Startup Genome. This is a free monthly benchmark for startup founders. After filling out a questionnaire we will compare you against other startups that are similar to you in order to help you evaluate your recent performance. The Startup Genome Compass uses a hybrid Stage and Type model that describes how firms progress through their business development lifecycle. Traditional theory of startup performance hinges on external characteristics of a firm to attribute success factors. Properties such as the amount of money raised, education of entrepreneurs and history of entrepreneurs are typically used to try and explain startup success and failure. The results, however, indicate that a firm’s fate is not only determined by external factors. The Startup Genome Project aims to enhance traditional theory by delving deeper into firm behavior. Startup Types Types of startups are differentiated based on the complexity of their interaction with their users and payers.
Type 1 - The Automator Developmental Stages. A Deeper Look At Blackbox’s Data On Startup Failure And Its Top Cause: Premature Scaling [Infographic] Earlier this week, we covered Blackbox, the young company responsible for creating The Startup Genome Report, an ongoing, collaborative R&D project designed to take a comprehensive dive into what makes Silicon Valley startups successful — and not. (Read our initial coverage here.) On Tuesday, we covered the company’s launch of what it calls the Startup Genome Compass, a benchmarking tool for startups that helps founders monitor their progress in different growth categories. Since then, more than 6,000 startups have signed up to use the Compass. Along with the diagnostic tool, Blackbox also released a new research report on the major causes of startup failure, including perhaps more significantly, the primary cause of startups kicking the bucket: Premature scaling.
While this was touched on in our prior coverage, we thought it might be worth elaborating on their findings, including presenting a nifty infographic created by the team over at Visual.ly. For now, we’ll leave it at that.
NYC incubators. Social TV. The Quora debate. Word Lens More Than Pays for Two Years of Bootstrapping With Its Impressive Launch. It was an app two years in the making, but a blowout week more than made up for the time and money Otavio Good spent bootstrapping Word Lens — the first arguably useful augmented reality experience. Almost perfectly fit for Arthur Clarke’s famous saying that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” Word Lens is a translation app. If you open it up on your iPhone and hold it up to any sign in Spanish, it automatically translates it, replacing the foreign words in the viewfinder with English. But besides its magical demo, the impressive thing about the company is that Good and his partner built the optical character recognition and translation technology from scratch.
Word Lens doesn’t rely on Google Translate, because Good doesn’t want the app to be totally dependent on a steady Internet connection. For all he knows, a tourist could be in an isolated, rural part of Bolivia or Colombia. A breakthrough came when they were trying to test taking snapshots.
SUPERMARMITE - It's cookin'up in the neighborhood!". 10 European Startups To Watch in 2011. When you hear Silicon Valley discuss the European startup scene it’s often negatively. Some say that the investors aren’t brave enough, some say the entrepreneurs aren’t bold enough. Whether there’s any truth in these accusations or not, the fact is that there are startups across Europe that are brimming with original ideas and creativity. Following on from our 10 Exciting European Startups from 2010, here are 10 startups to look out for in 2011.
Pearltrees Visitors to the LeWeb conference last month couldn’t have failed to spot Pearltrees. The French startup had a stand large enough to rival tech heavyweights like Google and Zynga. Pearltrees makes organising groups of links to content incredibly easy. Recent additions to the service include real-time group collaboration and a touch-screen based interface which will be ported to the iPad soon.
Planely The idea behind Planely is a certainly niche one, but the Danish startup could well be onto something that frequent air travellers will love.
Beauty. 5 Tips for Startup Success From a Co-Founder of HootSuite. The Digital Entrepreneur Series is supported by Egnyte. Egnyte Hybrid Cloud File Server delivers critical business infrastructure — online storage, file sharing, collaboration and backup — at LAN speeds. Visit www.egnyte.com to learn more. Digital agency Invoke has a habit of creating products instead of purchasing them. HootSuite, a third-party client for accessing social networks like Facebook and Twitter, is the most successful of the in-house tools that the company has launched as products.
