Startups
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TextWeight Launches to Help Track Weight Loss via SMS
I’m excited for my hubby, tonight his app TextWeight… which he just launched this morning, is on the front page of TechCrunch.It’s a really simple app. Â You sign up with your phone number, and each morning you get a text asking you your weight that day. Â For me, I already weight myself once each day when I get up in the morning so this makes a lot of sense.
The cool thing is that this is a pull instead of a push. Â I don’t have to remember to text the app my weight, because it askes me. Â Then it graphs how I’m doing over time.
Congrats Kevin! Â You can follow @TextWeight on Twitter.
Cin
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Time to Say Goodbye Seattle, Hello San Francisco
Cross posted from Seattle 2.0 >>
A series of events yesterday convinced me that it’s time to write the blog post that I haven’t being willing to touch for over six months. This is the blog post that says goodbye to Seattle and hello to San Francisco.Seattle is a great place to start a company and, after traveling a ton this past year, I strongly feel it is also one of the best places on Earth to live. I anticipate that you, Seattle 2.0 readers, might point out that it seems a little ridiculous to be editor of Seattle 2.0 and then to move away. As numerous people can attest, I’m a huge fan of Seattle startups, entrepreneurs, and as someone who was born and raised in the Seattle area I’m homesick as hell. But I don’t live for the scene, much as I enjoy being a part of it. For awhile, I did feel like the startup community was an end in itself and I think that is one danger to be aware of as you’re starting your own companies. Your fellow upstarts are not, for the most part, your customers. Impressing them is optional – impressing (and making money from) your customers is required.How Long Has This Being Going On
I’ve been avoiding talking about my move kind of like someone who’s in a new relationship but doesn’t want to call the guy her boyfriend. But the truth is that Seattle and I had to break up, because I’m seeing someone else… and it’s very serious. I wasn’t planning to fall in love with a startup in the Bay Area but it happened, and as one of our investors (who is partial to the New York tech community) said, “you have to go to the place where the startup you want to work on is”. I think he’s right, and beyond that I think you have to take your business where it is most likely to be successful. For Twilio, that’s San Francisco.I saw Mikhail Seregine of Seattle-based startup Jambool (their San Francisco team shares an office with us at Pier 38) today, and we laughed at how much one chance meeting at a WTIA event could do. One year ago Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, Mikhail, and I were eating dinner together at an event where our respective startups were presenting and look how much has changed since then (Twilio took funding, ClayValet closed, and I left Pelago).It’s a Choice, Not a Sacrifice
Right about now I’m missing everything from our weather to our (often crappy) sports teams, and for the record Seattle really does have the best Thai food no matter what these foodies tell you. Most of all, I’m missing A LOT of people including my parents, my sister, my friends, and the majority of business contacts I’ve built up in the past five years since dropping out of college. Case in point, I saw Dave Schappell today at our office here in SF and probably hugged him hello a little too tight (sorry Dave).Why give all that up for a startup? Why give it up for a company that, despite an impressive trajectory, still has statistically high odds of going nowhere like every startup? Why risk messing up my marriage, going bankrupt trying to sell my real estate, etc. just to be constantly exhausted, have panic attacks, get sick, travel too much, sleep too little? Why live like this? My reason might surprise you. It’s not that I love startups (although I do, for many reasons).My reason for choosing this crazy life is simple, I want to give people back hours of their lives. I want to take things that are hard, and make them easy. I want to free people up to do higher value things with their time. It is the common thread of everything I’ve ever worked on, and it is the motivation behind each company I’ve chosen to work for and each product I’ve worked to create or bring to market.Tactics: On Becoming a Maker
One of the top reasons I took on the role of 1st non-founding multiple-hat-wearing something-or-other (we call is “Director of Marketing”) is because I need to become more technical to achieve my long term goals of founding successful startups of my own. Startup Weekend taught me something important about startups in the earliest stages: he who writes the codes makes the rules. As it turns out, I really like the freedom and immediate gratification of creating working prototypes. One of my proudest moments was when an app I wrote made it to the #3 spot on Hacker News, and no one said anything nasty about my code. Phew!Tactics: On Becoming a Marketer
Although I hold the title “Director of Marketing” I am not a traditional marketer, meaning I didn’t study it in school and I didn’t even really intend to get into marketing. In most startups, engineers are the rockstars and marketing plays second fiddle but its becoming increasingly obvious that startups with engineering gurus who never bring anything to market are not viable businesses, and ultimately a waste of time and money for investors. What I’m doing now allows me to stretch my wings as a marketer, and become intimately familiar with marketing channels and how to bring a product to the public.Thank You, Thank You, Thank You
It’s not like I’m disappearing or anything, I’m still going to post my ramblings on here until Marcelo or the commenters kick me out. I wasn’t going to do this because it is a little cheesy but what the hell. I really want to thank some people who have been helpful to me in the Seattle startup community, and who I think are part of what makes Seattle a great place to be in tech. I apologize in advance for anyone I’ve forgotten, and I’m sure I’ll be updating this post.my husband, Kevin – for putting up with my single-minded obsession with entrepreneurship, supporting me endlessly, and also kicking my ass when everyone is telling me what I want to hear- Marcelo Calbucci (Seattle 2.0)- for encouraging me to write for Seattle 2.0, live broadcast, and generally inspiring me to go after things I want in life, cooking yummy food and talking for hours
- Michelle Goldberg (Ignition Partners) – for being a supportive mentor who believes in me, listens, and gets excited about the same things I do
- Brian Westbrook – for being my better half when we cohost Seattle 2.0 TV, up for anything every time I call with something I want to film, teaching me to fake smile on camera for hours, and letting me play with his gear and toys
- Rob Eickemann – for being the first person to say hi to me at the first tech event I ever went to, Six Hour Startup, as well as a friendly face at Saturday House and organizer of Startup Weekend
- Cassie Wallender – for interviewing me at my first attempt to join a startup (I didn’t get it, maybe because I wore a suit to the interview hehe) at iLike
- John Cook – for cofounding TechFlash, because it is helping keep Seattle startups on the map where they belong and helping them be taken seriously
- Ksenia Oustiougova – for showing me how hard you have to dig in to get what you want, sharing your office space, and inspiring me to be less nice and more badass
- Josh Maher & Nathan Kaiser – for hosting Lunch 2.0 and nPost events (respectively) that helped me meet tons of people, learn to pitch, and feel like I was a part of something special
- STS mailing list – for letting me lurk, the entertainment, the wisdom, did I mention the entertainment?
- numerous geeks like Brian Dorsey, Calvin Freitas, Colin Henry, Damon Cortesi and Aviel Ginzburg – for explaining things to me without making me feel stupid, encouraging me to keep getting better at coding, and answering my (often dumb) questions
- Poker 2.0 – for your money 😉
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Handicapping LeWeb Startup Competition: First Impressions
I just did the 5 minute “it’s okay to be an asshole” pass over these companies as I prep for LeWeb and get my blog coverage prepared, and here are my thoughts. Keep in mind that 5 minutes times 16 companies not chump change, and I’m sure I’ll be diving deeper once I meet with the teams later this week.
Here’s the grading scale
F: does not work
C: feature (needs to be integrated into something larger to achieve distribution and be worth paying for)
B: product (serves a function, but doesn’t have a clear point of monetization and return to investors)
A: company (a product comprised of features serves customers and returns revenues, there is a clear business model if revenues aren’t yet coming in)
1. CloudSplit
Track how much you’re spending on cloud computing with CloudSplit, and receive suggestions on how to reduce cost. This seems like an interesting tool, but I have to believe that the more important thing to measure is how much you are SAVING after switching to cloud computing over your previous solution. The person who would actually look at this tool on a daily basis is probably a systems administrator of a small/medium business who is trying to convince management to head into the cloud. He’s going find that reliability, scalability, and cost savings from the original system are the most pressing concerns. With so few enterprises in the cloud at this point, optimization seems far off.
First impression: feature
Looks like the iPhone app is already launched, cool, I’ll check it out. Polished website, I’m guessing these guys aren’t quite as early stage as some of the others.
First impression: not sure, need to see if app is paid
3. FriendBinderSeems very similar to FriendFeed. Tried to use Facebook Connect feature, but it appears to be broken. I was able to add Twitter and YouTube but all I see in the stream are my own updates- where are my friends?
The site looks somewhat amateur in design, along the lines of a Startup Weekend projects, and their last Twitter update is 11/23 so I wonder if this is actually anyone’s full time dedicated company or just a side project that managed to make it in.
First impression: product
4. Kukunu
This name is already a problem, I typed it in a KunuKunu a few times. Ah, another travel planning site… can this really be anything unique from the other hundred thousand (at least) services in this space? Interesting they have an orange favicon in the browser bar and no orange on their site, is this a rebrand of a more mature product?Looks like social travel planning, guides etc. This product will be a total community play and I imagine money will have to come from advertising and lead generation. Done right there is still a lot of money in that since travel is a big ticket item, I requested and invite into the private beta so we’ll see what happens. Follow them on Twitter too @kukunu
5. Mendeley
Mendeley helps faciliate the organization, sharing, and discovery of research papers. Cool – this actually falls in the category of “I don’t know another company innovating in this space” and I imagine with the .gov movement towards more open data this fits well, if I wanted to research something like… global warming.Oh crap, it’s desktop software. Do not want!
Okay, this still looks pretty cool but I need to do a review of it when I have time… 5 minutes won’t cover a desktop app.
6. Shutl
Cute branding (and on their Twitter page too) and of course I love isite that count their launch date down to the second.
But waht does it do? If I wan’t writing a review there’s no way I’d provide my contact info, but I just did so hopefully that means I will learn more soon. Oh! Their Twitter profile actually gives me more info than the website:
“Shopping online will never be the same… All Shutl’s announcements will be made here first. Watch this space!”
My guess: social shopping
This redirected to Liqpay and I don’t see any ign of Siteheart Inc… so hopefully I’m on the right website. Well this is cool, payments via phone – definitely something interesting and a reason to chat with them about Twilio too. We’ll wait and see if this is the right website
8. Sokoz
The site is in French, but never fear – Google translator is here! A side note, it might not be a good thing that I can’t figure out what it does based on the images without the translation. The read button that says “Acheter” (or “buy”) is a hint, but only because I know that word.
Okay cool, the translation is in – this is a service for ecommerce sites to help them sell things? I will just talk to them in person… too tired, 5 minutes is up
Redirects to GetInLive.com, so I hope I am on the right website. This website design is so fresh, and I don’t usually like dark backgrounds… very striking look. The problem is, now that I’m on the site I don’t know what it is I am supposed to actually DO. There isn’t a clear goal for the user, and I’m left wondering what I’m even looking at. Everton vs. Tottenham are 2-2, is that soccer (football) or something else? It also says “calculating 4,972,973” data points and it looks like it should be ticking over with new data points… what could those possibly be?
10. Storific
This is another in private beta, but their messaging should give you some hints. This is absolutely a product designed to service business for some kind of in-store experience, their idea of being “Storified”. I wish I had a retail outfit I could legitimately sign up for their alpha.
I’m pretty interested in theis space, it is pretty bleeding edge and reminds me of the “Future of Retails” meetups I brought together at the Red Mango at Pacific Place back when I will still working on Whrrl. Curious.11. Stribe
Now here is something I need, a product that can instantly create a social network on any website. I like that my first thought was “like Ning… well, not really” because Ning is a seperate walled garden from the other walled garden that is my website. I just signed up for an account on behalf of Twilio, I would love to give this a test drive. Cool name too, I am surprised it wasn’t taken. Looks like this is a widget, not clear if it is a full product offering to solve a business problem or just help solve it… and how to make money? We will find out.
First impression: Feature
12. SuperfeedrSaw these guys around, at PariSoma in San rancisco and also at the ReadWriteWeb Realtime Summit that was held about a month ago in Silicon Valley. They are parsing feeds from the realtime web and making them useful for developers. I’m still trying to figure out how to partner with these guys on a contest for Twilio, what they are doing is cool and I think people will eventually demand this data enough — but is the demand for it there now.
And how repeatable is this? It seems like this might be an execution play, and there is also TweetHooks out there. Is this a standalone product, or does it need to be part of some overarching service? Looks like they are already charge, so good on them for that.
First impression: product
13. task.ly
Managing to-do lists more efficiently, a big bold statement on there about the vision the Google Wave creators had as compared to the task.ly vision. I love their design, and hope the product will be as simple as it seems to be from their branding/marketing copy (clearly what they are going for). This is a crowded space, but productivity tools are fun and monetizable.
First impression: Product
14. Tigerlily
Ah a product for marketers, I want to try this one out – it is for making better use of Facebook as a marketing tool through Facebook pages. Reminds me a bit of Involver. Very explicit about Facebook fans on these pages being leads, which is sending me the right signals that these guys see it as a business and not just a “make prettier Facebook pages” play.
Ooh they appear to have contest and quiz management, that is smart! So I tried to set up the free version but something is not working here, Facebook doesn’t seem to want to make selecting Tiegerlily an option… oh well, I’m zonked, I’ll try again tomorrow.
15. The Hyperwords CompanyFirefox add on, gotta restart to run it… the basic idea is that it provides resources (dictionary, wikipedia, etc.) for words on your website. We’ll see… I’m not sure what I think, but there are some glowing quotes on here.
Sounds like the uses go way beyond the dictionary, to include translations, converting metric to standard, etc. Can’t wait to find out how they want to make money.
First impression: feature
16. WordyPay as you go copy editing! The video on the front page looks slick, but it was having a difficult time buffering. This is a clever idea, let’s get a quick quote on this blog post so far. Just a little copy paste here…
Whoa 46.29 Euros and 92 minutes (or ~0.50 Euros per minute)… yikes, that is a bit pricey for me – I don’t even get paid to blog! This is cool how do I become a copy editor? How do I make money as a copy editor? Do they use Amazon Mechanical Turk? That would be clever. I’m not sure who is going to pay for this, but I’d love to speak with them… the quote I got was so far from the 0.03 Euros advertised on the front page. Let’s see what the quote is for “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” That is 0.27 Euros, and will take 1 minute to turn around.
Well it is 3am, time to hit the sheets for a nap and then we’re off to the airport. Can’t wait to meet all the startups in Paris, and find out if some of my guesses and criticisms were correctly placed. Au revoir!