know where the new money will be going.
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| Seven Gmail Add-ons That Make Email Suck Less Posted: 21 Apr 2012 06:00 PM PDT  Editor’s note: Sidian M.S. Jones is the founder of OpenSourceReligion.net and does graphic design for BookLamp.org. He has a forthcoming book called The Voice of Rolling Thunder. Follow him on Twitter @SidianMSJones. I think it says a lot about the current state of email that we have so many startups trying to change the way we do it. Gmail has been a key player for many years now. With features like threaded messages and filters, they've kept ahead of the game; but the feeling still seems pretty unanimous. Email sucks! Someone has got to burst this bubble and, when they do, they are going to make a mint. I don't know, this legendary "empty inbox", if it does exist, still evades me, have you ever seen one? What happens when when there are zero emails? A win screen? Now there's an idea… While we’re waiting for the next big disruption, there are services that can make the experience a little better — and maybe more than that. This is a list of Gmail add-on services that are at the top of the game right now. Rapportive has been, more or less, the standard for email sidebars that display the latest social network updates of whomever you are emailing. However, many users are lamenting the recent LinkedIn acquisition, claiming the popular add-on will no longer be updated. You might, like me, be interested in switching to Smartr Inbox for Gmail, or one of the few other alternatives. Either way you go, having the latest on your contacts is a very good way to build meaningful relationships in the digital age. You may not be able to escape the tyranny that is email, but you could apply a bit of "out of sight, out of mind" technology with AwayFind. It lets you assign parameters to emails like "push to iPhone if this person emails me within the next week" in which case AwayFind will notify you on your mobile device with an SMS, Voice call or one of their iPhone or Android apps. With features like this in place, you can finally walk away from the inbox. Just slowly…back away… This one I'm most excited about but it's also the only one I can't get. The Mail-Pilot team leads with "Your inbox is now a to-do list…" It hadn't struck me until reading this tagline how much sense this sort of approach makes. Of course my inbox is my to-do list! But then why do I have a Tasks widget sitting in the bottom right corner of my Gmail? Probably because email services haven't been treating emails as to-do items; but maybe they should. "Today’s email apps mark your email as “read” as soon as you open it, even though you still have to act on it. All messages require further action: deleting, replying, or some other activity." Again, a slightly different perspective with potentially large consequences. I'm keeping an eye on this one. If you weren't part of the KickStarter funding then you won't be getting your hands on a copy, though I'm sure they're working hard on a public release. Not quite so much an add-on as much as it is a utility, FindBigMail is just too useful to not list here. There isn't much explanation needed for this service, you sign up and they give you a rundown of your biggest emails, and therefore what is taking up the most space in your Gmail account. The interface is slick and easy to use, but I will add the caveat that FindBigMail does toss a few new (and unasked for so far as I can tell) folders into your account. Then again, while this surprised me, I'm not sure what other way they might be able to do it. But just try not clicking that little refresh button over and over as it scans your email! SaneBox, which was recently reviewed by TechCrunch, uses algorithms to determine email importance and then moves them into separate folders, something I think Gmail covers in more than one way but maybe SaneBox is better? They do, however, boast social network integration, follow up reminders for when someone hasn't gotten back to you, and my favorite, the SaneBlackHole Unsubscribe. "Drag an email into the SaneBlackHole folder, and you’ll never hear from that sender again. Unsubscribe from mailing lists with 1 click!" Something about dropping unsolicited emails into a digital black hole makes me feel so good inside. Simple and effective. Boomerang For Gmail let's you send email later, set follow up reminders, and remind you if you don't hear back. Like AwayFind, I think I might categorize Boomerang in the "out of sight, out of mind" camp, as you still have to deal with the emails later, but you get the potential solace of an empty inbox. It includes a calendar picker for dates but also understands language such as "next week" when telling Boomerang when to send a message. Cloud magic, who competes with Greplin, is a search service that crawls through your Gmail, Google Apps, contacts, calendars, documents, and Twitter updates. Install the extension and CloudMagic will insert a search function in Gmail and Twitter, and It is also now available as a mobile app which, according to Sarah Parez is "…really, really, really, fast." Advanced Operators like "content:" really help you get down to business by searching Gooble Document texts. Yes, you can do that from within a document, but why not just do it all from one search box? Gmail Labs Gmail Labs is one of the best, and first, places you should visit if you are looking to get more out of your Gmail experience. To access Gmail Labs log in to your Gmail account, click the gear in the upper-right of your inbox and then click settings. From here there will be a tab labeled "Labs". The Gmail team describes Labs as "…a testing ground for experimental features that aren’t quite ready for primetime. They may change, break or disappear at any time." Despite the warning, Labs features have never disappeared nor drastically changed their functionality on me to the point of stopping my use of one, or even ever frustrating me. And boy is there some awesome stuff in here. To name a few…
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| Online Video vs. Music – Different Game, Same Rules Posted: 21 Apr 2012 04:00 PM PDT  Editor’s note: Peter Csathy is President & CEO of online video technology company Sorenson Media and is a frequent guest blogger for TechCrunch, as well as his own "Digital Media Update" blog. Csathy previously was President & COO of online music pioneer Musicmatch (acquired by Yahoo!) and spent 10 years in the "traditional" media world, including stints at Universal Studios and representation of the rap group N.W.A. Follow him on Twitter @pcsathy. Netflix — the poster child for premium Internet video services — was birthed by iTunes and other online music services before it. Yes, movies and music are fundamentally different forms of media. Apart from the obvious, in the online world, music tracks can be unbundled from albums (movies can't), and the number of movies produced in any given year represents a small fraction of the total volume of recorded music (and these differences directly impact business models). Nevertheless, despite these differences, three ingredients that have proven to be essential for the success of any online music service apply equally to the premium online video world. This trilogy represents the "Sacred Tenets of Online Media" that apply to any service provider. Apple was the first to get it right in the online music world with iTunes. Who will first get it right at massive scale for online video? Netflix may have the lead, but the game is still early. So, game on. Sacred Tenet #1 – Quality, Quality, Quality. I know this sounds trite, trite, trite, but how many service providers really get it right? Remember the early online music services (both legitimate and not)? Audio quality was frequently abysmal. The overall experiences were usually empty (meta-data, what meta-data?), and the bad guys infected you with viruses. Enter iTunes, which offered a healthier, better sounding product and far richer overall experience. That mattered. That was a game changer. The same applies, of course, for online video viewing, no matter how big or small the screen. To "win," service providers must ensure that movies and television shows look good on every device regardless of the explosion of new devices, form factors, endless specs, new formats (MPEG-Dash, UltraViolet) and variable network conditions. Consumers don't care, and they aren't patient. Not anymore. They just want the stuff to work. And, that ain't easy. That's why Netflix transforms each movie into over 100 renditions to account for different devices, formats, and network conditions. THAT's a commitment to quality. Here's further proof that service providers are finding a commitment to overall quality (essentially user experience or U/X) increasingly critical. My company, Sorenson Media, provides video encoding solutions for video professionals to solve the fundamental problem of transforming video for optimized delivery over the Internet. We just recently surveyed our user base of 100,000+ video professionals (the full survey results were just recently reported in TechCrunch). Our users both confirmed what we already suspected, but also surprised us with what we didn't. Not surprisingly, 75% of video professionals encode regularly (at least weekly), and no output format is unimportant as multiple formats are heavily used (although MP4 and H.264 lead the pack for both web and mobile). Surprisingly, however, even though our product ships with over 200 encoding recipes (presets), a whopping 80% either tweak those presets or create their own. That's how complex this stuff is. Our customers find it necessary to dial in video quality even further! Why? Because you gotta get it right, or the U/X is wrong. And, if you got it wrong, then your customers look elsewhere. Sacred Tenet #2 – Deep Content. We live in a world where iTunes, Rhapsody and Spotify offer virtually any music track you could ever think of – 15 million of them! We take that for granted. We expect it. But remember, it wasn’t that long ago when that wasn't the case. In the earliest days of legitimate online music services, music libraries were small and filled with gaping holes (how's that for an oxymoron?). iTunes launched with a scant 200,000 tracks back in April 2003, and my former company, Musicmatch, launched its then-revolutionary music on-demand subscription service with 250,000 tracks later that same year. Think about that. Those numbers, of course, represent only about 1.5% of the total number of tracks now offered today. Ultimately, once customers got over the novelty factor of new music services, that paucity of content led to frustration – and opportunities to differentiate based purely on size. We at Musicmatch – and all others – soon realized that those gaps had to be filled as quickly as possible. And, the arms race was on to sign up the most record labels the fastest – and then boast about it as a major differentiator (which it was). I was there – I remember camping out in New York City for a week just so that I could pounce on any indie label I could to add "0's" to our library (with the goal of ultimately adding "0's" to our topline). This same basic truth applies to premium online video services of course. What happens when you can't find the movie you want? You bolt and look elsewhere. Well, none of the service providers want that to happen, so each of them is feverishly racing to expand its cache of movies and television shows. That's why you read about deal after deal after deal. It's the quest to get the critical mass they need for their customers to stay. At this point, since online video libraries are still relatively thin, deal scrambling will continue at a feverish pace and media companies (licensors) should have the upper hand. (For a further detailed discussion of the power media companies hold in these online movie licensing discussions, check out my earlier TechCrunch guest post on the subject.) Sacred Tenet #3 – Discovery & Navigation. It's essential for online movie customers to easily find the premium content they want, when they want it. But, it's also essential for them to find a way to intelligently and easily navigate the vast expanding universe of other content that they don't necessarily know they want – until it "finds" them and they experience it. That is the fundamental role of discovery. Back in my Musicmatch days, we offered a music discovery engine based on the tastes of other listeners. If you liked Arcade Fire, The Decemberists, and the Shins, then you would be introduced to other music that other artsy indie-types like you liked. (By the way, for you music fans, Pandora recommends Bloc Party and the XX if you plug-in those three bands.) Effective discovery enhances the user experience – and leads to more content consumption (meaning more opportunities to monetize). The same holds true for premium video. As movie libraries expand online (which they absolutely must do since we are still in 2003-like online music numbers), it is essential to give the consumer powerful tools to make sense of it all. Many flavors of discovery exist, including social. Service providers will look to differentiate themselves here too as music services, like Pandora, do in the online music world. iTunes got it right 10 years ago – and rules the online music world still to this day. But, things are very different in the online video world. Many hats are in the ring this time around. Netflix is the leader, but certainly isn't a lock. And, Apple isn't a significant player (yet). The players who pay homage to the Sacred Trilogy will best position themselves to be the big winners tomorrow. As fundamentally different as the two different forms of media are, the recipes for success in the online media service provider world largely stay the same …
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| Convertible Note Seed Financings: Econ 101 for Founders Posted: 21 Apr 2012 02:00 PM PDT  Editor's note: Scott Edward Walker is the founder and CEO of Walker Corporate Law Group, a boutique corporate law firm specializing in the representation of entrepreneurs. Check out his blog or follow him on Twitter as @ScottEdWalker. This is the second part of a three-part primer on convertible note seed financings. Part 1, entitled "Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Convertible Note Seed Financings (But Were Afraid To Ask)," addressed certain basic questions, such as (i) what is a convertible note? (ii) why are convertible notes issued instead of shares of common or preferred stock? and (iii) what are the advantages of issuing convertible notes? This part will address the economics of a convertible note seed financing and the three key economic terms: (i) the conversion discount, (ii) the conversion valuation cap and (iii) the interest rate. Part 3 will cover certain special issues, such as (i) what happens if the startup is acquired prior to the note's conversion to equity? and (ii) what happens if the maturity date is reached prior to the note's conversion to equity? What Is a Conversion Discount? As discussed in part 1, in the context of a seed financing, a convertible note is a loan that typically automatically converts into shares of preferred stock upon the