Earlier today we told you about GeekWire’s 2013 awards in Seattle last week. The award for the geekiest office space went to Killer Infographics, which also partnered with GeekWire for a creative, totally awesome view of startups. Although known for their “Killer Infographics” the teams at Killer and GeekWire created an 8 bit video game style movie called “The Adventure of the Startup Kid”.
The video was created to play at the beginning of the GeekWire awards which were held last Thursday at EMP Seattle and very well received.
The Adventure Of Startup Kid starts off in the office where Startup Kid has an idea that is a mashup where “Twitter meets Kickstarter mixted with FourSquare and Vine”. Of course Startup Kid’s co-worker thinks it’s a great idea and Startup Kid quits his job.
Then of course he goes to dad for seed funding, eventually finds a team, and goes for venture funding. Each step along the way looks just like an old 8 bit video game with challenges that are like beating level lords at the end of every game. For instance when the team goes for venture funding they have to reach money bags being dropped from the sky by a cloud, reminiscent of getting coins in any Super Mario or Sonic game.
One of the biggest challenges in the game/movie is when it’s time to face the competition. The screen turns red, the space needle turns into a space ship and then they face the competition in a Street Fighter esque battle.
Just after that there’s the final battle where an animated Jeff Bezos pulls up in a semi truck that says Amazon and begins throwing boxes at the Startup Kid. Bezos flies off on a rocket but not before tossing a bag of money to Startup Kid. Startup Kid sort of wins because he gets acquired but then ends up back in a cubicle, presumably acquihired, that is of course until he has his next startup idea.
Last Thursday night Seattle based GeekWire presented the 2013 Geekwire awards recognizing the “pillars of the region’s startup community”. Winners of the prestigious GeekWire awards walked away with a customized joystick trophy, one of the most sought after awards next to a Crunchie.
Here are the winners:
Startup Deal Of The Year: Zulily, a daily deals site for moms and kids raised $85 million dollars earlier this year from Anreesen Horowitz at a $1 billion dollar valuation.
App Of The Year:Haiku Deck this app makes it incredibly easier (some say easier than Keynote) to build pitch decks and presentations on an iPad.
Perk of the year: SEOmoz, this category recognizes a perk given to employees by a “startup employer”. Of course companies like Google and Facebook are known for the quality of life and perks for their employees. This award recognizes a Seattle company with a great perk. SEOmoz gives employees $3,000 that can only be used for vacation. Denver startup Full Contact does the same kind of thing for employees, but with $7500 and those employees need to agree to totally “disconnect”.
Do-Gooder of the year: Edward Jiang, StudentRND. Jiang’s organization forsters the even younger startup community in Seattle. According to GeekWire, StudentRND hosts hackathons for high school and college students looking to engage the youngest of entrepreneurs.
Startup CEO of the year:Sam Blackman, Elemental Technologies. Elemental Techonologies is powering big name companies digital offerings like HBO Go and Comcast’s Xfinity. They raised $13 million in venture capital earlier this year, although they didn’t need it. Blackman’s background includes stints at PixelWorks, Silicon Graphics, and Intel.
Game of the year: Halo 4. GeekWire says that “Microsoft proved that Halo has a life beyond Bungie last fall”, that and raking in $220 million in sales on the first day alone was good enough to get the trophy in this category.
Boostrapper of the year:Adorii. Although they aren’t “married” to the idea of bootstrapping forever, Adorii CEO Mathew Matsudaira said “It allowed us to be agile and move quickly to deliver an (minimum viable product) to the marketplace,”. In it’s simplest form Adorii is a deals site for those planning a wedding, at times offering up to 80% off products and services for those headed down the aisle.
Innovation of the year: Puzzazz TouchWrite. Puzzazz is the first company to tackle handwriting recognition for iOS devices. Right now their handwriting recognition software is proprietary to the company and used in their “digital puzzle bookstore” platform. According to GeekWire “TouchWrite lets users draw a character across the top of the screen, then recognizes the letter and places a digital version in the active cell of the puzzle. It can work with a variety of handwriting styles and doesn’t require users to learn any special style of writing. The feature turns on automatically when the on-screen keyboard is turned off.”
Geekiest Office Space: Killer Infographics. In addition to creating Killer Infographics this Seattle company has a killer office space. Head over to GeekWire to see a video tour.
With one week to go in the Memphis based Seed Hatchery startup accelerator program, one of their startups, ScrewPulp, has officially launched (isn’t it nice to see real products at demo days).
Long time readers of nibletz.com, The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else, are very familiar with ScrewPulp and it’s founder, Memphian Richard Billings. Billings comes from a wide background of creativity, and media. At one point in his career, Billings was a radio disc jockey. Throughout though, he’s been a tinkerer on a very grand scale. For instance his home has a full movie theater and he’s building arcade and pinball machines in his spare time.
So what’s ScrewPulp? It’s a way for self publishers to generate traction by trading their wares for social media mentions, reviews and ratings. In it’s simplest form the model works like this:
– Author publishes their book on ScrewPulp
– The first 25 copies are given away free
– Those people are expected to engage with the material through reviews, ratings and social media mentions
– Readers can continue to get the newest books free as long as they support the model.
After the initial free period, publishers start making money on their book. Pricing is based on how well the book was received, or sales. What’s especially nice for publishers is the platform is non-exclusive and publishers get 75% of the take.
“I want to change a broken industry,” Billings said in a statement. “Screwpulp is removing the obstacles that discourage so many authors, and empowers everyone to take control of publishing’s future.”
ScrewPulp is a product of the entire LaunchMemphis ecosystem. The idea was conceived at a 48 Hour Launch event in June of 2012. From there, ScrewPulp was one of the startups selected to compete in a Global Entrepreneurship Week challenge, which included pitching the concept to Federal Court Judge John Fowlkes. At that contest, ScrewPulp won over $5,000 in cash and prizes.
ScrewPulp founder Richard Billings pitches his startup to Federal Court Judge John Fowlkes.
It was only natural for ScrewPulp to continue iterating and preparing for launch under the development and instruction of Seed Hatchery, Memphis’ cohort based technology accelerator.
“It’s been a fun uphill battle all the way, but we have our work cut out for us after investor day next week.” Billings told nibletz.com in an interview. He’s also very excited about the progress they’ve made to date. ScrewPulp soft launched last week with four books and four authors. In just one week, and with no promotion, marketing or media they now have 23 books from 23 authors, and 250 readers signed up for the platform.
To add to that momentum, ScrewPulp’s mentor, Publishing executive Joe Wikert, will be flying into Memphis to introduce the ScrewPulp team at Seed Hatchery Investor Day next week. Wikert was the Publisher and Chair of O’Reilly Media’s Tools Of Change conference. Wikert has also had executive positions with publishing giants, Wiley and Macmillan Publishing.
You obviously like to read, so go read a book at ScrewPulp.com
Here’s ScrewPulp’s first ever pitch at 48 Hour Launch
This Memphis founder also launched her startup at 48Hour Launch and is now a finalist in the Black Enterprise Elevator Pitch Contest.
The “new” American Airlines has been doing a lot these days to come out of an airlines typical “business traveler” comfort zone. They are the only domestic airline that’s supporting startups at the ground level. Through a variety of partnerships and a nationwide team devoted to small business, and specifically startups, American Airlines is promoting their BusinessExtrAA program to the business leaders of tomorrow.
Their efforts to help startups don’t just end with an extra layer of rewards, the American Airlines team that’s working with startups is routinely found at startup events, job fairs and even hackathons. At these events they’re telling people about American’s programs but also mentoring and providing sound business advice to entrepreneurs both young and old.
Paul Swartz, who heads the airline’s small business and startup outreach in the north east, is routinely found taking office hours at events. We saw him spend countless hours talking with startup founders and entrepreneurs at CES 2013, and at SXSWi. One founder at SXSW told us that during his office hours consultation they talked about marketing, and brand loyalty.
Now American Airlines has decided to beef up their social outreach. Sure they’ve had a Twitter account that tweets out business tips, blog posts and customer service tips, but now American Airlines wants to reach influencers.
Through a unique partnership with Klout, American Airlines is now offering 1 day access passes to their first class Admiral’s Club lounge for those with high Klout scores. The best part is, you can get the benefit and hang out in the lounge, even if you fly on a different airline that day (we’re not sure why you would want to).
