At South-by-Southwest on Monday March 15th? Join a list of great folks at the Skip Intro party at 8pm at the Cedar St. Courtyard. It is hosted by Brizzly (Polaris portfolio company), Foursquare and Katalyst. It is also sponsored by Dogpatch Labs, Stickybits, Dailybooth, Mobile Roadie and Citizennet. Hope to see you there!
You can follow Skip Intro on Twitter.
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
When discussing marketing and product strategies, I sometimes come across as a broken record! One of things I preach is the power of change. A button's color, an ad's call to action, or the placement of a marketing module can each have a profound impact on user interaction. Of course, the only way to understand is to test... and the only way to effectively test is to have proper tracking place (don't yet? try KISSmetrics). Here is yet another example of a relatively minor change that has had very significant impact. It should serve as motivation for web and product marketers to test, trial and iterate.
Facebook recently added a post-logout promotion for the Facebook iPhone app. Nothing fancy... and nothing that required real engineering effort:
The effect: in under a week, Facebook iPhone usage soared by 20% in under a week:
A handful of recruiting-related blog posts were published over the weekend; and whether you are hiring or interviewing, these are important reads.
First, in "Recruiting High Impact Employees", Peter Flint of Polaris Ventures gives a list of questions to ask when hiring. Before joining Polaris, Peter spent several years at Ramsey Beirne Associates and is an expert in building senior management teams for early stage venture backed companies. Peter provides a detailed check list of important questions (attention job seekers: prepare for these!). Here are a few: - Strengths and Weaknesses analysis: Delve deep and follow up any generalized comments by asking for examples. Also get specific examples of failures and successes. Everyone wants to give you just the strengths. - If the candidate is being considered for a more senior role than he has played before, what challenges will he/she face? - Ability to hire well: Get examples. full list here
From a job seekers' and perspective, both Jason Antman and provide advice on crafting job reqs to specifically attract engineers. The two most interesting takeaways:
1. Engineers should write the technical specs... and be very specific about critical skills and nice-to-haves. 2. Pay as much attention to the non-technical specs as the technical. Describe the job, the team and work environment, etc.
According to both bloggers, the majority of engineering ads fail these two bullets.
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.
Vitaminwater has introduced its newest flavor: Vitaminwater Connect (named after Facebook Connect)... and they are giving away 100,000 free bottles of Connect to their 1.2 million Facebook fans. If you remember, over the last few months, Vitaminwater ran a major Facebook campaign that allowed fans to create their own flavors and vote on the best concoctions: "made by fans, for fans on Facebook":
The announced flavor is Vitaminwater Connect... which will arrive in stores shortly and carry the Facebook logo on it:
As it prepares to hit shelves, Vitaminwater is giving away free bottles to the first 100,000 Facebook fans who request one. Users request their free bottle via their fan page and the coupon "tab":
Once you request the bottle, two interesting things happen:
1. you are encouraged to share your discovery to your Facebook friends... which is how I found this offer
2. you receive a confirmation page that also changes the fan page's logo to denote that you have accepted the offer (notice the "request accepted" portion of the graphic)
As we have seen time and time again, people love offers, samples and customized 'stuff' (product, content, etc). With the Connect flavor campaign, Vitaminwater has effectively crowdsourced the flavor, marketing and launch.
Hurry and get your free bottle by becoming a fan at http://www.facebook.com/vitaminwater
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:
This morning, Apple has announced that wifi-equipped iPads will be available starting April 3rd and pre-orders begin March 12th for online and in-store purchase. 3G iPads will be available in "late April":
Internet marketers used to optimize for the "first page" - in other words, being one of the top ten natural search results. While there was declining value with each search position, you could still derive significant traffic from lower positions. But as Google gets smarter and more sophisticated - the search page gets more and more crowded.... which significantly heightens the importance / impact of high rankings... and weakens the value of lower positions. Think about how Google's search results have gotten more crowded. Depending on the query and category, search results pages now include a mix of: photos, news clippings, product data, stock quotes, Twitter mentions, mp3 tracks, etc. SERPs have become more crowded, more colorful and - sometimes - distracting.
While the SERPs have changed dramatically and impacted traditional SEO, it also represents an opportunity for other creative traffic drivers. I have written about the SEO benefit of Facebook and Twitter, but there is significant, proven opportunity around photo, blogging, product and xml optimization.
Below are two screenshots of a newsworthy query (CJ Spiller - NFL Combine standout) and a product query (Tag Heuer). Notice how much of the SERP is not traditional "organic" results.