closing of a Series A round of financing. A conversion discount (or "discount") is a mechanism to reward the noteholders for their investment risk by granting to them the right to convert the amount of the loan, plus interest, at a reduced price (in percentage terms) to the purchase price paid by the Series A investors. In other words, the founders are saying to the investors, in effect, if you take this risk and give us money today, we'll reward you by giving you "20% off" at our Series A round down the road (20% being the usual discount, as discussed below). For example, if the investors in a $500,000 convertible note seed financing were granted a discount of 20%, and the price per share of the Series A Preferred Stock were $1.00, the noteholders would convert the loan at an effective price (referred to as the "conversion price") of $0.80 per share and thus receive 625,000 shares ($500,000 divided by $0.80). That’s 125,000 shares more than a Series A investor would receive for its $500,000 investment and a 1.25x return on paper ($625,000 divided by $500,000). (The foregoing example does not include accrued interest on the loan, which is typically about 5%-7% annually, as discussed below.) Discounts generally range from 10% (on the low side) to 35% (on the high side), with the most common being 20%. In Fenwick & West's 2011 Seed Financing Survey (the "Fenwick Survey"), the percentage of convertible note seed financings that granted a discount to investors was 67% in 2010 and 83% in 2011; and the median discount was 20% in both 2010 and 2011. One of the significant advantages of issuing convertible notes, as opposed to shares of preferred stock, is the extraordinary flexibility they offer in connection with "herding" prospective investors and raising the round. Clearly, a greater discount can be offered to early investors who are assuming more risk, particularly where the startup is closing its financing on a rolling basis over an extended period of time (as is the trend). Moreover, a note can include a discount that increases over time – e.g., (i) 1.5% per month up to 25%; or (ii) 10% if the Series A round closes within 6 months, 15% if it closes between 6 and 12 months, and 20% if it closes after 12 months. In the Fenwick Survey, the percentage of convertible note seed financings that included a discount which increased over time was 25% in 2010 and 5% in 2011. Finally, founders should be aware that investors will sometimes push for the issuance of warrants in lieu of a discount. In a seed round, this makes no sense and only creates more paperwork and, accordingly, higher legal fees. In the Fenwick Survey, the percentage of convertible note seed financings that included the issuance of warrants was 0% in both 2010 and 2011. What is a Conversion Valuation Cap? A conversion valuation cap (or "cap") is another mechanism to reward the noteholders for their investment risk (and for their efforts in increasing the value of the startup as a result of introductions, advice, etc.). Specifically, a cap is a ceiling on the value of the startup (i.e., a maximum dollar amount) for purposes of determining the conversion price of the note — which (like a discount) thereby permits investors to convert their loan, plus interest, at a lower price than the purchase price paid by the Series A investors. Using the example above, let's assume the cap were $5 million and the pre-money valuation in the Series A round were $10 million. If the noteholders invested $500,000 and the price per share of the Series A Preferred Stock were $1.00, the noteholders would convert the loan at an effective price of $0.50 per share ($5,000,000 divided by $10,000,000) and thus receive 1,000,000 shares ($500,000 divided by $0.50), which is 500,000 shares more than a Series A investor would receive for its $500,000 investment and a 2x return on paper ($1,000,000 divided by $500,000), not including any accrued interest on the loan. Notice that if there were a 20% discount and no cap, the noteholders would only receive 625,000 shares or a 1.25x return, as noted above. If we bump-up the pre-money valuation to $20 million and the cap remains at $5 million, you can see how the noteholders are rewarded (and protected): Their $500,000 loan now converts at an effective price of $0.25 per share ($5,000,000 divided by $20,000,000) and they would thus receive 2,000,000 shares ($500,000 divided by $0.25), which is 1,500,000 shares more than a Series A investor would receive for its $500,000 investment and a 4x return on paper ($2,000,000 divided by $500,000), not including any accrued interest on the loan. Again, if there were a 20% discount and no cap, the noteholders would only receive 625,000 shares or a 1.25x return. As you can see, noteholders with a 20% discount and no cap would receive 625,000 shares whether the pre-money valuation in the Series A round were $10 million, $20 million or $50 million. This is why sophisticated investors vehemently argue that a note without a cap (i) misaligns the interests of the founders and the investors; and (ii) penalizes investors for their efforts in helping