Nibletz Staff - 75/87 - Serious Startups

Conversion In A Box Makes a New Way to Trade Content for Contact

conversioninabox

Trading content for contact information is a common practice around the Internet. Most of us think nothing of plopping our email into a box for a free ebook or song download.

Indianapolis-based Conversion In A Box wants to make that process even easier. An account dashboard makes it easy to set up several accounts at once and track metrics on how each account is doing.

It will be interesting to see how Conversion In A Box grows. After all, this process is already handled pretty efficiently by email services like Mailchimp and Aweber.

Check out our Q&A with Conversion In A Box below:

What is your startup called?

Conversion In A Box (www.conversioninabox.com)

What’s the story behind your idea?

I have a 12 year background in Music business. From 1999ish – 2012 I ran a concert promotion company and produced over 450 events, I also had a management company and managed several musicians that I developed and grew into bands that toured around the world. Fast-forward to now, I got out of music as a full-time profession and went back to my roots in technology. I do, however, help bands in my free time and I run a music blog where I write about music marketing, business, etc. In late 2012 I helped a friend launch a new band and we thought it woudl be awesome to gather email addresses in exchange for new songs from their album and from that Conversion In A Box was born.

Its an easy to use software that makes it a piece of cake to give away a song in exchange for an email address (and other info, if you want it).

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Mark LaFay is COO of Sonar studios and co-founder of Conversion In A Box. Mark has a BS in Computer Technology from Purdue University and has 12-years of experience in music business and marketing. LaFay built an artist mgmt. firm that represented multiple artists. He negotiated multiple recording and publishing deals, released 25 albums that collectively sold over 500k copies globally and launched tours in 26 countries (6 continents); LaFay also founded and managed a concert promotion company that produced over 450 live events independently in Indianapolis. After his departure from music, LaFay went on to assist in the growth of the events and entertainment division of Bohlsen Group, an Indianapolis-Based PR firm, before assuming his current role at Sonar Studios.

Vince Freeman is founder, president, vision-caster, and the “keeper-of-the-faith” for Sonar Studios, and co-founder of Conversion In A Box. Since studying Industrial Design and Visual Communications, Freeman has spent over twenty years in this industry instructing, speaking, writing and consulting in the area of using technology in communications and the visual arts. In 1999, Freeman founded Sonar Studios, a rich media and application developer located in downtown Indianapolis. Under his direction, Sonar Studios has won numerous awards in addition to being a Mira Finalist in 2010 for “innovation of the year” and 2013 for “excellence and innovation in education.”

Where are you based?

1060 N Capitol Ave

Suite C100

Indianapolis, IN

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

There is a thriving startup community in Indianapolis. There are several meetups and networking events that encourage entrepreneurs to get after their ideas and even pair them up with technicians and investors. There are also several investor groups in several different industry verticals here. You could have an m-tech product like we do, or bio-tech, pharm, energy, retail, etc. and you would have funding options in the City and the state. The state government is also working on initiatives to encourage startups. There is an investor tax credit to encourage investment in Indiana companies and there is even a state-sponsored investment fund designed to fund new Indiana businesses.

What problem do you solve?

Our tool is a simplified approach to digital marketing. We make it easier, cheaper and faster to launch marketing campaigns with validating results.

Why now?

We no longer live in an age where success requires vanilla products marketed to vast numbers of people through huge television and radio spends. Thanks to the internet we can now create products designed for specific groups of people and we can reach those groups through laser-focused marketing campaigns that require less money.

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

We are fully functioning and available for use. We have cracked 250 users and our average CPA is around $5.00. We have also integrated with mutliple ESP and CRM platforms which makes it easy to put your data into use either in bulk or in real-time.

What are your next milestones?

1000 users, 25% account utilization or higher.

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

We have some videos at www.conversioninabox.com that do a great job of explaining the product and why you should use it :-).

How to Raise Money Without Asking

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From Ben Yoskovitz, Instigator Blog

When you start raising money for your startup, people will tell you, “If you want advice, ask for money. If you want money, ask for advice.” You might dismiss this as generic, cookie-cutter advice, but there’s definitely some truth to it, particularly the second part.

If you want money, ask for advice.

Recently, I was in touch with three entrepreneurs (two via the phone, one via email), and in all three cases they wanted to give me an update and ask me some questions. All three are fundraising. None of them asked for money.

