EWCPresenter.com

EWC Presenter is a web content creation and management platform that simplifies the way users develop and maintain content for web and mobile.

   

We had a very insightful and interesting interview with Mr. ‘Payman Taei‘; Founder and President of the US (Frederick)-based start-up “EWC Presenter”.

“EWC Presenter” is a web based platform to create, edit and enhance thousands of users web presence.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Taei’ regarding his internet start-up company “EWC Presenter”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “EWC Presenter” is all about?

I am the Founder and President of EWC Presenter (www.ewcPresenter.com), a web content creation and management platform that simplifies the way users develop and maintain content for web and mobile. We’re all about creating efficiency and simplifying the way users interact and manage their web presence. Our service is geared towards anyone with little to no technical knowledge who wants to take charge of their website be it creating, editing or adding engaging features to their websites.

2. When has “EWC Presenter” been founded? And what stage is “EWC Presenter” currently at?

EWC Presenter is an extension of Easy WebContent which was founded in late 2008 as a simple website editor geared towards anyone who wanted to easily manage the content of their websites without coding knowledge or changes to their existing website. In 2010 we extended our system to allow site owners to add various interactive features to their site and today we have leaped into creating an easy to use yet powerful site builder that gives non technical users the ability to develop and maintain their web presence.

And today with EWC Presenter we are changing the way engaging content is created.

3. What is “EWC Presenter”‘s business model and how does it work?

EWC Presenter is currently free to everyone; We aim to continue supporting our freemium model long-term and offer an extended version of the service under a premium subscription plan as we have already done for our HTML Editor and Site Builder.

EWC Presenter is a cloud based system; giving us the ability to scale and serve our users growing needs deploying regular upgrades and features to users without the need to manually update or pay upgrade fees for new version releases.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

Our team comes from different walks of life. I would say that we are extremely diverse both in culture and skill. It’s a great cohesion with each member and whenever we conduct meetings it’s always a creative mission. Our team met at our Web Development company HindSite Interactive, an award winning web consulting company which incubated and supported Easy WebContent from the start. Without HindSite Interactive we likely wouldn’t be here today.

We have members that work in the Easy WebContent office and some that work from the comforts of their home, so communication is key to our functionality and success.

We use a few different modes of communication depending on the task at hand. Design oriented tasks are often done in person between our design team; while development oriented tasks are handled through our CRM system, email and sometimes skype or chat. We’re quite open and flexible and open to all communication means; whichever best serves the purpose.

5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique about you and what’s new about what you make?

Our goal is not to give users every possible feature you can imagine. It’s about giving them features and capabilities that most users need in a easy to use and user friendly manner.

Additionally although some users want out of the box solutions, we find that many also want to have a certain level of control and flexibility. For example you may like a certain theme we offer but you want to make it your own by changing colors, graphics and even minute adjustment such as border, spacing and margins.

Our offering give you these abilities while eliminating the headache of any coding and design experience.

6. What is your growth like? And what milestones has “EWC Presenter” achieved so far?

Easy WebContent has grown slow but steady and organically over the years. In fact we have at time prevented growth for sake of investing to our service quality, research and development and tapping into new offerings that further strengthen our brand. Our goal has never been to have the largest user base; Our goal is to provide quality tool and services to our loyal user base and a steady stable growth rate that sustains our passion to further improve our services to our customers.

With our EWC Presenter launch in just a few weekls since our initial Beta launch we have seen an exponential growth in our user base which leads us to believe the stikiness of our tool.

7. Who are your competitors? And what is “EWC Presenter”‘s competitive advantage over them?

We have a number of competitors but each in their own niche, while EWC Presenter works across a few content categories and thus in one way or another competes with tools such as Prezi, Weebly, Slide Rocket, and wix to name a few. Presenter was developed to solve more than one problem. You see most applications are made to do one thing and one thing only. That is not how we see or treat Presenter. Presenter was developed to tackle a few issues faced by users and professionals alike.

What we are offering through Presenter is one App, one location to create awesome interactive content that will set you apart from others.

8. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?

We don’t have any direct competitors for our HTML Editor service; There are Downloadable software such as CoffeeCup’s HTML editor but most of our direct competitors (offering easy to use online based HTML Editors without any set-up are no longer operating).

In terms of Site Builder, there are many other Site Builders; Many have been around for a while and a few new products have recently popped up.

Our advantage is that our tools are created with the sole aim of allowing users to more easily manage and edit web content and have more flexibility and freedom in design over other tools.

9. What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?

Software an technology are ever evolving. If you sit back for a moment and become static, it will pass you by.

Just because we make it easy for you, doesn’t mean it was easy to develop. Any company be it hardware, software or any industry that involves user behavior and experience can tell you that to make things simple and easy to use comes at a cost of extra time, resources and effort to achieve that for your users.

10. Why are you going to succeed?

We are extremely ambitious about where we are taking Presenter. Our passion for the art of interactive design and graphics combined with our extensive knowledge in HTML5 is allowing us to make Presenter the go to App for creating not just animations, or presentations but a whole spectrum of content types that are in the works.

