Below is a recap of the February 10, 2012 episode of the ABC show Shark Tank (episode 302). If you are unfamiliar with Shark Tank, the concept is simple – entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a panel of investors and the investors have to provide at least the amount the entrepreneur is seeking for a deal to be completed.

Tonight Barbara Corcoran was replaced by QVC product creator Lori Greiner.

Pitch #1 – The Swilt

Ivori Tennelle pitched her product called, “The Swilt” which she describes as a sweater and blanket together. She was seeking $30k for 35% investment and wanted to use the money for SEO and to create inventory. None of the sharks were interested and Lori noted that the Snuggie is dead.

Pitch #2 – Show No

Up next was Shelly Ehler presenting her “Show No” towel. Basically it is a changing towel for kids so they can change into dry clothes at the beach or a water park. So far Shelly has sold $15k in Show No towels to two major amusement parks. Shelly was seeking $50k for 25% investment. This was one of the most heated battles between the investors to-date. Kevin O’Leary referred to the product as a “towel with a hole in it” but the other investors were very interested. Final offers were: Lori at $75k/25%, Damon John at $75k/20% and Mark Cuban at $75k/25%. Shelly selected Lori Grenier’s offer and Lori actually handed a signed check to Shelly – a first for the show (although I would assume it was to make good tv).

Shark Tank Update – Notehall

I am sure you already have heard about Notehall – they signed a deal with Barbara Corcoran for $90k and last year sold to Chegg. Venturebeat noted that Chegg gave Notehall $3.7 million in stock plus an undisclosed amount of cash.

Pitch #3 – Puppy Cake

I am not a dog person so I certainly don’t get this one but Kelly Chaney presented her creation called the, “Puppy Cake“. The Puppy Cake is a cake mix for dogs so you can create a cake for the dog’s special day. She was seeking $50k for 25% and Kelly noted she has $80k in sales over her 4 years in business. Unfortunately none of the investors took the deal. Somehow I think that the idea would work better if Kelly made the cakes and sold them in specialty food stores.

Pitch #4 – Wine Balloon

Last up was Eric Corti with his invention the, “Wine Balloon“. The product is basically a balloon that you insert into a bottle of wine, pump it up and Eric notes that it saves the quality of the wine better than any other device on the market. This was yet another hot battle for the investors. Eric was seeking $40k for 30% and Kevin O’Leary offered exactly what Eric was seeking. Lori Greiner offered $500k for 100% of the company. Mark Cuban joined Lori and offered a combined $600k for 100% of the company. Eric didn’t accept quick enough and Lori and Mark came back with an offer of $400k for 100% and Eric accepted. So in the span of 3 minutes, Eric lost $200k.

Find more stories about: ABC, Angel Investors, TV

Several friends and colleagues have noticed the HelloBar on CN noting that I am looking to sell the site and they have asked me why. It’s simple…I am focused on my startup now and just don’t have the time to put a real effort into CN anymore. I’d like to sell the site either as a domain name sale or the full site including all of the content.

Here’s part of what is included in the sale:
– centernetworks.com domain (domain age 1999)
– over 5,600 posts (CN uses WordPress as the blogging platform)
– other domains not being used today: centernetworks.net, centernetworks.org, centrenetworks.co.uk, centernetworks.co.uk
– the new owner would take over the CN Twitter account (nearly 10,000 earned followers)
– the new owner would take over the CN Facebook page

If interested or if you would like more details, please contact me at general@centernetworks.com.

Find more stories about: CenterNetworks

The New York Technology Council held an incubator showcase for several NYC-based incubators last summer. Joly MacFie from WWWhatsup NYC posted a video of the event – you can watch the 90 minute event below. Here’s the presenter list:

• Bruce Niswander, Director, Technology Innovation & Entrepreneurship, NYU-Poly
• Daria Siegel, Director of the Alliance for Downtown New York’s Hive at 55
• Natalia Arguello, Director, NYDesigns
• Matthew Shampine, Co-Founder, WeWork Labs
• Charles Kemper, Managing Director, ER Accelerator

From what I can tell, Hive and 55 and WeWork Labs are more coworking/shared office space than a traditional incubator where a group trades services for equity. Since the list does include coworking, I must include the first coworking space in NYC, New Work City.

