A big congratulations to Flixel for bringing Tyra Banks on as an investor!  Flixel is deeply integrated into the upcoming season of America’s Next Top Model which airs August 9th on the CW (US).  We are all looking forward to seeing the amazing works of art that Tyra and the team have created using Flixel’s new suite of apps (available in App Store).

For more detail on the story please see the All Things Digital post below or, watch a discussion about Tyra and Flixel on the Wall Street Journal .

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Tyra Banks Invests in Flixel, Will Feature Its “Living Photos” Prominently on “America’s Next Top Model”

All Things Digital

Modeling icon Tyra Banks has invested in the animated-picture app Flixel, and will heavily feature it in the current season of her “America’s Next Top Model,” which airs Friday on the CW.

This goes well beyond normal product placement. Instead of simple static photos from fashion shoots, some 100 professionally created Flixels — that is, “living photos” that combine aspects of still photography and video — will be created and aired throughout the course of the season. Banks’s signature “Tyra Mail” notes to contestants will be Flixels, and in one episode, all the contestants will be creating their own Flixels.

Banks, who called herself “obsessed with technology” in an interview yesterday, started making animated GIFs about a year ago with the app Cinemagram (Here’s BuzzFeed’s compilation of her efforts). This year, when the Twitter-owned mobile app Vine came out, she dove right in with loops of herself belting songs and doing impressions (BuzzFeed also has a roundup).

“It starts off with me being the user. You’ve seen me on Vine being the fool. It’s something I enjoy myself,” Banks said.

The concept of a living photo captivated Banks.

“When I first saw the Cinemagraph, it blew my mind and took my breath away. It had a ghostlike quality. It was a photo but it was alive — it gave me chills.”

Originally created by fashion photographers Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg, Cinemagraphs are moving digital photographs made shareable on the Internet because they are saved as looping GIF files, which Web browsers display automatically. Banks searched for a way to bring Cinemagraphs into her work, and arrived at the app Flixel.

Founded two years ago, Toronto-based Flixel at first wanted to be “the next Instagram” — an iPhone app for social sharing of Cinemagraphs. It wasn’t the only one; close competitor Cinemagram caught the eye of Silicon Valley investors and raised $8.5 million last November after some quick user growth.

Looking for the best way to stand out, Flixel turned its efforts to higher-end tools, with a $9.99 version of its app aimed at people who want to fine-tune living photos from their iPhones and iPads. The 11-person company also built out its own creative agency to help brands make nice Cinemagraphs with its apps.

The combination of high-fashion quality and broad accessibility made Flixel just what Banks was looking for, she said. Banks invested in a previously undisclosed seed round for the company at the beginning of this year, bringing Flixel’s total funding to just over $2 million.

This is Banks’s second public investment through her Fierce Capital, following personalized shopping site The Hunt. Banks said she specifically wants to find female-led or female-focused businesses.

Since investing, Banks advised Flixel on a redesign of its interface to be more accessible to new users (Flixel founder and CMO Mark Homza attested yesterday that her feedback was quite useful).

Banks also dove wholeheartedly into integrating Flixels into “America’s Next Top Model,” now in its twentieth cycle. “The reason we’re still on the air is we’re always looking for ways to push the envelope,” she said.

So are Flixels a gimmick, or will they find a lasting place in fashion? Banks agreed that they won’t work in print, but said she imagines digital Flixel billboards are right around the corner.

What’s clear is that this is more than your standard celebrity endorsement.

“I was an endorser when I was a model,” Banks agreed. “I was a Victoria’s Secret model, I was a Cover Girl model. This is providing strategic help, and advising and bringing them onto my show. It’s a much more robust relationship.”

In the early days of 2012, a small startup called Dollar Shave Club unleashed the greatest startup video of all time upon the unsuspecting Gillette wielding world.  The video was titled “Our Blades Are F***ing Great” and it masterfully combined elements of Old Spice’s classic “Man-Your-Man-Could-Smell-Like” campaign with more traditional notions of rugged blue-collar American individualism.  More than five million views on YouTube vaunted Dollar Shave Club into the mainstream.

This brings me to today’s news – Flixel, a MantellaVP portfolio company and a leader in the emerging “living photos” or Cinemagraph space, has released what is in my humble opinion the 2^nd best startup video – the release coincides with Flixel Verion 2 hitting the App Store.  One of the Flixel co-founders, Mark Homza, in conjunction with actress Cassandra Sorokopas (and production team Randy Cole, Adam Zivo), has created a video which feels like an Instagramed music video mixed with a love story in the vein of Joel and Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  Congratulations to Mark and the team.

Mark’s video demonstrates to me the power of the Flixel app, as well as the broader implications of the emerging Cinemagraph movement, for mass artistic and commercial expression.  Historically new mediums rose to prominence over long time horizons.  Joseph Niepce created the first photographic image in 1827 but it took another 136 for Kodak to release the mass-market instant color Polaroid camera. Sony put out the world’s first digital camera, the Mavica a full 154 years after Niepce’s breakthrough.  In the five short years since the release of iPhone we have seen improved versions of traditional mediums (photos/videos) gain mass acceptance (Instagram/Viddy et al.).  What we haven’t seen are fundamentally new visual mediums, mediums made possible by rise of the high powered mobile computers we call phones.  With Flixel, and the broader Cinemagraph movement, we will.

You can read the press release here:  http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/786439

Fragmentation of the Android ecosystem is making it difficult for developers to build and monetize apps.  Right now only 2.9% of all Android devices are running the most recent version of the OS, Ice Cream Sandwich.  Older versions of the OS still dominate with Gingerbread at 63% and Froyo at 23%.  Fragmentation creates a poor consumer experience (i.e. apps don’t work) and combined with low cost phones, is attracting a down market consumer.  Android apps are being monetized at just $0.23 for every $1 of Apple App Store revenue.  Given this, Android’s share gains are not translating into developer mind share.

Forking is a less widely known issue but it may prove to be even more important.  When Amazon released the Kindle Fire they took Android’s Gingerbread iteration and built a custom OS on top of it.  Amazon does not intend to update the OS on Google’s release schedule and the Kindle Fire does not support the Google appstore as the device is connected to Amazon’s app store.  As such, while Amazon’s device is “built on Android” it is completely disconnected from the ecosystem and will continue to be going forward.  The forking trend is rumoured to be picking up speed after Google bought Motorola Mobility.  Android OEMs are scared of being held hostage by Google and are working to build their “own” versions of Android.  I would imagine that all the big players (HTC, Samsung etc…) have formed internal OS groups to ensure they have a backup plan if Google continues to tighten the screws.

So will the conventional wisdom turn out to be true?  Does Android’s growing market share mean it is destined to “win” the smartphone wars?  For now I am going to dodge the question and state that regardless of who wins, this is a big opportunity.  Valuable companies are going to be built to deal with these issues.  Startups need to look at the problems in the chaotic Android ecosystem and build elegant solutions.  The problems are getting worse and the time is now to start fixing them.

In addition to these private sector sources, the Canadian government has a wide variety of programs designed to help startups.   Some of these programs (IRAP, SR&ED, FedDev, CMF) are well known and have been utilized by hundreds of startups.  I am not going to explain the details of these programs but, if you need information on them, feel free to email me at rsamuels@mantellavp.com and I can provide you with a brief overview and put you in touch with an entrepreneur who has utilized each funding source.

Interestingly, there are dozens of other programs that are not as widely known but can still offer startups substantial help extending their runaway.  To this point, our good friends at MaRS have built a comprehensive database that covers nearly all of the funding sources available in Canada (the database is located here and given that it has ~100 entries for just Ontario, it is well worth exploring).

After reading through the Ontario section I found 3 new funding sources that I was unaware of which offer the possibility of substantial external capital.

Eastern Ontario Development Fund – This program provides a grant of up to $1,500,000 to companies located in Eastern Ontario to fund up to 50% of economic development projects valued at $100,000 or more. The program is targeted at relatively established companies that have a minimum of 3 years of operating history and 10 employees or more.

Export Market Access – This program will cover up to 50% of the costs of “developing export sales”.  The program is targeted at later stage startups, as it requires sales of $500,000 and 2 year of corporate operating history.  Eligible costs include trade shows, marketing tools, market research and bidding on foreign projects.

Innovation Demonstration Fund – A grant of between $100,000 and $4,000,000 (50% of costs) is available for companies with pilot stage “green” technology that will provide Ontario with a significant competitive advantage and is globally competitive.  While the program is designed for “green” technology it appears to include anything that is “globally significant”.  This process sounds like it could be slow given that the project needs to be reviewed by the Ministry, an inter-ministerial review team, an external panel and others.

If anyone has utilized funding sources that they want to recommend to the community please feel free to post a comment below or message me (rsamuels@mantellavp.com / @RussSamuels)