From experience the Admiral’s club lounge typically has great wifi, comfortable workspace, workstations with printers and desk tops, a variety of snacks, soda, beer and wine and it’s all free. Many of the Admiral’s club lounges have favorable views of the tarmac, gates and runways and they make for a great escape while waiting on a layover. In some of the bigger airports, the Admiral’s lounge offers private call areas and lounge furniture so you can catch a quick nap.
You love infographics right? Well lately we’ve been talking a lot about the gender divide and promoting women entrepreneurs from “everywhere else” as best we can. We recently told you about a new Memphis accelerator for women founders. Also in Memphis we highlighted Pink Robin Avenue and it’s founder Danielle Inez who grew her startup out of a 48 Hour Launch weekend, to the finals in the Black Enterprise Magazine Elevator Pitch Contest. We also regularly feature a “Bad Ass Startup Chick”.
Well the fine folks at Intuit, the finance company behind products like Quickbooks, have commissioned an infographic using data from Forbes and nerdwallet, highlighting the best cities for women entrepreneurs.
Coming in at number one was Silicon Valley, however the rest of “everywhere else” faired quite well.
Seattle came in at the number 2 spot with a score of 63. Washington DC, Minneapolis and Portland Oregon rounded out the top five. All five cities had more than 30% women owned businesses.
The survey sample for the data consisted of 552 female business owners. 66% have said they are more optimistic about growth in women owned businesses than they were last year.
Dollars and cents.
The most recent data from 2007 says that 7.8 million women owned businesses in the United States, counted for $1.2 trillion dollars in revenue. That’s up from 5.4 million women owned businesses just ten years prior.
Check out the infographic below provided by Intuit.
Picture this, the thick of the summer of 2013 and you find yourself at the amazing One Ocean Resort in beautiful Atlantic beach. You’re there with hundreds of like minded coders, developers and software engineers, learning, living and having fun. Oh and did we mention your wife and kids are hanging out by one of the pools or on the sandy beach? This sounds like a great “working” vacation right?
It’s a reality at Code On The Beach, a software engineering conference in Atlantic Beach August 16th-18th. The conference will cover topics from ASP.NET MVC to Windows Azure to HTML5 to SQL to mobile. Friday will feature intro and beginner tracks while Saturday and Sunday will feature intermediate to advanced level content. Conference organizers have made the session length longer so you can “dive in”, but they’ve also structured the event so you can literally take some time and “dive in” to the ocean.
Intro sessions on Friday afternoon
Intermediate to Advanced sessions on Saturday and Sunday
Great hospitality with a full beach resort experience
Family-friendly: bring your spouse and kids
Top speakers from across Florida and the U.S.
Longer session length allows for deeper dives
Open Space track where you can speak on any topic you desire
Nightly hackathons to benefit local non-profits
Opportunities to meet local industry leaders and employers
Steps from the session rooms to the beach or beachfront pool
Walking distance to excellent local beach dining and nightlife
Early registration starting at just $99 (compare to other weekend conferences!)
So if you’re like me and constantly on the road to conferences and events leaving your husband or wife at home to tend to the kids, no worries, Code on the beach will be a vacation for them too:
Catch sun or waves at the beautiful Atlantic Beach
Lay back or splash at the beachfront pool, with poolside docent services (hotel guests only)
Relax and get quality treatment at the ocean view hotel spa (hotel guests only)
Visit the 24/7 fitness center for exercise (hotel guests only)
Walk to nearby beach shops, dining, and nightlife
Attend beginner programming sessions so they can get in on the conference action too
Hack on projects with you at nightly Hackathons by Ignite for local non-profits
Travel to nearby attractions like the Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens, Adventure Landing Water Park, and Talbot Island State Parks
You can get in on the early bird registration and a savings of $60 per night at the resort. The link to register for the conference is here. The link for hotel registration is here.
Here at nibletz.com The Voice Of Startups everywhere else, we’ve profiled a few startups that have made the lives of those living with autism easier. Often times these technology startups come in the form of mobile or tablet applications to assist with communication. Whether it’s picture based short messaging or assigning pictures and graphics to simple sentences, doctors have praised the work of those entrepreneurs creating these kinds of apps.
Chad Ruble, a New York based entrepreneur has created something similar, but this time for his mother, who suffered a stroke.