Maybe they don’t want my money. Maybe they don’t know I’m an investor (which seems unlikely). Or maybe they’re leveraging a little psychology to their advantage.

After each of the interactions, I thought about the startups and entrepreneurs for a few days. The updates were all positive (although they openly talked about outstanding issues too, they’re not being dishonest about things), and that positivity grew inside my brain over time. I was left…wanting more…

Why the Series A is Both Bigger and Smaller Than Ever

From Nikhil Basu Trivedi, Medium

A couple months ago, I was chatting with a first-time entrepreneur who had recently raised a couple million dollar seed round after graduating from a well-known startup accelerator. He told me of his fundraising plan:

NibzNotes9

I’m guessing I’ll raise a $15-20M Series A in about a year… by that point, we’ll have shown product/market fit so we’ll be ready to step on the gas.

5 years ago, that wouldn’t have been “the plan.”

Series A rounds used to be different. The prevailing view back then was that the Series A, defined for our purposes as the first round of institutional venture funding for a technology startup, was typically a $2-6M round after which investors would own 10-30% of the company.

31 Highest Venture-Funded Travel Startups

From Rafat Ali, Skift

Yesterday, travel startups HotelTonight and GetYourGuide announced major funding rounds, and both of the travel startups are now well into double-digit millions on the amounts they’ve raised so far — HotelTonight may soon even touch $100 million mark. NibzNotes8

That gave us an idea to compile a list of all the biggest venture-funded startups currently in travel and we came up with this list of 31 companies, with the lowest cutoff of around $20 million.

Some observations:

Airbnb and Uber, never really billed as travel startups per se, are the two biggest venture-backed startups that exist now across tech, not just the travel tech sector.
Chinese car rental, sharing, and booking companies have raised huge amounts to compete on scale.
Russian booking companies have raised large amounts to compete in an especially competitive market.
In general, room sharing and car sharing requires lot of investment to build, disrupt, and compete.
Only four B2B startups are on this list. Surprisingly, two are aimed at the intersection of travel transactions and advertising/retargeting.

Wedding Bells Lead to “Aha!” Startup Moment

When you’re a kid you have all sorts of dreams. Maybe you want to be an astronaut or an archeologist, a doctor or a mechanic, for example. Still, others have more dreams, some of which are generally considered sweeter, more romantic, or even lovely.

Enter Robert Caruso, a budding engineer turned entrepreneur who proposed to his longtime girlfriend a few months ago.

Though I’m not sure what exactly Rob’s goals were when he was a kid, marrying the woman of his dreams certainly became one. With marriage, though, comes the need for things like rings, cake, and probably, to some extent at least, fancy outfits.

With an approaching deadline to make each of those things a reality, he set out to make one thing: dollars. (Love will most certainly come next, of course.)

This was Rob’s problem. He needed to come up with some sort of solution.

His first aha moment came after a bit of an alarming realization, actually. He mentioned that it went something like this:

“We were starting to plan our wedding, and I realized that I was a graduate student. I don’t have any money. But I am an engineer. What if I made an app?”

So he began working. That was around Thanksgiving. And after a few weeks of letting it sit around he decided to start working on it again, when he had his second moment.

“Even though I’m an engineer, I’m not trained to program, you know? I’m not a programmer. But there’s a website called Google.”

The knowledge he gained from everyone’s favorite search engine helped him build his fifth official app in the Apple App Store: Swift Match, both a memory and puzzle game somewhat similar to one or two you might have seen floating around out there already but with a few twists.

Play either a free or paid version, each with three different modes, and match symbols as quickly as you can. The more you match and the less you miss, the higher your score. He launched a week ago, and there’s a chance he has enough money for a tuxedo shoe or something by now.

So far my high score is 88. If you can beat me, send me a tweet and I might write my next article about you.

Follow @SwiftMatch on Twitter and.

Tyler Sondag is a startup connoisseur with a hand in anything and everything you could imagine. Hailing from the ever-developing Northwest Mississippi, an alum of Saint Louis University and currently a transplant to St. Louis, Missouri, one of his main missions in life is to get and keep young people engaged in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Follow him on Twitter: @MrSondag.

How to Know When to Raise VC Money

From Tomasz Tunguz, Redpoint Ventures

Aside from a startup’s internal considerations about the right time to raise money, founders should weigh the seasonality of the fund raising market when planning their

raise. There’s a rule of thumb batted around the valley that the worst times to raise capital are in the dog-days of summer and after Thanksgiving. As it turns out, this
aphorism is only a half-truth.

