» Startups

I wanted to do a quick product review for a product I started using today.  It’s called Litmus.  You got to see it to believe it!  It rocks!

Understanding the core principles of a Venture Capital deal can be quite the challenge.   For starters, you need to know that VC money can be smart money but its real expensive money too.

There are different stages of funding but today I’m going to be discussing an early stage term sheet.  Also, you need to know that east and west coast deals work differently.  West coast deals seem to have better terms than East coast – this is primarily due to the investment banking type of mentality you find in places like New York and Boston.   First question that probably comes to mind is why shouldn’t I just get west coast funding?  Well, it’s not that easy, West coast VC’s tends to want to have you in their backyard.  So unless your geographical located in Silicon Valley, this will be a challenge.

The most common mistake entrepreneurs commit is that they get completely blinded by a valuation and forget about the terms.  Whatever you do, make sure you get a good lawyer that knows about these things.  If you have a friend who’s already been down this road, don’t be afraid to ask them for a referral to their lawyer.

(more…)

This morning TechCrunch posted an article of some talks of Facebook acquiring Twitter.  The rumor on the street is that that Facebook was offering $500 mil of their already overvalued stock.

TechCrunch reports: “Facebook has raised $516 million in funding to date, while Twitter is backed by $20 million in investment. Twitter boasts 6 million active users, while Facebook reports more than 120 million.”

I’m on the fence as to whether this would be good for the tech community.   I like the idea of the expanding Twitter’s existing reach and making it a lot more powerful than it is.  I also like the idea of it becoming a more stable platform with the right team behind it.  My main concern is that Zuckerberg will try to integrate it in with Facebook too much and cause it’s unforeseen death.

Either way, Twitter, of which I’m a big fan, does need to start thinking about its future and quick burn rate.

What are your thoughts on Facebook acquiring Twitter?

TechCrunch featured a company called InLinks.com yesterday and referred to it as “hard to detect”, as in the world of blackhat SEO.  I’m not so sure about that one.  Let’s face it, the folks at Google are pretty smart.  It took me a few minutes and I quickly discovered some of the publishers by performing a few simple Google searches.  Here are just a few of the publishers I discovered: The Hunters Mark, Krimson News, TheRandToday.com,  Stephan Miller and Peer1.  Michael Arrington, are you telling us Google can’t do this?

I think that building a business model based on what is considered a violation of Google’s terms wasn’t the smartest idea by New York-based advertising firm MediaWhiz.  Matt Cutts, Google’s SEO guru, specifically states on his blog, “Google has been very clear that selling such links that pass PageRank is a violation of our quality guidelines.”

There’s a lot of talk about this in the new media industry.  Olgivy commented that appearing on TechCrunch is normally a good thing - but not this time.

My advice, stay away!  Don’t touch this one with a ten foot pole whether your an advertiser or a publisher!

UPDATE:  The Hunters Mark posted a comment below today in regards to this post.  InLinks.com had an excerpt from their blog which when searched on Google was the only result which lead me to believe that either InLinks.com is using thier blog as an example or the Hunters Mark actually did act as a publisher on their behalf.  Either way, our agency tries to encourage best seo practices and found Inlinks.com business model unethical on many levels.  If the Hunters Mark was never a part of it, I apologize for the inacuracy, however, I can assure you that we did research this thoroughly.

Embracing the green space in today’s eco-friendly world has proven to be an overwhelming success for my client and friend, Shawn Burst of Jeriko House.  Every bit of this story is like a marketing fairy tale.  Hug a tree, test the waters and find yourself in a forest of greenies lining up at your door for what could be the next, most revolutionary home to hit the housing market.

It all begins in the wake of hurricane Katrina when Shawn had just lost his family’s dream home.  Determined to build a new home and not willing to wait years, he set out on a mission to find a new high-end housing alternative overseas.  After visiting engineering firms in Germany and exotic finishing manufacturers in Bali, Shawn came home with the most incredible vision which he named Jeriko House.  He called BOALT to design and develop a new alternative home brand literally from scratch.

