All Your Face Are Belong To Robo.to
Here at LaunchSquad, we like to say we’re all about working with cool new companies that have innovative ideas and stories we feel passionately about. With that in mind, we couldn’t be more thrilled to work with Particle, whose ambitious motto is to create Web and mobile apps that “shorten the distance between the Web and awesome.”
Particle’s first product is called Robo.to – a strangely addictive online app that lets you record short video clips of your current mood, activity or location. The 4-second clip becomes sort of a personal video avatar, accompanying text status updates and integrating with social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. The site has been attracting loads of fans, including a few folks you might recognize here and here.
A few weeks back, we introduced a new Robo.to feature called TV Mode, which literally lets users “watch the Web” by creating TV channels with hashtags, keywords or individual people, then view user-generated video status updates of trending topics. For example, you can flip from video to video on a particular topic to get a glimpse of individual reactions to major events. The potential in the ability to “see what the Web looks like now” is enormous. Imagine if we’d been using this for #IranElection or even #KanyeWest … a really interesting idea, we think.
Others certainly agreed with us as Robo.to’s TV Mode caught the attention of The New York Times, NewTeeVee, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, Beet.TV, and many others. In honor of the launch, we threw a party at Potrero Hill hot spot Mighty, complete with robot hostesses and Robo.to stations to record the fun with the new TV Mode feature at #RobotoParty. Maya Baratz wrote this great piece about the party in SF Weekly. We all had a great time. But don’t just take my word for it. See it for yourself here: http://robo.to/tv/robotoparty
Winning: It’s What Jerry’s Does (Now)
It has been a whirlwind year for the LaunchSquad softball team (aka Jerry’s Lube & Fenders) to say the least. Coming off a dismal 1-6 season in the summer BASS season, Jerry’s looked to improve on that single victory — and boy, did we!
We’re still unsure if it was the competition level, the laughable team names (many of which I still do not understand) or the newly-replenished Jerry’s roster, but we did the unthinkable and went undefeated in the regular season with a flawless 7-0 record — and won the championship.
With strong arms from pitching veterans Brett and Jesse, we had the Lincecum-Cain 1-2 punch that most MLB teams only dream of. Schreiber played like a young Omar Vizquel in one of his eleven Gold Glove-seasons, and with contributions from some new blood from Coop, Mnich and Marty, as well as assorted friends family of LaunchSquad, we headed into the postseason with guns blazing.
After beating the Hawaiian Slingshots in our first round match-up, we anxiously awaited our second, and final, night of playoffs, and after being a weeklong delay due to inclimate weather, Jerry’s finally took the field in the semifinals against “Cookie Dusters.” With an extra boost from Melissa Biles in right field, who took the field after a last-minute decision to come out of Jerry’s retirement, we got three outs on three pitches in the top half of the first inning. In the bottom half, we scored ten runs, and despite a last-minute offensive surge in the last two innings, we held them off to advance to the championship.
We faced the Wallabies in the finals. Despite excellent performances by fierce characters like a Wendell-Kim lookalike and a centerfielder who covered the entire outfield like Grady Sizemore on steroids, we came out on top by a score of 7-5.
This season was certainly one to remember, but also one to grow on. Moving into the LaunchSquad soccer season next week, we hope to keep this undefeated streak alive.
Celebrating 10 Years of Astia Doing it Right
On November 2, a fresh group of tech startups will embark on what can only be described as Venture Bootcamp. This highly competitive program is hosted by LaunchSquad client Astia, a global non-profit organization that aims to propel women’s full participation as entrepreneurs and leaders in high-growth businesses.
Although women launch twice as many businesses as men, only 6% of all venture-backed startups are lead by women, and a pitiful 1.7% of venture-backed technology startups were founded by women. However, a 2007 Catalyst report reveals that Fortune 500 companies with the greatest representation of female board directors achieved significantly superior financial performance than even the best homogeneous firms. With these numbers in mind, Astia offers a host of programs to female entrepreneurs, egregiously underrepresented and unsupported in the industry areas of innovation, life science, and technology.
