July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Facebook page owners have long yearned for more insight than PTAT — Facebook’s people talking about this metric — offers. Starting today, they’re getting their wish.

Facebook announced today that the statistics and numbers that make up PTAT are now going to be available, by default, in their individual elements, along with other metrics on page owners’ Insights overviews. That includes:

• Page likes
• People engaged
  (people who have clicked on, liked, commented on, or shared something from your page)
• Page tags and mentions
• Page checkins

In addition, the former Page Insights virality metric, which Facebook says is often used as a benchmark for post quality, is getting more data. Clicks on post links, which have not been included in virality measures, are now being added in, along with the existing count of how many people saw your posts. Since clicks are being added in, Facebook is tossing the “virality” monicker and substituting “engagement rate.”

Facebook is also adding new metrics and data around page engagement, showing not only who you’ve reached by who you is engaged with your content, down to sex, geography, country, city, and language:

Perhaps most interesting, however, was what Facebook had to say about getting your posts featured in your fans’ news feeds.

We all know that Facebook rewards “quality posts” with greater reach, and that posts with more likes, shares, and comments are more likely to be seen by fans. Facebook said today that one major consideration is the ratio of positive interactions to negative interactions. Which means that posts with plenty of likes, comments, and shares … and no hide posts, hide all posts, report as spam, or unlike page actions will do very well.

But if the negative reactions go up, your post dies.

In the new Page Insights, Facebook will aggregate all those metrics into a single per-post score card, so you’ll be able to see and evaluate those positive and negative interactions, and fine-tune your content strategy for the future.

The changes will be rolling out over the next few weeks and months, and Facebook expects to complete the roll-out by the end of summer.

Sadly, there is no waiting list you can sign up on to speed access.

Image credits: Jolie O’Dell/VentureBeat, MailChimp® via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Andrew Dowling is founder of Tapestry.net.

Parenthood isn’t a common topic of discussion among entrepreneurs, because conventional wisdom says that the two simply don’t mix. B

eing an entrepreneur and being a parent are both such all-consuming pursuits that it’s apparently impossible to do a good job of both. This idea is further reinforced by the stereotype of successful startup founders as young, single twenty-somethings.

Like most stereotypes, this is a load of hogwash. More than 80 percent of successful startup founders these days are actually over thirty-five, and there are a ton of reasons why having a little bit more life and business experience can greatly improve a startup founder’s chances of success.

But what about parenthood itself?

I know what you’re thinking: “Okay, experience can help, but surely parenthood can only hinder an entrepreneur’s chances of success?”

I think there are a number of ways that being a parent can actually make you a better entrepreneur. Here are my top reasons:

1. Patience

If there’s one thing being a parent teaches you, it’s patience. Prior to parenthood, many of us get used to the idea that we can control the pace at which our lives run. When things take too long, we make them go faster. We rush, we push, and we pay more: we do whatever it takes to make things happen how we want, when we want.

After kids come along, we are forced to learn that this doesn’t always work. Some things simply take time. Sometimes you just have to sit back and let time do its thing.

It’s the same with startups. Sure, some things need to be rushed like crazy, when velocity and time to market mean everything. But some things simply take time and need to develop according to their own schedule. Unless you’ve got a well-developed reservoir of patience, you’re going to seriously mess things up by trying to rush something that shouldn’t be rushed.

2. Relationships

A lot of people exaggerate how much marriage changes your life. Sometimes it does, sure, but it is by no means guaranteed. I know plenty of married couples that live their lives no differently to the way they did before marriage.

Being a parent, on the other hand, is pretty much guaranteed to make things change big time. Together you and your partner are thrown into a crazy new reality where you need to work together on tasks you were totally unprepared for. Inevitably, you learn a lot about how to manage interpersonal relationships. You’re tired, you’re exhausted, sometimes you don’t even know which way is up; but you still learn how to find a way to hang together as a team.

Sounds a lot like the relationship between startup co-founders, doesn’t it? Co-founders share responsibility for a troublesome, demanding, and attention-seeking baby known as the business. They’d better know how to manage their relationship darn well if they want to stay together as their baby grows up.

You’re tired, you’re exhausted, sometimes you don’t even know which way is up; but you still learn how to find a way to hang together as a team.

3. Perspective

Living life in the crucible of a startup can make you believe that nothing else in the world matters quite as much as the success of your business. You’re on a roller coaster where the highs are euphoric, but the lows can make you feel as if your world is about to end.

Kids have an amazing way of giving you a sense of perspective. They keep you on an even keel and are a great reminder of what’s important to worry about, and what’s not.

4. Dealing with chaos

Parenthood is almost totally non-linear. Nothing goes quite according to plan. Stuff happens. You deal with it. And you get very good at dealing with the unexpected.

Life in a startup is almost exactly the same.

5. Responsibility

When you’re a parent, the buck stops with you. There is nobody more senior you can defer to, nobody else you can shift responsibility to. When someone has to make the tough decisions, it’s you.

What better description of life as an entrepreneur could you get?

6. Adapting expectations

When you’re a parent, it’s very easy to get swept up into great ideas of what your kids will do, what they’ll enjoy and also what they’ll become — and quite often what we expected is very different from the outcome.

Parenthood teaches us to support the path that your children taking, even if it’s not what you had expected; it’s much better than trying to push them into a direction they’re not prepared to take.

Startups are much the same. You can stick to your original vision, come hell or high water, and often go down with the ship; or you can embrace reality, see that your expectations were off, and pivot.

7. Handling change

Anyone launching themselves into a new business quickly finds they’re dealing with lots of things which are unfamiliar to them. Legal issues, technologies, marketing strategy, governance — sometimes it feels as if everyone is trying to talk to you in a different language. And everything is constantly changing.

From the moment you discover you’re going to become a parent, your trajectory is remarkably similar. Your life suddenly changes in a big way forever. You find yourself dealing with concepts and terminology you’ve never had an interest in before. And once your kids are born, you’d better get used to dealing with change, because that’s what your life is going to consist of for the next couple of decades.

What better preparation for life in a startup could there possibly be?

Image credit: marknye/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Smartphones have transformed the work environment, but there are still significant challenges in adapting workflows to a mobile world.

The latest startup to enter the Bring-Your-Own-Device arena is Collaborate.com, a mobile collaboration platform for distributed business teams. Its project management apps for iPhone and Android let you easily access and share files through integrations with Box, Dropox, Evernote, and Google Drive, and keep everything in one place. There are tools for task management and communication, and push notifications to keep people on top of projects.

The service came out of Kibits, a company founded in 2011 that raised money from Google Ventures, Charles River Ventures, General Catalyst, and others for its group messaging app. Towards the end of last year, it raised an additional (unreported) $1.35 million to pivot and fuel development of Collaborate.com.

When you’ve got that domain name, you’d better do something good with it.

Founder and CEO Matt Cutler said his goal is to bring the same conventions we use to manage our personal lives with smartphones to the professional environment. Professionals like automotive dealers, real estate agents, veterinarians, personal security guards, etc. can coordinate their efforts using secure “collaborate rooms” where they can message coworkers, chat in real-time, and share documents, tasks, links etc. This is particularly useful for field workers who need information to make quick decisions.

The BYOD movement presents major issues for productivity, communication, security, and organization. This shift in the business world seems to be here to stay, and a host of startups are building technology in response. Companies like Double Dutch, Taptera, CoTap, Enterproid, Apperian, Tomfoolery, Asana, Outpost, and Springshot (and there are more) as well as large companies like Salesforce and SAP, provide solutions that tackle some aspect of these challenges.

Collaborate is throwing itself into the mix, and in addition to a great domain and a clear, well-designed user interface, the company has a founding team with an impressive track record. Cutler was a founder of Netgenesis, which IPOed in 2000, and brought two other companies to acquisitions. It is based in Boston.

Photo Credit: storem/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Dear entrepreneurs and CEOs (and their sales teams):

Some interesting news came across my Twitter feed a few weeks ago. A competitor decided to discontinue one of their services, essentially opening the door for my company (and other companies like mine) to poach their customers.

As soon as I heard the news, I went from my normal day-to-day activities (coffee, RedBull, coding, coffee) into to full-on salesguy mode. This was a huge opportunity because suddenly there were thousands of potential users looking for a new home.

So what is a CEO to do?

My first instinct was to target the users with some in-your-face marketing. We’d brag about our services and talk about how we’d gladly take them in from the cold. “We’d never abandon you!” “We’ve been here all along, and we’re better anyway!” But before I could move on this (horrible) idea, I watched as many of my other competitors and industry colleagues started to do the same exact thing. On one blog that offered reviews of several businesses in my category, I noticed that the head of one company voted down everyone but himself. Did he think no one would notice?

Once I saw the vultures swoop in, I was thankful I hadn’t yet gone in for the kill. I thought to myself, is this really what the industry has come to? Misleading campaigns, throwing each other under the bus, wild discounts, coupons and plain ol’ begging? I think it made the whole industry look bad, and our combined credibility went down a notch or two.

The next time something like this happens, I know what I’ll do: Nothing. Well, not really nothing, but I’ll just keep doing what I’ve always done.

It’s more important for a startup like ours to have the right customers than it is to have a lot of customers. We always want to make sure we’re attracting users who will be a good fit so that we meet their expectations. We know our users are intelligent people who make informed buying decisions and do lots of research before they make a purchase. They aren’t the type to be swayed by temporary discounts or clever ads.

At the end of the day, the only thing that really matters is the product. We know it’s good, and if it fits their needs, we’ll get new users. Our product might not be right for some businesses, and we’re okay with that. It’s better to help someone find the right fit than to have them suffer and complain when they are stuck with something that isn’t working for them. It’s really tough to be “all things to all people,” so we’re not going to try.

