Announcing Dogpatch Labs San Francisco Roster

We are excited to announce the newest Dogpatch Labs class here in San Francisco. It includes entrepreneurs and companies that have been part of the lab over the last few months and those that just recently joined (new additions: AdCru, Animoto, Burbn, FanPop, JibJab, LearnBoost, Milennial Media, Recruly, StickyBits, Task Rabbit and Wild Pockets). As always, we look for great, exciting entrepreneurs who thrive in open and collaborative environments. And we aim to have a diverse collection of individuals, companies and verticals. The current batch of residents certainly represents that! You can view the TechCrunch write up here and rosters of all three Dogpatch Labs here.

Dogpatch San Francisco

AdCru is a pay-per-follower ad network for Twitter founded in September 2009.


Animoto (San Francisco) generates custom, professional-looking slideshows from user-uploaded music and photos. Their “patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology and high-end motion design” drives the web app. (TechCrunch coverage)
Burbn is a new way to communicate + share in the real world. (TechCrunch coverage)
Cardpool is a gift card exchange service where anyone can buy, sell, or trade their gift cards in a safe and secure environment. (TechCrunch coverage)
EGG HAUS is an interactive agency. We help our clients create and deploy engaging branded experiences on every consumer platform.
FanPop is a network of user-generated fan clubs for different topics of interest created and maintained by the community of fans.
FanPulse welcomes you to your world of sports. FanPulse (launching January 2010) is a new sports-service that lets you easily follow the sports you love and talk about them with your real friends. (TechCrunch coverage)
Formative Labs - working on ideas that solve problems and change consumer behaviors.
Formspring: Ask questions, give answers and learn more about your friends. (TechCrunch coverage)
Hollrr - Want to help your friends discover a great new product? A quick Hollrr is the easiest way to let them know what deserves a shout out. (TechCrunch coverage)
JibJab (San Francisco): Headquartered in Santa Monica and founded by Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, and backed by Polaris, JibJab is a leading e-Card business. (TechCrunch coverage)
LearnBoost is an education platform for secondary schools.
Millennial Media delivers the largest reach – 83% of the US mobile audience – through the largest mobile advertising network in the US. (TechCrunch coverage)
Mr. Tweet looks through your extended network to help you find effective relationships and information most relevant to yourself.
ProfessionL centralizes all your recruitment management needs into one unified web-based software application that can be used by any business that recruits (including recruitment specialists).
Recurly makes subscription billing easy for developers and organizations of all sizes.. (TechCrunch coverage)
The Start Project - turning ideas into action. (TechCrunch coverage)
Stickybits brings the physical and digital worlds together with barcode stickers which trigger audio, video, photo, and text messages when scanned. (TechCrunch coverage)
startupSQUARE is a marketplace where entrepreneurs can meet one another and brainstorm their next big business idea.
TaskRabbit(formerly runmyerrand.com) helps individuals and small businesses in a community outsource their tasks and deliveries, leveraging the latest technology and the social networking paradigm.
Trazzler helps you answer one question, "Where should I go?" by recommending trips unique to your location and Travel Personality.
Twylah: your personal assistant on twitter.
Wild Pockets is an end to end solution that supports creators throughout the life cycle of 3D game development
Yardsellr - In the tradition of neighborhood garage- and yard-sales, Yardsellr makes it easy for you to list and sell, or find and buy whatever you want. Yardsellr helps spread the word about your item within your online "neighborhood" – social and messaging networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Jibe Hiring VP of Technology in NYC

Jibe is hiring a VP of Technology. The job is based in New York and a great opportunity to work with leading social technologies as the fourth employee of a great startup.  I blogged about why I think Jibe is an important company tackling a big market at the time of Polaris’ investment.  Since that time, the company has done its private beta and is hustling towards full public launch.  Especially in light of the expanded Facebook functionality announced at F8, we think the opportunity is bigger than ever.

Jibe is firing on all cylinders, and Joe, Peter, and Toby are a talented, lean, and hardworking crew to join on this mission.  They’re also great guys on a personal level.  The full job spec is below.  Feel free to ping me with any questions before applying.

COMPANY JIBE - http://www.jibe.com

POSITION Vice President of Technology

LOCATION New York, New York

WEBSITE www.jibe.com

COMPANY DESCRIPTION

JIBE created the first “Employment Networking Platform” that opens up the social graph of both employers and job seekers to identify the most trusted & qualified candidates.

Designed to bring the power of social networking to online career search, JIBE integrates Facebook and Linkedin to enable employers and applicants to leverage the overlap of their social graphs. From previous co-workers to friends who work with a specific company, JIBE recognizes matches between these two networks as they apply to a job opportunity.

