News Corp Buys Social News Agency Storyful For $25 Million

Stop me if you’ve heard this one:

An American company, an Irish company, and a British billionaire walk into a bar…

We all know what happens next, right?

On Friday, Rupert Murdoch’s New Corp announced the acquisition of Dublin startup Storyful, a social news agency that collects real time content from users and figures out what’s real and verifiable. Then, they buy and license that content to news agencies, providing them with user generated content they can actually trust. (Warning, if you click through to the Storyful website, take some Dramamine first. Trust me.)

We’ve all seen–and complained about–news reporting during big crises. During the Boston Marathon bombing, CNN wrongfully reported an arrest hours before one was really made, a move that could have endangered citizens of Boston. Last year, when tragedy hit Sandy Hook Elementary School, news organizations misidentified the shooter, accusing the wrong brother. And that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

These kinds of mistakes are common in 24/7 news media because everyone is trying to be first, and that can cause carelessness.

Storyful founder and CEO Mark Little see the problem in a different way, though. Sure, there’s a lot of social media noise around the news, but that actually gives journalism a new layer of reality.

“I watched the Arab Spring unfold on YouTube and saw an authenticity I had rarely seen on TV news,” Little writes on the Storyful website. He goes on to say, “Storyful is dedicated to helping news and communications professionals everywhere use social media to make their newsgathering, reporting and storytelling shine.”

And now they’ll be doing that from under the News Corp umbrella.

The plan is for Storyful to continue to run as a separate business unit, operating from its home in Dublin. The company will continue to license content to its current clients, including News Corp competitors like the BBC and ABC News.

Robert Thomson, Chief Executive at News Corp, said this in a statement:

“Storyful has become the village square of valuable video, using journalistic sensibility, integrity and creativity to find, authenticate and commercialise user-generated content. Through this acquisition, we can extend the village square beyond borders, languages and platforms.”

The acquisition will also allow Storyful to expand its products and services.

“We will be working to productise the core discovery technology that powers Storyful,” Little told me in an email. “We want to build the tools that power all social newsrooms. We are also focusing in 2014 on brand newsrooms, developing content solutions for the marketing, advertising and PR industries.”

Now, it’s no secret that Rupert Murdoch and News Corp aren’t always very popular. A simple Google search will show you that. In particular, many feel that News Corp cares more about getting a story out than making sure they report the truth, which could stand in contrast to Storyful’s efforts to verify everything.

As I researched, I noticed some pretty disdainful comments on the Storyful blog about the acquisition and asked Little about them. He (digitally) shrugged it off.

“I’m really happy with the reaction to our news, which has been overwhelmingly positive. I’ve seen the generalisations about News Corp that don’t correspond with the reality I’ve come to know. Again and again, every News Corp executive I’ve met stresses the importance of the verification work we do. Nothing changes on that front.”

Brad Feld Talks About His Rise To The Top

Eric Strait, Tech Hustlers

So who is Brad Feld? Well, if you are in the startup community and don’t know who he is, then I forgive you for living under a rock…it must be awfully dark under there.

Okay, take a breath…because he has been to the mountaintop and back! So before Brad became a startup entrepreneur and an investor rock star, he was an executive at AmeriData Technologies after it acquired Feld Technologies. Feld Technologies was a firm he founded in 1987, that specialized in custom software applications.

Since then, Brad has been a renowned early stage investor and entrepreneur for over 20 years now. Brad is one of the Co-Founders and Managing Directors of the Foundry Group and Mobius Venture Capital. Prior to that, he founded Intensity Ventures, a company that helped launch and operate software companies and later became a venture affiliate of the predecessor to Mobius Venture Capital. (Crunchbase) He is also the co-founder of TechStars, an accomplished world-renown author and blogger, and an avid marathon runner that has completed 22 marathons as part of his mission to run a marathon in each of the 50 states.

So there you have it, the nuts and bolts of the career of Brad Feld.

My interview with Brad Feld is one of my favorites to date. Why? Because as one of the leading startup investors in the world, he could have been the biggest douche bag ever, and he is simply one awesome guy. To me the highest compliment you can receive as a person, is to be one who is approachable, friendly, and kind. I mean not many people can say that they would be like Brad is and was with me, achieving the success he has. I know people who are broke, and act like they are God’s gift to earth, and act like the biggest douche bag you have ever seen. You have to realize, Brad does not need publicity! He not only accepted to do an interview with me, but he did it happily! So next time you choose to be a jerk, reconsider and help grow the startup community by supporting fellow entrepreneurs whose aim is to help others succeed!

Okay, sorry about that but I always have to give props where props are due!

So why don’t you sit back and listen to the podcast and hear the often unknown and hidden life of the great Brad Feld.

Click here to listen to the podcast

Follow All Your Anticipated Releases With Hypebadger

Don’t you hate it when you miss the release of a new movie or game you were really excited about? There are so many new things popping up every day that it’s hard to keep up.

That’s what the new website Hypebadger is for. Just tell the site what release you want to follow, and you’ll receive an alert on the release date. Easy as that.

Hypebadger is interesting for 2 reasons. First, the team is the definition of “distributed,” with an entire ocean separating certain members. Second, while the idea has some merit for individual users, it could be a boon for independent artists, filmmakers, and musicians. Hypebadger will remind fans of when their favorites are releasing new products, helping those artists actually make money.

