DoesWhat

Interview with Dorian Selz (Squirro)

Editor — Mon, 13 May 2013 21:47:29 +0000

Squirro is a context intelligence app that acts as a personal digital assistant. I interviewed Dorian Selz, Squirro founder to find out more. This is the hundred and ninety eighth in a series of DW startup interviews. Big thank you to Dorian!

How would you describe Squirro in under 50 words?

Squirro is the leading context intelligence technology, that delivers the full story behind structured and numerical data.

How did you meet co-founders Toni Birrer, Patrice Neff and Felix Hürlimann?

We have all been working together for 8 years since the we created local.ch, the largest web-site in Switzerland. Following our exit from local.ch, we created Nektoon AG, where we first developed memonic an online note-taking and where we now focus on Squirro.

Why did you decide to launch Squirro early 2012?

Squirro is the natural evolution of the experience we gathered while developing local.ch and memonic. With local.ch we created an extremely powerful local search engine. The memonic technology allowed users to clip and share the content they found and liked. In early 2012 we identified a great opportunity in the B2B intelligence field. Today companies have access to more data than ever before, but without context this data can often be meaningless. We therefore decided to develop Squirro, the technology that delivers context to you data.

How long did it take to put together the initial version of Squirro?

Squirro was not born out of the blue! Thanks to memonic we already had a solid architecture to build upon, none-the-less it did take us 6 months to have a minimum viable product. We have gone through some substantial changes since this first product and we can now provide our technology for most business intelligence suites or CRM platforms such as QlikView or Salesforce.

Who do you see as your target audience? How are you reaching them?

Our core target audience are businesses for which it is paramount to have access to timely relevant information. In the business intelligence space we have developed a solution that delivers unstructured information such as news and reports from any source (internal or external) to provide the context needed behind numerical data.

Has Squirro got the feedback and growth you expected since launching January 2012?

The feedback we have received from the start has been very encouraging. We had identified a clear opportunity from the get go and with rapid iterations we are now in a position where we expect our growth to accelerate. The opportunity to implement Squirro within business intelligence suites like QlikView is a big accelerator for us.

Do you have any features in the pipeline?

Our patent pending Digital Fingerprint Technology, the engine that powers Squirro will keep on evolving. To date the communication channel between the hosting application (QlikView, Salesforce, SAP byD,...) and Squirro is one directional. This means that Squirro analyses the signals it gets from the platform it is embedded in and feeds it back intelligence based on those signals. The next evolution for us is to make the communication between the two platforms bi-directional. Imagine for example that Squirro analyses in real-time the amount of news generated on a particular topic for a particular company. Squirro could notify the user of any significant variations and correlate this information with the already existing data of the hosting application, therefore bringing another layer of context to the information displayed in dashboards.

How do you differentiate yourselves from your competitors?

There are a variety of player in the sales and business intelligence with very strong propositions. Our key differentiator is our ability to constantly deliver relevant real-time intelligence that complements both business and sales intelligence.

What are you most excited about at the moment?

We have recently adapted Squirro to be seamlessly integrated in QlikView. Users now get real-time, accurate, context intelligence to any point of insight they uncover while doing business discovery in QlikView. It is really exciting to see how enthusiastically both users and partners have reacted. Imagine you are looking within QlikView at a financial stock analysis application and particularly at a graph of stock price evolution. From that graph you see whether the stock is on a positive or negative trend and you can compare it's current pricing to any pricing in the past, but you do not get the information as to why the price has evolved in one or the other direction. That's where Squirro come in! By simply selecting any data point on the graph, Squirro will deliver, directly within the application, the most relevant information about it. You now get the full story behind your data.

Can you convince the reader to start using Squirro in under 50 words?

Squirro delivers unstructured data to users in context of their personal interests and priorities, learning and refining it as user interactions increase. Combining the structured and the unstructured worlds together, Squirro provides the 'why' behind the data. This reduces search time by 75% and allows for more effective decision-making.

Finished reading? Check out Squirro!

Interview with Isaac Saldana (SendGrid)

Editor — Fri, 10 May 2013 00:25:03 +0000

SendGrid is a cloud based transactional email service provider. I interviewed Isaac Saldana, SendGrid founder to find out more. This is the hundred and ninety seventh in a series of DW startup interviews. Big thank you to Isaac!

How would you describe SendGrid in under 50 words?

SendGrid is built for developers, by developers. We aim to master email deliverability, so businesses can focus on their core product, not email.

How did you meet co-founders Tim Jenkins and Jose Lopez?

Tim, Jose, and I met at UC Riverside. While at school, I spent a lot of time at the computer science lab working on various projects. Tim worked there and was eager to have someone help him, so he offered me a job. While we worked there, we became fast friends with Jose, who was also a developer and a regular there. Actually, Jose ended up taking a job at the lab after Tim left. So that lab at UC Riverside was the starting point of an almost decade-long friendship that has seen us collaborate on a bunch of different business ideas and startups.

How did the idea for SendGrid come about?

SendGrid started from me trying to solve a problem I was facing while working on some apps after college. The apps I was building all had email components and I became really frustrated that the emails I was generating from the apps weren’t being delivered. I talked to a bunch of my developer friends and realized that all of their projects needed email too. But, none of them were good at developing the email part, or they weren’t interested in doing it well. So I decided that I would master email deliverability. At the time, I didn’t have any idea of how big the market was for this. I was really just trying to fix my own problem. I really encourage everyone to solve their own problems initially, because if you’re thinking about doing a startup, the worst-case scenario is if that startup doesn’t work, you can still end up using that product or service that you created while trying to fix your problem. In my case, it was one of those things where I started solving the problems that I had and it eventually ended up turning into the company that SendGrid is at this time.

How long did it take to put together the initial version of SendGrid?

Tim, Jose, and I originally developed the idea in March 2009. At the time, we named the company SMTPAPI.com. Not very catchy, but it got the point across. Things moved pretty quickly after that because in May, we were accepted into the TechStars accelerator program in Boulder. I had applied to TechStars before with a different idea, so it was very encouraging to be admitted for SMPTAPI.com, which we quickly renamed SendGrid. TechStars was an incredible experience for us, especially because of the mentorship it provided. The mentorship we received there shaped a lot of the important decisions that we made when we first started, and still impacts our decision making today. TechStars also helped give us a better reputation—we got the passive benefits of being associated with such a reputable program.

