Jersey City Startup easi6 Wants To Make Meetings Easier With Doors & Dots

No it’s not a game. Doors & Dots is a new mobile app released by Jersey City startup easi6 that aims to help people organize and collaborate on meetings. They focus on the most important details of what, with whom, where, and when.

A lot of meetings, especially impromptu ones, are often too small to bother with long drawn out notes, but too big for a quick mention in your calendar. Doors & Dots makes it incredibly easy to create meetings, share meeting-related content, and then archive that content for later use.

Doors and Dots believes that they are solving common problems with meetings, specifically near term meetings, by focusing in four areas; create, share, snap, and socialize.

While there are many apps out there that are designed to quickly help people organize social events, none have been targeted for people having actual meetings. Most people plan their meetings out in advance, but impromptu meetings occur all the time, especially when someone is traveling and trying to see as many clients, colleagues, or associates as possible.

Say you’re in New York City for a big convention, and you want to kill your downtime by meeting with potential developers. Using Doors & Dots you can quickly organize that meeting (and others just like it), you can keep notes and photos from that meeting, and now you can even use Doors & Dots’ newest feature and track meeting attendees as they are en route. When you’re in a new area and running late, the person you’re meeting with can track you and help you find the best route.

What is your startup?

Our startup is easi6, Inc., a mobile app development company. We make Doors & Dots, a mobile app for creating, sharing, and discovering near-term meetings and for quickly and easily sharing meeting details on the go. Doors & Dots is currently available for free download to iOS devices from the Apple App Store.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Kay Woo (@climbingK) – Founder & CEO Kay holds bachelor’s degrees from Seoul National University (SNU – Korea) and Binghamton University (SUNY) in electrical engineering, financial economics, and mathematics, as well as a master’s degree in financial mathematics from Columbia University. In addition to his academics, Kay also brings to easi6 his experience working with startups and private equity investors in green investments and green technologies/consulting.

Jaehwa Han (@drunkhacker) – Co-Founder & CTO Jaehwa is a co-founder of easi6, Inc., and serves as the lead engineer for Doors & Dots iOS, Android OS, and back-end system development. Jaehwa graduated from Seoul National University with B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science and engineering. From his multiple startup experiences, Jaehwa has gained substantial skills in the development of mobile services, ranging from front-end to back-end systems. Among Jaehwa’s previous mobile projects is the development of a student-facing mobile application for Seoul National University. Additionally, Jaehwa has recently completed an internship at IBM’s Austin Research Lab, participating in IBM’s ‘Mobile First’ project.

Jordan Jarecki (@salserokid) – Co-Founder & CGO Coming to easi6 with academic backgrounds in social and area studies, Jordan also brings his professional experience in direct sales with an energy supply company and business operations in Campus Activities at Binghamton University (SUNY). Having completed startup training with the NYS Small Business Administration, and having developed many student-group and NPO connections, Jordan leverages his training and contacts to add value to easi6.

Where are you based?

easi6 is headquartered in Jersey City, NJ, just above the local favorite Powerhouse Lounge.

What problem does your startup solve?

Our mission at easi6 is to solve common problems with uncommon technologies – uncommon in their application, that is. With Doors & Dots, we’re making coming together with friends, and sharing meeting information on the go, faster and easier. We’re doing this by applying the latest technologies in social networking, location-based services, social media, and user modeling.

While other apps have tried to tackle social planning, Doors & Dots focuses on creating meetings and sharing meeting-related content. Currently, the typical methods of coordinating an activity are to use basic texting or email or to make use of social messaging services, like GroupMe, WhatsApp, or KakaoTalk. These tools are effective for planning meetings but not so friendly for sharing multi-varied content on the go.

Doors & Dots organizes the most important details of a meeting (for what, with whom, where, and when) in a single mobile screen, complete with meeting photos, a comment thread, and an interactive meeting map. Users can share their real-time locations en route to a meeting, chat on the map, and socialize around locations in a virtual, geographic space. We’re also proud of the ability on Doors & Dots to invite friends via text message and/or email using the information logged in a given user’s mobile device contact list. This way, users’ friends can still be kept in the loop, even if those friends do not use Doors & Dots or have smartphones.