Below is a chart of the dollars VCs have invested by month of year. I’m using Crunchbase data since 2005 for tech companies in the US. There are a few notable trends in the data.

First, the impact of the summer is evident. The slowest month for investments during the year September. I’d estimate there are a few weeks latency in the data between when the investment commitment is made and the investment is disclosed. The legal diligence process of about 3-4 weeks that typically follows signing a term sheet introduces this lag.

Some Investors Prefer the Old Ways

Seed-Funding

Rob Go, Next View Ventures

A lot of things are evolving in the startup and VC world. Many of them for the better, as there has been a great surge in great talent going after big ideas and greater NibzNotes3 access to capital at the early stages. It’s an exciting time to be an entrepreneur and investor in this ecosystem.

But I find myself lamenting some things that seem to be changing. Or at least, things that used to be very rare, that are becoming less so. I’m pretty new to VC in the grand scheme of things, but I do think that are some old school idea that are being lost or forgotten that I tend to agree with. Here are three old-school ideas in particular I’ve been thinking about.

1. Knowing your investors.

This seems like common sense. In the early stages, entrepreneurs have historically known who all their investors are. Entrepreneurs will certainly know the VC’s that led their round, and they certainly know the friends and family that invested in their companies. Often early rounds included angel investors, and these usually fell into two categories. The first were people who know the founder really well, and believe in them. They wrote a check because they believed in the talents of the founder and wanted to support him or her.

Inside Travel Guides Want You to be an “Insider” Anywhere

Do you travel much? Not, dash to a city, have a meeting, and eat at the hotel travel, but real travel. The kind where you spend days in one place, exploring a new city and eating new foods?

If you haven’t traveled like that in awhile, you may have forgotten how stressful it can be. Where do you go in a new city? What do you eat? More importantly, what do you avoid?

The guys at Inside Travel Guides feel ya, and they’re using local writers to produce guides for cities all over the world. Right now you can download guides for cities as diverse as New York, Paris, and Reykjavik.

Check out our Q&A with Inside Travel Guides below, and get to seeing the world already!

1) What’s your startup called?

Inside Travel Guides

2) What’s your big idea?

Travel guides written by locals. We sell $10 travel guides to cities around the world that show you a day by day itinerary of what a local would recommend their best friend doing.

3) What’s the story behind your idea?

The cofounders are avid travelers and want to see more people explore the world. The #1 reason people are not traveling more is because they feel lost. Our mantra of ‘never feel lost’ matches great information and a beautiful mobile design letting you explore.

4) Where are you located?

Boulder, Colorado

5) What’s the startup scene like there?

Thriving! We have built something special + have been named a startup capital.

6) What milestones have you reached?

We launched with 18 cities and 35 guides to some amazing places.

7) What are your next milestones?

A mobile app is the next big thing as far as the products goes. The community is currently voting on where we should build guides to next.

8) Where can people find out more?

Inside Travel Guides http://inside.co blog.inside.co twitter.com/inside_guides https://www.facebook.com/insidetravelguides

Will a New NSA Chief Lead to Real Reform?

From the Wall Street Journal

President Barack Obama plans to nominate the Navy’s cybersecurity chief to become the next director of the National Security Agency and the commander of the U.S. Cyber Command.

Vice Adm. Michael Rogers, currently the commander of U.S. Fleet Cyber Command, will be named to the post, said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Thursday. If confirmed by the Senate, he will succeed Gen. Keith Alexander, who has held the NSA post since 2005.

“This is a critical time for the NSA, and Vice Adm. Rogers would bring extraordinary and unique qualifications to this position as the agency continues its vital mission and implements President Obama’s reforms,” Mr. Hagel said.

Mr. Hagel also said that a civilian official, Rick Ledgett, would become deputy director of the NSA. Mr. Ledgett currently serves as chief of the NSA response unit handling the fallout from the leaks by former agency contractor Edward Snowden. Mr. Ledgett’s appointment doesn’t require Senate confirmation.

Starting Up? Piece of Cake. Entrepreneurship…That’s a different story.

From Adii Pienaar, Making New Mistakes

Today, it’s easier to start a startup than any other time in our history.

And it’s likely only getting easier with each passing month.

We have so much information about what works and what doesn’t. Founders are sharing their stories of success and failure in the spirit of enabling someone else to learn.

