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February 28, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
What is BricaBox anyway? The elevator pitch you've been waiting for.
Anyone who's ever chatted with Nate about BricaBox often has the same response: confusion.
Nate's a good friend, but he's a typical visionary founder in that he's hesitant to succumb to others' bastardized Web 2.0 analogies of what the product actually does. Many entrepreneurs cringe at being called the "Wikipedia for this" or "Flickr for that" or "del.icio.us but with blogging". It goes against the vision--the bigger picture. They seem to think it cheapens their accomplishment, but I disagree. People need to compare new things to things they already understand. It helps them process new ideas.
So, since Nate doesn't have an elevator pitch, I've decided to create one for him. BricaBox is pretty simple actually. It is...
"A wiki with depth."
Wikis are pretty flat. You find a webpage, you click into it and add text. You can add links, but links just enable you to travel sideways in a flat world.
BricaBox enables outsiders to add structured content to a page--content that has all sorts of other attributions, like restaurants that not only have locations, but menu items as well.
So... who cares?
Well, any publisher who cares about interactivity, engagement, and pageviews should care.
There are some brilliant sites out there on the web that are what I call "rotating cubes". Most sites are essentially databases, but these sites, through their structure, expose all the various data elements to users as separate pages. Some of my favorites are IMDB, Last.fm, and Baseball Reference. Every element in their database is a new page, semantically connected to all of the other various datapoints associated with it. On IMDB, actors are in movies and movies have directors who've done other movies. You can click sideways and up and down this side forever--and these types of sites often gets lots of pageviews. IMDB gets 8 pageviews a visit. Last.fm gets 6. Baseball Reference gets almost 5. By contrast, the NY Times gets 3 and Citysearch gets 2.5. Those are pretty flat sites.
What structured, open content like a BricaBox does is bring your database out into the open, making it crawlable, clickable, and easily navigated. It's something that any publisher with a structured database should think about implementing, lest all their good data stay below the surface of their web, never to be discovered by users, crawlers, or anything else that floats by.
February 28, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-02-26
February 26, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-02-25
February 25, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Fears of Me - Driving by Night... I heard this on the radio last night. Great song
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February 25, 2008 in Music | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Businessperson with an idea for a web startup? Looking to get a tech partner? Read this first!
On the nextNY listserv, there are a lot of businesspeople who think they're just a developer away from a great web startup. It's certainly possible, but I often find that they haven't really fleshed out their product idea too much.
I'd very very strongly suggest that, before you start paying someone to build anything, you do some extensive product spec work... talking to as many people as possible about what you're building.
Hold a few feedback sessions, too... ask a few knowledgeable people to sit in a room to hear your idea and give feedback on its current state and where it might go. Be open to their suggestions...and give them pizza!
Here's a checklist of things I would do before paying dollar one to start building:
1) Narrow down your market vertical... Weddings or adventure sports? Feature creep is a killer at an early stage and companies often try to do too much. Your end product, if it comes to market, will be so much smaller than you imagine.
2) Outline 2-3 things you things you want to focus on within that niche.. You'll prob narrow down to one, but keep an open mind about possibilities, because feedback is going to make you alter your idea.
3) Find 5 sites that do at least some aspects of what your site does and use them extensively... like everyday for a week or two at least (ideally longer!)... know all the ins and outs of the service. Group all their features into a) things they do well b) things I can do better/different c) things we can work together on and d) make a list of things you wish they did.
4) Take all the features and rank them in terms of importance... This way, you'll realize whether you're building a new mousetrap, because all your top features are category D or a better mousetrap, b/c they're all category B or C) more of a mashup.
5) Take your list and imagine what ties this all together in one site if you can do 1 feature, 3 features, 10 features, etc... Where are the natural grouping points... and what is the minimum amount of things that gives you a viable site.
6) Talk to 5 high level people in the industry about the smallest versions of your idea and get feedback. After their feedback, go through this whole process over again.
6a) (Optional) Blog this whole process openly and solicit even more feedback.
7) Then, MAYBE I'd talk to a contract developer... but only then.... Of course, if you can get someone more technical working on this process with you at no cost.... just to help shape the idea.. that's ideal.
In addition to this, you need to create a plan to be executed everyday that makes you exactly the right person to do this idea. It will be incredibly difficult to get backing and support for your project unless people feel like you are THE person to do this startup, you understand those industries much more than almost anyone, and have publicly associated your name with those industries. Starting out by blogging about those industries, maybe running some learning annex courses, a meetup group, etc. is a good start.... because it will sharpen your thinking on the space and attract others with similar or better yet, contrary ideas.
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February 25, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
web startup jobs in new york, ny from Indeed
Indeed Daily Job Alert
web startup jobs in new york, ny (within 25 miles)Edit job alert - View jobs: since yesterday - for last 7 days - all jobs
6 new jobs found
|
Web Developer
Interface Designer/Developer
Build Engineer / QA Analyst
Engineer-HVAC/Design
Programmer - Core Java - J2EE - OOP/OOD in Java - SQL - Tibco
Lead Java Developer |
View jobs: since yesterday - for last 7 days - all jobs
February 25, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
nextNY MSM News Coverage Blackout... why?hh
The other night, well over a hundred people packed Antarctica Bar to celebrate the 2 year anniversary of nextNY. In two years, our ranks have grown to 1500 people, with probably close to 1000 different people attending our events at one time or another. And the group is a neat story in itself. Anyone can start an event. There are no titles, everyone is a participant. The listserv buzzes with questions, comments, recommendations, from a wide spectrum of tech and digital media folks in NYC... entrepreneurs, investors, designers, developers. And yet, no NYC based reporter has ever written about it. I just read this Investors Business Daily article about how networking groups in L.A. are helping to put that city on the map as a tech center. We'd love something like that. Besides Caroline McCarthy, we never even see tech reporters at our events... yet I always get calls from people asking me for intros to cool companies and wanting to know the latest buzz. What gives?
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February 24, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Not clear=WTF?
Matias was institutionalized after trying to set a car on fire with his children inside in Pennsylvania, police said. Family members said it was only after one of his sons said goodbye to his sister that Matias changed his mind and decided not to torch the car.Dad choked teen, stuffed her in burning boiler, police say - CNN.comIt was not clear why he continued to have visitation rights.
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February 22, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Did they watch the same Hillary?
It wasn't quite the love-fest of the CNN debate in Los Angeles, California, three weeks ago, but Clinton repeatedly shied away from challenging her rival, even when the debate's moderators gave her ample opportunities to do so."
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February 22, 2008 in Politics | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
