curiousgirl's playground

I've been idle for a while and actively pursuing a few projects of mine...one of which is Yoink'd.

Yoink'd Mediabox is a fully AJAX / DHTML web media player (like Windows Media Player, iTunes, Winamp, etc..) for finding, organizing, and sharing available online video content (from youtube, google video, etc.). Features include:

• Ability to convert any raw RSS feed into a playlist
• View real-time live yoinks from friends (integrated with Facebook)
• Ability to completely embed the media player onto any website in various formats (Yoink'd Mini and Yoink'd Widget)
• Auto-relinking of dead video links
• Ability to play on any web-enabled device (browser, iPhone, Nintendo Wii, PS3, iPod Touch, etc..)
• Customization via multiple skins

Our core value lies in user experience and our media sharing capabilities. We truly want to change the way we view media on the web.

Enjoy this short demo to the sweet, tunes of Aly and AJ in "The Potential Breakup Song."

technorati tags: yoink'd, yoinkd, mediabox, aly, aj, potential breakup song, yoinkd.com

October 9, 2007 | 4:19 AM | Comments (1)

I've been taking a closer look at the mobile space and found a number of very well-written blogs. One of favorites is Mobile Opportunity written by seasoned industry expert Michael Mace.

One of his older posts back in April 2007 caught my attention. He points out an interesting ultimate social networking tool, Spitr, a project by Inrvoice LLC being worked on by technologists and biomedical researchers:

From what is described, the product is pretty scary if you think about it: more real-time than Facebook status updates or Twitter. Imagine having your thoughts immediately being published live. It is the ultimate form of stalking yourself. Pros? A definite time saver (no more typing or fiddling with gadgets). Could very well be one of the most accurate ways of understanding and analyzing human thought. Cons? How does this work exactly? Privacy issues, of course. I'd like to keep most of my thoughts to myself. Is there some way of "filtering" your own thoughts? Wow...that'd be kind of weird - like quality checking your own thoughts...

technorati tags: twitter, social networking, spitr, bluetooth

August 30, 2007 | 9:25 AM | Comments (1)

Here's an excerpt from my recent conversation with a friend online (re: web 2.0 site):

In addition, my friend is "paranoid" and will not disclose his idea until it is "finished" (which is not a problem by me, of course. I'm just a curious girl and love to hear about new ideas.)

This post is not to make fun of my friend as he is super-talented and an amazing computer scientist. I just find it amusing as I've heard the same exact lines echoed previously in blog posts I've read in the past year or so. In fact, here are some related, very useful articles by industry leaders and experts:

• Top 10 Lies of Entrepreneurs
• Startup Lessons

One of the key lessons I've picked up from visiting TechStars, talking with entrepreneurs, helping build a social web media player, and working at a startup is the importance of speed-to-market and customer feedback. It's so critical to rapidly prototype in order to churn around fast iterations of a product. This process of fast, agile development is advocated by heavily by Eric and Todd of MyBlogLog; it's also a trend we notice with the high influx of Facebook and iPhone apps. Yet, this seems to be at odds with the emphasis in design in my last few posts, right?

Naturally, there are tradeoffs to everything in life. It's hard to pursue several ideas at once only to "see what sticks" so to speak. However, I feel like what's more important is finding the right balance between all these different choices. I guess, at the end of the day, there must be a final team consensus -- make a decision and move forward.

technorati tags: entrepreneurship, startup, technology

August 8, 2007 | 5:27 PM | Comments (0)

I'm truly impressed by Janice Fraser, one of the founding members of Adaptive Path. She is an entrepreneur, interaction designer, and editor -- all in one! She writes an inspirational blog (hah, she's "clevergirl") and has an excellent podcast here.

• Partnerships (people) are most important. It's all comes down to trust. Adaptive Path's success is due to the solidity of the seven co-founders. Janice talks about her great relationship with Peter Merholz, President of Adaptive Path, and how even if they did get it into conflicts (ps: constructive discontent is always healthy), the conflicts would be meaningful.
• Make meaning. Not just in the Guy Kawasaki's "Let's Change the World" kind of way. Janice stresses creating meaning for your employees, making sure they want to be there and are 100% passionate.
• Be stingy.
  • Financially. The founding members of Adaptive Path spent 6 months arguing over whether or not to buy a printer and lived without an office for a year.
  • On features. Less is more. Each additional feature = extra expense = additional design, development, testing costs.
• Alignment = Integrity. Hire for the right characteristics in people. The right people will create the right product vision. The right product vision gets you the right customers. My questions for Janice are: What exactly does "right" mean? More importantly, how do you know what is "right?"
• Companies are designed for people. Firm culture is critical. Janice says, "If work is not fulfilling, people will not have loyalty." What I admire most about Janice is her brutal honesty. She's not afraid to admit "she's human" and makes mistakes, too. As CEO, Janice says she "has no power" and instead must empower others around her. She cites a specific example with a newly hired PR person where she took more control than she was supposed to. This PR employee approached her about it, and she accepted the feedback and immediately apologized and let go. For Janice, her employees are her partners.
• You are employed by an industry, not a company. Think about the bigger picture. Take the long view.

technorati tags: janice fraser, adaptive path, design, ceo, entrepreneurship

August 5, 2007 | 4:48 PM | Comments (1)

What is it? How do startups get ahead of customers? How and when do startups execute on strategy? What happens if your strategy fails?

