Archive for the ‘Startups’ Category

Posted on August 13, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

Startup lessons for entrepreneurs and businesses from Mark Cuban. Local Tech Wire Event notes & video

Yesterday I attended a Venture Capital Symposium hosted by Local Techwire that featured Mark Cuban @mcuban at the American Tobacco Complex, in Durham, NC. Other speakers included Mike Doernberg, CEO of ReverbNation, Rich Lee, Founder & CEO of Hosted Solutions, Aaron Houghton, Co-founder, iContact, Mitchell Mumma, Partner of Intersouth Partners. The speakers participated in a panel then Mark Cuban delivered a very entertaining, honest and thought provoking keynote to about 250 entrepreneurs, venture capitalist and local media. Mark’s keynote and the panel discussion was about the challenges of starting a company, sustaining one, how to hire smart, being successful and more. I jotted down a few notes throughout the event that you can read below.

Question: What are the challenges facing entrepreneurs today?
Panel Answer: Access to capital, access to talent, themselves, lack of focus
Entrepreneurs need to focus on what they need to do to be successful
Lack of focus
Mark Cuban: @mcuban – No obstacles; now is the best time ever to start a company. Start something you love.
It’s a great time to be an entrepreneur right now.
They can be successful because the talent.

Question: What is the most important trait you look for when you want to add someone to your team?
Mark Cuban: It depends on the job
Panel Answer: Look at the fit to see if they can work in the culture

Question:What role does luck to play in entrepreneur success?
Panel Answer:
Luck is the relevant to scale
You can fail 101 times and get it right one time and you’re an overnight success
You need to identity what you’re good at and be willing to change.
Take a finical accounting course

Poll asked to the panelist:
What kind of cell phone do you have in your pocket?
Mark Cuban: Sidekick for email & a Droid X
Other Panelist: iPhone, iPhone, blackberry
Do you Tweet? 2 yes and 2 no
Do you have an iPad? 3 yes and 1 no
Do you use Social Networking sites? Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
If you have to pick one technology that will impact consumers & entrepreneurs in the future what will it be?
Cloud computing/smartphone
Wireless bandwidth
Smart Grid Power Technology
Mobile Technology

Question:What advice would you have to a child picking a career in the future?
Don’t’ worry about what you do but who you work with. Do what’s important to you and build brand you first.

Video from Mark Cuban’s keynote via @WRAL

Mark Cuban Keynote Notes:

1st Rule for every company:
The best equity for every company is sweat equity.Most think the 1st thing to do is to raise money
Don’t think VC’s are the best thing, they are vulture capitalist
Don’t always look to raise money but look for ways not to raise money
Tech has become inexpensive
Think about how you’re going to cut your own cost & spend as little money as possible to start a business

Sales Cures All:
When you do a business, who is going to be the #1 sales person?
Develop a culture where everyone in the organize sales
It’s all about selling,
If you’re not comfortable selling your product, then who will?
You have to be the king or queen of sales
Have good customers service

Ideas:
The ideas are the easy part, everybody has one
The hard part is the preparation
Ask yourself who hard are you willing to work?
If you’re married you have a disadvantage,
Understand in your mind you have some challenges ahead

Don’t lie to yourself
It may be your idea but you may not the best person to do it

Learn how to kick your own a**
There’s not one business that another company someone has not said, I can do that better
Someone is always trying to do it better
Put yourself in your competitors shoes
Ask yourself, what would you do to kill what you have
You have to resale to your own customers every day
No customers wants to feel take advantage of
At the end of the day you don’t own your business, your customers do
If you don’t put your customers first, someone else will
Great customer service is like being a great lover.
But sometimes you have setbacks
There are going to times when things go wrong but you can’t let them freak you out! Learn and move forward.
If you’re not making mistakes you’re not trying
Come up with a list of elements that work for you.

Other:
Culture is important to your organization
The two people Mark learned the most about how to deal with the media was from Dennis Rodman & Paris Hilton.
Learn how to communicate with the media,
Media is always looking for a story.
Put yourself in the the shoes where the media needs you.
Understand what business you’re in
Think about what you really are selling!

You can see a few flickr photos from the event here and scan twitter via the #techwire hashtag.

Posted on July 19, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

Two NC Startups partner to offer location-based check-in contest: @TriOut and @Shoeboxed

It’s good to see local startups working together! Originally posted on TriOut’s blog

Since we launched back in February one of our goals has been to work with local businesses to offer a check-in learderboard contest each month. Previous contest have included working with Empire Eats, Arrichion Hot Yoga , Golden Corral and today we’re excited to announce that TriOut has partner with the Durham startup Shoeboxed for a top 5 check-in leaderboard contest.

“Shoeboxed is the easiest way to get rid of your paper clutter. Send receipts, business cards, and other documents to them in postage paid envelopes or via mobile phone and Shoeboxed will scan, data enter, categorize, and upload everything into your secure online account. Download expense reports, PDFs, or enjoy unlimited organized online storage at no extra charge. www.shoeboxed.com.

For the Shoeboxed top 5 check-in learderboad contest, the top 5 TriOut users for the week of July 19 – July 25 will win a 60 day free Classic trial Shoeboxed account and a Shoeboxed T-Shirt. The winners will be announced on Monday, July 26 via the @TriOut twitter account.

The Leaderboard is based on our check-in points systems and you can earn extra points for checking in at locations with specials. You can see all of the locations with specials here: http://trioutnc.com/specials/. For more information about the TriOut points system read: TriOut Points System.
You earn more points the following ways:
5 points for each check-in per location, per day.
3 points for each photo.
3 points for each review.
10 points for checking into an event.
10 points for checking into a location with a special.

We’re excited to be working with the Shoeboxed team and would like to congratulate them on their continued success as a NC Startup. You can find more about Shoeboxed and connect with the company via their online profiles below:

Web: Shoeboxed.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Shoeboxed
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/shoeboxed
Phone: (888) 369 4269 |

Good luck to everyone and thanks for using TriOut. We’re working with other local businesses to provide more sponsored leaderboard contests in the future. If you’re interested in sponsoring a TriOut leaderboard contest please email wayne at TriOutNC dot com or call 919-200-0933.

Posted on July 13, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

Would you check-in to win free Gas? Whrrl partners with Murphy USA for social loyalty program

As many question the value of using location-based services a lot users are still asking the question, what am I getting out of it for checking in? A few years ago using your favorite geo app was just a cool tech/geek thing to do but now it’s all about value. Fast forward to 2010 and the tech blogging space is dominated by post about Foursquare vs Gowalla and very few mentions of the other 20+ location-based apps that are working on partnerships to add value to their users.

Photo via Clickz.

Enter Whrrl, is a Seattle based app founded by Pelago. Last week Whrrl launched Society Rewards, a social loyalty program designed to close the gap between a brand’s online social media presence and real-world physical presence. Whrrl also launched a partnership with Murphy USA for a chance to win free gas by just checking in. From the press release:

… Whrrl has teamed with Murphy USA to reward the customers who love
them. When customers check in with Whrrl at one of Murphy USA’s 1,100 locations nationwide,
they will be accepted into the “Murphy USA Society” and earn a chance to immediately win free
gas.

Now with a chance to win free gas is it enough to make geo fanboys and others to check-in? In terms of value for check-ins what type of location-based promotion or partnership would you like to be rewarded with?

Disclosure: I have no affiliation with Pelago/Whrrl outside of the fact that I’ve met with the owners/team at various tech events and have visited their Seattle based office once

Posted on June 27, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

Did the @WhiteHouse / @BarackObama pick @PlacePop to check-in over the other 20+ location-based services?

A few minutes ago I received a push notification on my iPhone from @PlacePop that Barack Obama checked in at InterContinental Toronto Centre as you can see via the iPhone screenshot above. What is @PlacePop? Per the http://www.placepop.com website:

PlacePop is a place-based, social networking application developed by Ooga Labs – a San Francisco-based consumer technology greenhouse. The company was founded in 2009 by Kent Lindstrom, former CEO of the social networking website Friendster.
PlacePop fills a gap in the geo social networking market by providing a simple location-based social app for consumers, combined with a mobile, web-based affinity marketing platform for local businesses.

After seeing the message I did a little research to see if this was a fake account and it looks like about 12 days ago the Barack Obama account first checked-in to the Naval Technical Training Center, Corry Station and since then the White House – Oval Office. On another note, I don’t recall friending the Barack Obama account either, therefor I think it’s a partnership/marketing project with the social media team at the White House and PlacePop. Also the location/time of the check-in is someone what accurate being that the President is attending the G20 Summit in Toronto.

