Tuesday, June 29, 2010

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Bling Nation Adds A Paypal Option To Cell Phone Payments Top
Startup Bling Nation has landed a pretty major deal with PayPal, we’ve learned. Bling Nation’s payment systems addresses physical goods in merchant stores and will now allow consumers to use their payment chips to deduct funds from a PayPal account. Here’s how Bling Nation works. The startup partners with banks, who then offer the consumers who use their services a Bling Nation and “Bank” branded chip that can be stuck onto any cell phone device. The chip will allow any user to make a payment directly out of their checking account similar to a debit payment. Bling Nation also partners with all of the local merchants in given town, to give them special “Bling Nation” credit card machines that will scan the chips. The payment device will calculate the number of times a payee has made a transaction and as an added bonus, will automatically award the user with coupons, points or discounts, which the merchant determines. The device will read the chip and deduct the money for a purchase out of the payee’s bank account. Bling Nation even allows merchants to implement a security feature, in which upon purchase, the customer will have to enter a PIN code for larger transactions. With the deal with PayPal, anyone will be use Bling Nation to link a PayPal account and receive tags that they can then stick to their cell phones. You may also be able to enroll during the checkout process as well. And Bling Nation in turn will equip merchants in given areas with payment devices that work with the chip. This is a big win for Bling Nation’s system, which originally had ambitions of solely focusing on hyperlocal banks in small communities. The PayPal integration is currently being tested in Palo Alto and is steadily being rolled out nationally. Most of the work involves distributing the payments devices to local merchants. Enrollment is limited for now, says co-founder Meyer Malka. Consumers can sign up for the service at participating merchants and eventually through the web. The deal also represents a way for consumers to start paying for physical goods, not just online purchases, with their PayPal accounts. Bling Nation recently raised a whopping $20 million in funding to scale its system. Armed with a deal with PayPal, the startup is well on its way to making it into stores nationwide. And PayPal is one step closer to fulfilling its futuristic vision for the payments platform, as shown in this video. CrunchBase Information Bling Nation Information provided by CrunchBase
 
OPower to Expand to West Coast, Names iLike Founder Hadi Partovi to Advisory Board Top
Energy efficiency tracking company OPOWER added Hadi Partovi to its Technology Advisory Board and will open new offices in San Francisco next month. The Arlington, VA based company’s 10,000 square foot office in San Francisco’s South Park neighborhood will have room for between 75 and 100 employees, a large part of which will be engineers. “We signed a two-year sublease because we hope to grow out of that space,” says CEO Daniel Yates. In Partovi, OPOWER is getting an experienced advisor who will help build the company in its plans to grow from 95 to 150 employees total in the coming year. Partovi co-founded online music service iLike with his brother Ali, which they sold to MySpace , before leaving in April. Previously, Partovi founded Tellme Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft for a reported $800 million. Partovi also worked on IE5. OPOWER provides utility companies with a way to engage customers with easy-to-understand home energy reports designed to inspire them to reduce consumption. OPOWER uses behavioral economics to provide each customer with a personalized analysis of their usage, taking into account their circumstances and lifestyle. “Instead of saying ‘you used this many kilowatts’, we say ‘you use 5% less or 20% more than your neighbors,’” says Senior Director of Marketing and Strategy Ogi Kavazovic. The company has signed on 35 utility companies in 15 states across the country, including seven of the 10 biggest players. Yates says that by the end of this year, OPOWER will be saving more energy than the entire U.S. solar power industry is producing. The company is targeting north of $30 million in annual recurring revenue. CrunchBase Information OPower Information provided by CrunchBase CrunchBase Information Hadi Partovi Daniel Yates Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Work For Us Turns Facebook Fan Pages Into A Recruiting Tool Top
Facebook is great for keeping up with friends. And of course brands are using it as marketing tool by creating Fan pages. But it can also be used by companies as a recruiting tool. I’ve written before anecdotally about how Citysearch uses Facebook ads for recruiting by targeting the ads at the hiring manager’s friends. Well, now there is a full-fledged Facebook app for that called Work For Us Work For Us creates a tab on a company’s Fan page which turns it into a mini-job board. You can see an example here for BuildASign or SPG Creative Marketing. People can apply for the job right inside Facebook, or Like a job and therefore spread it to their friends as a social referral. Recruiters can also create a Facebook ad for any job and target it accordingly. The company behind Work For Us is Work4Labs , a startup funded by French angel investors Stephane Le Viet and Gautier Machelon. Already, 2,000 companies have added the Work For Us tab to their Facebook Fan page, including State Street and the French divisions of Accenture and Grant Thorton. The app is free for the first 30 days, then Work4Labs scharges, with plans starting at $9 a month (5 job postings) and going up to $500 a month (for unlimited job postings). More details at AppBistro . CrunchBase Information Work for Us Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Etsy CEO: How Social Will Unlock Etsy's Potential [Video] Top
After a brief hiatus, the founder of Etsy Rob Kalin reclaimed the CEO title in January of this year. During a brief interview at Etsy’s Brooklyn headquarters, I asked Kalin, “Why do you think you deserve to be back as CEO?…Is  there anything really unique about your vision that will take Etsy to the next stage?” Kalin responded: “Sure, so why do I deserve to be CEO is something that you gotta earn every day, so I definitely don’t take that title for granted. As far as where we want to go, to me the most important part of commerce is the social aspect of it. Social aspect drives the marketplace.” The five-year old marketplace for handmade goods is growing quickly each year, last year it pulled in nearly $200 million in gross merchandise sales. This year, Kalin says they’re on track to reach approximately $400 million in gross merchandise sales. That doesn’t translate into significant profits for Etsy— which only takes about 3.5% of each transaction— but Kalin says profits are secondary to the more important goal of increasing traffic and dialogue on the site. In the next few years, he expects gross merchandise sales to be in the multi-billion-dollar range, but in order to get there, he says they will need to succeed in their social ambitions. In the next 12-18 months, Kalin plans to roll out a social strategy that will go beyond the site’s current offerings, which include forums and chat rooms for members. He didn’t want to give away all the details, but he did say: “Markets are conversations. For us at Etsy we want to figure out how buying an item from someone is a conversation. So Facebook’s message is to connect and share, and so Etsy is taking that one further, where it’s connect, share and exchange things. We’re playing with ways to create more, more social layers inside that experience so one would be being able to have a conversation with people who you’re buying from inside of your shopping cart another one would be using search queries not just to connect people to items but to connect people to other people. To me this is the power of the web, so you know that quote from Aristotle, ‘Man is a political animal?’ is actually mistranslated. It’s ‘Man is a polis making animal,’ and not man, humans. Humans are village making species and we want to connect with other people.” In episode two of our company profiles series, Kalin gives us a tour of Etsy, discusses profits, his social vision and why he stepped down in the first place. CrunchBase Information Robert Kalin Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Someone Has Finally Managed To Rob Amazon. No Products Anywhere To Be Found! Top
You often hear about Amazon Web Services having some downtime issues , but it’s rare to see Amazon.com itself have major issues. In fact, I can’t ever remember it happening the past couple of years . But that’s very much the case today as for the past couple of hours the service has been switching back and forth between being totally down and being up, but showing no products. Obviously, Twitter is abuzz about this — though there’s no word from Amazon on Twitter yet about the downtime. Amazon Web Services, meanwhile, all seem to be a go, according to their dashboard . The mobile apps on the iPhone, iPad and Android devices are sort of working, but it doesn’t appear you can go to actual product pages. CrunchBase Information Amazon Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Foursquare Closes $20 Million Series B From Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square, And O'Reilly Top
Foursquare , the geo-mobile startup everybody tried to invest in or buy, now has officially closed its Series B funding round. The “wire transfer heard ’round the world,” as board member Bryce Roberts puts it , was for $20 million, giving the company a $95 million pre-money valuation. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, as previously reported , with existing investors Union Square Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures participating. CEO Dennis Crowley says the fundraising was “a lot of work” and plans to use the money to staff up and keep adding to the product. “It’s all about building a team that can churn out new product,” he tells me. “We’ve been dreaming up these things for the past 10 years and now we have the opportunity to build them all.” The money will also help pay for more office space. His 27 employees are already too big for the startup’s current New York City offices, and Foursquare is about to move into new digs upstairs in the same building. “It’s awesome,” he says, “we can hear them building it upstairs right now!” He plans on hiring a lot more engineers. The whole funding process has been drawn out. Crowley was deciding between suitors last Spring , when buyout interest started to come, first from Yahoo, and then from Facebook. The VC deal was put on hold. But Andreessen Horowitz felt so yanked around by the process that partner Ben Horowitz very publicly “withdrew” from the bidding. That turned out to be nothing more than a rebuke. And now Horowitz says of course they invested. Foursquare has a “great Founder/CEO,” a “killer product,” and is going after a “gigantic market.” In Crowley, specifically, Horowitz sees the leadership traits they like to invest in: a CEO who is a “keeper of the product vision.” Selling to Yahoo would have been a mistake . Facebook would have been more interesting. In any case, Foursquare will go it alone for now, and develop the product unencumbered by a larger organization with a different set of goals. But remember, Marc Andreessen is on Facebook’s board, so that avenue is not entirely shut off. Leaving Foursquare independent will allow it to find its own way. The geo check-in service that lets you broadcast your location to all your friends is hitting a nice growth curve, adding 15,000 users a day. It is now up to 1.8 million registered users, up from one million just last April. Why mess up a good thing when you can buy it later? Horowitz dismisses the notion that Crowley picked them to get to Facebook later. “I think that is reading too much into it,” he says. “Dennis has a primary relationship with Mark Zuckerberg. He doesn't need us or Marc to do that. The reason for them going with us, at least in my belief, is that they thought we would help them go from a great product to a great company.” Walking away from M&A negotiations was not easy. “It is a really cathartic and emotional decision to make,” says Horowitz. “If you look at what those guys had to walk away from—generations of your people being set financially in order to try to build a great company—that takes a lot of courage.” As far as making Foursquare a great company that makes a lot of money, Horowitz says the “monetization” opportunities are “very obvious and straightforward.” There are many ways Foursquare can start charging businesses once it reaches a larger scale. “Would you pay to know your most frequent customer?,” Horowitz asks rhetorically. “Probably.” The bigger issue is how to take Foursquare from nearly 2 million users to tens of millions of users and beyond. The value of Foursquare is not location, says Horowitz, which he thinks will become “a feature of maybe every product.” The real value is in the network effects that start to unfold as more people you know and more places you go are all on Foursquare. “If everyone you know is on Foursquare, everywhere you go, the more valuable it is,” he points out. In other words, Foursquare isn’t only about the check-in. That is only the starting point. CrunchBase Information Foursquare Andreessen Horowitz Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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