the startup increase its value. The math can be tricky, but the bottom line is that noteholders without a cap do not share in any increase in the value of the startup prior to the Series A round. Accordingly, as discussed in detail in part 1, a cap is akin to a valuation in a priced round (i.e., if the startup were issuing shares of common or preferred stock); however, the beauty of a cap is that it is not a valuation for tax purposes — which facilitates the financing by allowing the founders to grant different caps to different investors. In the Fenwick Survey, the percentage of convertible note seed financings that included a cap was 83% in 2010 and 82% in 2011; and the median valuation cap was $4 million in 2010 and $7.5 million in 2011. How Do the Discount and the Cap Interrelate? If the convertible note includes both a discount and a cap, the applicable language will typically provide that the conversion price will be the lower of (i) the price per share determined by applying the discount to the Series A price per share; and (ii) the price per share determined by dividing the cap by the Series A pre-money valuation. As reflected in the examples above, the reason the conversion price is the "lower of" (not the "higher of") is because the lower the conversion price, the more shares the noteholders are issued upon conversion. In the first example above where the discount was 20%, the cap was $5 million and the pre-money valuation was $10 million, we saw that the conversion price was (i) $.80 when we applied the discount to the Series A price and (ii) $.50 when we divided the cap by the pre-money valuation. Accordingly, the conversion price would be $.50 (the lower of) for purposes of computing the number of shares issued to the noteholders upon conversion. Now watch what happens if we drop the pre-money valuation to $6 million: Applying the discount, the conversion price, of course, stays the same at $.80; but when we divide $5 million (the cap) by $6 million (the pre-money valuation), we get $.83, which is obviously higher than $.80 — and thus the discount applies, not the cap. This is a bit counter-intuitive because the pre-money valuation exceeds the cap by $1 million. Notice, however, that unless the pre-money valuation were greater than $6,250,000, the cap would not be triggered ($5,000,000 divided by $6,250,000 equals $.80). If this weren't confusing enough, there is one other complex issue that founders need to be aware of with respect to discounts and caps: the additional liquidation preference that is created. Indeed, this is a particular problem, and could result in a substantial windfall to investors, in a large convertible note financing with a low conversion price. For example, in a $2 million convertible note financing with a 50% discount (or a 50% conversion cap ratio), the noteholders would receive $4 million worth of shares of Series A Preferred Stock upon conversion (not including accrued interest), which would include whatever liquidation preference is attached to the shares (typically 1x). Accordingly, the noteholders would receive an extra $2 million of liquidation preference. There are several different approaches to solving this issue, the most elegant of which is to convert the notes into a different series of preferred stock (e.g., Series A-1), with a liquidation preference per share equal to the conversion price; however, for purposes of this post, it's enough for founders simply to be aware of this issue and how it relates to discounts and caps. What is the Typical Interest Rate and How Do the Investors Get Paid? The third and final piece of the economics puzzle is the interest rate component. Again, a convertible note is a loan and typically requires the startup to pay simple (not compounded) interest on the amount of the loan. Interest rates on convertible notes have historically been in the range of 7%-10% annually, but recently have dropped to the 5%-7% range. In the Fenwick Survey, the median annual interest rate in convertible note seed financings was 6% in 2010 and 5.5% in 2011. As alluded to in the examples above, the interest is not paid in cash on a periodic basis like a typical loan, but instead accrues (or accumulates), and then the total amount of interest due is added to the loan amount and converted into shares of preferred stock upon the closing of the Series A round. For example, if the interest rate were 5% in a $500,000 convertible note seed financing and the Series A closing occurred on the one-year anniversary of the convertible note closing, the investors would convert an additional $25,000 ($500,000 x .05). Each state has its own laws (called "usury" laws) that limit the maximum interest rate that may be charged on a loan. In California, for example, unless an exemption applies, the maximum annual interest rate for a non-consumer loan is the higher of (i) 10% or (ii) 5%, plus the rate charged by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on advances to member banks on the 25th day of the month prior to the date of the loan (or, if earlier, the date of the written loan commitment).