The reality is, this wasn’t an isolated chance for us to acquire new clients. We’re always competing for customers, and you’ll find yourself doing the same at some point. Do you really want their first impression of you to be a desperate plea based on discounts or over-inflated promises? Anyone who isn’t innovating (or at least listening to their users) and gets new clients by offering the lowest price isn’t building loyalty. When the next guy with a lower price comes around, guess where those customers are going to go?

My suggestion to any entrepreneur who is facing a similar challenge: Keep doing what you’ve always done. Offer a good product with a sustainable price. Build loyalty so when the next guy comes along and says “Use my service!” your customers won’t switch — they will stay with your company because they like you and your product.

</rant>

Sincerely,

Jim Belosic, the “learning as I go” CEO.

Jim Belosic is the CEO of ShortStack, a self-service custom app design tool used to create apps for Facebook Pages, websites and mobile web browsing. ShortStack provides the tools for small businesses, graphic designers, agencies and corporations to create apps with contests and forms, fan gates, product lines and more.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

Image via ► kevin dooley via Compfight cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Combat Gent gives men no excuse not to have a well-made suit.

The online men’s store has raised $1.84 million in funding from well-known fashion investors and is the first company selected for the new Fashion Tech accelerator program.

The company is a direct-to-consumer brand that sells hand-tailored shirts, suits, ties, and denim. Cutting out the retailer middlemen allows Combat Gent to charge only $160 for suits that still look classy. The suit is a staple of the male wardrobe that has remained largely unchanged for 150 years. Even entrepreneurs who favor hoodies and jeans need a suit every now and then. However, well-made suits are traditionally expensive, and cheap suits look, well, cheap.

Founders Vishaal and Mo Melwani are cousins whose family ran Versace boutiques. They grew up learning about the fashion-garment industry and valuing designer clothing. After college, they saw many of their friends struggling to afford a decent work wardrobe, and they decided to apply their experience to building a company that helped guys feel like “complete bad-asses without breaking the bank.”

Combat Gent was founded in May 2012. It now has 72,000 active users and has done $100,000 in sales. It is part of a recent trend of male-focused e-commerce companies that simplify the process of shopping for men. Bonobos and Indochino are two well-known startups in this space. They provide online, curated selections of staple clothing items with a focus on fit. Men who don’t have much time, energy, budget, or style-savvy can use these sites to develop a complete wardrobe with minimal effort. Investors seem to like this space as well. Bonobos has raised over $70 million, and Indochino closed a $13 million round earlier this year.

Companies like these are impacting more than e-commerce — they are also part of the larger “Made in America” movement. The harmful consequences of “fast-fashion” made headlines in April after a large, multistory garment factory collapsed in Bangladesh, killing more than 650 people. Bangladesh is the center of the worldwide garment industry. Large brands like H&M, Nike, and Gap outsource to Bangladesh, where production is faster and cheaper. These lower costs come with unsafe, exploitative working conditions, however, and the April disaster brought the situation to the attention of American consumers. People want to patronize companies where they trust the sourcing and receive personal attention. Most of Combat Gent’s production happens in Los Angeles, and the company puts a strong emphasis on details.

Zappos chief executive officer Tony Hsieh’s VegasTechFund invested in this round along with MHS Capital, Naxuri Capital, Greycroft Partners, Blazer Ventures, Jake Bornstein of Flint and Tinder, and Berlin-based Point Nine Capital, which marks the Combat Gent’s first step toward expanding into Europe. This financing will fuel brand development.

Combat Gents also unveiled a new product offering of Italian shifts. The company partnered with Italian fabric-maker Andreazza & Castelli and will offer Italian Super 120′s cotton shirts for $40.

The company has offices in Los Angeles and Las Vegas and has around 10 employees.

MobileBeat 2013 is right around the corner. We’re gathering the industry’s brightest minds who are looking beyond design to implement a fully integrated Mobile Experience.

Join us on July 9-10 for two days packed with high-level discussions, breakouts, exclusive announcements, and networking sessions. The following mobile leaders will be joining the discussion:

Anand Chandrasekher, SVP and CMO, Qualcomm
As senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Qualcomm Incorporated, Anand Chandrasekher oversees global marketing and external communications. Prior to joining Qualcomm, Chandrasekher was senior vice president at Intel Corporation in charge of the Ultra Mobility Group and the Intel Atom processor family. During his 24-year tenure at Intel, Chandrasekher held a variety of roles, including co-head of Intel’s Mobile Platforms Group, the Worldwide Sales and Marketing Group, aand the Workstation Platforms Group. He is best known for his pioneering efforts on the Intel Centrino platforms, which helped usher in the modern era of mobility.

Brent Hieggelke, CMO, Urban Airship
Brent Hieggelke is the chief marketing officer of Urban Airship, which enables the world’s top brands to earn and maintain a presence on their customers’ mobile devices through mobile relationship management solutions. Previously, he spent a decade helping brands optimize digital marketing initiatives in executive marketing posts at WebTrends, TouchClarity, and Omniture. Most recently, Brent started and ran Second Porch, the first Facebook-integrated social vacation rental site sold to HomeAway, Inc. in May 2011.

Session: Context: Mobile Experience Determines Whether You Live or Die

B. Bonin Bough, VP of Global Media and Consumer Engagement, Mondelēz International
B. Bonin Bough is the vice president of Global Media and Consumer Engagement at Mondelēz International. In this role, Bough is responsible for all forms of media, including leading and developing the partnerships, internal capabilities, and strategies across all forms of consumer connections, including digital, TV, print, and outdoors. Since joining Mondelēz International, Bough has been the driving force behind Mobile Futures, a first-of-its-kind program that partners the company’s brands with leading mobile startups. He has also played an integral role within the teams behind Oreo Daily Twist and the Oreo Super Bowl commercial and real-time activations.

Session: Brands and Agencies – Mobile Advertising Armageddon or Heaven

Sam Shank, CEO and cofounder, HotelTonight
A travel-obsessed serial entrepreneur, Sam previously founded and was CEO of DealBase.com, a travel deals search engine, and was CEO of TravelPost.com, a hotel reviews site. SideStep acquired TravelPost.com and Sam stayed on as VP of business development until Kayak acquired it. Shank also worked in comparison shopping at Excite, CNET, and NexTag. Not at all surprisingly, he was an assistant to Wes Craven on the film Scream. He HotelTonights at the Ace New York.

Session: Exploring Two-Sided Markets

Which upcoming releases and trends will help you make your design even sleeker, your technology stacks even faster, and your revenue streams even safer? Who is claiming the eyeballs and wallets by providing the best Mobile Experience? What are the top brands in the world doing to keep up with this shift, and who are they working with?

Find out at MobileBeat 2013. Make sure to grab your tickets today. Seats are almost gone!

Thanks to the following industry leaders for supporting MobileBeat 2013: Ford & CloudOn as Platinum Partners; HasOffers, IBM, Intel, New Relic & Tapjoy as Gold Partners, Fjord, Flurry, Kontagent, LifeStreet Media, & MoPub as Silver Partners; and Helpshift, IDrive, & Urban Airship as Event Partners.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Tred is applying the idea of “trying on at home” to cars.

The startup launched its home-delivery test drive service in the Greater Seattle area today for people looking to buy a new car and closed $1.8 million in seed funding.

Buying a car is a big decision. Autotrader.com and Polk Automotive did a study in 2011 that found that new vehicle buyers spend 11.5 hours shopping for cars online and 7.5 hours shopping for cars offline. You have to research cars that are right for you, visit a dealership, take the car for a test drive, and negotiate price. This process is time-consuming and can be stressful, particularly with car salesmen lurking about.

Potential buyers can schedule test drives for cars that interest them wherever and whenever is convenient. Tred has partnered with local auto dealers and brings those cars to consumers so they can experience it on their own turf. If you are deciding between two vehicles, you can schedule delivery of both at the same time and make side-by-side comparisons even when they come from different manufacturers. People can also do experiments like arranging bicycles in the trunk, installing car seats, loading groceries, or determining which car fits best in the garage and whether a car really suits their lifestyle.

“Tred cuts the time in a dealership substantially and eliminates all the pressures of making car buying decisions on the showroom floor by bringing cars directly to where busy families and professionals are comfortable — on their own terms, during their schedule, and at the best possible price,” said cofounder and chief executive officer Grant Feek to VentureBeat. “So for the busy family, there’s no more worrying about the impatient toddler who doesn’t want to sit through pricing negotiations or long periods of time finalizing paperwork.”

After the test drive appointment, Tred will send a price report and dealer contact information. The company said it works with dealers to offer “rock-bottom, no haggle” prices. It is able to do this because dealers appreciate the ability to focus on serious shoppers who are more likely to buy. When people are ready to buy, they bring their price certificate into dealership (within two weeks) for redemption. The price is predetermined and significantly cuts down on time in the dealership since you only go once. You know exactly what you want and exactly what to pay. You are under no obligation to buy.

Another benefit of this model is objectivity. Tred’s auto experts are not loyal to a particular brand and can present the facts impartially. They do not make sales commissions, so there are no ulterior motives or pushiness, either.

“There have been other Internet innovators who have entered this space and tried to work with local dealerships, but Tred is taking a different approach,” Feek said. “First, Tred is for dealers by dealers, and we don’t make a business decision without first consulting them and considering their ROI. Secondly, we’re committed to helping dealers participate in the customer-service revolution that is sweeping the rest of the retail economy. And we believe that doing so is the single best way to capture Gen Y and busy families and professionals.”

Feek is a Seattle native who used to work in real estate development and finance. He founded Tred in 2012 and participated in TechStars Seattle. Chairman and CEO of General Motors Rick Wagoner, Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital, David Cohen, Maveron Capital, Fraser McCombs Capital, Great Oaks Venture Capital, and Founder’s Co-Op participated in the financing. It will support the company as it expands into new cities.

Feek drives an Outback.

