Jeet Singh and Joe Chung have already had a nice exit, taking their enterprise software company Art Technology Group public (it was acquired by Oracle for $1 billion back in 2010). Now they’re hoping to turn the act of building successful startups into a “repeatable process,” through their new firm Redstar ventures.

Singh and Chung, along with their third co-founder Matt Beecher, said they became interested in angel investing a few years ago, but at the same time they were turned off by the randomness and risk of the traditional model. So they developed their own approach, a “venture foundry,” where the firm focuses on a few broad themes, develops companies internally, and then spins them out if they seem to be getting traction. Here’s how the model is described on the Redstar website:

We identify significant trends and growing markets, and develop potential products and services for those markets. We match very successful mentors with young and experienced entrepreneurs and co-found companies with them. Together, we staff these teams, evaluate the market, build and test the product or service, establish partnerships, identify sources of investment, and launch the enterprise. We also fund these firms through their seed-stages.

What are those themes? The firm has three so far, namely underemployment, the “grey market,” and the present/future of media.

Apparently Redstar has actually been around for a couple of years, but didn’t really publicize its existence — it’s only starting now because it has launched its first company, social shopping startup LoopIt (I’m assuming that’s one for the grey market category). The goal is to launch about three companies per year, Beecher said.

“We might spend seven, eight, nine months on the concept before we launch it,” he added.
“The core tenet of our business is knowing which [concepts to focus on] better and earlier through our network and research.”

Redstar describes this as a “top-down” approach to building companies. That makes it sound like the firm is going against much of the received wisdom in Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurs are encouraged to launch their products as soon as possible and adapt based on customer feedback, and where team and execution are valued over ideas.

Chung said he definitely expects companies to adapt and change, but he said that too many startups overvalue execution: “In the early days of ATG, there were so many company- killing decisions that we had to undo, but we were able to get away with it. … One of the great fallacies is that startups are really good at executing.”

Not that Redstar is relying entirely on its thematic approach to guide its investments. It’s also a question of building the team — the partners said they might be excited about a given idea but decline to pursue it if they can’t find the right executive to lead the company.

The firm aims to make investments of $500,000 to $1 million. Ultimately, Singh said the partners are hoping that half their companies will be successful. That would be pretty remarkable if it happened, but he noted that with a higher success rate, Redstar doesn’t need “billion dollar successes” to pay off.

“We don’t have to swing for the fences,” Singh said. “We’re trying to build good, solid companies that eventually sell at a reasonable valuation.”

REdstar itself is self-funded so far. The partners said they’re looking to raise money this year, but it might be structured less as a traditional venture fund and more as an equity investment in Redstar.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Songza, the app that matches expert-created music playlists to your mood or activity, has just released a huge update to its iOS app, streamlining the experience quite a bit and cleaning up the UI to ensure that users are getting the best music to match their mood and activity in the fastest time possible.

To start, you’ll notice straight off the bat that the Concierge screen has changed dramatically, with new colors in the background and the removal of the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. But it’s not just about looks. Songza’s smarter now, too.

The Songza team has always prided itself on finding you an amazing playlist to match your mood and settings in just three clicks. Today, they brought that down to one long-press click on any Concierge situation (like Driving or Sweaty Dance Party) to get music playing quickly.

Songza 3.0 also includes a faster way to find music for the situation you’re in, even if Concierge hasn’t predicted it for you. Simply shake the app while on the Concierge screen and you’ll be asked what you’re up to, leading you to the right playlist for the right moment.

One of the biggest pain points with Songza is that it’s difficult to find the right music based on artists. Sure, you can hunt for mixes by genre, mood, activity and artists, but even then you have to sit through most of the playlist before your fave comes on.

Songza 3.0 solves this problem by letting you hunt out all the playlists that include your queried artist, with the mixes that are most relevant to your preferences coming up first. And if that weren’t enough, the app automatically moves songs by your favorite artist to the top of the playlist.

Last, but certainly not least, the new and improved Songza made a few tweaks to its Audio HQ feature, which was debuted in collaboration with Audyssey Laboratories back in December.

Record Store Clerk, a feature that tries to match you with new music based on what you already like, has been baked into the experience on the back-end, rather than remaining as a front-end feature.

Clearly, things have changed a lot in the land of Songza, but the new version comes with in-app tips to help you find your way. Songza has picked up tons of traction since it launched, now boasting 4.7 million monthly active users who spend more than 65 million minutes with Songza on a daily basis.

The update is available now on the App Store.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

As 3D printers become more ubiquitous, small manufacturers have two choices – build and hope for the best or cede to patent trolls who own a number of basic patents around extrusion and additive manufacturing. Sadly, more of those patents are being filed daily and many have plenty of prior art available that would make them unwelcome at the Patent Office.

Formlabs, for example, is facing this issue with their unique additive printer. Luckily, the EFF is currently challenging six of those early patents including one that deals with the creation of confections using extruders full of chocolate.

Julie Samuels at the EFF writes:

Documents the EFF is filing are essentially examples of prior art that would invalidate these patents. They also offer links to StackExchange so interested parties can submit their own examples of prior art. Patents can protect ideas but more and more they are being used to destroy small innovators. It’s good that the EFF is standing up in favor of a nascent and important technology and that it’s getting to it so early on in the process.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Shutterstock is a major hub for designers, photographers, and companies. Not only can image enthusiasts upload their work to the site for perusal by others, but many users of the service find inspiration from the site’s troves of photos. Of course, with a library of over 22 million photos, search can become a bit difficult.

To put an end to this dilemma, Shutterstock is launching a new search tool called Spectrum, which lets users search by both keyword and color using a simple slider.

According to VP of Product Wyatt Jenkins, there’s a huge disconnect between words (the way we search) and images (what we’re searching for, in this instance).

Many users come to the site looking for the most beautiful image that will fit in with a certain ad campaign, presentation, or project. Many times that means it needs to fit in with a certain color scheme, which is where Spectrum comes into play.

Users simply visit this site, type in a search term, and start sliding that color bar back and forth to find the right image. Not only is the full spectrum of color available for search, but Shutterstock also included a strictly black and white option as well.

Users can also filter searches by hue, with options for “bright” and “light” photos.

The effect of seeing a collection of photos filtered by color is mesmerizing (go ahead, try it!) — the team at Shutterstock calls it color rush.

The idea isn’t just to make photos more easily searchable, but to add a new tool to the platform that helps users find inspiration. You may never imagine a purple forest or a golden ocean, but Spectrum changes all that, and actually helps you imagine more creative photos because of it.

Spectrum is available now here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

It’s not only Groupon that is feeling the crunch among daily deal sites: LivingSocial is laying off 400 employees today. There were reports of the layoffs out yesterday from more than one source; the company confirmed the number to TechCrunch in an email just now. “I can confirm that we notified approximately 400 employees today — all but a couple dozen in the United States — that their positions are being eliminated,” a spokesperson told me. “That’s about 10% of our global workforce.” The cuts come in sales, customer and merchant services, and the company’s takeout/delivery service.

After two years of “hyper-growth” in which the company went from 450 to 4,500 employees worldwide, raising $800 million in the process, now LivingSocial is cutting itself down to size after reporting a net loss of $566 million in Q3 after write downs from unprofitable acquisitions.

According to Amazon, which owns about 30% of LivingSocial, the company had revenue of $124 million in Q3, double the revenue from the quarter a year earlier

“These moves will align our cost structure with our 2013 plan and free up resources for critical investments in marketing, mobile, and other areas,” the spokesperson said.

We are following up with LivingSocial to ask about what departments may be affected, and whether any executives are leaving, and whether it will sell some of the assets it has acquired. We’ll update as we learn more.

[Update] Here is how the numbers break down: “Nationwide, the largest impacted group was sales, as we restructured our sales organization to focus on our most profitable markets and regions,” the spokesperson says. He says “a number of positions” in its customer and merchants services groups, as it moves those positions from D.C. to a new call center in Tucson. He says the company will rehire “a number of those positions” in Tucson over coming weeks.

And although not many of the layoffs are taking place on the international side, it is losing a key person. Eric Eichmann is leaving his job as president of the international business unit. “Eric and our CEO [Tim O’Shaughnessy] reached a mutual decision that this would be a good time for him to leave, as the scope of his international position has changed over the past year,” said the spokesperson. No other senior executives were announced today.

As for products, Takeout & Delivery is being “refocused” on a smaller number of markets “to find the right formula for success, and some positions were affected by that shift.”

The company is doing battle not only with Groupon but a million other sites that have cropped up to offer daily deals. Groupon has been trying to pivot to becoming more of a marketplace for local commerce, but that hasn’t produced as fast a return as some had hoped. Now people are calling for the head of CEO Andrew Mason.

LivingSocial has had its own share of executive turmoil, including the departure of co-founder Eddie Frederick earlier this year. There had been reports of layoffs coming for a long time at the startup.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Lattice Engines has raised $20 million in a round led by New Enterprise Associates for its predictive analytics platform that gives salespeople the information to sell their products. According to The San Francisco Business Times, the company, founded in 2006, has raised $36.5 million, including a $15 million investment in 2011 from Sequoia.

The service is designed to analyze large amounts of data to determine a customer’s intent. The platform delivers real-time data to sales representatives through their CRM platform, email or their mobile devices. At the heart of the technology is the company’s salesPRISM data-analytics platform. It allows salespeople to find the right conversation talking points to use when calling customers, what to cross-sell, how big a deal to expect and what products the customer is most likely to purchase.

The market for technologies that optimize sales and marketing is booming. Lattice Engines plays in a space with competitors that include Oracle, Microsoft and IBM. And startups are booming, as the amount of data increases in volume and speed.

Lattice Engines looks more targeted than most in the space with a specific focus on salespeople in Fortune 500 companies. That should help Lattice Engines compete, as more companies target the ever expanding big-data market.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook says it’s testing a redesign of its ad creator tool that will give more guidance to advertisers as they build their campaigns — specifically by helping them find the right mix of Facebook ads and Sponsored Stories to achieve their stated objectives.

You can see a screenshot of the new workflow below. (Yes, it’s a looooong screenshot, but that means you can see the whole thing.) As shown, the small businesses and other advertisers who use Facebook’s self-serve tool start out by specifying what they’re hoping to accomplish with a given campaign, whether it’s specifically getting more Page likes or promoting Page posts (they can also take a more nuanced approach by choosing “advanced options”). Once advertisers have identified their goal, the ad creator will recommend a combination of ads and Sponsored Stories to achieve that objective.

Connecting Facebook ads to specific goals has been a theme of Facebook’s ad products for several months now. The company says that in May, it introduced features that helped advertisers measure the performance of ads based on their stated objectives. Now Facebook is integrating that idea into the campaign creation process, making it easier for advertisers to take a smarter, more integrated approach to their entire campaign — and also encouraging them to try out different ad types.

Facebook says the change is only affecting the ad creator interface, not the ads API. Other new features include a preview that shows how Sponsored Stories will actually appear in a user’s newsfeed.

If this interface is a hit with advertisers, it also seems like Facebook could use these features to introduce new ad units in the future.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

For a while now, Gmail users have been able to choose between various themes to personalize their inboxes. Starting today, you will be able to add even more of a personal touch to Gmail, as Google now allows you to set your own background images in Gmail. Google actually offered a similar option for Gmail before it launched its redesign last year, but this time around, Google – of course – also offers a deeper Google+ integration and allows you to upload your own photos directly or select your backgrounds from your Google+ photos.

Google is rolling this new feature out slowly, so it may be a few days before you get to choose your favorite cat picture as a background image in Gmail.

For the rest of your interface, you get to choose between a light and a dark theme when you use your own photos. This will hopefully allow you to still see the rest of the interface, but given that Google is apparently using a lot of transparency here, you’ll probably have to try a few different images to find the right combination.

Google will also select a number of images to feature in its redesigned Gmail themes tab. It’s not clear how the company plans to select these, but it looks like these are images from Google+.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Listen up, ladies! (And upwardly fashionable gents!)

A new service has hit the web that you’ve likely been waiting for for a long time. Gone are the days of trotting over to a store sales associate and getting help with matching makeup or clothing colors. Now all it takes is a trip to Plum Perfect and a camera to get your style on.

Here’s how it works:

Upload a picture of yourself to Plum Perfect, and wait a second while the technology scans the photo to detect your coloring. It should generate three conclusions: lip, eye, and skin color. You’ll instantly be given recommendations based on your coloring for the best eye shadows, lip sticks and glosses, and foundations/bronzers. Plum Perfect offers 16 different makeup brands, including Lancome, Laura Mercier and Shiseido.

The system is simple enough for a total tomboy to find the right colors, and the idea is to add different verticals. See, founder Asmau Ahmed used to be a chemical engineer, with experience in color quality assurance, so the science of color is kind of her thing. Makeup is just a logical category in which to use the technology she’d envisioned for so long.

Eventually, you’ll be able to upload a picture of a shirt and get hat, belt, and pant recommendations. The same will be true for home furnishings (imagine taking a picture of a couch and being given three colors to decorate the room with).

Of course, thanks to Pinterest, you’ll need an invite.

Click to view slideshow.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Gigwalk, a mobile app that allows users to get assigned basic “gigs” or jobs from companies via their location, is unveiling a new suite of tools to allow companies to manage local work via the phone.

Gigwalk, which launched last year, basically allows companies to tap into a mobile workforce for simple tasks. Users simply download the app, enter PayPal information and get assigned entry-level “gigs” or jobs that may take just a few minutes at a time in a particular location. For example, TomTom uses Gigwalk’s workforce to snap pictures to verify certain navigation points, such as one-way streets, etc. These workers simply snap a picture, email them in and receive a few dollars for the easy task.

Gigwalk is making it easier for companies to communicate with workers. Ad co-founder Ariel Seidman tells me, the company is focused on giving businesses the tools and controls it need to collaborate with workers and get work done efficiently. New Mobile Work Groups give companies a way to maintain a network of people they have worked with in the past and want to work with in the future. Companies can post their jobs specifically to their groups, more broadly to the Gigwalk network, or to both.

Currently, Gigwalk has around 130,000 workers in its network to help businesses find the right workers for the right jobs. When evaluating a candidate, businesses can see the number of Gigs each applicant has completed, the applicant’s highest level of education, his or her current occupation, and his or her on-time rate.

In order to help companies communicate with workers in real-time while they are completing tasks, Gigwalk has added instant messaging to its app. Businesses receive an email whenever there is a communication through the platform, such as when they’ve received a message from a worker, when an application to a Gig has been received, or when work has been submitted and is ready for review. Businesses can respond directly through the Gigwalk platform, and messages are sent to workers’ mobile phones.

The app also now includes a survey guide, a notepad, and a photo library to enable workers to more efficiently document and collect information in the field.

Seidman says that some people using Gigwalk are earning $6,000 per month for work. Since launch, over 180,000 jobs have been completed through the platform for companies like eBay, Microsoft, Chegg, and BMW. The company also now has workers in all 50 states in the U.S.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch