Nibletz Staff - 71/87 - Serious Startups

50 Insane Facts about Bitcoin [Infographic]

Everyone is talking about Bitcoin. First the crazy high, with Business Insider predicting it could hit $1 million. Then Silk Road imploded and the “Dread Pirate Roberts” arrested.

Most recently Mt. Gox shut down, and a percentage of the Bitcoins “disappeared.”

Despite all this, several mainstream tech leaders are firmly bullish on Bitcoin.

But what does this all mean? What is Bitcoin, and where did it come from? Why has it become such a big deal in the last year?

Bitcoin was created in 2008 by “Satoshi Nakamoto.” At this point, no one knows the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, though plenty have tried to discover it. The technology requires the Bitcoins to be “mined,” a process that produces 3,600 BTC a day. (BTC, by the way, is the abbreviation for Bitcoin.) At the current rate, it’s anticipated that all Bitcoins will be mined by 2140.

Interest in Bitcoin spans all aspects of tech, from drug dealers on the deep web to prominent venture capitalists. Check out the infographic for a few quick facts about Bitcoin. For more information on how it all works, Khan Academy has a helpful video series.

50 Insane Facts About Bitcoins

50 Insane Facts About Bitcoins [Infographic] by the team at Who is Hosting This

Here’s Why Startups Should Keep Up With Tax Law Changes

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The art of running a successful startup business is not as linear as stated in the fundamental courses of finance. There are a lot of intricacies involved, such as legal and tax matters, that need to be complied in order to lead a successful startup. The causal link is that startups need to focus more on non-generating aspects, such as tax compliance. A stat report on startup business points out areas that led to failure: 46% of failures are caused by incompetence in the taxation domain… Food for thought. Tracing tax exposure and keeping up Tax changes can interfere with business success in various methods. A simple way to explain this is when a business is selling the product(s) in different forms. For instance, a startup sells software that can either be downloaded or bought on a disc. The delivery variability means that the tax rate can vary. This is where state based regulations play a major role. If the software is downloaded in Texas, the tax rate is going to be different. Likewise, if the product is bought as a disc, it falls under the ‘tangible good’ category, the tax rate being different. Since the state laws on taxing digital good vary on a routine basis, tracking them requires a non-conventional approach. State laws also have a far reaching impact on startups. Contrary to the ‘academic’ belief, the physical presence of a startup is not the only way to create tax exposure. A good example is the ‘nexus’ effect, which is created when enterprises do businesses in different states. For instance, a person runs a startup enterprise in California and does a sales deal in Miami. This action requires the business owner to register and file Florida state sales taxes. The dynamism of tax structures demands a focus on financial factors that affect business environment. Startup entrepreneurs can boost financial literacy through financial seminars and insights on the future of wealth management. Also, they can take advantage of webcasts, tax news applications and online newspapers to keep up with the latest in tax laws. It is also important to mention that the best way to manage taxes is by complying with them, rather than looking for ‘safety nets’. For instance, state laws also require startups to show their foreign capital. This very reason led to a startup, Beanie Babies is to be levied a penalty of $53.6 million for tax evasion. The plain cause behind the issue was undeclared Swiss accounts, deemed as a safety net. However, state laws within Illinois allowed the U.S. attorney to pursue a case. Financial complexities are a common occurrence within the marketplace and are being further compounded due to the presence of newer kinds of financial products. As the state and the Fed tries to keep up pace with the development, they would keep evolving the tax ecosphere. It is therefore necessary for a startup to have a sound tax structure in place that takes all the changes into consideration. Not only will it ensure compliance to government laws, it will play a vital role in the long-term success of the business.

Get Hired By The Startup Of Your Dreams–No Technical Experience Needed

From Mark Saldana

Joining the tech world might seem like a mysterious process, but I can assure that you don’t need magical powers, luck, or a blessing from Mark Zuckerberg to join a startup. Back in 2009, I was a completely non-technical recent grad (English Major, LOL) who didn’t know ANYTHING about startups. Somehow, I still managed to convince a now well-known file-sharing startup to hire me. If you don’t code or design, you probably won’t have the luxury of turning down offers from startups that are throwing themselves at you. But don’t let that discourage you; there are still plenty of ways to get a awesome startup to give you a chance. Here’s how:

Here’s How To Know If A Startup is Really Ready for Investment

From Steve Blank

Since 2005 startup accelerators have provided cohorts of startups with mentoring, pitch practice and product focus. However, accelerator Demo Days are a combination of graduation ceremony and pitch contest, with the uncomfortable feel of a swimsuit competition. Other than “I’ll know it when I see it”, there’s no formal way for an investor attending Demo Day to assess project maturity or quantify risks. Other than measuring engineering progress, there’s no standard language to communicate progress.

