Posts Tagged "business"

• YouSendIt lands new CEO with Brad Garlinghouse

  Hots News
  

  Former AOL executive Brad Garlinghouse will join cloud storage and file-sharing company YouSendIt at its new CEO, the company announced today.

  Garlinghouse will replace Ivan Koon, who served as YouSendIt’s CEO for six years. Garlinghouse was formerly AOL’s head of AOL’s Silicon Valley division and before that served as CEO of DialPad, which was acquired by Yahoo.

  YouSendIt wants to be a major cloud storage player for businesses, but it will have to slug it out with Box, Egnyte, Accellion, and now Google with its Drive cloud storage product.

  “YouSendIt is a rare gem — it has quietly built the leading business in this space by focusing on execution,” Garlinghouse said, in a statement. “Used within a whopping 98% of the Fortune 500 and with more than 30 million registered users — the company is well positioned to continue its dramatic growth. YouSendIt has already demonstrated a track record of solid financial growth. I’m proud to lead YouSendIt into this next phase.”

  Campbell, Calif.-based YouSendIt currently has 585,000 paid subscribers out of its 30 million users. The company says it generated a record revenue in 2011 and that it was up 61 percent year-over-year.

  Filed under: cloud

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• The Top 10 Russian internet entrepreneurs you need to know about

  Hots News
  

  Russia is now the largest internet market in Europe, with more than 55 million online users. Russian internet market leaders, Yandex and London-listed Mail.ru Group, both reported a year-over-year revenue growth of 50 percent for the first quarter of 2012.

  The Russian market is growing at a supersonic rate and provides excellent exit opportunites for investors in Russian online ventures to create a brand-new breed of Russian internet entrepreneur.

  So who are the trailblazers to watch in this new web frontier? Yankov Sadchikov, Russian startup blogger at Quintura.com, talks us through the hottest Russian entrepreneurs to watch right now…

  Oskar Hartmann, founder and CEO, KupiVIP.ru

  After launching online shopping club KupiVIP.ru in fall 2008, the Russian-German Oskar Hartmann added an e-commerce platform for Russian retailers and launched online fashion store ShopTime.

  In Russian online shopping, KupiVIP is growing bigger than established brand OZON.ru by racking $200 million revenues last year. In 2010, Hartmann partnered with the French businessman Pascal Clément to set up a Moscow-based internet business incubator, Fast Lane Ventures, which has already started eighteen internet businesses to date, of which two were already exited.

  Marina Kolesnik, founder and CEO, Oktogo.ru

  Following a consulting career at McKinsey and management role at DataArt, where she headed complex software development projects, Marina Kolesnik has leveraged her Harvard MBA to launch her own online venture Oktogo.ru two years ago. Since then, Marina raised $15 million in venture capital from European and Russian investors to make Oktogo.ru into Russia’s leading online hotel booking and travel site or “Booking.com of Russia”.

  Pavel Cherkashin, co-founder, Krible and Kuznech

  Having been Russian manager for Adobe and Siebel as well as Microsoft Russia’s general manager of consumer and online businesses, Pavel Cherkashin made a number of angel investments in online businesses in Russia. He now works for his investee companies: online customer support service Krible and image search Kuznech as well as helping other investees: online video site Tvigle.ru and mobile advertising network AdWired.

  Alisa Chumachenko, founder and CEO, Game Insight

  In online gaming, marketing is key. The former head of marketing at Astrum Online, which was merged into Mail.ru Group in 2008, Chumachenko started her own  social game publisher and developer Game Insight in late 2009. In 2011, she moved into mobile gaming to make Game Insight one of the leading gaming companies on Android.

  Albert Popkov, founder, Sravni.ru

  Popkov capitalised on the social networking boom in Russia. Back in 2006, he launched the social network company Odnoklassniki.ru. He then raised funding from DST and sold his startup to it later. Odnoklassniki, which is part of Mail.ru Group, has some 25 million monthly users. In 2009, Albert launched consumer banking comparison site Sravni.ru, which is now the leader in its category.

  Yulia Mitrovich, Entrepreneur in Residence, Svyaznoy Group

  A graduate of the University of British Columbia, Mitrovich was a McKinsey consultant before going to Web Media Group in Moscow to head its online video site Zoomby.ru.

  In 2012 Mitrovich joined Svyaznoy Group, the leading mobile phone retailer in Russia, as Entrepreneur in Residence. No surprise, Svyaznoy founder Maxim Nogotkov was named Russia’s Entrepreneur of The Year 2010 by Ernst & Young.