Hypebadger is very young, still testing out their MVP. But, if you’re an early adopter, they would love to hear your feedback as they build out the next phase.

Check out our Q&A with Brad Rach:

What does your company do?
Hypebadger is a website designed to allow users to follow and receive updates on unreleased products that they’re interested in. For example, if you hear about a new movie that you’re interested in, but you’re not a huge movie-goer you might forget about it and miss it in theaters. With Hypebadger, you go to the site, ask to be “Badgered” by the movie, and when it is released you receive a notification telling you that it came out.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?
The founder of the project is Chris Horsnell. Chris is a developer based out of Milton Keynes (outside of London, England) Chris built the MVP prototype over a summer and then brought on myself and two other founders. David Bannister is our User Experience optimization expert and is based out of London England. Chloe Bromfield is the project’s designer and is from Northampton. I’ve taken on the role of Marketing and Business Operations, and I’m a Project Manager from Ottawa Ontario.

What’s the story behind your idea?
HypeBadger was dreamed up when Chris was following the release of a mobile game (Star Command). He constantly checked for updates on the game: images, videos, and eventually its release. Chris was dedicated enough to do this, because he was very interested in the game, but all the while he kept thinking that it would be nice to just wake up one morning and be reminded that the game was coming out.

So Chris started building HypeBader on March 22nd, 2013. Over that weekend, Chris would put the kids to bed and work all night on his product. By the end of the weekend he had built the bones of what would become Hypebadger. He spent the summer refining the product and building out the founding team.

Where are you based?
Hypebadger is a nice example of a global team. I work out of Ottawa, Ontario; and have never even traveled outside of North America. Chris is located in Milton Keynes, a town near London.

What’s the startup scene like where you are based?
In Ottawa, the scene is very heavily focused on tech and small bootstrapped startups. On the other side of the equation, Milton Keynes is not a large city, and has a fairly small startup community. However its proximity to London certainly helps with becoming involved in that community. Hypebadger is not a project defined by the physical boundaries of the location. Because its a purely digital service, the team resonates more with the startup scene online, on sites like CoFounders Lab or Reddit.

What problem do you solve?
Hypebadger solves two problems. The first, with the most broad appeal, is the issue that countless people have where they lose track of upcoming movies, albums, games, events, etc. With HypeBadger they don’t have to face this issue anymore, as soon as they’re interested in an announced release, users can go onto the website and follow the item for the future.

The second problem that Hypebadger solves is that many independent developers, filmmakers, musicians, or entrepreneurs don’t have an easy way of keeping the interest of fans. They often get a short window of interest, but lack the marketing budgets to announce their releases. Hypebadger will be a game changer for them, since they can ensure that interested fans receive a direct notification as soon as they launch.

Why now?
With the popularization of Kickstarter, more and more independent companies have begun producing their products. The market is becoming very saturated, there are countless sources for news, and its easy to lose track of things in information overload. Hypebadger is needed now more than ever, to help users keep track of the products that they’re interested in.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?
Hypebager has already finished building a minimum viable product (MVP) to test the concept. We have also exceeded 250 users.

What are your next milestones?
Hypebadger is hoping to hit our 1000 user mark within the month. Our next major development milestone will be to complete an Android application.

Where can people find out more? Any social media links you want to share?
Website: http://www.hypebadger.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hypebadger
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HypeBadger
Google+: https://plus.google.com/103391743539144654189/posts

Toronto-Based Slyce Raises $6 Million To Help You Shop

Does this ever happen to you:

You see someone with something you’d like to own, but when you get online to search for it, you can’t quite articulate what it was?

With the new Slyce platform, you can just snap a picture of the item and find out where to purchase it. In a lot of cases, you’ll also be able to buy it right away.

While this sounds cool from a consumer standpoint, think about what this could mean for retailers. Suddenly, shoppers can find you more easily than ever before, right when they are in the mood to buy what you’re selling. For the niche, unique retailers, a platform like Slyce could mean a huge boost in business.

We’ve talked about the Big Instincts Group before. If even one of their most recent bets pan out, they’ll definitely be a company to watch.

Our Q&A with the Slyce team is below:

What does your company do?

Slyce is a visual search platform that allows Users to instantly purchase items in the real world simply by taking a picture with their smartphone.

Slyce will exist as both an independent consumer application, and a white label solution which can be integrated with existing retailer technologies. Using advanced visual recognition on smartphones as well as through a desktop application, Slyce is enabling retailers to be there at a consumers exact point of interest and ultimately changing the way retailers and consumers search and purchase items.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Cameron Chell and Erika Racicot are Co-founders of Slyce and are also co-founders of venture-creation firm, Business Instincts Group . The pair have been working together for over 5 years. Cameron is considered one of the original founders of the Application Service Provider industry, and founded the original cloud computing company, FutureLink. Erika is the operational driver at Slyce and has a background in operations and marketing, working in industries ranging from technology to hospitality to politics.

Where are you based?

Slyce’s headquarters is located in Toronto, but they also have offices in Minneapolis and Calgary.

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

The Toronto startup scene is arguably the largest in Canada. There is a strong, supportive community with incubators, accelerators, events, meetups and genuinely smart and innovative people. There are a numerous great startups which call Toronto home, and we’re excited to be involved in that community.

What problem do you solve?