Find more stories about: incubator, New Work City, NYC, startups

Next Tuesday is the annual holiday known as Valentine’s Day. The day is named after St. Valentine and over 150 million cards are exchanged – here’s the full history of this very special day. This year the new deal sites are holding a cage match with each site offering a deal with a national floral delivery service. Most of these deals expire asap so you should be quick if you want to grab some flowers for your sweetie. Also note that the delivery fees are higher for a delivery on Valentine’s day. Lastly, I see some of the local cities within the deal sites are also offering flower deals so make sure to check your local city before purchasing a national deal.

If you want to pick up flowers yourself, I am hearing the best deal for super fresh roses is Whole Foods with 2 dozen for $19.99. Make sure to call your local store to get current pricing. If you don’t have a Whole Foods in your area, Walmart is offering 1 dozen roses for $15 beginning today.

LivingSocial – offers $25 for $50 credit at Teleflora. I used this deal yesterday for some flowers for my mom who is recovering after some surgery – note, there is a $15 or more service fee and Teleflora added me to their email marketing list even though I specifically unchecked the boxes to be added to their lists. Voucher may be applied towards service costs.

Groupon – offers $20 for $40 credit at FTD.com. Voucher may be applied towards service costs.

Google Offers – from what I can tell, this deal has now expired but they were offering 2 dozen roses, vase and shipping for $45.

Amazon Local – offers $15 for $30 credit at ProFlowers. Voucher may be applied towards service costs.

Eversave – offers $25 for 2 movie tickets and a $10 gift card good at 1-800-flowers.com.

It’s important to note that there are tons of discount codes available for most of the online florists so make sure to spend a few minutes to find the best deal for the floral arrangement you are interested in.

(note: links to Groupon and LivingSocial contain affiliate code)

Find more stories about: Amazon, daily deals, group buying, Groupon, LivingSocial

Yakov Sadchikov, President & CEO of visual search engine Quintura, has put together the following list of the top 10 Russian web startups for 2011.

In September 2011, Russia became the largest Internet market in Europe with 51 million online users. Who are the top emerging internet companies that disrupt the Russian market. Find out below a list of top 10 Russian web startups of 2011.

1. Oktogo.ru

Having raised $5 million in venture capital from European early-stage investors, Oktogo.ru is #1 in Russian online travel. Russia’s ‘Booking.com‘ Oktogo.ru has not only collected the largest online hotel database in Russia but also baked it with user reviews from TripAdvisor.

Oktogo.ru CEO Marina Kolesnik is one of the most visionary female internet entrepreneurs from Russia.

2. ZeptoLab (Cut the Rope)

Russia’s answer to Rovio‘s Angry Birds, ZeptoLab‘s Cut the Rope reached 60 million game downloads in the first year from initial release without venture money.

Managed by Voinov brothers, Misha Lyalin and, from recently, Diana Moldavsky, Moscow-based ZeptoLab strives to leverage its Om Nom game character by releasing Cut the Rope sequel and branching out into comic books and plush toys.

3. Biglion

Heavily-funded by Tiger Global and Ru-Net, coupon service Biglion beats Groupon and other upstarts in the space in Russia. Biglion delivers the highest revenue growth in Russia’s internet history: from zero to $15 million monthly revenues in one and a half years. Biglion could be the next largest internet IPO candidate from Russia after Yandex in 2011 and Mail.ru Group in 2010.

4. Metabar

Metabar is the perfect example of how to turn a simple idea into a hundred million business. Founded by Yandex grad Michael Ushakov, Metabar offers browser toolbar creation service, just like Conduit. To grow fast, Metabar has raised $1 million from Runa Capital.

5. Nginx

It’s hard to beat Microsoft. Nginx did it. The lightweight, high-performance web server, reverse proxy and e-mail proxy software provider Nginx is #2 web server software on the Web, behind only Apache. Founded by Rambler refugee Igor Sysoev, Nginx raised $3 million from global venture capital investors to make it a commercial success.

6. Lamoda

Online shoe store Lamoda.ru is the first project launched in Russia by Samwer brothers’ Rocket Internet with funding from Holtzbrinck Ventures, Tengelmann Group and Investment AB Kinnevik. Lamoda stands against competion from Sapato.ru and Ozon.ru who both closed massive VC rounds in 2011.