Each year, approximately 25-30 exceptional companies are welcomed into Astia’s ecosystem of venture capitalists, investors and business experts. On November 2, the 2009 selected companies will kick off their membership with Astia’s Doing it Right program, a 5-day marathon of workshops, followed by two months of business coaching. Once a part of the Astia community, client members benefit from strengthened access to capital and consistent business leadership training.
Since 2003, 60% of Astia’s clients have achieved funding or acquisition within one year of teaming up with Astia. This year marks Astia’s tenth anniversary supporting companies to develop into high-growth enterprises.
We’re proud to be helping Astia spread the word as they facilitate positive change that will not only help women entrepreneurs, but also drive innovation and economic and job growth.
Launching a New Way of Learning with iMinds
There are a few things I do regularly: commute to work, cook, clean my apartment, shop (only for things I need, of course), work out and lounge on my roof (though not for long). None of these tasks require much brainpower, and so to keep myself entertained I’m usually plugged into my iPhone and listening to some trashy pop, the podcast of the Rachel Maddow Show or my favorite NPR podcast, The Brian Lehrer Show. A couple weeks ago I added something new to my repertoire, iMinds MindTracks.
iMinds, a new LaunchSquad client, recently launched a brand new category of digital books that provides bite-sized knowledge via your MP3 player. With a library of about 80 tracks (and quickly growing) in 12 different categories—Art, Science & Nature, Culture & Religion, etc.—iMinds is adapting the way we learn to our busy lives. iMinds MindTracks are 8-minute MP3s that are written by professionals in their field (we are talking people with PhDs here) and then read by Australia’s top voice-over actors and set to soothing background music. So while iMinds is actually educational, it’s also entertaining and captivating.
So, let’s be honest. I was 4 when the Berlin Wall came down and sure, I learned about it later in life in school but honestly, I know more about the superstar made famous in Germany, David Hasselhoff, than I do the Wall’s history. As the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall approaches, I would love a refresher on the Wall’s rich history, yet don’t think I’m ready to add The Berlin Wall: A World Divided to my already lengthy reading list. I could certainly go to Wikipedia for a crash course but no matter how many articles are cited I still question the quality of their content. Enter iMinds’ Specialist collection on the Berlin Wall: it consists of six different MindTracks, and is the perfect way to brush up on the details of the Wall’s history while I scale, gut, and sauté a fish. Ahh, the beauty of multitasking!
Oh yea, and did I mention they are available through Audible.com/iMinds and Apple’s iTunes Store? And, they’re the same low price as the The Hoff’s greatest hit, 99 cents!
Cliqset Gets Real
Over the last few months, client Cliqset has been working on the latest rev of their real-time community. Yesterday, after a few weeks in private beta, Cliqset finally opened its doors to the public. Its new public beta features a completely redesigned UI that showcases real-time conversations and activity streams so that users can easily share, discover, and discuss their online social activities. In Cliqset, users can draw their online communities into one centralized hub to track and organize all of their social information from nearly 70 social networks and services.
Cliqset is making available a new full-featured Air desktop app so that users can efficiently manage their activity and social data from a slick, easy-to-navigate desktop environment.
Adding to the excitement, Cliqset just unveiled a first-of-its-kind Boxee app that lets users have real-time conversations with their friends while they watch TV shows, movies, and other content on Boxee.
Already, the social platform has accumulated a considerable amount of activity in its earlier stages from both users interested in engaging in this real-time community and developers excited to use its open APIs for app creation. For more details on yesterday’s launch, see the reaction from Mashable and TechCrunch. And we encourage new Cliqset members to engage with LaunchSquad at http://cliqset.com/user/launchsquad.
LaunchSquad Volunteers Get Literary
LaunchSquad volunteers recently headed over to Fort Mason’s Festival Pavilion on a foggy morning to help sort books for the 45th Annual Big Book Sale, sponsored by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. The member preview sale started at 4 PM so volunteers really had to work quickly as people had been lined up braving the winds and mist since six that morning! It felt like a Star Wars movie, but the costumes were replaced by fleece and knits.
For those of you who have never been to a LaunchSquad staff favorite, Oktoberfest by the Bay, which coincidentally changed locations this year, The Festival Pavilion is an enormous warehouse. Long tables spanned the square footage featuring over 300,000 books, DVDs, CDs, books on tape, vinyl and other forms of media. All books were $5 or less. And if you think that is cheap, Sunday was $1 day!
A veteran Big Book Sale volunteer, Carol, carefully supervised as our own Alan Cooper sorted copies of Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife. She repeatedly commented on his likeness to the Mr. Darcy of the screen, Colin Firth, and we are not quite sure she believed it wasn’t really him as we carted him away to stack books by the next table. At noon, our work was done and with cold hands, warm hearts, and five freebies, we headed back to the office waving good-bye to the bookworms still lined up out in search of some literary steals.
Vook Launches: A New Way to Read/Watch
As the way that we consume media continues to evolve, old begins to co-exist alongside the new. LaunchSquad client Vook has brought to market an entirely new concept: the ability to read and watch a book in one integrated format–on the Web and the iPhone. Last week, the company, in partnership with Simon & Schuster, released the first four ‘vooks’ (rhymes with books) available for purchase directly from vook.com.
The titles, which include how-to guides to beauty and fitness as well as fiction works from best-selling authors, allow readers to benefit from the creative talent of both the authors behind the titles, as well as the filmmakers who were able to bring key plot points and instructional aspects to life. As online video continues its boom, and readers are increasingly more mobile and discriminating, Vook delivers a new reading experience that is engaging, unconstrained by special devices and setups, and adds a visual dimension to text all in one place.
The launch received considerable buzz in publications including The New York Times, Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly, BBC radio and KRON. Want to give a vook a spin for yourself? Check out www.vook.com.
LaunchSquad Gets into Savings
Throwing cash around just doesn’t have the cache that it had a few years ago. With searches for “online coupon” increasing 172% between July 2008 and 2009, saving money appears to be America’s new favorite pastime.
LaunchSquad client Savings.com is an online coupon website and community that offers up some of the sweetest coupons and deals on the Web. As a result, LaunchSquad has been experiencing first-hand that online coupons really are a fantastic resource.
Here’s a quick rundown: When you’re shopping for, say, a new laptop, kick off your quest with a quick search for “Dell coupons” or “HP promo code.” You might be surprised at the number of resources that come up touting their online coupon wares. There are a lot of sites out there, and it’s important to know how to cut through the clutter lest you spend half your day sifting through deals codes that don’t work… that’s where Savings.com comes in.
With a reserve of coupons and deals from more than 3,400 merchants, Savings.com dedicates major time and resources to quality-assurance, making sure every one of their coupon codes actually work, and also connecting directly with merchants to develop exclusive, special-to-Savings.com coupons that no one else has available. And how do you know where to start? The Savings.com community of DealPros votes the best deals to the top of the list, so shoppers always see the best stuff first.
This month we help launch a nationwide campaign to find and recruit more top quality DealPros to Savings.com, offering the country’s most popular saving voices an opportunity to win get exclusive editorial access to Savings.com as well as an all-expense paid trip to San Francisco. Got a mother, sister or friend who loves to save? Let them know they can apply here.
In addition to recruiting new DealPros, we’ve been working with Savings.com to get news out about savings through great articles in publications like Forbes, TechCrunch and Reuters as well as a weekly top deals column in the New York Daily News. In the process, they’ve been helping us shop smarter.
This is one exciting company to be sure, and we couldn’t be happier to help them spread the word about smart savings.