Talking about failure… As a society and ecosystem, we have embraced the concept and nobody needs to worry about any negative stigma associated with failing.

We also have the ability the reach out to the best of the best and create our own, virtual advisory board. And that at a couple of dollars a minute.

We have learned validation and testing techniques to mitigate the risk of our new startup idea(s) before we even really start.

There’s more know-how and reasons ever to bootstrap your startup. Bootstrapping has spawned some amazing companies.

If bootstrapping isn’t your cup of tea, you can easily raise external funding online or go the crowdsourcing route.

Technology has enabled us to build remote companies, removing another (very physical and geographical) barrier.

Read the full article here.

Legitimo Brings Legal Documents to Everyone–Even Spanish-Speakers

A spoiled quinceanera led to a hackathon win led to the creation of Legitimo. The New York-based startup has created a mobile app for legal documents, similar to Shake.

Unlike Shake, though, Legitimo also provides simple legal agreements in Spanish, a necessity for the 69 million Spanish speakers in the US.

Check out our Q&A with Legitimo co-founder Nikhil Jhunjhnuwala below, and if you’re in need of simple (Spanish!) legal documents, you can download the app on Android and iPhone.

What is your startup called?

Legitimo

What’s the story behind your idea?

It began with a frantic phone call from Julia, a middle schooler I mentor in Los Angeles. Angrily, she explained how her family recently got ripped off during her quinceañera party. The venue they had rented was a complete mess and understaffed, the band left early, and everything was out of order. Basically, Julia’s special day was ruined and any hope for restitution was doubtful because Julia’s family did not sign any written agreements, making it difficult to prove what exactly was agreed upon.

Upon hearing this story, I envisioned an app that gave ordinary people free legal protection by helping them create simple, and legally binding, contracts on the go. Some months later, that vision was realized at “El Hackathon” sponsored by LATISM. Twenty-four grueling hours later, we walked away with the grand prize and a prototype of Legitimo that would quickly become our obsession.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

I’m a former USC Law student turned startup junkie. Keval Amin is my best friend and a graphic designer, and Legitimo is our third startup together. The other two are StartEngine incubated myRight (R.I.P) and ramen profitable LegalCrunch. We met both Sameer Kanda and Maria Gutierrez at the Hackathon event. Sameer is a developer with over 10 years of experience and is currently mining LiteCoin at the speed of broadband. Maria is a lawyer from Argentina who recently passed the New York State bar.

Fun fact: 3 out of the 4 founders dropped out of school. Can you guess who the honor student is?

Where are you based?

We are based in New York City (specifically SoHo).

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

There’s always something going on in “Silicon Alley”! It’s amazing to see so many events taking place each week. After you go to some you start see similar faces and really feel a sense of community. At the same time, newcomers are welcomed without hesitation. We went to El Hackathon on a whim and never imagined that it would lead to a real product, let alone a win.

What problem do you solve?

Sometimes you need a contract, but hiring a lawyer is expensive and online templates aren’t personalized. Without a convenient solution, most people forgo this basic legal protection, which unfortunately increases the likelihood of scam or fraud. No written record means it’s hard to prove what terms were agreed upon and disputes often come down to a he-said, she-said battle, the sorts of which you see on Judge Judy.

Legitimo solves this problem by making it easy to create, sign, and send personalized agreements on mobile devices in seconds. Additionally, Legitimo translates contracts into other languages, allowing people that don’t speak the same language (or people that just don’t speak English for that matter) enter into legally binding agreements. Currently we support English and Spanish, but plan on expanding globally, ultimately becoming a Rosetta Stone for simple agreements.

Why now?

We’re initially targeting the Latino community because they are the fastest growing demographic in the US with the highest rates of smartphone usage. Capturing brand loyalty at this critical time will be important. Additionally, there are over 60 million Americans, and many more people abroad, that regularly engage in informal economies that are largely cash-based, making it difficult to take legal action should something go wrong. This is a huge problem because people end up losing money with no remedy. With a pain point this obvious and an increasing demand, it’s inevitable that something like Legitimo would make its way into the market.

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

We just launched an Android and iPhone App!

What are your next milestones?

Our next milestone is to reach 100 real users, and then reach out to those users learn everything we can. Once we figure out a strong market fit, we plan on scaling. But right now we’re focused on listening.

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

For updates, visit our website or follow us on Twitter.

Mobile Startups Raise $3.8B in VC Financing in 2013

Q3 of 2013 posted the largest quarter in financing for the mobile sector ever, CB Insights reported this week. Venture capitalists invested $1.12 billion dollars across 150 deals in that quarter, and Q4 didn’t see a significant decrease in investment. Across all 4 quarters of 2013, VCs poured $3.8 billion dollars into the mobile industry.

That money isn’t just going to finance the next consumer app, either. (Though $190 million did go to consumer apps.) With 2013 being the year we all woke up to Internet threats, startups working on security took the largest portion of that funding (10%). Travel was the next hottest sub-industry, but the money spreads out a good bit after that. Payments, customer relationship management, and business intelligence/analytics were all sub-industries that pulled in big VC money last year.

Unfortunately, the money wasn’t as spread out over geography as it was over industries. San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Mountain View pulled in a combined $1.36 billion dollars. The next closest region was New York/Brooklyn with a combined $269 million.

What does this mean for startups everywhere else? Well, obviously, there’s money to be had out there. With some projections placing smartphone sales in the billions this year, and fewer companies than we thought going mobile first, it’s safe to say the market isn’t going anywhere.

Companies dealing in mobile security will probably still be attractive to investors in 2014. After all, black hat hackers and the NSA aren’t going anywhere.

Check out the whole report from CB Insights here.

Sqrl Raises $550K to End the Need for Follow-Up

Cincinnati-based Sqrl announced today that it has raised a $550K seed round, led by CincyTech and including Hyde Park Ventures and Vine Street Ventures.

Ooops. I hope we didn’t spoil the ending of our Founder’s Accelerator Tale series!

As many of you know, Sqrl is a Brandery alum, started by 3 accountants to solve a problem they all dealt with in their day jobs: follow-up.

In order to succeed in accounting–and most professional services, actually–you need a significant amount of information from clients. You know who really sucks at getting you information in a timely, organized manner? Clients. And, it’s even worse when you have multiple clients, with multiple bits of information, and you’re handling all of the data by hand.

“Performing the accounting work was fine,” Sqrl cofounder and CEO Ryan Watson said in a statement. “there are great tools to handle that piece of businesses these days, but we were losing half our day playing air traffic control with our clients. It’s the same problem we had when I worked at a big four firm. A team would send hundreds or thousands of requests via email, and we all kept track manually in one huge spreadsheet. It was a nightmare.”

They guys at Sqrl (pronounced “squirrel,” and they want you to think of a digital hunter-gatherer) created an internal, automated system that handled those daily requests at their online accounting firm. When other firms expressed interest in the system, they figured they had something and applied to the Brandery.

Sqrl is focusing for now on small, regional accounting firms, offering their initial system free while they work on premium products. Eventually, the platform can be adapted for financial advisers, lawyers, and digital agencies.

“Sqrl is addressing a fundamental problem we all encounter every day,” CincyTech principal Justin Thompson said. “The founders happen to be from the accounting field, which might have more of a problem than most professions. We believe the team has created an elegant solution to the problem and are well capitalized to test their solution in the marketplace.”

Where to Find the Startup Billionaires…in an Infographic

We all know the dream. A few crazy years of startup life is nothing compared to the fame and prestige of a successful IPO. Oh, and the money. Let’s not forget the money!

In Forbes’ global billionaire list last year, 33% of the top 500 were Americans, and 16 of those are our golden boys. (Yup, all men, unfortunately.)

But, which companies have minted the most billionaires over the years? While the wealth was relatively spread out among the companies you would expect, there were three big winners with 3 billionaires each:

Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg ($13.3B), Dustin Moskovitz ($3.8B), and, theoretically, Eduardo Saverin ($4B)
Microsoft: Bill Gates ($67B), Steve Ballmer ($15.2B), and Paul Allen ($15B)
Google: Larry Page ($23B), Sergey Bring ($22.8B), and Eric Schmidt ($8.2B)

Do you think Larry and Sergey sit in their offices and argue over that .2 billion while they plot their next world takeover?

Where are the Twitter guys, you ask? The Forbes data was published before the IPO late last year, but Biz Stone was the only founder to become a billionaire from it.

The moral of the story? Sure, there are billions to be made in tech startups. The percentage of people that get there is pretty low, but if you’re reading this you’re probably a startup founder. You like long odds.

Check out the infographic below from for the full story on who made what and when from the world’s biggest tech companies.

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