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Thursday, January 23, 2014
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Startupbootcamp Istanbul

With news earlier this week that Earlybird, the Berlin-based VC, has launched a new $130 million fund targeting early-stage startups in Turkey and Central and Eastern Europe, it seems apt that Turkey — specifically, Istanbul — should get itself a new startup accelerator.


Formally announced today, Startupbootcamp, the pan-European accelerator based loosely on the Techstars model, has expanded to the Turkish city and is currently accepting applications. As is now very familiar, it operates a 3-month ‘bootcamp’-style program to fund, mentor, house and showcase early-stage startups. Teams from anywhere can apply, but will need to relocate to Istanbul for the program, with applications expected from across Europe, the Middle East, CIS and North Africa.


Startups accepted into the program, which kicks off in June, receive €15,000 (in return for giving away 8 percent equity), 4+ months of office space, and what’s being described as €250k+ in sponsor and partner services (which I wouldn’t place too much value on).


But of course, like all the other accelerators, it’s the mentorship that’s supposed to be the biggest draw, coming from over 100 entrepreneurs, investors and partner companies, along with the much coveted exposure to angels and VCs on Demo Day.


It’s also talking up the co-working space aspect, too. Located at Bahcesehir University, the Startupbootcamp Istanbul office “spans over two floors, with an incredible atrium and cafe-filled terrace which overlooks the Bosphorus”, apparently. That certainly beats a cramped coffee table at Starbucks, but I digress…


In addition, being a pan-European accelerator — Startupbootcamp also operates in Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Dublin, Eindhoven, Tel Aviv and Haifa — there’s access to the SBC global alumni network for the 10 teams accepted into this year’s Istanbul program.


The program is headed up by Ersin Pamuksuzer and Omer Yucel. Pamuksuzer is described as a serial tech entrepreneur, including helping to build the Turkish telco Turkcell. He also established the incubator, Crea-world, when he was CEO of Ericsson Turkey/Middle East. Meanwhile, Yucel is the director of corporate relations at Bahcesehir University.


So why launch an accelerator in Turkey? “Istanbul has always been an important gateway between east and west,” notes Startupbootcamp Istanbul’s Pamuksuzer in a statement. He also cites Turkey’s location in respect to Europe and the MENA region, and its relaxed visa rules, adding that “many multinationals currently use Istanbul as a base for the surrounding regions, and we expect many startups to do the same.”


Furthermore, Turkey, which has a population of 75 million, is by some estimates the second most online nation in Europe.







2:24 AM

With news earlier this week that Earlybird, the Berlin-based VC, has launched a new $130 million fund targeting early-stage startups in Tur...

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old spice

I generally try to avoid writing about ads. But you know what? These are going to be absolutely plastered all over Facebook by tomorrow morning (if they’re not already), so hey: might as well make sure you lot see them relatively early. Plus, they’re pretty damn good.


After a short break, Old Spice — otherwise known as “that company that makes really, really good ads and, I don’t know, deodorant or something” — is back with another web campaign that proves their ad team is one of very few that can repeatedly and intentionally make things that go viral. This time around, it’s prank websites.


Take, for example, this website for a “Push Up Muscle Shirt”. Click the link, then just let the page sit there for a few seconds (or, alternatively, click one of the links to speed up the process). Heads up: have your speakers at a reasonable volume, first.


Surprise! The page drops away and it’s the good ol’ Old Spice Man — or, as his mother knows him, Isaiah Mustafa — gently shaming you in the way only he can.


All the prank sites we’ve spotted so far, each with their own surprise video bit:



Heh. That list reads like a spammy SEO comment generated by the worst bot ever.


This ad team (Wieden + Kennedy, assuming Old Spice is using the same agency as before) has got this thing figured out. They’ve found a solid formula, and just keep finding a tiny way to tweak it and make it new. The first time? Traditional TV spots. The next time? Straight-to-YouTube, targeting the Internet’s love for goofy humor directly. And the next time? Present them as answers to a Reddit AMA. After that? Prank websites. Tweak it and do it again until people stop laughing.


