BricaBox Archive

NY-based BricaBox which closed its doors last month, is now back as an open source platform. CEO Nate Westhimer explains, "I’ve heard from a number of people that open sourcing — or "freeing" — the code would be a good way to let the dream live on. After speaking with with several folks in the open source and free software communities, I believe this is the right thing to do."

Nate is now looking for developers to help with the forward progress of open sourcing the BricaBox code. I need to be honest here. I don’t think this is a wise move. First, Nate has already moved on and will he really want to be attached to BricaBox going forward? Second, was the application ever really finished? Nate shared the lessons he learned by running BricaBox and that should have been the end of it – or perhaps a full sale of IP and domain. What I think would have made sense is to offer code snippets that developers could use in their applications like the Google Maps mashup, etc.

It will be interesting to see what the open source experts at Ostatic think of this move. Check out all of our BricaBox coverage.

NY-based BricaBox has announced that they are closing their doors today. CEO Nate Westhimer has a lengthy blog post explaining some of the reasoning behind why he has decided to close shop.

I normally don’t post when services close but I think in this case it’s worthwhile because Nate is actually going to provide a great amount of detail on what Nate believes went wrong. If you are working on a startup or plan to, you should subscribe to Nate’s blog for the upcoming learnings.

Nate notes, "I can tell you most of this decision revolved around issues of money, traction, team, and vision: the four essentials of a successful startup. I think it’s fair to say that a startup deserves to live if it has good quantities of at least three of those four things, and BricaBox is now out of all but one of them."

Earlier this year Nate had about 20 people over (me included) to help provide feedback on BricaBox. The product positioning and marketing message was never really finalized. It seemed like it was being tweaked too often. I think the message got better over time but was still too loose. On the flipside, whenever I talked with Nate, he was always very passionate about BricaBox which is very important for a founder.

Nate is very active in the NYC startup scene so it will be interesting to see what comes next. Whatever it is, you will hear about it here!

Social content application generator Bricabox demo’ed their app tonight at the April NY Tech gathering. We’ve covered Bricabox a number of times before. The idea is to provide a set of pre-defined templates for sites like a cupcake finder, or a soccer shootout site. You can also start from scratch and build your own social content application. Whether it’s video, images, documents, etc., Bricabox is attempting to make it easier to build a social app.

NY-based Foodist Colony is a service that lets you setup your own restaurant guide and/or interact with the community who have setup their own. Think of it as a personal Yelp that you can customize to show off the restaurants you like around the city. The site has been around for two years and currently serves only the NYC metro area.

When you signup for an account on Foodist, you are presented with three choices: create a premade site with one of their starter kits, build your own restaurant guide or just enter the site and add your selections later on. Here is the demo guide I setup — note that I just picked some pizzerias, these are not my favorites :).

Here’s an example restaurant page which might actually be better than Yelp. I like the "I’ve been there" option which lets you keep track of where you have eaten.

There are widgets, an iPhone/Touch version, mini-social network and lots of cross-promotion from other members. I’d like to see Facebook and Twitter integration. And what about a tie into Savory Cities to include video overviews? And of course where is the news/activity feed? Lastly, tie in GoMobo (our coverage) for takeout ordering directly.

This is a direct competitor for recently-launched Bricabox (our coverage). Bricabox has more technical options but requires you to enter the content from scratch. With Foodist Colony, the content is already there as a starting point, what a brilliant idea. Both services could learn something from the other.

In my testing over the past couple of days, I am very impressed by how slick the app is. It has enough Ajaxy-goodness but not an amount that’s overwhelming. The responses from the system are quick and the information is well presented. What I don’t see is any advertising or costs to be a member, so I am not sure how they monetize the app. I have a message into the team and will report back.

We’ve covered NY-based BricaBox several times before as they have moved through their private Beta. Yesterday I stopped by their office in Chelsea to learn more about their public beta launch today. They call themselves a "social content platform" and allow users to create robust sites that are bigger than a blog but smaller than a full-blown CMS like Drupal.

The easiest way to think about BricaBox is that it’s like a blog or wiki plus widgets already installed and ready for your choosing to create sites like a photo mashup with Google Maps, or a directory of x resources with Compete traffic charts. The sites are completely customizable and a new feature they’ve added allows new users to "dupe" a BricaBox to create their own — making it very easy to have a starting point to build from.

