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nextNY Feedback Forum
About Us
The Feedback Forum is a monthly gathering of NYC entrepreneurs and technology-based startups or businesses in the NY metro area.
We work with young companies who are facing critical operational decisions, providing a small (9-12ppl), non-public forum where ideas can be shared and critiqued honestly in a 60-75m discussion.
We exist because, outside of startup/VC boardrooms, few people have access to the real-world problems confronting entrepreneurs "in their own words." Giving entrepreneurs access to a trusted, non-public forum where they can share information candidly creates a learning opportunity which can benefit the broader NYC entrepreneur community.
Our meetings are small but open, however our agenda is not. Please be aware that these sessions are for focusing on, and learning from, the issues presented by our guest entrepreneurs.
We provide pizza and beverages thanks to the generosity of our host, Rose Tech Ventures.
We meet in Manhattan from 7-9PM on the last Monday of each month (excepting holidays).
If you are interested in joining our invitations mailing list, please contact Jonah Keegan at DENSHI AT GMAIL DOT COM.
Alumni
SimpleDine.com
Chris McAleenan, founder of SimpleDine, an online restaurant delivery service in Grand Rapids, Michigan, spoke about the challenges and opportunities of outside investment. What can a capital infusion do for your growth strategy, and what should you be thinking about before you take the cash? We also discussed the execution challenges in the online food delivery space, and various strategies for success.
Rocktail Drinks
Founder Jonathan Hudson demoed his company's new product, the Slingshot, a portable gelatin-based single-serve alcholic beverage, aka "jello shot," which they are launching in mid-2007. We discussed pricing, marketing and regulatory issues pertaining to the upcoming launch.
xynoMedia Technology
Lena West, the founder of xynoMedia Technology, presented "a proven ebusiness/internet/web 2.0 strategies to give companies a 'fighting chance' online..." She had success implementing various media/communications technologies piecemeal, and wanted feedback on structuring a comprehensive solution as a service offering for her consultancy. We provided feedback on the language and service/product descriptions for her demo, as well as thoughts on positioning and managing the sales cycle.
JAR Group
A.J. Lawrence, President of the Brooklyn Search Marketing Firm The Jar Group presented a handful of issues surrounding the challenge of smart growth:
- How do you manage relationships when your work as a secondary agency starts to equal/eclipse the work of a client's primary agency?
- How do you continue to attract, identify and retain the right talent?
- When partners see their roles changing in the face of growth, what sort of reevaluation is appropriate?
introPLAY
introPLAY is a sports and fitness community where users can track workouts in 89 different sports and activities, participate in fantasy sports-like exercise competitions and interact with the wider community at www.introplay.com. The site recently launched and now faces a series of challenges to build its user base and establish its revenue model.
- introPLAY has to prioritize its goals between various capital projects given very limited resources(spend money on marketing/PR, additional services, design, etc?).
- Another key issue is positioning in the marketplace. How does the company balance between positioning among the sports, fitness, weight loss, health and fantasy sports segments?
- Finally, how does a startup get the attention of larger companies to discuss partnership opportunities?
Anil Doshi, founder of introPLAY, has spanned a number of financial and operational roles at financial services firms and startups. Most recently, he was an analyst at Ahab Capital Management, a hedge fund where he focused on special situation investment opportunities. He also worked at Vencast, a startup that raised capital for private equity and hedge funds, and Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette. Anil graduated from Dartmouth with an A.B. in Economics and Government.
Lincoln Voters
Scott Jeffrey is a political software entrepreneur and youth activist.
Jeffrey founded Lincoln Voters in May 2005. The flagship product is a voter database management application geared to petitioning and Get-Out-The-Vote drives for political campaigns.
Lincoln released its second product at the end of 2006, repurposing the original application to manage voter registration and PAC registration for labor unions.
Scott is looking for funding and wondering how best to position the value he's built with Lincoln Voters, in his words:
"The problem I'm having is that I'm looking for funding but Lincoln is in a middle ground between business and philanthropy. I would be a Social Entrepreneur but politics is too dirty for people looking to invest in the environment, education, health, etc. even with my 'I get youth to vote' angle."
Jeffrey is a 38-year-old software developer and native New Yorker. He grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn and attended Midwood High School, a magnet public school in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. He graduated from Princeton University, class of 1989, with a Bachelor's Degree in Astrophysics, and moved to the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Red Hen Spectra
http://www.redhenspectra.com:3000/
Prof. Sanford Dickert is one of the founders of Red Hen Spectra. RHS is building a platform to unlock value in chemical spectra by increasing identification efficiency through a database-driven web-service and an online community for industry professionals.
RHS's goal is "community curation" - essentially a community managed spectral database - where experts determine the spectra and which compound it matches. The intent is to build ownership amongst the users of the database. Additionally, we will support intellectual property ownership - where creators of the spectra are identified and rewarded over time.
Challenges facing RHS:
- How do we get the chemical community to share their knowledge?
- How do we get community members involved in curation? Similar efforts have yet to get traction.
- How do we make money, when the equipment manufacturers are not interested in getting involved in the project?
- How do we find other markets for this collaborative curation platform?
Sanford Dickert is a cutting-edge technologist. Product Strategy Evangelist. Social Media Marketeer. Democratic Campaign Consultant. Systems Engineering and Dance Instructor. With deep knowledge in technology and system dynamics, Sanford applies basic engineering principles to all sorts of problems - whether in business, operations, marketing, engineering, or sales - and solves them. Previous work includes telecoms (IP and VoIP), mobile services, web applications, software development, social media marketing and production, online community management, infrastructure consulting, and various roles in Democratic politics.
Paradox Optimization Technologies
http://www.stage.paradox-software.com/
Paradox has built process optimization software based on proprietary algorithms for the manufacturing industry, and is looking to apply their technology to an interesting problem in the online world: keyword optimization for online search advertising.
They are looking for ideas on:
- How to deploy worldwide online in the most secure environment so that major companies will feel fully comfortable with the security of their data
- Building a reliable, responsive and cost effective customer service infrastructure
- Media/Advertising and Internet Media applications of the Paradox Optimization engine
- Contacts and introductions at Yahoo, Google and other media companies
- Contacts in manufacturing (plastics injection and blow molding, and other manufacturing), life sciences companies and potential financial and strategic partners to support major sales and marketing thrust.
Paradox Optimization Technologies
Background Information
Paradox Optimization Technologies is deploying a market ready Optimization Platform/Engine with multiple vertical applications in large potential market segments: manufacturing, advertising/media, life sciences and, financial services.
The manufacturing vertical application, called Paradox Manufacturing Wizard, can be customized for specific industry segments. For instance, an injection and blow molding module for the plastics industry (a $345 billion market) is completed and being used successful by companies. Companies, including the subsidiary of a $900 million dollars a year pharmaceutical company, are achieving up 20% productivity increase/cycle time reduction, which is very significant in manufacturing.
Media/Advertising/Internet Applications
In media/advertising, internet search advertising is very lucrative but very competitive. Google, Yahoo.etc.. and advertising agencies and their clients are seeking cost effective ways to optimize their ad campaign process by designing and testing in vitro various variables/alternatives ad campaigns and only spending money to test market the most promising ones.
The Paradox Optimization Engine can be customized to provide the flexibility to optimize search advertising and other ad campaigns/media processes.
Paradox Optimization Technologies has designed a breakthrough Optimization Engine, with the Paradox Optimization Design (POD) embedded, that can optimize up to 11 variables simultaneously rather that comparing and testing two variables at a time. The end result is finding the optimized set points, the sweet spot, not only for each variable individually for the system as a whole, leading to significant productivity/efficiency/quality gains and cost savings.
Co-Founders of Paradox Optimization Technologies
The two Co-Founders are Roland Nelson and Louis Difo. Mr. Nelson is a Professional Engineer with software development and extensive manufacturing experience. He is the original software architect of Paradox.
Louis Difo '73 is a magna cum laude Engineering graduate from Princeton University.
Louis is a former senior executive of Chase Manhattan Bank ( JP Morgan Chase) with corporate, institutional, international finance, strategy and business development experience, including P&L responsibility. As Vice President for Strategy and Marketing, he helped build and implement strategies for a nationwide business that went from $300 million to $2 billion in three years. Louis is the architect of business strategy and of the EBITDA productivity/efficiency/ quality multiplier concept for the Paradox Optimization Technologies.
BricaBox
BricaBox trying to produce a totally new kind of web publishing platform. Taking lessons from blogs and wikis and creating a dynamic and (hopefully) easy to use community CMS designed for thousands of people to collaborate and mash-up their content on their own websites.
The first version is launching November 8th and will allow anyone (anyone in the beta program, that is) to launch websites around "semi-structured" content. This means that anyone wanting to create their own directory, restaurant or media review website, rich-media archive (hey podcasters!), or community zeitgeist can do that on BricaBox, all while taking advantage of the web's most powerful APIs, like Google Maps, Compete.com's Web Analytics API, the Technorati API, and more.
Issues we want to discuss:
- Usability. This is for the UI/UX/design gurus. We want this to be as usable as the best blogs and wikis. How do we give "normal people" access to APIs and keep it understandable?
- APIs and Features. Okay code-geniuses, which APIs should we be trying to incorporate? What do you think about our use of AJAX? Would you have used Ruby on Rails or PHP (we went with Ruby).
- Market and Demand. Hey "business guys and gals," do you see the same market here that we do? Who can get the most value out of this product? How do you rate our decisions, like having a single user-base and giving away a free version of the product?
Bios:
Nate Westheimer is the CEO. He's been working with National Public Broadcasting as the Technology Strategist for a while. He's been working on the BricaBox concept for about a year, and before that he was an Analyst for InvestorCom, a stock surveillance firm on Wall Street. At Brandeis University, Nate was the President and Station Manager of BrandeisTV, the student-lead TV station. In 2004 he developed a new format for college/community TV which involved early implementation of IPTV and other technologies. His blog is at innonate.com
Kyle Bragger is the CTO. Kyle's experience lies in both design and code. Before joining BricaBox in the Summer of 2007, Kyle worked with a major web publisher located in NYC. There, he worked on a data-mining project, managed the implementation of new community features registering millions of monthly hits, and created a custom caching system designed for high-performance and high-security websites. Kyle has also worked with local design firm MultiPod and ran his own freelance shop, Trndy, LLC. His tumblog is at kylebragger.com
PeerDecision
PeerDecision is a community focused on all aspects of the college application process. Users post a profile and have the community vote if he or she will be accepted to specific colleges. Additional features include an interactive forum, user submitted wiki pages throughout the site, and an application cycle management system to streamline the application process. The target population is college bound students, parents, high school guidance counselors and college admissions officers. The site has launched and progressed through beta testing. The current focus is on recruiting a core user base before a mass launch.
Issues:
- We are struggling with different ways to penetrate the high school market. We cannot mass solicit without a core group of active users which provide real value.
- Our site offers many features but nothing stands out as our core feature. How do we select and focus on a feature that will improve our user recruiting?
- Our core developers are spread throughout 12 time zones and are full time students. What are some suggestions on managing a virtual company and motivating unpaid developers?
Bios:
Jack Po:
Jack is the CEO at PeerDecision. Jack graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering with a concentration in Computer Science and a M.A. in Mathematics. At his day job, he is a BME PhD student at Columbia University working on protein folding. He is very actively involved in mathematical education at the high school level. He serves as the assistant coach for the New York City Math Team, as an advisor to the Baltimore County Math League and Math Team, and a member of the AMC advisory panel for the Mathematical Association of America. He is also an adjunct faculty at the City College of New York and currently serves on the board of director for the New York Math Circle.
Edward Chan:
Ed is the marketing and biz dev guy at PeerDecision. In his day job, he is the analyst for the Medical Solutions Fund at Siemens Venture Capital where he performs research on various market sectors, evaluates and sources deals, and works to develop portfolio companies. He is a Board Observer at MD Datacor and is actively involved with the following portfolio companies: China Diagnostics, U-Systems, and Cylex. Prior to joining SVC, Edward worked as a Business Analyst at Capital One in Virginia and performed equity research at Legg Mason in Baltimore. Edward also had experience in developing medical devices and working at a venture backed startup. Edward graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering, with a concentration in Computer Engineering.
Cupid's Lab
Cupid's Lab is an early stage startup building an online social network focused on creating a trusted and fun environment for online dating. Launched as a social experiment among friends, Cupid's Lab opened its doors to the public in 2007 with their premier matchmaking application that lets friends play cupid for one another. Since launching the site the team has been faced with critical challenges.
Issues:
- When functionality and value depend on an active user base, what are the challenges of building a community that will encourage interaction and participation while gating spammers, predators, and other questionable users from the service.
- Online dating is a VERY competitive industry where the top players spend large amounts of money on advertising and lead generation. How does a bootstrapped endeavor stand to compete in this industry through partnerships and grassroot methods for executing regionally focused marketing?
- Exploring touchpoints and circles of engagement to broaded our service by empowering active users in a way that encourages participation by passive users.
Bios:
Tobin Schwaiger-Hastanan, co-founder of Cupid’s Lab, is a software engineer with over 14 years of experience building enterprise and Internet applications. Tobin is currently a freelance developer for MTV Networks where he is re-architecting Nickelodeon’s Go City Kids community site. He has also worked at FOX Interactive Media and MLB Advanced Media, where he architected the e-commerce system behind MLB.com’s digital subscription and download service.
Jevaun Howell, co-founder of Cupid's Lab, is an artist and multimedia designer. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, he received a B.A. in Communication Design and minors in Film, Digital Imaging, and Business Administration. He is currently employed as the Design Director for Major League Baseball, working on rich internet applications and new media initiatives.
CenterNetworks
http://www.centernetworks.com/
CenterNetworks is an industry resource covering Web 2.0 and Social Media with a heavy emphasis for NY-based companies. Content includes news, reviews, industry insights and analysis, interviews and conference coverage.
Issues:
- Methods to get more visibility for CenterNetworks in NYC tech scene.
- Monetization ideas.
- Ways to get the community more engaged on the site.
- Event ideas.
Bio:
Allen Stern graduated in 1995 with a Bachelors in Accounting and went to work at a medium-sized accounting firm. He was nicknamed "Dos Man" because I handled all of the networking and computers. In the mid-90s, he made the jump to a large agency called CKS (aka MarchFirst). There, he worked on the agency's largest accounts including Citibank (built their first credit card web site!), Clinique, IBM, Wimbledon and AIG (their first web site). Absolutely loved that time as people coined me, "The CPS" which stands for "Creative Problem Solver". It was also during this time that I built (with a friend) HTMLCenter. During the early years it was considered one of the top 5 web development help sites.
In 1998, he moved to Atlanta and joined Georgia-Pacific. He became responsible for the public facing web sites (about 16 or so). He moved through the ranks to become the eMarketing Manager, and completed his MBA at Georgia State University.
CN began initially as a hub for my "center" sites. After we transitioned the various sites into HTMLCenter, it sat idle. I re-started CN in Sept 2006 because, frankly, it was time for a new view. My background is very diverse moving from finance to technology to marketing and that background allows me to look at Web topics with a different viewpoint. I love web analytics and site optimization and consult with a variety of clients with their Internet marketing needs.
Baffld
Baffld is a new community-generated advice site focused on love and romance -- something like Yahoo Answers meets Dear Abby. Visitors to the site ask personal questions, and then the community writes responses and votes on answers. Having recently launched, the site faces a range of questions, including:
Issues:
- What's the best approach to advertising -- google adsense, direct ad sales, Double Click or Glam Media (or some combination)?
- Should we focus on building out Baffld's feature set or launching Rattld, a comparable site for new parents?
- What's the best strategy for building a user base?
Bio:
Baffld's creator, Emily Weil, used to work on Wall Street, analyzing stocks, where the data was not quite as romantic. She has an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA from Brown University. Prior to business school she worked as a software engineer.
MediaMerx
MediaMerx has developed a low-cost, turn-key broadband video solution specifically tailored for Telcos and ISPs in emerging markets: Latin America, Asia, Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Our platform is designed to deliver high quality video over broadband to markets that suffer from international bandwidth bottlenecks. Through our platform, ISPs can create customized video players, source content from around the web, add local content and license premium content. The best part is that it is a pure ASP system, so there is nothing to install and no additional hardware to purchase to get started. It is affordable, scalable and it offers several revenue opportunities as well as major cost savings for all parties involved.
Issues:
- How do we efficiently develop the three areas of our business in parallel: product development, content (free, Tier 2, Tier 1) and distribution (software licensing)?
Product development is led by our CTO, a few consultants and a team in India. Our VP of Content is sourcing Tier 1 media. Consultants from Tilzy.tv source Tier 2 media.
- How do we create a global sales capability on a startup budget of about $100K?
This capability may comprise of resellers, telco agents and a direct sales force focused on six markets: Brasil, India, Russia, Africa, Israel and the Philippines.
- How do we secure strategic financing that will help scale the venture into an international media marketplace?
Our CEO is preparing a VC effort for a $5MM raise. A significant obstacle is finding the right audience; MediaMerx is an international, prerevenue, complex venture.
Bio:
Michael Hallinan is the COO of MediaMerx and has a background in technology, systems integration and international development.
As a Captain in the Marine Corps, Michael has six years of experience planning, installing and operating over 20 voice, data, and satellite networks in Australia, Kenya, Kuwait, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Iraq and Hurricane Katrina ravaged parts of the US. Prior to the Marine Corps, Michael founded Student Media Group, which distributed student media nationally for companies such as AT&T and Citibank. Michael holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs from Georgetown University.
UpNext
UpNext creates 3D cities for local search and discovery online. UpNext cityscapes are interactive and dynamic allowing users to explore their location easily and quickly.
Issues:
- Marketing – focus on bring people into the destination site or push forward with an API
- Expansion – more cities or a better New York
- Demo of some new features that we are looking to get some feedback on
Bios:
Danny Moon
Danny is the CEO and co-founder of UpNext. Prior to UpNext he was a consultant in San Francisco and spent some time on Wall Street as a research associate. He received him MBA from Columbia University and his BA from UC Berkeley (Go Bears!).
Vik Advani
Vik is the CTO and co-founder of UpNext. Prior to UpNext, Vik worked in the video game industry as a software engineer for Savage Entertainment. He worked on games such as He Man and 007: Rogue Agent. He also worked for IBM and BizBuyer prior to entering the gaming industry. Vik received his BA from UCLA in computer science.
Unype
Unype is a meta-social-network where you can meet users:
- from ALL social networks
- in real locations of the world
- in real-time
- for free and without any downloads.
Unype is a location-based social application that is integrated into Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Bebo, Ning, Orkut, Friendster, Plaxo, Twitter, iPhone, Android and Unype.com.
Unype integrates all social networks and 'many' location-based services into one easy-to-use environment: a one stop shop to:
- meet people
- find a house or a hotel
- find discounts
- publish your location from your mobile phone, twitter or the web
- see what your friends publish immediately
- see where your friends are and communicate with them
- synchronize your calendar with friends
- see good things around you
- read news, see events etc.
Unype is live. Over 100,000 users from many different social networks are using it as of June, 2008.
Issues:
- Positioning?
- Global userbase, multiple revenue models?
- Funding or targeting early revenue generation?
Bios:
Murat Aktihanoglu
Unype Inc. was founded by Murat Aktihanoglu (M.S.CompSci) in 2007. Before founding Unype Inc., Mr. Aktihanoglu started Holoscape Inc. in 1999 and before that he was a technical lead at Silicon Graphics Inc's Cosmo Software division, working on the most popular to-date 3D internet browser, Cosmo Player. He brings more than 20 years of computer graphics, application design and research experience. He has served on the Technical Advisory Board of the Web3D Consortium and was one of the designers of X3D. He has worked on various 3D immersive web platforms, mainly Cosmo Player, Blendo and Emma3D.
He has also started another startup (TheNextWeb) in 1999, building a similar product to Unype, which successfully produced the first working prototypes of users surfing the internet in a multi-user environment where they could share media assets and communicate. Mr. Aktihanoglu has served as a founding consultant to many startups (including Improv, Sonicbox, Atair, Plaxo, CoolIris) to establish their engineering infrastructures and software development methodologies. He has managed engineering teams at Silicon Graphics in Mountain View and Sony Corporation in Tokyo, Japan.
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