Upstart Graduates 5 New Female-Led Companies

It seems that everywhere I go, people are talking about women in tech and women in startups. Everyone has an opinion on why it’s hard for women in tech (or IF it’s hard). Some think the solution comes from changing institutions to accommodate families. Others think women just need to embrace careers and quit being timid.

There are plenty of opinions, but we in the startup world know that execution matters more than theory. Yesterday in Memphis, execution was on display.

The people behind Start Co in Memphis, TN are actually doing something to advance women in tech, and the fruit of that labor was seen in the 5 teams that presented at Upstart’s Demo Day. I talked about Upstart in July, and like most Demo Days, it’s amazing to see how far the companies have come in a few short months. Of course, it’s still early days for all the companies, and everyone knows the real work begins after Demo Day.

WeddingWorthy.com–WeddingWorthy.com was a late addition to Upstart cohort, but when leaders saw how serious founder Tameesah Desangles was about her business, they felt she’d earned a place at Demo Day. Desangles’ company is a visual shopping platform for brides and their bridesmaids. There are thousands of things to buy for a wedding, and with 25 retailers on board, there are plenty of options.

Artwardly–Leni Stoeva changed her business model quite a bit during the accelerator, but the final product is an art-leasing platform that connects high-end art and individuals and businesses. No more Fortune 500 companies with Aunt Ida’s black and whites in the lobby. With her connections in the art world, and some great developers building the platform, Stoeva is on pace to change the way collectors, businesses, and even museums source their art.

GemPhones–We’ve written about GemPhones before, and founder Kelli Meade is still going strong. GemPhones is electronic jewelry, combining the function of earphones with the style of necklaces. Lots of people flaunted their GemPhones at the after parties, and it’s really impressive how many styles are already available.

Stylecrook–A native of Bermuda, founder Zakkiyah Daniels came all the way from Thailand to participate in the Upstars accelerator. Stylecrook is a social shopping site that allows you to receive discounts when you enlist your friends to help you pick out clothes. Let’s face it, that’s how most women shop best anyway. Stylecrook is now making it digital.

Kids360Now–Audrey Jones started her presentation with a sobering story about children harmed at a day care and taken to a hospital, but because their parents contact information was inaccessible, the parents didn’t find out until pick up time. Kids360Now solves that problem by putting the information into the parents’ hands, and allowing them to grant access when needed. A daycare administrator can simply open an app on her phone in the even of emergency, rather than trying to reach a file cabinet.

The women of the first Upstart cohort made big strides in the 3 months of accelerator life. We at Nibletz are cheering them on as they continue to grow and develop their companies.

UberConference Could Save Your Startup On Conference Calls

UberConference, Startup Tips, startups, conference calling There’s a reason that UberConference won the TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 Battlefield, and continues to win awards today, like theInternet Telephony Excellence Award. It’s because they’re out to save their users money and headaches that often times come with conference calls.

Conference calls have often been the brunt of true frustration. Until recently conference calls meant dialing into a long, strange, and sometimes long distance number. Then you had to dial an equally as long passcode. This could be a pain sitting at your desk but even more of a pain when you’re mobile.

Another big pain point for people that require a regular amount of conference calls is sound quality. By the time the 3rd or 4th person enters the call it’s like you’re talking in a tunnel. With UberConference you get the benefit of HD audio calls from anywhere on the internet.

UberConference has put together a core feature set wrapped around a visual dashboard that makes conference calling a breeze. So much in fact that lawyers are raving about it.

UberConference’s core features are free and for just $10 a month you can get UberConference Pro which rounds out a suite of sweet conference calling features.

Start a conference without having to enter a PIN
Schedule conference in advance
Automatically call participants at scheduled time (Pro only)
Schedule recurring meetings (Pro only)
Get a local phone number (Pro only)
Optional web display shows who is currently talking
Easily and quickly mute participants one at at time, or by group
Participants allowed conference before the organizer shows up
Record call easily with one button
iPhone and Android apps (free) let you easily start a conference from your phone

Then, after the call UberConference provides you with a report that details who was on the call, the exact times they dialed in, who was on first and who joined the call last.