Corporations running internal incubators face many of the same selection issues as startup investors, plus they must grapple with the issues of integrating new ideas into existing P&L-driven functions or business units.

10 Fundraising Mistakes You’re Probably Making

(image psmag.com)

From Sam Altman

There’s a lot written about what you should do when you raise money, but there hasn’t been as much written about the common mistakes founders make. Here is a list of mistakes I often see:

• Over-optimizing the process

A lot of founders try to get way too fancy with tricks that they think will help them raise money. It’s actually quite simple; if you have a good company, you will probably be able to raise money. You’re better off working to make you company better than working on fundraising jiu jitsu.

Why Mobile is a Whole New Thing & How to Do It Right

From WSJ Accelerators

If you are still thinking that mobile app and web development are a niche or future priority, you need to adapt to today’s reality, and fast. According to Pew Internet, 31% of American mobile Internet users say that’s the primary way they access the web.

We’ve now reached that critical inflection point where more people access the Internet from mobile devices than computers.

As with any platform shift, today’s mobile revolution means major implications and big opportunities for businesses. The problem is that too many companies have underestimated the radical change that mobile brings about. They think of mobile as simply an extension of the Web, rather than an entirely new platform, and they look at the smartphone as just a smaller computer with a lot less memory and processing power.

Nashville-based Hack_App Makes it Easy to Find and Apply to Boot Camps

coding schools

With the massive shift in the economy in the last few years, many adults have found themselves without the skills they need to be successful. Even those with steady jobs feel the itch to learn something new or stay relevant.

Because of that, there have been an explosion of so-called “boot camps.” Dev Bootcamp, General Assembly, and Hack Reactor are just a few examples.

But, the process of finding and applying to all those schools can be a pain. So, John Reagan created hack_app to streamline the process.

Check out our Q&A with John below, and if you’re looking for a career change, click through to see if hack_app can help you do it.

What is your startup called?

We’re called hack_app. We provide a common application and admissions software for career accelerators, schools that provide 2-6 month intensive skill development courses like Dev Bootcamp, General Assembly, and Hack Reactor.

What’s the story behind your idea?

Last summer our CEO, John Reagan, was looking to change up and accelerate his career when he first heard about career accelerators. The prospect of totally changing his career and life in under three months was very intriguing. So he started researching and applying to web development career accelerators and was extremely excited to learn a whole new skill set that would better prepare him for the startup world.

During the search and application process John Reagan was frustrated by the lack of accessible, accurate information about the different career accelerators and also by the amount of time it took him to complete several different applications that asked very similar, but slightly different questions. So John Reagan had the vision of a common application service that would allow applicants like himself to easily apply to multiple schools and a directory and information hub that would give potential students accurate, updated information to help them make informed decisions about where to go to school.

He started calling schools and getting input on the concept and a lot of positive feedback so he decided to pursue the idea and his co-founder, Stephen came onboard as well. John Reagan went to school at MakerSquare in Austin and got a crash course in web development. During that time we were learning about the industry and we were working on hack_app both inside and outside of the course.

After MakerSquare, John Reagan started working on hack_app full-time, and then Stephen left his job to move to Nashville and work on hack_app full-time in December.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

John Reagan Moore – CEO

John Reagan has a background in economics and project management. He has been interested in entrepreneurship since college and had worked on a couple ideas and small business before hack_app. He was working as a project manager at a non-profit before taking the leap into a career accelerator and starting hack_app.

Stephen Watkins – CTO

Stephen has been writing code since before he could spell development. He studied CS in college and spent a few years as a developer with a national defense contractor before heading to a web development job at the Florida non-profit where he and John Reagan met.

Where are you based?

Music City, USA. (Nashville, TN)

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

We just recently moved to Nashville, so our experience is pretty limited, but we have been really welcomed by the community here. We work out of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center and there is a fantastic community of active founders and mentors there, willing to listen and help. There is definitely a strong healthcare influence on the startup scene here, but I think it is also a great and rapidly improving place for tech and consumer startups as well.

What problem do you solve?

Admissions Time Sink

Both career accelerators and their students spend a lot of time on admissions. Students have to write a lot of applications, and school administrators have to read a lot more. The admissions process is a massive time sink for schools. We are saving both the students a lot of time by enabling the students to apply to a lot of schools while still only filling out one application. We are saving the schools a lot of time as well by streamlining their admissions flow, and soon we will be offering ways to prescreen applicants.

School Marketing Friction

Schools also face the problem of friction between the moment a student is first interested in them on a directory site and capturing their information and starting the marketing and admissions process.