7. Surfingbird

Curation is a hot trend on the Web. So is web discovery. Backed by $2.5 million from the French and Russian investors, Surfingbird.ru delivers a web recommendation and discovery service to end-users. Is it better than StumbleUpon? 2012 will tell us.

8. GridGain

St. Petersburg, Russia- and Foster City, California-based cloud computing software vendor GridGain employs the winning formula for Russian startups: a software development in Russia and sales & marketing in the U.S.

GridGain closed $2.5 million Series A in November 2011 led by RTP Ventures, the U.S. arm of Yandex and Ozon.ru investor Ru-Net Holdings of Leoind Boguslavsky.

9. BabyBoom

Kids’ goods online retailer BabyBoom.ru finds itself in a very crowded market space in Russia unless a baby boom is really coming to the country. Index Ventures‘ seed fund seems to believe in it by backing BabyBoom. We will see next year.

10. KupiVIP

Online commerce is booming in Russia. Top 10 Russian web startup of 2009, online shopping club KupiVIP.ru made headlines in April 2011 when it closed $55 million round from Bessemer, Balderton and Russia Partners, the largest internet startup funding in Russia. In 3 years from launch, KupiVIP managed to become bigger than Ozon.ru, a 10-year old ‘Amazon’ of Russia. Time to market is a key!

Find more stories about: Russia, startups, Yakov Sadchikov

Somehow I thought this year would be the end for the Blockbuster Express kiosk machines. Back in November they changed their pricing model and it seemed like it just became a lot more expensive to rent from Blockbuster Express versus rival RedBox. As an infrequent movie renter, I found the Redbox machines to have a better selection and a better price – and you can nearly always find a free movie rental code for RedBox.

Today RedBox has agreed to acquire the kiosks and “other assets” from Blockbuster Express.  RedBox notes in their release that the deal is worth up to $100 million. Interesting note, RedBox is actually owned by Coinstar, the company that makes the coin counting machines found in supermarkets. I use the Coinstar machines all the time because they charge no fee to convert the change into an Amazon gift certificate.

How long now before Netflix buys out Blockbuster mail service?

I also wonder what happens to all the codes for Blockbuster Express that I bought on Groupon/LivingSocial – better use those quick!

Here’s the email that I just received from their customer email list:

Dear Valued Customer,

NCR, which operates your Blockbuster Express kiosks, has entered into an agreement to sell its kiosks and other assets to Redbox. Until the transaction is completed (we anticipate in the third quarter of 2012), you will continue to enjoy the convenience, choice, and value you’re used to from BLOCKBUSTER Express. Until the sale is completed, we will continue to run the business as we have been, focused on bringing you the latest New Release movies with most titles only $2 for the first night. You’ll also notice that we’ve increased our In-Stock Guarantee value so you will now enjoy a movie night on us with a value of up to $3 if we don’t have the New Release movie you want in stock.

As a reminder, we still have 100s of great movies available at $1 and additional nights of all movies are still only $1, all part of preserving an exceptional value for an affordable night of entertainment.

We’ll continue to provide you with information on any changes that result from this recent announcement but for now we just wanted to say thanks for being our customer.

Sincerely,
Justin Hotard
General Manager

Find more stories about: acquisitions, blockbuster, NCR, RedBox

Below is a recap of the February 3, 2012 episode of the ABC show Shark Tank (episode 301). If you are unfamiliar with Shark Tank, the concept is simple – entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a panel of investors and the investors have to provide at least the amount the entrepreneur is seeking for a deal to be completed.

Pitch #1 – Chord Buddy

Founder Travis Perry created a plastic gadget that you place onto an acoustic guitar to help you learn how to play the guitar. As you learn how to play, you remove pieces of the Chord Buddy until you have completed removed the gadget and are playing completely solo. Travis was seeking 125k for a 10% investment.  Travis selected the offer from Robert Herjavec for 125k for 20% of Chord Buddy and in addition Robert will put 50k into an escrow account for a potential infomercial at a later time.

Update – CBS Foods

Shrimp burger manufacturer CBS Foods didn’t sign a deal last season on Shark Tank. The update explained that while no deal with completed on the television show, the company received a number of offers and has moved from 30k in sales before the Shark Tank appearance to a projected $5 million in sales this year.

Pitch #2 – Liquid Money

Founder Pat McCarthy demo’d his fragrance named Liquid Money. Available in both men’s and women’s versions, Liquid Money is supposed to smell like fresh, crisp US currency. Pat was seeking 100k for 5% and rejected the only offer from Damon for 100k for 80% of Liquid Money.

Pitch #3 – Tail Lightz

Kyle Rainey was up next with his Tail Lightz jean patches. Remember those patches we all sewed onto our jeans in the ’80s? Kyle has updated them with lights. He was seeking $50k for 50% of Tail Lights – no offers were presented from the Sharks.

Pitch #4 – You Smell

Last up on this episode was Megan Cummins presenting soaps under the brand name You Smell. The most interesting product in Megan’s line is the soap that was as thin as a piece of paper in a small package like Orbit gum – seemed good for traveling when the public restroom is out of soap. Megan was seeking $55k for 20%. This was a fierce battle from the sharks for the investment. The final offers were: Mark Cuban at 55k/20%, Barbara Corcoran at 55k/30% + 10 cents per bar sold, Robert Herjavec at 55k/20% + 50k first-year salary for Megan. Ultimately Megan selected Robert’s offer.

Find more stories about: ABC, Angel Investors, Shark Tank, TV

Another year, another SXSW festival coming up in just a few weeks. What will this year’s event hold? Last year seemed like a big shift for both the event and for attendees. The event was split up into many locations (I think this was a huge mistake), more commercialization than ever and it seemed like lots of people came to Austin but didn’t buy a badge – they just surfed the hallways of the convention center and also attended lots of Sixth Street non-official events. Each year the event grows larger and hotel rooms display sold out signs earlier and earlier.

I wonder if this will be the year that the registration/check-in process will be updated similar to how Google handled the IO event registration.

The SXSW group has released demographics for all of the SXSW events: music, film and interactive. You can find all of the demographics data here (would have been great as an infographic). Remember that the numbers don’t include people who just came to town without an official badge.

Some of the interesting stats include:

• Total conference attendees across all three festivals – 50,000
• Interactive participants – 20,000
• Sessions – 935
• International attendees – 10%
• 75% of attendees have an income over $55k
• 30% of attendees are over 40

Drop me a line if you are coming to town for the annual gathering – I will be covering the event for CN.

Find more stories about: Conferences, sxsw, SXSW 2011

Check out some of the latest web technology and business jobs posted for January 30, 2012 on the CenterNetworks Job Board. Subscribe to the CN Jobs feed and get all of the latest Web industry jobs delivered directly to you.

Featured Jobs:

• Vice President/Director, Digital Services at LipmanHearne
• Web/Interface Designer at Garmin International
• Application Developer (Programmer/Analyst III) at University of California, Irvine

More Jobs:

• Front end web developer at Artisan talent
• Interactive Developer at Garmin International
• Lead Ruby Engineer at Howcast

Employers – Join other top companies on the CN Job Board. Post your jobs today – only $10!

Find more stories about: job boards, jobs

It seems these days hackdays, hackathons, hack this, hack that events are popular across the world. Some of these developer events have created very successful startups and some of the companies have been acquired.

Austin will be holding an API Hackday on Saturday, February 18 at the HubAustin coworking location. The event is free for everyone – just make sure to register for the right category so the organizers can make sure there is enough of each type of attendee (developer, designer, investor, etc.). The event will run from 8am-8pm with free lunch, dinner and post-event beer celebration.

Here’s the event overview, “API Hackday Austin brings developers together for an all-day coding fest focused on building apps and mashups with APIs. Developers of all experience levels can share ideas, collaborate on existing projects, start new ventures, and find out about great tools and new APIs to play with. Hackers will also hear from some of the country’s top API-focused companies on tips, tricks, and tools for building the next big app. At the end of the day, teams and/or individuals get a chance to present their work to a panel of judges and win kickass prizes.”

The event is sponsored by Twilio, Mashery, Paypal and Sendgrid – all four companies are heavy on the API.

Find more stories about: API, Austin, Conferences, Texas

This Saturday, January 28, 2012, the LoneStar PhoneGap group will hold their first meetup. PhoneGap is a mobile platform that helps you easily create mobile applications and more importantly helps you distribute one set of code to all of the major phone OS systems (Apple iOS, Google Android, Blackberry, WebOS, Windows Phone 7, Symbian and Bada). Nitobi, the parent company of PhoneGap, was acquired by Adobe last October.

I think it is awesome that a group is meeting on a Saturday afternoon! The meetup will be held at a public library just west of the university area. Free pizza and drinks will be served.

Here’s the event description, “Lets kickstart the first PhoneGap meetup in Austin. Come to learn about PhoneGap, network with other PhoneGappers in Austin, and discuss best coding practices. On the program is a 15 minute coding session where we will develop a simple PhoneGap application demonstrating some of the key features and coding style. You are wlecome to bring your laptop and code along with us.”

Find more stories about: Austin, Meetup, mobile, Texas

Check out some of the latest web technology and business jobs posted for January 21, 2012 on the CenterNetworks Job Board. Subscribe to the CN Jobs feed and get all of the latest Web industry jobs delivered directly to you.

Featured Jobs:

• Front end web developer at Artisan talent
• Interactive Developer at Garmin International
• Lead Ruby Engineer at Howcast

More Jobs:

• Senior Theme Developer / Front-End Developer at Sony Music Entertainment
• Project Manager, BI Applications at Beachbody
• Senior Web Developer at Saatchi Online
• Web Development Specialist at Columbia College Chicago

Employers – Join other top companies on the CN Job Board. Post your jobs today – only $10!

Find more stories about: job boards, jobs

Last weekend our hosting company moved the physical location of their servers — from San Antonio to Chicago. There were a number of very serious issues that appeared post-migration caused by the hosting company. I will address the issues and the responsiveness from the hosting company in another post once all of the post-mortem details have been provided to me. But what the downtime and issues made me quickly realize is I need to have a current, well-documented disaster plan for both the blogs and for my startup.

With a WordPress blog, there is the website (css, html, images, video, etc.) and then there’s the database. I have backups of both. Luckily there was no downtime passed the migration period for the blogs. As long as we keep current backups of both content and database, it would be relatively easy to create a new server installation, either at the same host or a different host and copy everything to the new location. Then it should be as simple as switching the DNS and waiting for the internet pipes to switch the tracks to the new location.

Obviously every startup and every company will have a different disaster plan. We backup our database several times a day so we can always revert back to a backup should the need arise. And we test the backups on a regular basis using a mirrored database. When my startup was down due to the hosting issues, I knew I needed to quickly be able to communicate to both current customers who would want to login to the system and to potential customers looking to place an order. I updated the affected web pages with a message explaining the situation and offering a way for customers to contact us, both by phone and by email. I also prepared an email blast but since the server was up and down, I decided not to send the email. I did monitor the social networks and responded to any queries or questions from customers.

Now that the site is back, I have created a duplicate of our public website as a “disaster version”. This will allow for quick deployment in the event that another round of downtime appears in the future. With a click I can move the disaster version into production and be assured that all of the right updates have been made. Once the issue is resolved, I can revert back to the pre-disaster website and continue business as usual. It’s important to remember that both the regular and disaster versions must be kept in sync.

I will also be looking into additional options around creating a complete mirror of both the website and database just in case further downtime arises. Once this “live” mirror is setup, should we experience any significant downtime, I can first activate the above disaster version and then just switch the DNS to the live mirror and there should very little impact.

I’d love feedback here about your disaster plans for your startups along with general tips and tricks. Leave a comment and I will add the feedback to the post.

Shevonne at Chicwriter has a good overview of questions you should ask as you create a disaster recovery plan.

Find more stories about: startups

I’ve covered the worldwide Startup Weekend events over the past couple of years. The concept behind Startup Weekend is to bring the community together in a different city each weekend to create a startup (or multiple startups) during the weekend.

The event is coming back to Austin during the weekend of March 30th, just after SXSW. The weekend of events will be held at Hub Coworking which is a few minutes south of the city center. Pricing runs from $75-$99 and if it is like the last event, meals will be provided. You can register here and there is an early bird registration that runs through February 17.

For those of you that are new to the Startup Weekend concept, here’s the overview, “Startup Weekends are 54-hour events designed to provide superior experiential education for technical and non-technical entrepreneurs.  Beginning with Friday night pitches and continuing through brainstorming, business plan development, and basic prototype creation, Startup Weekends culminate in Sunday night demos and presentations.

Participants create working startups during the event and are able to collaborate with like-minded individuals outside of their daily networks. All teams hear talks by industry leaders and receive valuable feedback from local entrepreneurials. The weekend is centered around action, innovation, and education.  Whether you are looking for feedback on a idea, a co-founder, specific skill sets, or a team to help you execute, Startup Weekends are the perfect environment in which to test your idea and take the first steps towards launching your own startup.”

Find more stories about: Austin, Startup Weekend, startups, Texas

About two months ago I wanted to print some very simple round stickers for CloudContacts. In the past I’ve used Sticker Robot which produced some absolutely awesome vinyl stickers for CN. This time I just wanted something basic – the CN logo and it didn’t need to be die-cut or on vinyl.

I decided to place orders from both Zazzle and VistaPrint for the stickers. I would have ordered all of the stickers from Zazzle but I had a Living Social voucher for VistaPrint and so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to compare the stickers and the experience from both companies. Zazzle was sending a ton of coupons to their newsletter subscribers although that well has seemed to dry up since the holidays are over.

Since VistaPrint offers a lot of “free” products, it’s important to understand that I paid full price for the stickers. Based on the overall experience, I won’t Vistaprint again and am completely disappointed that they continue to send me printed matter in the mail including an offer for Google advertising today. I never asked to be contacted post-purchase or to be added to their mailing lists. While I could understand that with their free products you are opening yourself up to be spammed with their co-branded marketing offers, I paid for the stickers.

Summary: In every aspect from design tools to after-purchase contact, Zazzle kicks the ass of VistaPrint.

Basic Company Overview

VistaPrint is a public company with a $1.14B market cap and notes, “over 25 localized websites that serve various markets around the world, over 3,100 employees, three state of art manufacturing facilities and 13 offices, including its corporate headquarters in Venlo, the Netherlands.” Zazzle has raised just about $50 million and has been in business since 2000.

Pricing

Many of you might know this already but VistaPrint charges different prices based on your entry point. Because I was coming from Living Social, the prices are higher than if you enter the website directly. This is the same with Groupon deals as I have a Groupon voucher for VP now (I asked Groupon for a refund earlier today).

For example, when I visit VP directly, I am offered 250 premium business cards for $10. When I visit the special Living Social/Groupon link, I am offered the same 250 premium business cards for $13.99.

Design Tools

The design tools on both services are very basic but Zazzle made me feel more confident that the design I uploaded would actually be what was printed.

Checkout Process

I was speaking with a friend about the stickers and when I mentioned the checkout process, I realized that using VistaPrint is a lot like using GoDaddy. There are about 800 pages of offers that you need to go through before getting to the final confirmation.

Quality of Stickers

I ordered “glossy” from both vendors – only the Zazzle stickers actually look glossy. In case location of printing matters to you, VistaPrint had a note that the stickers were printed in Canada. I guess that’s why they took so long to arrive versus Zazzle which I believe are printed in the USA. VistaPrint printed more stickers on a longer-sized page. Outside of the glossy issue, the quality of the stickers is very similar but the glossy ones sure do look a LOT nicer.

Post-purchase Contact

Shortly after I received the stickers from VistaPrint, I received a printed brochure in the mail. I never asked to receive any mail or any offers using any form of communication. As I noted above, if you use free services from VistaPrint, you should expect to be added to lots of lists because some way they need to generate revenue from the free item. But I PAID for the stickers.

Today I received a letter in the mail from Vista Print offering a deal on Google ads. This was the point at which I made the decision that Vista Print will never see another dime from me. I called their customer service in Jamaica today and requested that my account be completely deleted. On the positive side, Vista Print answered the phone quickly and told me the account would be removed within 72 hours.

Wrapping Up

If you made it this far and would like a CN sticker or a CC sticker, email me your address and I will send one out to you. And don’t worry, I won’t add your address to any mailing lists.

Find more stories about: Customer Service, VistaPrint, Zazzle