Watch the Game with Like-Minded Sports Fans with FanWide
FanWide has developed an exciting way for people to find and connect with other sports fans to watch their favorite teams. The company's flagship app is a social media platform that organizes watch parties at local bars and restaurants for fans of major college, professional and international sports teams. The FanWide platform benefits both local establishments and sports fans, providing restaurants and bars the opportunity to host events that can supplement their traditional customer traffic and broaden their local brand recognition, while giving fans a place that is guaranteed to feature their team's game.
Partnering with local bars and restaurants enables FanWide to ensure that every viewing party features exclusive deals on food and drinks, team-centric decorations and displays, and an optimally-staffed establishment. Fans use the app or mobile website to check-in when they arrive to redeem the promo at each venue.
Whether you've moved to a new city, are traveling on business, or simply support a non-local team, FanWide will help you find a fun environment to watch your team's games.
Although there are other social organizing platforms on the market today, only FanWide has taken the care to implement analytical capabilities that provide fans with the most exciting viewing experience, while also maximizing the profits of participating businesses. The app is also free for fans and exceedingly simple to use: simply download the app, specify your favorite teams or sports, and FanWide quickly directs you to viewing events in your area. Furthermore, FanWide's focus is to use technology to build communities of sports fans nationwide and bring them together at an event, instead of solely focusing on social interaction via an app or website.
According to FanWide President & Founder Symon Perriman, his company's application was developed to reflect the growing geographic disconnect between many sports fans and the teams they cheer for.
"A lot of people in today's digital age are work transplants, students, military, or travelers who want to connect with their fan-base and find shared experiences in a positive atmosphere. Research shows that about half of sports fans currently live out of market from the teams they watch and root for. And with national networks, it can often be difficult to find a channel that is featuring your team. If you add the rising number of "cord cutters" who are eliminating traditional television packages altogether due to the high costs, there is large segment of consumers that can benefit from our app and website. We developed FanWide as a free, simple, and intuitive service to make sure that every sports fan can find a community, no matter where they happen to live or travel."
FanWide event - Patriot fans cheering on their team!
The technology underlying FanWide was developed by a talented team that brings years of developer experience to a fledgling startup. This extensive experience, along with prior experience with Microsoft technologies, led the team to build their website and services exclusively using Azure and the Microsoft stack. FanWide leverages Azure to host and power their distributed, tri-tiered architecture. The app's front-end website was developed by several former Microsoft employees, using .NET MVC alongside Visual Studio and TFS online. While FanWide's backend infrastructure leverages Azure Cloud Services and Virtual Machines that are connected with the Service Fabric.
In addition to utilizing Azure for their solution's underlying infrastructure, FanWide also relies on a wide variety of Azure services to fully power their platform including: SQL Azure, Azure Web Sites, Web Apps, and Azure Search. The FanWide team has been very pleased with their decision to build using Azure, particularly for the flexibility and convenience the stack has provided, Perriman says. "We use dozens of Azure features, and love the convenience of a fully-integrated cloud platform. It enables our developers, designers, architects, and data analysts to use the same suite of tools, including Visual Studio Team Services and Azure Active Directory."
After spending six months developing and designing their app and service, the FanWide team officially went live with their product in September 2016 -just in time for the kickoff of football season. Perriman believes that FanWide's decision to leverage their app on Azure facilitated a quicker time to market, while affording more flexibility to evolve their solution over time. "Azure provides the most integrated suite of tools that any new business needs to get started - covering design, development, productivity and operations. Thanks to Microsoft, we could affordably launch our business, seamlessly communicate across our remote team, and build FanWide from an idea to a nationwide brand in just one year. We are looking forward to incorporating additional Azure features as FanWide continues to evolve and we expand operations into new markets."
Check out FanWide or download the app (available for iOS and Android) and start watching your team win today!
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Microsoft is helping these startups succeed through its BizSpark program. To join or see other startup stories, visit us at our website here. To listen to our startups, check out these podcasts on devradio here.
About BizSpark: Microsoft BizSpark is a global program that helps startups succeed by giving free access to Microsoft Azure cloud services, software and support. BizSpark members receive up to $750 per month of free Microsoft Azure cloud services for 3 years: that's $150 per month each for up to 5 developers. Azure works with Linux and open-source technologies such as Ruby, Python, Java and PHP. BizSpark is available to startups that are privately held, less than 5-years-old and earn less than $1M in annual revenue.
APPLY for Microsoft Ventures Accelerator - Berlin
Apply now for the 2nd batch of the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in Berlin
Are you an early-stage startup having an idea so brilliant it burns? You want to make it happen – now? Then apply for the 2nd batch of the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in Berlin! It´s an immersive program aimed at squeezing the countdown to launch. During the 4 months of the program you will have access to top-notch mentorship, technical training and support and the opportunity to present at an Investor Demo Day to angel investors, venture capitalists, Microsoft executives, media and industry influentials.
What you need to know:
- The program will start in August 2014 and will run for 4 months
- The business of applicable startups must have a focus on developing software and/or a web based business model
- The Microsoft Ventures Accelerator supports an open platform approach and accepts startups that develop on any development platform. Startups accepted to the accelerator must be willing to try applicable Microsoft platforms.
- Microsoft does not take any equity for participation in the program (and hence the startup will get no funding for participation either)
- This program is not limited to startups from Berlin, however the founding team will have to move full time into our startup center in Berlin for the time of the program
- Only companies with funds raised less than $1m may apply
We're looking forward for your contact and application!
Microsoft's Startup Team in Germany
Stay in touch with the German Startup Team: On www.facebook.com/BizSparkDE and www.twitter.com/BizSparkDE. Feel free to send us all your questions and ideas about the Accelerator and all other Startup activities of Microsoft.
Azure in the Valley: Microsoft Accelerator in Tel Aviv Visits Microsoft Silicon Valley
Israeli Windows Azure Demo Day comes has come and gone twice, and this time there is evidence of strong growth in the class members. Last year's class received on average $900,000 in venture funding per startup. This year, the group doing a tour of investment circles and having meetings with companies to sell their solutions is coming up with an equally impressive group of statistics. Ten out of 13 startups in this class have secured some form of funding.
The Accelerator, based in Tel Aviv, and currently opening up applications for its third class, works in partnerships with two universities, one in Israel and the other, Georgia Tech. The startup culture in Israel is pretty intense. Close relationships and an innovation-focused society has driven many to pay attention to the new Accelerator.
Israel lately has been a startup machine, with Israeli army veterans using the technical skills they've learned in the military to launch companies alongside their friends, and admission to the accelerator is getting more competitive–the company reports 300 applicants for 13 places this time, compared to 100 applicants for 11 places last year.
Here is a brief overview of some of the companies that presented.
Started with a little music.
WSC -- This is kind of MySpace for sports but the bands in this case are sports teams. The web app helps people manage the sports they love and is an answer to a fragmenting media landscape facing big media brands and the athletic teams that are trying to manage their broadcasting rights. Fans can look for any content for any of their favorite players and curate in a video-centric player. They can also vote and share with other fans. Fans can add their favorite moments into a fan board and share it via a kind of shop window. It's called the Play Maker. According to Gage's reporting, WSC has raised $1 million in funding.
Then there was Askem, which "enables you to question everything," according to founder Itai Herman, who was decked out on stage during the afternoon pitch. The app works like a super rich media bulletin board. Take Instagram and then attach the ability to put together instant polls and then tag the photo with potential answers. The team plans on making money by partnering with brands, helping them understand exactly what consumer think, from the looks of the pitch. The rationale: Brands are so big that the crowds they attract are huge, so who is being heard i the dense thicket of smartphone voices?
