the startupist

I have 404,772 users. Now what?

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 01:02:35 -0400

Three months ago I started a social network for musicians called Fandalism. My goal was to build a database of every musician on the planet and give them a place to show their work and meet other musicians.

I launched it without much fanfare by inviting a few friends and posting about it on…

Google Drive: 1 More Place to Put It.

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:52:01 -0400

Google Drive: 1 More Place to Put It.:

Now that you’ve put your files in every other digital locker service that had a pulse, Google Drive will be offering 5GB for you to have your way with in the near future.

Sidenote: I would have sacrificed my online social identity to Google+ for the rest of my life if Google drive was G’s plan to give everyone a self-driving car. -1 for Google…

Y Combinator's Latest 66 Startups

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:03:20 -0400

Y Combinator's Latest 66 Startups:

Lot’s of cool and nerdy stuff out of Y Combinator’s latest class. I’m particularly in like with Zillabyte, Flutter, FlyPad, Priceonomics, and Exec. The rest are either acquhires in the next 6-12 mos, or flops altogether.

I wasn’t really inspired by the majority of this class. This isn’t to say the rest of the co’s are on a flat trajectory - I’m just not really into the rest, and don’t see their value - at least as it relates to me.

Umm. And, any way you slice it - YC funded a blog with DailyMuse. A blog. They can say they’re “working” on something all they want. Until that something comes along…it’s a blog.

Svbtle and Obtvse.

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 18:19:00 -0400

Svbtle and Obtvse.:

Svbtle is beautiful, and extremely intruiging as a walled garden for vetted bloggers. I think there is room for more of that sort of thing - the exclusive collective. Obtvse is also delightfully minimal, and something I will definitely be messing around with.

As far as any “controversy” goes, I don’t care.

Groupon Grabs FeeFighters

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 18:15:40 -0400

Groupon Grabs FeeFighters:

This seems to be, probably, the best case exit scenario for FeeFighters. Their payment processing suggestion service is helpful. Their on payment service seemed reactive. All in all, it’s a good exit for a good company, and a great strategic play for Groupon as they move further in the direction of supporting small businesses (and booking more deals).

$0.01 Instagram Prints, MoPho

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:04:00 -0400

$0.01 Instagram Prints, MoPho:

Making the digital tangible is always fascinating. MoPho is no stranger to this, as they have offered their app as a way to get your Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa photos printed on paper, canvas, mousepads, etc. MoPho announced Instagram support today, and are kicking things off by offering the first 15,000 Instagram photo prints for a penny.

Get on that.

Fab.com By The Numbers - After 9 Months

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:13:58 -0400

Fab.com By The Numbers - After 9 Months:

Fab’s mobile numbers are of particular note.

betashop:

3 million members, doubling in the first 3 months of 2012 - up from 1.5M on January 1, 2012.

40% of daily visits coming from mobile.

More than 1 million products sold in 9 months.

That’s an average of 111,111 products sold per month.

Tiger + Shaq + Arnold = ?

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 00:06:04 -0400

Tiger + Shaq + Arnold = ?:

Courtesy of onwardly at HN, this emerges from the archive. As it turns out, they all held Google stock Pre-IPO.

8 years ago, the GOOG managed an exit. A lot happens in 8 years.

Pictorious B.I.G.

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 23:07:40 -0400

1) I wanted to be more creative with the headline, and work in a Notorious B.I.G. reference in some kind of clever way. That would have taken too much time.

2) Semi-ProTip: If you want to find out about cool apps before your friends, check the “release date” tab under the different app categories in the iPhone App Store a few times a week.

And now: Pictorious.

During my weekly what’s new browse through the app store, I came across a neat little app called Pictorious. Pictorious defines itself as a fun, mobile, photo-sharing game. The game is started with a picture of a specific event or action, and other users participate in the game by offering their own photos of that particular even or action.

For example, a recent game had a picture of Tom Brady in his signature hunched over slump sitting on the field. Pictorious challenged their users to photograph themselves or someone else “Bradying”. From there, users vote on which photo they think is the best with “likes”. The person with the most likes wins the game, along with a smattering of self-confidence and pride. Plans for brand sponsored games with actual prizes are planned.

To put Pictorious in more relateable terms, you may like to think of it as a sort of DailyBooth+DrawSomething+BuzzFeed love-child.

There are plenty of reasons to be both excited and indifferent about Pictorious.

Pictorious is not the first time the interactive photo-post has been tried. About 3 years ago, there was a website called DailyMission which did essentially the same thing - posting a daily categorical contest, and allowing their users to respond with photos or videos relevant to the topic. More recently, a sparsely populated website named JustSnapThis seems to be pursing a similar idea. Based on the non-existence of DailyMission and the ghost-town that is JustSnapThis, I’m not convinced people want something like Pictorious.

Part of this, arguably, is due to the non-existence of a mobile application. The mobile app significantly reduces the “barrier” to uploading photos, as the photos can be taken and uploaded via the same device. However, even DailyBooth, the once hot “twitter for photos”, seems to have largely stagnated - even with the presence of a mobile app.

On the other hand, if there is going to be a startup that will finally crack the interactive photo-contest I would say that Pictorious would be the one to do it. The current success of DrawSomething lens support to the argument that mobile users like to waste time on creative and interactive games. Yes, taking and uploading a photo is different than playing a modified version of pictionary, but you have to allow that there is a slim correlation there. Also, the current obsession with the perpetuation of memes and the ongoing growth and success of BuzzFeed will only offer a second platform for these memes to be perpetuated, as well as offer a source of endless new photo content for BuzzFeed’s editors endless pageview hogging photo-collections.

Pictorious may not be your thing. It’s not mine. I, honestly, will probably never use it. Not even once. But, I also don’t see myself ever using DrawSomething. I don’t like games. Nonetheless, I will be keeping an eye on Pictorious to see if they can finally find an audience for interactive photo games.

Pictorious is led by Andrew Chung and Michael Park. More on there impressive resumes here.

Charlie Rose drills down on Gilt, offering a unique and in-depth...

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 02:41:00 -0400

Charlie Rose drills down on Gilt, offering a unique and in-depth look at the state of Gilt, the flash-sale commerce landscape, ecommerce overall, and the state of the NY tech/startup scene.

(And a Ried Hoffman interview on is tossed in at the end gratis.)

Discovering Art(.sy)

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:47:00 -0500

One of the driving forces of the internet has been discovery. Yahoo is credited with being one of the primary discovery engines of the web while it was still in diapers. Discovery evolved from a curated page of links, to search with the invention of the search engine. As the internet evolved into it’s interactive age, discovery occurred on a social level, and in the current age of handled computing (read: smartphones) discovery is happening in a much more personalized way.

Joining the society of other discovery engines, is Art.sy - the much anticipated NY-based startup founded by Carter Cleveland just over 3 years ago. Led be Cleveland, funded by the likes of Jack Dorsey, Eric Schmidt, Charlie Cheever, and Peter Thiel, and advised by global art and discovery leaders Larry Gagosian (Gagosian Galleries) and Joe Kennedy (Pandora), Art.sy, on paper, seems well positioned for success.¹

The art discovery startup debuted at TechCrunch Disrupt NY in the Spring of 2010, showcasing as a sort of new art marketplace. Art.sy has since shifted their focus, and is now, at it’s core, an art database displaying its contents in a simply searchable gallery.

In much the same way that Pandora analyzes song structure, patterns, and influences to create the music genome, Art.sy analyzes works of art for hundreds of different characteristics in an effort to create the art genome.

After waiting for over a year, I finally received my Art.sy invite today. In the case that you have not received your invite yet or have not requested one, I took the liberty to post a few screen grabs below.

Here, we have the home page showing you works currently on display.

Use the search box at the top of the site, or use the characteristics in the footer to find art based on any number of characteristics/specific criteria.

Next, we have the individual piece page. View the work in detail, find out whether it is for sale (at which point, Art.sy will put you in communication with the artist/gallery). You can also save the work to your own digital collection (like a Pinterest for the sophisticate). Finally, you can follow the artist to be alerted when new work is uploaded for viewing/sale.

Art.sy is sort of amalgamation of Pinterest and Pandora for the art sophisticate. It brings together the best of these applications, and introduces the tradition of art museums, galleries, and brokerages to create a unique, elegant, and obviously artistic experience.

1: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/art-sy

Kickstarter in 2011.

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:33:17 -0500

Kickstarter in 2011.:

See previous commentary and statistics.

Of note: It would seem that, with products like Twine, PadPivot, etc. getting so much media attention and widespread praise for the amount of cheddar they were able to raise for their respective projects, the Design category would be the one that grabbed the most cashflow. While it did grab the title for most popular rewards, it was actually the Film ($32mm) and Music ($19mm) categories that netted the most $$$$ for the projects.

The top search terms of 2011 courtesy of Experian Hitwise. Do...

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:39:08 -0500

The top search terms of 2011 courtesy of Experian Hitwise. Do people just not know how to use the address bar? This blows my mind…

via tc

...and we're back.

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 11:45:46 -0500

I mean I’m back, with you.

I spent a minute or two thinking about deleting TheStartupist, and letting it fall off the face of the earth. And then I decided that I just like following the space too much.

So here’s the plan for the revamped TheStartupist: I’m going to play the part of dj, and spin stories that I find interesting, relevant, and important - along with a short take. Some reasoning below:

Breaking news is covered. If TC, SAI, AllThingsD, et al have breaking news on lock. I don’t have the time, or the desire, to break news - so I’m not even going to pretend to try.
There are two prevailing voices in the tech/startup space. Boring/Unopinionated and Inflammatory/Sensationalist. I miss the f*** off attitude of TC, I think Venturebeat, RWW, and the institutional tech press (AllThingsD) are boring and mostly unopinionated, I think TheNextWeb covers too much stuff that just doesn’t matter, and I think SAI is thin on news and hell-bent on raising the world’s collective blood pressure. I deeply enjoy reading SplatF and BetaBeat - a good balance of opinion, data, analysis, and the occasional long-form read.

I expect TheStartupist to function more as a way for me too bookmark and record my take on tech/startup news, than as a way for you fulfill your insatiable desire to waste time reading things on the internet. In any case, if you want to keep up with news that actually matters, startups that are actually building good, sustainable, (and cool) businesses, and save a little of your time by not reading most of the textual drivel (like this) then TheStartupist might be your new friend.

That is all. Hopefully no future post will ever be this long again. Bye.

Obscura: The Instagram for Censorship

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:55:00 -0400

In the case that you, or your mother, have not already shared every last personal detail of your life on the Facebook already, please be informed that it will happen - nudie pics and all.

Released at the end of August and available for both Android and iPhone, the Obscura Cam app, in much the same way as Instagram makes it easy to add visual effects to your photos, allows users to easily obscure and censor their photos with the cliche black box, the anonymous blur, or the ever-pixelated kaleidoscope effects.

Where in the past your mother would have gotten a swift boot from the Facebook for posting those naked baby photos of you, she can now feel free to expose the smooth skin that once belonged to you without having to risk membership to the club that affords her both continual access to her friends as well as her virtual farm.

Seriousness aside, Obscura is a cool app. I’m not sure I would play it off as a way to “legally” share digital versions of a less clothed self in the way that other reviewers have done. Rather, this app seems to be just another weapon in the citizen journalists arsenal so that they can observe, snap, and safely report recent sitings of the neighborhood streaker. Additionally, celebrities, athletes, and politicians may prefer to use the app preemptively - so that, when their nakie pics leak to the press all of the difficult censorship work is done. Just a thought, is all…

Movenbank: Phase 1.

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:56:15 -0400

You may remember my overall negative pre-impression of Movenbank, the self proclaimed next generation bank that is looking to create a revolutionary new bank with no paper, no plastic, and no hidden fees. Well, the startup debuted in alpha mode at the beginning of the month. I received my alpha invite two days ago. Here’s an inside look at phase 1.

It all started with a series of 40 questions designed to gauge my personal spending habits, saving habits, and my overall views on money and personal financial management. The questions are fairly repetitive, with at least 5 of them asking me in one way or another how I view/react to impulse purchases.

It all ended with the results of the survey. Based on the answers given to the 40 questions, Movenbank groups their users into 1 of 9 classes. I spend quite a bit of time and energy analyzing my money and allocating it, which is obviously reflected in my classification as an “Accountant” in the table below.

Also, I received a badge! Gamified banks are fun!

That’s about as far as the alpha goes at this point. Take a survey, and they tell you what your “financial personality” is. Cool. I couldn’t help but ask myself what was next. Luckily, Movenbank anticipated that question, and had an answer ready.

So, before we get to get all Bank 3.0 up this this interweb, it looks like we’ll have some sort of Mint with game mechanics. Admittedly, I don’t have high hopes or opinions about Movenbank at this point. I will reiterate, as I said in the previous Movenbank post, that I want them to prove me wrong. I love banking, and am excited to see what they put out - whether or not I think it will ultimately be successful.

Kickstarter, 1,000,000 Backers Later...

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Last week a woman named Rachel Perrie pledged to a film project called Cargo. At that moment she became the millionth person to have ever backed a Kickstarter project… …Kickstarter backers have now pledged more than $100 million to projects. To put this in some context, the 2011 fiscal year budget for the National Endowment for the Arts is $154 million. At the current pace of more than $2 million in pledges each week, Kickstarter backers are pledging more than $100 million a year.

Kickstarter’s growth has exploded over the past year. More designers, producers, musicians, photographers, and artists of all other types are getting funded than ever before - to the tune of a projected$100,000,000+ per year. Where organizations like the NEA cannot fund every great creative project, Kickstarter has stepped in to supplement, support, and sustain the creativity and art for future generations.

Kickstarter is not just a trendy “crowdfunding platform”. It is the new endowment for the arts created for and sustained by the people.

If This is the Future of Banking, I'm Stashing my Cash Under a Mattress.

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0400

You know those startups that are going to be a super-huge success because they have a location-based-photo-sharing-social-group-deals-with-private-sales-and-game-mechanics? Yeah. It’s kind of like that.

Betabeat reported on Movenbank, a start that may, in the near future, use your Klout score and other aggregated online social data to issue you a credit line. The “bank”, founded by Brett King, seems to be a logical next step following his success with the book Bank 2.0. I should note that King, an accomplished figure in the world of finance, is brilliant and has a fairly accurate picture of how banking has changed and intriguing ideas as to what it might look like in the future (read: he is 100x smarter than I am when it comes to that stuff). However, there are a few things I find concerning about Movenbank, not the least of which is access to a credit line based on Klout, but more about that later.

The core purpose of Movenbank is to be a “third generation banking experience” with “no paper, no plastic, and no hidden fees”. Ambitious for sure, but it the premise seems reasonable enough. Then, King starts talking about what is coming up in their alpha. Initially, the startup will have no real banking features. Rather, it is described as being a “foursquare/Klout for your financial life”

-Pause. What the what? So we can check in with our money and get badges? Or, we get a Klout-style score based on our buying history? Or we can share our purchases (look how that worked out for Blippy/Swipely…) Or, maybe it’s Mint.com gone Facebook. No description of the company, from other tech sources or from the founder himself, has made any real sense. End Pause.

Now, let’s talk about this Klout stuff. Klout is a supposed measure of social influence based on activity/data on social networks and applications. It is complete nonsense. How do I know? Klout claims that I am influential about New Jersey, Coffee, and iPads. I live in the Dirty Jerz and occasionally will tweet my current location in NJ when I go out on work related visits. Other than knowing the NJ Turnpike extremely well, I know really nothing about the rest of the fine state. I have tweeted about coffee before. I like to drink it. But to say I’m influential about it is hilarious. It seems that some who is influential about the drink would be able to describe the roasting process, etc. I cannot. I can only tell you that I think it tastes good. And now, iPads… Somehow I am influential about iPads, yet I do not even own one, so… Klout is a joke. Now, let’s assume that King is completely serious about using online social profile data to determine a Movenbank user’s influences which will essentially determine their ability access a line of credit. At least with Klout, the only real thing at stake is access to free samples from Axe. To stake tangible dollars on what seems to be a relatively easily manipulable algorithm is not something I would characterize as “good business sense”.

At this point, I should reiterate that King is a very smart man with a great deal of knowledge about finance and banking. I could be very wrong about everything here. In fact, I hope I am. I hope I look like a fool when Movenbank launches, but thus far the joke seems to be on Movenbank. None if this adds up.

Once we get past the neo-socio-influential layer, we move into the actual financial guts of the Movenbank platform - the paperless, plasticless, hidden fee-less guts. Movenbank plans to utilize near field communication (NFC), presumable via mobile phones, to facilitate transactions. The recent release of Google Wallet certainly has transactions via NFC on every geek’s mind, but it seems that the general public could really care less at this point. NFC faces a massive educational curve and concerns about security from the public. A recent TechCrunch piece reports that PayPal believes NFC to be years away from serious consumer adoption, and I am inclined to agree. It looks like Movenbank is trying to go all Jetsons when all the world is really asking for is Flinstones 2.0 (i.e. BankSimple).

I did sign up for an invite. We’ll see what it’s all about when I make it to the inside.

Google+ may be the Fastest to 100,000,000 users, and Why it doesn't Matter.

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Bill Gross, the founder of Idealab whose portfolio includes companies Snap, UberMedia, and Aptera, predicted via Google+ that the fresh-out-the-kitchen social play would be the fastest social network to reach 100,000,000 members. Numbers released by Google during their quarterly earnings call pegged the current membership at about 10,000,000 which is not all that bad for a “limited launch” that happened just over a week ago.

Mr. Gross could be correct. In fact, I would say that you will probably see his prediction come true. However, I am not sure that his prediction was quite as bold as he thinks.

To me, making the prediction that Google+ will be the fastest to 100,000,000 users is like saying that Amazon/Quidsi’s Wag.com will be the fastest pet superstore website to 1,000,000 orders - it is a complete no-brainer. Google+, like the new Wag.com, has the luxury of being operated by a company that is already at scale. So, while Google+ may be the fastest to 100,000,000, there is something a bit more compelling and fulfilling knowing that Facebook or Twitter managed their current membership completely from scratch, facing the problem of scale all the way up.