JIBE empowers employers to efficiently search and evaluate relevant candidates that are connected to other employees in their company. By creating a referral-based recruitment process it helps ensure a more satisfied employer and new employee. JIBE’s “employment networking platform” gives applicants benefits that no other job site provides, including the relevancy of job postings to their social connections and real-time status updates about their applications. This level of transparency and feedback gives job seekers the insight needed to get hired for the job they want.

REPORTING RELATIONSHIPS:

You will report to the CEO

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Your responsibilities will include:

  • Recruit, support, train, mentor, motivate and lead a best of breed technology team;
  • Identify, architect, develop, implement and maintain technology solutions to meet the company’s strategic business objectives;
  • Implement a flexible and scalable infrastructure to support a dynamic product roadmap and prioritize deliverables;
  • Implement process and procedures in software development and hardware management that speed the company’s time to market for new products;
  • Clearly communicate progress and hurdles you and your team face allowing senior management to make data driven decisions
  • Manage schedules, budgets and staffing for multiple simultaneous projects;

TECHNICAL & MANAGEMENT QUALIFICATIONS:

  • Experience building and leading a highly motivated technical team, in a dynamic product development environment.
  • In depth knowledge of Ruby, MySql, graphing databases and search solutions;
  • Extensive knowledge building and managing a scalable web infrastructure;
  • Experience managing consumer facing web applications and products with substantial traffic volumes and large surges;
  • Extensive knowledge in build/release engineering and change management;
  • Experience with iterative product development processes;

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS & EXPERIENCE:

The ideal candidate has the following characteristics:

  • Business minded engineering executive, with the ability to partner with the Chief Executive Officer and executive team;
  • Superior management skills with the ability to create innovative systems that serve the organization’s revenue and business objectives;
  • Creative problem solver with a “can do” attitude, a passion for the intersection of media and technology and an enthusiasm for bringing innovative technology products to market;
  • A business partner to the senior executive team;
  • Lateral thinker with the ability to articulate a strategic decision, give clear direction to technology team and lead by example/inspiration;
  • A technical innovator who can amplify product direction with sound advice and creative solutions;
  • Willing and able to roll up his/her sleeves and be ‘hands on’ in the process of building and directing the technology organization;
  • An excellent communicator with the ability to work effectively at all levels within the organization;
  • Impeccable attention to detail and planning along with a process-driven approach towards achieving objectives.

EDUCATION

An undergraduate degree in Computer Science or equivalent is required. An advanced degree is preferred.

COMPENSATION

A competitive compensation package will be offered to the successful candidate.  The compensation package will include a base, bonus and equity.

Send cover letter, resume, and work samples to:

Hacker@jibe.com

New Additions to Dogpatch Labs SF: Burbn, Cardpool, Formspring & More

I have been delinquent in updating this blog with recent additions to Dogpatch Labs San Francisco... so here are five companies that have taken home at Dogpatch Labs over the last couple months (and I'll try to provide more frequent updates!) Burbn is a new way to communicate + share in the real world.

Cardpool is a gift card exchange service where anyone can buy, sell, or trade their gift cards in a safe and secure environment.

Formspring: Ask questions, give answers and learn more about your friends..

ProfessionL centralizes all your recruitment management needs into one unified web-based software application that can be used by any business that recruits (including recruitment specialists).

Rosepad is an education platform for secondary schools.

Register for Dogpatch Labs Office Hours: Wednesday March 31st

The next Dogpatch Labs San Francisco office hours will be Wednesday March 31st from 9:00 - 11:00am. Office hours are informal and a good opportunity to meet, tour Dogpatch and interact with other residents / entrepreneurs. If attending, please grab your free ticket on Eventbrite!

Where: Dogpatch Labs at Pier 38 in San Francisco (Townsend and Embarcadero) What: Office Hours When: March 31st at 9-11am Who: Ryan Spoon (Polaris Venture Partners) and various Dogpatch residents + office hours attendees

Polaris is Excited to Back Formspring.me

Yesterday, Formspring (http://www.formspring.me) announced a $2.5m Series A investment that was led by Baseline Ventures and FreeStyle Capital. Polaris is excited to also participate alongside a slew of terrific angel investors: Ron Conway’s SV Angels, Maples Investments, Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital, Kevin Rose, Travis Kalanick, Dave Morin and Scott Dorsey. Formspring is a social Q&A platform that makes it very simple to ask questions and receive answers from targeted users. Through Facebook Connect and Twitter , answers arrive almost instantly; and thanks to Formspring's large network, users and answers are highly targeted. The combination of:

- a simple user-experience - a clear consumer impulse (questions / answers) - that delivers immediate gratification - in a viral and social way

... has translated into significant growth. Since their November 25th launch, Formspring now reaches over 44m users and had over 300m questions answered. For a taste of their size, search for Formpsring.me on Twitter ... you will notice 100s of posts each minute:

Whether you are looking for creative direction or seeking input on a specific topic, I encourage you to give Formspring a spin.

More reading: VCMike: Why Polaris is Backing Formspring

Introducing Stickybits

Very excited to welcome Stickybits to the Polaris portfolio and to Dogpatch Labs (both New York and San Francisco). Founded by both Billy Chasen and Seth Goldestein, Stickybits are unique bar codes that can be attached to physical objects and read / shared with mobile devices. You can print off barcodes at Stickybits.com or order a booklet of stickers on Amazon.

How do Stickybits work? 1. Place the sticker on something (like a card or a flyer) 2. Scan the sticker with the free iPhone and Android apps 3. Attach digital "bits" to it (video, photo, music, etc)

The creative possibilities are endless and, when it officially launches at South-by-Southwest next week, we are all excited to see what users come up with. Here is a relatively uncreative example in action: I attached a Stickybit to my laptop - you can scan this specific barcode to see a photo and video of it... or to add bits yourself:

More about Stickybits and the launch: TechCrunch:The Secret Lives Of Objects: StickyBits Turn Barcodes Into Personal Message Boards Peter Flint: Introducing Stickybits DogpatchLabs.com: The Launch of Stickybits

A 'matchbook' of Stickybits (order yours on Amazon!)

Stickybits.com: Register, Login, Track & Share

The New York Tech Scene, Dogpatch Labs Featured in NYTimes

Today's New York Times had a great, thorough piece profiling New York's active and growing tech scene: "New York Isn’t Silicon Valley. That’s Why They Like It."

The article describes various signs of activity: - events: New York Tech Meet Up - companies: Foursquare, Vimeo, Hot Potato - investors: Polaris Ventures, NYC Seed, Union Square - universities (as hubs of entrepreneurship): Columbia, NYU - and inclubators: featuring Dogpatch Labs New York

Some of the more interesting breeding grounds in the city are technology incubators that nurture and mentor young companies. One example is the new Manhattan arm of Dogpatch Labs, which is backed by Polaris Venture Partners, an investment firm in the Boston area.

Dogpatch, which opened in January, offers start-ups a place to work, rent-free, for several months, along with the possibility of securing an investment down the line.

Socks, crumpled pieces of paper, scribbled-upon white boards and empty beef jerky packages are scattered around Dogpatch’s roomy office. “It’s been called a frat house for geeks,” says Peter Flint, a partner at Polaris who spends several days each week in the New York office.

“There is a lot of excitement and interest budding in New York,” he says. “And if we can help convince entrepreneurs to think about staying in New York versus going to Silicon Valley, then that’s a huge win.”

Currently, 13 companies are housed in the space, including Postling, the newest spawn of the founders and early employees of Etsy. Locals cite Etsy, an online shopping bazaar specializing in handmade crafts, as one of New York’s shining start-up success stories, along with DoubleClick; TheLadders, a jobs search site; and the Gilt Groupe.

“There wasn’t anything like this in New York when Etsy started,” said Chris Maguire, a co-founder of both Postling and Etsy. “We worked out of our apartments for the first few years.”

I was able to spend time last week in New York and was struck by the vibrancy of the community, the entrepreneurs and of Dogpatch - which features a collection of outstanding thinkers and companies. With Dogpatch Labs NY, we at Polaris obviously believe that New York is an important and growing center of entrepreneurship. In addition to my home-base of San Francisco and our Cambridge Dogpatch Labs, I look forward to spending more time in New York and to helping drive collaboration among the 100+ entrepreneurs across all three locations.

Introducing Living Proof Full (Late!)

A late announcement as this launched earlier in the year... but Polaris portfolio company Living Proof has introduced a new product: Full. It is Living Proof's second product line, following the success of No Frizz. Full is a thickening cream that uses MIT-grown science to transform flat, lifeless hair into beautiful, naturally full hair: "Full is a lightweight formula that features Poly Beta Amino Ester-1, a new technology invented by our scientists that creates a micro-pattern of thickening points on each strand."

You can find Full on LivingProof.com and at Sephora (both online and in stores). In fact, Sephora storefronts currently feature Living Proof's Full.... very prominently! If you are out shopping this weekend, I encourage you to stop by your local Sephora and take a look at Full:

A Sephora storefront featuring Full:

Full featured on LivingProof.com:

More reading: - About Full - How to use Full - About Living Proof - The Living Proof Blog - Living Proof on Facebook and Twitter

And a variety of spotlights from Sephora, Sephora.com and their newsletters: