Audio Mixologist: A great muse case study

Incredible case study on a muse project that has gone from concept to creation.  Not only is is this a great reference guide, but also very motivational as well.  The users handle is dvdwlsh and his post was made Sept 5, 2008, so this case study is still a work in progress.  As of today, Dec 9, 2008, his shopping cart is down for some reason, there have been more posts on the forum thread, but no response by him yet.  Below is his summary of the creation of his muse, click on the “Continue Reading” link to see the entire post.

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Update: Product is 100% complete and selling live

Warning: This is a robust entry so here’s the order I’m going to follow so it’s not just random thoughts. I’ll need to split it into 2 posts to get around the forums thread length limit.

1. Full Update
2. Direct responses to your questions/ideas
3. Step-by-step of product creation
4. Launch & Delivery

1) Full Update

Product
The Audio Mixologist System is 100% created, packaged and live for sale at audiomixologist.net. Going from concept to final product was literally packed with interesting challenges and unexpected turns, but nearly all of the experience was positive and will make things much easier for future projects.

Advertising
All advertising at the moment is via Google Adwords, which is driving traffic from the Google search engine (obviously) and content-network sites (surprisingly, this is where most of the clicks and impressions are originating).

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Startup Salary Data

I found these statistics on OnStartups.com.   They are taken from compstudy.com which publishes a report titled “2008 Compensation & Entrepreneurship Report in IT”.

1.  This year’s survey was conducted between April and June 2008.

2.  31% of the executive population this year were founders in their companies (up from 28% in the prior year).

3.  CTOs and CEOs were the most frequent founders.

4.  Average base salary across all positions increased by 4.7% from 2007 to 2008.

5.  On average, non-founding CEOs received a 5.4% grant.

6.  Outside of the CEO/President the non-founder Head of Technology holds the highest average equity percentage at 1.53%.

7.  Just 33% of the companies in the latest financing stages still have the founding CEO.

8.  For companies raising one or fewer rounds, the average founding CEO holds nearly one third of the equity.  After two rounds, this reduces to an average of 18%.

9.  Founding CTOs have 17.1% on average in companies with one or fewer financing rounds and 7.49% of companies with 2–3 financing rounds.

10.  CEO average base salary went from $227,000 to $237,000.

11.  Non-founder CEOs have greater total compensation ($339,000) than founding CEOs ($286,000).

12.  Founding CEOs hold an average of 22.05% of the company vs. non-founding CEOs which hold just 5.46%.

13.  The chairperson is the CEO of the company 56% of the time.

14.  Investors comprise more than half othe board of directors seats.  Outside board members comprise about 20% of the board.

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Sources:
http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/7336/Startup-Salary-Data-from-Private-Company-Compensation-Survey.aspx

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Recession and Opportunity

There were a couple interesting posts on TechCrunch this weekend.  The picture to the right shows what companies are presently trying to accomplish to survive the slowing economy.  The big effort is to cut back spending dramatically and immediately rather than waiting and crashing.  Clicking on the picture will take you to a 56 slide presentation that Sequoia Capital created on the current state of the economy.  Interesting stuff, especially from the perspective of a VC company.  On a more positive note, Peter Graham of Y-Combinator blogged about how a recession is a good time to create a startup.  The core theme of his blog post is that what matters more than economic conditions are the people involved.  The pitch to VCs will now be more centered around how your business model is recession proof rather than how viral it is.  I pulled the most relevant parts of article and quoted them below:

If we’ve learned one thing from funding so many startups, it’s that they succeed or fail based on the qualities of the founders. The economy has some effect, certainly, but as a predictor of success it’s rounding error compared to the founders.Which means that what matters is who you are, not when you do it. If you’re the right sort of person, you’ll win even in a bad economy. And if you’re not, a good economy won’t save you.

So if you want to improve your chances, you should think far more about who you can recruit as a cofounder than the state of the economy. And if you’re worried about threats to the survival of your company, don’t look for them in the news. Look in the mirror.

Fortunately the way to make a startup recession-proof is to do exactly what you should do anyway: run it as cheaply as possible.