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

One major challenge that the easi6 team had to overcome early on was the physical distance between the team members. When the easi6 team first came together, the two business co-founders were in Jersey City, NJ; our lead engineer and co-founder was in Austin, TX; and our four developers were in Seoul, South Korea. Just recently, we brought all but two developers to our headquarters in Jersey City.

For the past six to eight months, however, we’ve had to make it work through careful and consistent communication. In addition to Google’s collaborative tools, Skype & Github have been invaluable services. Of course, we’ve always had to contend with the 13/14-hour time difference between Jersey City and Seoul, depending on Daylight Savings. We understand why Marissa Mayer decided to end Yahoo’s work-from-home employment policies, despite the controversy that ensued.

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

Beyond bringing together an academically diverse and experienced, Korean-American team (including highly connected and talented advisors), and in addition to pivoting from a business venture in a completely different industry, the biggest milestone that our startup has thus far achieved is the development, implementation, and release of Doors & Dots for iOS.

We’re extremely proud of this accomplishment. We’re a group of young, aspiring entrepreneurs and the fact that we could learn as much as we have, develop a concept from scratch, and bring a product to market all in less than a year is an experience that could not be easily replicated in many other industries.

What are your next milestones?

Looking forward to the summer and fall of 2013, we have a number of major milestones to hit:

1. Early implementation of user modeling and machine learning modules for arrival-time and transit-method estimation.

2. Take Doors & Dots cross-platform with an Android OS version. This is an important milestone for the easi6 team as we seek to be competitive in the Korean market.

3. Begin implementation and testing of various premium and retail-orientated features.

4. Complete a beta version of, and prepare for live trials of, a Doors & Dots platform solution central to our early monetization strategy. A beta release of this solution is set for late fall 2013 or early winter 2014.

What’s next for your startup?

At this point, our startup is still very much in the market-fit stage of product development, testing, and iteration. We’re pre-money and pre-revenue, bootstrapping easi6 & Doors & Dots all the way. As our user base grows, we’ll continue to assess the need to take on funding to cover our growth and operating expenses.

In the meantime, we are seeking user feedback, pursuing media and other exposure opportunities, continuing to build out Doors & Dots advanced functionality, developing and testing our first platform solution, and making investor pitches. Furthermore, in order to better reach out to our target-user demographic, we are in the early stages of establishing a student ambassador program at select colleges. This program will continue to expand over the course of 2013 and 2014, and we are always seeking interested and ambitious students.

Where can people find out more, and what is your Twitter username?

We encourage tech enthusiasts, app users, and especially students, to check out our splash page online at: www.doorsndots.com, and to look for us on both Facebook and Twitter. We have a Facebook page and a Twitter page for both the company (www.facebook.com/easi6; @easi6) and the app (www.facebook.com/doorsndots; @doorsndots), respectively. Interested parties can also find us on LinkedIn and join the discussion on our startup blog at: blog.easi6.com.

Michael Arrington’s favorite game has a very similar name and icon to Doors & Dots.

Interview With Australian Startup: CheckinLine

CheckinLine is a new Australian startup that gives insight into data from checkins for engagement, promotion and insight. It works by virtually camping out for registered fans and gives access to promotions and engagements to those who deserve it most by way of a daily check-in.

The startup based in Melbourne claims that in their own case studies with their platform the average engagement level in 2011 was 69% which is well beyond the average engagement on any other platform. CheckinLine gives a more accurate picture to their clients because one check in equals one opinion. Their end research is more intimate than most, they liken it to having a one on one conversation with a companies most active customers.

CheckinLine seems to be a lot like SCVNGR where the user completes a task upon check-in rather than a blank check in without engagement. An engaged check-in is much more effective than a non-engaged check-in.

The company describes their camping out philosophy like this: “I’ll hold your place for you, but I need you to come back regularly to let me know you’re still interested. If not, I’ll reward more committed users”.

We got a chance to interview CheckinLine below:

Interview With California Startup: At The Pool, Casual People Discovery Platform

People discovery is a hot startup space this year. As you’ve heard time and time again it was the startup space dejour at South By Southwest back in March. Startups like Ban.jo, Glancee, and Highlight ruled the roost on the streets of Austin during the interactive festival.

Now four months later, Glancee has been purchased by Facebook and the others are getting just passive traffic (I know some may disagree). One of the problems with people discovery applications are the in your face constant notifications that occur when you’re logged into one of the services. You get inundated with notifications about people you don’t know and sometimes don’t even want to know. There has to be an easier way.

Enter “At The Pool”

The Los Angeles startup offers you a once a day match based on interests and things you may want to do off line. Are you looking for new rock climbing buddies? Maybe you’re looking for new friends to start some pick up hockey? Maybe you’re looking to talk startups or even build a startup? Well At The Pool says there’s a pool for that.

Just what does that mean? Well we talk with At The Pool’s co-founder Alex Capecelatro to find out about their pool party. Check out the interview below:

Nebraska Startup: Arch Get Photo & Video Answers To Your Questions From Anyone

A Nebraska based startup called “Arch” has a different spin on the recommendation space. With Arch, you join the ArchCrowd network and then you are tasked with the duty of helping your fellow Arch network members with their requests for information, pictures and video.

Suppose you live in Kansas and you’re about to partake on your first trip to our nation’s capital in Washington DC. If you sign up for Arch you can ask questions, like “what is there to do in Washington DC”. From there Arch will find someone in the Arch network in Washington DC who can answer your question.

The Arch person answering your question can take photos or videos of things to do in DC and send them back to you. You’ll receive a push notification when a fellow Arch member has responded to your request. As more and more Arch members arrive in Washington DC to start their day or what have you, they will also get a notification to answer your question. Soon you’ve crowd sourced a bunch of things to do in Washington DC.

Arch makes it easy to supply answers via photos, videos or even just text. If you’re looking for things to do, hotels to stay at, places to eat, places to walk or just a quiet corner to read a book on a trip, Arch lets you connect with real people who have decided they want to help people, by signing up for Arch.

The Arch platform at archcrowd.com is still in private beta. In fact Co-founder Joe Smith attended Apple’s WWDC conference in San Francisco CA this week and was fielding Arch requests from the San Francisco area all week long.

The Arch team of four co-founders spoke last month at Cornstalks a monthly forum for individuals interested in high growth entrepreneurship.

The team includes: (from their website)

Tim Hermanson: (top left) Arch project manager – Tim received a B.S. in business administration/finance from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2006. Tim has over 5 years of experience managing various projects at a large, local bank with a focus on compliance and operations.

Mike Ackerman: (top right) Webserver architecture and API specification for Arch – Mike graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2006 with a B.S. in Computer Engineering and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. He has since worked in Industrial Automation and Software Engineering focusing on .NET.

Joe Smith: (bottom left) Mobile client application design and implementation – Joe received a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Joe has 6+ years experience as a software engineer designing and implementing both server-side and user-facing software projects using a variety of technologies and platforms.

Kari Petsche: (bottom right) Arch graphic design lead – Kari graduated from The Art Institute of Pittsburgh with a degree in graphic design in 2001. In the past ten years, Kari has won several design awards working with clients such as Tim Burton, Warner Brothers, NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, 20th Century Fox, Tavern On The Green & The Bonnaroo Music Festival.

Linkage

Check out Arch at their website here

Follow them on the Angel List here

Big props to our homies at Silicon Prairie For this story and that pic we borrowed

Nibletz is THE voice of startups “Everywhere else” support the team here

Interview With New York Startup Spark Rebel

Social discovery is one of the hottest online and mobile crazes right now. There are social discovery sites for everything from restaurants, events, people, things, food and fashion. Spark Rebel is an amazing blend of social and discovery revolving around fashion that real women are wearing today. Sure it’s nice to be able to shop the top tier boutiques in Chelsea, Manhattan and Rodeo drive and Spark Rebel does have feature some high fashion, but the thick of this social discovery site for fashion is what everyday women are working to work, out on the town or for a relaxing evening.

As people’s lives got busier and busier and they began to take to online shopping over in store shopping, an entirely new way to discover things popped up. The problem with traditional online shopping sites is that you’re seeing what the stores want you to see. You’re seeing the fashions that the buyers are seeing and not necessarily what everyone’s wearing.

Then, you go about your busy day and see that awesome outfit a woman is wearing at Starbucks or you see a must have dress on a woman in the elevator with you, and then you never see it again.

Spark Rebel uses a mixture of social, discovery and recommendation to bring the hottest trends and fashions to their users.

Spark Rebel was born out of site for teenage girls, which is a segment even harder to curate than traditional women’s wear. We got a chance to interview Spark Rebel. Check out that interview after the break

Baltimore Startup: Woofound Launches Gamified Recommendation App For iOS

Woofound is a Baltimore based startup in the recommendation space. Since we hail from Baltimore and Philly, this is exciting news for our area, and of course “everywhere else”.

Woofound matches your personality to things you want to do. Woofound was actually built in conjunction with psychoanalyst and psychotherapist Dr. Noreen Honeycutt from Baltimore Maryland. This is actually the second startup in just as many days that we’ve reported on that dives much deeper than the surface to serve up recommendations or discoveries. The first was London based ColourDNA which uses the psychology of colours in it’s discovery platform.

Our friend Sarah Pereze over at TechCrunch reports that Woofound co-founders Dan Sines and Josh Spears founded the company last year after Spears was set up on a blind date. The two friends thought, wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to match up interests based on personality traits?

Like Parking Panda, (another Baltimore startup) Woofound’s launch centers around Baltimore and DC, however today’s launch brings online the 70 top metro markets. Perez pointed out that most of the recommendations in her hometown of Tampa were things she was already familiar with. I had much better luck in Atlanta this early morning.

There’s not much mention of how deep the personality integration goes however they are going to develop a version of Woofound for the Univesity of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) that will help students with career path goals.

The interface is nice and it has this simple feel to it. The user simply rates things “Me or Not Me” reminiscent of the hot or not days.

The iOS version launched today with Android in the coming months.

Linkage:

Check out Woofound here

Source: TechCrunch

We’re the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more stories from “everywhere else”

Ohio Startup: Whotever, A New Social Website To Discover Whotever You Want

After South By Southwest in Austin Texas earlier this year, the last thing people want to hear about is a new “discovery” app or platform. It seems everyday another startup is launching to help discover people socially. Well this startup, based in Ohio, called Whotever is hoping to fix that problem.

As more and more social discovery sites pop up, actually using the web or your mobile to discover information on the things you actually want to know about gets harder in harder. Even with basic search engines like Google, the results you get today are much more polluted than the results of say a 2005 Google search.

That problem became evident to Timi Azeez and the other co-founders of Ohio based startup Whotever, 8 years ago. Azeez told nibletz.com:

“About 8 years ago, the three of us were in a heated debate and it prompted us to confirm our facts/findings on the internet. During the research online, we discovered that we could not find exactly the information we needed for our debate. Instead, we spent hours sifting through the data page by page defeating the purpose of the discussion. We realized the internet experience was more hectic than fun and this precluded us to start Whotever.com. It was the first step to improving the users’ experience on the internet.”

That’s the foundation for this new startup that they hope to launch later this year. We got a chance to talk a little more in-depth with Azeez about whatever.

More after the break
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Massachusetts Startup: 7 Lunches Brings Lunch Specials Right To Your Email Or Phone

The daily deals space is blowing up like crazy. Other than social discovery apps, daily deals has to be the hottest app platform out there right now. It’s getting crowded, but every once in a while something different comes along in the daily deals space worth mentioning.

7 Lunches is one of those things. With the hustle and bustle lives we all live these days, the cost conscious business professional doesn’t have time to comb through lunch specials on restaurant websites. They also don’t have the time to cruise down to their local hot spot to just “see” if there is a good special. We need to know the specials and we need to know them now.

That’s how co-founder and co-creator of 7 lunches, Ryan Maturski came up with the idea for 7 lunches. He was eating in a local sub shop in North Adams, MA and he told the owner that he should send his daily lunch specials out via email. Voila. Marturski and co-founder Jeff Lee set out to do just that, not just with the sub shop but with every restaurant that they could get to participate.

More after the break
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