Thursday, June 3, 2010

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TechStars Boston Graduates Ten New Startups In 2010 Top
Editor's note : The following report comes from Don Dodge, who blogs at Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing and is a Developer Advocate for Google. TechStars is a seed accelerator program that selects about ten companies and provides funding of $18,000 per team, as well as support and mentorship. Dodge covered the last Boston TechStars class in September, 2009. TechStars has now been operating for four years. According to results data that TechStars has published, six of the first twenty companies to go through the program have been acquired by larger companies, and about 70% of its companies have been funded and/or are now profitable. This week, TechStars debuted ten new startups from the second Boston class. The teams presented on Tuesday to about 250 VCs and angel investors for the first time. These companies are about three months old and have two or three founder employees. Don was in attendance and these are his notes on the startups that presented. Just nine months ago, I attended the inaugural Boston TechStars demo day where companies such as oneforty and Localytics presented. Since that time, TechStars has shifted the Boston program to operate in the spring instead of the summer, so ten new companies presented. Below is a summary of each one. Mogotest is a front-end testing tool to help companies ensure that their web sites render properly across various web browsers and platforms. MogoTest can spider your web site or test individual pages to help you spot browser inconsistencies. The company demoed a very easy to use comparison tool that visually puts two browsers side by side so you can quickly spot inconsistencies between various browsers. It works with all browsers and all platforms including mobile browsers. Monkey Analytics powers mathematics and data analysis in the cloud by providing on-demand computing resources, analysis tools, and a socially driven marketplace for analysts, algorithms, and data. Today, complex math and data analysis is commonly done in applications such as Matlab and R. Monkey Analytics is bringing those sorts of analysis tools to a cloud based system so that it can be accessed by anyone from anywhere with at scale and on demand. Marginize augments pages on the web with an independent space owned by the visitors where they can meet each other and interact freely. For example, you can see what people are saying about the Marginize homepage here . Marginize cleverly makes use of existing Twitter content about each page, and allows visitors to "check in" to the page and comment. The most active community member becomes the “curator” for that site, and other recently active users are shown after they check in, hinting at possible game dynamics to come in the future. Appswell is a mobile crowd sourcing system that allows people, companies, and brands to harness the wisdom of crowds. Appswell is their own first client of the platform, with a crowdsourced contest for iPhone app ideas and has redeployed the platform to power Brightidea Mobile. Appswell is now working with interactive agencies to offer turnkey crowdsourcing solutions for brand advertising campaigns, which can be launched quickly and cost effectively. Loudcaster lets anyone create interactive online radio stations quickly and easily. Their model is to sell Internet broadcasting tools to DJs and to generate revenue by aggregating their audiences and inserting advertising. Loudcaster has been running a stealthy limited beta, working with 100 DJ’s, and there are 200 more waiting to use the product. The company plans to officially open to more DJ’s by June 30th. SocialSci helps academic and professional researchers source and survey participants for their scientific studies. Today, universities and researchers find study participants offline and they’re overpaying to do so. SocialSci helps source them more efficiently online, and delivers the research studies to them through their own integrated surveying tools which are designed to be secure and private. Currently, SocialSci is tracking over $5 million being paid out by live research studies and is operating a private beta of their online research platform with several major universities. Sparkcloud introduces you to interesting people who are around you in realtime. The company has several early applications to demonstrate how developers can leverage Sparkcloud to more easily create their own real-world social applications ranging from urban gaming to location-based dating. SparkCloud will introduce you to 12 new people every day based on profiles, preferences, and social data. StarStreet is a sports stock market that allows sports fans to make real money based on their skill in trading players and their knowledge of sports. It works similar to the real stock market. You buy shares in a professional sports player. If the player does well the value of the stock theoretically goes up as more fans want to own that stock. You sell your shares and make money. As we know from the real stock market, you can also lose money. TutorialTab lets non-developers add interactive