Q&A Wednesday :: TweetTV

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Today’s Q&A Wednesday is with Bradley Markham, founder of TweetTV. They’ll be pitching at the Social TV Summit in New York this week.

Q: Give us the elevator pitch for your company?
tweetTV (www.tweet.tv or www.tweetTV.com) is real-time social TV. It’s part TV discovery tool and part TV communication platform. We’ve created a real-time, localized TV Guide that helps users discover what to watch on their TV by ranking currently airing programs based on their real-time“tweet rate” on Twitter.   This helps answer the question “What are people watching on TV right now?” The guide is constantly shifting to show which programs are trending at any given time, and their localized channel numbers.  We can show local trends, intra-network trends, and more.  Plus, on the TV discovery side, we’ve invented a unique search tool that lets users  dig down to see what’s popular on TV based on any combination of networks, genres, and program types.

But that’s just the beginning. When a user clicks on a TV program, he enters into a “tweet room” where he can see and reply to all of the tweets related to the program (beyond generic #hashtags ).  We’ve created a full-fledged TV oriented web-based Twitter client for TV that goes beyond just seeing and replying to TV-related tweets. Our intuitive interface allows for actual tweet-based conversations and allows users to filter TV tweets by friends, experts, Network/Cast, etc.  If that wasn’t enough, we’ve integrated multi-user video chat so our users can see and chat with each other publicly or privately while continuing to engage in tweet-based conversations, view program info, and further participate with others about the TV program they’re watching.

For TV Networks, tweetTV offers unique engagement tools such as Featured Tweets, and easy, customizable content integration so that networks can easily put their talent and content in front of their social TV viewers in a very direct, accessible way.

Q: How did the company get started? Who had the idea? Was there an “A Ha!” moment?
About 3 years ago, our founder, Bradley Markham, noticed that several of the Trending Topics on Twitter were related to TV shows. The ‘A Ha’ moment came when he realized that it’s not enough to just  say  “x is trending”.  The question to be answered is “Trending against what?”.  He realized that he could create a platform that would show trends within channels for anything that people were tweeting about (TV being the obvious first choice).

Q: Who are the founders of the company?
tweetTV is founded by Bradley Markham.  Born and raised in Crockett, TX, Bradley later attended Stanford University where he graduated with honors and a degree in Science, Technology, and Society with a specialization in internet business.  He then went to work at Google, where he served as an optimization specialist in the Google Adwords department in the days when Adwords was a brand new advertising medium.  He has since owned, operated, and sold several small-market web businesses, including FreeTVonline.com, DoggySpace.com, and Wordze.com

Q: How has the company been financed so far? Are you looking for additional capital?
tweetTV has been completely bootstrapped thus far. We worked on the website for 2 years before releasing our public beta just last week.  We’ll be pitching tweetTV on the “10 Great Ideas” panel at the Social TV Summit in New York on November 16th. We are now actively seeking seed capital and encourage interested investors to contact us.

Q: What can we expect to see in the future from your company?
We have tons of exciting things in the pipeline, only a few of which we can mention.  First, we’re going to be introducing free, front-facing social analytics for all TV programs.  Also, we’re just starting to talk with TV networks about unique partnerships where we can integrate their content feature their tweets for the programs of their choosing.  We’re working on mobile apps.  And because our technology allows us to identify and display trends within channels, look for us to branch out beyond TV and create other web-based interactive popularity guides (think news, shopping, etc).

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SXSW Accelerator Deadline Approaching

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How would you like to launch your startup into the stratosphere at the hottest of all hot tech conferences, Southby? Who wouldn’t? Well, it won’t happen if you don’t get off your tail and apply this week. This is your chance to get seen by thousands of interested people, investors, bloggers, press, and media of all kinds.