The first question I asked the team is about comparisons to Ning, Magnify and KickApps. CEO Nate Westheimer said that BricaBox is different because they are more like a CMS with a social network. Westhimer also walked me through his Bricabox, Nate’s List.

I asked Westheimer about their business model. He shared that it will have three components: pro accounts, rev share when the user selects to run advertising and an ad buyout option on white-label services.

My initial suggestion for them is to create a BricaBox to be their show-off site. Something bigger than Nate’s List – maybe a Celebrity list site that shows locations that some big celeb has been around to in NYC. They need something to draw in new users and show the power of the tool to get users engaged enough to want to build their own.

The company is bootstrapped with friends and family helping out currently. They are looking for a PHP developer, contact them via the BricaBox site if interested.

Check our previous BricaBox coverage. Here’s Westheimer with CTO Kyle Bragger:

Here’s their demo video of how to use the tool:

NY-based BricaBox CEO Nate Westhimer has a lengthy post today about the company’s attempts to hire a PHP developer in NYC. Nate posted the PHP position on a variety of job boards (including ours) and hasn’t received any response to-date.

BricaBox is looking for a PHP developer to start on a three-month contract. I am wondering if it’s because his job description is short and to the point? There’s nothing in the post to get a developer excited — no talk about lunches, Wii tourneys, beer fridges, etc. Also, I wonder if the note about "potential equity" might be scaring away potential applicants.

Nate notes regarding a possibility for why it’s hard to find developers in NYC:

Probably the best insight on the matter came from my very own partner and CTO of BricaBox: Kyle. He reminded me that startups = risk, and that with the economy the way it is right now people would feel more comfortable working in an unexciting job that’s definitely going to be around in a year.

So, it’s sad for me to say, because I’m such a booster of the NY tech community, but in my mind NYC is failing us right now. I’d almost like to think that we’re the only ones having this problem, but I know we’re not. Everyone is. And this makes me wonder: what’s the solution? Are we fools to try and work with local folks? Can we only hire when it’s permanent? Should we kick the dream of finding a team-member, rather than a code-monkey, to the curb?

I think Nate is going to need to pound the pavement and get out to some hardcore development meetups. Any other suggestions for Nate on finding a PHP developer in NYC?

Fraser over at AdaptiveBlue has a post tonight highlighting BricaBox developer Kyle Bragger. This week on nextNYers, BricaBox CEO Nate Westhimer was featured and it appears that a piece of the video where Nate spoke highly of Kyle was cut out of the final version. So Nate created another short video where they seem to speak about Kyle’s scarf (it’s fab!) and bagels more than the code, but it’s not bad. Love the Bob Barker mic!

Fraser’s discussion centers around bringing the coders/developers/programmers to the front. This takes me back to 1995, I flew to some tiny town in Ohio on a prop plane and when I arrived at the company HQ, the CEO took me on a tour of the office. During the tour, it seemed we went from dark to light a few times. I asked him why this side of the office was pitch black while the other side had full lights and sunlight pouring in. His reply was that the developers like to sit in the dark so that’s the developer’s side and they don’t come over to the light side and vice-versa.

I’ve always wondered what I am since I lean to the marketing/financial side of the business but can jump in and do most intermediate programming. For me it’s about understanding enough about everything to speak intelligently and help the team where the holes are. I had the nickname "The Translator" for about 12 yrs.

One of the changes in Web 2.0 is that startups are becoming heavily developer-started. So we are seeing many developers in front of the camera instead of only behind the PC. No more are there developer and creator – they have merged in many cases. I do like the startups that show off their teams on the site and each one gets a short bio or overview. It makes the company seem more real.

As the companies grow, many take on model-looking CEOs to help the company grow in image. I am guessing it’s at this point that, unfortunately, the developer’s head to the dark side in Ohio. It does seem like more people that I speak with have at least a little bit of developer in them. Better than my days taking Quick Basic at NYU :)

While I normally prefer someone who can get the room excited when presenting their product or service, after the last few meetups and conferences, I am open to just about anything. Whomever is in front of the camera, show some passion. It’s all I ask.

One thing I notice about the NY Meetups is that most are just general in nature and the demos are general as well. Perhaps the developer community needs to create more meetups that are hard-core developer-oriented. Even the Drupal Meetup, could probably be split into user and developer discussions.

Overall I believe the developer community is much more tight-knit than it was ten years ago. It’s great to see and even if only for the work on CN and HTMLC, I write code.

(Till would say I modify code, but he would be wrong)