We have a great team behind Presenter and we listen to what our users want. This is allowing us to quench our users’s thirst for better features and improved functionality so they can have the best experience possible.

11. If “EWC Presenter” succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?

We have plans for a number of areas we will be expanding to. Some you’ll have to wait and see in the coming months, but we already have 5 categories we are rolling out features under.

User can use Presenter as a one stop shop to create variety of web and mobile friendly content. We currently have the ability to create animations, presentations, infographics, product demos and banners. All in HTML5, all web and mobile friendly on publish and last but not least the ability to make each interactive.

12. Why did you choose this idea and concept to build “EWC Presenter” based on?

The idea came to us actually. At my web development company HindSite Interactive, a core part of our business back in mid 2000′s was interactive design and motion graphics and based virtually on Adobe Flash. And with the onset of iPhone came the demise of Flash followed by a negative impact on our interactive/animation work. Virtually overnight we got less and less requests for flash work since it’s not supported on Apple’s Mobile devices.

We waited a couple years and didn’t see a tool that we ourselves would want to use to create the type of work we would be proud of.

So I decided for us to take a leap of faith and create an App that is cloud based, easy to use by pros and the average Joe, and fully based on HTML5 which unlike flash is not going anywhere but up given it is accepted by all big players and now accepted by W3C as a standard as is HTML.

13. What have you learned so far from launching your idea?

It’s been a great learning experience. we learn new things everyday. Creating EWC Presenter to do everything that it does has been a big technical challenge to say the least. No one has taken on HTML5 interactivity the way we’re approaching it.

So we had a clean slate and coming up with new ideas and features where many are based on our own research and development. What did we learn? The farther we go, the deeper the rabbit whole gets!

14. Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?

As with any start-up you always wonder how long it will take to gain the traction you desire. We have no doubt we will gain traction; we already actually have met our goals since our Beta launch in terms of users and feedback we were hoping for. The question is how far can we take Presenter.

We have technical challenges ahead of us not about the App itself, but about some of the really cool ideas we have in mind which require a lot of technical research to bring to reality. I’m confident we will achieve them.

15. What’s the benefit for the customer/user?

There are a number of benefits to using Presenter. We listened to what our users wanted from the onset of our closed beta launch. In fact in closed beta we backed up our launch because we realized we had to make some drastic changes in our interface to better accommodate the user and we continue to collect feedback and adjust system regularly.

Users can take advantage of Presenter for a number of benefits. One App to provide you the ability to create awesome content for web or mobile from Presentations and animations to banners, infographics and even product demos. All in HTML5 and the ability to make each one fully interactive and engaging.

16. How did customers / users find out about you?

We launched a closed beta and contacted a few venues and began to get a series of registrations for our tool.

We also attended number of local tech events to get the buzz going and when time came notified everyone in our list about the product beta launch. The rest is been word of mouth and buzz from users who enjoy the tool enough to share and refer others to it.

17. Who are your current customers / users? Who are your target customers / users?

Often you are told to have a niche target audience in mind when launching a product. We’re going against a grain a bit. The fact is Presenter applies to anyone. Students and teachers use it to create graphs/charts for your school project or an interactive Presume when applying for a job. Designers and bloggers use it to create professional animations, banners and motion graphics for landing pages, websites and blogs.

E-commerce site owners can use it to better market their products through product demos and graphics and the list goes on…

18. Where do new customers / users come from and what makes new customers/users try you?

Many are referrals from prior users, some find us through organic traffic on search engines and mentions on various blogs and sites, and some see references to Presenter from other projects users publish and want to see what they can do with it.

Last but not least we have a user base from our other product lines HTML Editor and Site Builder who are also using Presenter.

19. What do your customers / users say about your product and/or service?

“You guys are great. Many thanks Amazing product – fantastic service. You deserve your success. And I will spread the good word about your products.”

Although Presenter has only recently opened to public, we have been getting positive feedback from our users. We appreciate all feedback about our tools, positive or negative helps us to refine and improve our products and based on the feedback we will continue to evolve Presenter to be the best product it can be.

20. How are you going to scale?

Technically our system is built to scale. We are growing our user base exponentially and to achieve the scale we built the system on the Cloud so we can increase capabilities to meet demand.

Based on our growth rate we will then assess our next steps to grow our operation which may include additional technical improvements and strategic adjustments.

21. What’s the biggest missing feature? The one thing customers/users keep asking for?

We have been getting requests for more assets and widgets. The fact is we have plenty of them but I think the users have seen the capability of our widgets and realized it truly simplifies the content creation process so the want more. Good news is we can roll out widgets quickly because we always knew it will be an integral part of our system.

The one feature we have been getting more requests for is the ability to import and integrate to other verticals such as integration with a CMS system or Blogging platform. Guess what, users asked and we’re working on delivering in the near future)

22. Are you going to internationalize? And if yes how are you planning to expand your start-up’s operations accordingly?

We didn’t intend to. We thought our core audience would be North America or english speaking countries, but surprisingly we’ve been getting a lot of traction out of Europe such as Spain, and France.

Even though the system is in English, they seem to have no problems using it as it supports virtually all latin characters.

23. How big do you think you can get? Why? And how you are planning to achieve your goals?

The potential is huge. Our system has the ability to scale across many content verticals not just presentations and infographics and it is being used by both pros and the average person so we see a big market that we’re going to tap into.

We are going to first and foremost concentrate on continually improving our product and take are of our user needs. With that we know the users will continue to follow.

To support our growth we are entertaining opportunities from a financial and technical level to meet the growth.

24. Are you looking to hire a new workforce? And if yes, what job vacancies do you currently offer and where can potential applicants contact you at?

We are always on lookout for great talent. User interface, animators and HTML5 savvy developers can contact us.

The first thing we look at is not your academic achievements but your portfolio and real life experience. If you got the talent, and the motivation contact me directly payman at easywebcontent dot com.

25. Are you looking for partnership opportunities or funding from Venture Capitals (VC) or other funding sources? Or your business is self-sustainable? And if the first option applies where can potential partners / investors contact you at?

We are open to any opportunity that makes sense for both sides. We’re not at a stage where we have to have funding to move ahead.

EWC Presenter runs under Easy WebContent which already generates revenue from its other services and is fueling Presenter’s growth.

But we are entertaining Angel or VC investment in the near future to help us with our 3-5 year plan that I have in mind.

We are also very interested in partnership opportunities as I believe there is a number of verticals the application can serve.

Investors / Partners can contact me directly at payman @ easywebcontent dot com.

26. What advice do you have for fresh entrepreneurs?

Be consistent. If you look at the founders of established companies you will find one common denominator between all of them.

Aside from being there at the right time, and having a great idea and strategy, they were consistent in their approach and did not give up in the face of big challenges and obstacles.

27. Finally, do you have any other comments that you would like to add?

We want everyone to give EWC Presenter at try. It’s free and anyone can sign-up to use it and see what you can do with it.

Your feedback is important to us and will help us further refine the system. Go to www.ewcPresenter.com and Create Awesome.

Airwalk-Design.com

Airwalk Design is like Pinterest for designers, a creative platform for sharing design inspiration.

  

We had an insightful and in-depth interview with the young entrepreneur Mr. ‘Daniel Schwarz‘; Founder & CEO of the England (London)-based start-up “Airwalk Design”.

“Airwalk Design“ is a creative social platform for sharing design inspiration.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Schwarz’ regarding his start-up company “Airwalk Design”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “Airwalk Design” is all about?

Airwalk Design is like Pinterest for designers, a creative platform for sharing design inspiration. We also have fresh, undiscovered writers with specialist knowledge in certain genres of digital design. We call them our ambassadors! Our mission is to inspire and spark thought-provoking reactions in the minds of designers worldwide. The very best of the user-submissions will be published in our magazine.

2. When has “Airwalk Design” been founded? And what stage is “Airwalk Design” currently at?

We began right at the beginning of 2013, and we have already launched our website this spring, including Dropbox integration and our new Google Chrome app that lets you share design inspiration with no more fuss than a single click. We are currently accepting sign-ups and encourage users to submit their favourite design inspirations.

3. What is “Airwalk Design”‘s business model and how does it work?

We plan to monetize our platform with niche-topic advertising using the BuySellAds network and also through the sales of our monthly e-magazine. If the inspiration strikes us, we will also publish books by either myself or our onboard, handpicked writers specializing in specific topics such as dark-art and surrealism.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

I am the only person in my team! I do everything, from design to development to marketing! It’s a tiring role, but an exciting and fulfilling one. Not too much cost-effective! We do have onboard writers, however they have signed up as volunteers. Their benefits include discovery, experience and reputation.

5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique about you and what’s new about what you make?

We don’t really have many competitors, or you could say that we have a lot. Photoshop blogs, Pinterest, the Behance network or deviantArt…we’re taken inspiration from so many things but we like to think that we’re unique and incomparable. We’ve integrated with Dropbox, we have a Chrome App, really put the effort in. Our writing focuses on intense, thought-provoking topics that are sure to inspire.

6. What is your growth like? And what milestones has “Airwalk Design” achieved so far?

In a short space of time, we’ve received so many positive comments and user-engagement milestones such as “loves”, “comments” and “retweets”. Designers love our platform. We’ve also made some great connections which has proven beneficial to marketing our platform. Our first big milestone will be to have 500 sign-ups.

7. Who are your competitors? And what is “Airwalk Design”‘s competitive advantage over them?

We don’t really have many competitors, or you could say that we have a lot. Photoshop blogs, Pinterest, the Behance network or deviantArt…we’re taken inspiration from so many things but we like to think that we’re unique and incomparable. We’ve integrated with Dropbox, we have a Chrome App, really put the effort in. Our writing focuses on intense, thought-provoking topics that are sure to inspire.

8. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?

You could say our biggest problem was creating problems. We had too many ideas, and too little time to implement them. We had way too many re-designs. Deciding where to promote your startup for weeks is hard to, but we ended up ultimately e-mail marketing the entire internet community anyway (within our niche of course). Most of all, keeping the spirits high and keeping patience is the hardest part!

9. What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?

People don’t understand the personal aims behind this project. Not everybody reads the about me section, and I suppose it may not be all that relevant to them, but it could be crucial in turning some visitors into customers. This is why I’m reaching out to blogs and startup specialists. I want people to know that this is more than a blog.

10. Why are you going to succeed?

Not because I will never give up, not because I wake up at 6am everyday, not because I check code a million times before signing off on a web-project, not because I’m irritating when it comes to perfection, but because I analyse every detail and see things that others don’t. I always have a plan, and I’m always one-step ahead of it.

11. If “Airwalk Design” succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?

We definitely want to expand into publishing. Writing is a passion of mine, and most of our workforce will include writers. We want to inform and inspire, and I think writing is the best way to do that. We will publish a monthly magazine as well as a series of books, both entertaining and informative.

12. Why did you choose this idea and concept to build “Airwalk Design” based on?

Your idea has to be something that you’re passionate about. I could not work the 10 hours a day that I do if I hated it, it would drive me insane. This doesn’t mean that it’s viable. The market has to want and understand your idea too. I also built upon this idea because I’m a designer by background, so it launched right off the back of that really.

13. What have you learned so far from launching your idea?

Never have too many ideas. Initial ideas are great, but to keep piling them on pushes your launch date further and further away. I’ve also learnt that it helps to talk about your idea before you’ve launched. Tell people, tell them how it’s coming along, what you’re finding hard and what you might want help with. Connections are always great, even if they’re just to keep you sane.

14. Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?

Our biggest problem will be trying to suppress our ideas. You have to be patience to make a successful startup, the hardest thing in my opinion. Spreading out your ideas over time keeps the buzz active for as long as possible, so we’re putting some things on the sideline for now, such as more apps and features.

15. What’s the benefit for the customer/user?

People who sign up have many, many benefits. The sole point of the platform is to share design inspiration and to collect it too. However, the best will be chosen each month to be published in a magazine, so there’s exposure on the line here. We deeply encourage users to think about the inspiration behind their work for a good chance in being published.

16. How did customers / users find out about you?

We’re putting a lot of PR out there. We want as many blog coverage and earned media as we can, whilst rewarding the picked up coverage from other blogs. We have many areas to promote, see, for example our website, our app, it’s features, our magazine…even our contest. There’s a lot going on right now.

17. Who are your current customers / users? Who are your target customers / users?

We’re targeting artists and designers with a strong sense of ambition, that can be your everyday designer, the amateurs, and the hard-hitting professionals. There’s something for everyone. It’s a place where everybody is equal because of one reason: we all have a mind, and the ability to be inspired.

18. Where do new customers / users come from and what makes new customers/users try you?

We share our articles a lot, especially with other Photoshop websites such as PhotoshopRoadmap, etc. We also publish articles on other websites for promotional purposes. We have a large twitter network and an even larger Facebook network. A lot of our sign-ups come from making strong connections with other startups.

19. What do your customers / users say about your product and/or service?

We’ve gotten some great feedback from our beta launch. Users love our layout and it’s clean masonry feel. It’s simplicity, the app, the Dropbox integration. It’s quite a productive tool for finding design inspiration and users enjoy reading our articles in the meantime. We’ve spent a lot of time on it. Go check it out!

20. How are you going to scale?

We’ll be hiring more writers to talk about specific, niche topics to fit the demand of what our users want. Right now we have a few, and we think they’re interesting, but we haven’t asked or analysed what people are really demanding yet. Maybe you could help us out? Or even suggest a digital design writer.

21. What’s the biggest missing feature? The one thing customers/users keep asking for?

We’ve been asked to design a Firefox and iPad app, which was already on our to-do list. People also want to know more about our writers, personal stuff, so we’re creating a page about our ambassadors. They’re undiscovered, so it’s all fresh and exciting. People also want more notifications, and that’s something we regard as our current priority.

22. Are you going to internationalize? And if yes how are you planning to expand your start-up’s operations accordingly?

Our platform is already getting an international audience, however, it would be nice to have a personalized viewing experiences for each region, such as language formats. We love how inspiration is so diverse from a cultural aspect. Internationalization is very important to us and we regard it as a key priority.

23. How big do you think you can get? Why? And how you are planning to achieve your goals?

We think that we can be as big as Behance or deviantArt, even Pinterest. And also other popular Photoshop networks such as PhotoshopRoadmap and PSDTuts+. Our writers are the real key to our success, which will convert in referral traffic and organic traffic. Let’s not forget the powerful effects of social media too!

24. Are you looking to hire a new workforce? And if yes, what job vacancies do you currently offer and where can potential applicants contact you at?

Right now we definitely want writers who can specialise in a niche topic of design. Maybe typography, or character design, both of those would be interesting. These position would be voluntary, at least at first, and would suit a an inexperienced writer looking to launch a career from this. We can be contact @ schwarz@airwalk-design.com.

25. Are you looking for partnership opportunities or funding from Venture Capitals (VC) or other funding sources? Or your business is self-sustainable? And if the first option applies where can potential partners / investors contact you at?

