Internet Tech Boston

Recently, I sat down with Michael Fruzzetti and Ben Dolgoff, co-founders of newly minted Peekaboo Mobile, an application for  Apple mobile devices that uses your GPS location to send you deals and offers at retail stores nearby. By combining two ideas that have become hugely popular in 2010 – local coupons a la Groupon, and GPS-aware mobile applications, it’s no surprise that since their launch on the Apple App Store in early March, 2010, Peekaboo has quickly amassed 400 users of the service in the Boston area. More importantly – they’ve secured relationships with around 65 businesses such as Beacon Hill Athletic Club, The Good Life, and Boston Common Coffee, who use Peekaboo’s online coupon management system to post deals and offers directly to the Peekaboo community. As COO Dolgoff explains, “things like Groupon are a ‘thought-out buy.’ You need to be in front of your computer and make the purchase online. Peekaboo Mobile is all about ‘real time deals.’”

With backgrounds in Finance, the initial career path put Fruzzetti on Wall Street as a trader, before returning to Boston, reconnecting with fellow Suffolk grad Dolgoff and forming an umbrella company ByteVentures that they’ve used to create several internet business. Peekaboo Mobile is their 4th venture together.

They realize they’re under stiff competition from the many “Groupon-clones,” as well as New York-based Postabon, which recently secured a $1.05 million round from Spark Capital and has presence in Boston, New York, and San Francisco. But, the Peekaboo duo feel they have a strategic advantage when it comes to the competition – the thriving, vibrant, and helpful community that surrounds entrepreneurs here in Boston.

Currently housed in the entrepreneurial frat house HangOut Labs, and planning to secure angel or seed funding from one of the many startup competitions such as Mass Challenge, both Fruzzetti and Dolgoff are supremely optimistic on their future outlook, with plans to bring their currently offshore development team in-house, and expansion to other cities in the near future. As Dolgoff explains, “there really is a community here. People who actually want to help. We’ll expand to other cities, but our homebase will always be here in Boston.”

What do you think of a “real time deal” service on your mobile phone? Is this a service you’d use, and do you think it will affect buyer behavior when out shopping? Leave your opinion in the comments, below.

On Friday, April 23, the Lean Startup Circle – Boston organized a free simulcast of the “Dean of Lean,” Eric Ries‘ massive conference – Startup Lessons Learned. As Steve Blank put it, “it’s the Woodstock of Lean Startup events. If you weren’t here, you’ll want to say you were here.”

Many thanks to the Cambridge Innovation Center for graciously hosting this event and helping to keep it free. If you’re interested in the many great talks that were held, please be sure to check the Startup Lessons Learned website for information on how to watch the recorded day-long events.

If you’re a local Boston Entrepreneur, you may be interested in checking out the video, below, that I took during the event. Here you’ll get a chance to (virtually) meet the members of the Boston chapter of the Lean Startup Circle. I also took a few photos of the event.

I’ve been in startups since 2002. At the time of this writing, that gives me 7 years experience in startup life. I’m not sure if that means I have “a lot” of experience in startups. Probably not. But, I do have “some” experience in startups, and I’ve learned a few things the hard way. One of the things I’ve learned is how important it is to pick the “right” startup to join. In the past, this was not really a top priority for me – I was young(er) and more focused on the more typical aspects of a job offer – compensation, job function & title, and location. I fell for all the hype of working first for a DotCom and then a Web 2.0 startup. Now I’m old(er) and more picky. I don’t want just a job at a cool company, I want to find a place that I can believe in. Here are a few questions I’ve found myself asking the management at startup companies, when I’ve been interviewed by them. I pass them along to you in the hopes you’ll avoid some pitfalls. These questions mostly apply to a Venture-backed software company.

Management

Strategy

Customers

Company & Culture

There’s no one single question here that should make or break your decision to join a startup company. By nature, a startup is filled with risk, uncertainty, and change. But, after you’ve found out the answers to all these questions, put together a scorecard. Trust your gut, and choose wisely.

I’m constantly battling with my wife over the amount papers she prints when it comes to her recipes. I’m amazed at the sheer amount of stuff she prints, files, organizes, and keeps in drawers. I was pleasantly surprised, on a personal level, when I met Paul Jin, founder of Plummelo. Recently added to the Dogpatch Labs startup community sponsored by Polaris Ventures, Plummelo is designed to help the passionate home cook find, organize, and make the delicious dishes that the rest of us have come to take for granted. Let’s hear about this interesting new web startup from Paul himself:

Mamet: What is Plummelo and what prompted you to start it?
Jin: Plummelo allows users to collect recipes from anywhere – from the Internet and the kitchen. Plummelo will automatically create shopping lists, so the user will never have to write another shopping list. I started Plummelo because I was frustrated with trying to remember where I got a recipe from the Internet. Google helps, but do you know how many hits you get when you type in “meatball”? My kitchen recipe folder was no help either. Organizing and rediscovering recipes is a major chore and only the most dedicated have create binders with plastic sheets. It shouldn’t be this hard to keep track of recipes.

Mamet: What’s the #1 unexpected thing that’s happened since you launched?
Jin: How universal the problem is, and how enthusiastic people are to the concept. I was expecting only the cooking enthusiasts and the super-organized to be interested, but the problem of recipe organization is conceptually easy to understand for anyone and because everyone eats, this solution resonated with every person, especially moms.

Mamet: By it’s nature, your user is not near a computer when using Plummelo the most. How does Plummelo bridge the gap between home office and home kitchen?
Jin: I’ve intentionally decided not to address this part of the problem yet. I’ve learned that many people do have laptops at home, so they do take the laptop into the kitchen. I’ve also learned that some are hesitant to do that because of concerns about kitchen splatter and the safety of their laptop, so they just print the recipe. Also, buying another home computer or any display device just to have something in the kitchen is not high in the home financial priority. Several years ago, there was a lot of buzz around internet appliances for places like the kitchen, but consumers didn’t really go for such dedicated devices. So, the solution I wanted to focus on was online organization rather than physical device.

Mamet: How does Plummelo fit into the ecosystem of existing online foodie communities like Food Network and Martha Stewart?
Jin: Plummelo is what I call a meta-cooking website – it sits on top of the existing cooking blogs and websites in the same way that users view them. Users typically frequent more than one recipe website and their natural process is to find the recipes they like and to collect them in some way. It’s relatively rare that a user goes to just one site for everything. Collecting recipes and organizing them is an offline process, and I want to create a simple online version of that. So, Plummelo gives users the freedom and control to collect recipes from where they want instead of being captive to any single site. Because of this last aspect, Plummelo also provides ratings of recipes from across the Web as well as ratings of recipe websites themselves.

Mamet: What does the future hold for Plummelo? What next big steps should we be on the lookout for?
Jin: We just finished phase 1 of our development plan, so now we want to use what we have to create amazing content and to support and engage the Plummelo users. So our next step is to focus on valuable content via the blog and our social network channels (Twitter and Facebook), and valuable content on the website to engage users and visitors. There are 2 more major phases that will add amazing social features and value features. We can hardly contain ourselves with excitement when we talk about what’s in store.

Cambridge Open Coffee is a weekly event on Wednesday morning, where Boston entrepreneurs gather to talk shop over coffee at Andala’s coffee shop in Central Square. If you think of events like the MITX Technology awards as a yearly spectacle where the best and brightest come together to celebrate their work and party, Open Coffee stands in direct contrast. This a small group of people who gather once a week to discuss their technology-based business, and the specific obstacles they’re looking to overcome. Think – Halls of Justice meets Sloan School meets group therapy. It started in London, and there are Open Coffee sessions all around the world now.