help systems that make web sites easier to learn. For example if you hover your cursor over a text input field it will pop up a text box that explains what you should enter in that field. TutorialTab makes it easy for web sites to create hands-on tutorials to guide their users. They are currently pre-launch, but you can see a preview video on their site. UserMojo is an emotion analytics platform that measures the quality of user experience to help site owners understand not just what their users are doing, but also why they’re doing it. The company records emotions from users via a simple feedback mechanism, and then allows customers to see heat maps of emotional response to various pages over time and to understand what’s driving actual user behavior. When users hover over any area of a web page they are presented with emoticons that relate to how they feel about that content. The web site owner can see the results visually on the page. CrunchBase Information TechStars Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Buzzd Aggregates Check-Ins From Foursquare, Gowalla And Others In Social City Guide Top
We’ve written about the social city and nightlife mobile app, buzzd, which pulls its data from Twitter and other buzzd users, for a bigger picture of the places that are hot in a given location. The startup just released an Android app in December and today is launching a new version of its iPhone and BlackBerry apps that integrates location-based services in the mix. The buzzd network compiles information from its base of over a half-million users, Twitter, and other real-time sources to provide users with activity updates for almost half a million venues across the United States, the U.K. and Canada. You download the app and it will bring up a list of venues close to you that are currently popular based on people talking about them on Twitter and Buzzd. And the app now aggregates over 500,000 check-ins per day from Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Loopt, Yelp, Whrrl and many other real-time location -based services sources to present activity at bars, clubs, restaurants and other points of interest. The new data will be added to the app’s "buzzdmeter," which gives you a real-time measure of activity at popular bars, restaurants and nightclubs in your city. The integration with these services makes a lot of sense for Buzzd, as the app essentially tells you where the most frequented places are within your location. As Foursquare, Gowalla and other location-based social networks continue to attract more users, these services increasingly provide a comprehensive way to see where your social graph With the new versions of the apps, users can now find their Facebook friends and Twitter followers on buzzd as well as simultaneously post their buzzd ratings to their Facebook wall and/or Twitter feed. And users can see what their friends are up to in the new “feed” section. Buzzd has also created a rewards program to encourage more people t broadcast their ratings of venues to friends. Currently, Buzzd is tracking over one million active users/month across its apps, which is solid growth for a niche app that was only released a year ago. Buzzd originally launched an app on the BlackBerry as one of the original BlackBerry Partners Fund recipients . While the startup is expanding to the iPhone and Android platforms, Buzzd is also adding nifty features, which should help increase its userbase. CrunchBase Information Buzzd Information provided by CrunchBase
 
BanxCorp Files Antitrust Complaint Against The NYT, Fox, CNN, Dow Jones, Others Top
BanxCorp this morning announced that it has filed a federal antitrust complaint against nine firms, including Dow Jones & Co, Fox News, The New York Times, CNN and MSNBC. The company alleges (PDF) that the nine companies engage in “unlawful per se horizontal market division, customer allocation, and price fixing agreements” with its competitors in the market for bank rate websites throughout the United States. The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, and accuses the firms of entering into “a conspiracy in restraint of trade and forming a cartel” with their competitor Bankrate.com together with approximately a hundred competing bank rate website operators including some of the largest media conglomerates in the United States. The complaint estimates that the damages caused by the “price-fixing cartel” may exceed $500 million, to be trebled under the antitrust statute. BanxCorp, which operates competing bank rate website BanxQuote.com , indicated that other members of the ‘cartel’ may also be joined. Currently included: Dow Jones & Company and Fox News Network (both News Corp.-owned), The New York Times Company, CNBC, Cable News Network, MSNBC Interactive New, AOL, LendingTree and Move. CrunchBase Information Bankrate Information provided by CrunchBase
 
AdSafe Reports Rise Of Online Advertising Exchanges, RTB And DSP Platforms Top