I’d say that we are self sustainable. We don’t have any running costs, and we didn’t use any capital (apart from the web hosting!). We will be using Kickstarter to help launch our magazine in mind spring, though. That idea is crucial to the success, but not required. Keep a lookout on Kickstarter for us!

26. What advice do you have for fresh entrepreneurs?

It’s hard to stay relaxed, and to tell you the truth, I rarely do. My advice to new entrepreneurs is simplify, compact, and review ideas constantly. Cut out the not so great ones and focus on the best ones. Only focus on what you should be doing now, rather than worrying about a task in the future.

27. Finally, do you have any other comments that you would like to add?

Thank you for your time. I would share the hell out of this if it were published!

Pollfish.com

Pollfish is a survey web platform that allows anyone to create a survey, select audience from Pollfish distribution and get answers.

   

Start-Ups.Co had an in-depth and intuitive interview with Mr. ‘Giannis Zaoudis‘; Co-Founder and CTO of the Cyprus-based start-up “Pollfish”.

“Pollfish“ is a survey platform which provides access to millions of targeted users.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Zaoudis’ regarding his start-up company “Pollfish”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “Pollfish” is all about?

Pollfish is a survey web platform that allows anyone to create a survey, select audience from Pollfish distribution and get answers. Pollfish builds its distribution with mobile app developers who embed Pollfish SDK into their apps, in order to gain revenue.

Pollfish can be considered as a marketplace similar to the mobile ad marketplaces that already exist.

2. When has “Pollfish” been founded? And what stage is “Pollfish” currently at?

Pollfish has been founded on March 2013 and it has already over 150,000 users and two paying customers. Currently we are expanding our network in England and we are in discussion with well known research companies for the next surveys. The next goal is to hit 1,000,000 users and be able to make worldwide surveys for big firms.

3. What is “Pollfish”‘s business model and how does it work?

Pollfish potential clients are anyone that wishes to create a survey and get some answers. Clients can be individuals, market research companies, advertising agencies, firms and others. Pollfish focuses on the online surveys market, while re-channeling it through existing mobile apps!

Pollfish provides a one-stop solution from survey creation to delivery of results. Pollfish introduces survey distribution and targeting as a service! Distribution is built through partnerships with mobile app developers who embed Pollfish SDK into their apps. Clients pay per completed survey and revenue is shared with the developers.

Every day thousands of mobile applications are released to the different app stores around the world. Different monetization methods are used on these apps following the successful ad model. Pollfish is taking advantage of this model to deliver more revenue and happy users to the developers! Users responding to Pollfish surveys can win prizes or discounts through Pollfish partnered retailers, something which brings in additional revenue to Pollfish as users are channeled towards the retailers and get commission on the sales while simultaneously keeping users engaged.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

Pollfish team started working in January 2013 with the vision to change the global landscape of how mobile surveys are conducted! Pollfish has 5 founders, which are spread, in two different countries (Cyprus and Greece). The team is working remotely though Skype for the last three months and managed to take the project from an idea to a minimum valuable product with 150k users on the platform and two paying customers!

Pollfish team members know each other for a long time and has previously founded other startups and worked together in different projects in the past!

John Papadakis – Founder and CEO: John is responsible for the team coordination and sales. He is also building the back-end of Pollfish platform.

Andreas Vourkos – Founder and COO: Andreas is responsible for the operations of Pollfish and sales. He is keeping the balance in this group of fellows. He is building and supporting the Pollfish Android SDK.

Giannis Zaoudis – Founder and CTO: Giannis is responsible for the technology of Pollfish. He is dealing with the server side issues and he is developing the front-end of the platform.

Vasileios Mitrousis – Founder and Head of Mobile: Vasileios is responsible for anything regarding the mobile part of Pollfish. He is dealing with the fragmentation issues and he is building and supporting the Pollfish iOS SDK.

Zissis Bellas – Founder and Art Director: Zissis is responsible for the user interface, brand development and anything else related to the image of Pollfish. He is building the mobile UI, the website, the promo videos and other.

John, Giannis and Andreas have graduated from the same University and have been friends for more than 9 years! John and Giannis have co-founded a San Francisco registered startup (http://www.pajap.com) in the past. John and Giannis have won different competitions around mobile and web development.

Andreas and Vasileios have co-founded Wajee Mobile Ltd (http://www.wajeemobile.com), a mobile software house startup. They built their own augmented reality SDK libraries from scratch, being among the few companies in the world with that kind of ownership and won different competitions such as Cyprus Microsoft Imagine Cup 2012, Cyprus Hackathon 2012 and others.

Zissis was introduced to the team later on and became a perfect match! Zissis took part in many of the most well known advertising campaigns at Greece during the last two years! All member teams have been working full time on this project for the last 3 months.

5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique about you and what’s new about what you make?

Pollfish introduces a new innovative way of monetization of mobile apps in the global scene and additionally exposes and targets the elusive mobile user to survey! Below we highlight some of the most important advantages of Pollfish platform:

• Pollfish is following the widely spread and successive mobile advertising model. Pollfish builds its distribution with mobile apps developers who embed Pollfish SDK into their apps, in order to gain revenue. Each completed survey can provide 10-20 times more revenue than ad clicks! SDK integration is easy, fast and does not reserve any extra space to the developer’s app. Therefore, Pollfish can bring monetization to mobile developers in a complete different way than ads and with much more higher rates!

• By 2015 there will be more mobile users than web users. Mobile users are a very attractive segment, not easily accessible for market research. Pollfish brings full survey experience to engaged mobile users in an easy and not intrusive way! Pollfish builds its distribution through partnerships with mobile app developers who embed Pollfish SDK into their apps. Clients pay per completed survey and revenue is shared with the developers.

• One of the most important things in market research is targeting. Pollfish provides access to its clients; to the audience they really want. Pollfish ongoing targeting system continuously learns and improves by fully taking advantage of its user base. Pollfish is a distribution and targeting service for surveys, with access to a specific and hard to access audience, mobile users. Pollfish is a scalable product that can grow and expand to an international level.

6. What is your growth like? And what milestones has “Pollfish” achieved so far?

Pollfish is going from 0 users to over 150,000 in three months so growth is going very well at the moment and we are on the way of expanding to over a 1,000,000 users. Market research companies are already familiar with online surveys so getting the first two customers was really interesting and we currently in discussions for the next couple of customers!

7. Who are your competitors? And what is “Pollfish”‘s competitive advantage over them?

Survey Monkey, Question Pro, Google surveys are some of the existing players in the online surveys industry, but they don’t really address mobile audience. Pollfish is offering an audience which can’t be accessed through any of these services, an audience which belong to the opinion makers of our society.

8. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?

The initial obstacle was to convince app developers that it was worthy to spend an hour of their time to integrate our SDK. What we did was first to agree with market research companies that they will run a survey as soon as we had the distribution, so developers were happy to integrate our SDK since they would earn money immediately.

9. What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?

There are many issues regarding how surveys are conducted that people are unfamiliar with. Surveys is a wide field which is being studied many years and include hard theories on human behavior which require a solid background to understand them. Our field is to provide a stable marketplace in order for all the researchers to collect data and apply the scientific theories on them.

10. Why are you going to succeed?

Success is a big word and can only be told at the end, so i don’t know why are we going to succeed but i do know that we going to grow and we plan to do this quite aggressively and position Pollfish in the worldwide market during the first year. The team is really great and most of all focused on delivering results which in the end is all that matters.

11. If “Pollfish” succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?

Pollfish is focused on the market research area and has no plans on expanding in other domains at least for the next couple of years. Our goal is to provide this new distribution channel for market research companies and data collection and on the other hand an increased revenue stream for the developers. We are extremely focused and not looking into other domains so soon.

12. Why did you choose this idea and concept to build “Pollfish” based on?

Pollfish team noticed a huge opportunity since there is no other marketplace on the mobile survey domain. We searched a lot and decided that we wanted to make a validation test. The process was split in small steps. Initially we just tried setting up a small sdk to check if the users will respond to surveys. After we realized that our assumptions were valid we decided to build this start-up.

13. What have you learned so far from launching your idea?

Focusing on the business side of things is really important. In order to do this you have to measure everything, conversion rates on campaigns, on clicks and stay always focused on doing small tests to validate your assumptions. Most products/services on the start-up domain are quite innovative thus have a high risk of not being used by many users/customers, so don’t rush just test simple and small components.

14. Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?

Expanding in more than 4 countries worldwide will bring quite many problems i suppose. Localization to server scaling will definitely be issues but the team consists of experienced engineers who can handle such issues. Furthermore business development in countries with different entrepreneurship culture will be a challenge by its self but we like to think of ourselves like adopters and quick learners.

15. What’s the benefit for the customer/user?

Pollfish has a lot of advantages in terms both of its clients, its app developers and its users which respond to surveys. Lets start from the last, users gain gifts from answering surveys and since they are happy with that they rate apps high, making app developers happy who also win 10-20 times more money than an ad click per completed survey. As far as market research companies are concerned they just publish their survey and relax, we automate all the process and provide them with the collected data!

16. How did customers / users find out about you?

Currently, we were exploring only the Greek market and we have been focusing on making some cold calls and use our existing network to attract our first customers. In the future we are designing some engaging ad campaigns and we are going to participate in some well-know conferences for market research companies to present them our solution.

17. Who are your current customers / users? Who are your target customers / users?

Our current customers are market research companies which are being used by big firms in order to collect data about their brands/products. We are targeting this very specific audience which allows us to scale fast since it has already collected all the big firms which conduct surveys worldwide. Market research companies are already familiar with online surveys and will be totally excited with mobile surveys.

18. Where do new customers / users come from and what makes new customers/users try you?

New users come from the market research industry mainly and they want to use our service in order to provide their clients a new way to access an audience that was not available before. Furthermore our automated solution in data collection and distribution is quite convenient for them since it has zero overhead in their overall day to day operations.

19. What do your customers / users say about your product and/or service?

Developers are extremely happy since they earn much more money with our service and since their users are happy by winning gifts. On the other hand market research companies are very pleased that they can collect more than 500 completed surveys withing 2-3 days by simply providing their questionnaire with the appropriate logic.

