TechStars - 30 days in
June 27, 2008
As you know, I try not to write too much about TechStars here. Most of what TechStars is up to is over on the new community site at the TechStars web site.
But, once in a while I can’t resist updating you. We’re now 30 days into the program this summer with our ten new companies. And, just like last year, it’s a blast. We’ve had Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo in along with many other special guests that have helped our companies tremendously.
Here’s a great 3 minute video showing you what we’ve been up to. In it, you’ll see the likes of Dick Costolo (Feedburner), Dion Almaer (Google, Ajaxian), Kevin Marks (Google), Jared Polis, Don Dodge (Microsoft), Eric Marcoullier (Gnip), Anand Iyer (Microsoft), Greg Reinacker (Newsgator), Greg Cohn (Yahoo), Brad Feld (Foundry Group), Mike Culver (Amazon), Josh Hug (Shelfari), Alex King (Crowd Favorite), Rick Klau (Google), Jason Mendelson (Foundry Group) as well as most of the 2008 and 2007 founders.
Several of our companies will make their first public appearance at the New Tech Meetup on August 5th. I hope you’ll come out and support them.
If you want to learn (much) more about what we’re up to, visit and participate in the TechStars community. You can subscribe to much more detail there if you’d like.
It’s not the widgets that suck, it’s the widget delivery
June 26, 2008
I agree with Fred Wilson’s points in his fantastic post Widgets Is The Wrong Word For What We’re Doing. But perhaps it’s not really the widget that’s the problem. Perhaps it’s the widget delivery architecture.
Early last year I said widgets would be big in terms of usage and adoption. Brad Feld agreed that they’d be big as an “application container for publishers.”
And widgets are clearly an important part of the web today. They help us distribute content where we want it and where it’s of the most use to us. They’re so rich, so personal. Yet still, now in the second half of 2008, the experience of widgets still undoubtedly sucks on so many levels.
This seems fixable to me. The beauty of it is that I’m not so sure we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Some of these widgets are pretty amazing. They’re skinnable, flexible, and intelligent. Best of all, they give developers a simple model for distribution. It’s just that the delivery model is fundamentally flawed.
So I think what we really need are improvements in the widget delivery model. There’s simply no quality of service, not enough caching going on, poor design in some cases, and no graceful failure modes. It seems like some kind of “widget-CDN” could be developed.
Why is it that a single injection of Javascript couldn’t be the last one I’d ever need?
If there was a widget distribution intermediary, installing a widget could be a simple dashboard-based drag and drop operation for the publisher. There would be almost no pain to remove/add/replace a widget. If a widget wasn’t available (e.g. the widget publisher was down/overloaded - think Twitter), then that page view would simply not contain that widget. Or perhaps it would contain a cached (and working) version - wouldn’t that be nice? The distribution point would understand availability. It would be efficiently caching widget views with publisher control. It would be ensuring a reasonable experience.
I think this is fairly close to what Fred is actually calling for: a “more integrated model of mashing up web services.“. When I first heard about WidgetBox, I figured this was essentially what they were going to go and do. But alas, services like this simply exacerbate the central problem.
So, how is a widget like a toilet?
Maybe it’s not all that bad if you have the right plumbing.
StickerGiant’s among us
June 23, 2008
John Fischer is the founder and CEO of Denver based StickerGiant. You guessed it - they make and sell stickers. StickerGiant has actually been around since 2000, but it really changed focus recently. I thought it was a great example of how experimenting with your business can have a huge impact, and I wanted to quickly tell the story.
But before I get to that, here’s John explaining how StickerGiant got going.
“I started StickerGiant after some success marketing other novelty items during the Bush/Gore indecision news cycle. Since aggregation was on my mind that became my StickerGiant mantra. StickerGiant retail got started the August before 9/11, and we were #1 for “flag stickers” at the time, which gave us a unbelievable boost to start off. The Bush Presidency gave us a big boost as well, as things got worse, the rhetoric stepped up, and in the political sticker business, rhetoric=sales.”-John Fischer
John started StickerGiant eight years ago, and until last year he actively resisted the notion of the company doing its own printing. The company had always outsourced the actual printing of the stickers and was really just a storefront and a place to buy cool stickers. The company had done well doing just that, and was growing nicely.
Then, opportunity knocked. John had an employee who had just gone through a big life change and needed to earn more money. This meant that she would have to leave the company and go and get a full time and higher paying job. Rather than losing a valuable employee, John sat her down and charted out how they could build a printing business together that would give them leverage. She took the challenge, the the overall business was 20% larger in less than a year. It turned out that this changed the company significantly and it’s been growing by leaps and bounds since that day.
Now John says “StickerGiant printing services got started last June and is now more than 50% of our business, we are experiencing out-of-control growth and we are making staying on top of it our #1 priority.”
The lesson? Experimenting with things and taking some risks can pay off in a big way. Ten employees and millions of stickers later (many of them custom), it’s paying off for StickerGiant.
Although profitable and experiencing about 100% year over year growth currently, StickerGiant is considering a round of angel investment this summer in order to step up marketing efforts and to help fuel the growth of the business.
John asked me to mention that Colorado Startups readers should mention “Social Media Love” when placing an order with StickerGiant.
Generation Think Tank - guys in matching shirts
June 23, 2008
Generation Think Tank (GTT) is a new “non-traditional marketing and advertising” firm in Boulder. The firm is focused on helping clients reach the coveted “gen Y” crowd between the ages of 13 and 32. The founders are Brett Jackson (an early employee at Crocs), Connor McCue, and Daniel Lim, but the company now has about ten people on staff full time. GTT has three main areas of focus: Strategic consulting, digital media, and branded entertainment.
This past Friday night I bumped into Brett (right) and Connor (middle), along with Alex Watson (left) at The Kitchen. I caught this snap of them all wearing their new GTT threads. Now that’s dedication.
