Evernote for Everyone
Big congrats to our client, Evernote, on the launch of its public beta today.
In private beta for the past four months, Evernote is a multi-platform note-taking application that allows users to easily capture memories and content in any environment. This information is then made accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere, with all notes automatically synchronized between the network and local devices.
Over 120,000 users have participated in the invitation-only closed beta and over 1 million notes have been taken.
Blogs including Lifehacker, ZDNet, Webware, jkOnTheRun, VentureBeat and Mashable have already covered the news thus far today, and for more information on the launch you can check out the Evernote blog or get updates via Twitter.
Go here to register for your own Evernote notebook and be sure to stay tuned for more big news from the Evernote team this summer.
Mochi Media closes $10 million in funding
Congrats to our client – and downstairs neighbor – Mochi Media for raising a $10 million Series B round of funding led by Shasta Ventures, with help from original investor Accel Partners. The news was announced yesterday and got wide pickup in TechCrunch, VentureBeat, CNet, Gamasutra among others.
Mochi is doing some impressive things and is in the thick of a very hot market. They make a suite of tools and services for indie Web game developers and publishers that allow them to easily monetize their games or game portals. They also have an ad network, MochiAds, that lets advertisers make buys across the network of games and portals and reach the 60 million gamers per moth that play Mochi games. What’s really exciting is that by some estimates, there are anywhere from 200 to 300 million people that regularly play casual games, so Mochi Media’s potential is huge.
Congrats again, and here’s to many more years of growth and success!
LaunchSquad in the San Francisco Examiner
LaunchSquad was featured last Friday in San Francisco’s favorite daily newspaper, the Examiner. The article touches on the work we’ve done with Barely Political and Obama Girl, the company’s evolution from the first dot-com era until now, and the unique culture here at the Squad. If you didn’t already see the article during your commute last week, you can check it out here.
SuccessFactors Taps Into the Future of Work
Our client, SuccessFactors, held its annual user conference, SuccessConnect, in San Francisco last week, which brought together hundreds of business leaders from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses to talk about how they can better engage, motivate, retain and recruit great talent, and how technology can help do that.
Highlights from the conference included more than 40 customer presentations from the likes of Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Fannie Mae and Kelley Blue Book, an announcement with IBM that the global computing giant will market, resell and implement SuccessFactors’ product suite, and a keynote from SuccessFactors CEO and founder, Lars Dalgaard. Lars kicked off the conference by talking about the past, present and future of the workplace, sharing personal stories from his early experiences at Unilever and Novartis. It’s inspiring to hear Lars explain that SuccessFactors was founded out of his frustration at having no insight into his career path within these huge companies – both that he was able to see the potential value in open communication about employees’ career paths and goals, and that he took the initiative to do something about it. As Lars said, he believed “there had to be a better way” – now there is.
LaunchSquad helped produce a video for Lars’ keynote presentation to illustrate the future of work. The video featured interviews with “digital natives” – those who have grown up with digital technology – discussing what they expect and want from employers – companies that will engage, inspire and challenge them, as well as allow them to connect with others in their enterprise. Watch the video below:
I was really impressed by just how much collaboration and idea-sharing was exchanged through presentations, panels, keynotes, lunch discussions and even informal hallway pow-wows. It was great to see huge companies like Whirlpool Corporation, ConAgra Foods and T-Mobile come together with smaller companies and learn from one another, sharing their experiences of implementing SuccessFactors and bettering their human capital management strategies. All in all, the event was a huge success and we were glad to be a part of it.
Blasting Out From Under The Radar
Earlier this week, two LaunchSquad clients, Mochi Media and Vivaty, presented at Under the Radar: Social Media and Entertainment.
It was a great show overall: 32 companies across 8 categories presented to different panels of judges. Host Dealmaker Media streamed video from the conference live via Ustream.tv, and tweeted the entire event.
Presentations are now on YouTube: Mochi Media’s here, and Vivaty’s here. Vivaty won both the judges’ and audience choice in the Social Networking category, and Mochi Media announced that they now have 60 million users worldwide!
Congrats to both companies for excellent presentations!
Daptiv TV Takes Hold
We’ve been working with our client Daptiv on a series of videos centered around how their customers are benefiting from their collaboration/project management software. Filmed at their recent user conference YouCon ‘08, the short pieces offer snapshots into how companies are taking advantage of some of the unique and exciting things Daptiv is delivering. Daptiv is using the videos in a variety of ways, and has even created a Daptiv TV channel on YouTube.
It’s taken some time, but online video is getting to a point now where it’s having an effect on pretty much everything, in similar ways that email and the web did 10 years ago. Whether it’s TurnHere helping pretty much any size company create professionally-produced short films about their business; to Obama Girl becoming a national celebrity and part of the lexicon of the Presidential campaign; to BrightRoll making it easy for marketers to deliver high quality video ads to the masses, the web is evolving from a word-driven medium to a visual one. And it’s a powerful force that will only strengthen in the coming years.