For any consumer who has seen something they love and then struggled to clearly articulate that item in a search query, Slyce visual product search is the multi-dimensional and intuitive answer to their prayers. For retailers, the Slyce image recognition technology can be adapted in innumerable ways to facilitate all kinds of innovative functionality. For the first time, Slyce enables retailers to engage and transact with consumers at their very point of interest.

Why now?

Smartphones are becoming our most trusted and adored possession and taking pictures with them, part of our daily life. Approximately 350 million photographs are uploaded just to Facebook every day! People take pictures of items they want, or clothes they like, and with the Slyce platform we help them discover where exactly they can purchase that item and enable them to do so almost instantaneously. The way the offering is structured means Slyce competes both in the visual search arena, and the social shopping sector. With mobile shopping accounting for 39% of all online traffic during this holiday season, there is a clear opportunity to get deeply involved and grow the shopping experience.

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

Over the past 12 months Slyce has raised just over $6 Million in financing and just last week announced the acquisition of another visual search tech startup, Hovr.it.

What are your next milestones?

Upcoming milestones will be in customer acquisition and product development. We will be closing another round of financing early in 2014 and are currently looking to expand our Toronto team in order to scale quickly and effectively.

10th Magnitude Is In The Business Of Helping Entrepreneurs

You know howW to tell that startup culture is going mainstream? There are now businesses whose sole focus is providing services for entrepreneurs.

It used to be that companies built their businesses on corporate clients (you know, the kind that can pay), but founders with good connections could get a lot of work done for free or cheap. Companies didn’t advertise their services specifically for startups but were often happy to help out friends or acquaintances.

Now, though, plenty of businesses are more than happy to advertise their services specifically for startups. Sometimes they provide services in exchange for equity or sponsorships, but sometimes they also have a payment structure in place that makes it beneficial for a startup to spend some money.

Veteran tech guy Alex Brown saw this kind of need in Chicago three years ago. He founded 10th Magnitude to help founders build out some of the cloud applications they might need. The company also helps big companies jump into the 21st century by facilitating a move to the cloud, but Alex and 10th Magnitude are really excited about startups and founders.

Check out our Q&A with CEO Alex Brown:

1. What is your startup called?

10^th Magnitude

2. What does your company do?

10^th Magnitude is a cloud software and services firm. We help clients of all sizes build and run cloud-based applications, as well as migrate existing applications and infrastructure to the cloud. We specialize in Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, and we are one of Microsoft’s leading Azure partners in the US.

3. Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

10^th Magnitude was founded in 2010 by tech industry veteran Alex Brown, who combines decades in tech—both on the solutions side and the data center side—with an undergrad degree from Oberlin in economics and an MBA from Yale. His experience includes:

Executive Vice President, Arrowstream, cloud based supply chain management technology
Vice President and General Manager, Univa, Datacenter automation and Cloud Management
Director, Dell Inc. (US and Asia-Pacific), Consulting Services, Global Solutions
Managing Director, Plural, one of the largest .net developers in the country (acquired by Dell, 2002)

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

Chicago is a pretty vibrant startup scene, not only in tech but also in a variety other industries. It’s pretty collaborative, which is great and encouraging to all the entrepreneurs. And, from 10^th Magnitude’s perspective it’s incredibly valuable since a lot of our clients on the application development side of our business are also startups.

5. What problem do you solve?

10^th Magnitude solves the problem of organizational stagnation. Our services allow organizations to innovate without taking on the risk of the capital expense normally associated with that type of initiative.

6. Why now?

I started the company because I saw the writing on the wall. The technology was just coming into focus and has been on a rapid adoption curve ever since. Cloud technology is available now, and we jumped on the opportunity and our clients have as well.

7. What are some of the milestones your company has already reached?

o We are 3 years old with no external funding and we have grown consistently.

o We’ve continued to acquire larger and larger (i.e., over $1B clients on a regular basis)

o We are acknowledged as an industry leader; seated on advisory boards at Microsoft and Channel Company.

8. What are your next milestones?

Our immediate goal is to doubling staff and revenue over the next year.

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

Twitter: @alex10thmag; @10thmagnitude

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TiqIQ, the Kayak for Ticket Sales, Launches On Mobile

Last week Rafat Ali posted on LinkedIn about “mediata” startups. Mediata startups combine data and media:

“What if data *is* media?” Ali asks.

New York-based TiqIQ has been operating along those lines since 2009. The company works as a ticket selling platform for live events around the country. TiqIQ aggregates the best prices across several secondary platforms like eBay, TicketsNow, Vivid Seats, ScorBig and primary sellers like Ticketmaster.

“Think Kayak.com for live events,” VP of Marketing Brett House told me over the phone. “We scour the web for the best tickets available so fans don’t have to. All they have to do is show up and have a good time!”

TiqIQ utilizes the ticket market pricing data to produce original content on events and fan-demand. They are able to see trends across the market, going back as far as 5 years. The articles are then published across their network of 1,500 fan blogs and websites, like this article on the crazy Iron Bowl that put Auburn in the SEC Championship game.

Their publishing partners are impressive, including Forbes.com, Bleacher Report, Grantland, Huffington Post, Village Voice Media (with 14 properties nationwide), and high affinity sites, like the largest SEC blog in the country: Saturday Down South.

TiqIQ has seen lots of growth since its inception and landed a $1.7 million Series A early last year. Now they’re looking to grow even more with the launch of a new mobile site.