Why is this a big deal or I’m blogging about it? Well for a couple of reasons. One being their are over 20 plus location-based services with @Foursquare, @Brightkite, @Loopt @whrrl and my favorite the hyper-local startup @TriOut (*partner) leading the way. PlacePop just launched in March, 2010 and if they landed a partnership with the White House or their PR/Social Media team that’s a big deal. Two, in a time where many attack Facebook for privacy and discuss the harms of using location-based services if the President of the United States (at least his traveling social media team) can use a location-based service to check-in so people can track his location, what does that say about everyone else or national security for that matter. Third, with the tech world drooling over the @Foursquare vs @Gowalla battle that is really not a battle, if it’s true what does it mean for them and other location-based services if the government picked PlacePop over them. Remember this: INFOGRAPHIC: If Obama Used Foursquare from @RWW in February 2010? Personally, I don’t think it means to much from a state of competition but more of a validation of the value of location-based services. Also note that “If” this true, PlacePop updates are more current than the @BarackObama tweets… interesting.

Regardless if it’s true or not PlacePop is an upcoming player in the location space and is one to watch for. At launch PlacePop had a check-in reward special with both Target and the Black Eyed Peas. Where the first 100 people to earn Silver status in PlacePop would receive 10 gift cards at Target and the first 1,000 people to check-in at any participating tour venue received a free song from the Black Eyed Peas. Those promotions were on the http://www.placepop.com/about/rewards/blackeyedpeas and http://www.placepop.com/about/rewards/target pages but are no longer showing up.

You can find me on PlacePop here: http://www.placepop.com/people/waynesutton

If you use PlacePop let me know how you use it in the comments below. If the @whitehouse / @BarackObama team are using @PlacePop to check-in what are your thoughts on the government using a location-based service?

Posted on May 13, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

How we used social media tools to launch and mangage a location based services startup.

As some of you may know we launched a location based services startup called TriOut in Febarury 2010. Looking back from my years of attending and planning startup weekend events using social media tools to launch a startup of any kind can be great for marketing, planning, customer support and more.

Although TriOut is three months old, Lawrence Ingraham @LawPower (TriOut Founder) started working on TriOut in October of 2009. Fast forward three months later, even though we still have a long way to go I wanted to look back at how we used social media tools to launch and manage TriOut at it’s current state.

External Communication:
Phonebooth (Started with Google Voice, then switch to Phonebooth)

Project Management Documentation:

• Google Wave
• Google Docs

Internal Communication:

• Twitter
• Google Wave
• Gmail
• Skype
• SMS

Billing:

• Paypal

Customer Support:

• Get Satisfaction: http://getsatisfaction.com/triout
• Twitter

Email Marketing:

• Google Spreadsheet Sign-up Form
• Blue Sky Factory

Blogging:

• WordPress: http://tri-out.com/blog/
• Disqus Comment platform

File Transfer and storage:

• DropBox
• GoogleWave

Widgets:

• Custom Built http://trioutnc.com/u/widgets.php

Brand Awareness/Marketing

• Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/TriOutapp
• Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/triout
• Facebook Fanpage: http://www.facebook.com/TriOutapp
• Google Buzz: http://www.google.com/profiles/trioutapp (new)
• Twitter Accounts: TriOut & TriOut4Biz (New)
• Flick: http://www.flickr.com/photos/triout

Measuring/Monitoring

• Pre-launch (beta sign-up form)
• New user registration (custom)
• Google Analytics
• Tweets: RowFeeder & Searchtastic
• Google Alerts
• Check-ins: Custom Built
• iPhone app intsalls/downloads – Apple
• Mobile Web check-ins – Custom

To Implement:
Highrise for CRM (customer relationship management)
Social Media Measuring platform: Either or both: Trackur and Argyle Social (supporting local NC startups!)

Results:
While I can’t get into how many users we have at the moment here’s some traffic and measurable items from October 2009 to now.

• @TriOut twitter account: 610 followers, listed 77 times
• Facebook Fanpage: 259 fans/likes
• Blog Subscribers:
• Users to date: N/A
• October 2009 35 Beta testers
• February 2010: 200 Beta Testers
• May 2010: Reaching a landmark

Google Analytics chart Visitors Overview from February launch to May 12:

Compete.com unique visitors chart from February to March

* Disclaimer: Phonebooth is a client and I’m a partner with TriOut.

As TriOut continues to grow we’re going to keep a close eye on what works in terms of marketing, communications and productivity.
What online tools do you use to manage your startup or business?

Posted on April 20, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

The Undiscovered Value of the Check In / guest post by @LawPower

Louis Gray wrote a great piece titled “Should boring married people check in on location apps” which I felt needed a response. His experience is something I’ve seen many times before, he becomes the mayor of his house, checks in at the various gas stations and furniture stores, then questions the value of checking in. I say, come to North Carolina and use TriOut for a month. You’ll never look at checking in the same.

The “check in” doesn’t have to be a no-value, self promoting act. It can actually help you find places to go and people to meet. TriOut is based in the Triangle area of North Carolina; Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill. We’re more than just a location based service, we’re a service to our community.

We treat every user check in as a positive vote for the location you’re checking into. You wouldn’t keep going back to a place you don’t like, right? If you do, you know full well you’d give it a bad review, like the DMV or a horrible automotive shop.

Using this information, we developed a “popularity” index for locations based on the number of people who have visited, how often they visit, and what they rate the place. We can determine which restaurants in Raleigh are the most popular, which museums in Durham you should check out, etc. This is much more accurate than a simple “5 star rating” you get from other sites.

What makes this system even more valuable is when you’re looking for new places to explore. We have a “Places You’ll Probably Love” section in our search results. What this does is takes all the locations your friends have been to, calculates how popular they are with your friends, then returns places which you haven’t been in to, in order of popularity. My wife and I have used this just about every weekend to find new restaurants to try out, and the beauty is, there’s always something new to try.

We like to call it “organizing the word of mouth.” Your friends are out there going to some great places, eating at some great restaurants. Unless you catch them say it on Twitter, or have a conversation with them about it, you’ll never know. Because they check in at locations, and add photos and reviews of places they visit, we can share their impression of the location without you having to ask.

I’d say the “check in” is the most valuable technology that has popped up in the last year. Just as Twitter has become a system for communication, checking in will eventually become the way we get recommendations and find places to go. All it takes now is for more companies and developers to realize the power of it.

Guest post by Lawrence Ingraham from April 4th, 2010 on http://tri-out.com/blog

Disclaimer: I’m a partner with TriOut a location-based startup in NC where I serve as the Business development/marketing strategist.

Posted on April 18, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

Is the future of location-based services that great or should they sell, sell, sell?

Remember this scene from the movie Trading Places?

Yesterday Ben Parr co-editor at Mashable wrote an article called “Dear Foursquare: This Is Not the Right Time to Sell” in which he discusses the uncertainty of the location-based industry and recent rumors of Yahoo buying FourSquare for $125 million. It’s an interesting argument to make if the Foursquare team decides to sell or work towards being the “next big thing” as they have been called by so many industry leaders. In the post Ben highlights 5 factors to consider should Foursquare decide to sell or not: Those factors were:

Potential market size: Currently, Foursquare has almost 1 million users. But what is its potential market size? It’s essentially anyone with a smartphone capable of GPS. And while that number is relatively small now, it’s rapidly rising.

Competitors: Foursquare’s primary competitor is Gowalla, but it has been breaking away from the app ever since the South by Southwest conference (SXSW) in March. It also faces competition from Yelp and potentially Facebook, which will likely be revealed next week at Facebook’s F8 conference. Yet despite these external threats, Foursquare has a commanding lead and all of the media’s attention.

Potential worth: Foursquare’s worth around $100 million currently — can it reach $500 million? $1 billion? $10 billion? Where is the ceiling?

Business model: Foursquare currently burns more cash than it takes in — can it create a business model that will make it profitable and sustainable? I believe there’s a ton of potential in location-based advertising, especially now that Apple and Google are helping pioneer this market.

Exit strategies: If Foursquare were to turn down the Yahoo offer, who would be able to buy it? Or is there legitimate potential for an IPO?

Here’s my comment on the article
Ben, as a Foursquare user/friend of the team and with the current state of yahoo, I understand your post title and the points you make about selling. But as someone with a location based startup (http://TriOutNC.com) I think if Foursquare decided to sell right now, it wouldn’t be a bad idea. Just look at recent Ning news. Also the LBS space is getting more crowded by the day and they have a lot more competition beside Gowalla. The last time I counted there were over 17 different LBS apps and we haven’t seen what Facebook will launch as you mentioned. But we do know it will be big for the LBS industry and it seems almost weekly that Google is making their apps location aware.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the team, that they can succeed and continue to grow their user base along with showing their value but a $125 million buyout vs raising $3 & $5 million in a competitive uncertain space sounds like a good number to me. Would you have turned down the half billion from Google like Yelp did?

But hey, what do I know, I’m just a LBS geek from North Carolina. Good luck Foursquare either way and nice post Ben.

Also see:

• Location Based Poll: What is your favorite Location based social network/app?
• Check-Ins are Coupons. Game Mechanics are Bulls***. Show Me The MONEY or Go Home (Loser).
• Your feedback and results from the location based social network/app poll

*Disclaimer: I’m a partner with TriOut a location-based startup in NC where I serve as the Business development/marketing strategist.

It’s one of those cases where you agree but disagree with someone but only time will tell for everyone in the location-based industry.

To answer my own question, “Is the future of location-based apps that great or should they sell, sell, sell?” As we continue to grow and market TriOut, I believe the answer is yes, the opportunity is that great but we’re hyper-local to NC and have our business strategy with financial goals in place. For the rest of the location-based apps, good luck. What are your thoughts?

Posted on March 23, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

4 companies for startup stickers & the SXSW collection

I wanted to have something here besides the auto generated RSS feed shares post that have been publishing since SXSW. So here’s a simple list post if you’re in the market to buy some stickers.

The picture above is how my skinned MacBook Pro looked before SXSWi and below is how it looked afterwards. I wanted a few TriOut stickers to pass out during SXSWi myself and for the launch party. Here’s a list of sticker printing companies I found and were suggested via twitter.

1. http://www.stickergiant.com/
2. http://www.psprint.com/stickers-labels
3. http://www.contagiousgraphics.com/Stickers/stickers.html
4. http://stickerrobot.com/pricing/

Also check out some of the stickers I collected at SXSW, you may recognize a few of the companies.

Do you have a company that you use for stickers and what is your favorite sticker on the MacBook Pro?

Posted on February 25, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

What's happening with @TriOut ? A Location-Based Social Network for NC.

If you’re live in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, NC area also known as the Triangle and/or follow me on Twitter I’m sure you have seen a few Tweets about @TriOut. TriOut which stands for Triangle Out is an idea that was first conceived in October 2009 by Lawrence Ingraham @Lawpower (founder of TriOut). Lawrence knew I was a fan of location-based apps and said we have the perfect community in North Carolina to launch our own location-based service.  After a few meetings over coffee and iPhone app beta testing, I joined Lawrence in helping make TriOut go from an idea to a reality. Mostly in #vampiremode at night.

Fast forward 5 months later and last week we held a launch party at the RTP Headquarters with about 100 attendees and  launched the website http://TriOutNC.com for non-iphone users and the community.

Ealier this week we emailed our first newsletter to our subscribers thanking everyone and announcing our first check-in special with 3 local  Dairy Queen locations and a top 5 Empire Eats check-in contest. It has been a pleasure working with Lawrence and we’re excited about the future of TriOut. Thanks for the support NC and if you’re not subscribed to our email newsletter you can do so here and on our blog.

Take a look at our first email newsletter below from TriOut with more details about the launch party, check-in specials and our contest.

TriOutNC.com launches

Hello everyone Last Wednesday, at the RTP Headquarters (@theRTP) around 100 people were in attendance from early TriOut beta users and bloggers, venture capitalists and, programers/developers, along with friends and family – as we officially launched TriOutNC.com and removed the invitation-only mode for the TriOut iPhone app. We would like to thank our sponsors and everyone who was in attendance. You can read the official press release here and recap post here. Also check out some the photos here by John Rees.

Mad Treats, Inc, Dairy Queen Check-in Special

Another announcement we made at the launch party was our “check-in” special with Mad Treats, Inc. at 3 local Dairy Queen Locations.The current specials are available at the locations: DQ Grill & Chill (New Bern Ave) DQ Grill & Chill w/Orange Julius(Morrisville Carpenter) DQ / Orange Julius (Brier Creek) After you have checked-in you’ll see one of the following badges for either a Buy one Medium Blizzard, Get the Second Free or get $1.00 off any smoothie. From there just show the badge to the cashier to receive your TriOut “check-in” special. Be sure to join us at the Triangle FreezeUp! FreezerBurns Live! @DQ on Monday, March 01, 2010 7:00 PM – 10:00 at the DQ Grill & Chill w/Orange Julius(Morrisville Carpenter) location hosted by Gregory Ng. You’ll recieve 10 TriOut points for attending and you can RSVP here: http://freezeup.eventbrite.com

Top 5 wins free $25 Gift Certificate at Empire Eats via Check-in Contest.

As some of you may have noticed every Monday morning the @TriOut Twitter account sends out a Tweet of the top 5 TriOut users for the week. With the new TriOutNC.com website you can see the leaderboard updating in real-time. We’re please to announce the Empire Eats Top 5 TriOut Check-in Contest for the week of February 22 – 28. The top 5 users for the week will receive a $25 gift certificate at one of the following Empire Eats locations below. You can read the full contest details including how to get points here.

Thank You Launch Party Sponsors

Connect with us

Blog	@TriOut	TriOutapp	TriDot pics	iPhone app	Feedback

TriOut | 4501 New Bern Ave.STE 130-252, Raleigh, NC 27610 919.295.0824 | contact@TriOutNC.com| icons via http://icondock.com.