I spend a good amount of time online, so I thought I’d share with you some of the cool stuff I’ve viewed recently.  This is in no particular order.

• Multiplex - This is some pretty cool technology coming out of IndyHall Labs.  Multiplex is a new way to sort and view your huge archives of dvds.  Fast forward to 1:10 for some great footage.  Kudos to the team that’s putting this together -  David Martorana, Jason Allum, Jason Tremblay, Johnny Bilotta and I think Alex Hillman is in there too.
• iminlikewithyou -  Check out this video from last weeks Tech Meetup in NYC.  Multi-player games made easy.
• My older brother Anderson, CEO of ScanDigital.com, got on Twitter.  Follow him @AndersonSD
• Carsten Petzold, co-founder of LTLprints.com was written up at the BarCampPhilly blog.  Very nice.
• Excited for my halloween costume to arrive.  Halloween is such a fun day.
• Jesse Middleton of Srcasm.com finally got me to sign up at Passpack.com.  Very cool if you can remember your super long (and freakishly secure) password passphrase.
• Better late than never.  Check out Choicetweets.com
  
• Facebook hit 10 billion photos! Wow.
• And this image was passed around the office.  And now I share it with you.  Enjoy.
  

  Puking Pumpkin

Tony Baigalupo:  TonyB is the driving force behind projects such as NewWorkCity and has dedicated an amazing amount of energy and effort in promoting and organizing coworking in NYC & Cooperbricolage.

What I like most about Tony is how much he’s focused on giving back.  Tony has built an amazing network, that he shares without hesitation, and someone worth reaching out to if you want to play in the NYC startup scene . Oh yeah, he also is a resident at house2.0 - very cool.

Sanford Dickert: I met Sanford while he was helping Tony with their unending quest to establish an official coworking space in NYC.  I liked him from the first time chatted and we’ve had some fun nights out on the town.  One of the most interesting facts that I learned a few weeks after our first meeting was the Sanford was the CTO of John Kerry’s 2004 Presidential Campaign.

Sanford is really great at helping projects get off the ground and pointed in the right direction.  You could think of him as a walking linkedin as well.  Thanks for your feedback on so many of my ideas!

DavidJr.Com:  David is one of those guys who is always producing a crazy viral video that leaves you somewhat questioning the sanity of people.  A guerrilla videographer,  DavidJr.com has mastered the art of self promotion and viral videos.  He sings a mad karaoke too!  If you’ve got some time checkout his videos over at davidjr.com. Watch out that you don’t get blinded by his *bling* belt buckle.

Gregory Galant:  Depending on the day it is Greg might be found interviewing top entrepreneurs for his famous Venture Voice podcast or causing a stir in the online world as CEO of the hilarious news parody website News Groper. There are some pretty funny stories  of mainstream media picking up his parody articles and citing them as facts - way to go big media.

I had a chance to interview him at AlwaysOn NYC. If I can get permission from FountainHeadNetworks.tv I’ll try to post that here.

Howard Lindzon:  It’s pretty tough not to enjoy the brains behind hit shows like Wallstrip, the Naked Putz, and MobLogic.

I first met Howard when I was at Wallhogs and have really enjoyed tracking what he is up to and reading his kick-ass blog. If you’re not following Howard you’re missing out.  He’s amazingly informative and entertain at the same time.

He’s also sitting on a nice fund over at Knight’s Bridge Capital Partners.

Matt Trush:  As founder at Convos.com, Matt is one of the guys who helped inject me into the NYC Tech Meetup community.  Always willing to help out and drink some beer, Trush is a quality guy and someone who I really enjoyed getting to know.  Also a Villanova guy, we were called back into the classroom together to give a startup presentation to the nationally ranked business undergrads and that was a blast! If you’ve got a minute checkout his style blog and pickup his feed - well worth it.

1.) Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2.) Achieve universal primary education
3.) Promote gender equality and empower women
4.) Reduce child mortality
5.) Improve maternal health
6.) Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7.) Ensure environmental sustainability
8.) Develop a global partnership for development

One of the newest products that was built with the sense of urgency the Millennium Summit’s MDG helped to articulate is LifeStraw. Today, over 1 billion people have limited or no access to clean water. Naturally, access to clean water is an essential and through technology Vestergaard Frandsen is able to provide thousands of liters of drinkable water for less than a cup of coffee.