Actually, the site launched quietly about 3 months ago. Since then, they’ve seen a 303% growth in the mobile conversion rate and double the overall traffic. In just 3 months.

I’d say that’s “high growth.”

The fully responsive mobile site is clean and simple. You can allow it to see your location and immediately pull up all the local events. Just like on the website, you can also personalize the mobile site so that you only see sports or events you’re actually interested in. (Yes to football games. No to basketball. Just for instance.)

Of course, it makes complete sense that mobile ticket sales would do well. Mobile shopping overall is having a year, and as consumers get more comfortable (and the experience gets better) TiqIQ can only expect that to grow.

Which is why in the next couple of months they’ll also add content to the mobile site. They are going for that extra “stickiness” that will keep fans on the site long enough to buy tickets after reading about how scarce they are to a particular event.

So now TiqIQ is not only a media/data company but also a content/commerce company. Two hot trends that find a pretty interesting home in live event ticket sales.

TiqIQ doesn’t have the name recognition of, say, StubHub, but the disdain in House’s voice as we talked about the competition indicates that they aren’t too worried about that.

And let’s face it, with growth like that and more features to roll out, the guys at TiqIQ probably aren’t worried about too much these days.

Except maybe which bowl game to go.

The Sharing Economy Moves Into…Fashion?

Okay, here’s the nightmare scenario:

You’re traveling for work or to a high school reunion or whatever. The big event you’ve traveled for is in a few hours and you realize, “Holy shit! I forgot my (fill in important clothing item here).”

A couple of years ago that exact thing happened to Amrita Aviyente while she was in India for a high school reunion. She ended up buying really expensive shoes that she had very few occasions to wear after that trip.

The whole experience made her think, “Wouldn’t it be great if there was someone just down the street I could borrow shoes from?”

Back in Boston, she set to work on Date My Wardrobe, a peer-to-peer service that allows users to post their upscale wardrobe pieces online and rent them to other people. Aviyente calls it “AirBnB for high-end wardrobe items.”

She’s particularly excited about the social component that’s possible with Date My Wardrobe. You’re in a new city, need some shoes, and suddenly you find yourself meeting someone with your exact taste in fashion.

The team–which also includes Izi Aviyente and Chetan Chawla–piloted the beta during the Boston Lean Startup Challenge. They were in the top 5 teams in this year’s class, and are now busy working on the updates they want to make to the platform.

Those changes will be easy to implement quickly because two of the three founders have technical backgrounds. They are working on a payment platform (right now they use Square Cash) and hope to launch on mobile soon.

Competition, obviously, comes in the form of just buying something when you need it. However, there’s also New York-based Rent the Runway, which has an inventory of used designer items for rent. There’s also DC-based SnobSwap which works as an online marketplace that lets you buy, sell, or swap clothes.

Neither of those companies are strictly peer-to-peer like Date My Wardrobe, but some people will prefer that. While it’s fun to think about sharing clothes, it could potentially be a little creepy.

Of course, staying in someone’s home or getting a Lyft from a stranger could be creepy, too, and those things are doing all right at the moment. Buzz aside, the sharing economy is still in the early days, and there is plenty of room and time to grow.

Amrita and her team plan to be a part of that. They are looking to 2014 to be a big year for Date My Wardrobe.

Silvrback Wants To Be The Medium For Writers

Some of the best startup stories begin with a personal itch–some problem that bugs the founder so much, he or she just goes out to fix it.

That’s basically the story of Tahoe-based Silvrback, a new blogging platform built by Damian Sowers. Sowers had used Medium a few times, but hated that the site always sent readers to someone else’s content at the end of his articles. WordPress and other full time blogging platforms proved complicated, with too many choices that made it easy to procrastinate the content part.

So, Sowers got to work.

The developer and consultant built Silvrback to look like Medium but allow writers to have more control over their brand and platform.

“Medium is great for readers but bad for writers,” it says on website. “Readers are steered away to other articles/authors after they are done reading your article. Moreover, the analytics of Medium are extremely basic and you have no idea how people found your article.You really shouldn’t use Medium if you want to build any kind of brand with your writing.”

With that in mind, Sowers made a list of things he personally wanted in a blogging platform and incorporated those into his final product. Things like a clean and modern UI, hosting, and Google analytics can all be found at Silvrback. The site is definitely well-designed, and Sowers incorporated much of what people love about Medium into it. In fact, you can probably think of it as a mashup of the good things about WordPress and the good things about Medium, all in one platform.

However, despite the tough talk, Sowers says he isn’t trying to compete with Medium. The bigger platform focuses on content discovery, but Silvrback focuses on providing a great platform for writers. Some of the changes to Medium announced last week back of Sowers’ theories on what matters to writers. Of course, it also makes them even more direct competitors.

Still, it stands to reason that writers will be happy to go where there’s a built-in audience, and Ev Williams and team have that at Medium. While the platform does steers readers towards other content, it’s not really that hard to find a writer you like and read everything they offer.

Many of Silvrback’s users have joined up from Hacker News, and that hacker/writer audience could prove to be the best niche for Silvrback to target.

If you’re sick of Medium (or your hosted blog) go check out Silvrback. You can get a 2 week free trial here.

The Aha! Moment: When Lightning Strikes

Reshma Chamberlin is a double-transplant. From India to New York and currently St. Louis, her life has been full of stories. And the same goes for her partner-in-enabling-others-to-tell-stories, Elizabeth (Beth) Buchanan. The pair is behind Muzio, an app that self-proclaims to be “the easiest way to curate the best of life’s adventures into one little package to share and enjoy.” And many would agree. How many times have you taken a bunch of notes, pictures or videos on a business trip or vacation and wanted to share them in an organized way (but haven’t been able to)?

“How do you capture the essence of an experience in an easy-to-capture way?” That’s the question that led to Muzio’s first ‘aha moment.’ Beth had just come back from a trip to Cape Cod when she was showing Reshma some of her pictures. The conversation went something like this:

Beth: “I had such an amazing time! Look at all of these wonderful pictures I took!”

Reshma (looking at pictures): “Beth, this is boring.”

And, thus, the two decided they needed to do something about that. Muzio was born.

So Reshma and Beth, who were (and still are) running a design firm, B&C Designers, headed to the Women Entrepreneurs Rock the World conference in New York City this past May. It was an on-course conference; they were meeting some great people, making awesome connections and learning a thing or two. Everything was great. But then things got better – much better – when they heard a woman named Angela Jia Kim present a concept called “finding your ‘lightning rod.’”

What’s a lightning rod (in a metaphorical sense, of course), you might ask? “A lightning rod is that thing that gives you career satisfaction, helps you achieve your monetary goals and makes you happy all at the same time,” Reshma said. “When she talked about the lightning rod concept something clicked. At that moment we realized we needed to pause everything else and just focus on this [Muzio]. We couldn’t expect it to do what we knew it could do and wanted it to do if we’re not focused on it 100%.

And the third ‘aha moment:’ being able to knock out Muzio’s entire launch plan in a two hour plane ride after a sleepless night transferring in and out of airport wings and waiting lines and wallowing through multiple canceled flights and hours of layovers. “When we finished that we knew we had our lightning rod. This is what we were supposed to be doing,” Reshma finished.

Don’t worry; you don’t have to be the next Benjamin Franklin to find your own lightning rod. Think about it – or don’t. Either way, you’ll know when lightning strikes.

Learn more about Muzio online at http://muzioapp.com/ and follow them on Twitter: @MuzioApp.

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.

Dead Tags Can Hurt Your Startup, ObservePoint Can Help

The general consensus among website analytics experts is that 20% of tags on most websites for companies big and small are tagged incorrectly.

Provo, Utah startup ObservePoint has found that this discrepancy can amount to big losses for companies dependent on web traffic. The newest trend in web analytics companies are those that are doing “tag auditing”. ObservePoint is one of those companies.

In a recent case study, ObservePoint found that they’ve been able to increase the amount a site can sell ad and banner space for by 100% simply because the traffic site owners are reporting is actually lower as a result of tag “mis-firings”.

The same can be true for the other end of the spectrum as well. In some cases they’ve seen sites with up to 37% inflation because there are multiple instances of the same tag on a page that fire and then traffic numbers are inflated.

As mobile and web advertising continues to increase ten-fold, media buyers are desperately looking for the most accurate traffic. To find that, there is a need to look past traditional SEO and directly to tag auditing, which is where ObservePoint comes in.

ObservePoint founders Rob Seolas and John Pestana both come from solid web traffic and analytics backgrounds. Seolas was the co-founder of iLead Media an internet sales lead generation startup that was acquired by Think Partnership in 2005. Pestana was co-founder at Omniture which was acquired by Adobe in 2009.

Now they’ve put their collective smarts together to help companies optimize not just their sites but right down to the tags.

We got a chance to talk with ObsevePoint. Check out the rest of the interview below.

What does your company do?

ObservePoint keeps tag and web analytic data honest by going through a site and auditing each page’s tags to verify whether or not they are firing and reporting accurate data

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

When starting ObservePoint both founders Rob Seolas and John Pestana set out to solve the problem of correcting the accuracy in online marketing and web analytics data. Each founder had a solid background in understanding how companies measure web traffic and produce web leads.

Where are you based?

ObservePoint is located in the Silicon Slopes, or more officially Provo, Utah.

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

Provo is a city about an hour south of Salt Lake City, which has a vibrant start-up community. It was been named to a number of business lists as a top place to start a business. Forbes named it at the No. 1 place for business and careers.

Provo’s technology and start-up pedigree runs deep and many of the area’s tech startups can be linked to Novell and WordPerfect. Since the Novell and WordPerfect days the Silicon Slopes – a name coined by John’s previous partner and Omniture co-founder, Josh James– there have been hundreds of tech companies that have launched and gone on to be acquired by bigger out-of-state companies or private equity. In the past six years that list includes Altiris (by Symantec for $800M), Omniture (by Adobe for $1.2B), Ancestry.com (by Permira Funds for $1.6B), Vivint (by Blackstone Group for $2B), among others.

In addition to the acquisitions, Angels and VCs have been active and investing heavily in Provo-area companies like Qualtrics ($70M), InsideSales.com ($35M), and Domo ($125M) to name a few. Other non-Utah-based companies like eBay, Adobe, HP and American Express have established significant presences in the area.

Add the fact that Google Fiber recently chose Provo, and it’s been a pretty good year for the region.

What problem do you solve?

Most web analysts know that their analytics data is dirty, but they either don’t know how to detect and clean it up or they know they and their superiors have come to expect it and sweep it under the rug.

A major hurdle is the thousands of hours it would take to go through each page to check AND test each tag to make sure it is firing correctly. At least that’s how it was before ObservePoint came around. What we’ve found is that on average, websites have a 20 percent error rate in their web analytics data due to tagging problems.

When we tell a web analyst they show us the tags and proudly state that the tags are there. However, they don’t really know whether the tag is firing and reporting the data accurately. In addition to tags not being present or firing on the page we have found that some sites have a huge inflation rate because of tag duplication on one page and each of them report that as unique traffic. This inaccurate data is troublesome because companies are basing major decisions on this information.

ObservePoint automates the auditing for all the tags on a website. We run a thorough scan of the site and test each tag to make sure it is firing. After that we present reports of the pages that have problems so they know what they need to fix.

Why now?

The idea and the development and testing of the technology started in 2007. However, we believed that the issue would become more prominent in the next few years and that foresight is paying off because companies are starting to realize that they can’t continue to make decisions based on bad data.

Also, the tag management space has shone a bright light on the headache that is managing each tag. Companies are starting to add a tag management platform, but that can create a false sense of security when it comes to data quality. Really, tag management platforms need to be audited the same way an analytics tag does to ensure that data is collected correctly.

We are called into a lot of new tag management implementations to audit them and companies are shocked when they find that the tag management system hasn’t solved their data quality issues.

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

Besides having record revenue years, one of our major milestones happened earlier this year when we were invited into Adobe’s Enterprise Solution Partner Program. That was a big step and one that John and Rob hoped would happen since the beginning.

What are your next milestones?

On the technology front, we’re working on adding the #1 requested capability – that is to audit tags that fire on click. (Currently, only page-load tags are catalogued.) This requires some major back-end technology changes, and that will add a new and improved user interface, better performance, comparison to historical data, and a slew of other features.

We recently passed a milestone of no longer thinking of ourselves as being in start-up mode as we are in growth mode. We’ve been taking on clients for about two years, but our technology is already much more mature than that. We’re well ahead of everyone else in terms of understanding tagging issues and as such, we are now taking on customers at our fastest pace ever and we don’t expect that to slow down for the foreseeable future

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

All our information is on our website: www.observepoint.com. Also, we have a free Chrome plug-in tool that we’ve developed that allows Web analysts and QA people to see the tags on their site right inside the browser. It can be found on our website –http://www.observepoint.com/debugger

People can also learn more through our social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Cincinnati Startup Pressing Issues Wants To Re-Invent Journalism

There are problems with digital journalism, or so says Brad Merrill, the founder of Cincinnati startup Pressing Issues. After years of experience in digital journalism, Merrill and his cohort of journalists decided they wanted to do something new.

“It all started when a group of journalists decided they wanted something new to read. They were looking for a news magazine that not only told them everything that was happening around the world each week, but that did so in an entertaining way. Ideally it would be gleefully sweary and eager to offend the rich and powerful. They realized this meant it probably wouldn’t include any ads,” Merrill told us in an interview.

Pressing Issues is launching today with a model similar to NSFWCorp in Las Vegas. All of the content is subscriber based and behind a paywall. They’ve eliminated ads entirely. Pressing Issues is going to have to demonstrate the strength of their content in bulk and fast.

To do that they are making sure their paid contributors provide thought provoking, and entertaining content, both are important parts for Merrill.

Check out the rest of our interview with Merrill on launch day, below.

What is your startup called?

Pressing Issues

What does your company do?

As the death of real journalism looms over the horizon, we’re paying great journalists to produce investigative pieces and long-form essays about topics other publications aren’t covering, and we’re making their jobs even harder by demanding that their stories be entertaining. We’re employing a paid subscription model with a strict paywall on our digital edition (print is coming in a couple of months!), and we’re going the 100% reader-supported route with no ads.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

It all started when a group of journalists decided they wanted something new to read. They were looking for a news magazine that not only told them everything that was happening around the world each week, but that did so in an entertaining way. Ideally it would be gleefully sweary and eager to offend the rich and powerful. They realized this meant it probably wouldn’t include any ads.

Upon realizing that this magazine didn’t actually exist, they decided to create it.

I am founder Brad Merrill, and I’ve written for and edited many digital publications in the past. I’ve long recognized the problems with digital journalism, and I decided that by not being part of the solution, I’m being part of the problem.

Where are you based?

I’m based in Hamilton, Ohio, just outside of Cincinnati. I was very disappointed to have missed out on Everywhere Else – I hope you guys will be back in the area in the future!

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

As a tech/startup blogger myself, I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with so many brilliant entrepreneurial minds here in the Cincinnati area. The startup community is fantastic.

What problem do you solve?

We don’t have a mission statement, but if we did it would probably say something about “reinventing journalism.” It’s a broken business. Everyone wants to make an app and make journalism smaller and smaller. I say it’s time to make journalism big again. That’s why we’re publishing 3,000-word pieces online, and 10,000-word pieces in print. We’re serious about this.

As for topics, we just like good stories. Bonus points for really big stories. For example, one of our first pieces is about a former cop in Las Vegas who wrote a book encouraging the use of hostage negotiation techniques to manipulate women for sex and, in his words, “get past no.” He’s now in charge of a downtown watch group intended to keep people (particularly women who get off work late) safe in the city—presumably from the very things he advocates in his book. Not the best man for the job, I’d say, so we’re exposing the whole thing.