Photo Credit: Tred

Nextt is still in private beta but peeked out to announce $700,000 in seed funding and reveal some details about the product.

The application gives people tools to connect with friends around real-world events, experiences, or outings. Right now, the go-to planning mechanisms are social networks, email chains, or group messaging, and none of these are particularly efficient. Nextt’s platform allows people to rally their friends to see a movie, go for a hike, or coordinate a night out dancing, and it simplifies all the back-and-forth communication.

“Nextt is the next step in the evolution of social media,” said president and cofounder Mark McGuire in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. “There is an incredible pressure to perform on social media today — to present a specific version of ourselves, to say and do all the right things, and to focus on what we’ve accomplished. We’re losing our ability to live in the moment as we’re carefully documenting our lives across feeds, hashtags, pics, and more. The social web has given us incredible new ways to share our past or present; why don’t we have a service to help us create our future?”

McGuire is a serial entrepreneur who previously founded NameProtect.com, which was acquired by Corporation Services Company, and Jellyfish.com, which was acquired by Microsoft. He spent his career in the tech world and watched as social media came to dominate people’s lives. Multiple thought leaders have addressed this “social web hangover,” or state of “superconnectedness,” which can have negative effects. McGuire said symptoms include the following:

• Pressure to perform choreographed versions of ourselves online, creating feelings of envy, jealousy, and Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
• An inability to live in the moment as we digitally archive our lives
• Difficulty in shedding connections formed in earlier stages of life (high school classmates, former partners, etc.) from our digital friendship graph
• A focus on the self that encourages narcissism and reduces empathy
• Anxiety about maintaining hundreds of superficial digital relationships and leaving less time to foster deeper, face-to-face relationships
• Feelings of loneliness and isolation
• A desire to spend more time doing things in the real world and less time online

After researching this issue extensively, McGuire and cofounder Emmanuel Buah wanted to create technology that would get people out from behind their screens and actively engaging in real-world activities.

If users are already feeling social media fatigue, I question whether they will want to add another social network into the mix even if it is for offline activities. That said, plenty of entrepreneurs think there is an opportunity here. A not-yet-launched startup called MoveTogether is building a mobile app to make discovering and organizing casual activities as easy as possible, and Hangtime, UpTo, Ketchup, and features on social media sites, like Facebook events, also address the same issue.

Nextt will launch later this year. Venture Investors and Great Oaks Venture Capital led this round. The company currently has seven employees and is headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin.

Photo Credit: Nextt

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

SocialRadar has raised $12.75 million to, well, build out your social radar.

Its application combines location-based mobile technology and social media information to make you aware of the people and connections around you. It seems a lot like Highlight, which generated a lot of fanfare at the SXSW conference in 2012 but hasn’t made much noise since. SocialRadar is still in the development phase and is working with iPhone, Android, and Google Glass to “change the way people connect.”

Founder and CEO Michael Chasen said the world now has 1.1 billion smartphones and 2.8 billion online social profiles. SocialRadar’s “singular vision” is to make use of this information through GPS, allowing you to walk into a room and immediately have access to a relationship map.

Serendipity is so old-fashioned, don’t you think?

Explore more of what’s coming next to mobile at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat conference, July 9-10.

Chasen was a cofounder and former CEO of ed-tech behemoth Blackboard. He spent 15 years there and took the company public in 2004, and then sold it to Providence Equity Partners in 2011 for $1.7 billion. This latest project is taking on the social-local-mobile space, although it seems a bit late to the game. I don’t know anyone who still uses Highlight (and I have pretty tech-savvy friends.) It is awkward to go up to someone and say “hey, this app said we should be friends”. Networking is generally done through warm introductions. Furthermore, if I am walking into a party or bar, chances are I am familiar with my friends who are there and don’t need my phone to remind me.

My own skepticism aside, the DC-based company managed to pull in a hefty Series A round of funding from DC-heavy hitters. New Enterprise Associates led this round, along with Grotech Ventures, and Swan and Legend Ventures. Big name angels also participated, including Path cofounder Dave Morin, AOL cofounder Steve Case, Ted Leonsis, partner at General Catalyst, Kevin Colleran, and others.

Not too much information is available about SocialRadar yet, but this significant support leads me to believe it is much more than the next generation of Highlight.

Photo Credit: SocialRadar’s team lifting a whiteboard in their new office

For years, it’s been a truism: online advertising is cheap. For pennies or fractions of a dollar, you could reach thousands of consumers, paying only for those who clicked and, sometimes, only for those who buy.

Those capabilities aren’t going away, but for the first time in years, the prices you pay for online ads is going up. The core reason?

Google’s new “enhanced” campaigns.

Google’s enhanced ad campaigns are certainly enhancing one thing: Google’s revenue. After seven straight quarters of decreasing prices for clicks, Google ad prices rose 6 percent over the last three months — and they’re expected to jump another 5-10 percent in the next quarter.

Source: Adobe

Google cost-per-click ad price increases, early 2013.

Why?

Google announced enhanced campaigns very quietly in February of this year. The enhancement that Google added was simple: baking mobile ads right in with desktop ads. It was a significant change that Larry Kim of search marketing firm WordStream called “the biggest change to AdWords in five years.” It’s a simplification for advertisers, and it’s a recognition on Google’s part that mobile is now core to the web.

It’s also a massive cash cow.

“Up to last year you could target desktop, tablet-only, or smartphone-only mobile ad campaigns,” Adobe’s Sid Shah explained. “Now you have one campaign, one bid, and you can give it a mobile adjustment factor to adjust it up or down for mobile.”

Source: MoPub

Regardless of the platform, tablet ads cost more than smartphone ads — because they convert better.

The problem is that costs per click (CPC) and return on investment (ROI) have historically differed tremendously from desktop to tablet to smartphone. In general, desktop ads are the most expensive, smartphone ads are the cheapest, and tablet ads offer the best ROI. That’s because desktop ads convert well, smartphone ads don’t, and tablet ads cost like smartphone ads but convert like desktop ads.

Google knows this, of course, so when it launched enhanced campaigns Google added a “mobile bid adjustment” factor that enables advertisers to make their mobile ads 20 cheaper, for instance, than their desktop ads, or vice-versa. But advertisers are not using the MBA wisely.

“What Google recommends is a -20 percent to 0 percent MBA,” Shah, who is the director of business analytics for Adobe’s digital marketing division, told me yesterday. “But we found that MBAs should range all over the spectrum. Which makes sense – if you’re mobile-only, mobile does well for you, and the MBA should be positive, but if you’re doing mortgages, mobile won’t do well for you.”

Which means that although the CPC of mobile ads — particularly smartphone ads — should be a significantly small fraction of your desktop ads, they’re getting artificially boosted by Google’s bundling. This isn’t necessarily because Google is boosting the rate, but because the MBA that advertisers choose based on Google’s recommendation is not representative of the actual cost variations.

And because Google is the gorilla of the online advertising world — with about 50 percent market share of online ads and 56 percent of all global mobile ads — what it does affects the entire industry.

“Over the last three months, for the first time in seven quarters, CPCs went up,” Shah told me. “In the next quarter, CPCs will go up another 5-10 percent, year-over-year.”

Source: Adobe

Adobe’s algorithm for optimizing online/mobile ad spend more closely approaches a fully optimized ideal, the company says.

Adobe, which bought digital advertising firm Efficient Frontier in 2012 to build its online, mobile, and social advertising solutions, says that one solution is to work with independent agencies — such as itself — which can help advertisers optimize their spend better than Google, Facebook, or other major ad vendors do directly. The company’s Adobe Media Optimizer technology can help maximize ROI, Shah says, basing its bid and spend parameters on actual conversion and engagement data for your specific campaign.

[Editor's note: We'll be discussing mobile monetization at our MobileBeat event in SF next month, where we're bringing together many of the top players including Google, Millennial, Facebook, Flurry, MoPub, Tapjoy and more.]

“Our algorithm is actually working better than Google’s mobile bid adjustment,” Shah says.

In other words, I asked him, Adobe’s algorithm is working better for advertisers, while Google’s algorithm is working better for Google?

“You said that, not me,” Shah laughed.

Last year costs per click fell for the second year in a row, but the overall digital ad spend went up. It’s reasonable to assume, Adobe says, that the spend trend will continue, even while the costs trend has reversed.

Which means more money in Google’s fairly fat wallet, and perhaps a little less in yours.

Unless you get smarter with your spend.

photo credit: x-ray delta one via photopin cc

This sponsored post is produced by Silicon Beach Fest.

Los Angeles has long been associated with the iconic Hollywood sign that overlooks the expansive city, and a kitschy style that lights fire to fashion and glossy entertainment trends worldwide. But big plans are surfacing across the city near the blue water and popular beaches. It’s not just start-ups, established companies are vocalizing their support to building this community, as an earlier post from Cornerstone OnDemand CEO, Adam Miller illustrates in how to build a “killer tech company outside the valley.”

The community is called Silicon Beach and it’s focused on integrating a new industry and perception into the city’s DNA: technology.

The community is taking its biggest step yet to integrate technology into the city’s core with its third Silicon Beach Fest, which kicks off this Wednesday, June 19th. For four days, the brightest minds in tech, fashion, and entertainment are gathering in sunny Santa Monica for insightful panels, rousing parties, and cross-industry inspiration.

What will you experience at Silicon Beach Fest? The event is split into a dozen tracks, encompassing a variety of panels, meet-ups, and showcases that represent the broad industry verticals within Los Angeles. Some of the most popular tracks from last year’s event include: Investor, Entrepreneur, Hollywood, Gaming, Digital Content, Advertising, Social Media, Software Development and Design, and Arts and Education.

Keynotes include top Los Angeles venture capitalists such as Mark Suster; CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand, Adam Miller; and Nely Galan, former president of Telemundo. Speakers include esteemed executives from: Warner Brothers, Disney, Fox, Rubicon Project, United Online, Virgin America Brand Marketing, Crosscut Ventures, Amplify.la, OMD, Machinima, Demand Media, CAA, GOOD, Upworthy and more.