After investing a significant budget in developing his website, he left faith and one press release to do the rest.  It was only a matter of days before the website started to received hundreds of visitors a day from blogs such as InHabitat, TreeHugger, JetsonGreen, Luxist and Architect Magazine to name a few.  Some reviews better than others but you know what they say, all press is good press.
(more…)

There seems to be an ongoing debate within our agency on how much time should be spent on information architecture.  In retrospect, I think the main reason we previously focused so much time on information architecture was because we needed a client sign off and found it more efficient to make changes in this stage.  But what happens when we’re working on one of our own start ups?  How should we approach information architecture?

The below snippet is from a 30 page set of wireframes that we provided to Aspen Snowmass when we designed and developed their booking engine user interface.  Information architecture was a must for this project because making changes in the development phase would have been extremely inefficient.

37Signals in their Getting Real book, swears by building out the interface first.  “Too many apps start with a program-first mentality. That’s a bad idea. Programming is the heaviest component of building an app, meaning it’s the most expensive and hardest to change. Instead, start by designing first.” (more…)

After several weeks of hard planning, I’m sure that Peter Corbett of IStrategyLabs is glad to know that the Apps for Democracy was a huge success.  I’m glad that BOALT took home the agency 1st prize and was able to build an application that was going to help the community so much. So what’s next for DCHistoricTours.com?

After speaking with D.C.’s Chief Technology Officer, Vivek Kundra, last night, he told me that one of the reasons we were chosen was because they wanted to use our application on main D.C. inauguration website.  This would provide the many anticipated visitors this January a helpful resource to learn more about our nation’s capitol.  I thought that was pretty exciting so naturally I stayed up last night wondering what I could do to improve the app. (more…)

Mayor Fenty to the left of me.

I just got back from the mayor’s press conference which was held this morning.  BOALT is proud to announce that it won the agency 1st prize for its submission, DCHistoricTours.com.  This is a great accomplishment for us as we just opened our D.C. office 2 months ago.  It was an honor to shake Mayor’s Fenty’s hand and receive the award today!

I wan’t to thank Peter Corbett for all of his hard work and dedication in hosting the contest.  I also want to thank Sichon, Phil and Tim from BOALT for their time and effort over the past 2 weeks in building the application.

UPDATE: Thank you Justin Thorp for sending me your video.

Check out the video of the event:

Also, congrats to Travis Hurant, Tim Koelkebeck and Brian Sobel for winning the Indie 1st prize!

Yesterday, I had the pleasure to meet with Mike Subelsky over a cup of coffee in Dupont Circle.  Mike, who goes by “Hacker & Improvisor” in his email signature, has has been involved in quite a few interesting start ups including OtherInbox.com, Subelsky.com, IgniteBaltimore.com and BigImprov.org. The purpose of our meeting was just to kickback and discuss different entrepreneur stories and strategies.  After the meeting, I felt real good about some of my contributions to the conversation and thought I should share them.

(more…)

BOALT’s submission to the the Apps for Democracy innovation contest, DCHistoricTours.com, will launch this week as planned.  Please help us win People’s Choice Award by voting for us here.

The contest is being held by the District of Columbia’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) which is responsible for D.C.’s technology infrastructure and Peter Corbett of IStrategyLabs.  The contest just kicked off last month and has already received tremendous buzz amongst technology enthusiasts.

With over 19 million visitors each year to our nation’s capital, DCHistoricTours.com is destined to become a successful planning resource for the city’s tourists.  In addition, the timing of the website’s launch couldn’t have been any better with the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.

DCHistoricTours.com is integrated in real-time with D.C.’s data catalog, which provides real-time data from multiple agencies to citizens - a catalyst ensuring agencies operate as more responsive, better performing organizations.  The website which is comprised of user generated content allows users to create, view and vote on tours.  It is integrated with Yahoo’s Flickr photos, Yelp restaurant reviews and Wikipedia facts.