"My lost voice becomes a significant vote," said Herman. The method of creating a question out of a moment turns any moment into opinion measuring that is statistically significant. "We suggest leaving marketing tools to marketing people. Most of us want to create freely and creatively. We don't want yes or no, hot or not questions. These things need to change. Questions are part of who we are."
From questions, we dove into other questions and smartphones, this time with the huge opportunity for brands at athletic events. Screemo is something like a smartphone interaction with digital signage for fans at games. The app creates real life interactive experience between smart phones and digital screens during athletic events to drive engagement with the brand but also increase sales and revenue for athletic events through brands sponsorship. When they recently did a beta with Tel Aviv Maccabees, the popular Israeli basketball team, the brand achieved 25% engagement during the game and was able to double the revenue from the digital ad space. Another 84% of those engaged on the phone turned to the team's Facebook page, where they continued to interact.
BetaWorks: "A Collection of Things" and Looking Holistically at the Wild West of Social Web
In 2011, BetaWorks CEO John Borthwick and his management team gave back $27 million "and then some" to investors, according to a recent TechCrunch Disrupt interview (see below), and then they topped up the tank for another few millions in investment to keep building what is emerging as a suite of media products that sew together the social web. According to Borthwick "What we have now is a collection of things," that Betaworks is using to build that many might call the social web version of cable tv. In several interviews on the web, Borthwick surfaces this idea that many people turn to the social web in a very human way to use media platforms as a social "nexus."
They communicate ideas, they set aside time to comment on articles, and they create a searchable social web that produces information about people to connect to, and problems to solve, to name a few pieces of the social web puzzle. While most attention has been focused on Borthwick's purchase of Digg, and Instapaper, and the "growth" story around his investments, little attention is paid to what he is actually doing.
Is he creating a more engaged social web? Is he sewing together dozens of media properties to create a more seamless information and engagement experience in the web? Is he making our modern century's New York Times, which is actually more of a series of conversation feeds, rather than a single media property run by a publisher's bias or business interests? It's fascinating to watch, and we have many questions for him.
If anyone knows the story of Cable Cowboy, John Malone, they might remember that Malone built his cable empire by literally going around the country and using cable to link up disparate terrestrial tv affiliates into one massive tv offering. There were brutal battles. Much of what Borthwick says in interviews focuses on this type of story. He tells Tsotsis in his interview that "the market is characterized by big companies, and this incredible startup system... but I think if you look at the products out there, I think of them more like an ecosytem or a cluster of things."
He says that they are focused on "the whole platform" and "the entire puzzle," rather than the single most profit-optimizing piece of the puzzle.
The fact that BetaWorks was able to return $27 million, "and then some" to investors should tell you that building something holistic for the web can be profitable.
BizSpark celebrates Five Year Anniversary
When we announced a program for startups called BizSpark, the idea that "Microsoft cares about Startups" was new to the Startup Community. That was November of 2008.
This month, BizSpark celebrates its 5th Anniversary. In five years, more than 85,000 startups have participated in the BizSpark program from 165 different countries around the world. 100,000+ developers have become BizSpark members and we're partnered with over 1,500 organizations who, like us, are striving to help startups every day.
It has always been our goal to help startups succeed and over the years, BizSpark startups have been involved in big success stories, like Yammer being acquired for $1B and just last week, BizSpark grad, Criteo, raising $250M from their IPO. But, just as meaningful, are the many stories we have highlighted in our Featured BizSpark Startup Series. Through these interviews, we get the chance to hear, first-hand, about the journey of these startups and how they are making their dreams come true. These founders also share valuable advice for other startups. We have recently created The BizSpark Show -- interviews with startup founders and investors from around the world with a focus on BizSpark members who are building the next great companies from the ground up. We are inspired and fascinated by the ideas, tenacity and sheer will startups possess and we invite you to share your own BizSpark story with us: bizspark@microsoft.com.
We hope you will join us in celebrating BizSpark's five years. Throughout the month, we will be sharing opportunities to join your local BizSpark team and other startups. Follow us @bizspark and on Facebook so you don't miss out.
Another way we'll celebrate this five year milestone is to bring you Twitter Talks: instant, direct conversations you can have with the BizSpark team about topics YOU SELECT. We encourage you to participate! Look for updates on #bizspark. We know our work with startups is never done and we want to always find ways to adapt the BizSpark program to meet the changing needs of Startups.
Many thanks to each and every one of the 85,000 Startups who have joined BizSpark and helped bring us to this five year milestone!
BizSpark Member myhomehelper Fights Dementia With The Cloud, Makes Technology4Good Finals
A one-man Microsoft BizSpark company from Hull is up against the likes of Barclays Bank with a dementia memory aid that he made for his Mum. myhomehelper beat off competition from over 200 candidates to be selected in the final of the AbilityNet Technology4Good awards.
Aimed primarily at those living on their own myhomehelper displays regular, random and timed reminders/photos to assist with daily activities and help relieve boredom, tiredness, anxiety and depression but doesn't require any computer experience or knowledge from the user. It also helps family and friends by reducing the reliance on them while the video calling feature allows them to easily stay in touch.
The system was created by Hull businessman Kevin Marsch, Director of Simpla Solutions. "I developed myhomehelper to assist me in caring for my Mum who was diagnosed with dementia in 2010." After receiving positive feedback about the system from care workers, Social Services and NHS professionals Kevin quit his job of 14 years in 2011 and formed Simpla Solutions to develop the myhomehelper further and focus on making it available nationwide.
It has been piloted across the UK and US for the last 18 months. During this time Kevin has received support from other Hull companies with KC providing free ADSL2+ connections to those taking part in the Hull pilot and Strawberry who provided free hosting and support for the web site. Simon Crosby, Head of Development at Strawberry said "When we heard from Kevin and what he wanted to accomplish we knew straight away that we wanted to help him. We think that startup companies need as much help as they can get and to help a local startup supporting a worthy cause struck a chord. It's great that his work has been recognised in this way."
Kevin has been receiving praise for myhomehelper from all quarters. Former Secretary of State for Health and Labour MP for West Hull and Hessle, Alan Johnson, said "myhomehelper is a big idea developed by a tiny company. I applaud Kevin Marsch who has developed this concept in Hull. His hard work has provided help for dementia sufferers and a boost for British trade."
It is thought that there are approximately 800,000 people living with Dementia in the UK, with over 7,500 in the Hull and East Riding area alone. These numbers are expected to rise significantly in the future. Kate Atkin of the Hull & East Riding Alzheimer's Society said of myhomehelper: "The Alzheimer's Society welcomes any innovation that uses technology to assist in the daily lives of people with dementia and their carer's."
The Technology4Good Awards celebrate the hard work of people of all ages who use the power of computers and the internet to make the world a better place. They were created by AbilityNet, working with BT and a range of commercial and not for profit partners and sponsors. "Being selected as a finalist alongside the likes of Barclays Bank is great. It gives exposure to myhomehelper that I just wouldn't be able to achieve on my own." said Kevin, who has been selected in the Accessibility award category.
To vote for myhomehelper in the People's Choice award go to the Technology4Good website https://www.technology4goodawards.org.uk/peoples-award-2013/ . Votes can also be made via twitter by tweeting #T4GMyHomeHelper – the more people tweet this, the more votes will be recorded. The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony, to be hosted by Mariella Frostrup, which takes place at the BT Centre in London on 4th July.