AdSafe Media , which uses algorithmic modeling and human verification to rate the brand safety of content on commercially supported Web pages via a proprietary system, this morning released its Q1 2010 analysis (PDF) of the online display advertising industry. The report provides an analysis of the key display advertising brand safety metrics and industry insights observed by AdSafe Media throughout the first quarter of the year. One of the key findings: 47% of traffic was served by exchanges, real-time-bidding (RTB) or demand-side (DSP) platforms, a significant increase in the use of these channels from last quarter. According to AdSafe, premium brand advertisers appear to be shifting a larger percentage of their display adverting spending to exchanges, RTB and DSP platforms because of increased media efficiency and broader reach afforded by these channels. Just yesterday, we reported that Google reportedly acquired demand-side advertising startup Invite Media , and this morning one of its competitors, LucidMedia, raised $4.5 million in funding . Clearly, there’s some momentum going in this space. Other key findings cited in the report are: - 752 was the AdSafe Safety Index for Q1 2010, a metric which trended down from last quarter’s Index of 814, indicating that overall brand safety in the display advertising ecosystem decreased slightly - 2.89% of inventory was served outside campaign Geo-Targeted specifications - 86.5% of AdSafe observed inventory was transparent, meaning it was IAB Category I, II or III inventory CrunchBase Information AdSafe Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Flash Sales Site HauteLook Raises $31 Million Top
Flash sales site HauteLook has raised $31 million in Series C funding, led by Insight Venture Partners . The startup previously raised $10 million in Series B funding last year. Thanks to the immense popularity of members-only, online sample sales, HauteLook has grown to 2.5 million members since launching in 2007. The site has partnered with more than 1,000 brands to date, offering more than 2,500 sale events in women's fashion, men's fashion, accessories, kids' clothing and toys, home and beauty. The basic idea behind the online sample sale model is this: big designers, such as Marc Jacobs or Versace, place excess inventory on a sale site at 50 to 70 percent discounts over a several day period. The sales are private, available only to members, with upcoming sales from brands announced via emails. Products include clothing for men, women and children as well as jewelry, handbags and home accessories. You can get invites from other members or request invites via the site. The new funding will be used toward member acquisition strategy and to expand to new categories such as gourmet food, wine, and other services. The company is also looking to boots its social media and mobile offerings. The flash sales space is definitely competitive; and the amount raised isn’t surprised The amount raised isn’t surprising considering that similar startups in the online sample sales space like Gilt Groupe, and Ideeli are all raising huge amounts of money, growing their user base at a rapid pace and turning a strong profit. In fact, Gilt just raised $35 million in funding a few weeks ago. VC firm Kleiner Perkins recently invested in One Kings Lane, an online sample sale site for home decor and accessories, which we wrote about here. The concept has even attracted retail giants like Saks and Neiman Marcus, which are now jumping on the bandwagon to offer their own private sales. CrunchBase Information HauteLook Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Fwix Expands Its Geo Index Via Local Widgets And A Broader API Top
Up until now, fwix has stuck to indexing and serving up hyperlocal news from neighborhood blogs and news sites. Its main competitor in that respect is Outside.in . But fwix is moving beyond local news to create a broader geo index via publisher widgets and its API . In addition to its existing local news API (which is already being tested by the New York Times Co. and the UPI), fwix is adding geo-tagged status updates (from Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, and Brightkite), geo-photos (from Flickr, yfrog, Smugmug, and Twitpic), local events (from Eventbrite, Eventful, Upcoming, and Zvents), nearby reviews and restaurants (from Yelp and Citysearch), concerts (Songkick), local crime and government data, weather, listings (Oodle, Trulia), and deals from local merchants (Groupon, Town Hog, and Living Social). A little map pops down you tell you where these places are. Publishers and sites can pick and choose whatever data they want and create widgets with a customized local feed they can place in a sidebar. These could include Tweets about about the publisher’s business, Flickr photos, check-ins, or Yelp reviews. Widget publishers can also opt to include ads in the widgets targeted to the same location and content on their sites and split the revenues with fwix. Affiliate links to group buying deals is another source of revenue. “What we are building is this massive geo index,’ says CEO Darian Shiraz. Developers can use the API to pull in localized status updates, photos, and more. Publishers can create their own widget from any of the given geo streams. Mobile apps can also use the data. Fwix is at first exposing all of this new data only through its widgets and APIs. Eventually, fwix will roll it out on its own site as well. CrunchBase Information Fwix Outside.in Information provided by CrunchBase
 