20. How are you going to scale?

Initially we are adding only a certain amount of paying customers. We have a waiting list from which we will add new customers when we are ready and then continue with the creation of many helper tools for our users in order to over-automate the procedure and allow many users to easily create their surveys and collect their data in various formats. Scaling is a process that we estimate it will take about 6-7 months.

21. What’s the biggest missing feature? The one thing customers/users keep asking for?

Currently we are automating the survey creation process, which is what our market research companies ask from us. After we complete this step, we are going to work on the data presentation and also we are going to enhance question types and survey logic in order to meet all of our clients demands. Finally we are going to provide white label solutions since big market research companies have already been addressing this issue.

22. Are you going to internationalize? And if yes how are you planning to expand your start-up’s operations accordingly?

Pollfish is already addressing the Greek and Cyprus audience and is being provided in both English and Greek. The next milestone is to address the English market which is very interesting since many big market research companies operate there. We are going step by step in order to be able to handle all the requests professorially.

23. How big do you think you can get? Why? And how you are planning to achieve your goals?

Pollfish has set several high goals by the end of 2014 with over 100 clients worldwide, over 1M users and is working towards them very aggressively. Our plan for the next couple of months is to introduce our service to all the major marker research companies through some related conferences and then work on enhancing their experience.

24. Are you looking to hire a new workforce? And if yes, what job vacancies do you currently offer and where can potential applicants contact you at?

“Online surveys” is a $2bn market in the US with 9% annual growth rate. By 2015 there will be more mobile users than web users. Market research departments / firms need access to a new, and till now, hard to target audience (mobile users) while lowering their costs.

We believe that we can get a large portion of the online survey industry since we are offering a great audience for researchers to access.

25. Are you looking for partnership opportunities or funding from Venture Capitals (VC) or other funding sources? Or your business is self-sustainable? And if the first option applies where can potential partners / investors contact you at?

We are starting a funding round for 250,000 euro which will be used mainly for marketing and sales expenses in order to expand in more than 4 other countries worldwide. Anyone can contact us at info@pollfish.com or ping us on angel list https://angel.co/pollfish-1. The next year will be quite promising and we have been setting really high goals.

26. What advice do you have for fresh entrepreneurs?

Focus on the business side of things!

 
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Linkody.com

Linkody is a backlink management and monitoring webapp for SEO agencies and site owners.

 

We had a very interesting and insightful interview with Mr. ‘François Mommens‘; Co-Founder of the Netherlands (Amsterdam)-based start-up “Linkody”.

“Linkody” is a web based application that monitors your hard-earned SEO backlinks 24/7.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Mommens’ regarding his start-up company “Linkody”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “Linkody” is all about?

Linkody is a backlink management and monitoring webapp for SEO agencies and site owners.

Linkody looks for the links to your domains and monitors them 24/7. If any link is removed or its source page fails, you get an email alert.

Linkody’s users save a lot of time by not having to check their links themselves, either manually or by using desktop applications which don’t have all the advantages of a web application. With Linkody, the old way of using Excel sheets to manage backlinks is over.

2. When has “Linkody” been founded? And what stage is “Linkody” currently at?

The 1st version of the product was launched in February 2011 as an experiment and because we needed such a tool for ourselves. Then my partner and I had to dedicate our time on other things. About 1 year later, 2 SEO oriented (French) blogs noticed the tool and wrote 2 very good reviews. People tweeted and commented about the service and it started to get some traction. We realized that a lot of people were looking for such a service and that there was the opportunity to develop a tool not only useful to ourselves but to other people too.

3. What is “Linkody”‘s business model and how does it work?

Our business model is based on a monthly fee for premium users. Premium users get additional features on top of a bigger volume of links and domains. There is a free package with a volume of 50 links for 1 domain. Although the premium plans are really cheap I still want to keep if possible this free plan to help small websites.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

A few years ago, Tom and I worked together in Barcelona for the same company. At that time I was the CTO and he was the Product Director. We saw very quickly that we were on the same wavelength professionally. We knew we could trust each other to get the job done. Both of us also had a lot of things in common like wanting to be an entrepreneur. Tom and I left the company around the same time. Tom founded his startup, lovehabibi.com, while I went living in another country. We kept talking about ideas and possible services we could develop together. Then I got the idea for Linkody.

Tom worked on the product, design and frontend development. I worked mostly on the backend. Now I am mostly doing everything myself as Tom had to take on a daily job for the time being.

5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique about you and what’s new about what you make?

There is a lot of SEO tools and services out there. They got in an arms race with each other that got them to build as many features as possible. The result is that they are quite expensive. We have decided to focus on one specific service, backlink management and monitoring, and do it well. For the people who are looking in exactly that feature, we are way cheaper and better.

6. What is your growth like? And what milestones has “Linkody” achieved so far?

We are monitoring about 75k links for about 700 active users. We are not growing as fast as I would like, in great part because I’ve been focusing lately on the product and its features and did not dedicate much time to marketing. Now that I feel that the product is really strong and mature, I want to dedicate more time on promoting the service.