  Igor Matsanyuk, founder, IMI.VC

  If the internet incubators are the new black, then mobile-focused business accelerators are the new, new black. Entrepreneur-turned-VC Matsanyuk has made a fortune by cashing out shares in Mail.ru Group during its IPO in late 2010.

  One year before, he merged his online gaming company Astrum Online Entertainment into Mail.ru. Igor currently seeds mobile startups viaFarminers business incubator and own investment company IMI.VC.

  Elena Masolova, co-founder and CEO, Pixonic

  The Higher School of Economics graduate, Masolova co-founded the AddVenture seed-stage fund in Moscow in 2008 and was a founding member of coupon site Darberry, which became Groupon Russia. She currently heads social gaming company Pixonic, a portfolio company of AddVenture. She also eager to make angel investments in online startups and lead them later.

  Anna Znamenskaya, founder, Workingmama

  Following a ten-year executive career including CEO of Digital Access (online video portal ivi.ru), Rambler‘s commercial director and B2B Media CEO, Znamenskaya has ventured into entrepreneurship with her own online project for mothers, Workingmama.ru in late 2011. She is also receiving Master in Digital Marketing from Instituto de Empresa in Madrid this year.

  Olga Steidl, partner, dots’n‘spaces

  The St. Petersburg State University graduate Steidl has headed marketing at mobile software maker SPB Software before it was acquired by Yandex last November. After a short stint withYandex, she has settled in Zurich to help mobile startups via dots’n’spaces and organize mobile industry events. Steidl is also startup CEO herself and mentor at Seedcamp where Yandex recently invested.

  FURTHER READING

  The Top 10 Russian Internet Startups Exclusive interview with Marina Kolesnik

  This article originally appeared on Venture Village, one of VentureBeat’s editorial partners.

  Filed under: Entrepreneur, VentureBeat

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• 7 ways BYOD will boost your business

  Hots News
  

  If you haven’t already heard of the bring-your-own-device trend, then get ready, because you’re going to be hearing more and more about it over the coming year. What’s more, this trend isn’t just a matter of employees wanting to use their own tablets and smartphones at work; they want to bring the social apps they’re familiar with into the enterprise too.

  The result of this merging of business and consumer applications is a new class of general and vertical apps that are as social as they are powerful. These new applications are increasingly easy to use, collaborative, and based in the cloud.

  While IT managers may cringe each time they hear “can you help me connect my iPad to the company server,” here are 10 reasons businesses should embrace the consumerization of IT.

  1. Real-time communication In their personal lives, people are becoming more and more accustomed to web-based communication channels outside of email. When people are used to FaceTime, chat, and instant messaging at home, the act of sending an email to a vendor, or even sending a fax to a lawyer, seems like an artifact from a different, and far slower, era. If I can chat with my friends on Facebook, why can’t I interact with co-workers on our CRM system? Why I can’t I have a secure instant message session with my lawyer?

  The socialization of enterprise applications gives workers, clients, colleagues, customers, and vendors better tools to communicate in real time. These tighter communication loops should ultimately drive key performance goals for any business, including employee productivity, operational efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

  2. Greater accessibility While traditional enterprise systems trap data in a single location, the cloud makes applications and business data available to more users on more devices in more locations. For employees, this can be a game changer, as the information they need is right at their fingertips – whether they’re at a client location, on route to a meeting, at home, or on vacation.

  3. End-user buy-in Ultimately the success of any technology initiative hinges on the ability to convince employees to actually use the software, device, or process. When employees clamor to bring their own tools into the workplace, there’s no risk that a new tool will sit idly by.  Throwing employees in front of a stodgy application is hardly a recipe for success. Rather, end users are more likely to use those tools that evoke the same look and feel of their friendly social networks and consumer apps.

  4. Shorter end-user learning curve A savvy workforce, familiar with its own favorite tools, can dive right into technology that leverages consumer elements in the corporate environment. Training costs go down, and employees can be productive with their new tools right out of the gate.

  5. Affordability Cloud-based applications shift the financial costs from the upfront capital expense of purchasing software licenses to an ongoing operating expense. When calculating the total cost of ownership, the benefits of cloud-based tools go beyond the cost of subscription vs. software seat to include: lower management costs, lower provisioning and upgrade hassles, and lower hardware costs. A 2009 report from Forrester Research concluded that Google Apps costs less than a third as much as on-premise email for equipping 15,000 employees with email.

