Saygent Launches In-App...

Apple’s Siri has been transforming how people interact with their phones. It taught us that it’s not just OK to talk to our phones, but that, in many cases, it’s actually a more useful way to get things done. Along those same lines, a company called Saygent is launching a mobile feedback solution which developers can insert into their application to collect feedback from the app’s users. Available as an SDK for easy integration, the toolkit can be used within any type of application. But Saygent is specifically targeting the emerging mobile wallet space to start. The idea with mSay, as it’s being called, is that mobile wallet providers (think, companies like Visa, MasterCard, Google Wallet, Intuit, etc.) could use Saygent’s solution to collect instant feedback about the merchant immediately following a mobile payment/mobile wallet transaction. The app’s developers – that is, the mobile wallet providers – can integrate the mSay in-app voice feedback solution into their app and then configure the types of questions the app would prompt users to answer, as well as when and where they would appear (e.g., pre- or post-checkout, on a product page, etc.). Some app makers may also want to make it so that consumers can launch the feedback option at any time. In a real-world scenario, you can imagine how a consumer might launch the app to give feedback about the service at a restaurant, or tell a clothing retailer that they were unable to find a dress in the right size or color. Or maybe they just had trouble using the app itself, and had run into bugs. “All they have to do is push a button and talk to the app, like they’re using Siri, and say whatever’s on their mind,” says Saygent creator Guy Hirsch. “And then our technology collects that feedback and analyzes it.” The interesting thing about Saygent’s solution, explains Hirsch, is that on the backend, the system can process the feedback, including what was said as well as the sentiment behind the words (angry, happy, etc.) and then route that response to the correct department for handling. That means a bug report or feature request about the mobile wallet may be directed to the app’s dev team or product manger, but a customer’s response would be sent over to the merchant instead. In addition to routing the voice messages appropriately, the system also provides metrics surrounding what customers are saying. Hirsch says mobile wallets are the perfect venue for the mSay technology. “We know you just purchased something,” he says, “so you might have something to say. And it’s critical for merchants and retailers to know that in near real-time, so if you had an issue they could take care of it right away.” (You know, before you post how pissed off you are on Twitter and Facebook.) The company is currently in talks with several mobile wallet makers now and plans to announce partnerships soon. Although Hirsch couldn’t disclose more details, it would make sense that one potential client could be Intuit. Given that Intuit is already a customer of Saygent’s other solutions in its online products, and is a notable player in the mobile payments space, it makes for a good fit. As for the revenue model, it will be on a per-response basis. An app maker gets 50 responses upon signing up in order to try it out, then pays 99 cents per response afterwards. There’s also a money-back guarantee on each response – if it’s not useful (spam, someone talking nonsense, or whatever else), the app publisher can flag it and not have to pay. San Mateo-based Saygent raised $1 million in seed funding from  500 Startups ,  Innovation Endeavors ,  Juvo Capital ,  Kapor Capital ,  Kima Ventures , Orefa Investment, PG Ventures,  Ty Danco  and  Matthew Grodin , in May 2011.

The Story Behind Paymen...

Editor’s note:  This guest post is written by  Derek Andersen , who is the founder of  StartupGrind and  Vaporware Labs , and is a former entertainment development manager at Electronic Arts. Paypal created a cost effective way to safely accept payments 10 years ago, but the web has changed dramatically and accepting payments has not. Enter Stripe, a company that in my opinion is going to get very influential over the next few years. At  a recent Startup Grind event  I interviewed 24-year old Irish co-founder Patrick Collison who has raised $18MM from Sequoia Capital and others. Patrick is leading a company poised to completely disrupt the online payment industry starting with your website. Background Patrick has the most valuable of  Valley technology  skillsets. He’s a technical prodigy having won numerous prestigious awards including Ireland’s  41st Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in 2005 , a national science competition which boasts hundreds of submissions each year from the country’s brightest young scientists. But he also has the personality and presence to be a leader and CEO.  His two brothers are equally impressive.  John  is one of Stripe’s co-founders not to mention a Harvard dropout and one of the first engineers at Auctomatic. His youngest brother,  Tommy , is a teenage blogger and writer that probably has more Twitter followers than most of us. Y Combinator and Paul Graham Patrick holds the distinction of literally being the face of Y Combinator. He’s the skinny red headed guy you see on the front of their website. While attending MIT at age 18, he and his brother decided to build a better version of eBay. After applying to YC they merged with Kulveer and Harjeet Taggar to build Auctomatic. They moved to an apartment in San Francisco, raised angel funding, and went to work. After launching and getting initial user traction,  the company was acquired  by Live Current Media and the founders moved to Vancouver to build the product. From start to finish the company’s pre-acquisition life span was just 10-months. Stripe was also eventually funded by YC. Patrick said that YC’s founder network is one of its most valuable assets. “Having all these other people building startups and having them want to help us because we were a fellow YC company, that was super valuable for us.” He added that perhaps the greatest advantage to YC is that,  “Paul and the (other) partners are just really smart. There is no question that they are very top tier.” Because of the sheer quantity of deals and companies that they interact with combined with those smarts, they’re able to offer both specific and strategic feedback that is second to none. What makes Paul special? According to Patrick, Paul Graham is able to make surprising ideas and connections that other investors and advisors simply aren’t able to make. What isn’t Paul Graham so good at? Patrick says, “He’s not good at feigning interest.” Solving Hard Problems  “The most striking example I know of schlep blindness is  Stripe , or rather Stripe’s idea. For over a decade, every hacker who’d ever had to process payments online knew how painful the experience was. Thousands of people must have known about this problem. And yet when they started startups, they decided to build recipe sites, or aggregators for local events. Why? Why work on problems few care much about and no one will pay for, when you could fix one of the most important components of the world’s infrastructure? Because schlep blindness prevented people from even considering the idea of fixing payments. 
 Probably no one who applied to Y Combinator to work on a recipe site began by asking “should we fix payments, or build a recipe site?” and chose the recipe site. Though the idea of fixing payments was right there in plain sight, they never saw it, because their unconscious mind shrank from the complications involved.” - Paul Graham,  SchlepBlindness . John and Patrick first started working on Stripe in early 2010.  The inspiration came when Patrick, who was working on a few side projects, kept complaining about how difficult it was to accept payments on the web.  The two quickly developed a simple solution and within 2-weeks they had processed their first transaction.  Over the next 6-months they showed it to friends, watched people interact with it, and iterated as fast as they could. In the beginning they weren’t sure how big the market was or whether they could accomplish their goal of addressing issues like fraud and non-US payments in a user-friendly way.  They originally partnered with a payments company, but quickly realized that the only way to control the entire experience was to control all aspects of the process. That’s when they brought everything in house. By the fall of 2010, Stripe had become their full-time jobs.  They thought about bootstrapping it, as they had to that point, but soon realized that as a payment startup they would need the kind of institutional credibility that only a top-notch investor could provide. “Even Turkeys Can Fly In A High Wind” Stripe’s most  requested feature  is to expand beyond the United States, which is something he assured me they’re working on. The team also recently moved from Palo Alto to San Francisco to accommodate their rapid expansion. To date the company’s growth has been completely organic. Before they publicly launched last fall they had more than 1,000 developers on a waiting list and have grown almost exclusively by positive word of mouth. For those wondering why they haven’t heard of Stripe, it’s because true to Steve Blank’s Customer Development process, they have planned to turn on the marketing as soon as they were sure the product was right. Quoting from a Kleiner Perkins founder Eugene Kleiner saying, “Even turkeys can fly in a high wind.”  Watch the full interview here .

Sure, Draw Something. J...

Pictures of the Prophet Mohammad have always been a highly contentious issue — they’re not explicitly prohibited in the Qu’ran but many Sunni Muslims forbid the idea, while others do not seem to mind as much. Among the latter group are those who feel that banning such images is a restriction on freedom of expression. The issue at the center of the Pakistan-blocks-Twitter story today has been reported to be around a viral activist campaign that’s been running for the past few years to point attention to this. But as with the actual blocking of Twitter itself in Pakistan — there has been no official Pakistani government statement about what is actually behind the current Twitter block at the moment (here is a screenshot of an  alleged email ordering the block to ISPs  with no specific reason behind it) – it’s hard to pin down exactly what content was actually sent around that caused the block in the first place. And at least one group is raising the question of whether this blockage could be related to the government testing an image filtering service — something with wider-ranging implications. A Prophet-drawing campaign started on Facebook in 2010 with a specific page, Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, created in response to the TV show South Park getting some heat for depicting the Prophet. The EDMD page was eventually taken down; but not before resulting in a temporary Facebook block in Pakistan. This year, according to  Wikipedia , EDMD was specifically geared at sending pictures around via Twitter, to protest the arrest of Saudi poet/journalist Hamza Kashgari for writing “insulting” tweets about the Prophet. However, there are a number of Facebook pages that come up when one searches for “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” — not clear whether any of these are “official.” And at least one Pakistani blogger/activist (and, yes, dentist) Awab Alvi has raised the point that there may be no direct blasphemy accusation involved today at all. In a blog post Alvi explains: Ever since the reports emerged we have asked affected users to help  test the site  from their ISP connections and within minutes we had hundreds of reports  The traceroute shows a very interesting fact, the block is at the DNS level, the url is not resolving right from the get go… My gutt [sic] feeling is that PTA is just testing their URL Filtering system, we had reports of them testing some image servers on facebook last week, and it disappeared by the evening. PTA choose Sunday to avoid any legal backlash exploiting the courts day off…. …The civil society has to its credit  a stay order on the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority  preventing them from blocking websites obtained on 19th April 2012 which can be used against them. Once they get through these testing days I am sure it can be later used as and when needed. Though the argument presented by PTA is that it needs this technology to crack down on Terrorism related issue, but one may never know when it can be used for political censorship Regardless of what is really behind today’s Twitter block, the issue of not being able to easily access the social network clearly touches on a sensitive point in Pakistan around freedom of expression: watch #twitterban to see how people in Pakistan and elsewhere are responding to the story. We have contacted the Ministry, Facebook and Twitter to try to get more information on this.

Marketing Lessons Start...

Editor’s note:  This is a guest post by Neil Patel, co-founder of  KISSmetrics  and blogger at  QuickSprout.com . You may have seen it by now… Google’s concept video about its new Project Glass . These glasses will do what your smart phone will do only without having to hold anything…you actually see your options at the side of your view. You can get directions, send and receive texts, make calls, schedule tasks and even share your view with another person. It’s a really exciting idea…especially if you love technology. But the actual product is easily years out from becoming a reality. Was Google wise to release an idea so early ? And should startups do the same? Concept videos give you constructive criticism At this stage Project Glass is nothing but a video…and may not be a reality for a long time. Augmented reality experts point out that there are huge hurdles the Google has to overcome . So why did Google unveil so early? It all boils down to the fact that they wanted feedback on the product. Google wanted to learn the good and bad things people had to say about the glasses. The video currently has gotten over 15 million views which suggests that there is a lot of curiosity in the product… but not necessarily interested buyers. It’s just like when Drew Houston released his Dropbox video . There was no coding…just a screen cast of how Dropbox would work. While Dropbox was certainly fishing for feedback on how to improve its product more importantly it was looking for how many people would adopt and use it. The Digg community responded : But more importantly, there were thousands of people who signed up to be notified for the release of the actual product on the first day of the video’s release. And then thousands more after that. Clearly Drew learned that there was a huge need out there that DropBox could fulfill. Concept videos gauge interest You’ll more than likely get in-depth comments from the innovators and early adopters . The early and late majority will typically just vote up or down on it. While the input from the first group is critical for building a better product…hearing from the second group is critical to knowing if you are creating a product that will have mass adoption. But don’t get discouraged if you only hear from the first group during the first round of your prototype video. While keeping costs low, make the suggested changes from the first group to the product and then release a second video. However, if you don’t hear from the second group the second time around…then you may have a product that nobody wants. Concept videos build your brand Another reason for doing a concept video is to make your company look like it’s a company that is on the cutting edge and is doing cool things in secret. The concept video is a powerful marketing strategy for companies that have long production time tables between products…like cars or iPads. Apple will release concept videos like this one on the iPad 3 that keep people in anticipation of the real product. Otherwise they may fade into background and no longer seem like the cool technology company it is. This is also why Google released their concept video. Remember, however, that this strategy doesn’t always work with small businesses. It’s a lot more risky for a startup to engage in a concept video if the technology is years out from entering the market. The startup without an established reputation or brand is better off just building a superior product behind closed doors . A concept video that gets a poor reception could easily sink their reputation. When should a start up use a concept video? A concept video is a great idea for a start up when two conditions are met: You can keep costs down – Google’s Project Glass video is a high-quality production that probably costs thousands to produce from the sheer man hours alone. Your video doesn’t have to be that slick. Drew Houston achieved his results with something a whole heck of a lot cheaper. You want feedback from focus group – If you are a startup building a killer product behind closed doors you will definitely at some point want to get feedback from real live users and learn from their suggestions . You can do this with a concept video that you only share in private. This will protect you from pre-mature scrutiny from the public. Make sure though you use testers who you trust and can be confident they won’t leak your product early. So how do you create a successful concept video? Here are some tips. Involve the viewers In my opinion the genius of the Google Glasses concept video was in that it shows you exactly what the product could do for you by putting the viewer into the lead role of the video. From the start of the video the camera moves around like it is you looking out from these glasses. This is a great example of allowing someone to demo a product without actually having the product! Highlight the benefits of the features The basic purpose of a concept video is to show potential users how its features will make the life of the user better. This means you have to give examples of ways your product can make the user smarter, more efficient or happier. The DropBox video gave tons of examples on stuff people could store. But then it went on to give scenarios of how DropBox could be used to solve common storage problems people have. Isolate the new features If you have an existing product like the iPad…then how can a concept video help you? In this case most people will be familiar with the general features of the product. What Apple’s concept video needed to do was show off the new features. This could be done without any narration as the action communicated clearly what a person could do with new features like connecting two iPads together, a holograph display of movies and an augmented reality keyboard. Tell a story Another reason the Google video was a success is that it told a story. It was a simple story of a day in someone’s life. It showed him eating breakfast, trying to catch the subway, meeting a friend for coffee and playing the ukulele for his girlfriend…and how Google Glasses was involved the whole time. That narrative…and how seamless Google Glasses fit into that narrative…keeps you glued to the screen! It’s critical to understand that your product must fit seamlessly into the story. If it feels crammed or out of place then this approach won’t work. Create a mechanism to capture leads Finally, if you are going to create a concept video then you need to create a way to capture the leads that you generate, which usually involves driving them to a unique landing page… This is what I think was Google’s biggest failure. They missed…and are missing…an opportunity to capture something like 14 million possible leads of interest. If anything by capturing leads with a basic field that allows someone to join a list of updates on Project Glass will help them to see how many potential customers there are, which would give you quantifiable data to determine if it will be a profitable market. For the startup who doesn’t have the financial resources that a Google has this is an absolute must. Create a mechanism to capture an email address. Final thoughts The concept video is a wonderful marketing tool on some many levels. However, it may not be the best approach for every start up. You need to evaluate your needs, your resources and what you are trying to accomplishing before jumping in with both feet. However, if and when you do decide, I truly believe that it’s a great way to help you save money and reputation…leading to a killer product in the end! What other advantages are there to using a concept video?

ClarityRay Battles Ad B...

Some of you are probably reading this post with ad blocker right now — and to be honest, I don’t blame you. Sure, there’s the occasional amusing or genuinely useful ad, but not terribly often, so why not install a plugin and avoid the whole mess? Of course, those ads make money, so if ad blockers become widespread enough, it could be a real problem for online publishers (who have enough problems already). Israeli startup ClarityRay says it’s not something looming in the misty future — it’s happening now, and it’s only going to get worse. In a recent study, the company claims to have looked at “over 100 million impressions across several top-tier publishers in the US and Europe” finding that 9.26 percent of all impressions were blocked. The likelihood that someone is using an ad blocker varies significantly by browser — Firefox users are the most likely to use a blocker, followed by Safari (the desktop version) and then Chrome. The report goes on: The combined market share of Chrome and Firefox is only increasing. Moreover, the great popularity of ad-blockers points to a strong public need; as awareness increases, a free, widely available solution that is one-click away on every platform is bound to increase its consumer adoption. It is, therefore, our estimate that ad-blocking will double within 20 months. The company’s logic, at least as presented here, didn’t quite convince me that ad blocking will double, but I’m not debating the larger points. Naturally, ClarityRay is offering a solution. “We believe ad-blocking today is a lot like how pirate MP3′s were before iTunes: they point to a valid consumer need, but do so in an unsustainable manner business wise,” says co-founder and CEO Ido Yablonka. In other words, Yablonka wants to provide an alternative that addresses the complaints of the “ad intolerant” while allowing publishers to make money. To that end, the company offers two complementary products — one that bypasses ad blockers, and another that allows publishers to offer subscriptions for an ad-free version of the site. So if you’ve installed and ad blocker and you visit a ClarityRay customer, you’ll still see a single ad, Yablonka says. Don’t want to see it? Then pay. At the same time, Yablonka acknowledges that each publisher has its own audience and its own needs, and he says ClarityRay customizes the program for customer based on crowd analysis. Even though the company hasn’t received much coverage from the press, Yablonka says it’s already live with several large publishers, totaling 1 million unique monthly visitors. (I’ve asked him to point me to a customer site that we can see the technology in action, and I’ll update if he does.) ClarityRay has also raised $500,000 in funding from Saar Wilf, who sold his company Fraud Sciences to eBay for $169 million, and is now serving as the company’s chairman.