VentureBeat readers can join the fun by registering with the code VB30 code here and receiving 30% off of the normal registration.

Come find out why The Genome Project rated Los Angeles as the second biggest tech market in the United States and why investors poured more than 3.2 billion into the bubbling Southern California startup ecosystem last year. Don’t miss your chance to become part of the discussion about the biggest innovations and disruptions taking place in entertainment, fashion, and tech.

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July 9-10, 2013
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Facebook announced today that the company now has one million active advertisers — companies or organizations that have advertised on the social network at least once in the last 28 days.

The company attributed that feat to small businesses, saying that this milestone is due in large part “to the small businesses growing their businesses online and in their local communities via Facebook.”

Apparently, small business does get social.

Facebook’s director of small business, Dan Levy, thanked those businesses:

I know business owners like these invest their hard earned money and time into running their companies. So today, on behalf of everyone at Facebook, I want to say thank you to them and to the over one million businesses like them who are active advertisers. You have chosen Facebook as a partner to grow your business. We appreciate the chance to work with you, and we celebrate your success.

Two months ago Facebook announced that there were two billion connections between local businesses and people in the site’s social graph, and in an average week, local business pages get more than 645 million views and 13 million comments. The company did not release new data on those points, but the up-to-date numbers are doubtless higher today.

With Facebook building ever-stronger connections between local businesses and their customers online — and an ever-growing wallet share of local advertising budgets — local search and recommendation engines such as Yelp and OpenTable and the tradition Internet Yellow Pages are potentially getting cut out of their traditional stomping grounds.

Facebook’s local ambitions are also challenging Google Local and Google Places, both of which collect data on local businesses and drive local advertising on Google, Google, Maps, and more for the search and advertising giant.

Photo credit: Andrea Costa Creative via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
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Recently soft-launched Foundersuite offers entrepreneurs a set of tools and templates to lessen the burden of starting a company.

The site is debuting with four modules and four template bundles. “It’s designed to help founders know what to do next, providing guidelines and structure to the messy job of starting a project,” CEO Nathan Beckord told Venture Beat in an exclusive interview.

“We’re aiming at people who want to build high gross, scalable businesses,” Beckord said.

Competing services already exist for each of the modules, such as Survey Monkey or even Excel spreadsheets, but Beckord said there’s value in having the tools all in one place.

“There are alternatives, and ways of cobbling together existing tools to achieve similar effects, but I don’t think there’s anyone else who’s taken the approach to put together a suite of tools,” Beckord said.

Presently the four modules include Idea Validation, Corporate Docs, Investor CRM, and Progress Tracker.

Idea Validation lets entrepreneurs evaluate business ideas. The idea summary tool – a short form of a business plan – helps founders articulate their business ideas clearly and concisely. The app’s social survey tool taps existing social networks such as LinkedIn to get feedback on an idea.

Corporate Docs provides a range of documents from incorporation documents to burn-rate spreadsheets.

Investor CRM is a customer relationship management tool specifically designed for entrepreneurs attempting to raise startup cash, Beckord said. The dashboard, below, lets owners quickly understand where they stand with fundraising campaigns and helps them plan next moves. The dashboard also includes alerts for upcoming fundraising activities.

Source: Foundersuite

Foundersuite/courtesy image

The last module, Progress Tracker, helps founders produce visualizations for investors and other stakeholders that include production, team building, funding, press, traction– just about anything an entrepreneur wants to visualize, Beckord said. Charts and graphs can be emailed from within the app.

The bundles consist of dozens of documents ranging from pitch decks to recruiting templates.

The four modules and bundles are just the beginning for Beckford and his team. For example, one feature the company plans to roll out is a key metrics table for the Progress Tracker module. With it, founders are able to share actual financials with investors, Beckord said.

In addition, there are three new modules and several new feature enhancements in the works using the company’s agile development system, Beckord said. He showed me several wireframes of soon-to-be implemented features.

But, he said that while the team wants to build out new features, they’re careful to keep the tools simple and focused. “I don’t want to let it sprawl,” he said.

With hundreds of startups currently using the system, and potentially thousands more to come, one obvious concern was privacy. “We’re very strict on privacy,” Beckord said, “We don’t share anything.” The company plans to add 32-bit SSL encryption for an added layer of security soon.

The San Francisco based company is self-funded and currently has about 700 startups using the app, Beckord said.

The app has a seven day free trial for all modules. After seven days, each module is available for a monthly subscription rate: Idea Valuation is $7, Investor CRM is $15, and Progress Tracker is $7. Template bundles are available for $11 each.

“We’re viewing this as an idea lab,” Beckord said, “We just sit around thinking up new tools for founders.”

Top image credit: Peshkova/Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
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I tried to make paper laterns once out of super glue, glitter, balloons, and string, and ended up ruining a friend’s outdoor patio.

Darby Smart launched today to prevent mishaps of this sort, and to capitalize on the DIY movement’s building momentum. It also announced raising $1 million in seed funding.

Darby Smart offers a crafting kit service that “brings Pinterest’s DIY inspiration to life.” Pinterest has more than 48 million users, and the DIY and crafts section is one of its most popular categories. People have created pinboards for every project you could imagine, including ideas for party favors, wardrobe adjustments,  home decor etc.. However these projects are often not as simple to execute as they may seem (I speak from experience), and Darby Smart seeks to make crafting more fun and easy for consumers, while giving DIY and craft bloggers a channel to make money.

“I came up with the idea for Darby Smart after repeatedly attempting to recreate DIY projects I found on Pinterest, but my creations never turned out quite right due to incorrect materials or missing information,” said founder Nicole Farb to VentureBeat. “Essentially, I would find a project, drive to my craft store and end up making something that looked like it was the work of a 4 year old! I learned that glue isn’t glue and glitter isn’t glitter. You need the right supplies to create a successful craft.”

Over the past few years, the handmade movement has exploded along with a cultural shift that values the DIY ethic. Farb said that despite this opportunity, huge gaps still exist in the market. Crafters who are active on Pinterest do not have a clear path towards monetization, while those that sell their wares on marketplaces like Etsy often struggle to scale. Darby Smart walks the middle road.

The Craft & Hobby Association found that craft supplies is $29 billion industry, with 56 percent of American households crafting at least once a year.  Farb said this market is “ripe for the plucking.” The startup partners with well-known DIY and style bloggers to create kits that contain all the required materials. Consumers can purchase the kits and craft to their hearts content, without doing any of the real legwork.

“Until now, no one has provided the mass population of DIYers the means to create these goods on their own,” Farb said.

Farb used to work as the vice president and head of emerging private companies group at Goldman Sachs. She said she was an active “DIYer” her whole life and through her work in finance grew familiar with the world of e-commerce, consumer internet, and retail. Kits cost between $25 to $45 and new projects are launched every three days. Darby Smart works with the project designers to test and identify the best materials, but from there Darby Smart handles the rest, including sourcing, pursing, packing,and delivering. Designers receive a percentage of kit sales.

Darby Smart is trying to cut out as much of the friction as possible when it comes to DIY projects. Unfortunately, they do not yet have solutions for people like me who are inept with a glue gun and get easily distracted mid-project, but then again the service did just launch today. The paper lanterns didn’t work out so well, but maybe I’ll have better luck with a champagne toaster. At least in that case, there is an excuse to drink champagne.

Darby Smart is based in San Francisco.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
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Y-Combinator startup Filepicker.io has rebranded as Ink and announced the close of its $1.8 million seed round.

The “file system as a service” startup went through YC’s Summer 2012 class. It builds tools to make it easier for developers to integrate access to cloud services within their apps on the web, iOS, and Android, making it easier to share content stored in different places. The company’s mission is to create an environment where all devices, applications, and services can talk to each other. Ink builds “the layer that lets the applications work together” so users can access whatever they need online, regardless of their connectivity point.

The original team of 4 — Liyan Chang, Anand Dass, Thomas Georgiou, and Brett van Zuiden — met at MIT in Fall 2011.

“We noticed that more and more people are using services like Dropbox and Facebook to store their files, but that those online file sources didn’t work well with mobile and web applications,” the founders said on the site. “As developers ourselves, we were frustrated by the time and effort we had to spend on these integrations, which took away from our ability to focus on core functionality that mattered to the user. Wanting to help other developers build better applications, faster, we built up the infrastructure needed so that these developers could hook into user’s content, wherever it lives.”

They went on to win the MIT 2012 $100K Entrepreneurship Competition and move to the Bay Area, where they were admitted into YC. As their technology and client base grew, they realized they needed a brand that could grow too. Filepicker.io turned into Ink File Picker, which grew into Ink Files, a “cross-browser filesystem SDK.”

“With the new name and logo, we wanted a brand that could grow with us as we build out more products beyond just picking files,” CEO Brett van Zuien said. “Also, as we invest more resources in the design and user experience of our products, we didn’t want the logo to not match the quality of the rest of the design.”

The startup now works with 20,000 web and mobile applications to connect them to photos, documents, and videos, and has transferred 1.1 billion files to date. Clients include SurveyMonkey, Livefyre, Udacity, Crowdtilt, Urbanspoon, Rapgenius, Fitocracy and Haiku Deck. using just two lines of code, these companies can connect their apps to 19 sources like Facebook, Dropbox, Gmail and GitHub, and File Picker will “handle the mess of uploading files” as well as all the javascript and backend APIs. The business is based on a freemium model. Up to 5000 files a month is free,  and then it costs $99 for a Pro plan with up to 50,000 files a month.

Andreessen Horowitz and Highland Capital Partners led this round. Filepicker is based in Palo Alto.

Photo Credit: Filepicker.io/Facebook

July 9-10, 2013
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FiftyThree is going on fifteen. Fifteen million dollars, that is.

FiftyThree is the company behind Paper, an iPad app that Apple named 2012 iPad App of the Year. Today FiftyThree closed a $15 million deal led by Chris Dixon at Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Highline Ventures, Thrive Capital, SV Angel, and Jack Dorsey.

Paper takes the tools that traditionally stimulate creativity — like pencils, pens, markers, and paints — and turns them into digital versions that allow artists to reach the heights of their creativity on the iPad. Paper also provides more advanced technological features like zoom and 3D graphics as well as editing and organization tools and (of course) the ability to share.

“Over the years, we noticed that somehow, along the way, software designed to help us be creative actually made us less creative,” the company said on its site. “That’s because we believe our best ideas emerge when we use pencils and paper. So we set out to build tools that work the way we do.”

It’s “mobile creation done right” and can be used by anyone whether they are professional artists, executives giving a presentation, or fathers making something for their daughters.

Paper has been downloaded over 8 million times and is one of the highest-grossing iPad productivity apps ever. According to Dixon, the team didn’t need to raise money but “decided that the opportunity was so large that it made sense to accelerate their efforts with additional capital and resources.” The founders said in a blog post that they will focus on enhancing the collaboration possibilities as well as physical creation. They will expand the software, service, and hardware teams.

FiftyThree is based in New York.

Photo Credit: Nico Paix/Flickr

This post is part of a series brought to you by TriNet. VentureBeat is collaborating with TriNet to discuss smart scaling for growing businesses and best practices for managing growth. As always, VentureBeat is adamant about maintaining editorial credibility.

Advisory boards can be invaluable. They can also be unbearable. But either way, you can leverage their networks and knowledge to grow your business.

Sure, you may not have picked everyone sitting on the board of your company. There might have been a certain amount of obligation tied to investments or favors for former contacts. Then again, you may have stacked your deck with devil’s advocates and opposing opinions on purpose (which may not be a terrible idea). The one thing tying the group together is that everyone has a stake in your success. This is a lever you can pull to get your board to offer more than hands-off guidance.

We identified four areas where advisory board members can effectively help companies scale. If you feel like you left your last few board meetings armed with nebulous advice or your own laundry list of action items, these might come in handy.

Pump up your exposure

By definition, advisory boards include professionals with a lot of prior experience and success. They probably made a name for themselves in your field — a name that other people notice and will associate positively with your brand. And in order to get that far, they had to build up their own network of colleagues, supporters, and contacts. Now you have these assets at your disposal to build up your brand.

Ask your advisory board members to promote your company to their networks — via social media, e-mail, their personal blog, or web pages. Whenever you have a big announcement, a product launch, or a big hire, call on your board members to share the good news. When they do, other people will share it, and on and on until you have some serious buzz.

The same goes for the media. Many successful advisers will be a known quantity to journalists; they are often interviewed on a variety of topics and regularly contribute op-eds and other well-placed quotes in stories. Next time, ask them to include a reference to your business in a quote, refer you as a source to a journalist covering your industry, or even write an op-ed for the Huffington Post or an industry trade pub to extend your brand’s reach. It’ll go a long way toward getting more eyeballs on you.

Show off your stamp of approval

A lot of small businesses — especially startups or companies in lesser-known industries — struggle with credibility. Early adopters may be enthusiastic, but the next wave of customers may be more skeptical about your products or company. By making it clear that you have heavyweights on your board, you can quell some of these concerns and make it clear from the start that you know what you’re doing.

Find a place on your website where the names of your advisers can live. Share when new advisers join your fold, and consider quoting them to customers, at events, or in interviews. The more you can associate your company’s name with the know-how of a respected individual, the better. Each member of your board is a virtual stamp of approval, and you shouldn’t shy away from showing yours off.

Attract great talent

Another area where you can put your board members’ networks to work is recruiting. Generally speaking, these people will have worked at one or more companies in the past with people they like and respect. Since many of them are coming from very successful backgrounds, they can probably name at least one or two proven candidates. Pooling their collective knowledge about top performers in your industry can help you piece together a great staff.

Great employees are attracted to big names. By touting your advisory board as one of your best assets, you grab the attention of people who want to work with other incredible talent and industry luminaries. Even better, you can have your advisers reach out to target candidates and give them an extra nudge to join your team.

Solve problems before they happen

One of the reasons early entrants in a field tend to win is that they encounter and solve problems before anyone else. They have the data and the experience to navigate around similar obstacles in the future, whereas their later competitors are doomed to repeat their mistakes that will slow them down even more.

A good advisory board can make all the difference here. When you have the smartest people in your industry in your corner — people who have avoided a number of pitfalls to scale successfully — they can help you anticipate and neutralize problems when they’re still a stretch down the road. That way, you can spring even faster ahead of your competition, or catch up to a smug incumbent.

Image credit: ShellVacationsHospitality/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
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Searching for a good read can be a difficult amidst the millions of books and infinite diversity of tastes and opinions. Parakweet has raised $2 million to not only make this quest easier but also more individualized.

Parakweet’s core product Bookvibe combines natural language processing and social-media analytics to find the books that are right for you. The technology identifies discussions about books and movies — along with associated behaviors and sentiment — from hundreds of social media conversations and recommends books accordingly.

“People generate vast amounts of social media text every day, and social networks are a huge influencer in the way that consumers discover products and [make] purchase decisions,” said founder Ramesh Haridas in a Q&A. “By helping computers understand what we say to one another, we believe there’s great value that we can bring to people by surfacing what is most important and relevant.”

The system taps into hundreds of millions of organic updates on Twitter, Facebook, and more and identifies certain behaviors like “intent to read,” “read,” and “recommend.” It factors in users’ personal interests, their online behavior, and the interests and affinities of people in their social graph to make recommendations that are more targeted than those Amazon promotes or word of mouth.

Haridas said Bookvibe is just one of the possible applications of the platform, and books are just “the tip of the iceberg.” This is Haridas’ third startup. He has founded and sold two companies and is an active angel investor. Parakweet was founded in 2010. This funding came from angel investors Scott Banister, Alan Braverman, David Jeske, Takashi Kobayashi, Mark Kasiraja, Tom Isaac, Vikas Taneja, Michael Young, and others.

In March 2013, Amazon announced that it was acquiring Goodreads, a popular social-reading service. The site had over 16 million members, and Amazon wanted to scoop up its technology, which improves the process of discovering and discussing books to ultimately drive sales. Other competitors include Shelfari, Riffle, and social-media analytics companies Radian6 and Crimson Hexagon. Haridas said Bookvibe is distinguished by its focus on specific vertical markets to maximize precision and actionability.

It has six employees and is based in San Francisco.

July 9-10, 2013
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Occipital is acquiring ManCTL to easily turn the real world into a digital one.

Occipital develops computer-vision products. Its applications — 360Verse and 360 Panorama — capture images and create maps in real time. ManCTL makes a 3D-scanning technology that captures images from a Microsoft Kinect or Asus Xtion camera and turns them into full-color 3D models. With this acquisition, Occipital’s cofounder and chief executive officer Jeff Powers said it’s part of the company’s effort to go after bigger challenges.

“A lot is happening with 3D printing right now,” he said in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. “People are figuring out different use cases, but the 3D printing community still needs help with content creation. 3D scanners are a direct solution for someone without strong experience to participate in this movement as well.”

ManCTL’s two founders currently live in Europe and will become part of Occipital’s San Francisco team. Occipital will gain its 3D-scanning product. The combined technology means that someone,without expertise in computer-aided design (CAD) or the money to buy an expensive laser scanner can easily create a 3D model of an object, person, or room.

Powers said his goal is to create one of the strongest computer-vision teams in the world that isn’t a large company like Google or Facebook and also explore new areas of computing. With all the advancements in image recognition, 3D printing, and wearable technology, this acquisition will keep Occipital at the forefront of this field.

Occipital was founded in 2008, and two years later, eBay acquired one of its early products: a barcode-scanning application called RedLaser.   In 2011, Boulder-based Occiptial was one of the first companies to participate in TechStars and raised $7 million led by Foundry Group. ManCTL also participated in the TechStar Kinect accelerator in Seattle, and Power said both companies agreed they could have a bigger impact by working together.

Occipital’s current team is 12 people working in Boulder and San Francisco. The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Photo Credit: Occipital

July 9-10, 2013
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We all know the importance of eating well, exercising regularly, and getting enough sleep, but good habits can be hard to maintain.

Today buzzed-about startup Lift opened up its platform to all web and mobile users, making it easier for anyone to achieve their goals. Lift has built a social goal-tracking application where people can create lists of habits they want to maintain, monitor their own progress, and connect with friends for motivation, accountability, and support. The most popular habits in the app are exercising, drinking more water, reading, and flossing. Each goal has a community of people that can leave encouraging messages, and Lift will compile personal reports to tell you how you are doing.

Lift was the first product to launch out of Obvious Corporation, the incubator and seed fund run by Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone. Lift founder Tony Stubblebine was part of the original team of Odeo, a podcasting service that eventually pivoted to become Twitter. At the time, he was Jack Dorsey’s boss and worked alongside Ev, Biz, and Instagram founder Kevin Systrom, who worked as an intern. He observed how a key part of success was the ability to focus on accomplishing the “right things.” Stubblebine decided to build software that could help people be more successful — whether that entails building a major tech company or trying to lose a couple pounds.

“We live in a world where you can get a lot of advice and track your behaviors, but there isn’t always support to achieve your goals,” Stubblebine said in an interview. “Lift actually helps you shape and change your behaviors so you become hardwired to think and do better. It’s persuasive technology, and it gets deeper than quantified self apps.”

Lift started out as a simple iPhone application. There are not a lot of bells and whistles or eye-catching design. The focus is strictly on giving people the data, tools, and environment they need to be better versions of themselves. The system creates a feedback loop that reinforces positive choices and cuts down on feelings of “conscious effort” or “decision-making fatigue.” Once you acclimate to waking up early to go running or eating salads for lunch, it doesn’t seem quite so difficult to do those things.