LifeStraw is a personal portable instant water filtration system. Water is sucked through a series of mesh filters, iodine coated beads to kill bacteria and active carbon. The chambers in the flute like device are able to clean the water and eliminate bacteria. How big of a problem does this address? 6,000 people die everyday due to no access to clean water - these are mainly children.

When I was working for the World Banks’ Africa Region I was introduced to many of the trials and tribulations of the countries and it is overwhelming. I’m pleased to see innovative designs like LifeStraw and LifeStraw Family.

If you have interest in helping a family of 5 get clean drinking water for a year for only $15, donations can be made to the Rotary Club of Ft. Lauderdale Florida. Here is a photo of the LifeStraw Family system.

For this post I decided to keep it close to home and interview my older brother, Anderson Schoenrock, CEO of ScanDigital.com. Stay tuned as I have a few other interesting entrepreneur interviews in the works. A sincere thank you to my big brother for agreeing to do this interview.

Tell us about ScanDigital. What are you trying to accomplish?

Sure thing Kendall, thanks for the opportunity to talk to your readers. ScanDigital is an innovative company that provides a service to convert old photographic and movie materials to digital format. We make it easy for people to preserve, organize, and enjoy their photos and video in the digital age. ScanDigital has developed a unique process that is secure, user-friendly and returns a high quality end product. Photos and video are converted to digital format and continually quality checked throughout the process. For photographic materials, our service includes scanning and professional retouching. The digital files are returned on a CD or DVD as well as in an online gallery at ScanDigital where they can be shared with friends and also archived for safekeeping. Our goal is to provide the highest quality service to our customers, with the least amount of hassle possible and in a manner that is highly secure.

What’s the backstory? How long have you been around? How did it get started?

My college friend, Mike Mothner, approached me about the idea after Christmas 2006. He gave his mom a digital camera and after seeing how easy it was to organize all of the new images on her computer, she asked how she could do the same with the old photos from the garage. Mike and I realized there had to be more people out there with the same question. ScanDigital was born in early 2007 and then launched in June 2007. The first year has been nothing short of phenomenal. We’ve grown from 2 employees to 20 employees. Processed more than half a million images and greatly improved our services along the way.

The experience has exceeded my expectations on every front. That’s not to say we are lacking our share of daily ups and downs like every start up, but the overwhelming trend as been onward and upward. I am especially excited for Year 2 as Year 1 has been focused on putting in place the groundwork and building blocks to take the Company to the next level.

500,000 images scanned is impressive. What new products are you bringing to market?

When we launched we simply offered the conversion of 35 mm negatives, slides, printed photos and photos in albums. Since our launch we have added numerous photographic formats to cover a wider spectrum of materials - and especially materials for high end amateurs and professional photographers, pre-loaded Digital Photo Frames, Custom DVD Slideshows and Video and Film Conversion services. In addition, our overall process and service has gone through several iterations of major improvements.

While the fundamental service is the same and the quality has remained high from Day 1, we have built a highly unique workflow management system called the EssentialTracker. Through the EssentialTracker all 14 steps of our process our integrated within our facility and customers have access to information about the status of their order in real time. This has taken our internal logistics to a whole new level that is unmatched by any other company in our market space.

What is unique and different about this service?

When we started ScanDigital we took a fundamentally different approach to this business than any of our competitors. Our service is focused on the customer and the user experience. Everything we do is focused on making a very technical, time consuming, daunting process easy for our users. At the same time we realized that there is a need to accommodate a wide spectrum of customers. We work with people that range from 80 year old grandmothers who know little to nothing about computers to professional photographers and design studios that are involved in photography professionally. This means we needed to create a process rigid enough to be fast, safe, secure and high quality while flexible enough to meet the needs of all customers. This lead to our Dynamic Order Form, which literally changes on the fly as the user makes their selections. Steps that are superfluous for that individual customer are hidden and other steps are revealed only as needed.

From a pure service perspective, we are the only service to have both the online photo gallery and conversion service components. We not only convert old material to digital files, but we also post them to our online photo gallery. People can also upload new digital images to their gallery in order to organize their images in one place, creating a seamless photo archive.

