startups Archive

Below is a recap of the February 17, 2012 episode of the ABC show Shark Tank (episode 303). 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. Other sharks include: Mark Cuban, Kevin O’Leary, Damon John and Robert Herjavec.

Pitch 1 – The Last Lid

Created by husband and wife Melissa and Kevin Kiernan, The Last Lid is a “fabric garden trash can lid replacement”. They were seeking $40k for a 20% investment. The idea is that this fabric lid is a universal fit for any garbage can and it will keep out rodents and racoons. Damon John was the only shark left and after Kevin raised his offer to $40k for 60%, Damon jumped at the chance and the deal was done.

Update – Lightfilm

In season 1, Lightfilm scored a $100k investment from Damon John. The company was rebranded as “Power Decal” and recently signed a deal with Best Buy to carry the light-up changeable decal for your car.

Pitch 2 – The Ledge Pillow

Next up was Amanada Schlechter seeking $30k for a 25% investment in the Ledge Pillow. This foam pillow is made for women with large breasts or women with breast implants to help them sleep. The pillow is made for women who sleep on their stomachs and helps the woman stay uplifted while sleeping. The Ledge Pillow works for women with a C cup and above. Amanda has sold 83 since her launch in 2008. Lori suggested Amanda change the name of the product to something with “boob” in it.

Pitch 3 – Talbott Teas

Steve Nakisher and Shane Talbott presented Talbott Teas. Shane explained the teas as, “reinventing tea just like Ben & Jerry reinvented ice cream”.  Shane and Steve were seeking $250k for 20%. The company had sales of $100k in 2009, $350k in 2010 and $500k to-date in 2011 (remember the show films way before it airs). Talbott Teas has been named one of Oprah’s favorite things and has appeared on QVC multiple times.

Kevin O’Leary offered $250k for 40% – Kevin agreed to a deal at 35% and the deal was signed.

Pitch 4 – M3 Girl Designs

Presented by the Bradshaw Family, Maddie, Margo and mother Diane, the family was seeking $300k for 15% of their jewelry company.  Their first product, “snap caps”, is a magnetic bottlecap necklace for young girls. Now the company is looking to expand their product line and create global distribution. The girls created a company with $5 million in sales over the last 5 years with $1.6 million in sales last year and profit of $1 million. Maddie and Margo are both teenagers and the sharks noted that they are already millionaires.

• Kevin O’Leary offered $300k for 30%
• Lori and Mark Cuban offered $300k for 30% plus Lori will mentor the team and help them get on QVC
• Robert Herjavec joins Kevin’s offer at $300k for 30%
• Family counters at $300k for 30% with Mavs season tickets with Robert, Lori and Mark Cuban
• Final deal agreed to: $300k for 30% with Robert, Lori and Mark with an offer from Mark to sit in his owner’s suite at Dallas Mavericks home games

Tune in next week for another exciting recap of Shark Tank!

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.
Continue reading “NYC Tech Incubator Showcase (video)” »

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.
Continue reading “Top 10 Russian Web Startups of 2011” »

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.

Continue reading “Does Your Startup Have a Disaster Plan?” »

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.”

Startup.ch has just released their Top 100 Swiss startups list. The list is only available in German on the website, but you can still easily navigate to the individual startups websites which are all available in English. They have also broken the list down by category, here’s a link to the Internet/Technology startups. Startup.ch notes that over 200,000 companies have been started in Switzerland since 2006.

The top 10 are:

1. Optotune
2. Dacuda
3. Doodle (our Doodle coverage)
4. Lemoptix
5. Poken (our Poken coverage)
6. Insphero
7. Smallrivers (known better as paper.li)
8. HouseTrip
9. Malcisbo
10. Aimago

You can also download a magazine about Swiss startup life and an overview of each startup in the Top 100 in English.

Swiss-based, social collaboration service Amazee has announced that they will be closing their platform effective December 23, 2011. We covered Amazee back in early 2010 and the social service was described as, ” the platform for collective action, where people initiate movements, find followers, collaborate and boost the attention for their cause.”

Their blog explains why the service is shutting down, “In the meantime, however, Facebook, Google and other large innovators have become all you can imagine, including enablers for social change. On our side, we have converted the business model. Amazee Labs has grown into a successful web development agency and requires our full attention. The work on amazee.com has therefore suffered big time and has become mostly restricted to maintenance work. If Web products don’t move ahead, they go backwards.”

The good news is that the team pivoted over time and their web consultancy Amazee Labs is going strong and will remain open.

Amazee will delete all data on December 23, 2011 so I assume that if you want your data, you should save it before that date.