BizSpark Members Can Get Free Exposure for Apps with PreApps
Meet the founders of Pre-Apps -one of the newest partners joining the BizSpark community . With over 30,000 new apps introduced each month, PreApps is a marketplace to discover, rate, and download the best mobile apps coming soon. They also have an exclusive offer for BizSpark members - you will receive free PreApps featured services ($24.99 Value) using the promo code: BizSpark.
Simply create an account, submit your app and enter the promo code upon check it out.
This interview was conducted by Neha Bhaskar, SR CHANNEL & ECOSYSTEM Marketing Manager at Microsoft, in NYC.
Here is an interview we did with the CEO of the company, Sean Casto.
Tell us a bit about your app and company
PreApps is the exclusive place to preview new and exciting apps coming soon. Our vision for PreApps is to forever enhance the relationship between mobile app developers and mobile app users, which will in turn create better quality, more successful apps. By implementing user feedback in the development process, apps have a greater chance of success, and for users a more enjoyable experience. PreApps provides developers with the tools, knowledge, and resources to increase their app's chance of success. Our collaborative process has proven to increase an app's downloads, ranking, and overall quality.
What came first for you-the team or the idea?
The vision for PreApps came first. The idea was first conceived 3 years ago. We began development over a year ago and have been growing our team ever since.
What inspired you to work on this idea and how do you see yourselves evolving?
Our team consists of app developers and we understand first hand the struggles app developers face. PreApps was built to provide developers the tools, knowledge, and resources to over come these struggles. The mobile ecosystem is constantly changing and PreApps will evolve with it. We will continue to improve our services and further provide significant value to the developer community.
What was the most difficult challenge your business faced this year?
As a startup, our biggest challenge has been building our brand informing developers of the advantages PreApps provides to the development community.
How do you know when you are failing in product development and how do you make a correction – do you make the decision on your own, or do you consult your team?
App developers know when they are failing in development when users encounter issues in quality, functionality, and design. Generating quality user feed back prior to an apps release is critical as it eliminates the potential negative reviews posted once the app is released, which will indefinitely ruin an apps status.
Who would you like to be your mentor, and what would you ask him or her?
I believe Mark Pincus (CEO of Zynga) would be a great mentor for PreApps. Mark Pincus has an extensive understanding of the mobile app ecosystem and particularly social games. He could provide invaluable insight into how our organization could further provide value to both the app user and developer community.
Who is your mentor, and what was the last great thing he or she told you and your team?
Chuck Goldman (Founder of Apperian) is one of our great mentors. The last great thing he told our team was to continue to innovate and expand our services for developers.
Who inspired you the most this week, and why?
Richard Branson inspired me the most this week. His recent article " Convincing Investors to Fund Your Tech Startup" provide me with the insight to better position our company to be more appealing to outside investors.
When was the last time you fell in love with a product?
The last time I fell in love with a product was 2 months ago when I downloaded an app titled Analytics Tiles. Analytics Tiles allows me to instantly and conveniently view our PreApps.com analytics in real time.
Is the lean startup process a type of marketing, or is marketing different from customer and product development? How does your company utilize next generation marketing techniques?
PreApps provides developers with the tools, knowledge, and resources to increase their chance of success. Our marketing techniques and quality user feedback results in an increase in app downloads, ranking, and overall quality. PreApps utilizes next generation marketing techniques through social media integration and a user reward system. Our user reward system can be viewed as a next generation marketing technique as users are rewarded for previewing, sharing, rating, apps coming soon.
We hear you have an exciting offer for BizSpark members. Could you tell us more about it ?
We are very excited to announce that all BizSpark members will receive FREE PreApps featured services ($24.99 Value) using the promo code: BizSpark. Simply create an account, submit your app and enter the promo code upon check out! It's takes less than 2 minutes to post your app and gain expose
BizSpark Members Pitch Their Startups in Less Than 140 Characters
Here are today's #BZPitch pitches. When you sign up to Microsoft BizSpark, you are introduced to literally hundreds of thousands of people working on over 50,000 startups.
To take advantage of this, sign up. When your application is approved, dive in on Facebook, Twitter, and in LinkedIn.
[<a href="https://blogs.technet.com//storify.com/douglascrets/bizspark-pitches-in-140-characters" target="_blank">View the story "BizSpark Pitches in 140 Characters" on Storify</a>]
Bringing Volume to Serendipity: BizSpark Grows Under Microsoft Ventures, Germany Opens Microsoft Accelerator to Packed Event
A high-caliber panel of judges chose Spreaker, a digital music sharing service, as the most promising BizSpark startup from Europe, and the People's Choice Award this year went to Booklikes, a social platform for the curation of books.
But the bigger story of the entire day was that Microsoft's presence in Germany – and their brand new accelerator – is bringing volume to serendipity, making it possible for startups from around the world to tap into the huge partner and enterprise network developed by the corporation during its long history in high tech.
The infusion of a venture capitalist mindset into existing offerings showed that entrepreneurs could work with Microsoft and help establish customers, build defensive walls around their product offerings and build great companies with solid partners.
Everything from the Microsoft BizSpark software development offer to working in the Windows Azure cloud and collaborating with investors through Microsoft Ventures sent a solid message to Europe's startups that there was a wealth of new collaboration opportunities in Berlin.
Stephan Jacquemot, Microsoft Germany's startup liaison, said that the opening of the accelerator and the work they are doing with BizSpark through the Microsoft Ventures developments, means that Microsoft is signaling very strongly they are working with startups in a dense, rich ecosystem.
"This shows how fully engaged we are in the lives and business development of startups," Jacquemot said. "This demonstrates how much effort and sincerity we are putting into collaborating with startups in a very interesting city for the development of the startup ecosystem in Europe."
The award winners both said that they have been impressed by this activity over the past several months.
"We've been working [together] for four months," says Francesco Baschieri, founder of Spreaker, based in Italy. "They were super helpful. We are now moving to Azure from AWS as our backend system and it's been super easy."
The people's choice winner, David Piaskowski, from Booklikes in Poland, said that seeing the Accelerator and being in the same place as startups from all over Europe proved to him that he was in the right place for business.
"Honestly, if I had the money to put toward investments, I would not be shy about investing in any of the startups I saw here today."
Jan Sessenhausen, Senior Investment Manager for High-Tech Grunderfonds, said that the actual existence of the Microsoft Accelerator andthe work Microsoft BizSpark team members have done on the ground with startups over the past five years just makes for a better ecosystem.
"It just creates better companies, and frankly, it makes my life so much easier," he said. The right companies are coming at the right time to the right place to get the five minutes they need face-to-face to make introductions and solve problems or answers questions, he said.
Reid Hoffman, founder of professional networking site LinkedIn, has said that building a startup is like throwing yourself off a cliff and building the plane on your way down. That whole enterprise becomes a little bit easier when you have partners like Microsoft and the Microsoft BizSpark program.
The BizSpark European Summit in Berlin was the fifth time in five years that the Microsoft startup champs have demonstrated that many people are there to help startups acquire customers, assemble the parts of the plane, and deliver to them a choice of assembly units to make sure that that sudden drop during customer discovery actually turns into a soft arrival on a runway.
"We expected to make it to break even by year's end," says Robert at Stonewash in the UK. But they got there by March, only three months after they started, he said.
Working with a team in London has meant that when they have an idea, someone sits down to listen and work out the problem with them, fast. "Somehow, that system of communication works much better" than when they have worked with other companies of Microsoft's size, he says.
One of the graduates of the Israel-based Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure, Screemo's founder Dotan Kopolovich, said that his greatest value was in starting relationships, not just introductions, with real companies.
"We started with one client in Tel Aviv," says Kopolovich. "And we ended up with many clients and in Madison Square Garden."
Stefan Bech, who has built an open platform competitor to Polyvore called Wantr, said that his biggest challenge for platform hosting was solved by working with the Danish team to move from AWS to Azure.
"I can honestly say we are very very happy," said Beck. "It's been very inexpensive and very easy for our engineering team to get startedwith."
A few representatives from Microsoft went further to say that the tremendous network that Microsoft has built is really a perfect channel for startups to build routes to more customers.
"We care about customers [as startups]. When you chase money, money rarely comes. We wanted to create program where we can bring you customers," said Rahul Sood, Managing Director of the recently named Microsoft Ventures.
The Microsoft BizSpark program offers the entry point into this ecosystem of partners and enterprise relationships. You can register for consideration for the program. Your startup needs only to be less than five years old, taking in less than $1 million in revenue each year, and building a software startup in the cloud.
Consumer Decisions Through Scarcity and the Perception of Value by Yu-kai Chou
Today we bring you a story about the flaw inherent to traditional economic theory, and an inherent human attitude about scarcity that gives the lie to this thinking. We asked Gamification expert and occasional Stanford University lecturer Yu-kai Chou to write a blog post about how scarcity can drive demand. You may remember our conversation with Yu-kai during The BizSpark Show (see video embedded below this post).
About the Author: Yu-kai Chou is an Entrepreneur, a Partner at the Enterprise Gamification Consultancy(EGC) and a Gamification Pioneer who has been working in gamification since 2003. Yu-kai is the original creator of the Gamification Framework Octalysis, and is a regular speaker/lecturer at organizations like Stanford University and Google Inc.
The Flaw of Traditional Economics Theory
When I was studying economics in school, the one fundamental lesson that the professors always talked about was the supply and demand curve. It basically says that if the price of an item drops, the demand will increase (moving forward on the demand curve).
If the item becomes completely free, the curve will indicate the maximum number of buyers that will acquire it. But if you have studied behavioral psychology, gamification, and/or human focused design, you will find that there's another side to the story. It turns out, being one of the 8 Core Drives of Gamification, Scarcityis another beast that drives consumer behavior. Scarcity is the limitation of something (an item, a resource, a service) towards meeting the corresponding demand. In economics theory, scarcity is well understood, but only in the sense of objective limits matched against the consumer's utility derived from a purchase. The issue here is that, almost all economics theory starts off with two key assumptions:
Consumers have perfect information
Consumers always behave rationally
But in the real world, these two assumptions almost never hold true - people are often irrational and never really have perfect information. Often they react to pricing in another, more surprising way: the more expensive something is, the higher the value (utility) is placed on it. This leads to increased demand. As a result, sales may actually increase with pricing. Normally, if an item were free (the extreme right of the demand curve), everyone who would want this product would obtain it. Say hypothetically, 100 people would do this. But sometimes, if the product is unusually expensive, people who previously didn't care might suddenly want it. Now sales may exceed 150 items! Because of this scarcity effect, a real demand curve in some products might produce a C-Shape instead of a diagonal line moving down to the right. Scarcity works because people perceive that something is more valuable if it is more expensive or less attainable. Because people don't have "perfect information," they generally do not know the utility of a certain good. Therefore, they rely on cues - such as how expensive or limited something is - to determine how valuable something is. If everyone wants it, it must be good!
Examples of Scarcity in Action for Service Providers
I've personally seen numerous examples, both first and second hand, where increasing the price actually allowed people to sell more. Not too long ago, one of my clients was trying to choose between two service providers, one who charged $8,000/mo and the other $10,000/mo. I informed him that I thought the $8,000/mo provider would deliver better services. However, my client remained doubtful, feeling that the $10,000/mo provider must be better because of the pricing. I told him that just because one service charges more doesn't mean it is compellingly better. Ultimately my client decided to use both of the services for a period of three months. After this period was up, we saw that the $8,000/mo provider was exceptional, while the $10,000 was very disappointing. In this case, if the lesser service provider would charge $6000 instead of $10,000, he might not even get a chance to try for 3 months (of course, focusing on creating value is the most important so you don't lose your job after 3 months). On another occasion I had a client that needed a CPC campaign audit. I contacted a friend who was the best in the industry from Eastern Europe. Since I had done some favors for him in the past, I was able to persuade him to help my client with a free audit, which he would have charged thousands otherwise. Though my client was excited about the arrangement, he hesitated and moved very slowly. I pressed my client on this and he said, "What worries me is the free price … is he really as good as you say he is?" He had perceived that my friend's service was not really valuable because it was offered for free. That's why it might have been more advantageous to charge a smaller fee such as $500 for the audit instead of giving it out for free.
Examples of Scarcity in Action for Goods and Products
This situation doesn't just happen in high end services. In the book Influence: Science and Practice, author Robert B. Cialdini describes a story of a friend he had who ran an Indian Jewelry Store in Arizona. The owner was trying to sell some high quality turquoise pieces during the peak tourist season. Despite her constant efforts to promote and emphasize these pieces to the shop visitors, no one bought them. Finally, the night prior to an out-of-town buying trip, the owner concluded that she needed to lower the prices and make the pieces more attractive to her customers. As a result, she left a note for her head salesperson with instructions to reduce the prices by half. However, the salesperson misunderstood the note, and mistakenly doubled the price on all the pieces. Upon returning a few days later, the owner was pleasantly surprised to learn that all the pieces had been sold. Doubling the price on each item had actually allowed her to sell more because the perceived value of each had increased. In his other book Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, Cialdini describes situations where inconveniencing people can result in them valuing something more. The book notes that, for infomercials, calls will increase substantially when the message is changed from, "Operators are waiting" to "If operators are busy, please call again later." Why would this be? In the first case viewers can imagine operators waiting to answer calls and take orders for products that may be of marginal value. In the second case viewers will more likely perceive that the operators will be struggling to answer a flood of calls and keeping up with the demand on orders. The perception will be that the product value is extremely high, and that the viewer better call in and order while they can. This type of perceived social proof works great in sales.
