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Tuesday, January 7, 2014
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The founders of Doodle, which offers an online scheduling service for individuals and businesses, are leaving the Swiss startup they founded in 2008. According to a company blog post, Michael Näf and Paul E. Sevinç will step down during the next couple of months, to be replaced by Michael Brecht as new CEO as of 1st February. He’ll lead the company along with a management team consisting of current Doodle employees.


Co-inciding with a change of guard, Doodle is also announcing that Swiss publisher Tamedia plans to fully acquire the company “in 2014″, following its original purchase of a minority 49 percent stake in May 2011 that saw German VC firm Creathor Venture sell its share in the company.


At the time, it talked up synergies between the scheduling service and its online directory search.ch, giving Doodle a boost in its domestic market of Switzerland with regards the SME sector. Terms of the minority acquisition were undisclosed, and I wouldn’t expect any more transparency this time around, though we’ll update this post if we hear any different.


Operating out of Zurich, Switzerland, Doodle claims 15 users per-month. The service, which makes it easy for users, groups and businesses to schedule meeting or take appointments, comes in a free basic version as well as various premium offering. Meanwhile, Tamedia says it will invest in Doodle to further fuel its international growth.


New CEO Michael Brecht is said to have more than 20 years of experience in the IT and online sectors and has held several international positions, including Managing Director at Germany-based CompuNet where he responsible for building the UK business, founder of urbia.com, an online portal for families and children (acquired by media house Gruner & Jahr), and founder of 52weine.de, a shopping club for wine.







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The founders of Doodle , which offers an online scheduling service for individuals and businesses, are leaving the Swiss startup they founde...

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Kleiner Perkins is making a big push into product development and design. The firm just debuted its design and product engineering initiative, called KPCB ProductWorks. And Kleiner named former RISD President John Maeda as its first design partner. One of Maeda’s first initial roles is leading the design fellows program, which accepts applications for its second year in operation today.


We spoke with Maeda to hear more about the design fellows program, and his views on the rise of design in the technology world. “I wish it had been available when I was an undergrad,” he says of the fellowship, which matches promises design students with startups, providing mentorship, real experience and more. Launched in 2012, the Design Fellows program is a 3-month work-based program intended to give top design students exposure to working on design challenges at KPCB-funded start-ups such as Coursera, Flipboard, Klout, Nest, One Kings Lane, Opower, Shopkick, Square and Zaarly.


As part of the program, KPCB also created a “design council” to serve as mentors and leaders to the Design Fellows, as well as help other KPCB startups with design-focused initiatives, which is led by Kleiner partners Megan Quinn and Michael Abbott.


As Maeda explained to me, “As the world is maturing, design is how we differentiate technology…A few decades ago, the ability to make a website was a rare skill, but now so many can do this. We want something more that helps us connect the web to us. And designs plays this role…it’s a way of differentiation.”


He adds that he has seen the increasing trend of designers want to go move to technology as well. He writes in a blog post: “For design students, the entrepreneurial environment can be a strong fit. Designers are not afraid to get their hands dirty and to go deep in their work – exactly what a startup environment demands. The fluid structures and rigorous work ethic that can seem daunting to those of another mindset will feel like home to those with a creative bent. In my time as president of RISD, more than 70% of graduating students said they wanted to do something entrepreneurial after graduation.”


Maeda believes that beyond the experiences quotient, mentorship is one of the key aspects of the program that can make a difference for a designer, and his or her career.


“Most people think of design as making something pretty or cool,” Maeda tells me. “But design is about how something makes you feel, it’s a way of connecting with a product on an emotional level.”







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Kleiner Perkins is making a big push into product development and design. The firm just debuted its design and product engineering initiati...

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Amadeus, the world's largest travel reservation and ticketing system, handling bookings for 95 percent of flights worldwide, uses a variety of NoSQL databases to deal with the massive amounts of data that it handles. Amadeus enables 3.7 million bookings on more than 700 airlines, 110,000 hotel properties, and 30 rental car agencies each day. "NoSQL databases are part of our technology stack to deal with Big Data," said Dietmar Fauser, vice president of the architecture, quality and governance divisions for research and development at Amadeus.


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Amadeus, the world's largest travel reservation and ticketing system, handling bookings for 95 percent of flights worldwide, uses a va...

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Cozy, a startup aiming to make the rental process easier for landlords and tenants, is announcing that it has made its first acquisition — landlord advice site Landlordology.


The tools currently offered by Cozy include collecting rent online, managing payments from multiple roommates, and screening tenants. Landlordology, meanwhile, features a number of guides and advice-focused articles for landlords and property owners, “especially those with 50 rental units or less.” (Sample post: “10 Best Practices to Prevent Tenant Lawsuits.”) Its traffic has supposedly been increasing 20 to 30 percent every month since it launched in January 2012.


Cozy co-founder and CEO Gino Zahnd told me via email that Landlordology will continue to operate as a standalone site. Apparently it’s operated by one person, founder Lucas Hall, who will continue to run it and remain in Washington, D.C., while also become community manager at Cozy (which is based in Portland, Ore. and San Francisco). Of course, Zahnd said they’ll be looking at ways to integrate the two sites, too.