Early customers of Generation Think Tank include Gelazzi and Brainpark. Here’s a video that Gelazzi is using to drum up interest in their product.
See more Generation Think Tank work for Gelazzi at SaveTheBunny.org.
Zwaggle Your Swaggle
June 20, 2008
Adam Levy will likely laugh when he sees the title for this post. He’s one of the most personable founders I’ve met recently and, like most founders, he likes to talk about his company. Zwaggle is dedicated to helping parents recycle their used strollers, DVDs, toys and more by allowing families to share them (using a point system) with each other. We covered them in an earlier post in more depth, but for this interview I met with Adam in an impromptu setting…land of the laptop warrior (and many startups in the making) The Cup. Get an inside view of this company and find out about their upcoming event (and how to zwaggle your swaggle) in this video:
Written by texturemedia acquired by CP+B
June 19, 2008
Boulder interactive design firm texturemedia has been acquired by Crispin Porter + Bogusky for an undisclosed sum. Here are some details by the Daily Camera and Boulder County Business Report which were released today.
Congrats to Andrew, Ivan, and the gang. CP+B made a great move.
Silly me. I thought their Webby award last week was big news.
Vermilion, Texture Media recognized with Webby awards
June 15, 2008
Boulder’s Vermilion (a web communications and marketing company) picked up a Webby award this past week for professional services based on their work for Action Marketing Group.
In his acceptance speech, which has a well-enforced 5 word limit, founder Bob Morehouse said “My second best night ever.”
Webby awards are given annually to honor excellence on the internet in about 70 categories.
Boulder’s texturemedia also won two different Webby “People’s Choice” award for their work with Pentax and the King Tut exhibition.
Congrats to Vermiion and texturemedia for these honors.
VC dollars continue to pour into Boulder
June 14, 2008
As I discussed back in April, VC dollars continue to roll in Boulder. It’s doubtful we’ll reach the $266.8M level that we reached in the first quarter of this year. But here’s some of the most recent action.
Symplified recently raised $6M from Granite Ventures and Allegis Capital.
Rally Software just raised $16.8M from Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV) and existing investors Vista Ventures, Boulder Ventures, and Mobius Venture Capital. I chatted briefly about this with CEO Tim Miller, who has already been super helpful this year with TechStars and is surprisingly good at ping-pong, as it turns out. Tim said:
“It’s great to have closed a large round. It’s great to have a large balance sheet to fuel growth. It sucks to still not have enough money to do everything we want. After the dust settled, were back to betting everything (again) on our next phase of growth. Never a moment to get comfortable with the status quo. I wouldn’t have it any other way…..” - Rally CEO Tim Miller
There’s also at least one $3M+ financing that according to my sources seems to have occurred recently here in Boulder but they’re oh so stealthy. Fine, as you wish. No link-love for you, stealthy one.
EventVue wins CSIA “Rookie of the Year” award
June 6, 2008
EventVue is a Boulder based company that makes software for conferences to help engage and organize conference attendees. In effect, EventVue helps make conferences more participatory.
EventVue starts by interfacing with the conferences existing registration system (such as Eventbrite or RegOnline). Attendees are then invited to participate in a simple targeted social network that is automatically formed around that conference. Conference goers can then search out people that they’d like to connect with prior to the conference, message them, and learn more about them. This has the advantage that once the attendee arrives at the actual conference, they already know who they want to see out.
When I go to a conference, it’s mostly about the networking. EventVue is just the type of service that can help make that happen, and help me get the most out of my conference experience.
Of course, EventVue does much more than just that. It integrates services such as Twitter to help the conference organizer keep up with the pulse of their community. It auto-magically finds attendees blogs, twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other profiles, then provides powerful community tools around them. For example, EventVue auto-discovers the conversations among conference attendees in the blogosphere and twitter and aggregates and promotes that to the conference organizer and other attendees. Any good conference is a social event, and EventVue helps magnify this for the benefit of all.
Last night EventVue won “Rookie of the Year” at the CSIA APEX Awards. When they were presented with the award, the CSIA said that it was because EventVue represents a potential to drastically change the way conferences and conventions are held and is beginning to deliver on that promise. Congrats to Rob, Josh, and the team at EventVue on the award.
Disclosure: I’m an investor in EventVue via TechStars and Colorado Startups.
A visit to Idyllon
June 6, 2008
Idyllon is an massively multiplayer online game that is an “online, 3D, social entertainment platform”. Instead of a home page, users get a cottage in the woods. In short, Idyllon is trying to map the online social constructs of today onto the familiar patterns of real life. In concept, it will be like playing a premium online game while exploring the social landscape.
I emailed with Idyllon founder Stuart Compton who told me that Idyllon “is designed from the beginning to remove the barriers present in current Social Networks and premium online games. As a truly mass market product, Idyllon is safe, friendly, warm and welcoming. You begin in your own home, in a private, safe environment where you can learn and experiment. Then, when you’re ready, a unique social experience awaits outside your front gate.”
Inside your home, and beyond your front door, you can modify your surroundings and customize them to your liking. There are also public areas where you can meet, chat, and make friends, as well as areas to play games. Basically, Idyllon is there to be explored.
I’ll admit I’m no expert on gaming systems, but the technology seems deep and interesting to me. Stuart was the art director for Everquest II, so he’s got a strong background with this stuff. The game concept seems to be more like Second Life - the point is not game play with Idyllon - instead it’s more about discovery. The question is whether or not Idyllon will ever reach the market, and if it does, will it speak to it in a way that is differentiated enough from others. Hopefully time will tell. If you’re interested, keep watching.
Idyllon plans to charge $19.95, plus $6.95 per month to subscribe. The company is currently seeking potential investors.
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