Applications of Scarcity in Startups
The most obvious application for start-ups is to launch with a confident pricing strategy. Instead of just offering everything for free or easily available for everyone, a more premium pricing model or exclusivity might also increase the confidence of users/buyers with a result in increased conversion rates. Another excellent example is how Facebook utilized "scarcity" in the form of exclusivity. Initially Facebook was exclusive - being only for Harvard students. Then it opened up to the Ivy League schools, and eventually to all colleges and high schools. Finally, everyone was allowed to join. Because people early on couldn't get it, they were "crazy" about it. The sense of scarcity and exclusivity created more demand than if Facebook had been "open to all" from day one. Zynga's Farmville also manufactures scarcity to make their product more addicting. Instead of farming for as long as you want to play (the basis for most games), you are often forced to stop and wait for 8 hours before you can continue to play the game. This causes people to think about the game ALL THE TIME. They may log in after 3 hours, 4 hours, or 6 hours, just to check and see if they can reap their crops, even though they know as a fact that 8 hours have not transpired. If Farmville simply allowed people to farm to their hearts' content, people would eventually stop, and not think about it all the time. In the game Geomon (recently shutdown due to a business transaction with a major tech company), gamers try to capture all the monsters in order to fight against each other. The game is similar to Pokemon, but influenced by the environment where the gamers are physically based. In Geomon, there are certain scarce monsters that can only be found in very limited or special situations, such as in proximity to a company, or on days where the temperature is over 110 degrees. Because some of these monsters are extremely rare, people are willing to spend real money in order to obtain them. One such example is the Mozzy, which can only be caught next to a Mozilla Office. In this image, notice how people seem to be desperate to get a Mozzy: Another example is the Laurelix, which at one point was owned by only 3 players in the game. The company actually received a call from the mother of a player, saying, "My son has been sick for a week, and he said only a Laruelix can cheer him up. I don't know what it is, but he said you have it. I'm willing to pay $20 for a Laurelix. Can you give that to my son?" Interestingly, these monsters are not necessarily more powerful than regular monsters, but because they are so hard to get, the perceived value increases immensely, helping the entrepreneurs to better monetize their game. Wootis another company that uses scarcity to drive sales. The enticing thing about Woot is that you never know what product will be promoted. The site also sets a limit on the number of people that can claim the deal. Many who check Woot at 4 PM will see an amazing deal, but typically find that the item is sold out. As a result their eagerness to get the next product will increase, motivating them to constantly return to the website. Eventually a great amount of buyers wait on the site at 11:59 PM each day, just to see the next product as soon as it becomes available. Once it does appear, they are ready to quickly snatch it up.
Accidental Fails sometimes become a Blessing
Another good example is the "Fail Whale" in early years of Twitter. The Twitter site was often down in 2006 and prior. Even though this frustrated many users, they waited more eagerly for the service to return (and talked about when it will return on Facebook). I've seen cases where people were planning to retire from playing a game , but then encountered issues due to massive servers problems, and instead of quitting, checking the app every day to see if they "can" play it or not. Even though they planned to quit, they needed to quit on their own terms. When they were prevented from playing because they "couldn't," their desire to play actually increased. What made the situation worse is that "sometimes" they would be able to play the game, only to experience another crash. If it was just indefinitely down, people would lose interest, but the "sometimes working" game would take on an addictive appeal. This behavior is much like how people pull on a slot machine, hoping for but not necessarily expecting good results. The same effect happend with Twitter, where users became obsessed with checking the service each minute to see if the service had been re-established, eventually increasing traction.
Viewing exclusivity as a form of scarcity is illustrated in the South Park episode "Cartman joins NAMBLA."Here, Cartman constantly brags about his new group of "mature grown-up friends" to his rival Kyle. After several exchanges of Kyle saying, "I don't WANT to join your group" and Cartman rebutting with, "No, you CAN'T join my group", Kyle finally feels compelled to learn how to join the group. The desire to become a member of Cartman's group is now present in Kyle, where there was none before.
So now what?
Of course, this doesn't mean start-ups should pull down their servers on purpose. Besides pricing your service/product with confidence, you may want to create a sense of exclusivity for each step during the Discovery and Onboarding stages, where the service makes them feel that it's uniquely for them; that they uniquely qualify for the access (Email notification that is only sent to VIP members). They now have exclusivity as the "Harvard students", the "Apple Fans", or even more broadly as "people who signed up the newsletter." For actions that lead to rewards and investments, instead of allowing unlimited actions (such as "liking" as many times as you want), consider more restrictive options. Often, placing a cap on how many actions a person can take (or investments that they can make) will cause them to desire it more. Some entrepreneurs may have experienced this in the case where fundraising for their venture becomes smoother once they inform investors that the round is closing and that their money is no longer essential (Or that there is space for only half the amount that investors want to put in). By using scarcity and exclusivity, businesses can influence consumer perception of their products and services. By increasing perceived value, customers and users are more likely to stay engaged and take greater interest in your venture, while making sure you don't give out all your hard earned world-changing work for close to nothing. Of course, if you price an item outside what is affordable to your target market, then this could backfire. But more often than not, when customers don't buy your product, it's not because they can't afford it. It's because the perceived value they have for your product is not worth the cost (and sometimes that cost is in the simple form of time investment or "talking to my boss about it."). Learning Gamification and Human-Focused Design is a great way to craft customer perception and get them to see your service as valuable beyond anything else that exists in the market.
Crowdnetic Builds a Mission Control for Crowdfunding
The current crowdfinancing environment got a huge kick of momentum earlier this Monday when the general solicitation rules for startups changed to allow them to ask publicly for money. The problem in this swarm of crowdfinancing options? Unless there is a well established and highly curated brand for this type of stuff, a potential investor or a potentially fundable team probably doesn't know where to go.
It's like suddenly there are thousands of planes in the air, but you don't know which plane is going where, or why. And nobody is sitting down at a control tower to make sure the machines are on their way, in the right way.
Enter Crowdnetic, which is a Microsoft-supported startup that hopes to rationalize all of that by being a kind of mission control for the crowdfinancing industry.
From their website:
Crowdnetic is a leading provider of funding portal platform technology and market data solutions to the private equity and crowdfunded securities industry. We operate the industry's premier centralized hub for real-time market data aggregated from platforms across the globe.
Founded in 2011 by experienced financial technology and data industry experts, Crowdnetic is committed to creating a productive and sustainable marketplace for web-based private raises. Bringing over 15 years of experience in building complex, data intensive customized solutions, the leadership team has been instrumental in revolutionizing the equities industry through developing market data and analytics solutions. We are now bringing our expertise to the increasingly intricate crowdfunding space.
We sat down with Luan Cox, Founder and CEO of Crowdnetic, to find out her point of view on the industry and technology-enabled financing.
Why are you building this startup? What does it do?
Crowdnetic has built a real-time data and technology infrastructure for the global crowdfinance industry (including p2p lending and security-based crowdfunding). Our platform and solutions efficiently connect intermediaries/portals to millions of investors around the globe by providing media portals and financial institutions with real-time, aggregated and normalized online private offerings and transactions data. We provide the much needed market data transparency and deal flow distribution required for this new asset class to thrive.
What does a product marketing team need to understand from engineering about how to sell the product?
A product marketing team needs to understand the various delivery methods for our data feeds solutions in various API formats (XML, JSON, Ruby, and PHP). Additionally, they should understand that we provide hosted data solutions and customizable crowdfunding portal technology (built using Ruby On Rails).
What impact or legacy do you hope to make in the market and in the business world?
By providing this emerging marketplace the much needed market data transparency, our objective is to help ensure integrity in the private markets while striving to bring prosperity back to entrepreneurs and small investors.
What advice do you have for anyone wanting to start a business in your country?
During this remarkable period of history, theU.S.capital markets are undergoing a dramatic transformation where a surge of financial innovation, guided by shifting trends in communications and a changing regulatory landscape, is sweeping across Wall Street and giving rise to a new investing methodology: Crowdfinance. There has never been a more opportune moment for entrepreneurs raise capital from likeminded peers.
How do you work with investors, or do you currently use any outside money at all?
We greatly value our shareholders for they are our biggest cheerleaders. We work for them and constantly strive to earn their trust and confidence. Although we are a private company, we provide our shareholders with a great deal of transparency and constantly keep the lines of communications open.
Why would an entrepreneur turn to Microsoft for help in building scale, a team, or using software?