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

People can find out more and subscribe at pressingissues.net

When You Need Peace & Quiet On Demand, Turn To Breather

You’re in the city and need to knock out some work, make a few calls, or simply grab a breather. What are your options? You could go back to your hotel room, find the local Starbucks to fight for the outlets, or spend hundreds of dollars at the local co-working space. I don’t know about you, but this is a problem that I experience way more than I would like to admit.

Breather is a new startup that intends to bring private space on demand, replacing the coffee shop workspace right from your phone. It is like Uber for workspaces. Launched in June this year at Le Web London by co-founder and CEO Julien Smith, his approach reminded me of something I would have read in a Rockefeller story, paced and deliberate.

“Breather is a network of beautiful spaces inside a city. You can use the space whenever you want and where ever you want and you can unlock them with your phone,” says Smith. “Fundamentally, Breather provides peace and quiet on demand”.

Smith said “It seems crazy, it seems kind of radical actually. The ability to walk through a city and at any time “order private space could work, if we could just find a way to make it work. That’s why we launched Breather.”

Breather prepares peaceful workspace that will give its users the same experience every time. Like your favorite meal at your favorite restaurant, you will know what to expect each time you return, regardless of where you are. By placing sensors in each room, Breather know what things are being used, what things are not, and how exactly to better optimize their spaces. Don’t be scared though, there’s only a camera on the lock outside the room.

Safety is also being carefully considered. Not just anyone can use a Breather space. You have to be invited by someone who is gong to vouch for you and because your credit card is put into the app prior to booking, it is unlikely that someone will abuse the space with illegal activities.

They have already received requests from cities around the globe asking to place workspaces in their cities. These types of requests prove that the concept is in demand and Breather is serious about controlling the speed of growth and locations. Growing in the right order is essential to their success.

The Breather team is the strongest piece of the startup. Smith told me that his mobile team is one of the best in the world. The team handled Angry Bird level traffic before coming to take this challenge on. The excitement in his voice when talking about this team was almost contagious.

Soon, Breather will be looking for community managers to ensure that specific cities are being managed properly. Smith told me that this is the weakest part of the startup at the moment, and they knew from the beginning how important this role was going to be.

“It seems kind of crazy, that an app on a phone could unlock hundreds of spaces in a city whenever you want it to for a reasonable fee. When it happens, you will never be able to look at a city in another way again. You will go to a city that does not have private space on demand and you will be like “this city is backwards” just the same way that ordering a taxi the regular way now seems backwards,” Smith said.

Breather will launch in New York City in October and will grow to other larger cities like San Francisco. After that, they could appear anywhere across the world.

Tony Monteleone (@StartupTony) is a serial entrepreneur and does Business Development for PERQ, a measured marketing software and services company that specializes in increasing online and in store traffic for businesses. He also serves as the Indianapolis Chapter Director for Startup Grind.

Indian Startup Price-Hunt Is Helping Indian Consumers Shop The Best Price

A new Indian startup called Price-Hunt is hoping to become the go-to destination for Indian consumers to find the best price on products. Once most consumers have found the product they are looking for, the next thing they do is shop by price. Obviously if you’re comparing apples to apples, like for instance a specific laptop model by a specific manufacturer, the final decision is going to be price.

Price-Hunt offers price based search results on anything from consumer electronics to the latest fashions.

“But search at price-hunt.com is not limited by categories and one can find anything here that is available at online stores. Its main aim is to make Indian consumers aware of price variation for products in India and make it possible for him/her to save money through price comparison,” Anupam Khurana, the startup,s co-founder told us an in interview.

Check out the rest of the interview below.

What is your startup called?

Price-Hunt

What does your company do?

Price-Hunt.com is a real time price search engine which searches and delivers the best prices across various online stores in India. Price-Hunt showcases wide product range from various categories like Consumer Electronic goods, Mobiles, Digital cameras, LCD TVs, home appliances, clothing and apparels, shoes, watches, jewellery and much more. But search at price-hunt.com is not limited by categories and one can find anything here that is available at online stores. Its main aim is to make Indian Consumers aware of price variation for products in India and make it possible for him/her to save money through price comparison.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

Price-Hunt.com is founded by Anupam Khurana and Palka Khurana.

Anupam Khurana is B.E. (Mechanical) from Delhi College of Engineering with 10 years experience in software and business development.

Palka Khurana is B.E.(Instrumentation) from Delhi Institute of technology with 8 years experience in Marketing and sales management.

Where are you based?

We are based in Gurgaon (Haryana), India.

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

Our target consumer is online shoppers of all age groups. With online shopping gaining popularity day by day, Price-Hunt was launched with a vision to simplify and enhance online shopping. It revolves about the idea of presenting a one stop search for all online shopping. We We hope to meet our goals and targets soon.

What problem do you solve?

Price-Hunt.com is an online price search engine with real time search as a distinguishing feature. Price search is not limited to any product and current coverage is stores in India. Price-Hunt.com also features current deals and offers for a single click experience. It will change the way people buy products online. One will not have to go to and store individually to check prices and buy products. the one point access to all shopping needs online will be price-hunt.com.

Why now?

Online shopping is gaining momentum and has bright future prospects with an increasing number of people opting to do shopping from the convenience of their home or office. Once keen to shop online, the traditional way is to browse each of the various online stores and order the product from the stores offering the best price (of course with a name and reputation for being good). This takes a lot of time defeating the purpose of time saving in online shopping and one still might miss a store offering a better price and end up buying the product at a higher price. Thus we came up with an idea of providing one click search for all stores so that the shopper finds the best price/deal immediately comparing offerings from the different stores for the product searched. This led us to the idea to develop price-hunt.