You recently received over $21M in series B funding. What was this process like and how long did it compare to the seed and series A rounds?

We’ve looked at securing funding as an opportunity to both grow our network and to learn from our investors. We knew from the start that raising funding would be a valuable learning experience for us—one that we needed to better understand our product and the market. We closed our seed round in November 2009. Series A followed in April 2010, and Series B in early 2012. We feel very fortunate to have received the funding that we have, and to be able to benefit from our investors’ mentorship and experience—our investors are an important part of our team. But, I want fellow entrepreneurs to know that it’s not an easy process. We definitely heard a lot of “nos” along the way. You always will. But, it’s important to not be afraid of failure—kind of like an athlete. You’re going to fall down, or miss a shot, but you have to keep trying.

Who do you see as your target audience? How are you reaching them?

SendGrid was built for developers, by developers. We strive to make developers’ lives easier, so we want to be everywhere that developers are—hackathons, summits, conferences, universities, etc. Our Developer Evangelist Team travels the globe to find out how people are using email and how we can help. We have a community forum on our site strictly for developers and we actively engage on Twitter. We always want to be a part of the conversation.

You send thousands of emails a second, have you had any difficulties in finding talented developers who can handle these scaling challenges?

Finding talented technical developers can definitely be a challenge, but we hope that by creating the right work culture, we can help combat these hiring challenges. If you create a strong culture, good talent will come. When we started SendGrid, we kept asking ourselves, why did we want to start a company? Why did we want to change the world? And the answer was that we wanted to be happy. So, we’ve built SendGrid on some key principles that make us happy and make us love coming to work. We focus on professional development, encourage everyone to be open about making mistakes, so we can all learn from them, and believe that everyone should be the CEO of their own position. We also hire based on what we like to call the 4H’s: honesty, humility, happiness, and hunger. We feel that by setting these expectations, we’ll attract good people regardless of how challenging the market is.

As your customers grow your revenue increases, very helpful when you have clients such as Pinterest. Was this something you thought about early on?

Because we started with other like-minded startups in the TechStars program, we were an easy fit for organizations that were getting started just like us. There is always the “new cool application” and we have been lucky to call many of those, like foursquare, Pinterest and Spotify, customers.

You primarily focus on transactional emails, but have also built a newsletter offering, how did this come about?

Email is always changing. Transactional email has been the bulk of our business, but marketing email is also important. Marketers are using email now more than ever to attract and retain customers, so it’s important for us to have an offering that caters to them as well. We don’t want to just be good at one type of email; we want to master it all.

What is your primary focus in terms of new developments at the moment?

We’re always concentrating on a lot of different initiatives. We recently introduced a new internal effort, SendGrid Labs that is spinning out tools that have helped us scale, for other developers to use. Labs just launched loader.io, a free load testing app that allows developers to stress their apps with up to 50,000 concurrent connections. We also just released a service that helps developers debug webhooks in real time. We never want to stop innovating, so you’ll see a lot more initiatives from us being rolled out in the near future.

What made you decide to bring in an outside CEO?

Initially, I was both a developer and the CEO and when the company got to over ten people, it was obvious that I needed to focus on one single thing. In my case, I really wanted to focus on coding. I relied on my mentors to help me make the decision—luckily, a lot of the mentors that I had were also a part of SendGrid’s board. One of the best decisions as CEO that I ever made was to bring in another CEO. A lot of people ask me if it was hard to turn over the reins. It actually wasn’t difficult at all. I like to use an analogy to explain it—when you have a kid, by the time they turn five and they have to go to school, you have two options. You have the option to teach them yourself and home school them, or you send them to school if you don’t feel confident you’re going to be able to teach them the best. In my case, it was similar where I knew bringing in a new CEO was one of the best decisions I’d made. Initially, I was worried like you worry the first time you send your kid to school but at the end of the day you know that’s one of the best decisions.

How do you differentiate yourselves from your competitors?

We really focus on providing top-notch customer support. We value companies who provide incredible service, like Zappos and Rackspace, and aim to provide the same great service that they do. Our developer-minded focus also differentiates us. We go through the same issues that developers do, so we speak their language. And again, culture is really important, by creating an environment where people love to work, it shows through in everything that we do.

What advice would you offer to any soon to be startup founders out there?

Go for it. And when you do, look for mentorship. Your mentors will provide you with invaluable guidance. And don’t be afraid of failure. Expect it. It humbles you. Starting your own company isn’t easy, but the rewards you receive from the challenges you face while building it are priceless.

What are you most excited about at the moment?

Right now, I’m really excited about the Research and Development projects we have underway, especially at SendGrid Labs with Loader.io. As a company that is built for developers, by developers, it’s really satisfying to be able to eliminate pain points for them where we can.

Finished reading? Check out SendGrid!

Interview with Ryan Fyfe (ShiftPlanning)

Editor — Tue, 07 May 2013 11:55:32 +0000

ShiftPlanning is an online employee scheduling application. I interviewed Ryan Fyfe, ShiftPlanning founder to find out more. This is the hundred and ninety sixth in a series of DW startup interviews. Big thank you to Ryan!

How would you describe ShiftPlanning in under 50 words?

The web's most easy to use employee scheduling and workforce management software for small businesses.

What made you start working on ShiftPlanning early 2009?

The initial idea for ShiftPlanning came from a mutual acquaintance that was working at a restaurant in my home-city, a restaurant where I had also worked. When I heard that they were still scheduling with paper and pen we agreed there was a better way, ShiftPlanning was born shortly after.

What technologies have you used to develop ShiftPlanning and which were the most technically challenging development problems?

ShiftPlanning is built on Opensource technologies - We use a standard LAMP stack which has really helped us to recruit and ramp up our development team. The most challenging thing that we've had to deal with on the technology side is scalability. Our initial product was built to prove the concept not to scale to thousands of customers. Over the past year we've had to pay down on a lot of technical debt which has been challenging both to our customers and to our team.