After Facebook, eBuddy Second Mobile App To Reach 50 Million Downloads On GetJar Top
App Store GetJar announced today that web and mobile messaging service provider eBuddy has surpassed the 50 million downloads mark for its eBuddy Mobile Messenger app. At the time of writing, the product page shows 50,655,934 downloads to date. eBuddy thus joins the ranks of Facebook as the second mobile app to exceed 50 million downloads on GetJar. Notably, the milestone was reached less than 15 months after hitting 10m downloads . GetJar, which dubs itself the ‘Walmart of mobile apps’, says it is currently the second largest app store worldwide, after Apple’s iTunes. It offers more than 65,000 mobile applications across all major handsets and platforms to consumers in more than 200 countries. The company recently launched a mobile advertising distribution platform that offers developers the opportunity to bid for premium catalogue placement per download in GetJar's store and distribution channels. App developers and publishers can set their own maximum daily budgets, and only pay when consumers successfully download the advertised application. eBuddy says this pay-per-download solution helped making GetJar its number one external source for downloads, particularly in key countries like India (GetJar’s solution allows developers to geo-target campaigns by country, handset or even carrier), although most of its growth is organic. CrunchBase Information eBuddy Getjar Networks Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Twitter Testing Users 'You Both Follow' Feature Top
According to a Tweet just posted by Twitter engineer Nick Kallen, the microblogging network has just enabled a new “You both follow” feature. The feature, which is only being tested for 10 percent of users, allows you to see any common people that you and another user both follow. Here’s a screenshot of what the feature looks like. The “You both follow” feature is pretty much what it sounds like. When you click on a contact it will show you the common people you both follow on the right sidebar of the page, just above the “following” tab. It’s actually surprising the feature hasn’t been turned on sooner, considering how useful it is in showing your social connections between other Twitter users. “You both follow” is similar in theory to Facebook’s friends in common feature, which has been around for some time now. The feature no doubt makes Twitter a little more of an interconnected social network and it should be interesting if the microblogging network takes it a step further. For example, Twitter could start recommending people to follow based on who your friends are following. UPDATE: Twitter API engineer Marcel Molina says in a Tweet that he’s formed a new team with Kallen to “build rapid prototypes.” I think this means we should be expecting more feature updates in the near future. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Behind The Scenes, Location Turf Wars Have Begun Top
Over the past several months I’ve moderated or been on a number of panels with many of the top players in the location space. A common theme keeps recurring. When someone brings up rivalries between any of the companies, it is always downplayed in favor of an “everyone wins” message. I’ve been skeptical of that since day one, but as the space has exploded, there have been signs that a lot of companies are winning (as evidenced by both usage and fundraising). But now, as the space matures and larger rivals enter, things are starting to get more testy. The most obvious rivalry is between Foursquare and Gowalla . Even as the two battled for supremacy at the SXSW conference this year, both sides downplayed the rivalry. But the fact is, there is a rivalry (and they even play it up for next month’s UK edition of Wired magazine — see: pic above). Foursquare and Gowalla don’t talk to one another — in fact, their two leaders, Dennis Crowley and Josh Williams , had never met until a panel I moderated at Where 2.0 after SXSW this year. That’s not to say they hate one another, but they’re also not out there holding location potlucks to discuss how they can work together for the betterment of everyone. On Monday, another competitor in the space, Loopt , released its latest location app, Loopt Star , which asks users to check-in places to engage with brands. Crowley wasn’t a big fan of this (to say the least), and let it be known on his blog. “ Check out Loopt's foursquare knock-off. Points for checkins and "boss" instead of "mayor, "”  he wrote . He continued: Not to be a hater, but if I was going to create a foursquare knockoff, I'd use game mechanics and create something *totally different* (e.g. the "Points 2.0" stuff we're cooking up now @ foursquare HQ). Why would you ever just clone someone else's work? Learn from it and innovate on top! That's how we all push this space forward! Earlier today, Loopt CEO Sam Altman tweeted out that he thought Foursquare was blocking the IP address of his office. Crowley responded on Twitter that it wasn’t intentional as far as he knew. But the block is still in place. Crowley’s criticism of Loopt Star is very similar to a post he did back in January in response to Yelp entering the check-in space . At the time, Crowley wrote: Shameless. At least innovate on top of it!: Most any foursquare user will tell you our leaderboard is flawed. It tracks the wrong metrics; it encourages fake checks & cheating; etc. We've been hustling these past few months to build the infrastruture that allow us to tweak the game mechanics on our end (think: Leaderboard 2.0) Poor guys, you copied the wrong stuff! :) Of course, nearly 6 months later, we have yet to see this Leaderboard 2.0 stuff that he keeps referring to (Foursquare has undoubtedly been distracted by scaling issues and Yahoo acquisition offers). As the company generally seen as the frontrunner in this space right now, of course Foursquare is going to have others gunning for it. But they’re hardly the only ones getting testy with rivals. Behind the scenes, a number of these companies seem to have a growing dislike (or at least, distrust) for one another. They may say the right things when they’re on stage or on panels, but it’s a different story when the spotlight is off. All of this is to be expected. As the location space continues to be validated, each company is out to prove that it’s the one that will be the next big thing — the one people will remember. And as more people are beginning to understand that they can’t use all of these services all the time, some are going to be forced out. And there’s a larger concern for many of these companies: it’s still far from proven that each can survive as their own businesses. Some are starting to make revenues, but those can quickly dry up if larger networks like Facebook or Google start to copy features and entice brands to sign up with them instead. And plenty of the larger companies out there still view the location startups as features rather than stand-alone products. If that thought starts panning out, many of these locations startups will be fighting to position themselves for quick exits. Indications right now are that Facebook won’t enter the space in a major way (but will have simple check-ins ), and instead will federate other location services’ data. But that will cause tensions too as each location service tries to become the preferred method that Facebook’s nearly 500 million users choose. The next time you’re at an event and you hear one of these guys say that in the location space “everybody wins,” don’t believe them, because they don’t believe it either. That may have been the case in the early days, but we’re beyond that now. And all of these companies know it and are starting to act like it. [photo: flickr/ dpstyles ] CrunchBase Information Foursquare Gowalla Loopt Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Its Mobile Usage Poised To Explode With iPhone 4.0 OS, Pandora Raises More Money Top
Remember when Pandora was on its deathbed? Yeah, those days are long gone. The service has just raised yet another round of funding, we’ve confirmed. The round was led  GGV Capital and participated in by Allen & Company, They’re not disclosing the amount raised, but you can bet it’s fairly substantial considering that their last round in July of last year was $35 million . Up until now, Pandora has raised just about $57 million in total. The new money will be used to further fuel growth and invest in new resources, the company says. Back in April, the company passed the 50 million user mark (up from 40 million the previous December) just as they launched their new iPad app. Mobile growth has been a key for the company, and it’s likely to explode even further with the launch of the iPhone 4.0 OS which will allow Pandora to run in the background for the first time. Despite the restraint, Pandora has been one of the top downloaded apps of all time in the App Store. But the new iPhone ability may bring with it some issues as well. Since it’s undoubtedly going to be used a lot more, Pandora is going to be streaming a lot more music for free (currently, music is served for free until you hit 40 hours in a month, then you’re asked to pay $1 to get unlimited access). The more music Pandora streams, the more it has to pay to the labels and artists. Of course, more music also means the more ads it can serve up (most of Pandora’s money comes from advertising). Pandora has also been signing deals left and right with other device makers, and even car companies to extend the service’s reach. Pandora’s last round of funding came right after it was officially saved following a comprise reached between webcasters, artists, and record labels on Internet streaming music rates. Thanks to that deal, its new freemium model, and the improving ad market, Pandora was able to go from a near-death experience to profitability in the course of  just a few months. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that Pandora had hired Steve Cakebread to be its new CFO. Cakebread was the CFO at Salesforce.com when it went public, so that was seen as a possibility the company was looking at. But with this new money, that seems to be off the table, for now at least. CrunchBase Information Pandora Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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