Microsoft is a renowned technology leader. It is an honor to have the opportunity to tap into Microsoft's vast resources including its brain capital.
Doing More With Less in Windows 8 Development -- (Part One)
Sonal Mane, a Startup Technologist working for Microsoft in Chicago, walks you through steps to make the Windows 8 app development process easier.
Here's her first post in a series.
Welcome to the 'Windows 8 design principles simplified' series. One of the key reasons for apps being rejected or sent back for fixes is Design.
Today's topic will be Do More with Less. It should give you a firm background on what reviewers look for in the app review process, and it will give you a premise with which you can begin your designing.
Designing for touch requires a few prerequisites that you would need to think through. Without these basics, you are not going to get too far.
1. Avoid distractions - The key idea is to trust you users and enable them to focus on where they are. Not where they need to go. As you approach design, focus on utilizing the real estate and what the app is great at. Clear the clutter and strip away everything that takes away from the app and your best-at statement.
2. Clearly define your best-at statement - To aid the decision-making around design, identify the single most important functionality that your app is best at. This means understanding your value prop and scope clearly and crystallizing it to a single statement. As you iterate on your app and add future versions, you can evolve and update your best-at statement. For your first iteration, keeping a narrow focus will help resolve several design decisions and issues.
3. Content over Chrome - Content is your best friend and the easiest way to get users excited about your app. High quality content also means you can draw attention without bells and whistles and attract users to your app. This means leaving only the most relevant user experience elements on the screen. This also means letting users immerse themselves in what they love and explore the rest. The thing to keep in mind is to flip the design mindset, think about solving to avoid distractions and not discoverability.
4. Clear out the Chrome - Chrome means navigation, layout, commanding and interaction. For example,
* Chrome comes from navigation, tabs and other navigational tools as they are used to help a user finding their way around an app.
* Chrome can come from layout that include boxes, rules and other content that is placed on the canvas to help organize content.
* Chrome comes from interaction and commands placed on the canvas to help users complete scenarios and features.
Simple rule to follow here is that if you see any user experience that helps with user navigation, layout and commands - Clear it out! Windows 8 has built-in design to help you work these elements into your app.
Here's a screenshot that focuses on the music video content and albums without cluttering the user experience with navigation, commands and layout.
5. Navigation, Layout and Commands Navigation - Pixels are precious so don't waste them on navigation. Sounds counter-intuitive when you focus on discoverability. Shift that focus on your content and think about where you are at and your content, not about the places where your user could go. When designing Windows Store apps, you can actually make the content itself navigable and remove this navigational chrome. Where does this navigation chrome go? It goes to the navigation bar from the top edge. Layout - Create visual clarity with crisp graphical elements. Remove lines and boxes to group and organize content. Give content breathing room through intentional use of space. This means that there is no need to draw lines around your groups. No need to draw arrows and create outlines on your user experience. Think space and not, boundaries. Commands - Integrate commands into the content. Leverage the edge. Provide commands contextually. Commands go in the app bar that shows up from the bottom edge. The content itself is interactive so your images headlines, titles and content can be tapped on to navigate to something. Search, Share, Settings and Devices go in the Charms that show up from the right edge. Login goes into right edge on the right sidebar.
How do users see these hidden navigation and app bars and charms ? The app should pop the relevant user experience based on context. For e.g. when a user selects multiple images, that is an indication to pop the command bar. Guess what, the user is about to perform an action on these images.
Here's a screenshot of what the navigation and app bar look like.
Want to dive deeper into this topic? Check out the video on Do more with less for more details.
European Startup 7Write Closes Seed Round of $250,000
This blog post is written by Mark Voermans, Audience Marketing Manager for Microsoft in The Netherlands.
One of the best things about my role here at Microsoft is mentoring some of the best start-ups in Europe. I get to see them at all parts of their journey, from the very early days when they've had a great idea but are still trying to work out what to do with it, through to their 'wow' moments. So, this week, I'm delighted to report that 7Write has just closed a seed financing round of $250,000, with a group of investors including Peter Davison (if the name's familiar, he was a seed investor in PayPal). This Dutch company is also one of the start-ups taking part in the latest Startupbootcamp programme (the acceleration programme for startups (of which I'm a mentor).
So what's so attractive about 7write? Well, like all the best start-ups, it appeals to something we all love and is a brilliantly simple but clever idea.
The 7write 'writers studio' allows users to easily write their book anywhere, anytime, online or offline on any device. Using the 7write 'Authors Centre' writers can self-publish their work with a single click. Let's put some perspective on that: this is a market with an estimated 416 billion value by 2016 (source: PWC Media & Entertainment Outlook 2013-2017)
First in its Startupbootcamp class to raise capital, Dutch start-up 7write launched its closed beta just recently and has already started publishing books. One of its early adopters has already been featured in the Amazon top 30 best-selling short stories authors barely a week after publication. (And I can't resist mentioning the fact that 7write have built their tool entirely on the Microsoft stack, including Windows 8, Windows Phone and Windows Azure).
If you're in the Amsterdam area on Friday 28th June, see if you can get an invite to Startupbootcamp's Demo Day: not only will 7write be releasing the latest version of its book platform, it will be a chance to meet some of the other startups taking part in the programme, plus we'll have a couple of VIPs visiting us: Vice President of the European Commission Neelie Kroes and Queen Máxima of The Netherlands will be guests of honour at the event.
And, if you're a start-up who wants to follow in 7write's impressive footsteps, don't forget that the deadline for the next Startupbootcamp (Copenhagen, focusing on mobile) is on June 30th!
PS: Interested in charting the course of European Startups of the future? Take time to vote now for the best BizSpark startup in Europe.
Europe's Top Judges and Entrepreneur Talent Join the European BizSpark Summit in Berlin July 4, 2013
On July 4, Microsoft Germany will host ten finalists that represent the top entrepreneurial talent in Europe. They will gather at the new Berlin offices of Microsoft Germany and celebrate the ninth annual BizSpark European Summit. You can follow updates from this summit here on the blog and also on Twitter, where we will be tweeting out live photos, videos and links at #bizsparkeu. Please follow @bizspark for Tweets in English, and @bizspark_DE for more tweets in German.
BookLikes is a global blogging platform designed for book lovers that lets its users create a personal webpage with a blog, virtual bookshelf and reading timeline. It's a mix of a Tumblr-like blog platform, book cataloguing site and social network. BookLikes is a service designed particularly for people interested in books with functions dedicated to book readers.
Book lovers can share book reviews and other book-related content, follow interesting blogs, read reviews and texts by other popular users or simply collect and organize books on virtual bookshelf. BookLikes is available in three language versions and gives insight into 12 book databases from 30 international booksellers.
BugSense is on a mission to set the quality standard for mobile apps. Analyzing 5 billion metrics each month across various platforms, BugSense provides more than 20,000 developers globally - including Fortune 500 companies - with app performance reports that help developers identify issues and create better mobile app experiences.
BugSense solution has the largest distribution in the industry (3rd most used SDK after Google Analytics and Flurry).
Based on research in sports science and space medicine, Omegawave provides leading methods for monitoring an athlete's functional condition. Omegawave delivers instantly relevant advice on the optimum amount of intensity and volumes of training. By identifying an athlete's physiologically limiting factors and providing guidelines to eliminate them, Omegawave helps to improve performance, prevent overtraining, decrease injuries and improve fitness and overall health.