• Know your customer; be a customer. Try to find a few key customers who might just tell you what they want and then go build that (Reminds me of “Law of a Few” from Malcolm Galdwell’s Tipping Point). What influences your customers? What do they care about? Above all, be passionate about your product. Use it. Test it. Tinker with it.
• Master storytelling. Why should anyone (e.g. your customer, Wall Street analyst, public relations, etc. -- your constituents) care about your product?
• Perception is key. People expect things to work. If something is in “beta” stage, it better work. Underpromise and overdeliver.
• Flexibility is crucial. Have a plan but don’t be afraid to tweak it.
  • 50% proactive - Knowing your strategy
  • 50% reactive - Understanding what market is saying and reacting to feedback
• Failure is OK. In fact, fail over and over again. Don’t be afraid. You learn more from your mistakes.

Panelists: Alex King (Crowd Favorite), Brad Feld (Mobius Venture Capital), Don Loeb (Feedburner), Dave Taylor (serial entrepreneur and consultant)

Should all startups blog? Must they do so nowadays to gain critical mass?

• Free marketing. Blogs can serve as a great way to spread the word about your product and company. Huge viral and network effects.
• Be coherent and consistent. Keep blogs focused on specific topics (e.g. separate personal and company blogs).
• Be thoughtful. Have your own insight and opinion. Do more than copy or reiterate what’s already out there.
• Have domain expertise. What is your unique contribution? Brad Feld asked one question to the eager founders of the room: “What can we be best in the world at?”

While Brad Feld argued for complete transparency in blogging, I feel companies ought to exercise caution. While blogging may be especially beneficial for consumer-oriented internet startups in "spreading the word," it also is a source of competitive intelligence. One interesting point that was brought up was whether or not companies should blog about a "roadblock" they've encountered. Another point was whether or not young people today should be worried about what they are blogging about online. In other words, can the words you say now (e.g. say as a teenager using MySpace or Facebook) be used against you later (e.g. for a future job position)? Since perception is so important, one negative first impression can ruin the future image of the brand (or person).

technorati tags: techstars, go-to-market strategy, blogging, startups, marketing, getting started

June 14, 2007 | 10:41 AM | Comments (0)

I’ve spent the past few days in beautiful Boulder, Colorado visiting TechStars, a three-month long summer program helping selected startup teams begin their company (much like Y Combinator featured in this Newsweek article). I met David Cohen, Executive Director of TechStars, earlier this year when he was interviewing my friends from LingoLinko, one of the chosen teams to participate. David later graciously invited me to check out the program this summer. This week, I’ve had the opportunity to sit in on weekly group sessions (e.g. talks from industry panelists on various business and tech topics from "go-to-market strategy" to "transparency around blogging") and startup-specific office hours (e.g. legal advice, advice from MyBlogLog founders and Noah Kagan, etc.)

My trip has been amazing so far. First off, Boulder is absolutely gorgeous. Here are some of my favorite perks about the city:

• Perfect weather. I’m biased since my family is currently in the Bay Area of California, but think Seattle summer. Clear blue skies, clouds, moderate temperature. Not too cold, not too hot. You can wear anything you want.
• Very outdoorsy. Great for hiking, biking, camping, skiing, running, whatever else you can think of. There are always cyclists and pedestrians on the road. Seeing people in a suburban town is a wonderful feeling!
• Happy, friendly people. I think this is a result of the weather, but everyone is nice. Talk to any local barista of the many, many coffee shops around the area. Feel free to ask a stranger for directions somewhere. Or talk to the lady who works in the Boulder Bookstore. They are all personable and easy going. I love the laid back attitude of everyone here.
• Easy to navigate. Because I recently lost my wallet, I wasn’t able to rent a car, but this hasn’t been a problem at all for me. The Pearl Street Mall (downtown Boulder) is just four streets away from me. Everything is within walking distance, giving me the opportunity to really appreciate and enjoy the weather in the mornings when I go out.
• Other random facts. Did you that more than 50% of city has college education or better? One of the best places to retire.

In addition, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all the conversations I’ve had with the founders of the TechStars teams. I love meeting new people and hearing their thoughts and ideas. I could immediately feel the excitement and energy of the founders just from short conversations with them, making me more eager to see the results of their hard work. All of them have been working on some very interesting, exciting, cool ideas. Unfortunately, most of them haven’t been getting too much sleep… For instance, my friends on the LingoLinko team have had crazy schedules (e.g. sleeping at 7am and waking up at 12noon). I’m amazed by everyone’s energy ….

I’m heading out of Boulder this afternoon. Thanks to David Cohen for letting me crash TechStars for a few days. Also, special shout out to Ben Casnocha for making my trip even more amazing and introducing me to more entrepreneurial people in the Boulder area!

technorati tags: techstars, boulder, colorado, david cohen, startups, entrepreneurship

June 12, 2007 | 9:06 PM | Comments (2)

My friend Theodore King and I had the pleasure of meeting Chris Lehmann, principal of Science Leadership Academy (SLA), this past Wednesday morning. SLA is a new Philadelphia public school, which opened this past Fall 2006, focused on project-based learning and built on School 2.0 principles. SLA's five core values (inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation and reflection) are deeply emphasized across all its curriculum. Many thanks to Christian Long, CEO of DesignShare, for introducing me to Chris in the first place!

Chris graciously offered us a few moments of this time out of his busy schedule to discuss the making of his vision. In addition, Jon Amsterdam gave us a tour of the facilities. Below are some of the observations I made from the visit.

• Empower students! SLA loves each of its students as individuals. This is deeply reflected in its admissions process. Each interested candidate is evaluated separately based on academics, extracurriculars, interest in project-based learning, etc. and goes through a face-to-face interview process where students are assessed based on their presentation skills, interaction with the SLA community, etc. Consequently, admission is not biased to only students who are top academic performers. Instead, the admission process considers a breadth of very diverse, qualified candidates. For instance, if a student was not performing as well academically, he/she must justify their performance during the interview process and why they are interested in a place like SLA. Fit is what matters. While this approach may lead to a larger academic difference gap among classes (which may be more difficult for teachers from a teaching perspective), ultimately I think this process provides "balance" and the "right" mix of students. At the end of the day, you want to admit people who truly want to be there, and SLA's admission process does just that.
• Renovate traditional learning. SLA focuses on project-based learning with lots of interdisciplinary overlap across courses, so students can easily apply concepts learned in one subject to another. For instance, history teacher Mr. Matt Baird described the most recent project his students were working on. It was focused on the abolitionist period where students had to draft a letter in response to the Dred Scott decision. The students then use modern technology to create advertisements during that time period. In another project, they must research and collect stories on historic Philadelphia and later publish the material on a public website. This process allows the students to mix knowledge of history with other disciplines (arts, computers, etc.).
• Incorporate cutting-edge technology. Each SLA student has an Apple labtop. Classes run on open-source course management programs like Moodle, allowing students and teachers to more easily collaborate online via features such as virtual classrooms, gradebook, discussion forums, and file uploads. In addition, teachers can use blogs and wikis to communicate with students on a daily basis. Chris told us that they are now switching over to use Drupal. In particular, they are partnering with Bill Fitzgerald of OpenAcademic to build a standard for online collaborative learning for the new tech-savvy generation.
• Create a sense of community. Students actively participate in all activities from helping with the SLA admissions process (acting as "interviewers" and providing their own feedback on candidates) to making changes to open-source software (updating SLA website, upgrading features of programs, blogging). One example Chris mentioned was a student who had excellent academics (4.0) but was not admitted. When the parents asked why, Chris said that the student expressed arrogance in front of other SLA students during the interview process, saying that he was only applying to SLA as a "safety school." To me, this is an excellent way of assessing a candidate's "soft" qualities. After all, people do not reveal their "true" self during the formal interview process. Only by interacting with people in an array of environments and situations can you get a better understanding of what the person is actually like. By using this method of active student participation, SLA students gain a sense of responsibility for SLA and ownership of their work. They feel part of the SLA family. Even just walking around the school, Theodore and I saw the hard work of students proudly displayed on the multi-colored pastel walls (e.g. poster displaying complex carbon molecules in Chicken Nuggets and Mac & Cheese). Jon told us that the walls will soon be decorated with art murals. (This hit home for me. I actually replicated a famous painting for my elementary school in New Jersey. I'm hoping to visit my old school later this May. My principal, Mr. Mrozinski, told me that as long as he was still at the school (which he is), he'd make sure the picture was still on the wall. I wonder if it's still there ...)

Overall, the visit was very enjoyable and eye-opening. It's great to first hear Chris talk about his initial vision and then physically see, touch, and walk through it. I can't wait to see what SLA will be like a year from now.

View this Flickr set to see more images. I took some with my phone, but the quality isn't nearly as good!

technorati tags: science leadership academy, sla, philadelphia, chris lehmann, school 2.0, education

March 29, 2007 | 5:19 PM | Comments (1)

A follow-up from my last post on deep relationships---
Check out Susan Wu's post titled 'Why emotional relationships with your users matter more than ever" She claims that "emotional intensity" directly affects:

1. level of attention user is willing to provide
2. quality of interaction between the user and the product

Both these factors are more critical in today's "attention economy." Relating to online consumer startups, the strength of these emotional relationships create network effects and determine the closeness of the community.

Interestingly enough, she also draws an analogy between user-product relationships with real life romantic relationships:

My dad has continually reminded me the importance of EQ over IQ. Is EQ more innate or can it be learned? How do you learn (teach) EQ? This reminds me of how Wharton tries to teach "leadership" to all incoming undergraduate freshmen in a class called "Leadership and Communication in Groups" (MGMT100). Based on the mixed reactions from students, it's hard to measure the overall "success" of this class.

technorati tags: emotional relationship, attention economy, emotional intensity

March 27, 2007 | 11:03 AM | Comments (0)

• Do you really understand the real need (sometimes unspoken need) of your customer?
• Can you give the customer what he or she really wants?

This is the motto of Song. If you haven't heard of Song before, they are a "lifestyle" airline (later killed and absorbed by Delta) targeted mainly towards women. Song is all about creating a deep, emotional relationship with the consumer:

• Experience creators. They have renovated the entire end-to-end flight experience from the time you punch in your flight information at the kiosk to when you are at the gate to when you are sitting in your seat. The pastel colors of Song are carried throughout this journey (Song logo/backdrop at airport, airport Song gate design, flight chairs, etc). Even the diaper changing station of the plane has the words "oh baby!" (white text on blue) written on it.
• Brand the people. Song employees are not interviewed. They audition. People are taught "how to be Song." People talk about whether or not they are "Song" or how much "Song" they are. The company has turned "Song" into an adjective. (Like how Google has turned itself into a verb.) Are you "Song?"
• Introduce novelty. Song is an airline, yet it has publicized itself in completely innovative ways, methods people would not typically associate with an airline. For instance, Song has a concept store in Massachusetts (much like the Apple store) where visitors can stop by for a visit. They have run a series of ads - print and TV - to convey their brand. These ads typically feature real, happy-looking people. The created scene is often magical yet not surreal.

The notorious saying goes, "I know I'm wasting half of my advertising dollars. I just don't know which half." After one year since Song's campaign, the team met for an evaluation of ad effectiveness. To their dismay, they only found that 15% of their target demographic could both recall their ads and associate them with the Song brand. What does this mean? It means there is a such thing as being *too* creative and out-of-the-box. Yes, you will grab people's attention, but they will not necessarily associate their confusion / surprise with your brand. You can't expect people to be smart enough (or proactive enough) to connect the dots.

• Create a lovemark. Follow the advice of one of the greatest advertising agencies of all time, Saatchi & Saatchi.

  Lovemarks transcend brands. They deliver beyond your expectations of great performance. Like great brands, they sit on top of high levels of respect - but there the similarities end.

  Lovemarks reach your heart as well as your mind, creating an intimate, emotional connection that you just can’t live without. Ever.

  Take a brand away and people will find a replacement. Take a Lovemark away and people will protest its absence. Lovemarks are a relationship, not a mere transaction. You don’t just buy Lovemarks, you embrace them passionately. That’s why you never want to let go.

  Put simply, Lovemarks inspire "Loyalty Beyond Reason."

  
  

• It's all about relationships. Not just with your customer but with your friends, your boss, your boyfriend, your children, your dog, and even your stock portfolio. It's how you manage and understand these relationships that really matter. I suppose at the end of the day, the essence is understanding what it means to be human. What motivates people? What do they care about? What are their inner wants and desires? Why do they do what they do? What are their stories?
• Feeling > Thinking. "How do you think?" is on the outside. "How do you feel?" is on the inside. Getting to know the inside is what counts. How well can you read the inside?

technorati tags: song, airline, experience, experience marketing, customer, customer need, lovemark

March 26, 2007 | 4:13 PM | Comments (0)

Last Updated: 3/16/07

My friend Ravi Mishra wrote a post a while back about Wharton titled "Where Entrepreneurship Comes to Die" which gained quite a bit of popularity. While I agree that the herd mentality at Wharton is very strong (too strong I should say), this past year I've noticed a small, growing "underground" entrepreneurship community. I've compiled a list of startups I know of to date from Wharton. If anyone knows more, please and I will add to the list.

• Natpal: effective advertising for local businesses, started by Nathaniel Stevens (WH '06), BusinessWeek's Top 20 Young Entrepreneurs under 25
  Founded in 2004
• Eatnow: online food delivery service, founded by my friend Nat Turner (WH '08)
  Founded in 2005
• BoxMyDorm: making the college move-in/move-out process easy, started by Peter Handy (WH '08)
• CampusDock: online eBay for college students, started by my classmate Greg Morillo (WH '08)
  Launched in 2007
• Eduvo: a web-based school 2.0-powered learning management system (better than Blackboard), founded by my friend Theodore King (WH '09)
  Launching this Friday!
• Locobuzz: online guide for what's happening on campus (I am friends with Dan Zhou (SEAS '09), one of the developers for this site.)
  Launching very soon, still in development phase
• LingoLinko: online language learning community, started by Yi Li (SEAS '10) and Zhuang Sheng Quan (WH '10)
  Still under development

• Herd mentality at Ivy Leagues and other top institutions is too strong. Investment banking and consulting are still the traditional "tracks" people take. From being in my business fraternity, Phi Gamma Nu, I've seen too many Wharton juniors stress out about the on campus recruiting process. There are too many students competing for a few spots (internships especially), resulting in an unnecessarily competitive process. I'm not in any way saying these are bad jobs. I'm saying that people think that they are the only jobs out there in this world and that they will become a failure in life if they don't get it. Please read Ho Nam's (General Partner and co-founder of Altos Ventures) excellent article on "We're raising sheep in our educational system, not independent thinkers and doers." Consequently, too many students fail to explore all the opportunities out there. Perhaps there's a job they would love more? It's not that these opportunities don't exist. As my friend Peter points out to me, opportunities exist everywhere. The question is whether or not you 1) choose to see it and 2) take advantage of it. I see this applied in so many cases -- not just to the entrepreneur but also to the financial investor finding niche opportunities in the market that Wall Street misses. So, next time, don't think that you have no doors open to you after graduation. You got to first acknowledge that the doors exist or else you are just closing them on yourself. Then, don't just stand there. Open them!
• Entrepreneurs solve problems they are familiar with and see around them. Most of the above sites are either targeted at colleges or focus on education. For the two that have a School 2.0 bent, it's interesting to note that both have an international focus.
• The entrepreneurs are getting younger. The time to start a company is getting earlier. This, of course, deserves a link to one of my favorite posts by marketing guru, Seth Godin on "The Best Time To Start."
• Entrepreneurship exists everywhere around us. We just need to open our eyes to see it. When I was visiting colleges back in high school, I remember that a Berkeley student told me that Berkeley was actually not all -that- liberal. It was just that the liberals were more vocal and got heard more. To this, I say, that all the closet entrepreneurs at Penn ought to speak up!

Does your school have an underground community?

PS: On a related note, these underground communities come in all forms .. including fan clubs! I've met a handful of people at Wharton who are devoted Warren Buffett followers and true value investors. I've also met people who admire Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator.

technorati tags: wharton, penn, entrepreneurship, startups, underground community, herd mentality

March 13, 2007 | 9:16 AM | Comments (2)

People are inherently social beings, and it's no surprise that the web is moving in that direction.

• More niche social networks, more application across industries and sectors: On top of social networking sites (MySpace/Facebook), social music sites (last.fm), social video sites (YouTube), here are a few examples from the professional world this NYT article:
  • Corporations: Cisco recently purchased technological assets of Tribe.net. In the future, company employees will more easily do internal searches, network with one another, schedule events, etc. They can use these networks to spread buzz on company products or events.
  • Politics: Check out My.Barack.Obama. Politicians can now use the web as a tool to gain widespread support.
  • Education: School 2.0 is reinventing education for the future. While this process is slowest (since training and adoption rate is slow - see below), once the initial infrastructure is built, this effort can easily scale. Students and teachers can more easily communicate and collaborate online (grading sheets, course materials, club websites, etc.).
• Social networking for everyone: Ning, a social networking site founded by Netscape co-creator Marc Andreessen, has recently been getting a lot of buzz for allowing users to create their own social networks (example: site for American Idol fans):
  
  
  From eBay sellers in Upstate New York to bead store owners in Maine, aspiring hip hop artists in New Jersey, pop culture junkies in New York City, college professors in Germany, young deviant artists in North Carolina, and even a few big media companies in LA, with Ning anyone can create the perfect social network for them.

• Organization of social networks and finding the "right" users: With all these niche social networks out there, how can we avoid duplicates? How can users quickly discover the networks they want? This really plays into the larger problem of organizing data on the web already. I suppose this is where Ning has an advantage in being a platform provider for social networking sites.
• Gap between techies vs. everyone else: There's an extreme lag (adoption rate) between the digital tech world of bloggers, tech geeks, etc. and everyone else. All I need to do is to take a look at my mom or even my college friends. The bottom line is that changing consumer habits is difficult (especially in a short amount of time). Of course, this depends on the target segment. If you are targeting tech-savvy users, adoption rates are much quicker. Look at the success of MyBlogLog. Instead, augmenting an existing user experience sounds much more likely for success in the short-term.
• Identity management: People hate typing in login/password information for multiple accounts. Is having one central location for management a "safe" way of handling this situation? The NYT article points to OpenId as a way for users to manage their profiles across social sites.
• Social network visualization I'm a visual person, so having a way to visualize my network - be it professional, for music, video, etc. - would be really cool. Sites like Many Eyes are playing within this space already. Though this might not be a "must have" feature, I feel presenting data in an easy-to-understand manner will be key in later stages of product development. I'm a big fan of using graphics/pictures to explain concepts and absolutely obsessive about presentation. (Talk to anyone who has worked with me on a Powerpoint presentation ;p)

technorati tags: social networking, social web, ning, mybloglog, data visualization, many eyes

March 3, 2007 | 7:29 PM | Comments (1)

Thanks to my dad for forwarding the link to Business 2.0's "The Next Net 25" (with short blurbs I added on each). Some observations of this data follow:

1. StumbleUpon - social websurfing
2. Slide - make easy slideshows on the web
3. Bebo - social network
4. Meebo - web-based integrated IM (better than AIM)
5. Wikia - hosting service for ad-supported community sites
6. Joost - interactive web TV (made by founders of Kazaa and Skype)
7. Dabble - tool for organizing videos into playlists of favorites
8. Metacafe - paying video creators for their work (not just a YouTube)
9. Revision 3 - production studio for geek-oriented online shows (started by Digg founder Kevin Rose)
10. Blip.tv- platform for syndicating serialized online shows
11. Fon - building a worldwide Wi-Fi network one router at a time
12. Loopt - around-the-clock friend tracking via mobile phone (Facebook stalking to a new level)
13. Mobio- mobile-phone mashups and widgets
14. Tiny- Flickr on the fly (pictures on your cellphone)
15. Soonr- access your home or office PC from your mobile phone
16. Turn- precise, automated ad targeting for advertisers
17. Adify- online marketplace for highly targeted ads
18. AdMob- place to buy ads for delivery to cell phones
19. SpotRunner- one-stop online shop for low-cost 30-second TV ads
20. ViTrue- lets corporate customers solicit, edit, and upload user-generated videos that promote their products
21. Success Factors- web-based performance & talent management (performance reviews, succession planning, and compensation)
22. JanRain- single sign-on service for multiple passwords that lets people hop freely from site to site
23. Logoworks- automates the design of logos, business cards, and stationery
24. Rearden Commerce- Web-based "virtual personal assistant" application that smoothly integrates hotel and flight reservations, meetings, and other events into your daily agenda
25. SimulScribe- effective way to convert voice-mail into scannable text (email, etc.)

GEOGRAPHY
California	72%
SF Bay Area	64%
New York City	8%
Other	20%
Total	100%

While the data is heavily Silicon Valley-centric, it is worthwhile to point out that Silicon Valley tends to be more concentrated in consumer-oriented businesses; New York City is known more for media/advertising; and Boston is more business-to-business. This trend may just be a function of a sector analyzed.

BUSINESS MODEL
Advertising	72%
Subscription	36%
Both	16%

Rich media video, broadband, mobile, interactive-internet-everything ...they will all be big.

AVERAGES
Employees	60
Founded	2004

FUNDING BY
Sequoia Capital	16% (4 out of 25)
Ron Conway	12%
Peter Thiel	8%
Benchmark Capital	8%

Hah, this chart really should be titled "who's taking away your ownership" (money, control, power...) ;p

technorati tags: business 2.0, 2007 startups, web 2.0, tech startups

February 22, 2007 | 6:40 PM | Comments (0)

Rather, how well should you know your customer? A few questions that I've been thinking about lately:

• Product vs. Go-To-Market: How do you balance improving the product technologically vs. being the first mover in a market? Sure, you can have a great product, but it means nothing if you have no customers. A classic example of this is the Betamax vs. VHS standard battle. Along the same lines, is it always best to be the first mover? Say you've got the customers. If you're not as technologically competent, how feasible is it to improve the technology later on?
• Product Launch: How do you determine optimal product launch? When do you know to "let it go?" When do you stop adding features and start beta testing? Would it be bad if initial customer reaction was very negative (how badly does it affect your reputation)?
• Customer Feedback: Sometimes, customers may not know exactly what they want. How do you interpret customer feedback, reiterate, and incorporate that into your product?

I'd appreciate any thoughts on these issues. Thanks!

technorati tags: customer, product launch, first mover

January 9, 2007 | 12:44 PM | Comments (3)

ChaCha is the what I've found to be the "true" live search. In addition to traditional algorithmic search, this search engine has a feature called "Search by Guide" where your search query is actually sent to a -real- person, and you're able to even interact with this person through an instant messaging window.

Here's a description of "Search by Guide" off of ChaCha's website:

ChaCha's Value Proposition

I see ChaCha's main value proposition (or mantra as Guy Kawasaki likes to say) as "quality, human approved results" (see above).

What are the benefits of having guides?

1. "Perfect" human language interpretation. Who better to interpret a human search query than another human? A machine cannot replace a human ... at least we hope not ;p
2. "Expert" guides. Guides have varying areas of expertise and are matched to particular search queries. This is great. First, though "crowd data" and user-generated content are nice, let's be honest. There's a lot of crap on the Internet, and the difficulty lies in figuring out what is relevant and credible and what isn't.
3. Live service. While there are other "smart" search engines (Hakia and Powerset) working on natural language processing, ChaCha takes it a step further by offering a "live" service. Often times, the main problem seen with traditional search engines like Google and Yahoo is that people don't know how to formulate a "proper" search query. As a result, search queries tend to be very vague or imprecise. According to Vividence Corp, nearly half of complex online queries never lead to desired search results. By interacting with a guide, you can clarify and ask for exactly what you want.
4. Showing what matters with fewer search results. According to this research study by Jupiter and iProspect, users usually don't go past the first three pages for a given search query. Clearly, it's great to see a search engine address this pain point issue of going through each search result!

Is ChaCha search better?

Though I find this search engine to be very interesting and fun to try (go ChaCha now), there are several major issues I see:

1. Is the business model sustainable? Guides are paid on an hourly basis and first receive between $5 per search hour as "apprentices." After each search query, the user is asked to rate a particular guide. This rating factors into the guide's compensation and advancement ("pro", "elite", "master"). More details about compensation here. According to Read/WriteWeb, there are over 10,000 guides and minimal amounts of advertising on the site, which does not look very good from an economics standpoint. Furthermore, can they attract and retain enough guides to manage the amount of search queries coming in?
2. Are the guides truly "quality?" The majority of guides tend to be college students or work-at-home moms. Can ChaCha really find experts in all subject matters --- law? finance? biology? In other words, what about more research-based queries from professors, professionals, and students? I tested out the service my asking a very specific question: "How many independent content producers for video are there in the United States?" I clarified this query to the guide saying that I wanted a market size estimate, to which the guide responded with "ahhhh." Yes, that was 4 h's after the "a." (By the way, this was the question my classmates and I had to answer for a business plan we were writing.) Though the experts understood what I was looking for, I was transferred *twice* to other guides to help get the information. The best result was a report on the UK but not the US. The issue here is two-fold: not only do the guides need to be experts, but they also need to have access to the right materials. Most of the time, credible in-depth research reports require subscriptions. Then again, the most popular Google searches are clearly not as sophisticated.
3. Speed of search. This is absolutely CRITICAL. My entire experience outlined above took around 20 minutes total. However, perhaps people are willing to wait to get what they need? "Even when people do find the exact information they're looking for, an internal MSN study found that it takes an average of 11 minutes per search for people to go through the long lists of links offered by today's search services."

Final Thoughts

• Reminder: People use search engines for different reasons. While relevance and speed of results may be the primary factors, people also see search engines as web portals, providing additional services like email, news, and other non-search related activities.
• In terms of textual search, I see more potential and long-term sustainability in search engines focused on natural language processing, leveraging the "wisdom of the crowds" effect, using clustering / Semantic Web technology, or creating some sort of search mashup.
• Going forward, it will be exciting to follow the action between the smaller startups (Hakia, Powerset, ChaCha, Snap, etc.) against the big boys -- Google (searchmash), Yahoo (mindset), Microsoft (live).

Related Articles

» "Search 2.0 - What's Next?"
» Interview with Scott Jones, creator of ChaCha search engine

technorati tags: cha cha, live search, search engine

January 2, 2007 | 5:54 PM | Comments (1)

Great in Theory

The basic principle behind "wisdom of crowds" is simple: knowledge of many is better than knowledge of one (the ol' "two heads are better than one"). Since The Wisdom of Crowds book and the more recent Yahoo! confab conference, prediction markets are quickly becoming the latest "hot" topic for many bloggers. The essential idea is that aggregated opinions of the crowd are more accurate in making future forecasts.

The concept is not new though and has been applied to numerous fields -- sports, financial markets, politics, pop culture, and even weather. For instance, consider betting exchanges like Tradesports and Betfair. Tradesports, for example, lets people place bets on, say, the outcome of the next presidential election.

More recently, at the Yahoo! conference, prediction markets are now being tested in organizations, collecting the opinions of employees in order to facilitiate better decision-making by senior level management. Look at NewsFutures. In fact, places like Inkling Markets has opened up the floor so any type user (enterprise, small business, personal, academic) can create and manage their own prediction market.

Great in Practice?

Read/Write.Web cites:
THE ISSUES: Reasons Why Prediction Markets Have Failed (by Adam Siegel of Inkling)
» Lack of understanding: People don't know what prediction markets are.
» Incorrect market structure: People may not receive their reward.
» Market rules are poorly described
» Timeframe too long in question: e.g. How much will college graduates make in 2025?
» Biases in questions posed

For the most part, I believe these mentioned issues can be mitigated over time as more people become familiar with prediction markets. Tradesports, for example, is not centered around questions (more topics), which helps eliminate biases.

THE REAL ISSUES
» Incentive structure (gaming prevention): A proven, tested incentive structure (whether based on monetary or social rewards) must be in place to prevent users from "gaming" the system. It could be like online poker, and we all know what happened to that.
» Large population of users: Like with real-world markets, there needs to be enough "bets" made (liquidity) in order to generate an accurate prediction.
» Differences across applications / fields: In the financial services sector, for instance, domain expertise may be more valued than actual technology, especially since serious investing in the stock market is no game. After all, if I had more knowledge than the market, would I share it with you? Too bad they don't have a class on stock-picking (what everyone actually wants to learn) at Wharton. Instead, we have theoretical Investment Management classes that teach you about "diversification" and "asset allocation" conveniently without a real prescriptive lesson. All to be expected of course. There's no start-up out there posting "here's the secret sauce to my product," or no venture capitalist telling you "here's a step-by-step guide on how I choose my companies."

FINAL THOUGHTS
» When I took Jeremy Siegel's macroeconomics class sophomore year, he told us that Tradesports was very accurate in most of its predictions.
» Prediction markets are very powerful and great concept. I am very interested in seeing how these issues will be resolved.

technorati tags: wisdom of crowds, prediction markets, yahoo confab, tradesports, inkling markets, trading, financial services, wharton

December 28, 2006 | 2:12 AM | Comments (0)

Search has definitely moved beyond traditional text to more niche verticals. The question I'm wondering -- which one of these will truly dominate?

VISUAL SEARCH

Player	Product	Search Type	Description
Google	Google's Image Labeler	Tag matching	Random users are asked to tag identical images. If a match is found between these users, that tag has increased relevance during image search.
Yahoo	Flickr	Tags + social networking	Users can tag each photo they upload to Flickr set. They can also search pictures in their social networks (contacts, friends, groups, etc).
Zooomr	zooomr.com	Tags + social networking	Like Flickr but larger emphasis on social networking aspect with geotagging features and tracking pictures taken by your friends across the globe.
Riya	Like.com	True "visual" search (focused on shopping)	Fell in love with Paris Hilton's new purse? Users can now access similar products online with an easy mouse click .. from a picture!

What's most interesting in this space here is Riya's recent switch in business model. The CEO, Munjal Shah, originally started Riya because "I found I had 31,246 photos all named DSC0009.jpg." The technology featured advanced facial and text recognition abilities, allowing users to more easily find all the thousands of untitled and untagged photos on their hard drives. In a recent move (Nov 06), they made their switch to focus purely on visual image search (Like.com) after their facial recognition technology failed to be useful to MySpace users. While this has generated a lot of buzz and excitment, not everyone has been happy about the news (including the CEO of Zooomr).

But what's the outcome of this shift? May be too soon to tell, but so far ... positive revenue growth despite decreasing Alexa trends.

Lessons Learned from Riya
- Customer is king.. It takes guts to make a significant product or strategic shift in the company, but at the end, it's important to have a product your customers want. (By the way, I really enjoy Munjal's blog and documentation of his start-up experience. It makes for a great read!)
- You can't make everyone happy. Like.com appeals mostly to (female) shoppers (looking for handbags, jewelry, watches, shoes, and other accessories) and probably won't be as useful for digital photographers that currently use Flickr or Zooomr (looking for artistic shots, scenic, portraits, film, and the like) .

SOCIAL SEARCH

One site I just signed up for is Lijit, a personal network search. Basically, it allows you to search the content of your friends and social network through blogs, photos, bookmarks, online profiles, etc. Check out their about page. Want to try it out?



OTHER SEARCH

For shoppers: Shopping.com, Froogle
For books: Amazon, Half.com
For coders / developers: Krugle
For job seekers: SimplyHired, NimbleCat
For travelers: Kayak, Sidestep

... All this has made me realize how big the web really is. All these different tools out there.

How many people will know about them and -actually- use them? I recently told a friend about Like.com, and she really loved the idea. One thing to say "this is cool." Another to actually use it. Consumers are so stubborn.

MORE RECENTLY

Now, even Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is joining in this game with Wikiasari, the people powered search engine.

My Prediction? We will be likely be using multiple search engines for different purposes. I'm a fan of products that focus on one core area and doing it really well. I'm not a fan of the 6-in-1 color printer-fax-phone-copier-scanner device (We have one in our home, and it really sucks.) One thing is for sure: You ( = we = people) will dominate.

technorati tags: future of search, visual search, like.com, flickr, zooomr, , ligit, google, yahoo, image search, vertical search, social search, personal network search, wikiasari

December 27, 2006 | 12:06 AM | Comments (6)