We met Ruble on our sneaker strap road trip when we stopped at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013. It was there that he told us that communicating with his mother was very important to both her and him. So he went to work to create a mobile app that allowed her to send simple messages that were assigned to pictures.
TapGram lets users communicate by tapping large icons to signify moods and needs. After suffering a stroke TechCrunch reports that Ruble’s mother has been dealing with a condition called Aphasia which prevents her from processing language the way that she used to. TapGram was born out of a Microsoft Kinect hack that Ruble put together to help his mom write emails.
TapGram has been in public beta over the last four months and Ruble has found that people who suffer from Autism, brain injuries and of course strokes are using TapGram to assist in their communication.
Check out our interview with Ruble below and for more information visit tapgram.com
Since starting our nibletz sneaker strapped startup road trip last year we’ve seen hundreds of startups pitch at countless demo days. Nick and I were finally relaxing with one of our advisors, Patrick Woods’ with a>m ventures, on the last night of SXSW and we had counted over 65 startups that we saw pitch through a variety of demo events at the annual festival.
We’ve also seen countless accelerator demo days and with it being May and most of the spring accelerators graduating this month, we’re on track to enjoy another dozen or so before we get to the thick of the summer. Speaking of summer, last August their were three accelerator demo days in Tennessee alone.
Startup community members and leaders are constantly debating “the rise of the accelerator” and where accelerators should focus their resources. Is the best accelerator model general tech and cohort based? Or vertical and rolling? Who knows, it will take several more iterations until each community finds the accelerator model that works best for them.
But what about demo day?
On Friday Business Insider ran this piece which references an indepth article about YCombinator and it’s historic demo day from the New York Times. In it, author Nathaniel Rich, quotes an investor saying that YC’s demo day, often thought of as the super bowl of demo days, “used to be a can’t-miss event, but that’s not so anymore. It’s a different vibe. Some major investors are starting to skip it.”
Rich points out that one investor said that YC Demo Day used to be a feeding frenzy for deal flow and it’s just not anymore.
Of course YC’s demo day is all the way at one end of the spectrum. Y combinator is said to take the best of the best and with hits like DropBox and Airbnb, the newer teams know they can set their valuations and standards higher, pricing a lot of smaller VC firms out of the deal. This either leaves VC’s empty handed or startups empty handed.
“The only way for a company to be overvalued is if there’s someone willing to pay that price,” Graham told the NYT. “So what they’re saying is: Going through Y.C. causes companies to raise money on better terms than they would have otherwise. We wouldn’t have the barefacedness to make that claim ourselves!”
Graham acknowledges that YC does take some bad startups though, saying sometimes investors can’t pick out the good startups; “Well, it’s not because the good start-ups look bad,” Graham says. “It’s because the bad start-ups look good! Which means we’re doing our job.”
Business Insider recently shared some of Mark Suster’s, a VC with GRP Partners and the founder of LaunchPad LA, best and worst sources of deal flow from his personal blog.
Surprisingly, blogging was revealed to be the best source of deal flow available. “The sheer number of relationships I’ve built through being public, transparent and being willing to engage in comments and through social media has enabled me to get to know entrepreneurs even before they launch their next company,” Suster said on his blog.
Investment bankers were said to be bad sources of deal flow, but the worst? Demo Day.
“Getting excited about a company at a conference and investing is a sucker’s bet,” Suster writes. “Entrepreneurs raising at prices not normally supported by progress face risks downstream when they have to raise more capital. And that fund raising is part of the job of being an entrepreneur – not something that gets in the way of your doing your job.”
Startup accelerators everywhere else are having a hard enough time getting investors in the door for demo day as it is. One accelerator participant in the middle of the country told us “outside of the investors that had a stake already in the cohort, no investors came to our demo day last year.” That can be hard to swallow.
As to the blogging, we have a handful of angels and VC’s that email us from time to time to get the vibe on some startup we wrote about. We also get thank you cards in the mail from startups that have gone on to raise money after getting their first piece of press from nibletz. To that end, we live off of our crowdfunding so to help out the everywhere else cause, click here.
In 10 days thousands of entrepreneurs will convene in Columbus Ohio for the biggest celebration of African American entrepreneurship in the country. The Black Enterprise Entrepreneur’s Conference and Expo is four days of celebrating startups, and small businesses led by some of the brightest entrepreneurs in the country.
Names like Robert Johnson (BET), Daymond John (Fubu/Shark Tank) and Magic Johnson are staples within the pages of Black Enterprise Magazine and in the halls of the conference in years past, and present.
One of the biggest attractions at the conference is the Elevator Pitch Competition. Entrepreneurs with new startups and small businesses have 60 seconds to pitch a vetting panel and if selected, a panel of judges on site at the conference. 10 semifinalists have been selected from across the country. Those semifinalists will have 60 seconds to pitch the judges. Then, they will eliminate five of the semifinalists and the remaining five will pitch the judges for 30 seconds. After the 30 second pitches, there is a Q&A session with the judges and then one entrepreneur will win $10,000 to help grow their company.
Danielle Inez, Memphis native and founder of Pink Robin Avenue, has been selected as one of the ten semifinalists. Her startup is a tech hybrid that allows users to order everything they need for the perfect party online and in one box. Their favors, decorations, theme pieces, and everything else they need for the perfect event is then delivered to their home.
Inez initially pitched the concept in Memphis at the Upstart 48 Hour Launch in December. Her idea was quickly chosen to develop out over the 48 hour hackathon. By Sunday afternoon she had won the weekend competition. Early feedback recognized how valuable Pink Robin Avenue would be, especially for busy people.
The founder is also key to the success of Pink Robin Avenue. Inez owns a PR company that specializes in high profile, luxury and celebrity events. Inez also spent part of her career as a wedding planner with exquisit taste and is incredibly organized with an eye for design, and detail that many people are just too busy to notice.
Inez is a busy woman. She spends her days tending to the details of her PR firm, diPR which includes a mixed portfolio of clients that touch the luxury world, celebrities and even non profit organizations. She spends another full time jobs’ worth of hours working on Pink Robin Avenue.
Although relatively new to the startup space, Inez has been an entrepreneur her entire life. She got a taste of entrepreneurism and non profits when she started a company focusing on mentoring with her mother. Inez put herself through college helping people plan weddings, events and eventually pivoting that business to the PR company.
Now Inez is ecstatic that a magazine that’s been inspiring her since high school has selected her in the contest. “I’m amazed! I’ve followed the contest for a couple of years and I’ve read the magazine since high school. I’m so happy to be able to represent my city and my network of entrepreneurs from the main stage.” Inez told nibletz.com in an interview.
Inez brings a well versed pitch with a bubbly personality, and she knows her stuff, but above all she’s a fierce competitor; “I’m extremely competitive, so first and foremost, I wanna win! This is also an incredible opportunity for exposure for my business and myself; I plan to plant the seed for potentially valuable connections. Last – but certainly not least – I hope to inspire someone else to step out of their comfort zone and take advantage of the platforms that can help grow their business.”
Inez is one of the founding members of Memphis’ Upstart program. Upstart is initiative set in place by Launch Your City and focuses on empowering women entrepreneurs. Elizabeth Lemmonds is the Chief Relationship Office for Launch Your City and the Director for Upstart. She’s been working closely with Inez since December.
” Ever since Danielle brought Pink Robin Avenue into the Launchpad and to our female founder 48 Hour Launch, I’ve been impressed with both her concept and her sheer tenacity. This remarkable opportunity is a testament to both. I’m proud to have worked with her and look forward to the huge things ahead for Pink Robin Avenue!” Lemmonds told us.
Inez’ Pink Robin Avenue and other startups like Mentor Me, currently accelerating in the Seed Hatchery program are a testament to the fast success Upstart Memphis has seen.
The finals for the Black Entreprise Elevator Pitch contest are bitter sweet for Inez who will miss Seed Hatchery’s Demo Day while she is pitching in Columbus at the Black Enterprise Event. “I can’t believe I’m going to miss Brittany’s pitch (Mentor Me), Brit’sbusinss has evolved into something that seems incredibly profitable”. Mentor Me was one of the other startups selected to build out at that Upstart 48 Hour Launch event where Pink Robin Avenue was born.
Here’s Pink Robin Avenue’s second ever pitch at 48 Hour Launch.