The fourth annual SXSW Accelerator will take March 12-14 at the 2012 SXSW Festival in Austin Texas. A live audience, as well as a panel of expert judges will be discovering advancements in social media, mobile applications, web entertainment, and more. The best part? Product demonstrations by the most ambitious talents in the world with the most creative new ideas to change it. We will catch a glimpse of the industry’s future, with a guided tour by our emcees and judges.

This competition will be unlike any other. On March 12, forty-eight companies battle for your taste-making, trend-setting attention, leading to a fireworks display of innovation. Connections will be made and careers launched. On Tuesday March 13, the top eighteen companies will be invited back, and at the end of the day winners of SXSW Accelerator will be announced. The Music Accelerator follows on Wednesday, March 14th with a full day of programming where eight music technology startups companies pitch their product or services.

For more information and to apply, go to http://sxsw.com/interactive/startupvillage/accelerator.

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SalesVu Closes $600K Funding Round

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SalesVu, Inc., the only provider of a cloud-based mobile payment application, announced today it has closed $600 thousand in a recent round of angel investment funding. Designed to significantly improve payment processing for the growing mobile workforce, the SalesVu solution is the first iPhone and iPad application to accept payments and connect to a secure cloud-based infrastructure for centralized pricing management, reporting, and marketing.

This infusion of financing will fuel the company’s product development and marketing initiatives, allowing the company to educate the market on the benefits of its cloud-based infrastructure and set itself apart from competitive terminal-based mobile payment vendors such as Square and Intuit.

“SalesVu offers a fresh approach to mobile payment processing, with a comprehensive solution that seamlessly integrates operations, management, and marketing,” said Francisco Leon, SalesVu investor. “SalesVu’s product also addresses the real needs of today’s workforce – mobility, reporting, scalability and security – making SalesVu a compelling alternative for businesses investing in mobile payment solutions.”

The SalesVu application allows mobile workers to securely process credit card transactions on iPhones or iPads. The company sends a free card reader to businesses who choose to process credit cards directly from their mobile device, and offers the industry’s lowest rate (2.7%) on all credit card transactions.

The unique cloud-infrastructure behind the SalesVu application allows businesses to manage their entire sales process anywhere – update pricing, products, services, customer data, and automatically beam the changes to mobile devices in the field. Businesses can also monitor mobile transactions and spot sales trends by employee, product, or time of day, gathering significant marketing insight with SalesVu’s reporting capabilities.

In addition to its operational benefits, SalesVu’s patent-pending technology integrates with Facebook allowing businesses to share deals and generate buzz through their own customer network. The elegance of the SalesVu solution allows it to be more than just a terminal mobile payment app, instead offering the industry’s first complete end-to-end mobile payment solution.

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BlackLocus Establishes in Austin

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I had an opportunity to meet BlackLocus CEO Rodrigo Carvalho a few months ago. It was right after they had landed their funding, and they were searching for office space in Austin and making some key hires. It’s now official with today’s announcement of Austin as their new headquarters and some new team members.

With recent graduation from the LaunchPad program at Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) and funding from Texas Venture Firms DFJ Mercury and Silverton Partners, BlackLocus chose Austin for its headquarters because of the wealth of top talent in cloud-based application development, marketing and start-up operations.

“We are excited to join the high tech community in Austin,” said Rodrigo Carvalho, co-founder and CEO of Black Locus.  “We have been graciously welcomed. The technology companies here and the people behind them want to see others succeed. Everyone has been so helpful. It comes down to the networking, the resources and the top tier talent. Austin was our top pick. “

BlackLocus recently completed a round of new hires and will be looking to expand the team even more in Q1.

Recent additions to the team include:

Rob Taylor, President & COO – Rob joins BlackLocus from TrueCar, a pricing confidence and auto-buying platform, where he built truecar.com from inception into a profitable, national brand that is reinventing how cars are bought and sold. He brings previous successes from social network QuePasa, and energy risk management solution PriceLock. Rob holds an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg MBA program and holds both a BS and Masters in Engineering.

Amanda McGuckin Hager, Director of Marketing – Amanda joins BlackLocus from SolarWinds, where she managed Marketing Programs for the inbound lead engine that is talked about on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.  She has over 15 years of experience in Marketing with high-tech companies and is an expert in online lead generation, demand generation and customer advocacy.

Trebor Carpentor, Director of Engineering – Trebor joins BlackLocus from SmarteSoft, where he managed and oversaw product development for the suite of test automation products. With over 15 years of development and engineering, Trebor’s experience includes lead developer roles for Lombardi Software (since acquired by IBM), Tangoe, NetSpend and Apple.

The new hires join founders Rodrigo Carvalho, CEO, Lukas Bouvrie, CCO and Francisco Uribe, CTO, who formed the company while completing their business and computer science graduate degrees from Carnegie Mellon University.

Working closely with industry experts and human-computer interaction researchers, BlackLocus has created an intuitive platform focused on solving tough problems for online retailers.  Simply put, BlackLocus automatically scans the competitive landscape, and then presents to their customer which of their products are priced too low or too high, while recommending pricing that maximizes their profits. The platform is designed for eCommerce retailers selling 100 to 1 million products.

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Mass Relevance Named First Re-Syndication Partner of Twitter

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Mass Relevance today announced that it has been selected by Twitter (blog post) as the first curation partner officially licensed to re-syndicate Twitter content. Content publishers can now work directly with Mass Relevance to publish and display syndicated Twitter content, as well as directly monetize the content through sponsorships or direct response. Through this partnership, companies will be able to move beyond engagement and create new revenue streams around curated and integrated experiences into TV, web, mobile and large-screen displays.

“Media companies and brands have always found social content to be extremely engaging, but they have lacked the capability to license, filter or display this content in ways that fit their business,” said Sam Decker, CEO of Mass Relevance, who was previously founding CMO of Bazaarvoice. “This partnership enables any brand that publishes content to log into our platform, filter and moderate content, display with customized or productized visualizations, and, for media, sell advertising against the content. There are over 250 million Tweets a day, and we can help brands find further, structured value in the massive growth of social conversations. It is a big honor to be Twitter’s partner, and this will be transformational for content publishers and advertisers.”

Through the Mass Relevance platform, which harnesses Twitter’s Firehose, content publishers will now have a complete solution to source, aggregate, filter and visualize syndicated Twitter content from a licensed company to any output they would like — from Twitter streams to geo-maps to standalone microsites. Mass Relevance platform provides out-of-the-box visualized modules or API access to work directly with agencies to create experiences that fit into TV, websites, mobile devices, or full screen display. These outputs can then be sponsored, bringing in additional revenues for content publishers or drive customer behavior for brands — with all content licensed through Mass Relevance. Mass Relevance also offers strategic services, including labs, curation consulting, design and support.

Examples of Sponsored Integrations

NBC’s The Voice During the Summer of 2011, NBC’s The Voice used the Mass Relevance Platform to integrate real-time social content into its weekly, live broadcast and official website. The hottest new show of the season, The Voice offered a highly engaging experience that put Twitter and other social media at the core of the live broadcast and encourages fans to participate in a 24/7 social media conversation with the show’s artists and celebrity coaches. Mass Relevance supported this strategy with a robust infrastructure that aggregated and displayed real-time social content at a massive scale, and immediately fed the freshest, most relevant tweets to The Voice’s social media V-room for on-air use.

E! Online and the Oscars In February 2011, Mass Relevance partnered with E! Online to create a microsite featuring the best Twitter content from the Oscars. During the show, the Mass Relevance platform filtered through 1.8 million Tweets to publish the best Tweets from the crowds, nominees, and pundits. They also published photo galleries and leaderboards indicating nominee buzz. Sixty-four percent of the visitors to this site were new to E! Online and spent an average of six page views per visit.