So maybe a recession is a good time to start a startup. It’s hard to say whether advantages like lack of competition outweigh disadvantages like reluctant investors. But it doesn’t matter much either way. It’s the people that matter. And for a given set of people working on a given technology, the time to act is always now.

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Sources:
http://www.paulgraham.com/badeconomy.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/17/paul-grahams-startup-survival-guide-for-the-coming-nuclear-winter-be-a-cockroach/
http://www.techcrunch.com/layoffs/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/10/sequoia-capitals-56-slide-powerpoint-presentation-of-doom/

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Why not to startup in Silicon Valley

Found an interesting article that makes a case against creating a startup in the Valley.  Here is a quick summary of the article.

1. The weather sucks in some of these towns (not Tallahassee) so your people will actually work instead of bugging out at 5:15 to train for a marathon, triathlon or Ultimate Frisbee.

5. Academics make great board members. Each of these cities has a rich educational environment and are great places to recruit sartorial advisors. And unlike at Stanford, you wont have to give up 1 percent of your equity just to put the provost’s name on your board!

2. You can recruit better outside the fishbowl. Every technology company hits the wall — some multiple times. In the Valley your employees will bail at the first sign of trouble and jump to a better job in the next parking lot. That means you will have to spike salaries to rebuild your team. Other places in the world aren’t quite so spoiled – or they come to you already cynical and stay through the rough times.

3. You won’t get lost in the startup maze. In the Valley, every VC has a portfolio company in each flavor – their own LP’s can’t tell them apart.

4. In my experience, other startup communities aren’t as pre-occupied with the “exit” as Da Valley. SV VC’s have attention spans measured in picoseconds and will sell/merge your company at the first sign of trouble. I can say that in Boston, at least, we are used to gutting out long “winters.”

Just how much VC is being thrown around?

All this speculation is mostly hot air, anyway, because investors put their money where their mouth is. Of the $7.4b of VC invested in Q2, LA/Orange County got more VC than Texas and Philadelphia/NJ combined. San Diego (population 3 million) got the same VC as five Midwestern states, and more than twice as much as the six North Central states (which includes top schools like Minnesota and Wisconsin).

Of course Silicon Valley took 40% of the national total — or more money than the combined take of the next six regions (comprising all or part of 20 different states).

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Sources:
http://blog.openitstrategies.com/2008/09/sv-quaking-in-its-boots.html

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2008 TechCrunch 50 Company List

I want to keep a copy of this list (52 companies this year) on our site so we can use it as a reference later and track some of these company’s progress.  By clicking on the links, it’ll take us to the developers website, and the “CB” will take us to the CrunchBase profile.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Session 1: Youth and Culture. 9:00-10:15am

• Blah Girls – Backed by Ashton Kutcher, Blah Girls is a gossip site that features a group of animated teenage girls who provide opinions on what’s going on in the world of entertainment
• Tweegee (CB) — A hub for tweens, Tweegee offers the youth market a suite of online tools for social interaction and organization
• Shryk (CB) — Web-based financial software for children aimed at promoting financial literacy and good saving habits
• Hangout Industries (CB) — Blends social networking with virtual worlds by creating a 3D, online environment where 16-24 year olds can chat and share media

Session 2: Memes & News. 10:30 – 11:45am

• DotSpots (CB) — Tracks the memes spreading across the web, aggregates the content associated with them, and gives everyone Wikipedia-like control over that content
• Angstro (CB) — Lets you set up a feed of news about your friends, instead of news by your friends
• LiveHit (CB) — Tracks the music, videos, and entertainment sites people are clicking on right now
• Quant the News (CB) — Creator of StockMood.com, a service that tracks the sentiments of online news stories about stocks and then measures their potential impact on the direction of those stocks’ prices

Session 3: Enterprise. 2:30 – 3:45pm

• FairSoftware (CB) — Creates virtual shares around software projects that gives each contributor a portion of any resulting revenues
• Yammer (CB) — A web application designed for businesses and organizations that asks its users to answer the question, “What are you working on?”
• Connective Logic (CB) — Along with the company’s real-time middleware, Blueprint will make it easier for developers to design, generate code, and deploy complex multi-core software applications without requiring expertise in multi-threaded software development
• Devunity (CB) — A platform for writing code in a browser-based editor that doesn’t force developers to use a proprietary layer
• OpenTrace – Traces items through the supply chain and adds them together to show the impact of products on the environment

Session 4: Advertising & Commerce Monetization. 3:45 – 5:00pm

• Burt (CB) — Collects user data to tailor individual advertising campaigns and target users more effectively
• Adgregate Markets (CB) — Brings online stores to consumers through a display ad that is a fully transactional widget
• Adrocket (CB) — Contextual text-based advertising for email; assigns keywords to each address depending on known demographic and contextual data
• OtherInBox (CB) — Provides an easy way to quarantine the spam and the messages you receive from online services

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Session 5: Collaboration. 9:00 – 10:15am

• Tingz (CB) — Offers a unified platform for delivering internet content across multiple devices including mobile phones and PCs
• MIXTT (CB) — A group based social network/dating site that encourages real world interaction that’s more comfortable than the 1-on-1 format of most similar sites
• Imindi (CB) — Based on neuroscientific principles, Imindi’s Thought Engine tries to exceed human thought and help its users find new ideas, concepts, and questions on the Web
• Popego (CB) — Surfaces the most meaningful information from within your social graph based on your interests and other factors

Session 6: Finance & Statistics. 10:30 -11:45am

• PersonalRIA (CB) — Allows users to shadow a professional investment advisor’s portfolio, automatically executing trades (which most brokerage sites cannot do)
• Emerginvest (CB) — Offers commentary and analysis on Emerging Markets and tools that provide you with information on how to diversify globally
• ExchangeP (CB) — Dubbed a “fantasy stock market,” ExhangeP’s service allows users to sign up for free and start investing in private companies
• Me-trics (CB) — Lets you see how mood, weight, and goals correlate with other metrics, including web services like Facebook or RescueTime
• iCharts (CB) — YouTube for embeddable, interactive charts

Session 7: Mobile. 2:15 – 3:30pm

• Mytopia (CB) — A gaming platform that lets players compete across mobile devices and social networks
• Tonchidot (CB) — Makes the Sekai Camera, a camera system that aims to merge the virtual and real worlds by using a digital device as a viewfinder
• Mobclix (CB) — An analytics and monetization platform for iPhone developers
• FitBit (CB) — Developing a small wireless sensor called the Fitbit Tracker, which automatically records data about a person’s activities, calories burned, sleep quality, steps, and distance throughout the day

Session 8: Language & Communication Tools. 3:45 – 5:00pm

• Alfabetic (CB) — Translates any blog or Website into another language and places ads alongside it in the new tongue
• Postbox (CB) — Based on Mozilla technology, Postbox saves users time when looking for particular information within their email
• Swype (CB) — A new method of text input on touch screens; does away with traditional “hunt and peck” in favor of a more fluid motion
• DropBox (CB) — Provides an easy way to backup your files, share them with coworkers and friends, and synchronize them between computers

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Session 9: Rich Media. 9:00 – 10:15am

• VideoSurf (CB) — A visual video search engine that allow users to search across millions of videos for a given actor and to view summaries of videos through a series of detected keyframes
• GazoPa (CB) — An image search engine developed by Hitachi that uses visual similarities between photos to suggest matches (rather than simply relying on keywords).
• Fotonauts (CB) — A photo sharing application that turns every album instantly into a Web page.
• Bojam (CB) — Although there are a slew of online music services already on the Web, Bojam is trying to do something a bit different: it wants to connect musicians and allow them to collaborate over the Web.

Session 10: Games. 10:30 – 11:45am

• Grockit (CB) – A “Massively Multi-Player Online Learning Game”
• Akoha (CB) — A web-based social game played with trading cards aimed at spreading good deeds around the world
• Atmosphir — A platform for creating 3D interactive games by selecting blocks (such as a sand castle tower, fireball-breathing bird, or trap door) and snapping them onto a grid.
• PlaYce (CB) — Provides a 3D virtual world inside the browser for games and social interaction that is based on the real world

Session 11: Vertical Social Networking. 2:15 – 3:30pm

• Birdpost (CB) — A social network for birdwatchers
• Closet Couture — Fashionistas need a social network too and Closet Couture is looking to give them one by connecting them to other fashion lovers, stylists, and retailers
• Footnote (CB) — For those looking to create historical records of loved ones or themselves, Footnote offers a timeline-based archive where you can upload photos and documents linked to historical databases
• Causecast (CB) — Causecast leverages social networking to connect nonprofits, leaders, celebrities and brands with those who want to make a difference through good causes
• Shattered Reality Interactive (CB) — A new massively multiplayer online game (think World of Warcraft) that lets the crowd guide the direction of future expansions

Session 12: Research & Recommendations. 3:45 – 5:00pm

• GoodGuide (CB) – Provides information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of products and companies
• GoPlanit (CB) — A one-click travel planner that assembles a customized trip itinerary with the click of a button; also supports mobile microblogging
• TrueCar (CB) – A site that allows users to assess the current market value of their automobiles in a given geographic area
• Goodrec (CB) – A mobile and online recommendation service that provides brief, to-the-point recommendations from friends and trusted sources

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KillerStartups.com

I found this link on the Mashable article for HotStartupJobs that you referenced in your post.  What is more interesting than this site itself, is the shear number of Start Up Companies they profile.  They do 15 a day!!!

 

Quick math shows that 15 a day equals 450+ a month!  That is unbelievable.  While some of the ideas on there look cheezy, there are actually a lot of seemingly legitmate ideas.  They are all very niche based it seems.  There is a lot of competition in tech, that is for sure.

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hmmmm, want a job at a startup?

This is pretty cool.  There are many people who would love to work in a startup to gain experience, contacts, stock in the beginning, etc.  But out of the plethora of job listings how do you go about finding this small portion of openings? 

 has the door open for you. Although HotStartupJobs launched within the last 24 hours they are pulling a great amount of job listings already.  Might be worth taking a look. 

A great lesson here is that not every tech startup has to be about social media, a specific product, etc.  There will always be room for an innovative solution to connecting people to opportunities.

check it out at www.hotstartupjobs.com and read more on Mashable

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Utilizing Partnership Deals to Raise Capital

I just read a few articles that made me want to further investigate the idea of forming a strategic partnership to acquire captial.  After reading about the recent deals with Mozilla-Google and Active Networks-ESPN, it really seems like a great way to piggyback on the credibility and success of an established company while at the same time securing capital.  I will need to research more on the logistics/pros/cons of securing capital in this manner, but I do like the general idea.  Below is an excerpt from the TechCrunch article on the Mozilla-FireFox deal:

 

Mozilla, the non-profit organization behind the popular Firefox web browser, has extended its search deal with Google for another three years. In return for setting Google as the default search engine on Firefox, Google pays Mozilla a substantial sum – in 2006 the total amounted to around $57 million, or 85% of the company’s total revenue. The deal was originally going to expire in 2006, but was later extended to 2008 and will now run through 2011.

 

The deal will ensure that the non-profit Mozilla foundation will be able to continue with the development of Firefox, its mail client Thunderbird, and a number of other applications. From Mozilla CEO John Lilly:
“We’re very, very happy about our relationship with Google and this makes sure that Mozilla will be sustainable and thrive for quite a long time to come”.

 

APPLICATION:

 

My thought is that for the GPS project brainstormed a few days ago — which I am now dubbing Project GiPS (Global Interactive Positioning System) — a similar deal could be made with Google to license their search technology.  Their search technology could be used to crawl, index and search from the Retailer Inventory Database created from participating merchants.  The benefit here would potentially be:

 

1) Access to a pre-existing, proven search model saving months of work creating a new search engine

2) Start-up capital

3) Credibility gained from Google’s backing

 

Keep in mind that Google doesn’t necessarily have to be the strategic partner here.  Several other options that I would highly consider would be Cuil (launched publicly less than a month ago, staff includes ex-Google employees, claims more efficiency than Google) and of course Yahoo which is attempting to grow their market share in the mobile space. 

 

-Chris

 

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References:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-deal-with-google-for-3-years/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/27/espn-helps-the-active-network-raise-80-million-more/

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