UberConference allows the first 5 participants free. Then if you connect your social media channels you can get another 10 people on your call and uploading your contacts gives you two more spots for people on your calls.

You can learn more about UberConference by watching the video below.

Education Startups Have You Applied For LAUNCHedu At SXSW?

Last year when we decided to head down a little earlier than we traditionally do for SXSWi, we were quite surprised at what we saw with LAUNCHedu and SXSWedu. For those unaware, SXSW hosts an entire conference a week earlier than SXSW Interactive, SXSW Music and SXSW Film. That conference, SXSWedu, celebrates education, technology, and edtech startups.

Like the SXSWi accelerator, SXSWedu has it’s own startup track called LAUNCHedu which functions almost like the SXSW Interactive accelerator.

The pitch and startup contest pits the best of the best educational startups from across the country against each other in front of startup influences like Mitch Kapor from Kapor Capital. Many VC’s and angels have found that SXSWedu finds startups on the cusp of greatness.

At last year’s event we met great startups like Common Curriculum, a Baltimore based company that has created an easy to use platform for teachers to develop curriculum. We also got to spend time with MatchBox, a startup that has put the college application process entirely on an iPad. We even got to spend time with Clever, the startup that won the K-12 category at LAUNCHedu. This company provides a platform that connects educational software providers with legacy student information systems and makes it all talk to each other.

If you’re an edtech startup and meet these requirements than you want to head over to the SXSWedu site before November 8th and register.

It’s been said that SXSWedu is growing faster than the SXSW Interactive festival grew when it was first added. It falls the week before SXSWi in March.

Click here to see our coverage of SXSWedu

5 Tips On Design From Dave McClüren Swedish Design Genius: More At Warm Gun!

1. Design is color. And by color, I mean primary colors, everywhere.

2. Comic sans is so hot right now.

3. Design for conversion, not for aesthetic. So long as it adheres to point #1.

4. When your design induces seizures, you know its good.

5. Designers & startups are like Dolce & Gabbana. Put them together + its magic!

500 Startups is at it again with one of their awesome one day conferences for creatives, startups, and innovators. This time the focus is measurable design. 500 Startup’s Warm Gun conference takes place November 22nd, and you’ll get to enjoy intoxicating amounts of design knowledge from some of the best speakers in the world.

You’ve heard of Tryptophan right? That’s what makes you sleep the day away after Thanksgiving dinner. Well at this 500 startups conference, you’ll experience 500-o-phan, a chemical overdose of 500 awesomeness which will leave you napping the following day. Hence, the reason it’s only a one day conference.

In true 500 Startups fashion they’ve left the pikers on the side and promise only the hottest “gun slingers” and “hot shots”. You won’t find any posers, just people that know what they’re talking about in regards to design. Here’s the lineup so far.

Jared Spool, CoFounder and CEO UIE
Julie Hovarth, Designer, GitHub
Cap Watkins, Product Design Lead, Etsy
Joshua Taylor, Product Designer, Evernote
Andrew Watterson, Designer, Asana
Luke Wroblewski, CEO & Co-Founder, Polar
Carrie Whitehead, Product Manager, Zappos
PJ McCormick, UX Design Lead, Amazon
Joshua Porter, Founder, Hubspot
Marc Hemeon, Senior UX Designer, YouTube
Karen Hanson, VP of Design Innovation, Intuit
Frederico Holgado, Lead UX Developer, MailChimp
Michelle Haag, Director of Design, Ebay
Michael Boeke, Product Manager, BrainTree
Christine Tsai, Partner, 500 Startups
Christen O’Brien, Partner, 500 Startups
Frank Yoo, Mobile Product Lead, Lyft
Drew Domm, Design lead, Sosh
Cesar Salazar, Venture Partner, 500 Startups
Bjorn Jeffery, CEO & Co-Founder, Toca Boca

ROCK THE MIC & WIN 25K INVESTMENT…

500 Startups is looking for startups that use design to dominate – consumer, b2b, they want it all. Are you transforming something mundane or necessary into beauty so stunning that unicorns weep? Are you using design to inform, inspire, and delight your users while watching your conversion multiply? Are you making everyone’s day better, one UX at a time? Apply for the Double Rainbow Double Unicorn Startup Design Award for a chance to rock the mic & score a 25k investment from 500 Startups.

Warm Gun is November 22nd at Hotel Kabuki 1625 Post Street in San Francisco.
You can register here.

And don’t forget about this amazing conference:

KC Startup Hoopla.io Is Causing A Ruckus In The Event Space

To many the event space is an extremely crowded one for new startups. It seems everyone and their grandmother wants to challenge the stranglehold that LiveNation/Ticketmaster has on the event industry. Others feel that they are safe battling the likes of Eventbrite and TicketLeap, and then there are the dime a dozen startups aggregating events in your local area.

Well when we heard Kansas City startup Local Ruckus was pivoting to something new in the event space we were intrigued.

Basically the problem is that event repository websites are everywhere with none really having that big a piece of the pie. That problem stems from the content. Typically these event sites have a sentence or two about the event leaving potential attendees wondering what the event is really about. Without a more indepth look at the event itself, event organizers are leaving would be patrons on the table, or at least still at home.

Adam Arredondo and Matthew Marcus set out to change the way events are marketed and promoted by putting an emphasis on the content and content distribution.

Here at nibletz we must get 25 emails a day from entepreneurs and event organizers that ask us to publish their event. Well it’s hard to write five sentences much less 300 words on an event when all we get is the name of the event, date, time and if we’re lucky, cost. So unless we want to go digging through the internet to find the relevant information and build a story we have to pass on it, and it may have been an amazing event.

Marcus described Hoopla.io like this: “Many local businesses don’t have the time, money, or expertise to effectively promote their events. Publishers struggle to provide high quality, relevant local events to their audience. With a focus on content distribution, Hoopla.io solves both sides of the problem and will create a nationwide local events syndication network.”

In it’s previous life Local Ruckus was trying to do what many local event sites are doing. While it may not sound like it, Hoopla.io is offering a new, and definitely refreshing approach to local events on a national scale. Local Ruckus had hit a wall that other startups like Louisville’s Impulcity and Nashville’s Wannado have hit. That all changed.

“We had been working on our original startup Local Ruckus for a couple years now, and it hit us that Ruckus didn’t have the scalability or force of disruption needed to spread across the country like we had planned. With that epiphany, we knew we needed to change our direction, and change it fast. Hence, Hoopla.io was conceived and born in the span of two months. With Local Ruckus, our passion to help local businesses better promote their events, and consumers more easily discover local events, was always simmering on the back burner of our minds. Hoopla.io was created when our goals and mission really started to boil. And everyone knows to take action when things start to boil.” Marcus said in an interview.

Hoopla.io has already received significant validation. They’ve already partnered with Kansas City corporate giant Sprint. They’ve also acquired over $100,000 in non-dilution capital, been named “Best Young Company to Work For” by Turnstone, and they’ve also been accepted into the Digital Sandbox program.

Hoopla.io is also preparing to pitch in the semi-finals of the Miller Lite Tap The Future startup contest. The contest pits startups against each other in regional pitch offs judged by ABC Shark Tank Shark, Daymond John. Miller Lite held their first semi-finals in Phoenix Arizona on October 15th. The remaining pitch offs include Atlanta, October 22nd, Dallas Texas, October 30th, Philadelphia , November 1st and Chicago November 5th. Hoopla is pitching at the Dallas event.

Find out more about Hoopla here.

Why Can’t We Be Friends: Social Sharing and SEO

By Markerly’s Christine Beuhler

No one can seem to agree: is SEO out of date and obsolete or still worth it? And what are social signals? What’s going on? I’m going back to bed.

SEO and Google

Google doesn’t seem to like SEO much, which is understandable. So-called “black-hat” techniques (simply bad SEO practices) have made it their business to dupe search engines for years to get their clients in the top rankings and first pages of results. That bad name given by these techniques has pervaded SEO to the point that using SEO makes some companies uneasy and worry about its legitimacy as a method to getting more.

Content and Social Signals

Google’s phasing out of SEO means they have turned to other means to populate the top rankings, in this case social signals. The rule of thumb of social signals is the more times a piece of content is shared (the more likes, mentions, tweets, retweets, +1′s, etc.) the higher quality content it is, and generally the higher in the rankings it will show up. In fact, about half of the traffic to sites is now coming from social sharing instead of searching.

Creating quality content which is ALSO popular is not easy, but it is a more consistently reliable practice which makes sense to people. People like something, they share it, it’s a pretty simple concept, as opposed to monkeying around with technical SEO terms that they don’t understand and which seem to insist on changing anyway.

Marrying The Two

So the two have their differences, but it’s easy to see that social sharing and SEO affect each other. Their relationship is becoming intertwined, so what’s an entrepreneur/blogger/business owner to do?

As long as searching is still around, (and I’m pretty sure Google isn’t taking a vacation anytime soon) won’t SEO always be necessary? In that case, what still matters when it comes to SEO? To create harmony between the two groups, here are some areas where to marry SEO AND great content for optimum results.

(If you haven’t already, go take care of your content. Seriously. Social sharing is great, but it’s not king. Content is.)

1. GREAT Headlines

The function of a truly great headline is that it grabs, intrigues, and entices you into reading the full piece, usually in 8 words or less. A tall order, especially when stats say only 20% of people read your piece past the headline. No pressure or anything. But headlines are also a great opportunity to state clearly what your piece is about, and the words you select are a big contributing factor when it comes to online searching.

Pro Tip: Personally, I’m not a fan of “shocker” headlines, because after reading, I often feel manipulated, meaning my perception of the headline did not align with my perception of the article. You don’t ever want to give your audience a feeling of being used. They will determine that you are “not worth it” and they won’t come back.

2. Keywords

Carefully selecting keywords will really help out the people who are trying to find you, but it also helps you narrow down what your post is actually ABOUT. Sometimes, you start off having no idea what you’re talking about until the end, when the big picture slowly comes into view and you grasp it. Kudos for that, keywords!

Pro Tip: Longer phrases often help out more than shorter ones. Competition for one or two word phrases can be extremely fierce, so the more specific you are, the more likely you are to to bring in the kind of traffic you’re looking for.

3. Images

When choosing titles, captions, and alt text for your images, make sure they are tightly relevant to your topic and this could help bump up your content even more.

Pro Tip: Blocks of text can be scary and intimidating to the reader, but engaging images keep the eye flowing through the entire piece, especially if they’re funny images or have funny text.

4. Video

This one may surprise you, but stats show that video automatically ranks higher in Google Search over any other type of content. This a huge plus for your rankings, but having video content also sets you apart by switching up the medium of your content, making it more exciting for your regular readers.

Pro Tip: Show your personality and be engaging in how you move and talk. Try to turn off your anxieties about being in front of the camera and always focus on how to best help people. So as always, keep your content fresh and lively, because that’s what matters the most. But using some of the tips shown above can make sure you’re found by the right people, while keeping your content prevalent on social media. See? They don’t have to fight.

Check out Markerly’s blog about the future of content and why you need a content strategy, here.

UpGlobal Partners With State Department, Google Doubles Down

October is a big month for UpGlobal, the new entity created when Startup America and Startup Weekend merged back in May. Next week UpGlobal will hold its first regional Champions Summit under the new umbrella. Since its formation, Startup America held quarterly summits for their regional champions. Now, after taking the summer quarter off, the two days of best practices, town halls, and networking continue. This time around they will incorporate Startup Digest curators and Startup Weekend leaders when the conference opens next Tuesday in Iowa.

Leading up to the big summit, UpGlobal had two major pieces of news that will help further their efforts to empower entrepreneurs and their communities around the world.

The first is a partnership with the US State Department, formally announced by President Barack Obama in a videotaped address he made to the attendees of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. ” In partnership with Up Global, we’ll help support 500,000 new entrepreneurs and their startups around the world,” President Obama told the audience.

UpGlobal oversees these four key initiatives to help grow entrepreneurs across the globe.

Startup Weekend: A 54-hour event that educates aspiring entrepreneurs by immersing them in the process of moving an idea to market.
NEXT: A five-week course for early-stage startup founders to better understand their product or service, become ideal candidates for accelerators or incubators, and fully integrate proven entrepreneurial methodologies.
Startup Digest: The world’s largest curated source of information, news, and resources for anyone interested in entrepreneurship. All content is tailored to reflect the local community, and subscribers receive a personalized digest each week.
Corporate Connections: A platform that builds connections between startups and corporations based on shared goals and industries. The platform allows startups to develop corporate partnerships, mentoring relationships, client and vendor relationships, and licensing opportunities in new and meaningful ways.

UP Global will work with the U.S. State Department, with the help of the Department of Commerce and USAID, to bring programs like these to new corners of the planet, tailor them to the needs of specific communities, and help secure the resources and network to bring these efforts to life. This collaboration will help achieve the objective of doubling the reach of entrepreneurship programs and resources by 2016 by:

Connecting: UP Global and the State Department will work together to help establish new UP Global chapters in 500 new countries and augment existing resources available to aspiring entrepreneurs.
Leveraging Networks: The State Department will draw on its extensive networks in target countries to bring in local business leaders and prominent American entrepreneurs to reinforce UP Global’s programs and events.
Drawing attention to the cause: UP Global and the State Department will coordinate to get information out about the entrepreneurship resources available through UP Global, including, when appropriate, through social media channels and outreach to local press.

The next big news for Seattle based Up Global was that Google, who has been partnering with Startup Weekend since last year through their Google For Entrepreneurs initiative, has doubled down and taken over as lead sponsor for Startup Weekend.

Upstart Business Journal said:

“…the Google partnership is especially powerful for the financial and technical support it can provide. UP is one of over 70 organizations that Google for Entrepreneurs has provided assistance to since formalizing a year ago. The entity within the search giant has been ramping up in recent weeks, announcing a new Google Hub network in seven non-coastal cities and plans to grow it to more.”

Google has replaced the Kauffman Foundation as the lead sponsor of the organization.

Find out more here and here.

Some Amazing Tips To Make Board Meetings Suck Less

When should your startup have a Board of Directors? That’s a question that many young startups either ask, or at least pretend they know the answer to. First off until you have venture money on board, a Board of Directors isn’t necessary. You may choose to assemble an advisory board, but it’s typically when you get VC’s to the table that they want to have a formal seat at it.

Now you may run into an angel that gives you a big chunk of seed money and wants to get on your board. When you decide to take that money you want to also make sure you want that particular angel involved in your decision making process. You may want to pass on that angel and find someone who will let you grow to a series A round before adding decision makers into your company.

Rule number one in this case is very important:

Investment and Equity does not necessarily = board seat.

We will dive more into the board in another post, but as a general rule of thumb, once you start adding a board of directors, you’re not the only one calling the shots.

Of course the opposite also holds true. You may know someone, an investor or not, that strategically makes a lot of sense for your business. You may also have someone that adds clout to your board. In that case you may want to add them to your board, but again take into consideration what that means for your startup.

First Round Review, First Round Capital’s blog for entrepreneurs and by entrepreneurs, took a really good look at “The Secret To Making Board Meetings Suck Less.” Jeff Bonforte co-founder of Xobni which sold to Yahoo, Mike Maples CEO of Floodgate, Dan Rosensweig CEO of Chegg, and Nirav Tolia all weighed in on this important discussion.

Once you have a board of directors you have to have board meetings. Those can be extremely intimidating for almost any entrepreneur turned CEO. If you’ve been an entrepreneur all of your life or left a traditional “job” to become an entrepreneur your first board meeting may feel like you have bosses, because you do.

“Board meetings are the height of insecurity for a CEO. Basically it’s a group of people who can both judge you and fire you based on that judgment,” Bonforte told First Round Review. Bonforte found that board meetings at his previous startup iDrive were nerve racking and that was stemming from the fact that his board was constantly criticizing and “attacking” him. He decided that from then on he would find board members vested in helping him rather than attacking him.

Bonforte gives these reasons that board meetings typically suck:

Board meetings are long, grueling, and hard to focus.
It’s nearly impossible to capture your company’s story accurately when you’re obligated to only talk about certain things, i.e. how money’s getting spent.
You can’t always get who you want on your board. Sometimes you have a choice, but most of the time one or two members will not have been your first pick and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Too many boards are too big, and too many board members invite observers and general hangers on — all who want to chime in with something to sound smart.
If you present a deck from the front of a boardroom, you’re asking to be judged and picked apart. It’s like you’re pitching your company all over again, only this time to people who can take it away from you.

The single biggest take away from Bonforte on all of this is:

“Every single entrepreneur forgets that the board works for them,” Bonforte says. “They’re in meetings getting their asses kicked and walking out with even more work to do. They feel like they have to prove their vision instead of proving that everyone in the room should be working together to solve the problem. As the CEO, you feel like it’s your job to carry the ball across the line, but it’s also the board’s job too.”

Bonforte and the other CEO’s offer some great, and some very simple, tips to making board meetings suck less like, don’t stand up and don’t do your deck from the front of the room.

Check out the rest of this important information at First Round Review.

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.

Uber Jumps In To Help DC’s Furloughed Federal Workers

We’re now in the 16th day of the federal government shutdown. Startups are trying to help furloughed employees in whatever ways they can.

Last week we reported that Washington DC-based 1776 had launched a website to help match employees with job opportunities and volunteer work for startups. Sure everyone needs money, but some furloughed employees have expressed the fact that they are also bored to tears. The site gives them an opportunity to work with something innovative and exciting. It gives the startup access to a potentially high qualified employee base.

Now the San Francisco based car hailing startup Uber has responded to the needs of the furloughed federal workers in the DC area.

Through Friday, Uber is offering their UberX product free for two rides up to $20 each.

While the Uber app is known for it’s black sedan and SUV service, UberX is a taxicab alternative. Rather than sedan service, users of UberX are picked up in midrange vehicles like Toyota Prius, Toyota Camry and similar type vehicles. All of the vehicles seat up to four people.

Uber is introducing the UberX product to the DC market, where their original service is still going very strong. At the same time it allows them to expose the service to the capital’s federal work force of hundreds of thousands which have gone without pay for over two weeks. It is important to note that the promotion is actually open to anyone in the DC area, but those affected by the shutdown will find that the company’s promotion came at the right time.

How does it work?

Enter promo code DCLOVESuberX in the Uber app.
Slide the car type selector to ‘uberX’—this promotion does not apply to uberTAXI, UberBLACK, or UberSUV.
Take up to two free rides before Friday, 10/18, at 11:59PM.
DCLOVESuberX covers DC area rides up to $20. Trust us—at these rates, $20 will get you far!

Here is a list of participating businesses:

201 Bar
9:30 Club
Al Dente
Argonaut
Atlas Fitness
Atlas Underground
Art Jamz
Bacchus Wine Cellar
Bearnaise
Bethesda Blues & Jazz Club
Blowout Bar
Boundary Stone
Brasserie Beck
Cactus Cantina
Cafe Deluxe
Capella Washington Restaurant
Capitol Hill Fitness
Capitol Lounge
Cashion’s Eat Place
Charlie Palmer Steak
Chef Geoff’s
Chez Billy
Chupacabra
Co Co. Sala
Daisy Baby Boutique
Darlington House
DC Improv
Duo Boutique
Edgar Bar & Kitchen
Farmer Fishers Bakers
Fia’s Fabulous Finds
The Front Page
Graffiato
Granville Moore’s
Gymboree – Play & Music
H Street Country Club
Hela Spa
HR-57
I.M.P. International Spy Museum
Hank’s Oyster Bar

Lauriol Plaza
Liberty Tree
Lisner Auditorium
Mangolens Photography
Marcel’s by Robert Wiedmaier
Mixx
Mellow Mushroom
Merriweather Post Pavillion
Mussel Bar and Grille
Muncheez Mania
Nellie’s
Pure Barre
Queen Vic
Qi Spa
Redwood Bethesda
Scratch DC
Sculpt DC
Shakespeare Theatre
Skin Beauty Lounge
Smith & Wollensky
Soupergirl
Snallygaster
Sticky Rice
Spirit Cruises
The Sweet Lobby
Tango DC
Tom Yum District
Tortilla Coast
Tusuva Body & Skin Care
U St Music Hall
Union Pub
Velocity 5 – Arlington
Vendetta
Vinoteca
Whitlow’s on Wilson
Willow Fashion
Wildwood Kitchen
Wingos
Zest American Bistro
zipcar

What Does It Cost to Run a Startup? [Infographic]

There are many costs associated with running a startup. Designers, developers, office space and supplies, and travel all add up. While each company will have costs unique to them, it’s pretty safe to say that starting a world-changing company is expensive.

We’ve always said location makes a difference, though. It’s expensive to live and work in big hubs like San Francisco and New York. Investor money can go further in the flyover states than it can on the coasts.

Staff.com–a startup that connects companies with talented remote workers–produced an infographic outlining the costs of starting up in different cities worldwide. They calculated to the cost of office space and the salaries of 2 developers and 1 designer to find which city was most expensive to start up in.

Surprisingly, New York came in third, behind Zurich and Sydney. San Francisco was only marginally cheaper than New York, and Manila came it at the least expensive. In the Philippines, you can apparently start up for $45,000 a year, which is half the salary of 1 developer in Zurich.

Of course, not every startup needs office space, or 2 developers and designer. Coworking can make office space less expensive, and these days a lot of things can be outsourced. Regardless, it’s interesting to see the numbers support the idea that starting up everywhere else has financial benefits, too.

Check out the infographic from Staff.com below:

Staff.com – Connecting Great Companies with Global Talent

1776 Turns Google Doc Into Unfurlough.us

Last week we broke the news that the entrepreneurs at 1776 in Washington, DC jumped into action when the federal government was first shut down. The first thing they did was hold an impromptu event which brought together the startups at 1776 with furloughed federal workers in the area.

What came out of that was the Google Doc we reported about last Friday. 1776 found a clear path between workers on furlough and startups that needed paid workers, volunteers or people to do small projects.

They’ve now turned the simple GoogleDoc into unfurlough.us which is picking up a lot of traction. The new jobs site, set up to connect furloughed workers with positions in startups, caught the eye of Mashable on Tuesday.

Mashable revealed that all kinds of people are signing up, even people that aren’t on furlough. 1776 cofounder Donna Harris told Mashable that they aren’t going to take down anyone’s profile.

So is it working?

Mashable reports that Josh Hurd, the founder of Nonprofitmetrics, used unfurlough.us to find a blogger who he is paying a minimum of $35 per post. Lily Bradley who works for the Department of Health and Human Services is also on furlough. She found a temporary job taking pictures for a startup that pays more than her day job.

1776 does have a warning posted on the unfurlough.us website reminding furloughed workers to check their agency’s “ethics guidance” to make sure they are allowed to engage in outside work while on furlough.

1776 even has their own listing looking for someone to do PR & Marketing research.

Building unfurlough.us was a community effort between blen and 1776 and built on the open source platform drupal, reportedly in under five hours.

The Role of IT Training in Today’s Startup World

The Role of IT Training in Today’s Startup World

The world of business and startups has changed a great deal over the course of the past decade or so. No longer is it practical to think that a business can be operated without IT, and whether that comes from an employee who is well-versed on the subject or yourself will depend upon both how much interest/time you have in learning more about IT and how much you can afford someone else to take care of things for you. The fact is, every business owner can benefit from increasing his base of knowledge when it comes to IT, especially when it comes to overseeing daily operations.

You don’t have to delegate a huge amount of time if you want to prioritize IT, but putting some effort into the equation will definitely help to push your business in the right direction. Here are just a few reasons why IT training is more important in today’s business world than ever in the past.

Businesses Rely on IT to Keep Moving

Years ago, IT didn’t usually take up a great deal of space in the minds of business owners when it came to day-to-day operations. Today, however, it is essential part of running a company. Without IT, the flow, retrieval and storage of information for businesses of all kinds would come to a screeching halt. Many business owners who simply don’t have the time or interest to handle the IT side of the business, and while this can be an effective tool, it can also be quite costly. Understanding more about how to handle the day-to-day logistics of your business’s IT can be quite freeing and is more than worth your while.

IT Is Crucial to Customer Satisfaction

Your customers need to know that they can get in touch with you no matter what time of day or night they need to. This means that if your website, email or other IT-related services are down, you’ll not only be missing out on the chance to bring in new business, but will also be running the risk of angering current clients and customers. Gaining a better understanding of IT will allow you to take care of any issues that might pop up, which means that any downtime can be cut to an absolute minimum. If you’re in the dark and can’t get in touch with whomever is handling your IT, you’re bound to run into issues that could be costly to your business.

IT Will Only Become More Integrative

Technology is advancing at an alarming rate, and businesses of all kinds rely on it for daily operations. While there are still certain types of businesses that don’t utilize IT as much as others, this is likely to change as the Internet continues to become a central aspect of the professional world. This will be especially important in terms of security. Understanding IT and training your employees to do the same will be a huge part of providing online security for your company in the years to come. It’s safe to assume that years from now, a business that doesn’t have solid integration of IT will have an immensely difficult time finding success and surviving in the marketplace.

There are plenty of resources online and elsewhere that can help teach you about IT issues. Follow the link here to learn more about an education in IT security measures and the technology involved in protecting your IP.

Kelly Jane Brown is an aspiring writer, entrepreneur and student at UCLA.

CEA Teams Up With UpGlobal To Expand Eureka Park, The Startup TechZone

Two years ago when we covered the first Eureka Park at the International CES in Las Vegas, we were amazed by the amount of good quality startups showcasing there. Last year when we embarked on Eureka Park it had doubled in size and also offered some great talks from the likes of Scott Case, Tony Hsieh and Brad Feld (just to name a few).

This coming year (January 2014), CEA has partnered with the new UpGlobal (the global partnership between Startup America and Startup Weekend) to expand the Eureka Park TechZone.

Now in its third year, the Eureka Park TechZone will span more than 2,000 square meters and showcase more than 200 exhibitors at the 2014 CES. Eureka Park will be located on level one of The Venetian and returns as the vibrant hub for the entrepreneur and startup communities to learn, connect, and inspire.

“The Eureka Park TechZone provides a stage for new companies with technologies for which we don’t yet have product categories, to market their innovation to venture capitalists, media and buyers. Eureka Park’s continued success solidifies the International CES as the ultimate proving ground for innovators of all shapes and sizes in consumer technology,” said Karen Chupka, senior vice president, International CES and Corporate Business Strategy, CEA. “We are thrilled to once again partner with UP Global and the National Science Foundation for the 2014 CES, and can’t wait to experience the ‘Eureka’ ideas that will fuel and transform our lives in the years to come.”

Also new for 2014, the Academia Tech TechZone will be floored within Eureka Park. Academia Tech focuses on the unique technologies coming from colleges and universities. The TechZone will showcase a collection of academic institutions at the 2014 CES, with Columbia University, N.C. State, University of Texas at Austin and Penn State University already confirmed as exhibitors.

CEA today also announces the launch of the Eureka Park: NEXT TechZone, a dedicated area at the 2014 CES, designed for mid-stage startups that have launched a product within the past year. Eureka Park: NEXT will be located on level two in The Venetian Ballroom.

Check out our previous coverage of EurekaPark at the International CES by clicking here.