Omegawave technology has been used by multiple Olympic Federations, premier soccer teams such as FC Barcelona, teams from the NFL, MLS, and NHL, and various other leading sports organizations. The company's global headquarters are in Espoo, Finland.
Tracking of TV ads is mostly guessing. Existing tracking tools are barely able to deliver accurate performance measurement promptly.
RapidApe is the first BI tool combining TV tracking and monitoring in one solution, giving clients full insights in the performance of their TV campaigns.
RapidApe generates data for the performance of a TV ad regarding the campaign's goals and connects TV tracking with data that makes sense.
simplesurance GmbH, operating under the name Schutzklick, is a provider of sales channels in eCommerce Shops for insurance products. The company offers various technical integration types to automate the closing and administration of insurance products. The insurance product portfolio covers all eCommerce relevant insurance product types.
SCREEMO enables creation of real life interactive experiences between smartphones and digital screens.
SCREEMO is the world's first cloud based SaaS platform allowing the fast, simple, and low cost creation and measurement of interactive experiences and abilities never available before to the mass market.
SCREEMO's patent pending solutions are up and running almost immediately at any location which is pre-deployed with digital screens, with no integration needed.
ScreenHits is a B2B and B2C online marketplace for the buying and selling of television and film content. It replaces the existing model of TV channels sending their teams to trade shows around the world to acquire content for their network. This new model aggregates content from the leading producers and distributors worldwide and filters it based on the needs of its buyers. ScreenHits provides instant viewing access of all the shows, which allows buyers to make quicker and more cost effective purchasing choices in a reasonable timeframe. In addition, with its highly intelligent search engine, buyers can search for content based on price, available territories, genre, rights, etc. It also provides helpful insight by engaging the viewing public to vote on the shows they want to see on TV.
With 8 years of existence in mobile app development, Snapp' provides packaged m-Commerce and m-Loyalty solutions to key accounts retailers, chains and small businesses. Snapp' develops FidMe (www.fidme.com), the European leading loyalty wallet mobile application with more than 2.2 million users accounts, and 4000+ loyalty programs. FidMe is available on every smartphone and uses the latest features offered by mobile devices.
Spreaker is a platform for creating and sharing audio, both live and pre-recorded. It allows people to capture live audio streams (interviews, music, comedy shows), edit them in real time by adding music and sound effects and share them everywhere.
Stonewash create magazine frameworks for smartphones and tablets. This enables magazine and catalogue publishers to turn offline content into visually compelling online content quickly on multiple platforms, enabling new revenue sources without disrupting their existing workflow. They also collate vast amounts of data on reading habits through reader profiles and subscriptions, which they provide to the publisher. Stonewash is the first app to provide detailed in-app analytics, and was the first app approved by Microsoft for Windows 8.
Wantr is a shopping tool that lets you collect all your favourite online stores in a single place, and updates you on their latest arrivals and sales. With an increasing need for a better overview in the online shopping space, Wantr provides a solution for people who want to stay updated on the latest styles and products in a fun and interesting way - without the hassle of checking multiple websites.
W.S.C Sports Technologies helps broadcasters and media rights owners to exploit and monetize their digital sports rights with an automatic video generation platform that creates customized and personalized videos according to fans' preferences and editorial content. Using the platform, broadcasters and media rights owners generate new revenue streams from their video assets with increased inventory, number of video views and fan engagement.
Get Your Map of the Microsoft Development Platform World
This map comes from Microsoft Technical Evangelist Vitor Ciaramella. Feel free to share.
How Pixsi Reimagines and Transforms the Shopping Experience
Founder and CEO Scott Andrews (www.linkedin.com/in/scottjandrews) conceived the ideas behind Pixsi (https://pixsi.com/) a few years ago and, together with his team and assistance from the Youngstown Business Incubator in Youngstown, Ohio, built the company that enables this sea-change for the masses. Pixsi ushers in a fundamental change in how people shop and how brands and retailers interact with them.
The debut Pixsi web app (www.pixsi.com), in beta since July 4th, provides a shopper media experience and a way to plan purchases while getting a head start on shopping trips.
Here are three things Pixsi is doing to transform the shopping experience,
Pixsi helps consumers make simpler and easier buying decisions.
There are no advertisements on the debut Pixsi web app and no tracking of user digital and physical interactions. Pixsi simplifies buying decisions by pulling together planning, shopping and sharing into a unified ecosystem.
2. Pixsi puts the consumer at the center of the marketing model, not the brand, retailer or advertiser.
"Start with your customers, observe and listen to them and ask "Why is that?" The shopper experience is fragmented, siloed and time consuming. Most consumers shop in multiple channels, ignore both online and offline ads, and do not want their online behavior tracked. That is, they believe there is or should be no difference between what they experience online and what they experience in a physical store. It should be all the same to them, said Mr. Andrews, who joined us for this interview between meetings with early clients and completion of the alpha testing of their newly released beta app.
3. Integrating shared values
Consumers search, shop and share their shopping experience everywhere they are. These main components of modern shopping (search, shop and share) are the silos that frustrate the consumer. Why? Because they were never made to work together in the first place.
"Marketers are frustrated as well. They are mired in the status quo while chasing the 'ghost of marketing's past". They need answers, not Big Data. Marketers need to embrace the content and utilities that enable pull marketing and the sharing of shared values, said Mr. Andrews. "The future of marketing is relevant social marketing content that conveys shared values and mobility".
How to use Pixsi
To get started, install their bookmarklet-button on your modern web browser's bookmarks bar.
Instagram Video and Facebook in Asia -- We Chat Live with David Weekly, Facebook Developer Advocate
Douglas Crets is talking with David Weekly, Facebook's Developer Advocate for Asia, at 3pm Pacific on livestream.
You might know David from his time at HackerDojo, which he founded. He recently joined Facebook as their new developer advocate for Asia.
David Weekly is Facebook's new Developer Advocate for Asia. He joins Facebook after an acqui-hire of his most recent company, Gaston Labs. David is the founder of Hacker Dojo, the largest non-profit hackerspace, PBwiki (now PBworks) - the first private wiki host, and Mexican.VC – the first Silicon Valley seed program for Mexican tech companies. David is helping developers worldwide connect with the Facebook Platform, Open Source initiatives, and Parse.com. He graduated as a President Scholar with a Computer Science degree from Stanford University in 2000 and is an award winning startup advisor and author of the Startup Guide to Stock & Options, which has been read by over 300,000 people.
Interview with SiSense VP of Marketing Bruno Aziza: On Growth and Gain in Big Data
SiSense is one the newest big data analytics companies you might have heard about recently. Over the past few weeks, the company, a Microsoft BizSpark startup, was elected Top 10 Big Data Startup by CIO Magazine, Top App To Try by Inc. Magazine and was selected Top Innovative Company by the Under The Radar Conference.
Their product, Prism, is now in production in 49 countries. Customers like Target, Merck and ESPN use the company's business analytics stack to find actionable insights in the sea of Big Data.
SiSense revenue grew by 520% last year, and the company recently concluded a $10M financing round led by Battery Venture, one of Silicon Valley's hottest Venture Capital firms. The company officially launched in October last year so, I caught up with Bruno Aziza, the company's marketing chief, to find out how his company made all that happen in less than a year.
Bruno Aziza, VP -- Marketing, SiSense
1.You've received a fair amount of attention recently for growing so fast and being funded. What advice can you offer bootstrapped entrepreneurs who are really trying to achieve scale quickly, so that they can begin to fuel their startups with revenue?