There were 15 smart people in the room, and me. I was glad to simply listen to what they had to say. But, I didn’t travel all the way up to Cambridge from the South Short just to listen. I wanted to take part in the conversation, but knew there probably wasn’t much of anything new that I could teach these guys.

Chris Williams, founder of Vuuch, explains his product at Open Coffee

So, I fell back on the good advice that you can find in books like Chris Brogan’s Trust Agents. I tried my best to help them out in any way I could – with my limited knowledge, but most importantly – helping make new connections for them.

How? Well, I met Nelson de Witt, who’s a Social Entrepreneur who spends time working with small and family-run business in Panama helping them understand how to take advantage of newer technologies like eBay, Twitter, and Facebook. I don’t know much about doing business in other countries, but I do know Dan Shortell, who had been doing that very same thing in Venezeuala. I made the connection over email and hopefully they’ll be able to share some stories and learn something new.

So, check out Open Coffee in Cambridge some Wednesday morning. You’ll be in an intimate setting of only about dozen or so people, but if you’re into startups, they’ll be the right dozen or so people.

Boston’s Innovation Economy has a great startup culture and entrepreneurial environment. But, with so many of these startups focused on delivering products and services around Marketing and Sales, it gets a little tiring. I’m just not interested in hearing about the next new business model that sits on top of Twitter. Imagine my delight when I met up with Alex Grodd, Founder at BetterLesson, “an organizational and sharing platform that allows educators to lesson plan more efficiently and effectively, giving warranted focus to creating innovative content, delivering innovative content, grading, tutoring, analyzing data, communicating with parents, and finishing paperwork.” I sat down with Alex to hear about the company he founded.

Mamet: What is BetterLesson and what prompted you to start it?

Grodd: BetterLesson is a social network that helps teachers connect and share lessons, best practices, and ideas.  I started BetterLesson in response to the frustrations that I experienced while teaching 6th grade in Atlanta and Boston public schools.  During my time in the classroom, I found myself constantly searching for lessons on the Internet and usually coming up short.   As a result, I would spend inordinate amounts of time ‘reinventing the wheel,’ creating lessons from scratch the night before delivering them.  After creating a series of effective lessons, I had no good way to share them with colleagues in my school and district.  I created BetterLesson to throw a wrench in this cycle, which was taking a serious toll on my instruction and morale.

Mamet: What’s happened since you launched it? things you were hoping for? Things you didn’t expect? any stats you can share with us?

Grodd: We officially launched our beta site in August and have seen really exciting growth and traction.  In less than three months, we have over 2,500 registered users from over 100 schools and  districts.  These teachers have contributed more than 12,000 resources to the site.  That being said, we still have a lot of work ahead of us and are excited to continue iterating around the user experience.  We have some exciting features and UI enhancements coming up over the next few weeks and months that will hopefully have a large impact on our community-building efforts.

Mamet: In your former life, you were a 6th grade teacher. How do you see technology and public education blending to change education?

Grodd: I’ve been working on BetterLesson full-time for over a year now (I was teaching full-time until July 2008).  There’s a great deal of literature on the role that technology could/should play in education.  I’ll list a few areas I’m excited about:

1. I (clearly) think technology can play a powerful role in scaling effective content and practices to teachers and students across the globe.
2. Technology can play a really powerful role in helping teachers deliver differentiated instruction that targets their students’ unique learning needs and styles.  There are many effective instructional video games and applications that create specialized learning programs based on each student’s unique talents, abilities, and needs.
3. There are a number of K-12 tools and systems (the gradebook is a good example) that have evolved very little over the past 50 years and are ripe for a big disruption.
4. Technology offers many exciting ways to collect and harness student data.

These are just a few…Education is a very fertile frontier for technology.

Mamet: What are some of the obstacles to bringing new technology into the  public system and how are you overcoming them?

Grodd: There are many obstacles to bringing technology to K-12 schools.  Many schools districts have outdated technical infrastructures. When we train teachers on ways to use BetterLesson, we see a lot of IE6 and outdated Flash, etc.  We do our best to help schools and teachers upgrade their technology.  Another major hurdle is that the predominant K-12 business model involves big companies selling big products to school districts via an extremely long and inefficient sales cycle.  Our solution is to take an entirely new, bottom-up approach and go straight to the teachers.

Mamet: What does the future hold for BetterLesson? What next big steps should we be on the lookout for?

Grodd: Our most important milestone is to build a platform where teachers can quickly and easily find high-quality content and connect with their peers. To get there, we’re working on a number of exciting UI enhancements: a new UI focused on ‘findablility’, more powerful search, better recognition of high-quality content and high-performing teachers, and an enhanced newsfeed and commenting system.  We’re also beginning to grow our marketing and outreach efforts.  There’s a lot of work ahead, and we’re excited to get after it.

The 14th Annual MITX Awards at the Boston Marriott Copley did not disappoint. The MITX awards attract entries celebrating innovative web design and development projects from all across the state, from small boutique firms to large marketing agency powerhouses. I was lucky enough to part of a team that won a MITX award in 2005, and believe me – when you go up against tough competition and walk away the winner – you feel really good. Be sure to keep an eye out on the VisibleGains and MITX websites for the video of agencies and in-house groups celebrating their MITX win. You’ll see a version of pure, unadulterated joy that can only be the result of working your tail off to produce a body of work that you are completely proud of – and then having a group of your people you have deep respect for, recognize YOU as a top talent. Oh, and you get a shiny plaque, too. Which is cool.

But, the real value of this yearly MITX event is not the handing out of awards. Really, this is where the best and brightest in interactive technology and creative design come to meet, greet, and share ideas. In addition to spending time pestering my VisibleGains droogs who were who were there supporting MITX by recording a “video winner’s circle,” I got a chance to reconnect with lots of smart people who get stuff done, like Keith Cline. He’s the guy behind VentureFizz, the one stop shop for information related to the local Boston VC, entrepreneur, and technology innovation community. I also had a great conversation with Brian Bolton, VP Marketing over at Bridgeline Software, about the value of technology workers in the agency world. Congrats to Brian, Marcel, and the rest of the Bridgeline team on their MITX win. Bobbie Carlton was there too, and I learned that her wildly successful Mass Innovation Nights is now spreading its wings and becoming more than that. This Friday, Bobbie will be hosting the first Innovation Breakfast at the Waltham IBM Innovation Center.

In addition to reconnecting with folks I know and respect, I was also able to meet some new faces. MITX attracts the people that you see and learn from on Twitter, and webinars, and other speaking opportunities.  Early in the evening, I met Greg Cangialosi, a fellow online video marketing buff. His company is BlueSky Factory – an smart email marketing platform used by other smart companies like Hubspot. But, while having an office in Mass, BlueSky is really based out of Baltimore, MD. So, I was still on the hunt to meet the  titans of Massachusetts innovation economy. After all, this blog is Internet Tech Boston. I met Jamie Scheu from Hill Holliday. He didn’t talk much about where he’s from. Must be his shyness. Finally, I spent a good amount of time with Cappy Popp, of Mass-based ThoughtLabs, who is just about ready to release his new book on Facebook. From what he was able to tell me, it sounds like a really good read. I’ve added it to my Amazon Wishlist.

Scott Kirsner was also there, toasting to MITX and the nominees and recipients. Special thanks to Scott for including me in his Boston.com review of the MITX and Boston History events. With Larry Weber and  Kiki Mills from MITX, Keith from VentureFizz, Bobbie from Mass Inno, and Scott of Innovation Economy fame all in the same room, it was a veritable Boston home team rally. All we really needed was Bobby Orr, Larry Bird, and Tom Brady to come strolling by to turn it into every New Yorkers’ special version of hell.

Yeah – I loved every minute of it.

Keith Cline is the founder of Dissero, a recruiting firm focusing on emerging growth companies in the Northeast. I’ve known Keith for five years, and respect his ability to find the right people to fit the right jobs in emerging technology companies. For those who’ve been tasked with hiring talent for a web tech company in Boston – you know how hard this is to do with success on a regular basis.  It takes a deep understanding of the technology, but also the personalities of everyone involved.  That’s why I was intrigued when Keith launched VentureFizz in 2009,  a destination website focused on all things Tech in the Boston area. From the start, it was clear that VentureFizz is much more than a job board. It’s a community site dedicated to bringing together the talent, the technology, the jobs, and the entrepreneurial spirit in this great technology hub in Boston and the northeast. I sat down with Keith to learn more.

Mamet: What is VentureFizz and what prompted you to start it?

Cline: VentureFizz is a destination website where people can find all that is buzzing within Boston’s technology community from one spot. There is a tremendous amount of great content out there and our goal was to help pull it all together for people in our industry. For the past seven years, I have been running a recruiting firm called Dissero, which is focused on VC backed technology companies in the Boston area. I speak with several people every day and I always ask the question – “how do you find information about Boston’s tech industry.” The responses are typically varied and it seemed apparent that a site like this would be a valuable resource. Thus, VentureFizz pulls all of this information together. Our features include: Company Research (over 800 companies, tagged and searchable), Job Board, Networking Calendar, VC Funding Activity, News, Blogs, and our Twitter feed.

Mamet:  What’s happened since you launched it? things you were hoping for? things you didn’t expect? any stats you can share with us?

Cline: One word – WOW – I have been overwhelmed and encouraged by the amount of support and positive feedback from the tech community in Boston. So many people have sent me emails saying how much they appreciate the site. The venture capital community has also been very, very supportive of the site. Firms like Matrix Partners, Flybridge Venture Capital, Venrock, Highland Capital Partners, etc. have all helped out in one way or another. Every week, the traffic continues to grow at a steady clip and we currently have over 6,200 people receiving our weekly email newsletter. The newsletter has been a very popular feature, since it provides an overall snapshot of information from the previous week. We also highlight innovative companies, jobs and upcoming networking events.

Mamet: During your “day job,” you help tech companies find talented technology workers. How do you see technology, venture capital / funding, and entrepreneurship blending to change the shape of the “recruiter” role?

Cline: In the recruiting industry, there are always new ideas, cutting edge technologies, or new business models that are looking to change the face of recruiting. Some of which have been venture capital backed and very successful. For example, LinkedIn has made an enormous impact on how recruiters source for talent. Bullhorn is a Highland backed company which has created a SaaS Applicant Tracking System for staffing firms. Each company is filling a critical need in a major market where there is a significant revenue opportunity (for a VC to fund the business). On the flip side, I see a lot of “solutions” that seem overly technical and complex, where they are trying to automate too much. A lot of recruiting comes down to experience, knowledge, personal touch, and instinct.

Mamet: How does VentureFizz fit into the ecosystem of great tech communities here in New England like Scott Kirsner’s Innovation Economy, David Beisel’s Web Innovator’s Group, and Bobbie Carlton’s Mass Innovation Nights?

Cline: VentureFizz is a perfect compliment to the overall ecosystem. We are all working towards the same common goal in terms of increasing the awareness of all the great things happening, as well as encouraging innovation throughout the region. WebInno, Mass Innovation Nights, MTLC, MITX, etc. are all included as part of our Networking Events page. I also help to promote specific events, such as the QUEST for Innovation, which has a featured listing and logo on our site. I have always been a big fan of Scott Kirsner, as well as Mass High Tech & Xconomy. I hope that VentureFizz is introducing their great content to some fresh eyes.

Mamet: What does the future hold for VentureFizz? What next big steps should we be on the lookout for?

Cline: I am happy with the positive feedback from the first release of the site, but I already have several ideas for the next release of VentureFizz. My goal is to make the site more social and interactive. At some point, I would like to roll out VentureFizz to another city…but I am focused on making the site a major success in Boston first.

Keith Cline is Founder, VentureFizz & Dissero. Keith has over eleven years of experience in the technology and recruiting industry. In 2009, Keith launched VentureFizz, which is a destination website focused on all things Tech in the Boston area. Seven years ago, Keith also started and continues to run Dissero, which is a leading recruiting firm focused on working with venture capital backed companies in the area.

As chronicled by local author & columnist Scott Kirsner, New England’s Innovation Economy attracts some of the best technology companies, most succesful venture capitalists, and smartest technology workers in the nation. I’m lucky enough to have been born, raised, and schooled here, and my professional career has been shaped by almost exclusively by some of the greatest, forward thinking minds in the nation. Yeah – I’ve got hometown pride. Don’t even get me started on the Red Sox.

One of the natural by products of having all these smart, innovative, hard working people within close proximity is that there are a lot of great, recurring meetups and events to go to, meet foks, grab mindshare, and make connections. To attempt to enumerate a complete list here would be doing a disservice, as they are too many and varied by subject matter and topic. I’ll leave that to the good folks at Boston TweetUp who do their best to keep us all up to date with all the tech networking events around town. But, organizations like MITX, Mass Innovation Nights, and especially Web Innovator’s Group routinely impress me with caliber of events they host at no or next-to-nothing cost to me.

This Tuesday, September 29th, WebInno23 will kick off with a slate of 3 main dish presentations by local Tech companies, as well as a gallery of 6 companies demo’ing their technology throughout the evening. As an extra special added bonus, Mike Troiano will lead a breakout discussion titled “An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Bootstrapping PR” with local talent including Scott Kirsner. I’ve had the pleasure of being able to speak one on one with both Mike and Scott to learn about their thoughts on technology marketing, social media, and engagement in the online world. I know from personal experience that this will be one great breakout session in an already impressive event.

If you haven’t already done so, take a moment to register for WebInno23. For those attending the event, drop me a note on Twitter now, and I’ll be sure to introduce myself this Tuesday.

Also, be sure to checkout videos and my feedback on past WebInno events.

As I sit here and watch the breaking news of Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed light up the Twitter-verse, a thought occurs to me. Facebook is the epitome of the Web 2.0 world – having grown from the brainchild of a college dropout to one of the largest online communities on the internet. You know you’re not just a cool web startup when you’re interviewed for 60 Minutes. FriendFeed has not had nearly as much media focus as Facebook or other social media darlings like Twitter and LinkedIn, but with the all-knowing, yet hard to define super-powers of the “ex-Google” founders, it’s had more than its fair share of media attention. Robert Scoble, I’m looking in your direction.

Here’s a news flash – these companies don’t really make any money. While the terms of the deal have not yet fully been disclosed (or even made official), I wonder if this is worth it. When two companies making no profit merge, they must be doing it for the hope of a future realization of revenue and profit. In other words, there are “synergies” here. Sounds a lot like the fateful merger of the Web 1.0 media giants – AOL and Time Warner. We all know how that ended up.

I don’t have enough knowledge or experience to be able to effectively (or even professionally) compare these 2 blockbuster deals. But, what I know about the first one is this. The merger of AOL/Time Warner marked the end of the Dot Com / Web 1.0 hype. It was all down hill after that. Many people have been discussing and speculating that Web 2.0 is already jumped the shark, and that we’re now in Web 2.5 or even approaching Web 3.0 – The Semantic Web. There’s a big part of me that thinks all this talk about Web 2.5 is just a fancy way of hitting the snooze alarm and prolonging the inevitable. Maybe we’ll look back at this latest big time merger and see it also marked the end of an era.

Then again, maybe not. What do you think? Please leave a comment below.