“We see significant demand from brands, publishers, and TV networks who need help expanding their content to include compelling Twitter integrations,” said Chloe Sladden, Twitter Director of Content and Programming. “This partnership with Mass Relevance will make it easier than ever for media companies to deliver great Twitter experiences for their readers and viewers.”

Since launching in 2010, Mass Relevance has seen explosive adoption and emerged as the leader in helping consumer brands effectively use real-time social content to drive engagement on television, web and mobile. The company has powered the Twitter strategy for some of the biggest events in the world, including the 2011 Academy Awards, NHL Awards, Katy Perry’s California Dreams Tour and, most recently, The White House Twitter Town Hall. Moreover, the company has been an integral part of some of the largest, most watched television shows in the country, including NBC’s The Voice, FOX’s The X Factor and Bravo’s Project Runway.

About Mass Relevance Based in Austin, Texas, Mass Relevance enables entertainment, media, retail, and manufacturing brands to drive real-time engagement through social curation. The company provides a flexible, robust platform to facilitate audience and consumer interactions in a relevant, moderated way that is proven to deliver measurable results. Brands using Mass Relevance include NBC Sports, Thomson Reuters, Al Jazeera, MTV Networks, Cisco, Samsung, Pepsi, and Golden Globe Awards.

Famigo Sandbox Makes It Safe for Parents to Pass the Phone to Kids

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Famigo, the only company focused on making mobile technology work for families, launches its newest product today: the Famigo Sandbox app, free for Android platforms. Famigo Sandbox resolves concerns parents might have about passing their mobile device to their children.

The abundance of smart phones and tablets has ushered in a phenomenon known as the “pass back.” Whether in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, on a plane, or in line at the DMV, parents pass their smartphones to children to entertain, educate and keep kids engaged during down time. This common occurrence is not without risk as smart phones now function as “Command Central” for busy parents. Simply by hitting the wrong button, a child can accidentally call a contact, send a text or email to the boss, or access content via the web or app store.

With Famigo Sandbox, mobile devices are suddenly family-friendly. Simply download and install Famigo Sandbox and with the press of a button the phone is partitioned, creating a “sandbox” that automatically separates meaningful and relevant children’s content from the rest of the smartphone’s capabilities, leaving the child free to select from their favorite content and activities.

“Let’s face it: Kids love mobile media. That’s not a bad thing; mobile devices empower parents to facilitate anywhere, anytime learning. With Famigo Sandbox, parents can unlock the benefits of mobile media without risk,” said Q Beck of Famigo. “Famigo Sandbox is a free application that goes beyond providing parental controls. It solves the common issue of app discovery: How do I find the best content for my children to ensure that they are getting the most out of their mobile experience?”

Famigo Sandbox is integrated with Famigo’s family-focused navigation and discovery tool, Famigo Family App Review, which sorts, categorizes and reviews family-friendly Android apps, updating content daily and providing a mobile content discovery tool for parents. When Sandbox is first loaded, it automatically searches the phone and compares loaded apps against a database of more than 30,000 kid-friendly apps, identifying relevant children’s content for inclusion. Parents have the option to further tailor that list, designating which apps their children can access, and effectively limiting their children’s exposure to those pre-selected apps. Parents can track their children’s use through weekly reports that detail how much time kids logged and which apps were used. A lockdown feature ensures that the phone is secure: Once Famigo Sandbox is opened, children can’t make calls, access the internet, navigate app stores, click on ads, make purchases or send texts and emails. And, children are unable to exit the Famigo Sandbox App without the assistance of a parent.

For a video walk-through, click here http://youtu.be/OlAHV_igovc

For animated description, click here http://youtu.be/eOutJT2-DaY

TalentGuard Announces New Version of Talent Management Suite

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TalentGuard announced the release of Version 6.0 of its enterprise-class SaaS solution, Talent®, an integrated suite of products designed to help organizations better plan and execute on talent management and workforce development initiatives. With our platform, employers achieve a lower cost of ownership, faster initial deployment, more frequent upgrades, and they avoid technical headaches—so they can focus on the people-side of talent management implementation.

With Version 6.0, employers will see increased ease of use and quicker access to valuable information. The new version can:

  • Launch assessments such as 360-degree reviews, performance appraisals, skills
    audit and engagement surveys;
  • Provide collaborative self-service learning and development tools;
  • Gather and analyze employee and workforce data;
  • Track progress and manage your organizational talent pool; and
  • Enable quick implementation, lower upfront costs, and eliminate IT support.

“We’re thrilled to have a platform that enables our customers to easily deploy and use technology to automate many of their workforce initiatives,” said Linda Ginac, CEO of TalentGuard, Inc. “Talent is a powerful and easy-to-use tool that is flexible enough to allow customers to start with just one module from the suite and add further modules, growing their talent management platform to meet their business needs.”

Talent® is our online, software as a service (SaaS) system that helps HR executives envision, improve and deploy talent programs. Our product suite turbocharges talent management through simple, transparent, and measurable methods that align with the organization’s goals, allowing you to manage across silos, and improve contact and interaction among employees. TalentGuard’s Strategic Talent Management solutions include strategy & process, development, and technology implementation.

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Mobile Education Is?

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mobileTechThursday, by Steve Guengerich

Mobile education is cool. In April of this year, Disney executive producer Starr Long spoke coyly but confidently at AMD’s GameOn Texas! Conference about Disney’s mission to make “educational” games the coolest, best games. (Games, by the way, that run on AMD-powered tablets and laptops, one would hope.)

Mobile education is hot. Tuesday, mobile platform maker Knewton, announced a significant partnership with education publisher Pearson. Pearson also led a $33 million funding round for Knewton.  It will be interesting to see how other publishers, like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which has had a significant regional presence in Austin over the years, will respond to Pearson’s moves.

Mobile education is controversial! Parents are conflicted. Kids are addicted. And administrators, as I could have predicted, are struggling with being nimble in an environment that is heavily influenced by politics, cultural norms, bureaucracy, inertia, competing stakeholders, etc. Just look at the dust-up this week from the UT Regent’s adoption of myEdu.

Mobile education is disruptive. Bob Metcalfe, who has quickly established himself as a center of gravity in the Austin tech scene, identified education as among the three big industries be disrupted by mobile, video, and embedded apps.

Mobile education is Austin. One look at all of the companies on the Austin Mobile Scene map – involved in mobile gaming, mobile learning and education, or contract mobile app development for others that are targeting education – is all it takes to know that the community has a strong capability in mobile education.

When confronted with the data, it’s clear that mobile education is an irreversible trend. More than two years ago, New York Times writer Steve Lohr reported an SRI-produced study that concluded “Online education beats the classroom.”

Here was the comment I left in the article’s ‘reader replies’ that has turned out to be the all-time, top referring page to my personal blog:

If you resonate with the study’s conclusions, then consider that we’ve only begun to scratch the surface. Imagine what we’ll begin to see when the generation that’s been “bathed in bits” begins building learning communities?

Imagine a mash-up of stumbleupon (randomizing), plus freerice.com (rewards/incentives), plus websites only slightly tweaked to deliver the core content required by states’ NCLB-mandated standards. The most successful (digital) charter school in history.

And, to take it a step further, now layer in the ability to be the personality that you want to be while learning, but still retain a social element through your digital self.

What is mobile education?  Mobile education is the future.

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Q&A Wednesday :: Ordoro

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Today’s Q&A Wednesday is with Jagath Narayan from Ordoro. The company will be presenting at the Under The Radar Conference on November 9th.

Q: Give us the elevator pitch for your company?
Ordoro helps retailers scale their ecommerce business. First, we sync their inventory with Amazon, eBay and other popular webstores, in real-time. Then, we display all their orders in a single view. Finally, we automate purchasing and fulfillment. And Ordoro does all this in a simple, web-based interface. Seeing all relevant information in one place, in real-time, solves a major pain point for retailers. But that’s just the beginning.

Ordoro also does the heavy lifting of order fulfillment. We automatically print shipping labels via Fedex, UPS and USPS, and route orders to manufacturers for direct shipping. We accurately track inventory levels across multiple warehouses and give retailers a real-time, accurate view of their supply chain.

Ordoro automates many of the menial tasks for these retailers, and let’s them focus on what they do best. Ordoro is how great retailers scale online.

Q: How did the company get started? Who had the idea? Was there an “A Ha!” moment?
Ordoro really started as a class project while we were students at UT. As a side project, we were helping a small business owner get organized with the back office operations and identify sales and inventory opportunities. He didn’t have a good system to keep track of his business, so we started searching for the right software for him. Pretty soon, we realized that there was no good solution available. Everything that we found was too expensive and too difficult to use for a small business owner. That’s when we decided to launch our own. But before we wrote a line of code, we spent time validating the market to ensure that there is indeed a market need, and that the market is big enough. During that market validation phase, we also signed up a few beta customers, and we started building the product based on the needs of those beta customers.

Q: What was your first indication that you really had something interesting here?
Soon after we launched the product, we built integrations to Amazon and BigCommerce platforms. We did this to “seed” Ordoro by connecting to the most popular online platforms that retailers use to sell their products. (BigCommerce is a shopping cart platform used by over 15,000 retailers to create their webstore, list their products etc). Within a few days after launching the integration, we started seeing an inflow of customers from BigCommerce, and that was very exciting for us. Customers started mentioning our name in the BigCommerce discussion forums. This generated enough noise that two other shopping cart platforms – 3dcart and Shopify – approached us with partnership requests. Basically, their customers were asking for Ordoro integration, and they wanted to work with us to make that possible. This was an important event for us because these companies, with 10,000+ retailers each, really saw the value that Ordoro is offering to their client base.

Q: What can we expect to see in the future from your company?
Today, we are integrated to a handful of ecommerce platforms, but we are also seeing signups every day from retailers who sell on platforms that we are not integrated to. This is awesome because this helps us maintain our lean startup methodology – the market tells us what integrations to build next. In addition to shopping cart platforms and market places, there is a strong demand to integrate Ordoro to other services that matter to the retailers – accounting packages, warehousing companies, point of sale systems etc. Ordoro is evolving to be the central place that ecommerce retailers go to manage everything that happens in their business.

Q: How has being in Austin helped you?
Startups need the right ecosystem to thrive, and Austin has really given us that environment. Soon after launching the company, we were accepted into the entrepreneurship program at the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI). They mentored us through the very early stages, and helped us hone our business model, and took us all the way to raising the first round of capital. After we graduated from the ATI, we handpicked a couple of Austinites with strong software track record – entrepreneurs who have grown software companies to over $100M in revenue – as our board of advisers. And today, these advisers are guiding us through the growth phase of the company. The tech media in Austin has also helped us expand our brand presence. For example, the organizers of the Under the Radar Conference in the bay area found us through an article that this blog (Austin Startup) had written about us, and they invited us to pitch to a large audience in Silicon Valley. Austin entrepreneurs really help each other out, and we have benefited immensely from the startup culture here.

9 Tips for Raising Startup Funding on AngelList

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Joshua Baer had an excellent post on Mashable today with tips on how to raise money on AngelList. An excerpt is below, but you can read the rest of the post here.

AngelList is an online community that matches startups with investors to streamline the fundraising process.

I’ve personally raised $1 million from AngelList for my startup, and have helped dozens of other startups raise $3 million more. I’ve referred more than 20 startups to AngelList, vouched for a dozen other investors and am ranked as one of the top connectors on the site.

Try a similar strategy by adhering to the following steps.

Read More Here.