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| The Rise of Smart Mobile Services (Not Apps!) Posted: 21 Apr 2012 12:02 PM PDT  Editor’s note: Saar Gur is a general partner at Charles River Ventures. Follow him on Twitter @saarsaar. A new generation of Smart Mobile Services is coming. We don't need to wait for Google Glasses to build the next generation of world-changing consumer services. Many of the enabling features for these services exist in our smartphones today. What do I mean by a Service versus an App? Well, most mobile app developers have built their user experiences to look a lot like a desktop application jammed on a phone. I open up the app when I need something. I open up Outlook on my desktop to check email (I am on Gmail, but work with me here), and I open up my Yelp app on my iPhone when I need a restaurant recommendation. Same, same. I am either in it, or it is off. For the mobile apps running in the background (e.g., email), they currently don't add any utility to my offline experiences and interactions. This will continue to work for many apps going forward, but there will be an entire new generation of Services (vs. Apps) that will run in the background, be with me, and add value to my daily flow, productivity and experiences. What do I mean by "Smart"? “Smart" means understanding a user and understanding their physical and mental state. Smart services will process user information in the background to make accurate predictions around real-time user intention and will offer suggestions, results and different user interfaces/interactions based on their prediction of state. Smart example: Google predictive search in mobile: By adding location data, Google can predict better search queries and search results – improving the user experience. Very few apps today do any processing to figure out the context and state of the user. They could use passive location data, where I am, who I am with, web services and information, etc. to make assumptions about the user (e.g., Saar is at home now, or Saar is driving) and interact with me differently as a function of state. A change in user interaction Current mobile apps use the notification channel and SMS to bring me back to their apps. But very few have "smart notifications" that take advantage of my current context. These next generation services will only interrupt me when they have something valuable to add that is in-context. And they will do a much better job building different user interfaces based on my state. As I think about what these new Smart Services will look like, here are some of the characteristics I have been noodling on:
If I have lost a bunch of you on this post at this point, I apologize. Another way and getting to the point is asking: Why can't I have the services below today? Diet – When I step into the gelato place (and you have a high degree of certainty that this is in fact what I am doing), why don't you ping me and encourage to walk out and go down the street for frozen yogurt instead? Music and home automation – Why won't Sonos turn on automatically as I pull into my driveway during reasonable hours? Driving — Why can't an app notice in my calendar that I have to get to SF from Palo Alto and ahead of time warn me that 101 is jammed? Why do I still need to check? Highlight potential hiccups and problems proactively and otherwise remain silent. Discover — If there is awesome location-based content (or people for that matter), how come it is so hard to discover? (Any good brainstorm of location-based services will include these scenarios, and has for the past 10 years. But the enablers now exist for these services to become a reality.) It is really early days and I am excited for what is to come. What do you think the most exciting smart services will do or look like? Special thanks to Gentry Underwood from Orchestra for contributing many of the ideas and inspirations for this post.
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| Twitter and LinkedIn Manage Tasks With Asana, New API Means Robots Can Too Posted: 21 Apr 2012 11:29 AM PDT  What could be a better endorsement of your product’s quality than having some of the hottest companies in tech relying on it? Launched in November, task management software Asana is already being used by Twitter, Uber, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Rdio, NationBuilder, and Airbnb. This week, Asana released a REST API to let customers build custom interfaces and in-roads to its productivity tool. A few examples of what you could build include a desktop app for viewing assigned tasks, or a dashboard for monitoring your team’s current projects. At an event to celebrate the startup’s progress on Thursday night, co-founder (and Facebook co-founder) Dustin Moskovitz and advisors like Ron Conway watched proudly as Asana’s other co-founder Justin Rosenstein delivered a rousing speech. “In just five months, customers have created 10 million tasks. Even more impressively, they’ve completed 4 million of them.” Asana’s product allows teams to assign, collaborate on, and complete tasks in sync such that everyone knows what they and their peers should be working on. If you loathe email, endless meetings, and bloated layers of management and bureaucracy, Asana could be the answer. While the austere gray and white interface can seem drab at first, it’s designed to disappear so you can focus on the task at hand. Disclosure: I’m friends with employees at many companies we cover including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Asana too. At San Francisco’s Hops & Hominy, Rosenstein beamed while noting, “Asana is becoming the center of people’s work. Over 25% of weekly active users use the product ever single day, Monday through Friday. And 75% of the people who adopt Asana are retained.” He told the story of a Menlo Park biotech company called Emerald Therapeutics started by two of the world’s top scientists whose mission is to “end disease”. Its founders were forced to spend 100% of their time managing the company, but after adopting Asana to simplify coordination, they were able to put 75% of their time back towards science. More impressive than these stats is the passion of Asana’s whole team for accomplishing the goal of “vastly increasing the speed and scope of every organization.” Rosenstein says “We see a future in which every organization on earth can coordinate their collective action perfectly, without effort, like a healthy brain. The Asana Project is about touching the heart of how people create together. The heart of how people self-actualize, help their fellow man, and manifest their potential.” As the task management space crowds, Asana’s team will need that passion as it attempts to pull ahead of serious new competitors like Trello from Stack Exchange’s Joel Spolsky, and Salesforce’s Do, and displace established collaboration tools like Basecamp and Atlassian’s Jira that are deeply embedded in the workflows of many companies. Rosenstein said “The API is the very first step of Asana’s larger platform strategy.” Its graphical user interface is quite minimalist and generalist, but Asana hopes to give developers and customers the power to specialize its tools for different verticals like software development, medicine, or news publishing. For now, the REST API can manage users, tasks, projects, stories, and workplaces. As an example, Asana offers an open source Chrome extension for instantly creating a task from text on any web page. One thing’s for sure: email, while useful, is often the death of efficiency, so it’s exciting to see Asana is slaying that dragon for tech’s top companies. Task management is such a huge problem for so many people that there may be room for multiple solutions, but Asana is setting a quick pace on the path to helping us all reach our potential.
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| Startups: Time For Another One-Sentence Pitch Competition With The Founder Institute Posted: 21 Apr 2012 11:08 AM PDT  Last December, TechCrunch worked with Adeo Ressi from The Founder Institute to host a competition for one-sentence pitches. It’s been a few months — so we’re doing it again. Distilling your startup idea into a single sentence can be a big challenge, but it’s crucial for communicating what you’re doing to the outside world. (While there are certainly exceptions, I’ve found that it’s a big warning sign when founders can’t succinctly communicate what they do.) Here’s the basic formula: “My company, _(insert name of company)_, is developing _(a defined offering)_ to help _(a defined audience)_ _(solve a problem)_ with _(secret sauce)_". So if you’ve got a startup founder, we want you to give it a shot. If you’ve got a pitch, just post it as a comment below. Ressi and his team will be going through every one, weighing in with their comments, and selecting the best ones. Their very favorite one will be offered a scholarship at one of the Founder Institute’s 26 locations worldwide plus a table at the Founder Showcase on April 24, while five more will get a free VIP ticket to the showcase. (You can read the previous winners here.) You’ve got until 10am Pacific on Monday to submit your pitches, then we’ll feature the winners on a post on Monday evening. Here are some more thoughts from Ressi on how to craft a good pitch:
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| Gillmor Gang: Scoble’s Magic Penny Posted: 21 Apr 2012 10:00 AM PDT  The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — drunk on power and app-pacified to the max, a pathetic unanimity in search of an argument, a raised eyebrow less than a real opinion… You get the idea; Keith Teare’s stellar Techcrunch post of last Sunday on Google’s earning call click problem seemed like a great place to continue a comment argument with @kevinmarks. But lo and behold, it’s not Web or Apps but both. HTML5 may turn out to be the least relevant part of this refactoring of the world around mobile. Hindsight or HipSwitch or Turncoat, the names don’t matter but the services do. Some people (like me) will do anything to avoid searching for an answer, and apps are just what I am looking for: touch and tap services orchestrated via push notification and intelligent predictive caching. Or not. @stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @kevinmarks, @jtaschek, @kteare Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
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| NY Tech Day: “Justify Your Startup’s Existence In 20 Seconds” Posted: 21 Apr 2012 09:30 AM PDT  The tech scene in NY is growing at such a rapid pace it kind of blows my mind. New York Tech Day was a glowing example of that growth, with 160 startups pitching and over 3,500 attendees. We couldn’t help but attend ourselves, and what we saw was more than exciting. Whether it be an equally creepy and creative online dating service or a way to customize your own chocolate bar, there’s no doubt that NYC is blossoming with technological creativity. We took a tour around the room, asking startups to justify their existence in 20 seconds. Of course, some were too tantalizing to cut off at the 20-second mark, but generally speaking we saw some pretty impressive pitches. Enjoy!
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