Fred Wilson is currently being interviewed on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt NY by Michael Arrington and a topic of discussion that came up was the “Best and Worst Things to do in VC Pitches.” If you’re not familiar with Fred Wilson, he is a managing partner and venture capitalist at Union Square…
Summit founder Jeff Rosenthal and Skrillex, interview each other at IMS Engage (photo: billboard.com)
Sonny Moore, who’s much more widely known as electronic artist Skrillex, was part of a fireside chat at the IMS Engage event in Los Angeles last month. IMS Engage is the International Music Summit’s event that bridges music, technology and innovation. To give you an idea of the scope, in addition to this fireside chat with Skrillex and Jeff Rosenthal, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, had a fireside chat with Diplo at the same event.
The interview opened with the usual background story that Skrillex tells, but they spent less than five minutes on the background. Skrillex seemed more impressed with what Rosenthal and his co-founders with the Summit Series have done as entrepreneurs and innovators.
The Summit Series is a series of events created by Elliott Bisnow, Ryan Begelman, Brett Leve, Jeremy Schwartz and Rosenthal. They wanted to create networking experiences for young entrepreneurs, not just run of the mill conferences. Their first event was a free ski trip to Park City Utah and had just 19 attendees.
Now they’ve grown into a global organization with headquarters in Malibu. Tony Hsieh, Russell Simmons, Imogen Heap and Dhani Jones have all attended their events. They were also able to garner support from former President Bill Clinton.
They are now preparing on their next big thing which is purchasing a mountain ski resort to create an innovation city.
Skrillex spent a majority of the interview actually digging this information out of Rosenthal. While Skrillex has also taken on building community and creative space for electronics “in the box” musicians in Los Angeles, he resonated with the entrepreneurial growth inspired by the Summit team.
Rosenthal talked about how he and his co-founding buddies had maxed out their credit cards and gone in debt on their first couple of events. Skrillex said he can totally relate having been in debt $50,000 just 1000 days (three years earlier). Like a true entrepreneur, Skrillex leveraged everything he had to build his artisti base. He had rented a warehouse and lived in it with his buddies. The warehouse space served as studio space and at one point Skrillex was evicted. He finally started making money and had $1 million dollars in the bank and then he made a conscious decision to blow all of that money on production giving his fans “the most incredible shows in the world”.
Skrillex credited Hypem the music blog aggregator and Soundcloud with helping bring him to fame.
Rosenthal and Skrillex both agreed with musicians and entrepreneurs it’s all about a body of work.
Towards the end of the conversation Skrillex asked Rosenthal why they created the Summit Series. Rosenthal replied that at first it was for them, they didnt have a peer group. “We like to connect and inspire the thought leaders of our time” Rosenthal told Skrillex.
Really this is a great interview, Skrillex is so passionately into what Rosenthal is doing, and really this was a fireside chat, not an interview.
Ashton Kutcher was back on the mainstage at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 after taking a year off. We first saw him at Disrupt in 2011 when he was being interviewed by Charlie Rose. It seems like so long ago. It was right after the Charlie Sheen blow up and after Kutcher had taken Sheen’s place on Two & A Half Men (which was off limits at Disrupt).
On Wednesday, during a fireside chat with Mike Arrington, Kutcher along with investment partner Guy Oseary (Madonna’s manager and the founder of Maverick Records) they discussed everything from what their investment firm likes to invest in, what they see in the future, a new fund raised at $100 million dollar valuation and drugs, ammo,assholes and anonymity.
When Arrington asked Kutcher about what he technologies he was looking forward to in the future, Kutcher talked first about sensors, and products that incorporated them. Then, he started talking about decentralizing currency and decentralizing security. In this part of the conversation he talked a lot about BitCoin and what the attraction is.
In evaluating deals Kutcher sometimes turns to “Hacking Volume” which he described as the number of people that are hacking a solution to a problem. Kutcher says that the fact that people are so widely hacking Bitcoin validates the value of the service and the money.
“…The fact that people are hacking BitCoin really hard almost harkens back to when banks first started and they didn’t have safe-safes and people were going into the banks and just robbing the money out of the safes it actually validates the value of the money itself…”
Arrington re-confirmed what Kutcher had just said asking him “…The fact that BitCoin is being hacked at almost every point in the network is a good thing?”
From there Kutcher said yes and then talked about how the BitCoin infrastructure and anonymity could be used as a vehicle for people to police themselves and eliminate “Big Brother”. Obviously this speaks to anonymity and CISPA which was recently defeated in Congress.
To reiterate the value of BitCoin, Kutcher said “I think the fact that you can by drugs and ammo with it is actually a validator of the currency itself.
As to decentralizing security, Kutcher is looking forward to a time when we can “…civically monitor each other in anonymous way actually keeps the anonymity of the internet, we don’t have to worry about big brother, and that same infrastructure that built out BitCoin for mass good” Kutcher continued “it’s the old sort of, if everyone had a dart gun and we drove around, and shot darts at assholes driving, we’d know really quick who all the assholes are”
At that point Arrington started cracking up on stage and said he could just imagine how many darts he’d have in his car.
Watch this great video clip from that fireside chat below.
Tuesday morning at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013, Mike Abbott (Kleiner Perkins), Aaref Hilaly (Sequoia Capital), Naval Ravikant (Angellist) and David Tisch (Box Group) were part of a panel moderated by TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis, called “Lot’s of Venture, but what’s to gain”.
With Venture Capital firms shrinking and the rumored “series A crunch” entrepreneurs and startup founders have a lot of questions. One of those is what are the different firms looking for, and even more than that, what are the individual partners at each firm looking for.
Each of the panelists fielded the question. Ravikant talked about how important it is to build a network when preparing to pitch VC’s.
Overall the VC’s and Angel (Tisch) on the panel agreed that they are looking for disruptive companies in technologies that they know. Where some entrepreneurs may believe that a certain firm is good for them because they invested in a competitor, the panelists think that can be a bad idea. Obviously the firm feels they already have the winner.
Abbott pointed out that in the case of this particular panel, all of the investors had actually started their own company. Ravikant is still currently running his. Having started their own companies gives this group of investors an advantage of being in the shoes of the entrepreneur.
Hilaly spoke later in the panel (not in the video) about the days of having to drive up and down Sand Hill Road and getting doors slammed in his face and dreams burned, “entrepreneurs have a lot ore resources available to them now”, of course one of those big resources is Ravikant’s Angel List.
Check out the video below to shed some light on what investors are looking for.
Email seems to be a pretty popular topic, especially on the weekend. Last weekend a lot of tech sites were talking about why they ignore emails and auto responder messages. Earlier this week I checked out the refresh of Microsoft’s outlook.com and the reinvigoration of Hotmail.
This week we’re first to bring you some pretty startling results about email. Our friends at Contactually, the popular email CRM startup from Washington DC, just published results from a rather interesting survey.
Engineers at the company recently analyzed over 1oo million email conversations looking at positive and negative words across the data set. What they actually found was that “On average, negative people tend to reply to emails 36% faster than their positive, bubbly colleagues.” Ousmane Mariko, community manager at Contactually reported on their blog.
For the study engineers looked at wording in emails. Words like “care” and “amazing” made their list of positive words. Words like “missed” and “stupid” were considered negative. After they counted up all the instances of multiple positive and negative words they calculated the ratio between positive and negative words across the data set.
Overall what they found was that people who were always positive in their replies responded to 47% of their emails within a day. 64% of people who were negative or unhappy in their email replies responded within 24 hours.
“It’s not immediately clear why positive people aren’t as good with email,” Jeff Carbonella said, CTO of Contactually. “Maybe the negative folks are more active online in general.”
Carbonella jokingly suggested that this may explain interent trolls. Another cause of this could be that sending a positive email reply takes a little more time.
The study also suggested that users of Contactually were much better at quickly following up with their top contacts, citing that they generated 44% more referrals for their business.
“We don’t necessarily have to be mean and cranky,” COO Tony Cappaert said. “Maybe we just need to use better software.”
Kyle
Earlier today we told you about GeekWire’s 2013 awards in Seattle last week. The award for the geekiest office space went to Killer Infographics, which also partnered with GeekWire for a creative, totally awesome view of startups. Although known for their “Killer Infographics” the teams at Killer and GeekWire created an 8 bit video game style movie called “The Adventure of the Startup Kid”.
The Adventure Of Startup Kid starts off in the office where Startup Kid has an idea that is a mashup where “Twitter meets Kickstarter mixted with FourSquare and Vine”. Of course Startup Kid’s co-worker thinks it’s a great idea and Startup Kid quits his job.
Guest