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

The company uses generic search engine route to get visitors to the site. We also use social media to provide personalized deals to consumers. Price-hunt.com has an average visitor count of about 900 and we are building up on that. We have just started and will go a long way.

What are your next milestones?

Mobile version of the site is under development. It will be an adaptation of the desktop version to the mobile with reduced features. We also plan an andriod application for the mobile users in very near future. We also plan to launch the Android application of the site very soon.

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

https://www.facebook.com/PriceHuntIndia

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/price-hunt

http://www.linkedin.com/company/price-hunt-com

Vancouver Startup Wantering: Google For Fashion?

You’d be surprised how many data points there are when it comes to shopping online. When you take into consideration data across the web and then across the social web we’re talking about hundreds of millions of data points. While the normal shopper can’t analyze or look at all of those data points, sometimes shopping for clothes online can easily result in 30 or 40 open browser windows. This can get ugly, confusing, and slow your computer down.

A Vancouver startup called Wantering is hoping to help solve your fashion faux pas, by analyzing over 100 million data points for you in what they call the “WantRank” algorithm.

Whether you’re shopping by deal, brand, category, color, print, fabric, or any other category, wantering can help narrow down your search and point you to the best deal. Then, the web platform can take you to a destination to purchase.

The team behind Wantering all came from the online retail world and they’ve spent years combing through and analyzing data.

We got a chance to talk to Wantering Evangelist, Kathleen Ong. Check out the interview below.

What does your company do?

Ever try to shop online when you’re not quite sure exactly what you’re looking for? We’ve been there. Wantering helps shoppers find clothes they’ll love through our fashion search engine. Save yourself the wasted time and frustration of opening up multiple browser tabs, wondering if something is on sale or in stock, and trying to shop from tiny thumbnails.

You can shop for clothes by brand, category, materials, prints, and color across a curated list of boutiques, flash sales sites and major retailers all in one place. And if you’re curious about why something is at the top of a search result, it’s because of our WantRank algorithm. WantRank tracks and analyzes over 100 million data points across the social web and ranks products based on what’s getting the most social-love.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds

The Wantering team are no strangers to online shopping. Wantering’s CEO is Matt Friesen, a technology industry veteran. Matt was previously the founder and CEO of Thirdi Software, a custom software development shop specialized in building eCommerce stores and web applications. Matt started Wantering in 2011 after Thirdi Software was acquired by Invoke Media (the creators of Hootsuite). Nick Cairns is Wantering’s head of UX and was previously the Director of User Interface & Design at Move Inc (the parent company of Realtor.com). Jesse Sherlock is Wantering’s CTO, and has experience building highly scalable systems for Reinvent (one of the largest domain owners in the world) and the BC Lottery Corp. Nicholas Molnar is the head of product, and was previously a web strategist at Thirdi Software. Nicholas sits on the board of directors of F Cancer and has been a speaker at numerous technology-focused events including TedxVancouver.

Where are you based?

Wantering is based in Vancouver and New York City.

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

Vancouver is known as Silicon Valley North. There is a great startup scene here with a growing community of startups, investors and accelerator programs such as GrowLab, which Wantering went through in 2012.

In New York, we’re based out of General Assembly. Wantering was selected as one of six startups to be part of the Canadian Technology Accelerator (CTA) New York program this fall. We’re looking forward to meeting people and getting to know the New York tech community on a more intimate level.

We get the best of both worlds; participating in Vancouver’s growing tech scene is such a rewarding experience and travelling to New York, where the industry is much more mature, has been eye-opening.

What problem do you solve?

We’re solving some of the most basic problems in online shopping. Where do I look for a new pair of shoes? What’s on sale from my favorite designer? Where can I get a blue cocktail dress for this wedding I’m going to?

Wantering gives shoppers a beautiful platform to discover and buy clothing by pulling together the best e-commerce stores all in one place. Gigantic images, detailed descriptions, trending products, and up-to-date stock and sale information make shopping less time consuming and more fulfilling.

Why now?

We believe searching for clothes online has lost its way. The results you see in leading product search engines are typically paid posts by retailers. One look at Google Shopping and you’ll find a big notice in the corner explaining exactly that! Not to mention, they don’t understand my style taste, and they completely disregard current trends in fashion.

Can you name two new features in product search since the ’90s? Shopzilla launched in 1996, Yahoo Shopping in ’97, MySimon in ’98, and Nextag in ’99. They’ve barely changed since, and are somehow still billion dollar businesses.

We think this is an area ripe for disruption. On Wantering.com we put the best products first by using 100 million data points from the social web, and we aren’t going to sell our users out. There is tons of room for innovation in this space, and we’re excited to be building something really cool to help people shop online better.

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

There’s been quite a few big milestones for us in the last 18 months. Releasing our search engine in spring 2013 was a one of the biggest moments for us; it’s both rewarding and motivating to see what you’ve been working on for months come to life. There is still more work to be done and we’re looking forward to what’s ahead.

What are your next milestones?

We have some cool product features in the works over the next while, so we’re excited to get those out!

Where can people find out more?

Shop for clothes you’ll love on www.wantering.com