It's true – we been fortunate to be covered multiple times by some of the best in the world, from Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, GigaOM, Inc, CIO Magazine and many others.
Growing a startup is not easy and I've found that startup memes these days take entrepreneurs attention away from what matters most when running a business. Call me traditional, but entrepreneurs should focus on one thing and one thing only: customers. They should make sure they understand who their customers really are, what solution truly solves their problem and what exact value customers put on "removing" whatever pain they are suffering. Getting funding should not be perceived as a goal in itself, it is a milestone that is reached to accelerate your ability to execute on your mission.
I often tell entrepreneurs "funding shouldn't be your goal. It's an activity. Your job is finding customers who are willing to pay you to solve their problems".
2.Funding obviously wasn't the goal for building the company, but what did you tell investors about the way you were growing that seemed to make sense to them and convince them of building that relationship?
There is no secret here. We have disruptive technology and a game-changing approach. That's what explains why we have so many customers and grew by 520% this past year.
We play in a field - the Big Data Analytics space - that hasn't seen a lot of innovation for decades; most vendors have legacy technology that prevents them from serving customers in the most effective way. So, when investors see that you have the product, the team and world-class execution, the discussion is much more interesting for the entrepreneur and the investor. It's a win-win.
The key to success is building a strong product and show that you have the ability to meet mass demand quickly. Anyone that meets our team, interacts with our product can tell that we are built on very solid ground and that our engineering is generations ahead of what's available today. Investors like to see this. To tell you everything, I had investors who flew just to come meet us at our events and offer to be part of our round. When this kind of attention occurs, you know you are doing something right.
So, my advice is pretty straightforward. It has 3 key points:
1) Focus on building a strong product that solves a big problem. The challenge of our times is not that we can't build products. It is that we can build anything! As a consequence, too many people end up building products that solve no-one's problems.
2) Go Big or Go Home. Don't just build something that's a little better than what's available. Your approach needs to be at least 10 times better than what's available. 'A little better' doesn't cut it.
3) "Vive La Difference". Embrace your difference. Challenge conventions. And don't just talk about it – prove it. When we showcased our 10x10x10 challenge, most people thought that our performance was impossible to attain. When they saw the solution, hundreds of prospects rushed to find out how we did it – which earned us the right to explain and get their business.
3.What challenges developed as a result of getting funding – in terms of operational challenges, or business challenges as you grew in size – and how did the team tackle them?
Our company culture is to drive faster and faster, always. Funding didn't create challenges for us. It created opportunities to amplify our vision. We are expanding quickly, in all departments and have to hire fast. One of the biggest challenges any startup has though, is to "hire right". This is very important. As team grows, you have to be ready to not just hire more because you need more bodies. You need to be careful in hiring people that truly fit your culture. This is not easy to accomplish.
As a result of our notoriety, we have been crumbling under resumes. People from all types of background have knocked at our door. We feel very fortunate that so many brilliant people want to be part of our incredible adventure. However, I advise every entrepreneur to make sure they and their team have a clear understanding of their company values and mode of operations.
So, don't feel pressure to bring in more people because your hiring plan says so. Hire right. Do whatever it takes to bring in the right talent. Even if it takes months. It will only be fair to your company. And it will be fair to whomever you hire.
4.At what point in the growth of the company did you find you had to change something fast? What was it and how did you do that?
We constantly have to adapt fast. Sometimes we need to adapt to new industry opportunities, sometimes its internal changes. The key here isn't really a tactic – it's more a "how your team works together" type of answer.
One of the most important changes we made was about 9 months ago when we deployed world-class sales and marketing systems. Our business was accelerating and we upgraded our sales practices and systems. This required major attention because, as my CEO often says, we needed to build for "galactic scale", not just for the next phase. The key to our success here has been the fact that our team works, without second thoughts, without territorial attitudes or hidden agendas.
Hard to believe but some startups still deal with politics, at a very early stage. You can't afford to do that. Doing a startup is about working with people you love, people you can trust, just like your family.
A friend of mine used to joke: "there is no "I" in team". That's true. But if you look hard enough, there is a "ME" in there. You've got to start with yourself. Trust your team unconditionally. Believe in the mission and the company. Drive as hard as you can, visualize the best scenario you can imagine and crush it!
Join BizSpark for a Studio Taping of The BizSpark Show with Special Guest Joni Cobb, PIPELINE CEO
We will talk with Joni Cobb, CEO and President of PIPELINE, a community of entrepreneurs based in Kansas City.
We will interview Joni and some of our local BizSpark members and pay tribute to the 75,000+ startups we have helped over the past five years. You won't want to miss it.
We interviewed them to get an idea of what inspired this success.
This interview was conducted by Neha Bhaskar, SR CHANNEL & ECOSYSTEM Marketing Manager at Microsoft, in NYC.
Tell us a bit about the app you built at the TechCrunch hackathon.
We wanted to make a tool that would aid developers in keeping track of the state of the design of their front end. Requirements usually change so fast when mocking up pages, that it is almost impossible to keep track of the overall progress. There is also no current tool (to our knowledge) that provides such an overview based on in-progress code, and makes it easy for non-developers to inspect the state of the project. The Big Picture tackles both.
What came first for you-the team or the idea?
We initially started working on different projects. Pasha was working on The Big Picture, and Pelle was trying to control the AR Drone with Leap Motion. Toward the middle of the hackathon we joined forces in order to polish the project and to make it into a Windows 8 App.
What inspired you to work on this idea and how do you see it evolving?
The idea came directly from dealing with the pains and quirks of developing web software. We think that if it catches the eye of some good open-source contributors, it could become an awesome designer/developer tool.
Outside of TchCrunch, what are you working on?
Pasha has a startup called Trait, that is attempting to put the power of biometrics (such as facial, fingerprint, and voice recognition) into the hands of every developer. Trait (currently in closed beta) is a biometrics as a service platform that bridges the gap between technology vendors and developers by providing developers with an easy to use API, while taking care of the necessary back-end infrastructure for storage and processing of biometric functions.
Pelle has a startup called circles.io, which is a real time backend as a service. Circles.io makes it easier for developers either on apps or websites can setup there product in no time with a team of people worring about the servers, databases, scaliblity, API, user management , realtime communications for them so they don't have to hire staff or manage it themselves. They only need to focus on the frontend development, leaving the mundane tasks to us.
What was the most difficult challenge your business faced this year?
Pelle: We are in the process of raising money, building the product , in addition to servicing clients and trying to bring new ones on it takes a lot of juggling. Having a small team is nice but it seems about the time to grow to give more time to each process.
How do you know when you are failing in product development and how do you make a correction – do you make the decision on your own, or do you consult your team?
Its all about time estimation. If you aren't meeting your milestones and ship dates, you need to take a step back and decide on whether it is because you underestimated the task or because there is a flaw in your development process. Then you improve one of the two. Consulting your team often confuses the two causes.
Who would you like to be your mentor, and what would you ask him or her?
Pasha: Elon Musk, I would ask him how one would attract the right people in order to quickly revolutionize an industry that before seemed insurmountable.
Pelle: Mark Cuban, I would ask he through his process of building his companies, who or what gave him the biggest push to get to the next level.
What advice do you want to give for any founder who wants to build a startup in rapid time?
If you think that you're on to a good idea and you found a market where your product is needed, draw up an executable 6-8 week development plan for your MVP, and put your heads down to build it. Also don't try and do everything yourself as a startup you have limited manpower take advantage of resources others have built!
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