StrayBoots CEO Discusse...

Very rarely do we see gaming startups launch on the rather limited platform of SMS. Mobile games are all about the graphics, the functionality, and the ability to leverage the very best of technology through an app. But StrayBoots , a real-world scavenger hunt via text, has managed to generate $200,000 in revenue over the past 12 months, with nearly 50,000 paying customers. Oh, and did I mention that it’s all through SMS? The margins must be incredible, considering that CEO Avi Millman explained that each two- to three-hour scavenger hunt costs the user between $6 and $12 and it’s currently only available on one phone per game. The company also has deals in place with Time Out, Serious Eats, MyCityWay, and Leisure Pass North America, wherein the partnerships will create co-branded nightlife and food games that are to be promoted by both parties. It works rather simply: just go to the StrayBoots website and choose a city and a game category, like restaurants or museums. You’ll then be emailed a code for your game, and once you’re in the specified starting point, just text the code in to StrayBoots. You can go at whatever pace you’d like, and play on a team, against a team, or by yourself. The game currently supports walking tours in the following cities: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Washington D.C., Seattle, Boston, Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Portland, San Diego, and the U.K. iOS and Android apps are in the works.

From Disrupt NY To A Mu...

They  raised $11.45 million , acquired a company called Sensobi, and were themselves  acquired by Skype  for a price that was likely well north of $43 million . There may not be a wilder tale of a Disrupt success (though plenty of startups would beg to differ), which is why we’ve chosen GroupMe to kick off a series I’m doing on “Disrupt Startups: Where They Are Now.” We sat down earlier today to chat with co-founders Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci to find out their perspective on Disrupt as a launchpad. Try as I might to snip down the interview, the whole thing is basically gold. GroupMe is one of many Disrupt alumni startups that we’ll be looking at over the next week and a half, so stay tuned for more “Where They Are Now” posts. And if you’re interested in checking out Disrupt and/or the Hackathon yourself, tickets are still on sale here and info on the Hackathon can be found here . Companies itching to join the Battleground can apply for the last remaining spots in Startup Alley . You can find the full agenda here. Here’s that interview I promised: TechCrunch: Tell me how this all started. GroupMe: We were at the first Disrupt Hackathon in New York. We had group SMS working on Twilio’s API. You could add people to the group using commands on SMS, or you can use an HTML5 webapp. The only problem was that you had to know numbers and type them in. I mean, it kind of sucked. But we added in an offers tab, and in the demo we were talking about the LOST series finale. In the top corner, when you clicked on the offers tab, it took you straight to an actual ad for half-price if you check out the LOST series finale event at Brooklyn Bowl. We basically demoed that we had a working group chat with a functional business model. Back then it was called Groop.ly. We had investors interested right on the floor of Disrupt, and we ended up talking about fundraising. TC: So if you had to quantify it, how would you say that Disrupt affected your company? GroupMe: 100 percent. We probably wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Disrupt. I had won a Hackathon that was an internal contest at Gilt Group, but what was really interesting and intriguing was the chance to build something and show it on a real stage. We had the idea a couple days before, and after we decided to go in we found it was a massive springboard for acceleration and growth. TC: So, were you guys the first to do group messaging? GroupMe: People had tried to do it for a long time, even 10 years before us. But we kind of nailed it at the right time and the right place. The service was ripe for adoption once we got the ability to interact with the address book. Mobile had really taking off and with access to the address book, the timing was right to go to the next level. TC: What’s changed since then? GroupMe: Honestly, there hasn’t been a ton of change when you’re looking from a very high vantage point. When we think about why we were doing Groop.ly back then, not much has changed from that night at the Hackathon. We were talking about how we can turn Groop.ly into a business and how we would quit our jobs the next week. A lot of those initial thoughts from that night were right on point. We wanted people to be able to speak with groups that are important to them, buy better, and get together in the real life better. You can still see us executing things we talked about that very first night. At the same time, a lot has changed from then. We built a company, built a big team, sold the company. But we’re still trying to accomplish the things we’ve dreamed of on day one. We had a whole discussion on how we can rapidly iterate, and we continue to build an awesome company culture with that great seed as our core. We stay true to why we were building our product and how we were getting it done. TC: Do you think that being a part of Disrupt gave you a better platform with the media in general? GroupMe: We think it’s a great story to tell. It was a fortunate sequence of events, fun and relatable. It’s actually a bit of a fairy tale. The fact that this happened at a Hackathon, the TechCrunch Hackathon no less, made it something very easy to talk about and compelling and fun to tell a story about. It’s an even more fun story to hear. People were aware that we had built it at a Hackathon and they wanted to know how things were going. We kept up our relationship with TechCrunch and Disrupt and went back to later Disrupts and participated in the Hackathon again. That’s where we built our sponsored groups feature. We launched it the very next day on stage. But it really was the perfect case of timing. TC: What are your future plans? GroupMe: We can’t talk too much about that, but we’ve been cooking up some fun features but if you stay tuned you’ll see what we mean. TC: Would you recommend Disrupt for other startups? GroupMe: We think Hackathons in general have become crowded places. What we saw is people going in having the same idea. But the Disrupt Hackathon is fun, whether you want to build something or learn it’s a great place to be. Disrupt in general is getting a lot of visibility for startups, and it has this huge impact on getting mind share, which we think is really important. The Hackathon and Disrupt are great ways to network and meet people, whether you’re focused or having fun. We aren’t the only ones to come out of the Hackathon with a successful business, but what’s great about it is that you can just test out your ideas without much to lose. Once you’ve done that, Disrupt is for visibility. TC: What have you been up to since the acquisition? GroupMe: We love the culture we have here. Skype wants to foster that and let it grow. We’re working with them on some pretty awesome stuff. It’s been a great process so far. We’re happy and they’re happy and it’s a great thing. TC: What advice would you give to Hackers and young entrepreneurs in general? GroupMe: Think about it, but don’t put a lot of pressure on building a company in 24 hours. You should just go and have fun meeting great people and really take advantage of the fact that it’s a big stage. Don’t try to build too much. It’s hard to focus and get stuff done, but all we wanted was to get to a certain proof of concept. So try to get there and have fun doing it. Stay focused if you can, and think of a goal. Past that, all you have to do is meet the goal you entered with. But you’re also trying to learn new tools and test things out. If we hadn’t finished Groop.ly we wouldn’t have been upset. We were there to push ourselves. TC: OK guys, last question. I see a lot of beer at the Hackathon, and I see a lot of Red Bull. What would you recommend as the perfect sustenance. GroupMe: There are two options. A mix of 2/3 Red Bull and 1/3 beer, or a lot of coffee and water.

Surprisingly Simple Ard...

If you’ve always wanted to try to build an Arduino project, this may be a great way to start. Matt Williamson built a tiny, Arduino-based motion sensor that will SMS you when something moves by your desk or into a room. It’s completely open source and the notifications system runs on your PC thanks to a simple Python script. Why is this interesting? Well it only requires 67 lines of code to perform something quite useful and the hardware is very easy to build as it uses pre-made boards and a little plastic container to store the motion-sensing components. It’s no automatic robot lawnmower or AI-based hovercraft, but it’s still pretty cool. Project Page

Badabing Badaboom – Bad...

With ‘social discovery’ all the rage with apps like Highlight, Banjo and Glancee attracting attention during this year’s SXSW it’s easy to forget there are players out there which have been doing this a tad longer. Badoo de-cloaked as a social network in London a few years ago with ‘discovery’ very much at its core, but with a twist – it encouraged people to promote themselves, sometimes with payment. Where Facebook concentrated on linking up with existing friends and friends of friends, Badoo was literally oriented towards you meeting new people all the time, and for others to push themselves out there. That gave it an obvious flirtatious feel, making it a quasi-dating site which happens to use a different method for getting people to pay. But it’s appealed to a lot of people. And I mean a lot. Currently on 149.8 million users, some time today that will tick over to hit 150 million, given it clocks around 150,000 a day. That makes it one of the top five social networking sites globally according to comScore, and its growth is being significantly powered by mobile (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and WAP worldwide). In the U.S. market it’s seeing more new registrations on mobile than on Web, with 68% of new users coming to the site via mobile over the past six months. A health check to these figures is that while mobile is starting to surpass web in the U.S., the global averages would be much lower of course. Mobile usage has grown by 100% since November 2011, and Badoo says is it more than doubling mobile revenues. The fact that it is monetizing mobile may be of interest to Facebook, which seems to have a terrible time on this front – a third of Facebook’s traffic is mobile but it’s not monetised. Then again, it is over five times bigger. Badoo’s iPhone app which comes with in-app payments designed to boost your popularity with packs of credits. You literally pay to become more popular and get more visibility in the network. In-app payments are a gift to Badoo, which in the early days used premium SMS as a way for users to supercharge their visibility on the network. U.S. growth is also being powered by mobile and according to app tracker Distimo Badoo’s Android app is now one of the top 10 most popular apps (No. 7) for social networking, up from 35 in November 2011, while its iPhone app is now a top 25 social networking app, up from No. 60 late last year. AppAnnie says Badoo is regularly a top 5 grossing iPhone app. Badoo says it is growing in New York (where Badoo just launched its first advertising campaign ), Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and other cities. This is helped by a marketing campaign that they are running in the U.S. right now – the first time they’ve ever done anything proactive like that. The company has released some further numbers to us exclusively, verified by comScore. These indicate that Badoo has seen over 60% growth year on year with 35 million active users per month worldwide, adding 150,000 new users a day. While Southern Europe and Latin America continue to show strong growth, the U.S., UK, Germany and Russia are growing fast. Badoo was usually strong in Russia and Latin America, but the addition of these developed markets shows Facebook isn’t satisfying everyone’s needs by any stretch. Badoo is still in profit and has an annual run rate of $150 million. It’s also winning big hitters such as former Google executive Benjamin Ling who was recently appointed Chief Operating Officer. Andrey Andreev, founder of Badoo, has a different view on social networking to Zuckerberg, who obsesses over sharing. Badoo, says Andreev, is about making it “as easy as possible to bring people together, so they can chat, make friends, date and have fun. And there is a massive opportunity to do this on a global scale.” And he has big supporters out there. Shervin Pishevar, Menlo Ventures comments: “Badoo is proof there is a huge global opportunity, and appetite, for using social and mobile tools to connect with new people. And for those tools to work at scale. Importantly, they make the experience fun, easy and fast, so it’s incredibly compelling to a mainstream audience.” Loïc Le Meur, CEO of LeWeb, says “Badoo’s viral spread from Europe to Latin America, and now to the US, shows the amazing potential of Europe’s tech scene.” Badabing Badoo, huh.

Engrade Grabs $3M From ...

As a high school student in 2003, Bri Holt found himself increasingly frustrated by the fact that there was no easy way for he and his classmates to view their grades online. So, being familiar with the wizardry of web development, Holt decided to build his own, laying the foundations for what would become Engrade . While Holt went on to other projects, over the next seven-odd years, his simple, free online gradebook slowly found increasing, organic adoption among teachers. In 2010, Holt returned to Engrade, brought in some help, and over the next 18 months, focused on turning the education tool into a more robust, enterprise education platform. To help it scale, the startup is now ready to take on venture funding, announcing yesterday that it has closed a $3 million round of seed funding, led by Rethink Education, along with participation from the non-profit, education-focused venture fund, NewSchools , which counts John Doerr as a board member, and individual investors including co-founder of Wireless Generation (one of edtech’s largest exits — to News Corp. for about $360M) Greg Gunn , Zac Zeitlin , and Richard Chino . Since 2003, Engrade has grown its user base to 4.5 million teachers, admins, parents, and students in all 50 states, and 150 countries, with institutional customers that include the New York City Department of Education and KIPP Charter Schools. Based on Engrade’s adoption, it’s clear that there’s a high demand for simple web-based gradebooks — as well as evidence of the little-known fact that teachers can be active early adopters. Of course, for a free web app, teacher adoption doesn’t necessarily translate into a sustainable business. If your company is driven by a mission that purports to make those very teachers’ lives easier, you don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you. Plus, teachers often don’t have discretionary spending from schools, so they end up paying for new technology out of their own pockets. In other words, this isn’t the best business model. Instead, Holt tells us, Engrade has turned to schools and districts to generate revenue, which generally speaking, have much more sizable budgets for purchasing ed software. Engrade uses, like so many other software startups, a freemium model. Users start off with the free product, but for schools with 100+ students looking to use the platform, the startup offers EngradePlus , starting at $600, and scaling up from there based on the number of students. To attract institutions and districts to its enterprise-grade features, the startups has added an array of features, which includes attendance, discipline, and parent-teacher conference tracking, score messaging, standardized test score analysis, report card printing, parent email and SMS alerts, an API for integrating with existing software, and admin-level reporting, among others. With its new funding, Holt says, the team is now looking to tackle one of the biggest problems to plague schools: They are producing a huge amount of data, but that data is spread across a fragmented group of learning management, grading, and tracking services. Teachers may use one service for grade tracking, and another for test scores. To combat this, Engrade is moving to integrate each segment of data into one centralized platform and make it accessible for teachers, students, parents, and third-parties via its API. Today, Engrade is tracking over 1 billion student data points, from grades to attendance and test scores. The goal is to be enable all those who make educational decisions, in each part of the chain, to have better access to the information through which they can identify problems earlier, which students are absent, at risk, etc. As it gears up for further expansion and sales efforts, the startup is also announcing two new additions to its leadership. Dr. Steven Paine, the former superintendent of schools in West Virginia, is joining Engrade as Chief Academic Officer, and Julie Huston joins as SVP of Sales. Huston is formerly the EVP of Global Sales for Archipelago Learning . While Engrade has been around longer than most and has the benefit of a sizable user base, there’s plenty of competition afoot. There’s JupiterGrades , ThinkWave , and venture-backed free gradebook and lesson planner, LearnBoost . Read Leena’s initial coverage here. [Disclosure: My significant other works for LearnBoost.] There are also a slew of Student Information Systems and Learning Management Systems that offer gradebooks as part of their services, like Spiral Universe , for example. But with a workable, easy-to-use free option to bring teachers in, and a robust enterprise-grade platform to lock in paying schools and districts, Engrade thinks it’s onto a winning model. For more, check out Engrade at home here , and let us know what you think.