We offer a platform for schools to market themselves on a level playing field and for students to identify the differentiators that matter to them. We make the admissions process smoother with our common application, and our upcoming admissions management system will make the entire admissions process significantly easier for both schools and students.

Why now?

Higher education is broken, and too big and slow to adjust to the needs of the students and our national economy. Career accelerators are exploding across the planet with industry growth well over 1000% in 2013. These new schools need a place to get their message out, and software to help their schools and the industry continue to grow efficiently.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

In December we raised a seed round to help us get this thing off the ground.
We just added our 15th member school. This is exciting for us because every new school we add increase our value both to students and schools.
In February we had our first students go all the way through the system.

What are your next milestones?

Completing a comprehensive admissions system. This is pretty big project and will add enormous value for our member schools. The new system will keep the entire admission cycle, from initial contact to tuition payment on our site. It will give schools a much clearer picture of their situation and allow for excellent admissions analytics.
Accelerator. As first time founders we think we could really benefit from the mentorship and connections from a good startup accelerator program. We are on the lookout for one that would be a good fit for us, and applying to a few programs.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

http://hackapp.co. That’s our main site, people can also read our blog at http://blog.hackapp.co and follow us on Twitter: @hack_app.

What’s the Number One Thing At Your Startup?

From Angela Tran Kingyens

A few weeks ago when Boris wrote about overcoming decision paralysis, I shared a comment that I make important decisions by evaluating my choices based on how they align with my core values. For years now, I have been encouraging nearly everyone that I meet to take some time to reflect on his or her values for this exact purpose (among many others).

People often talk about the importance of leading a value-driven life or business, but what exactly are values? They are at the core of our happiness, the source of our inspiration, and foundation of our close relationships. They serve as our compass and guide our decision-making. They shape our character both in our personal lives and at work.

DuckDuckGo: A Look at the Truly Private Search Engine

From Fast Company

When Gabriel Weinberg launched a search engine in 2008, plenty of people thought he was insane. How could DuckDuckGo, a tiny, Philadelphia-based startup, go up against Google? One way, he wagered, was by respecting user privacy. Six years later, we’re living in the post-Snowden era, and the idea doesn’t seem so crazy.

In fact, DuckDuckGo is exploding.

Looking at a chart of DuckDuckGo’s daily search queries, the milestones are obvious. A $3 million investment from Union Square Ventures in 2011. Just prior to that, a San Francisco billboard campaign. Inclusion in Time‘s 50 Best Websites of 2011. Each of these things moved the traffic needle for DuckDuckGo, but none of them came close to sparking anything like the massive spike in queries the company saw last July. That’s when Edward Snowden first revealed the NSA’s extensive digital surveillance program to the world. The little blue line on the chart hasn’t stopped climbing north since.

Turns Out Location Doesn’t Matter When Raising a Series A

kauffmanmap

From Tomasz Tunguz

Great entrepreneurs can come from anywhere. But do the locations of startups affect their ability to raise follow on capital? Do seed stage companies in the Bay Area face lower likelihoods of raising a Series A because of more competition? Or is it that New York based startups, because of a smaller ecosystem, face more difficulty?

Using Crunchbase data, I charted the financing follow-on rates across the 12 US cities in which at least 10 seeds, 3 Series As and 3 Series Bs have occured in the Crunchbase data set from 2005-2014. The first two charts below contrast the success rates of post-seed startups raising an A having raised a seed and raising a B having raised an A. The third chart shows the success rates of raising a B having raised a seed round.

TrustedHousesitters.com Eliminates Your Need for Pet Kennels

Whenever you go on vacation, it’s always the same question:

“Who will take care of the pets?”

Kennels are expensive and often unpleasant. Friends and family might be willing, but they could also have schedule conflicts of their own, or you could live far away from family.

Thanks to a jaunt to Spain, trustedhousesitters.com founder Andy Peck hit on the perfect solution.

Read our Q&A with Andy below to learn more:

What is your startup called?

TrustedHousesitters.com

What’s the story behind your idea?

The idea for TrustedHousesitters.com came about in late 2010. I was working as a writer at the time and stumbled across a home with several dogs that needed looking after in the north of Spain. The owner was offering someone the chance to stay there for free in return for keeping an eye on the house and looking after the dogs in her absence. I got in touch with the owner and several weeks later I was in house sitting in Spain.

Naturally it didn’t take long for me to realise that there must be plenty of other pet owners who would rather forgo the kennels in exchange for a live-in pet sitter and, plenty of people like me who would be happy to house sit in exchange for a great place to stay.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

TrustedHousesitters.com is founded and run by myself, Andy Peck & Rachel Martin. I come from a marketing background and have been lucky to have worked with a few very large and successful international brands like Red Bull and Diageo. Rachel comes from a background in PR and prior to TrustedHousesitters.com, ran her own travel PR company.

Where are you based?

TrustedHousesitters.com is run from Brighton, a small city roughly an hour outside of London, England.

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?

Brighton is often described as “punching above its weight” in terms of the number of startups it produces. It’s a city brimming with creativity and an excellent place to be a startup: there are services to cater for every startup’s need and for everything else, London is only an hour away.

What problem do you solve?

At TrustedHousesitters.com we solve the very common problem most pet owners face of “what to do with your pet when you go on vacation”.

We do this by connecting pet owners with trustworthy individuals, couples and families; people who will live in the pet owner’s home and look after their animals while they’re away.

Roughly 90% of our members do not charge to do this either. Our members tend to take on out-of-town house sits rather than in their own town or city (like I did in Spain). In return for walking the dog, watering the plants or just generally keeping an eye on things while the owner’s are away the sitter gets a free place to stay. We currently have around six hundred home and pet owners who are looking for sitters.

Why now?

The idea of getting a house sitter is nothing new, but the idea of people house sitting in exchange for a great place to stay is something that’s only really been made possible through the internet and the rise and acceptance of the collaborative consumption movement.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

At the start of this year we passed 5,000 ‘house sitter’ members (people who are willing to house sit for others) and there are currently roughly 20 new house sitting opportunities a day being posted on the site from home and pet owners around the world.

What are your next milestones?

House sitting in this way is still a relatively new idea and so we’re currently working towards doubling the mentioned numbers, a figure which will hopefully give us the critical mass we need to push the idea into the mainstream.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?

The best place to get a feel for what we do is to take a look at a listing from someone looking for a house or pet sitter, which you can do here: http://www.trustedhousesitters.com/house-and-pet-sitting-assignments/

We post a lot of the best house sits on our Facebook page ( http://www.facebook.com/trustedhousesitters ) and also have a very active blog as well: http://blog.trustedhousesitters.com/

The Tech Trend You’re Probably Ignoring (But Shouldn’t Be)

From Sam Altman

Yesterday at lunch a friend asked me what tech trend he should pay attention to but was probably ignoring.

Without thinking much I said “artificial intelligence”, but having thought about that a bit more, I think it’s probably right.

To be clear, AI (under the common scientific definition) likely won’t work. You can say that about any new technology, and it’s a generally correct statement. But I think most people are far too pessimistic about its chances – AI has not worked for so long that it’s acquired a bad reputation. CS professors mention it with a smirk. Neural networks failed the first time around, the logic goes, and so they won’t work this time either.

But artificial general intelligence might work, and if it does, it will be the biggest development in technology ever.

Why You Shouldn’t Care About What You’ve Done

From Satya Patel

At Homebrew, Hunter and I are very focused on “Why” a founder has chosen to start a company and what motivates him or her to attack the specific problem or opportunity he or she sees. But also important is the “how”, the approach the entrepreneur has taken to address the opportunity. Often, when we starting talking about the “how”, we hear about a lot of different ideas being considered and experiments being run in an effort to find product/market fit. But at the seed stage, entrepreneurs often focus only on what they’re doing without being equally attentive to what they’re learning. “Being busy” by itself does not equate to building a company. You should be learning with every step so that you can find a scalable model of success.

Focusing on the key questions and how best to answer them

To create an organization that learns and doesn’t just do, I’m a big advocate of the scientific method approach to building product (and companies more generally). The scientific method is a simple framework that can help startups focus, experiment, learn and iterate quickly and effectively. Below is a description of that method along with a simplified example of an experiment we ran at Twitter (not the actual data).

Asking the Right Question About the WhatsApp Acquisition

From Benedict Evans

Facebook just bought WhatsApp, paying $16bn in cash and stock and $3bn in RSUs. WhatsApp has 450m active users, of which 72% are active every day. It has just 32 engineers. And its users share 500m photos a day, which is almost certainly more than Facebook.

This is interesting in all sorts of ways – it illustrates most of the key trends in consumer tech today in one deal.

First, it shows the continued determination of Facebook to be the ‘next’ Facebook. It’s striking to compare the aggressive reaction to disruption shown by Google, Facebook and other leading web companies today with how some of their predecessors a decade ago stumbled and lost their way.

Second, the winner-takes-all dynamics of social on the desktop web do not appear to apply on mobile, and if there are winner-takes-all dynamics for mobile social it’s not yet clear what they are. There are four main aspects to this: