Last month, the lost and found startup Tile took to Selfstarter, kicking off a campaign to fund their Bluetooth tag. Initially, they had only planned on securing around $20, 000, but today they reported an astonishing $2.6 million in total funding.
Aside from setting the record for most funding on Selfstarter to date, the $2.6 million will complement the $200,000 raised through Tile's participation in Tandem Capital's mobile accelerator. The combined funds will ensure that the production and subsequent release will go smoothly.
"The enormous, positive response we have received from everyone during the campaign has been encouraging," says Mike Farley, co-founder of Tile. "The community has grown significantly over the past month, and we are looking forward to increasing its reach in the years to come."
Tile functions as a tag that can be attached to any item of value. If you lose that item, the Tile app will be the first place you turn. Walking near your Tile tag will trigger an alert on your phone to let you know you are close: Take that, couch!
Additionally, there will be an entire social network in play, too. If you leave your briefcase in a cab, alert your friends and family by marking the item as lost. They will be alerted that it is lost, and if they pass in the zone of the Tile tag, their phone will record the location and send it to you.
The initial rollout of the network could be limited, but the success of the campaign speaks to the possibility of it becoming enormous. You can still order the Tile through the website, and shipping starts this winter.
Bookacoach, a DC startup for hiring private sports coaches, recently announced a partnership with the National Alliance for Youth Sports. We took the opportunity to catch up with them on their progress.
In some ways, bookacoach seems lucky: they landed their partnership based on a simple cold call. No introduction, no mutual friends: just a telephone and a pitch. "When you call someone and meet with them, they either get it and they like you as a person, or they don't," says cofounder Myles Grote.
But perhaps that's the point: there has to be something to "get." For bookacoach, it's the vision of being a place parents can trust to find safe, background-checked coaches.
Founded in 2011, bookacoach has also started forging more relationships with other entrepreneurs. As Grote explains, they originally made the mistake of spending too much time building the business and not enough time out in the community. And, unsurprisingly, they didn't feel much support from that community, who seemed more enchanted by a few startup darlings like Uber.
But now, after devoting a little more time to fellow entrepreneurs, Grote has realized how valuable – and caring – a network can be.
"It's really crazy how you take one of those meetings and it ends up landing 15 intros," says Grote.
That's the same principle that Contactually cofounder Zvi Band talks about: by increasing your network, you increase your "luck surface area." "The bigger our 'luck surface area,' the 'luckier' we seem to get," he says.
And last but not least, the DC startup is building relationships with customers. Since we last covered bookacoach, they've grown to over 1,000 coach, athlete, and parent users in 39 states. Part of their routine now is to call customers personally and ask for feedback. It was one of these customer calls that inspired bookacoach's new messaging feature, which customers love.
Turns out even a sports startup needs a little practice on the power of teamwork.
Angry Birds is about the present genocide of green pigs, in retaliation for past grievances committed against the birds in 1748, right? Okay, so maybe not, but what if mobile gaming could be utilized to narrate modern, global issues and mobilize (see what I did there?) youth activism? Well, that’s what Angelique Mannella hopes to achieve with Decode Global.
Decode Global released its first game, Get Water!, on World Water Day in March. Currently available only for iOS (an Android release is planned for September), the game highlights the global issue of water scarcity and its ties to girls’ inaccessibility to education.
“[We wanted] to come up with an innovative way to engage youth in global development challenges [and] to bring global challenges into the everyday environments of young North Americans,” says Mannella.
Decode Global currently works with a lot of different social impact organizations and education advocacy groups, such as Women for Water and the Global Campaign for Education; however, what’s most impressive is the startup’s engagement with young people. It’s worked with various DC-area high schools and student groups, getting students interested in, and advocating for, the benefits of using games to educate about global issues. They’re also working on educational workshops and creating other resources to help teachers incorporate games with social impact into the classroom.
“Our goal is to introduce games that aren’t normally seen in an educational context, into the classroom through designing complementary learning curriculum,” says Mannella.
One of the most engaged ways Decode Global has accomplished this is through its Fellowship Program, created for recent grads with an interest in social impact and a game design, art, or technical background. “Get Water! was greatly influenced by [our Fellows]. [The game] is really a product of their thinking about what would make a fun and engaging game about water scarcity that they would play and their peers would play,” says Mannella. Following in its mission to engage a global audience, the Fellowship invites students from many parts of the world, with its current Fellows coming from the US, Brazil, Ukraine, and Finland.
The last time I created a WordPress blog, I spent hours scouring the free themes to find the perfect design. I customized colors, deleted columns, and changed background images. Then, when I finally thought I found the perfect template, I discovered one silly deal-breaker of a feature that I couldn't change.
I suspect this experience is all too common with WordPress themes. But PageLines is hoping to do something about it with its new launch today.
At its simplest, PageLines is a design tool that lets you drag and drop features to create your ideal website (see some features below). You can add columns or text boxes, move around images, and add special slideshows. If you're a design newbie, you can start with a basic theme and just tweak a sidebar here or there.
PageLines calls this a "design management system" because it works on top of WordPress, a content management system. Up until now, your main options for drag-and-drop website design included tools like Squarespace and Weebly, both of which don't integrate with WordPress.
But PageLines goes a step further: any developer can code a website feature (like an image gallery or an "accordion" section) and sell it in the PageLines DMS store for website owners to buy. Already, a few hundred developers are creating themes, plugins, and features in the same way that they create apps for the Apple app store.
"We would like to be the Apple of websites," says founder Andrew Powers. "This is the way websites are going to be built in 10 years."
Skilled designers can combine any of these features into a unique, brilliant, beautiful-looking website. As Powers says, it lets people do what they do best: developers can develop, and designers can design, and they can "communicate" via PageLines.
Membership starts at $8/month for personal users, $16/month for businesses, and $25/month for developers – something I might consider for my next blog.
What do you get when you combine talented developers with hiring startups? Well, you get a very awesome match of innovation and creativity.
GroupTalent is a hiring platform that allows employers and job seekers to find each other and set up interviews. The platform helps companies search, contact, and interview talented developers who are interested in full-time or contract-based work.
GroupTalent recently launched an intelligent search function for employers and job seekers. This ability allows both parties to discover each other based on specific criteria. It also opens up recruiting for employers because it gives companies the ability to find talent without the need for a large recruiting budget.
Not only does this new function help employers find talented employees, but it also helps developers and designers discover opportunities that fit their needs. Job seekers will be able to find positions that cater to their interests and meet their career goals.
Startups who are hiring also have some unique advantages with this new function. This search feature helps simplify job seeker engagement and the recruiting process. Not only that, but hiring managers are also able to create a profile for their open position, invite specific talent to review it, and discuss whether the position is the right fit.
Above all, GroupTalent is taking it one step further with its “try out” capabilities. Job seekers who are interested in a position can “try” a position for a couple of weeks to see if the position is right for them. Through this unique feature, GroupTalent has revolutionized the way employers find qualified and talented employees.
If the job seeker accepts the position, they are able to start immediately on their project. Developers and designers are paid between $3,000 to $7,000 a week and have the opportunity to get a feel for the company culture. One of the best parts about GroupTalent is that once the project is completed and the employer believes the employee would make a good fit as a permanent employee, there is a potential job offer waiting at the end.
GroupTalent has made it possible for companies to tap into large pools of talented candidates and job seekers. If you’re wondering what GroupTalent can do to help you find talented developers for your startup, visit grouptalent.com.
Saul Kaplan is an innovation junkie, and to somebody like him, there is always a better way to do things. Big or small, change is inevitable, and the best thing we can do is make it work for us rather than against us.
Through his company and book, Kaplan is able to help companies remain competitive through disruption. By showing us how to do R&D for new business models, while still operating on our current ones, we can eliminate vulnerability.
Passionate about business model innovation and social system transformation, Kaplan and his team are constantly in search of an answer to the question of how to go beyond simply tweaking things, and, instead, bring about major transformations. Kaplan explains his perspective in this video:
WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER
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