“Willpower can be measured physically,” Stubblebine said. “You can only make so many decisions in a day, and people are constantly bombarded with distractions, so they don’t have decision-making willpower to pursue their goals. Habit is powerful, and when you turn things that feel like making a decision into a habit, when it becomes automatic, it won’t wear you down. We aren’t prescriptive at Lift. We are not trying to fix you. You can be who you want to be, but people have unmet ambition, and one of the top reasons is they just don’t have the support.”

Now, after almost a year of early beta testing, Lift is available on the web and all smartphones. The app is free for users, and Stubblebine said he is not concerned with monetization yet. The priority is building a platform that helps people in a meaningful way. Lift is also soft-launching a group feature where people can train with experts, like Tim Ferriss and Leo Babauta of the popular Zenhabits blog.

In November 2012, Lift announced that it raised a $2.5 million seed round led by Spark Capital with participation from SV Angel. It is based in San Francisco.

But a pin on Pinterest? That can last thousands of times longer, according to a new study by Piqora (formerly Pinfluencer).

“Sure, you get 70 percent of your clicks in the first two days,” Pinqora CEO Shara Verma told me last week. “But there’s a huge long tail. Clicks kept coming all the way for 30 days, and even beyond.”

That’s important information for brands like Sephora, which says its Pinterest followers spend 15 times more than its Facebook fans. And it’s good to know that if you spend time picking out the perfectly shareable pin, that effort won’t disappear within minutes.

Source: Piquora

The lag between pinning and visiting can be up to 40 days.

The key difference is that while Pinterest is a social network, it’s also an ideas-and-inspiration website, whereas Twitter and Facebook are social networks with a massive emphasis on immediacy. When people visit Pinterest, they browse, they search, they surf, and they uncover more pins.

“In the world of Google, 70 percent of searches are long-tail, composed of four or more words,” Verma says. “Our hypothesis is that the same thing is happening on Pinterest … searching and Pinterest categories resurface the old pins.”

But that’s not all.

Verma, who used to be a director of product management at Yahoo Search, says that when web surfers go to Google and search for something, if they don’t see it in the first page of results, they think Google “didn’t get” what they meant, so they go back and reformulate their query. That doesn’t happen on Pinterest.

“On Pinterest, there’s no next page,” Verman says. “Just infinite scroll … so if you keep scrolling, you see a lot of pins, including older pins.”

One other difference is that Pinterest pins are accompanied by a lot of metadata. While Facebook is trying to apply metadata to people’s status updates and adding structured updates like how you feel so that it understands more about what and why you’re posting, and can improve graph search, Pinterest has that built in. In fact, a full 95 percent of pins are going to boards that are named after categories, Piqora says, and five percent are going into explicitly commercial boards with titles like “I want this” and “My dream list.” That’s almost a social CRM for retailers, who can check those boards and see which products are hot.

One other interesting stat Verma left me with:

Pinterest’s virality ratio has gone up 42 percent between the last quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2013. In 2012, pins published by brands were re-pinned at at .21 ratio, meaning that every brand pin would be repinned .21 times. Now, the ratio is .3.

Which means that either marketers are getting smarter about what gets repinned on Pinterest, or Pinterest users are getting more interested in sharing.

Image credits: Piqora

Keaton Row is a fashion startup reigning in “the future of personal styling.” Its platform connects women with trained stylists who help them create a curated, customized wardrobe.

Women create a profile, and Keaton Row matches them with three potential stylists. The stylists are vetted. After learning about their clients, they shop through Keaton Row’s catalog of 5,000 items and create individualized “look books” that consist of five to seven complete looks, or outfits, (30-50 items) from retail partners. The customer then shops directly from her look book and has a unified checkout experience even though items come from multiple retailers and brands.

“For the first time, any woman is able to have the luxury and convenience of personal styling, and fashion-forward entrepreneurs can use their expertise to help clients feel good about getting dressed each morning,” the founders said in an email. “For the first time, personal styling is relevant and accessible to the modern woman. Keaton Row has transformed the e-commerce shopping experience from a commodity into a service.”

Founders Cheryl Han and Elenor Mak met while working in the cosmetics industry. Han worked at L’oreal and Clarins, and Mak spent four years as an executive at Avon. They both attended Harvard Business School and saw how many of their professional female friends struggled with what to wear. They would ask their stylish friends for help, and Han and Mak saw an opportunity to put this process online.

The Keaton Row approach makes quality fashion advice more available to women. It encourages them to break out of their clothing comfort zone while also helping them cut through the overwhelming amount of clothing options online. The startup also provides style-savvy women with a way to capitalize on their expertise. Furthermore, professional stylists can use Keaton Row as a way to grow their own business without working through a brand or retailer.

Keaton Row does not charge customers or stylists. It takes a sales commission from partner brands and retailers and shares the commissions with the stylist. Retail partners include Piperlime, Shopbop, and Trendseeder. Since it launched in 2012, Keaton Row has added roughly 1,000 stylists in over 30 states around the country. The average order is $450, which the founders said is seven times higher than the average e-commerce order, and the conversion on the “personalized e-commerce boutiques” is at 38 percent. Customers not only spend more money on the site but also typically come back twice every three months to shop.

Keaton Row has raised $1.2 million from Rho Ventures and Grape Arbor. It has 10 employees and offices in New York and Montreal.

Photo Credit: octarina8/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
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Old St. Louis wants to become hot with young startups.

Civic and business leaders are raising $100 million to kick the region’s burgeoning startup scene up a notch. Dubbed the Regional Entrepreneurship Initiative (REI), it seeks to attract venture capital over the next five years to support the “rapidly growing entrepreneurial ecosystem and high-growth startup activity” as well as fund new ventures.

“A year ago, I asked what we needed to provide the best environment to help our best startups grow, and the answer came back with a resounding ‘get them more money,’” said St. Louis County Executive Charlie A. Dooley. “Now we are saying we need the money and are putting an aggressive plan in place to raise that capital. This guaranties the best new companies will stay in St. Louis and thrive for years to come.”

St. Louis is not exactly what you’d call a startup hub. The dominant industries are manufacturing, healthcare, and shipping, and the city is home to large corporations like Anheuser-Busch, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Purina, and Energizer. It may not be a “bastion of progressivism,” but this is beginning to change.

Local entrepreneur Aaron Perlut said that over the past couple years, the region’s business and entrepreneurial ecosystem has begun to dramatically evolve and flourish and is becoming a “tech town.” Technology job postings are on the rise, as are salaries, and St. Louis is attracting enough human, intellectual, physical, and financial capital to emerge as a center of innovation. A startup called LockerDome recently closed $6 million in Series A financing, “big data” company Appistry pulled in nearly $40 million from private investors, and CrowdSource.com closed $12.5 million.

“St. Louis is seeing an incredible amount of early-stage tech activity right now, which is leading to a strong funnel of great deals,” said Gabe Lozano, the chief executive officer of LockerDome. “Without question, we will be globally recognized as a top 10 city in technology within 10 years.”

Square cofounder Jim McKelvey is a St. Louis native and said that in the past, many St. Louis startups left the area to get their business off the ground, but now that migration is reversing. REI is designed to fuel this trend by attracting new talent and keeping native success stories home. This requires access to capital, which is one of the main roadblocks that entrepreneurs outside of the tech bubble face, and it’s one of the main reasons they head to the Valley.

The impact that a thriving startup scene can have on the economy is well known, and President Obama is a vocal supporter of initiatives that support technology and innovation. REI is not only about capital flow but also about strengthening St. Louis’s ecosystem as a whole. Other components include building a regional customer relationship management system (CRM) to track startup assistance, investment, and impact; developing a common measurement system to track results; creating marketing and communications campaigns aimed at expanding awareness and increasing participation from people inside and outside the region; establishing programs to include minority, female, veteran, and immigrant entrepreneurs; and setting up regional mentorship programs. The $100 million will also contribute funding to pre-seed companies as well as increase the availability of Series A venture capital.

REI received a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, will be entered at AccelerateSTL.org, and includes a coalition of public and private sector leaders as well as the region’s leading entrepreneurs and venture capital community. Some of the existing players in the St. Louis scene include Cultivation Capital, Arch Angels, Billiken Angels, and iSELECT Fund. There are also the incubator programs Arch Grants and Capital Innovators.

The money hasn’t been raised yet, but the passion is there. It is, after all, a city with a lot to offer. It has the Gateway Arch, the Cardinals, and a wealth of American history. Plus, it’s home to the gooey butter cake, which for me is enticement enough to go.

Photo Credit: era404

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

A Rolodex filled with two million of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world sounds like a business urban legend.

Relationship Science has created one, however, and people are willing to spend thousands of dollars for access. Today the startup announced raising an additional $30 million, closely following its public debut and a $60 million round of funding in February 2013.

Instead of being about “who you know,” Relationship Science proclaims “it’s all about you who really know.”

The startup offers “the ultimate business development tool.” It has amassed an online database of two million “top decision-makers” including bankers, private equity workers, and venture capitalists as well as 800,000 organizations across the public, private, finance, and nonprofit sectors. The cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) tool tracks the “1 percent” and relies mostly on manpower to do it.

During an interview with VentureBeat surrounding the startup’s launch, founder and chief executive officer Neal Goldman said that the decision not to rely on an algorithm to scrape the data was deliberate. Many influential people do not use social media sites like Facebook or LinkedIn, and thus Relationship Science’s results are more sophisticated and personalized. It has taken almost 700 people — mostly in India and New York — over two years to build.

Clients use the research-driven profiles to gain a deeper understanding of the people and organizations they want to do business with. The profiles include information about work history, board connections, deal history, education, nonprofit donations and affiliations, political donations, personal interests, creative works and awards, business relationships, and relevant familiar connections.