“We’ve been thinking about a ways to execute on the content side of things for a long time, and would’ve built this internally had we not forged a relationship with Lucas,” he added. “Joining forces with Landlordology makes so much sense: We’re fundamentally improving the building blocks of an industry for which great design has never been applied. Renting hasn’t really changed in centuries!”


The last time I wrote about Cozy, Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield had joined its board. At the time, Butterfield said that the startup’s biggest challenge would be distribution — namely, getting the word out among landlords. Acquiring Landlordology seems like one way to do that.







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Cozy , a startup aiming to make the rental process easier for landlords and tenants, is announcing that it has made its first acquisition — ...

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Fandango is announcing the first partnership that will see its movie ticketing capabilities embedded on Internet-connected TVs.


Mark Young, the vice president of mobile strategy and business development at NBCUniversal (which owns Fandango), said that the service has been available on smart TVs before this, but consumers had to actually download it. Thanks to a deal with Samsung, Fandango will now be directly integrated into the Samsung Smart Hub.


Essentially, Fandango will be powering the Trailers section of the Hub’s Movies & TV section. That’s not exactly what I would have expected, since Fandango is best-known as a ticketing service — sure, it will offer ticketing capabilities as well, but that’s not what it’s leading with. Young described it as the “branded storefront for all movie trailers,” comparing the approach to music video site Vevo.


Although the announcement, which is being made at the Consumer Electronics Show, is the first of its kind for Fandango, Young said the team has been looking beyond ticketing for some time, for example with the launch of original video series FrontRunners and Weekend Ticket.


“We believe Fandnago as the movie discovery brand has an opportunity to work with not just consumer electronics manufacturers but also other types of over-the-top delivery services,” he said, later adding, “It’s a definite strategy for us to be more forward-leaning in video as content discovery.”


The embedded capabilities are supposed to launch in the first quarter of 2014.


A few weeks ago, Fandango also announced that 2013 was the best year in its decade-plus history in terms of total ticket sales, visitor traffic, and mobile app downloads.







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Fandango is announcing the first partnership that will see its movie ticketing capabilities embedded on Internet-connected TVs. Mark Young,...

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The $99 Fitbit Flex is about to get an injection of fashion. Today, at CES 2014, Fitbit is announcing a partnership with the fashion brand Tony Burch for a line of accessories. Pricing has not been announced yet, but chances are these accessories will cost nearly as much as the $99 Flex.


Fitbit released the Flex in the spring of 2013. It’s a wonderful fitness tracker, and Fitbit managed to pack an array of sensors into the svelte package. The Flex ships with a wristband, but the actual dongle is a tiny pebble-like device, designed to slip into a pocket — or apparently be worn as a pendant if the Tony Burch concept is any indication.


With this partnership comes a milestone for Fitbit. Spawning an accessory ecosystem is often viewed as a positive health indicator for budding consumer electronic companies. Once a device maker, such as Apple or GoPro or Fitbit, can convince other companies to support their products, the road to success tends to get a bit smoother.


These Tony Burch accessories are scheduled to hit the brand’s stores and website this spring. The companies’ have yet to announce pricing, but since a Tony Burch silicon iPhone case costs $45, there’s a good chance these Fitbit accessories will not be inexpensive, either.


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The $99 Fitbit Flex is about to get an injection of fashion. Today, at CES 2014, Fitbit is announcing a partnership with the fashion brand ...

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One of the key differentiators for Vimeo over the years is simply its user experience, and a lot of that comes from its video player. It’s one of the reasons that all sorts of artsy independent creators decide to upload and distribute their videos on Vimeo instead of just putting them on YouTube.


But, believe it or not, Vimeo thought it could improve that experience and improve its video player. With that in mind, it went back to the drawing board and built its video player from the ground up, with an eye toward making it faster, more accessible, and more beautiful.


The new Vimeo video player is the fastest player yet, loading up videos almost instantly. In fact, the company has cut load time in half compared to the previously player. It’s also more responsive, defaulting to HTML5, which can be played directly in most browsers without having to load a plugin.


The fact that it’s HTML5 also means that the Vimeo player is now a lot more accessible. The same player will be available on desktop, mobile, and tablet browsers. It’s also added screen reader and voiceover compatibility, allowing creators to add closed captioning and translated subtitles.


The Vimeo player is also designed for better sharing, with tools for sending to friends via email, as well as embedding and posting on other social networks.


But one of the biggest new features is support for in-player transactions, which is meant to bolster sale of videos through the company’s Vimeo On Demand offering. Now creators who have videos for sale on the platform can add a purchase capability directly within the player.


Vimeo’s putting a lot of effort behind trying to get people on its on-demand platform. It takes only like, 10 percent of all sales in an effort to get folks to sign up. Allowing people to make purchases within the player will speed transactions and should boost conversion for on-demand video sales, since potential customers will no longer have to go to another page to actually make a purchase.







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One of the key differentiators for Vimeo over the years is simply its user experience, and a lot of that comes from its video player. It’s ...

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