Has ShiftPlanning got the feedback and growth you expected since early 2010?

ShiftPlanning went online very early. I would say it was an MVP, not Beta (a cliche). The idea was let's get it out into the hands of potential first users as fast as possible. We won't charge them for it, and we'll start getting active feedback to help shape our road-map. This was a very successful model, most of these clients are still with us today. I get asked a lot - "Who does Product at ShiftPlanning?" - Our customers.

The flexibility of your software has allowed you to target different markets, which are you focusing on?

We are truly vertical agnostic. We don't focus on any one industry more than another and while there are a few industries that are naturally larger than others based on product/market fit, and numbers of establishments/employees our actual market distribution is still very evenly distributed. This again has really helped us with product as we have our eyes open to the needs of small businesses in all industries and all parts of the world vs. food and beverage only for example which is one of our most competitive verticals.

You offer free account set up and free training, do you see this as a long term customer retention strategy?

Our support is equally as important as our product. This keeps our churn rates down and gives us good visibility into our customers needs. We've made a lot of investments into process here; some of which are already shared with our clients, for example our Learning Management System was built for our team and we later opened it up for our clients to use as a part of the platform.

You've received over $1M in venture capital, how long did it take to secure the funding?

Fortunately, it was very fast. The funding came from existing investors.

How do you differentiate yourselves from your competitors like eSchedule, Scheduly and ScheduleOnce?

ShiftPlanning is different from our competitors primarily for our vertical agnostic approach as well as having a full workforce management platform vs. just a scheduling product. Many of our competitors are also sales-driven organizations, vs. product/engineering led which creates a huge gap in our actual product in terms of end-user experience and types of scenario's that we can handle. With scheduling in particular, every business has unique needs. ShiftPlanning is built with that in mind.

You employee around 30 people, have you had any difficulties in finding talented developers and managers?

I've been very fortunate to have connected early on with many very talented individuals that share the same passion for new technology and entrepreneurship. Our team has largely been built organically around them. Finding key people is always hard especially as our needs have become more and more specialized as we grown. Remaining open to a distributed model has helped us mitigate a lot of these challenges as well as kept our efficiency at very optimal levels.

You're continually adapting to further workforce management automation and flexibility, do you have any features in the pipeline?

Our platform has grown quickly from Scheduling first into workforce management. We'll continue to invest in the full platform; It's very exciting to see now that we have clients that don't even use our scheduling product at all but are using another component of the platform; many exciting technology partners on these sides as well.

With the knowledge you have today, would you do anything different if you were to start-up ShiftPlanning again?

Make less assumptions and collect more data.

Where do you see ShiftPlanning in 5 years time?

The market leader in our space and with a much larger presence in the SaaS eco-system.

What advice would you offer to any soon to be startup founders out there?

Be patient and persistent; There is too much focus on the overnight success stories and viral consumer products - these are the exceptions and not the rule. It can take a significant amount of time to gain product/market fit and traction. Bootstrap as far as you possibly can. There is far too much attention/excitement around fundraising vs. around companies that are building sustainable/profitable businesses. It's not to say that fundraising is bad, but you need to be sure you're in a position where you can invest the money you're bringing in at a rate that offsets the dilution and loss of control it comes with.

Can you convince the reader to start using ShiftPlanning in under 50 words?

For less than the price of coffee each day you can eliminate overtime, improve employee job satisfaction and win back the valuable time you're spending running your business - to focus on growing it.

Finished reading? Check out ShiftPlanning!

Interview with Greg Laughlin (Statwing)

Editor — Thu, 02 May 2013 23:57:40 +0000

Statwing is a web based data visualisation application. I interviewed Greg Laughlin, Statwing founder to find out more. This is the hundred and ninety fifth in a series of DW startup interviews. Big thank you to Greg!

How would you describe Statwing in under 50 words?

Statwing is a really easy to use data analysis tool. We take the power of high-end statistical analyses and put them in a package that's more intuitive than analyzing data in Excel.

How did you meet co-founder John Le?

We worked together at CrowdFlower, a San Francisco microtask crowdsourcing startup. We built a product together there.

What gap in the market did you discover that persuaded you to launch Statwing mid 2012?

My background before CrowdFlower was statistical analysis of survey data, using a statistical tool called SPSS. John's background was artificial intelligence and machine learning, and he largely used a similar, open source tool called R. And we both fell back to Excel for simpler analysis. We both found that these statistical products made it really hard to do the basic analysis and visualization that almost anyone wants to do when analyzing a dataset (e.g., relating one variable to one other variable, for example). And Excel was fairly clunky and not that powerful. We figured if we had such different data analysis backgrounds and had such similar pain points, there must be a lot of other folks out there just like us.

How long did it take to put together the initial version of Statwing?

It took about 9 months to get an MVP out there. There's the old saying that if you weren't embarrassed with what you launched, you launched too late. Well. We didn't launch too late :)

You're currently hiring new employees. In what direction are you looking to expand?

We need more hands! Statwing is a very technical product, and we're very excited about our roadmap. But it's a lot of work, both front end and back, so we're looking for the smartest folks we can find to get on board. Sure, some specific skills would be nice (e.g., front end javascript framework experience), but we're much more concerned with finding someone who's demonstrated they can intelligently build complicated products.

How different is the current version of Statwing compared to your initial launch?

The single biggest chunk of work in the last 6 months was overhauling the user interface. We picked up a UI advisor (he designed the TiVo user interface), and we now spend a couple hours a week going over the UI in painstaking detail, complete reengineering the interface. We're pretty proud of where we've gotten it to. Some of our users find Excel very confusing, but Statwing very intuitive. Conversely, some of our users are pros in advanced statistical software but prefer to use Statwing when we have the appropriate functionality. That's not an easy balance to strike.

How easy is Statwing to use for someone with zero knowledge of statistics in the first place?

Very easy. We started out thinking we'd try to replace the advanced statistical tools, like SPSS. But as we did usability tests with our Excel-using friends they said things like "Y'know, this is what I typically do in Excel, except it's much faster and easier." Statwing runs statistical analyses behind the scenes, but presents the results to users in very plain English (with optional Advanced output if folks really want to dive deep into the stats). A lot of our users don't even think of Statwing as a statistical tool, it's just a tool that makes it really easy to explore data.

How do you differentiate yourselves from your competitors?

Our competitors, like SPSS, SAS, and Stata, were all built decades ago by statisticians, with statisticians in mind. Statwing is the first statistical tool that's easy and useful even if you don't have advanced statistical training. Insomuch as we're also competitive with Excel, we're different in that (1) we're much more intuitive to use, and (2) we subtly integrate statistical functions into our analyses, so you're getting a lot more power than you do with Excel.

Do you have a background in analytics and statistics or is your interest more on the software development side?

Personally my background is more in the world of data analysis. I've taught myself enough rudimentary programming skills to be slightly useful/dangerous, but my cofounder John does almost all the technical work. He studied math and computer science in college, so he's pretty evenly split in terms of being a software engineer and a data analyst.

What advice would you offer to any soon to be startup founders out there?

From the obvious department: If the user interface of your product is important (e.g., it's an analysis tool, not a social coupon site), get expert UI help in as soon as possible. Ideally you'd have a cofounder that knows some of that stuff. UI design sort of seems like it would be simple, so it's easy to just try to just do it without any expert assistance. But then your product sort of sucks, but it's hard to pin down why. Failing that, you need to be even more religious about usability testing than you already should be.

Can you convince the reader to start using Statwing in under 50 words?

If you've ever tried to analyze a bunch of data in a spreadsheet, you'll move five times as fast and learn a lot more about your data in Statwing than you would in Excel. If you're using SPSS or R and you only need the basic functionality, you'll move ten times as fast in Statwing, and you won't tear your hair out.

Finished reading? Check out Statwing!

Interview with Oliver West (Servango)

Editor — Wed, 01 May 2013 20:15:43 +0000

Servango is a community of task posters and doers. I interviewed Oliver West, Servango founder to find out more. This is the hundred and ninety fourth in a series of DW startup interviews. Big thank you to Oliver!

How would you describe Servango in under 50 words?

Servango is your local, mobile marketplace and the place to come to get things done. You can outsource those tasks, errands and jobs you can't or don't want to do, supplement your income using your skill-set or simply find new customers for your business.

How did you meet co-founder James McAloon?

James and I have been friends for along time. He joined the school I was attending at 11 years old and we became friends pretty much straight away, the friendship was further strengthened when he joined the golf club I grew up playing at. So we ended up learning together, golfing together, socializing together and eventually doing business together. I think our friendship means we can be a lot more candid about our business opinions which ultimately leads to more fruitful discussions and decisions.

What gap in the market did you discover that persuaded you to launch Servango?

It was borne more of personal circumstance to be honest, rather than the identification of this space as a hot topic in the tech start-up industry. I met James for a coffee one lunch time and he basically said that he had too much on his plate and would love it if there was some way of outsourcing certain tasks on his to-do list, some way of paying others to help lighten the load. After all there are only so many hours in a week. We got to talking about it in more serious terms and only after we'd started out on the path to making our idea a reality did we think, "hey, there are a few other people taking this on too".

How long did it take to put together Servango?

The concept phase lasted a little while, the constant brainstorming, exploratory research, the summing up of our options for example, but once we'd decided on a course of action the time from the first day of the build to launch was around 3 months a good part of which was fine tuning everything to make the experience of using the application as good as possible with the resources at our disposal.

How many users do you currently have?

We're currently at about 2500, which has exceeded our expectations thus far. We're pretty grounded in understanding the development life cycle and that we can't all expect to be Instagram, Angry Birds or Draw Something. The most important things for us are realistic goals and ensuring that we learn from every result we get.

Do you have any features in the pipeline?

Absolutely, but if I were to tell you I'd have to kill you! On a serious note, we are very excited about the features and functionality we've got lined up and we're looking forward to getting it all out there. Some are fairly basic changes, such as allowing the use of photos in messaging and on listings, others are fairly detailed.

How different is the current version of Servango compared to your initial launch?

We've made a couple of adaptations to our model that allow a user to create two different types of listing, one that is either Needed, or Offered. We found through analyzing our initial usage that there was a distinct demand for both of these types of interaction. It helps create a far more synergistic user base.

You launched in 2012, a boom for mobile applications yet a time surrounded by economic difficulties. Have you seen the growth and feedback you expected since launch?

Yes, we're pretty happy with the way things are going. We knew that 2012/13 was going to be touch economically but our application is actually a good fit for these economic times. There's a dearth of under and unemployed and those who are in full time employment are having to work twice as hard. This is fairly complementary to our model. Our feedback has been very good also, we worked hard to ensure that the user experience wasn't compromised, even in our 1.0 version. You see too many apps go for grandiose entrances to the market, trying to do too much too soon, its not an efficient way to do things and the user experience suffers as a result.

With the knowledge you have today, would you do anything different if you were to start-up Servango again?

Good question. The short answer is yes. Haha. But seriously I'd say the one thing we didn't properly account for was adaptability. Not in terms of the initial product's ability to be worked upon and improved, but from a business perspective. The business was set up to initially do "x" we didn't properly account for "x" + "unexpected". Of course the main reason this happened was because budgets are pinched right now, globally and that can't be avoided, but one piece of advice I'd give to anyone starting out on their own start-up would be to expect the unexpected and budget for it. These cliches exist for a reason!

Where do you see Servango in 5 years time?

We've always seen Servango as the place to come to get things done and we are doing everything we can to make this as ubiquitous as possible. In 5 years time, if you need anything, from your local community, be it a task completed, new business for your business, to find local businesses, find someone for some advice or a game of tennis on a summer's day we are endeavoring to make Servango your go-to for that need. Facebook and Twitter have the space nailed for social type networks with the people you know. Servango is aiming to be the go to network for all the local people that you don't know, but at some point inevitably need.

Which site or app do you check first when you wake up?

Servango of course! Beyond that it's a pretty regular morning routine, I use Reddit, so have a pretty well customized front page, devoid of memes and jokes but packed with relevant news (alienblue is great for this by the way), I also check BBC News, CNN and of course Facebook.

What is the biggest hurdle you have faced or are still facing?

Funding. I've seen a good chunk of the economic pinch on both sides of the Atlantic first hand and it's not pretty. Yes there's still a lot of money available but not like there was 5-8 years ago, back then all you had to do was pitch a half baked idea to a room full of seeders and you'd probably walk away with enough to see you through MVP and 12 - 24 months of trading. These days you need to prove so much more before you can realistically expect any significant investment. That said though I do think it has made the products and companies that make it through a lot stronger than they might have been.

Based on your own experiences what advice would you offer to any soon to be startup founders out there?

As mentioned, definitely expect the unexpected. It's a cliche for a reason, beyond that I'd say you need to focus on a few key things: get a good team together - this is so important, understand your limitations - even if you have a grand vision for a product it doesn't mean you are the best person for every job, task or role, be lean with your spending - consider how to get the most out of every dollar or pound you spend, set goals and have realistic expectations - it's very important how you measure success, and lastly have fun.

What are you most excited about at the moment?

The future. I think we are in a really interesting time right now. Within the next 5 - 10 years, we are going to see the emergence of an entirely new 'worker' and as a result start to see an even bigger and faster shift in the way we do business. You know, we first become aware of the 'real world' at about 14 - 16 years old - the workplace and its relevance to our life. When you consider that the mobile web movement has really only been going for about 6 years, it was in its infancy when those who are now entering the workforce became aware of the workplace as a whole. Fast forward 5 - 10 years and you'll have a whole new wave of people entering the workplace who are in the 14-16 year old bracket now who are growing up with with mobile technology at the forefront of their lives. I think there is a big difference between adapting to a technology and growing up with it, when you grow up with it, it's more natural and intrinsic and as a result you will naturally know more and want to do more with it.

Can you convince the reader to start using Servango in under 50 words?

Do you have enough time? Do you have enough money? If you answered no to either then download Servango and either find some nifty new earning opportunities or find someone else to do what you can’t or don’t want to.

Finished reading? Check out Servango!

Interview with John Lawson (3rd Power Outlet)

Editor — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:12:06 +0000

3rd Power Outlet specialise in urban accessories and jewellery. I interviewed John Lawson, 3rd Power Outlet founder to find out more. This is the sixth in a series of DW ecommerce interviews. Big thank you to John!

How would you describe 3rd Power Outlet in under 30 words?

We specialize in urban street accessories. Particularly in the area of shoelaces, sweatbands and flags.

Why did you decide to launch 3PO in 2005?

We had already been online since 2001 on Ebay as a vendor. At that time we were all over the place. I have sold everything from Books to Concert Tickets. I started to explore some items in a local wholesale store near my house in Atlanta. That is how we ended up trying certain apparel and jewelry and that is what got me focused.

You've had past experience at Accenture and Bank One Corp, did this previous experience help in getting 3PO set up?

I know working for a consulting firm did acclimate me for the rapid changes that came with ecommerce. I have been used to being put in situations and teams where you had lots of change and flux. So the Accenture environment prepared me well for what I embarked on in ecommerce.

When and why did the ColderICE persona come about and how has your personal brand helped your business?

The ColderICE thing really came about because I missed the social environment of the workplace. Once I was at home and working basically alone, I just had no one to talk to. So I turned on the video cam and starting talking to it via YouTube. The weird thing was, that people actually started to listen. Then I moved the conversation between videos to this new Twitter thing at that time. There were only 200k people on Twitter back then, and I used it a lot to interact. That was how ColderICE started.

How long did it take to get from idea to launch?

I think I launched FIRST and then had an idea LOL. So I was out there as John, but I had no URL for me to do the blog. What I wanted to do with a blog was to simply have 1 landing page for all my videos. When I went to Go Daddy to buy my name url of JohnLawson.com, I was disappointed to find it was already taken. Of course with such a common name, I guess I should have known. So I had to come up with something and I wanted it to feel unique. I had kicked around dozens of names for the site and one day I remembered a story. There were massive amounts of African American businesses in the days of segregation that severed "Blacks Only" in the separated Jim Crow of the south in America. Once the integration took hold, many of those business owners were harmed by the new competition of Blacks being able to leave the "Black part" of the town and shop and interact where they were previously not allowed to go. Out of that, there was a saying in the African American Business Community that "the Whiteman's ice must be colder"...I laughed to my self about it, flipped the words around, Googled "colderice" came back with few results. Went to Go Daddy and it was available and that was IT. Cause I knew I wanted to use the ICE as an acronym for Internet Commerce Education. The rest....history.

With the knowledge you have today, would you do anything differently if you were to go back to 2005?

Yes, I think the one thing I would have done completely differently would be to have focused MORE on building my own webstore a little earlier than I did. I didn't take that seriously in the beginning.

Who do you see as your target market? How are you reaching them?

I have a couple of targets. We deal in both B2B and B2C sales. On the B2B wholesale side of things, we reach them through many of the normal channels for wholesale retail ready merchandise. However on the consumer side, we use a lot of social commerce and we are very heavy into channel marketing with sights like Amazon and Ebay to reach the demographic.

What have been the most successful ways you've found in driving traffic to the website?

YouTube videos are probably one of the MOST successful things I ever did. I created a short video on "How to Fold a Bandanna" which today has more than 260,000 views. We have tracked over 10,000 actual sales from that one video. Nothing has ever been that successful as far a ROI, ever. That is ROI to the infinity really.

Where do you see 3PO in 5 years time?

We are in the process of redoing the entire thing. We are niching our product mix, beginning to manufacture our own brand and the 3rdPO you see today will most likely be an entirely DIFFERENT entity. Changing from a caterpillar to a butterfly. That is where I see us in 5 years.

Where do you see the future of e-commerce?

The future of this ecommerce industry is BRIGHT, vast and set for a RAPID increase within the BRIC nations. As they come online, they will move this method for product delivery forward in ways I can not image. The future of the industry is also being driven by the hardware more than ever. As consumers now get the ability to interact 24x7 with the virtual world through mobile devices along with advancements of mobile payments what we see today will be UNRECOGNIZABLE tomorrow. We are living in ancient history right now.

With the high competitiveness of e-commerce; which strategies do you implement to differentiate yourselves from your competitors?

You have to engage with your customers, your engagement makes you different. Even when others engage with them it is still the uniqueness of your company and its persona that makes all the difference. Plus when all things are equal as far as product, price and availability it will be SERVICE that tips the scale. Offer the best service possible.

What advice would you offer to anyone starting up an e-commerce business?

Research! It is so easy to do research on your industry today online. You do not have to fly blind, you can listen to the echos. People are telling you what is needed, where the opportunity is. Put up the radar and listen and you will breed success.

What are you most excited about at the moment?

I am most excited about the marriage of social media and ecommerce. I think social + commerce = business ... and not just online business...ALL business. That is exciting to me because this is the industry I have studied, been apart of and have been immersed in for over a decade. Now the world is catching up finally to what we are doing and what we have been doing now is positioned to go main stream. The technology is making the connection from "brick stores to click stores" and they will not be that hard line between the two.

Can you convince the reader to start shopping at 3rd Power Outlet in under 30 words?

I got more shoestrings in more colors than anybody else... LOL

Finished reading? Check out 3rd Power Outlet!

Interview with Eyal Lewinsohn (Iridize)

Editor — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 16:26:52 +0000

Iridize is a tool for creating online guided tours for web applications. I interviewed Eyal Lewinsohn, Iridize founder to find out more. This is the hundred and ninety third in a series of DW startup interviews. Big thank you to Eyal!

To those who haven't come across Iridize, how would you describe it?

Iridize makes it easy to create guided tours for your webapp that get your users going. Based on the tooltip technology, our guides can provide an encompassing first time user experience and help you make sure no user is left behind.

Describe yourself in one sentence.

Proud husband and father, CEO and entrepreneur, recovering java developer and devout basketball enthusiast.

What gap in the market did you discover that persuaded you to launch Iridize in October 2012?

For as far back as we could remember, Oded and I were always our friends’ and families’ tech support. Being the tech-savvy geeks, we would spend hours on the phone with Facebook-aspiring grandmothers or advising friends on anti-viruses. The question “where do I find that feature that does the thing?” was one that echoed in our experience assisting people and ultimately inspired us to create a tool that would be able to do that by itself. The thing is, on-page help was nowhere to be found. It didn’t make sense that in 2010, users would still have to go off-page for help with webapps or wait for chat support or even a call center rep. Sure - FAQs and knowledge bases were doing as thorough a job as ever, but the slot for immediate response on the same page for which you need the help was vacant.

How long did it take to put together the initial version of Iridize?

My partner, Oded, and I worked a full year on iridize as a side project- nights, weekends & holidays. On April 2012 we decided to quit our day jobs; on October of 2012 we launched our beta and 2 months later iridize v1 was born.

How does the current version of Iridize differ from the original version?

We have come a long way, in terms of user experience. Since our users are highly sensitive to user needs, working with them has provided priceless feedback. A good example of that is the evolution of our balloon tip settings: initially the setting were inside the tip, making it a bit clunky. When we realized our users were puzzled by the icons, we created an external Flow Panel to manage the settings, drastically reducing the editor to contain only editing functions.

Your pricing plans scale with your customers page views. Where have you seen the most traction?

Most of our customers are small-medium sized SaaS companies. Their page views usually fall in the 10-100K page views per month. But we are very happy to have the full range of customers both bigger and smaller. We also pride ourselves in providing the service for free for non-for-profit organizations and for startups that don’t have a positive cash flow significant funding yet.

Has Iridize got the feedback and growth you expected since launching in 2012?

To some extent - of course. Since the launch in 2012 we have been confronted with challenges and have had some realizations about changing directions, in regard to PR and networking, but all in all, I think we had fairly adjusted expectations and reality lived up to them. I mean, sure - we would love to have gone viral like Instagram or Fiverr, but we aren’t holding our breath for a cinderella story. Instead, we just work hard with and for our customers and take it one challenge at a time.

How do you differentiate yourselves from your competitors?

It’s simple: we are the only ones who actively and directly target small-medium SaaS companies, like ourselves. We like working with these folks and provide an easily affordable and implementable solution for their common issues, leaning on a thorough understanding of how to provide the optimal first time user experience. We are also the only company in the field that provides a solution that does not require installation and can be accessed 24-7 from anywhere with an internet connection.

What is your primary focus in terms of new developments at the moment?

We are in a constant state of improving our user experience, basing our changes on user feedback and top notch UX feedback. It’s remarkable to see how dynamic the process is: we get input from one of our users about a needed feature and immediately move to implement it. Oded and I have recently been accepted into The Junction accelerator in Tel Aviv and have been receiving a lot of quality feedback from the best designers, marketers and UX professionals in the field. So naturally, that is where we are focusing our energy at the moment. We are also exploring some very exciting new opportunities that I can’t reveal at this moment, so stay tuned...

If you could startup again, what one thing would you do differently?

The one thing I would do differently is start with more aggressive salesmanship from the get-go. It is never too early to start networking, especially if you believe in your product, like we do.

What advice would you offer to any soon to be startup founders out there?

Trust your instincts, choose your professional partners like you would your spouses and give it everything you’ve got.

Can you convince the reader to start using Iridize in under 50 words?

Iridize lets you easily create guided tours for your webapp to orient your users, increase trial conversions and reduce customer support costs. We provide an engaging first time user experience that's like a personal instructor who encourages your webapp users every step of the way, saying “click here”, “almost done”...

Finished reading? Check out Iridize!

Interview with Jerome Ternynck (SmartRecruiters)

Editor — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:59:34 +0000

SmartRecruiters is the social hiring platform. I interviewed Jerome Ternynck, SmartRecruiters founder to find out more. This is the hundred and ninety second in a series of DW startup interviews. Big thank you to Jerome!

How would you describe SmartRecruiters in under 25 words?

The Hiring Platform. Everything you need to source, engage and hire top talent.

If you could go back to 2010 and start-up SmartRecruiters again, would you do anything differently?

I see the startup world as an accelerated learning course so, yes there are several things that I think I would do differently in retrospect. However, if you would have told me in late 2010 that I would end Q1 in 2013 with 36,000+ customers who have created 177,000+ jobs, I may not have believed you.

You've received $5M in venture capital, how long did it take to secure the funding? What was the process like?

It is a good time to be an entrepreneur. With the right plan, fundraising is not difficult. Fundraising is not about convincing people, it’s about finding the other innovative believers. Upon moving to San Francisco, I networked and met about ten VCs for our Series A. Eights weeks after introductions, we were backed by Mayfield.

Over 36,000 businesses use SmartRecruiters, which marketing channels have you had the most success with?

Our philosophy is results driven. How we have grown: (1) build an awesome product, and (2) share remarkable content. Above all else, product comes first. The resource and development team is two thirds of our company. If you are going to subject people to marketing messaging, it should be content that will help their lives, even if they decide not to use SmartRecruiters technology. This customer first mindset is why so many practitioners and influencers want to contribute to the SmartRecruiters blog. The SmartRecruiters blog has published 400 posts from 75 different authors. Resourceful advice around a great product makes every dollar spent quite viral. Frankly, an awesome product in a big market doesn't need much marketing. With that said, "More, Faster." We recently started some demand generation campaigns, and are actually hiring a Director of Demand Generation. So if you know someone interested in generating demand for a great free software that is already organically disrupting a massive industry, give me a call.

You employee over 30 people, have you had any difficulties in finding talented developers and managers?

No. We use our own platform to source, engage and hire people so that’s been easy. On the tech side, our development team is in Krakow, Poland, and we really are a major player in bringing the San Francisco Startup scene to Krakow. Every time we host a meetup (part of our SmartUp Series), over a hundred developers come to our office and leave wanting more.

What is the biggest hurdle you have faced or are still facing?

You can never iterate fast enough. There is also more data to learn from.

What is your primary focus in terms of new developments at the moment?

We want to continue to execute on our vision to make hiring top talent easy. We just opened a marketplace for recruitment agencies to seamlessly connect customers to the best recruiters at the best terms. Later this year, we’ll be launching an assessment center to integrate assessments for any type of work at any type of company. Recruiting is increasingly a science. Know who fits.

You have offices in San Francisco and Krakov, how do you deal with time difference?

Mamy skype codziennej.

Where do you see SmartRecruiters in 5 years time?

The goal is to eradicate unemployment. Realistically, having empowered businesses to create several million jobs, and continuing to build an online labor market that is much more effective to the one in real life.

What advice would you offer to any soon to be startup founders out there?

Hire top talent, and then everything else will work out.

Can you convince the reader to start using SmartRecruiters in under 50 words?

Give us a try for next hire, you'll see.

Finished reading? Check out SmartRecruiters!

Interview with Siddharth Batra (Mine)

Editor — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 09:33:46 +0000

Mine is a directory of people and purchases. I interviewed Siddharth Batra, Mine founder to find out more. This is the hundred and ninety first in a series of DW startup interviews. Big thank you to Siddharth!

How would you describe Mine in under 50 words?

Mine is a directory of people and what they buy. On the web and iPhone. People do three things on Mine: They import their purchase history by connecting an email address They browse and follow other people and their purchases They discover and buy new products through other people

What in particular prompted the idea for Mine?

The inspiration really came from empirically analyzing the Twitter and Instagram public streams. Search for “just bought” right now on Twitter, and you’ll see an incredible volume of tweets from people just telling the world they’ve bought something. It’s the same on Instagram. Search for “instagr.am” right now on Twitter — nothing specific to shopping — and you’ll see that a ton again are about products! And the overarching context for talking about products tends to be ownership, what you’ve just bought. So there’s a gigantic product revealing itself here: It’s one that’s completely focused on ownership It’s one that improves on the current situation by including - a catalog picture of the item - the store where it was bought - a link to more info, where the item can be bought and by cataloging all this over time so that you build up a profile of what you’ve bought.

How did you meet co-founders Pierre Legrain and Deepak Rao?

Deepak and I went to the same undergrad college back home in Delhi. We had a blast working on a project together and haven't looked back since. Pierre and I met at Stanford where I was doing my CS Master's and he was doing an MBA right down the street. We co-founded a video advertising startup while at Stanford and have been friends since. The three of us got together in early 2012 after Deepak's graduation from Stanford and started working on Mine.

How long did you spent developing Mine before launching?

The excruciating period of grinding that happens before a startup succeeds (or appears to) is the most overlooked part of startup stories. Startups appear to be overnight successes but all of them go through the trough of sorrow when they're figuring things out. We spent a little over a year grinding it out with early users before we officially launched Mine.

How did you manage to raise $600,000 in initial funding?

We were really fortunate during fundraising. Early on in the process we met Michael Dearing of Harrison Metal and he decided to invest. Working with Michael Dearing is an enriching experience. He's a remarkably supportive investor who likes to stay under the radar. If you're contemplating raising a round of angel funding, go see him at Harrison Metal.

Through Mine, can you see what anyone in the world is buying or just friends?

The concept of getting inspiration from other people's purchases works phenomenally across any influence relationship - be it a friend of yours of someone you follow on Twitter. On Mine you can lookup what anyone in the world is buying - the new shoes your best friend bought, the latest book J. K. Rowling is reading or the cookware Gordon Ramsay is using in his kitchen.

Are there any new features coming up you can tell us about?

Once you connect to enough people you care about on Mine, it becomes an incredible destination to start your purchasing decisions. We're beta testing a feature to search the purchases of all your connections. So, if you're looking to buy headphones or the next iPhone app to download you can enter queries like "headphones my friends have bought" or "popular games from my friends of friends" and get relevant results from the people you care about.

What advice would you offer to any soon to be startup founders out there?

If you're solving a problem that you deeply care about nothing else will matter.

Can you convince the reader to start using Mine in under 50 words?

Mine gives you a superpower. There’s never been a directory of ownership where you could see what others you know have bought. Mine gives you super power eyes, and once you’ve seen with these eyes, you don’t want to stop.

Finished reading? Check out Mine!

Interview with Justyn Howard (Sprout Social)

Editor — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:05:58 +0000

Sprout Social provides a set of tools for social media management. I interviewed Justyn Howard, Sprout Social founder to find out more. This is the hundred and ninetieth in a series of DW startup interviews. Big thank you to Justyn!

How would you describe Sprout Social in under 50 words?

Sprout is a social media management platform for business. Our engagement, publishing and analytics features bring social presence into one powerful tool and turn keystrokes into happier customers, followers and fans. Sprout gives one user the power of twenty and large teams surgical precision to create exceptional brand experiences.

How did you meet CTO Aaron Rankin?

That was a lucky bit of chance. Aaron and I met on a double date in 2009. While our dates caught up, we started talking about liquor and eventually about a software idea Gil Lara (Creative Director and co-founder) and I were tossing around at the time. The conversation went well and we decided to meet a few days later – things moved pretty quickly from there.

What gap in the market did you discover that persuaded you to launch Sprout Social in 2010?

In late 2009, I was working for an enterprise software company and trying to find tools to help me use social media to connect with my customers. Everything in the market was focused on consumers and lacked the business layer that would make it really work for professional use. The idea has evolved a lot, but that was the original itch. It wasn’t even clear at the time that consumers would ever want to communicate with brands through Twitter or Facebook, but we (and our investors) made a pretty big bet that they would.

What made you think of the name Sprout Social?

It wasn’t a very involved process. Gil and I were just throwing around name ideas to help bring our design concepts to life. I think we ended up with 4-5 options and Sprout Social fit the best with our brand direction. After some back and forth and an occasional second guess, it began to feel right. Now it sounds perfect.

Who do you see as your target audience? How are you reaching them?

Our customers are very diverse. We work with big brands that have large teams, like McDonald’s; complex programs like the Obama for America 2012 presidential campaign; brands with smaller teams; and even our favorite local businesses. The common thread to each client is their desire to make meaningful connections with their audience and the recognition that social media is another way to build a relationship with their customers and fans. A large part of our business comes from word-of-mouth, as our customers are social by nature. Happy customers multiply. We also find new customers through integrated campaigns across the typical digital marketing channels, as well as through our popular blog, Sprout Insights.

What technologies have you used to develop Sprout Social and which were the most technically challenging development problems?

Our technology mix is pretty intense but our approach is simple - pick the best tool for the job. So we have a healthy blend of bleeding-edge and trusted technologies. That goes for our front-end tech and back-end stack. We process more than 6 million interactions per day for our customers and support heavy daily use across tens of thousands of users. In addition to scaling for that volume, we build against a requirement list that develops in real-time. There is no precedent for our features and the social media ecosystem changes overnight. Agility is critical to our success and remaining nimble has been harder than any singular technology problem.

How successful has your 30 day free trial been and why?

The world becomes pretty clear when you can rely on actual use of your product to convert prospects to paying customers. There is no such thing as buyer’s remorse when you’ve fully experienced something before you buy it. We know exactly how much value we bring to the table and get immediate feedback on changes and enhancements. It’s like running a school where every kid loves being there. For us, every customer relationship starts with a fair value exchange and great rapport and that makes a big difference.

You've received over $10M in funding, how long did this take to secure? What was the process like?

This is one of those answers that will be relevant to no one. We’ve raised two rounds of financing and both were done over the course of a few days (not counting contracts/legal). In each round you optimize for different things and when both parties find the right fit it’s pretty clear. We didn’t do a lot of frog kissing.

What is the biggest hurdle you have faced or are still facing?

Our biggest hurdle has always been being ahead of a roadmap where the industry is developing in real-time. Corporate adoption of social media has changed and moved so quickly throughout the past 2-3 years, it’s crazy. We have to constantly find ways to innovate against a moving target and do it at break-neck speeds.

You employee over 35 people, have you had any difficulties in finding talented developers and managers?

Finding great people anywhere is tough. Our team is about 65 now and has grown pretty steadily over the past 3 years. We have an exceptional group and with each great addition it becomes easier to attract the next. As we become more specialized, certain roles take longer to fill, but we’ve definitely had a lot of good fortune.

Has Sprout Social got the feedback and growth you expected since launching three years ago?

I think we had a vague idea of how big we wanted to be 3 years ago, but it wasn’t based in any reality. We had no point of reference from similar SaaS companies, so it was all wild guesses. I do remember telling Aaron in one of those first meetings that I thought we could eventually hit a certain revenue number, which sounded crazy at the time. We’re doing about 10x that now.

How do you differentiate yourselves from your competitors?

Everyone in our space uses the same buzzwords and the same value statements. At some point, the only differentiation that matters is the product and service. That has consistently been our biggest strength – we’ve built a top-notch platform and it speaks or itself. We’ve always been pretty understated in our marketing/positioning, but we’re starting to open up more about our success and capabilities this year. Most people wouldn’t know for example that our Enterprise customer roster is as large as it is, but our product is incredibly powerful.

What is your primary focus in terms of new developments at the moment?

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make social effective across an organization. Two years ago, a small team handled social – today social teams are regularly in the dozens to hundreds. Two years from now, it will touch more employees than most other types of business software. Our team is focused on anticipating the needs across an organization as social media adoption and implementation become more sophisticated.

Do you have any upcoming features for Sprout Social that you would like to mention?

We just introduced new engagement metrics in our app and also the opportunity for any brand to run a free engagement report. All they have to do is visit mustbepresent.com, authorize with Twitter and run a report. The new metrics detail average response rates, typical response times and more. It’s a great way to get a pulse on your performance; you can even compare your brand to vertical benchmarks. There’s another feature I’d love to mention as our customers are begging for it. Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to talk about it and contractually we can’t even say that it’s almost finished. Aside from that, we’re totally revamping our reporting engine and opening up some internal tools that we’ve built. We’ve had a very aggressive roadmap the past two years, but 2013 will bring twice as much new functionality.

Can you convince the reader to start using Sprout Social in under 50 words?

Happy customers are the only currency that matter in business. Sprout helps you get and keep more of them. It’s free to try, so please do.

Finished reading? Check out Sprout Social!