  6. Security While data is often the chief concern holding businesses back from the cloud, web-hosted applications can actually increase data security, particularly for those small to mid-sized companies that don’t have proper in-house technical expertise or resources like a dedicated, lockable server room. In these cases, off-premise storage removes the company’s sensitive data from on-premise risks, such as access by cleaning staff, employee error, even physical threats like earthquake and fire.

  7. Productivity Consider for a moment who is behind the consumerization of IT. While Apple may benefit greatly as iPads and iPhones cross over to the enterprise, it’s the employee and not Apple who is pushing to use these devices for work. At the heart of this trend is the simple idea that employees know which tools can make their work day easier and, hopefully, happier.

  The key question to ask is: If employees are asking to use their own tools so they can be more productive in the office or catch up on work after hours, is that such a scary prospect?

  Jack Newton is CEO and co-founder of Clio, a Vancouver-based company that offers web-based practice management software for solo practitioners and small-to-medium sized law firms.

  [Top image credit: Goodluz/Shutterstock]

  Filed under: cloud, enterprise, mobile, social

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• Ustream is pissed about DDOS attack, may launch Russian site tomorrow

  Hots News
  

  Ustream is undergoing what chief executive Brad Hunstable says is the “largest and most coordinated DDOS attack Ustream has ever seen” today and the team is pissed. The attack is rumored to be an attempt to censor a Russian citizen journalist reporting on protests in the county.

  “We’re a business, we lost a lot money today,” said Hunstable (pictured above) in an interview with VentureBeat. “This was on a scale that I’m not sure many websites would be able to fight off. This was one of the biggest denial of service attacks on the Internet.”

  Live video of protests in Russia on Ustream’s homepage

  A denial of service attack is when an individual or group of individuals attempt to access a website at hyper speeds, clogging up the network and eventually bringing the tired website down. Hunstable and his Ustream team have dealt with two previous denial of service attacks pertaining to citizen journalists streaming video of protests in Russia since the reelection of President Vladimir Putin. The first two DDOS attacks, which occurred on December 6th 2011 and January 6th 2012, were not at the scale of today’s.

  Hunstable is not taking this lying down, however. Within the last hour (since the writing of this post) Ustream has finally come back up and the team is squarely featuring the Russian citizen journalist, ReggaMortis1, on its homepage. It’s a veritable “don’t mess with my users” move, which Hunstable (who mentioned he was a West Point graduate) says could turn into a full fledged Russian website tomorrow.

  “We’re going to huddle up late tonight and take a step back and figure out what we can do differently,” Hunstable said. “I told my guys, I want us to roll out a Russian Ustream tomorrow.”

  The team got a tip-off from a Russian user who revealed two names of suspected attackers. Riots have broken out across Russia. Putin, who was recently reelected to Russia’s leadership was inaugurated this past Monday.

  “We may not agree with what [all our users] have to say, but in my opinion everyone has the right to speak,” Hustable told us. “Today you could summarize that there was an attack on Internet freedom.”

  Brad Hunstable image via PoliticalActivityLaw.com/Flickr

  Filed under: VentureBeat

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• Why Andrew Mason is still wrong about Groupon’s prospects

  Hots News
  

  After an accounting restatement, a shuffling of its board of directors and Groupon’s stock falling to below 50% of its initial public offering price (and 66% off the high it reached on its first day of trading), Groupon CEO Andrew Mason wrote a letter to shareholders yesterday to try to swing the momentum back in the company’s favor. Although the stock jumped briefly, it dropped a little today.

  Mason uses phrases like “reinvent the multi-trillion-dollar local commerce ecosystem” to paint a rosy picture of Groupon’s future. He’s wrong. The company faces a long, tough road ahead. Here is my analysis of Mason’s comments:

  Mason claims that “Groupon is a marketing tool that connects consumers and merchants.” Actually, Groupon’s daily deals business tries to keep consumers from building relationships with merchants. Groupon (like other deal companies) does not provide consumer information to merchants. It’s in Groupon’s best interests to have merchants buy another Groupon rather than reach out to consumers directly through a free mechanism like email or Twitter.

  Personalization. Mason cites deal personalization and targeting as something Groupon is doing right. I still get emails for laser hair removal and hair straightening on a regular basis. The fact is that Groupon does not have enough data to do targeting. Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and American Express have substantially more data on users than Groupon does. I’m one of Groupon’s best customers (having purchased at least 20 Groupons), but that data is trivial compared to what Google has on me. The typical Groupon customer has only purchased one Groupon.