It’s like learning a potential business partner is an avid boater and reading up on schooners … times 100.

Using Relationship Science enables people to discover new relationships, advance existing ones, and maximize every opportunity as well as figure out the best way to contact that person directly. The site does not contain people’s phone numbers or email addresses, but it does map connections so you can leverage your own professional network to find warm leads.

A number of other relationship CRM tools have attempted in the past and largely failed, but the company is extremely well funded, and Goldman said his ultimate goal is to build “the entire interweb of relationships.” New investors include Reuben Jeffery, David Komansky (former chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch), Randy Lerner, Stephen Luczo, William Rudin, and Salesforce.com. Previous investors include Ken Langone, Henry Kravis, Stanley Druckenmiller, Andrew Tish, Ron Burkle, and Joe Perella.

So far this year, Relationship Science has signed up over 150 client organizations, including well-known investment banks, private equity firms, law firms, wealth management firms, universities, hedge funds corporations, consulting firms, and nonprofit organizations. While its niche is the financial industry, the plan is ultimately to branch out into other sectors. This funding will support the company as it strives to meet customer demand, accelerate development of new services, create new applications, and expand the content of its database.

Photo Credit: Renaissancechambara/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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“We’re all about customer experience and enriching lives,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told Wall Street a couple of months ago.

That’s occasionally a little difficult to believe.

There’s no question that Apple is among the more customer-focused companies in the computing and technology industry. But there’s also no question that the company has a history of moves that can be tough pills for its fans to swallow.

One case in point is the iAd WorkBench/AppGratis scenario that has played out over the past few months.

This past week Apple unveiled iAd Workbench, a new mobile app advertising solution for companies that want to promote their iOS apps.  Just in April Apple pulled AppGratis, a very successful app discovery app, from the iOS app store — just five days after approving it – and then, after having had significant discussions with AppGratis over previous weeks as the company had adjusted its app according to Apple’s concerns, Apple refused to speak to AppGratis again.

Coincidence? I doubt it.

AppGratis was a free-app-of-the-day-style app that developers paid for access to in order to drive downloads of their iOS games and apps. Only iPhone owners who wanted the app downloaded it, so it was a self-selected audience, and the company was selective about who it featured. By late 2012, AppGratis was getting big enough to be able to drive upward of 500,000, and in some cases 1,000,000, downloads in just days — big enough to drive apps straight to the app store leaderboard.

Apple’s new iAd Workbench is an advertising solution for app developers. App developers who want to increase their downloads will buy ads that will be placed onto other apps, ones that users have already downloaded, and they can pay Apple per install of their app. iAds has come from rich interactive ads for 7-figure contracts with massive global brands to $50 minimum buy-ins to flog your apps.

What’s the key difference?

In scenario one, you paid AppGratis to drive downloads of your app. In scenario two, you pay Apple.

There’s other differences, and there are some nuances, sure. But that’s the core difference.

Apple was concerned about developers using AppGratis to “game” the app store top-10 ratings as well as alleging that AppGratis broke the app store guidelines. I fail to see how iAd Workbench couldn’t be used in a similar way, or how ads in any other online or mobile locations couldn’t do the same thing. And it is very clear that there are multiple other mobile app discovery solutions and ad companies who are doing the exact same thing.

I also fail to see how Apple couldn’t have devised a method of tracking downloads from AppGratis — or any other app discovery app — and adjusting the app store leaderboard to more heavily favor “organic” downloads. I wonder if something like that will be built for iAd Workbench, or if a massive spend on iAd Workbench will drive your app right up into the upper echelon of app store stardom.

Source: Apple

iAd Workbench app advertising solution from Apple

I talked to AppGratis CEO Simon Dawlat recently, but he doesn’t want to comment publicly. The company has been burned enough by the press, and by Apple’s reaction to it. But it’s pretty clear that success almost killed his iOS business. That — and the fact that Apple wasn’t “getting a piece.”

Which is why AppGratis is now on Android, where Google doesn’t exercise such heavy-handed control. And why, for iOS, it’s now focusing on the web, which Apple can’t control.

Which is an important point for Apple to remember.

While Apple was first to build a successful and massive mobile ecosystem with devices and apps and media, it’s not the only game in town anymore. It is the most lucrative in town, paying $10 billion to developers over the last five years, including a staggering $5 billion just in the last year. But sometimes platform owners have to do what’s good for the platform, and for third-party developers who are on the platform, not just what’s good for them.

The risk, if they don’t, is that at some point they’ll no longer have a platform.

Image credit: Nathan Makan/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Tarun Wadhwa is an aspiring entrepreneur and the son of serial entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa.

My dream was always to become a lawyer. I used to believe that law was the most direct way to impact the world around me. I thought entrepreneurs were only concerned with small issues, while lawyers worked on solving the big problems in the world.

I’ve learned that the life of entrepreneur isn’t what I used to think it was about –ruthlessly exploiting opportunities and constantly seeking out new ventures. It’s about being bold, creative, and mindful in your everyday actions.

These are lessons I’ve learned from my father, Vivek Wadhwa, who founded two technology companies. As a kid, I used to watch him working long hours, dealing with constant uncertainty, worrying about his employees, and selling to customers. It just wasn’t something I thought I would ever want to put myself through.  Even though I deeply admired and looked up to him, I never quite understood why he had chosen that path.

Now, as an adult with a startup in the privacy and cyber-security space, I am incredibly grateful that I was learning from him the entire time. The lessons themselves had little to do with business. It was the outlook on life that he instilled in me that has really taught me the skills I’ve needed to know. He showed me that entrepreneurship is not a profession; it is a mindset that shapes the way you interact with the world around you.

While convincing others to help you achieve your ends is great, it is far more important that you are treating people in an empathetic and respectful way. My father has always gone out of his way to mentor other entrepreneurs, even to a fault. He always cherished these experiences though.  He’s told me many times that in life we’ll have people who lend a hand to us without expecting anything in return, it’s important that we do the same for others.  I’ve benefitted enormously from others who’ve given me a break by taking a chance on me – and I hope to pass that generosity on later in life.

He taught me to step into the shoes of others, not to market to them, but to understand them.  As a child, I have vivid memories of the times near the holiday season when my mom would take me to a local toy store and let me pick out all kinds of different gifts. But the toys weren’t for me — we were buying presents for all of the company employees’ children. Its simple act, but having me decide what other children would want forced me to step out of my own world, and into theirs – even if it was for just a few moments.

However, not every lesson he taught me was in a positive way. When I was in eighth grade my father suffered a massive heart attack, partially due to the fact that he was working constantly. Thankfully, he has recovered, but it was a process that took a large toll.  I saw firsthand that one of the most important things you must do as an entrepreneur is to remember to invest in yourself. You can’t sacrifice your health for the sake of business. It’s not worth it.

The really important lesson here is that like running a business, living a life with an entrepreneurial outlook is all about balance and priorities.

This Sunday, I will spend some time reflecting on what my father has taught me through his words, actions and decisions – and I will give thanks that my role model in life has shown me some of the keys to living a more fulfilling, challenging, and empowered life.

Tarun Wadhwa is a writer, researcher, and entrepreneur working at the intersection between technology and public policy. He is currently a research fellow at Singularity University and his book Identified about the global rise of digital identification systems will be out Summer 2013.

Photo Credit: Facebook

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Tristan O’Tierney has left Square to circle the globe.

O’Tierney was one of the founders of Square, which is now one of Silicon Valley’s hottest tech companies. O’Tierney cofounded the company in 2009 with Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey to make it easier for microbusiness owners to accept credit card payments.

Last night, he tweeted that it was his last day at Square after 4 years.

O’Tierney graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2008 with a degree in computer science. He worked as a Mac engineer at Yahoo, Apple, and VMware and created the official Obama 2008 iPhone app. He built one of the first Twitter client apps on the App Store called Twinkle while working as an iOS developer for video game company Tapulous.

He and Jack Dorsey met at iPhoneDevCamp in 2008. Shortly after, Dorsey left Twitter, and the two began mulling over the concept for Square. While Dorsey worked on the business side and the Square reader, O’Tierney worked on the iOS applications to go with it.

The company has since grown by leaps and bounds. It has raised $341 million and is leading the charge to transform the point-of-sale (POS) industry. Square has expanded its offering to cater to businesses of all sizes — from a food truck owner to national corporations — and Square Register now involves a full suite of software with checkout customization features, management tools, and data analytics.

Square also released the latest version of its consumer app Square Wallet last week to make mobile checkout even easier. It recently launched in Japan and Canada and has spawned international clones like iZettle, Payleven, and mPowa.

The business side of the company is by all signs doing well. However, a number of Square executives have departed this year, including chief operating officer Keith Rabois, who departed in January after being accused of sexually harassing an employee. Then in May, AllThingsD reported that two more executives were leaving. Alex Petrov, who Square hired just three weeks before to serve in the new vice president of partnership position, never ended up joining the company, and Square’s vice president of international Alyssa Cutright confirmed that she left in March.

AllThingsD speculated that these moves could be connected to Square’s hire of ex-Googler Francoise Brougher as business lead.

The circumstances around all these departures (except for Rabois) are still under wraps. Also vague are O’Tierney’s future plans, which he said are uncertain except for “a bit of traveling.”

Photo Credit: kballard/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Two years ago, I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in a rice farming village in Thailand. I showered with a bucket, spoke Thai, and had minimal access to the Internet. Now as a writer at VentureBeat, I am at the center of the tech world. I can grill startups on their monetization plans, rattle off a list of the top venture capital firms, and knowledgeably discuss the nuances of crowdfunding.

Somehow, in the space of a year, I transitioned from the center of a rice paddy to the center of Silicon Valley. It was never a place I thought I’d end up, but now that I am here, I realize how my experience in Thailand helped me get to the position I am in today.

Culture Shock

In Thailand, I lived in the village of Wat Bot. It’s in just north of the Thailand’s middle, located about halfway between Bangkok and Chiang Mai in the rice paddy netherworld that few tourists ever see, even those who deviate from the beaten path. The nearest city was one hour away, and the nearest American was three. When I applied to the Peace Corps, I was a senior in college craving adventure and faced with the realities of a tepid job market and the decline of print journalism.

I was assigned to work in rural schools as an education volunteer. My job was to train teachers on progressive teaching methods and student-centered learning techniques and carry out community outreach projects of my choosing. The Peace Corps provided volunteers with three months of intensive training to acquire basic skills and knowledge for our projects as well as cultural and language instruction. While helpful, nothing could fully prepare me to step off the rickety, old bus in the middle of nowhere with an entire community looking to me to improve their struggling schools.

I had no idea what I was doing.

I learned quickly, though. You have to. I practiced speaking Thai at every opportunity, asked a lot of questions, and forced myself to constantly engage with people who could help me acclimate to this foreign world. A teacher from one of my schools introduced me to all the local “influencers” and showed me the important places around the village, like the market and bus stop. Kids down the road taught me the Thai alphabet and showed me how to do laundry using rainwater and plastic tubs. Whenever there was a massive spider in my house, the toothless woman next door came over and chased it away with a broom — until the day when I was brave enough to ignore the spiders on my own.

Every day presented challenges, but I grew accustomed to struggle and uncertainty as parts of everyday life. I grew more comfortable in the classroom and realized that despite my lack of experience, all I really needed were creativity, determination, and an open mind. The real challenge was coping with feelings of isolation, alienation, and loneliness. I was cut off from the outside world and mostly unaware of what happened outside Wat Bot.

When I departed the U.S., Twitter was an emerging phenomenon, and Pinterest had yet to be born. Few people owned smartphones, and the idea of “e-book” was blasphemous to my English-major self. I’ll admit that I was one of those [charmingly] obnoxious arty kids who craved “authentic” experience and thought a world dominated by technology was a dystopian nightmare. I did join the Peace Corps, after all: I relished the opportunity to live without technology and thought the way to save the world was one person at a time. So what changed?

Reverse culture shock

I returned from Thailand during the summer of 2011 with no idea of what I wanted to do. I considered applying to Ph.D. programs in cultural anthropology or teaching English in Japan. After three months of indecision and living with my mother in D.C., I chose to drive cross-country to Burning Man with a childhood friend and think about the future later. After seven days on the playa, I ended up in San Francisco. After one weekend filled with brunch, Dolores Park, and interesting people, I knew I wanted to stay.

Unfortunately, my expansive knowledge of fin-de-siecle literature and art, fluent Thai, and successful execution of hygiene-awareness campaigns did not translate into gainful employment. I found myself working in the culinary department at Zynga, which was my first glimpse of the tech world. On my first day, I walked dumbfounded through the halls, awestruck by the endless cereal dispensers, free Yerba Mate drinks, and the daily buffet cooked and served by a team of 50 people. I had never seen anything like it.

I worked there for a few months while saving up money, searching for an apartment, and familiarizing myself with San Francisco. I started dating an entrepreneur who moved to S.F. from Austin to get his startup off the ground. He inspired me to look to the startup realm for a job that put my brain to good use.

I left Zynga and in an effort to fully immerse myself in the tech scene, and I threw myself into an RV driving to SXSW. Somewhere between beer, concerts, and breakfast tacos, I learned about TaskRabbit, Path, AirBnB, LaunchRock, Highlight, and HypeMachine. More importantly, I met the people who worked for these exciting companies. These were my people. They were young and hungry. They were passionate, creative, and wanted to take over the world. I didn’t even work for a startup yet, but I knew that this world was for me.

I took a job at a startup that combined various elements of Pinterest, Living Social, and a digital magazine into one rather confusing product. I worked as an editor and commnuity manager: curating content, writing copy, and trying very hard to grow our meager user numbers. I acquired a very basic knowledge of UI/UX and participated in “high level” product discussions that involved our small team butting heads over how to gain traction.

It was a sinking ship, and I loved every second of it. Until I got let go, that is.

The CEO decided to “pivot” in a direction that did not require an editor. I realized that all I really wanted to do was to write. Fortunately, serendipity (and my social network) presented me with VentureBeat, which was hiring an editorial intern.

I thought it was a long shot. My background in tech was minimal, and it had been three years since I was actively engaged with journalism. During my interview, I emphasized my passion for writing and commitment to journalistic integrity. I also explained how my Peace Corps service made me resourceful, persistent, and willing to take on any challenge. One writing test later, I was hired on a contract basis.

Readjustment

My first month at VentureBeat felt a lot like my first month in Thailand, except with fewer mangos. I had no idea what to expect and was afraid of making a mistake — except this time, my limited expertise was on display to a large community of tech-savvy readers. Fortunately, after singing Christmas carols on stage in front of 800 Thai villagers, I am not afraid of looking stupid. The whole VentureBeat team was unbelievably supportive, and I found that by conducting extensive interviews with entrepreneurs and asking constant questions, I could figure out what was going on.

Just as in Thailand, I started to figure out the local ecosystem, pick up on the lingo, and grow a network of people who could help, teach, and support me. I found that writing about startups often allowed me to write about my other interests in travel, fashion, and food, and that there are tech companies out there changing the world in meaningful and sustainable ways. I am amazed how technical advancements in one area can have ramifications around the world. Take the example of payments: Simplifying the process of setting up online payment systems opens up incredible opportunities, like Kiva’s microfinance loans for entrepreneurs in the developing world and Watsi’s efforts to fund basic medical procedures for those in need.

Everything is connected, and many of these companies will have a greater impact than I ever could with my poster board and markers in a classroom in Thailand.

My experience over the past year has certainly given me a unique perspective on the tech scene — and my life. My coworkers and many of my readers viewed this as a strength, rather than a weakness, and encouraged me to apply that lens to my writing. Early this year, I was hired on full time as a VB staff writer, and when I am sitting at a media dinner debating the future of digital health or discussing Bitcoins in an editorial meeting, it is hard to imagine being anywhere else.

The transition from Peace Corps to VentureBeat was not an easy nor an expected one, but my involvement in both is motivated by the same desire to create and promote positive change.

Now if I could only understand how network virtualization works, my transformation will be complete.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Booze-flavored toothpaste, lawn darts, and funky colored ketchup may initially have seemed like good ideas, but these ultimately proved to be epic product fails.

Gutcheck has raised $4 million to helps brands prevent these types of disasters. Gutcheck is a on-demand market research community where companies can quickly get answers to their “burning questions.”

Before a business spends millions of dollars developing and distributing a new product, it’s important to test consumer waters and confirm that actual demand is there. Traditional market research can be an expensive and time-consuming process. The Harvard Business Review conducted a study last year which found that a vast majority of Fortune 1,000 companies are not depending on data to make customer-related decisions and are still relying on intuition. In today’s business environment, this is not the most reliable or accurate approach but the current process for market research can’t keep up with the fast-moving pace.

Gutcheck’s platform to makes the process more efficient by allowing brands to assemble specific groups of customers on-demand to provide insights.

The startup said that brands can find their target consumers in an average of 2.3 minutes, as opposed to days or weeks, and get feedback in within 72 hours. Clients select their demographic and geographic requirements, enter customer question criteria, and then conduct interviews with consumers on the platform. It is a quick way to figure out whether their target audience likes what they are creating. No more yogurt shampoo fiascoes. The system can also be used to find out which marketing campaign will be most effective .

GroTech Ventures and Crawley Ventures led this round, along with participation from existing investors Highway 12 Ventures and Village Ventures. The company is on track to triple sales in 2013 and will use this financing to support growth. Clients include big brands like Subway, The Home Depot, KFC, P&G, Hallmakr, Symantec, General Mills, Nestle, Kaiser, Pfizer, Intel, PepsiCo, Hotels.com, MillerCoors, and Coleman.

Just yesterday, a competitive startup called Atizo was named a winner at the Plug and Play Expo in Sunnyvale, Calif. Crowdtap is also a well-known rival. Gutcheck isn’t the only one taking on this problem, but it does have traction with big clients. It is based in Boulder, Colo.

And for the record, I was a huge fan of purple ketchup.

Photo Credit: izifunny.com

This sponsored post is produced by the Inside 3D Printing Conference.

Inside 3D Printing Conference attracted 3,000 attendees and top exhibitors like MakerBot and 3D Systems to its inaugural event in New York. Now, after months of exponential growth and tremendous 3D printing coverage in the news, the conference will head to Chicago this July 10-11.

The topic has piqued the interest and involvement of government officials, including Congressman Bill Foster of the 11th Congressional District of Illinois who will discuss digital manufacturing and its connection to policy, education, and jobs at the event.

Industry players, innovators, entrepreneurs, and investors will meet in Chicago to discuss the impact of 3D printing on various fields. Speakers include Scott Crump, Founder and Chairman of the Board at Stratasys, Ralph L. Resnick, President & Executive Director of the National Center for Defense Manufacturing & Machining (NCDMM), and Cydni Tetro, Entrepreneur in Residence for Disney.

The event will even feature the designer and architect who created style icon Dita Von Teese’s famous 3D printed dress to discuss 3D printing’s influence on fashion and art.

Sessions include Industrial Scale Additive Manufacturing Technologies, 3D Printing and the Future (or Demise) of Intellectual Property, and The Printed Athlete: How 3D Printing is Changing the Nature of Sports. View the full program here.

PERK: VentureBeat readers will save 15% on Gold Passports to the event with code BEAT. Register today.

Sponsored posts are content that has been produced by a company, which is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. The content of news stories produced by our editorial team is never influenced by advertisers or sponsors in any way. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.