When Dario Meli, David Tedman, and Ryan Holmes launched the company in 2006, they weren't necessarily planning on selling products. But as they developed the tools that they needed, they discovered other agencies needed them as well. Today more than 800,000 people use HootSuite. In 2010, HootSuite spun off of Invoke to form an independent company. 1. Meli says Invoke toyed with the idea of getting rid of the agency and focusing only on the products. 2. 3. The lobby of Invoke's Vancouver office 4. Silicon Valley Early Stage Venture Companies.
Gist - Connected People Change History. Rapportive. Leverage Sales Navigator insights anytime you send an email. View rich LinkedIn profile data for your contacts directly in Gmail, and use that knowledge when you reach out next. This Chrome extension is available in two flavors, “Lite” for free LinkedIn members and “Premium” for LinkedIn Sales Navigator subscribers. Sales Navigator Lite for Gmail will let you See rich LinkedIn profile data for your contacts directly in your Gmail, and use that knowledge when you reach out next Mention icebreakers, including shared connections, experiences, and interests, to build rapport with your contacts Hover over any email address anywhere in your message to quickly view their profile to stay informed on who’s who With a Sales Navigator subscription, this extension will unlock additional premium features: Save contacts as leads in your Sales Navigator account Use TeamLink to see if prospects are connected to your colleagues and get a warm introduction.
The iStreamer for iPad by AllofMe.com. AllofMe. New iPad UI for reading "river of news" Apple acquires Siri, a personal assistant application for the iP. Apple has acquired Siri, a voice-activated app for the iPhone that acts like a personal assistant. The transaction was approved Tuesday by the Federal Trade Commission. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Neither Siri nor Apple immediately responded to a request for comment. To use Siri, users need only to type or say something into the iPhone app, and it will carry out the command or find answers to a question. If a user wants to find a romantic restaurant around Los Angeles, they can say (or type) what they're looking for and Siri will deliver some potential solutions. The way Siri finds those solutions is quite innovative. Apple's decision to acquire Siri is likely a response to Google's recent acquisition of Aardvark, a service that answers user questions by soliciting help from other people around the globe. Aside from its Siri acquisition, Apple bought Quattro earlier this year for $275 million. -- Don Reisinger. Google buys social media site Aardvark | Technology | Los Angele.
Hbookmark: archive, sort and search your twitter links effortles. Cool Startups. Startups Founded by Yahoo Alumni. Augmented Reality. Trend Micro Acquires Online File Sync Provider Humyo - Data Stor. In the latest cloud-services consolidation move, Internet content security software provider Trend Micro revealed June 11 that it is acquiring Humyo.com, a 3-year-old, privately held online storage and data synchronization company.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Humyo, pronounced hew-MY-oh, offers an online file storage service that automatically synchronizes a user's files across multiple computers and a remote data store in order to make content available any time from any type of connected device. The company currently has about 600,000 users-mostly in Europe-storing more than 100 million files, co-founder Dan Conlon said. Its service is aimed strictly at consumers and small businesses and will be competing with services such as Dropbox and SugarSync. Files stored in Humyo.com can be shared with other users and published on Web pages, if so desired. The company houses its servers in a former Bank of England vault.
Beyond Yelp and Foursquare??? The difference between angel investors and venture capitalists - The difference between angel investors and venture capitalists The commonly understood difference between Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists can be distinguished by the organizational status of investors involved and the stage at which the investor in question puts money into a new enterprise.
The stages of investment in a startup venture can be classified as follows: seed funding, first round funding, second round funding, mezzanine funding, and initial public offering (IPO). Typically, but not always, Angel Investors put money into a startup company at the earlier and riskier seed stages than do Venture Capitalists. The term "Angel Investors" refers to private individuals who take positions in startup companies usually at a very early stage.
Angel Investors often have founded successful companies in the same or related field. Angel Investors are often motivated by their perception of an attractive opportunity in the startup company in field in which they have previous experience.
Eucalyptus Raises $20 Million in New VC Funds. SIP2SIP.info - free SIP account for voice, video, IM and Presenc.