  Mobile. Mason refers to mobile adoption as an important potential success for Groupon. Here, I partly agree with him. Local commerce will be driven by mobile. But it also gets at one of the biggest flaws I see in Groupon’s path to date: The company spent hundred of millions of dollars on the wrong land grab. It built a giant, very expensive email list; that money should have been spent getting app installs. Now it’s having to spend money again to get the app installs.

  Groupon Now. Mason touts Groupon Now, but the numbers in his own letter disprove its success. Groupon Now has sold 1.5 million Groupons compared with 170 million overall in 2011, according to the letter. That is less than 1%. On a revenue basis, I would expect it to be even smaller because Groupon Now deals are frequently for restaurants, which have lower tickets. LivingSocial, which pioneered the real-time deals product that Groupon copied for Groupon Now, recently shut down its product to focus on better opportunities. There are many structural reasons why Groupon Now will not be a success in the near term. I’ll write about those in a future post.

  Groupon Rewards. It’s too soon to say how Groupon Rewards will perform. But it is an incredibly crowded space, with companies like Facebook, Foursquare, American Express, and Google all having their own offerings. (There are at least a dozen more.) Regardless, Rewards will have much smaller take rates than the daily deals business.

  Groupon Scheduler. It’s a competent, but not excellent product. (See my detailed review.) Getting merchants to adopt this service will be a challenge. Groupon will be competing with vertical players like OpenTable and MindBody that can provide a product that is much better suited to the needs of each type of merchant. Nearly two months after I called Groupon out on it, the company still hasn’t answered the question of who owns the data that merchants put into the system. If a merchant inputs all of its contacts and appointments, can Groupon use that data to sell competing services? Until Groupon answers that very basic question, I advise all merchants to stay away from this product. Yield management is a smart business strategy that small businesses should take advantage of; Groupon has yet to make a credible case that it is a trustworthy partner.

  Groupon seems to be chasing everything that moves without thinking things through. This isn’t surprising given that the company shot up to 11,000 employees (more than three times the number of people Facebook employs) without ever proving its original business model. It needs to focus on 3 or 4 products that it thinks will work, instead of trying everything and hoping it sticks.

  Its core business model is in trouble and the other opportunities it’s going after are hard businesses with lots of competitors. From Mason’s letter:

  Though our transformation from daily deal provider to local commerce platform will not happen overnight, in the coming quarters, we will release the products that we believe complete the foundation for our ecosystem. We look forward to sharing them soon.

  Local has always been an incredibly difficult problem. It doesn’t spin out overnight successes. The companies that have succeeded are relatively small. OpenTable is valued at $823 million. Constant Contact is valued at $679 million. Although the optics of the daily deals business and Groupon’s questionable accounting made it look like a huge success, Groupon will find that the new business lines it is trying to get into take a long time and are highly competitive.

  I stand by my estimate from last August when I told Emily Chang on Bloomberg West that Groupon is a $1-$2 billion company.

  Mason does have one ace in the hole: Given the company’s ownership structure, he doesn’t really have to care about what Wall Street thinks. He could choose to ignore the stock price and do the right things for the business. That might give the company a fighting chance.

  Filed under: VentureBeat

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• Andreessen Horowitz bets big on Belly, an offbeat consumer-loyalty startup

  Hots News
  

  What started as a quirky loyalty program at one Chicago comic hideaway has spread to 14,000 locations in nine months, and can now count on the loyalty of one of Silicon Valley’s hottest venture capital firms.

  Belly, a digital loyalty program for small businesses, today announced a $10 million round of funding, financed entirely by rapidly-rising Valley heavyweight Andreessen Horowitz.

  Belly is the maker of a small business- and consumer-friendly rewards system and universal loyalty card. For a monthly subscription fee, the Chicago-based startup tailors programs around store culture to create rewards. To simplify management, it issues each location an in-store iPad display. Customers can use their Belly card or the Belly mobile app to “scan-in” to locations, earn points for each visit, and view rewards.

  The rewards can sometimes be a bit unusual. For instance, at AllyCat Comics, the Chicago comic store where Belly got its start last August, a Belly customer who makes 50 purchases earns the opportunity to punch the owner in the gut.

  With a growing but still small presence in eight major markets, including the just-added metros of Boston and New York, Belly needs money for expansion. The extremely young company will use its new funding to expand to new cities, form new partnerships, and hire top-notch engineering talent, founder and CEO Logan LaHive told VentureBeat.