On a side note: whatever they’re using* to stream these HD, fullscreen videos… can we… can we use this for every video, ever? The pixels. There are so many of them.


We miss any? Drop us a comment to let us know.


[* Before you go tearing into the source code and then come back here to laugh at me: yeah, I know they're using Vimeo for this. Or at least, I do now that I peeked into the source code. Intentionally or not, this is a pretty darn good ad for vimeo, targeted at any nerds who care to look behind the scenes]







1:08 AM

I generally try to avoid writing about ads. But you know what? These are going to be absolutely plastered all over Facebook by tomorrow mor...

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Wednesday, January 22, 2014
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redmart_delivery

RedMart, an online grocery service based in Singapore, announced today that it has closed a $5.4 million bridge round led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin; Property Guru founders Steve Melhuish and Jani Rautiainen; Meng Weng Wong, the co-founder of incubator JFDI; Wee Teng Wen, founder of The Lo & Behold Group; and Lion Rock Capital. The round was oversubscribed and brings RedMart’s total raised so far to $10 million.


Co-founder and CEO Roger Egan told me that RedMart’s new funding will be used to build its logistics infrastructure and technology to support the company’s growth. Since RedMart raised its Series A in July 2013, Egan says its revenue has grown 20% to 30% per month. He declined to disclose current financial or user metrics, but when we last wrote about the company six months ago, it had just made $5 million in annual sales. The company has also grown to 115 employees, up from 75.


RedMart is currently in the process of raising a Series B round, which is expected to close by the middle of the year, and will be used in part to fund the company’s expansion into other cities.


“We were going to do a smaller bridge round, but we were growing so fast we were running out of warehouse space and didn’t have enough delivery trucks,” says Egan. “We needed to expand faster than we thought.”


He describes RedMart as a “tech and logistics company that does grocery retail.” It is important for the startup to get order fulfillment right because as a grocery retailer, a typical RedMart order might include 22 to 26 items. The company currently has 16 delivery trucks and has developed software for Android-based devices that let drivers manage their routes, contact customers, and record delivery times.


Before raising its Series B round, RedMart plans to stay put in Singapore, which Egan says has grocery store industry that is worth a total of $5.9 billion. In a city where opening an e-commerce company is preferable to brick-and-mortar locations because of high real-estate costs, RedMart competes with other online grocers like Order Online, FairPrice, and several smaller organic food companies.


Egan says RedMart differentiates with lower prices, a wider selection of products, and same-day delivery. He wants to make sure its logistics infrastructure and technology is solid before expanding into other markets.


“Webvan’s biggest mistake was expanding too quickly before they had the business model right and all systems technologies in place,” says Egan, referring to the online grocery business that went bankrupt in 2001.


“It’s just much more time and effort to fix two things at once rather than get one right and replicate it really quickly,” he adds. “We want to build a whole operation and get the systems in place. We’re almost done with doing that and then we can copy and paste our internal operation into another city and adjust for cultural and last-mile delivery differences.”


In a statement, Saverin said, “I believe that time-starved consumers will increasingly value convenience in purchasing their daily essentials. The logistics and technology platform the RedMart team is building extends far beyond selling groceries in Singapore. The founders’ ambition is boundless, their execution near flawless and I am excited to help them to realize their vision.”







11:09 PM

RedMart , an online grocery service based in Singapore, announced today that it has closed a $5.4 million bridge round led by Facebook co-fo...

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Stan Collymore, a retired soccer player from England, accused Twitter of sitting on its hands when it comes to combating abusive messages -- of which he has received many. Collymore, now a broadcaster, became a troll target after he suggested Liverpool forward Luis Suarez faked a foul -- "diving," in soccer parlance -- in a game played last Saturday. Collymore's audacity in calling out Suarez earned him numerous murder threats, as well as demeaning remarks about his race.


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Service Source

ServiceSource, which provides recurring revenue management software for businesses like Renew OnDemand, announced today that it has acquired Scout Analytics, a Seattle-based provider of predictive analytics for subscription businesses. The terms of the deal were $32 million in cash.


In a statement, ServiceSource says that these verticals “roughly doubles its addressable market to now over $600 billion in recurring revenue opportunities.” Scout Analytics’ current customers include the Financial Times and Reed Elsevier, as well as information services company Wolters Kluwer, which is also an existing client of ServiceSource.


Scout Analytics manages more than $3.5 billion in recurring revenue, and ServiceSource says the acquisition will allow it to expand its business to $14 billion across more than 200 customers, tap into new markets, and offer recurring revenue management services to both subscription and traditional businesses.


Scout, one of Scout Analytics’ products, tracks customers’ subscription usage, spending, and other activity, and provides information that companies can use to improve account management, retain customers, and develop marketing strategies that to sell more services to users. ServiceSource said that recurring revenue will play a “pivotal role” into the Internet of Things as more people start using smart devices and cloud-based services.


Now that it has acquired Scout Analytics, ServiceSource has a new potential base of customers including consumer tech companies that operate on a recurring payment model. Scout Analytics currently analyzes usage from about 25 million subscribers on more than 400 million devices each day for customers in the software-as-a-service, information services, and digital media industries.


“Scout Analytics significantly expands our reach into the fast-growing SaaS market, while creating new opportunities in B2B subscriptions for information services and digital media. And, with the addition of sophisticated predictive analytics, we can give companies the required top-to-bottom view of their customers’ data to grow through recurring revenue,” said ServiceSource chairman and CEO Mike Smerklo in a statement.







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A man who wore Google Glass to a movie was hauled out of the theater and questioned for several hours by federal authorities over piracy concerns. The officials took no action against the man after they determined the wearable tech device functioned as his prescription glasses, and that he did not have the Google Glass recording feature activated, according to reports. The man, who was not identified by authorities, was watching Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit in Columbus, Ohio.


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2014-01-22_1448

Microsoft is giving its Office Web Apps a new look today, it seems. While the company hasn’t done all that much to promote its Office Web Apps lately, they are pretty capable online versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote that are free for anyone to use. Today, the company is giving all of these apps a user interface overhaul that brings an even flatter design, some new features and easier navigation.


While Microsoft hasn’t officially announced this update, the company has confirmed to us that it did indeed launch these updates earlier today. “We did introduce some Office Web App updates earlier today,” a Microsoft said. “As we’ve said in the past, we’ll continue to bring the Office features that you value most to the Web and this is just one example of that.”


The most notable change – or at least the first one I spotted – is a new navigation for the OneNote note-taking app. It now uses two columns on the left to help you navigate between the different sections of your notebooks. Previously, that was a bit of a hassle.


office_web_apps_new_look


Microsoft has also changed the design of the top menu across all the apps and cleaned up the design of the Ribbon menu across the board. The occasional semi-skeuomorphic icon remains in the Ribbon, but for the most part, the Office Web Apps have now gone completely flat.


As part of the update, Microsoft has also changed the header UI to include a switcher that offers access to other online Microsoft experiences.


One other change I noticed was that the Word app now features a “Tell me what you want to do” search bar that lets you search across all of the app’s tools and invoke actions, such as bolding text or find and replace right from the search results. It uses type-ahead, so it generally just takes a few keystrokes to find the function you need. As far as I can see, this feature isn’t available in the other online Office apps.


Microsoft tells me that it also now allows users to add “polish to reports and papers with new footnotes & endnotes.”


office_new_web_apps


Overall, the new design makes the Office Web Apps feel a bit more like the recently updated Outlook.com, which also features a similarly flat menu bar.


For comparison, here is what the old user interface looked like:


File-edited-on-SkyDrive_2EA5DAE2







3:39 PM

Microsoft is giving its Office Web Apps a new look today, it seems. While the company hasn’t done all that much to promote its Office Web A...

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