ScanDigital also has the fasted turnaround time in the industry, something that is highly valued by our customers.

Who uses your services?

One of the best things about this business is that it appeals to a wide spectrum of potential customers. Pretty much anybody that has any photographic materials or video materials sitting in an out of date format is a potential customer for us. Families use our service to preserve and protect their images against floods, fires, or other disaster. Photographers use ScanDigital to convert their old photographs to digital files in order to sell them on stock photo sites. Brides and grooms use our service to have Slideshows made to play at the rehearsal dinner. We’ve worked with doctors to convert medical slides into digital. Our list of professional/business clients includes architecture firms, design firms, party planners, professional organizers, funeral directors, governmental organizations. Clients that most people would recognize include the City of Pasadena, MTV Studios, Volcom, Shane Battier (NBA Star - Houston Rockets) and Dana Delaney (actress on Desperate Housewives).

Given that we appeal to many different markets, I’ve found myself attending events that I would never have imaged. A few weeks ago I attended a Craft and Hobby Convention speaking about how digital images can enhance crafts. Last week I was at a Funeral Director Tradeshow to meet with funeral directors who are ideal for our affiliate program. In early June we’ll be exhibiting at the world’s largest Scrapbooking Convention. It’s exciting to think of new ways to expand our audience but sometimes I have just laugh when I look at my schedule.

What’s the best part about this business for you?

I’ve been asked this question several times and it is hard to pinpoint the best part. There are so many things I enjoy about what we’re doing here and what we’re building. Internally, I think it is our team and building our team. We’ve hired great people and they’ve helped build a successful platform. We’re very much in a hypergrowth stage which means a lot is asked of our employees. Things change all the time. At one point we were hiring a new person every two weeks. People that were hired to do one thing are now doing performing other tasks. This requires a team that is willing to roll with things a bit, it’s a lot to ask and the team on the whole has responded in an outstanding manner.

Externally, it’s hearing from our customers. As I mentioned our customer’s are our focus and as part of that I have made it a goal to reach out to as many of them as possible to hear what they liked and what they did not like. People have asked me how I can afford to spend so much time soliciting feedback and interacting directly with customers. I am not sure how I can afford not to! I think what we’ve put in place is great, but I always assume it could be better. Listening to our customers is important for growing the business the right way. It is always especially rewarding to see the positive impact we’re having on people. We’re really in the business of helping people bring materials back to life that are otherwise useless in many cases. When I hear how excited someone was to view a set of slides for the first time in 30 years or to see an image they had forgotten about it really motivates me to continue building our business and reaching more customers.

Anderson, thanks for your time in lining up with me. It sounds like you’re building a great company. I will open the floor up to additional questions. Feel free to leave a question in the comments section as Anderson has graciously offered to answer more questions as well. Comments as always are also welcomed. Thanks!

Recently I’ve taken a short break from blogging. While this has occasionally happened in the past, this time I’m a little more sidetracked. I’ve been building a few startups in the meantime and I will blog about them soon.

Also, I’ve updated my blog to the latest version of wordpress and that didn’t go very well. For example, as of the writing of this post the only page that is visible is the homepage. None of my previous posts are loading and I’m not sure if its because of the update to WP or if its my host (brinkster.com) I will work of fixing that first and then circle back around to share with you some of the exciting events of the past few months.

In any event, please hang in there. I will be back soon!

Sincerely

Kendall Schoenrock

Miss Gospic, I give you the floor.

-Kendall

There were times this past week after watching this commercial that I found myself unconsciously dropping a “la la la” here and there. What a catchy tune. This got me to track down Israeli pop star Yael Naim’s ‘New Soul’ and to plop down a buck over at my itunes account. As James Sullivan points out at spinner.com

And she’s the latest example of how quickly selling out went from being an unforgivable indiscretion to an admirable career move, the savvy underwriting of your still-righteous indie career. In ‘New Soul,’ the singer blithely finds herself “making every possible mistake.” Latching onto Apple’s latest product roll-out won’t be one of them.

Ten men go out for beer. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. He said, “Since you are all such good customers, I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.”

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men — the paying customers?

How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his “fair share”? They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay!

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings). The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings). The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings). The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings). The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings). The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four

continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He

pointed to the tenth man, “but he got $10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!”

“That’s true!!”shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only $2 ? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!” The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important.

They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up any more. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, University of Georgia

ScanDigital.com. Check out this article from Danny Brown over at EasyReader.

Photo by Danny Brown

Many people dream of making their first million before they are 30. For lifelong Manhattan Beach local Mike Mothner, 27 and Santa Monica resident Anderson Schoenrock, 28, the dream was already old news when they sat down last spring to collaborate on an empire in the uncharted digital world.“I was eating Christmas dinner with my family last year when my mom, who had just got her digital camera, asked me how she could get all the old photos into the computer,” recalled Mothner. “The light bulb went off. It would be a time consuming task and I ran upstairs and checked online to see if other people were doing it.” Mothner pitched the idea of converting photographs, negatives and slides to Schoenrock at a New Year’s party last year. The two met in 2001 when they were members of Dartmouth University’s Psi Epsilon and made vague plans to one day work together. They launched their new company last June.
The start up money for ScanDigital came from Mothner’s Wpromote.com, an online marketing agency that achieved approximately $6 in revenue in 2007. Inc. 500 ranked Wpromote as the 62nd fastest growing private company in the United States.

Mothner began the company from his dorm room during his freshman year at Dartmouth. During the peak of the dotcom boom, he worked as an intern for Red Point Ventures, reading business plans. This was before Google had become a household word and there was an array of different search engines sprouting up. Reading through the plans, Mothner noticed a pattern: the companies all had websites and needed to find a way to increase their visibility online.

Mothner began programming while a student at Pacific Elementary. When he was 14 he wrote a basic calendar program that was like a simpler version of Microsoft Outlook.
“It got passed around schools and campuses and probably generated about four grand,” Mothner said. “I spent the money on baseball cards and comics — probably not the wisest investment.”

Mothner ran Wpromote throughout college, where he pursued a double major in Computer Science and Economics. For $9.95 a month, the program alerted the different search engines about a new website and indexed it, a process that would otherwise take two days of work. The company caught the eye of people working at Google. The Web conglomerate and Mothner formed a relationship that has since given Mothner a powerful ally in the cyber realm.

“I’ve stayed pretty close with the Google team,” said Mothner. “A few months ago they came down to our office to help train people, and a bit after that I was invited to their office to do a Q and A about the things I liked and disliked about their product. Only three other agencies were invited.”
Mothner was working as the fulltime CEO of his college start-up company when he approached Schoenrock with the idea for ScanDigital.

Schoenrock, who graduating two years before Mothner, had landed an investment banking job on Wall Street. At 25, he and a Wall Street colleague started a boutique real estate firm. The firm completed a number of high profile transactions, including the sale of the Union Bank Plaza Tower in downtown Los Angeles for $143 million. When Mothner approached Schoenrock, the boutique real estate company controlled $600 million of real estate property. But Schoenrock was sensing that the real estate boom was nearing its end.

“I sold my share and the people I worked with went onto a bigger real estate company,” said Schoenrock. “I didn’t have any interest in working for a big company again. I liked starting up companies.” “I recognize the risk of working with friends,” said Mothener, “but if you divide the roles well, then the benefit is going to be better than if we didn’t know each other.”
Within months of its summer launch, the company has experienced an average 25 to 30 percent monthly growth and has increased its staff from 3 to 17. Schoenrock handles the day to day affairs while Mothner works at the strategic level, while addition to continuing to run Wpromote. “Our growth trajectory has been too rapid to put into numbers,” said Mothner.Schoenrock agreed. “One of the best lessons I learned on Wall Street was that you can get bogged down if you spend all day with projections. The best thing to do is to focus your energy on building a solid product. If you do that well, then the money will be there.”

During the Malibu fires a 70 year-old lady said she was able to leave her house quickly because ScanDigital had converted nearly 100 of her photo albums onto a few CDs. “Our hope is that in a few years people will say, oh you know what you should do with that box of old photos? You should ScanDigital it,” Schoenrock said. “That’s our hope, to make our company’s name into a verb.”

For more information visit Scandigital.com. ER