  Belly’s premise seems promising enough. Who actually wants to carry around loyalty cards? And aren’t rewards more fun when they encapsulate everything you love about a locale? The problem is trickier to solve in practice, however, and Belly’s current strength is less in its ability to be a universal loyalty card — support at 14,000 locations does not a universal system make — and more in its novelty. There’s something to be said for walking into your favorite boutique, scanning a barcode at an in-store iPad display, and finding out that you’re eligible for something fun.

  To date, Belly has attracted 200,000 active users who have checked-in via scan more than 800,000 times. The startup now sees roughly 10,000 store check-ins per day, LaHive said. But competition abounds, so Belly’s biggest challenge will be differentiating itself and finding mainstream audiences.

  Belly, which employs a team of 50, previously raised $2.87 million in funding, mostly from Lightbank. Jeff Jordan, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, former chairman and CEO of OpenTable, and former president of PayPal, is joining Belly’s board.

  In the video below, the owner of an Austin, Texas-based frozen yogurt store talks about how Belly has helped her business.

  Filed under: deals, mobile

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• Rovio makes a Mighty Eagle’s $68 million in profit in financial squawk

  Hots Technology
  

  It’s inspired artwork, sketch shows and even a Pomplamoose cover, but flinging feathery fowl is ultimately a serious business. Rovio has announced that in 2011, it made a huge $106.3 million turnover and a whopping $67.6 million in profit (before tax). Fueled by the success of Angry Birds, Seasons and Rio, the company grew by a factor of eight in the last year, from 28 employees all the way to 224. The company adds that the three games were downloaded 648 million times and are now used by 200 million daily users, while sales of merchandise contributed to around 30 percent of the total revenue. The report adds that the only barrier to future profits is if people stop buying new smartphones, but we’re not sure that’s likely to be the case for a while.

  Continue reading Rovio makes a Mighty Eagle’s $68 million in profit in financial squawk

  Rovio makes a Mighty Eagle’s $68 million in profit in financial squawk originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 May 2012 15:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• High school coder gets $3M for his gradebook software, 10 years later

  Hots News
  

  Classroom management software company Engrade has closed a $3 million funding round.

  Company founder Bri Holt developed an online gradebook in 2003, while he was still a high school student. While I was chasing boys and trying to pass algebra, Holt was developing software that would eventually lead to a business. He now serves as the chief technology expert for Engrade.

  What started as a simple gradebook has morphed into a full featured software suite with teacher-specific tools, such as seating charts, discipline tracking, and alerts for at-risk students. There are also parent-teacher communication tools, such as email reports and mass text messaging. School administrators can use Engrade to view teachers and their students’ progress in grades and classroom performance. At an even higher level, school boards are able to manage data from multiple schools and students with Engrade, keeping track of grade point averages, disciplinary problems, and test scores.

  Engrade has built up a track record with several school boards and private schools, including the New York City Department of Education, North Star Academy, and Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.

  Engrade isn’t alone in the online grading world by a long shot. Thinkwave, Common Goal Systems, and GradeConnect offer similar systems to track student performance. Engrade hopes to set itself apart by offering its services for free and making money off its premium offering, Engrade Plus which starts at $600 per year for 100 students.

  Rethink Education led the round, with NewSchools Venture Fund and private investors Greg Gunn, Zac Zeitlin, and Richard Chino. The company plans to expand its service and improve its tools with the funding.

  Student with laptop image via Shutterstock

  Filed under: deals, VentureBeat

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• Kanex unveils ATV Pro, gives VGA projectors the power of AirPlay mirroring

  Hots Technology
  

  If you wish you could use your legacy projector with your iPad for educational or business purposes, then crack a smile. Kanex has released the ATV Pro, a HDMI-to-VGA adapter that will allow older gear to get access to AirPlay mirroring. It’s designed to get iPads into the classroom and even offers a 3.5mm audio-out port for stereo sound. Its available from today and will set you back $60.

  Kanex unveils ATV Pro, gives VGA projectors the power of AirPlay mirroring originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 May 2012 01:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• South Korea opens up cellphone sales, networks wary of the ‘free market’

  Hots Technology
  

  South Korea’s Communications Commission is wresting control of the domestic cellphone market away from operators. From May 1st, it is opening the handset business open to any vendor, who will sell phones unlocked so consumers can decide their choice of network. The plan is aimed at lowering prices by introducing competition between the retailers — although some voices in the industry have expressed concerns that the operators will withdraw discounted offers in retaliation. Naturally, the KCC is determined to ensure a better deal for consumers, and is already strong-arming wayward networks into ensuring that doesn’t happen.

  South Korea opens up cellphone sales, networks wary of the ‘free market’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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