7. Who are your competitors? And what is “Linkody”‘s competitive advantage over them?

Our competitors are all the big players in the SEO industry like SeoMoz and MajesticSeo as well as a few startups that try to compete on the exact same service. Our users are the ones that tell us why we are better: an intuitive and well-designed interface and a service that does its job very well. Our prices are also unbeatable.

8. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?

The biggest obstacle was the lack of time. Both Tom and myself had a full-time day job and worked on Linkody during the evenings and week-ends. Even during my holidays I would bring my netbook to work on Linkody. It was quite tough to work 8 hours a day and go home only to work more. That’s also quite taxing to switch your mental context from one project to another, from one set of technologies to another. Seeing people talking positively about our product was a great motivation to go on though and we are very happy with what we achieved.

9. What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?

Contrary to what a few people have said lately, SEO is not dead. As long as there will be search engines, there will be SEO. White hat SEOs are people competing against each other in the search engine battlefields. It’s like with any other industry. Black hat SEOs are however competing against the search engines themselves by trying to cheat the system. They’re the only ones that might disappear, although I think theoretically any system can be cheated and the arms race will only go on. So the SEO industry will not disappear and there is actually a whole market for specialized and cheap tools that has room for growth.

10. Why are you going to succeed?

Tom and I are not at our first startup. 8 years ago I created vitalprix.com. Tom created lovehabibi.com a few years ago. So we already have some experience as entrepreneurs. All the other companies I worked for during my career were also startups and I got a lot of experience from that too.

But the main reason I think is that we love what we are doing and we would be very happy to build a product that is useful for a lot of people.

11. If “Linkody” succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?

Until recently my focus has been on improving the current product. I still have a massive To Do list with my own ideas but also feature requests from our users for the near future. Later on a natural additional area for expansion would be social activity monitoring. Being present in social media has become a big part of SEO nowadays.

12. Why did you choose this idea and concept to build “Linkody” based on?

The idea came from my first business, vitalprix.com. I used to offer to some of my clients to have their product indexed on my price engine for free against a backlink from their site. As their number increased, I needed to find a way to check that these links were not removed without losing any time. I wanted a tool where I could register a newly acquired link and have it checked 24/7, so I could forget about it, knowing that I would be alerted by email in case of any change. I looked for such a tool and was surprised to find none.

13. What have you learned so far from launching your idea?

Funnily enough I am learning a lot about SEO. I knew the importance of inbound links and that’s why I looked for such a tool before developing my own but I did certainly not know so much about the SEO industry and how to do proper SEO. I am also learning how to promote a product, reach out to people and be outspoken.

14. Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?

The biggest problem is to grow the business to a point where it generates enough income to allow my partner Tom to join me back, and myself to go on, working full time on it. I am totally confident about the quality of our product. Our current customers are very satisfied. It is now a question of having a good marketing campaign and reaching a broader audience.

15. What’s the benefit for the customer/user?

Customers who just want to check their backlinks can use this tool as an “add and forget” service. They are sure to get an email alert if any of their link disappear. More advanced SEO professionals can use Linkody as a true linkbuilding platform. No need for Excel anymore, their database is in the cloud. Linkody provides all the information they need to assess their links’ value, and links’ analytics like the anchor distribution to prioritise their link building.

16. How did customers / users find out about you?

We first got mentioned in two (French) SEO blogs and that’s what generated the initial buzz. Then Linkody was mentioned in other blogs and SEO newsletters. So it’s mostly thanks to referrals, words of mouth and social media. People are tweeting or blogging about Linkody as one of the best link monitoring service out there.

17. Who are your current customers / users? Who are your target customers / users?

We have SEO and marketing agencies using Linkody to manage their customers link building campaign, webmasters or in-house SEO-specialists working on promoting their brand, and SEO-savvy individuals. Any site owner is a potential customer really. There are very few players that don’t need to work on SEO to get traffic and there is no SEO without link building.

18. Where do new customers / users come from and what makes new customers/users try you?

Most of our customers come from referral. The good reviews we got are attracting new users every day. We have a free plan and it takes about 10 seconds to subscribe, no credit card required, so it is easy and free to try our service. We have a tour page that explains our product and features: http://www.linkody.com/en/tour.

19. What do your customers / users say about your product and/or service?

We get positive feedback from our customers each time we release a new version. Some of them retweet our tweets announcing the new features. We are very happy about how our customers are satisfied by our product. There is almost no turnover with our paying customers. Once we get a new one, they stay. That proves how good our product is.

20. How are you going to scale?

Technically, I am 100% confident we will be able to scale. Distributed architecture and scalability are my specialities. I have been hired by companies for these specific skills to solve their scalability issues.

Our product is good and our fee very low. The number of clients will naturally grow as we are dedicating more resources to promoting it.

21. What’s the biggest missing feature? The one thing customers/users keep asking for?

There are several new features that are already planned. Some have been suggested by our customers. One of the main features that I have planned for the near future is the import of links from Excel or CSV documents. There is already a CSV export feature. We also have been asked to add bigger plans and yearly subscriptions.

22. Are you going to internationalize? And if yes how are you planning to expand your start-up’s operations accordingly?

Most of our customers are from France so I have planned to localize the tool in French with more languages to follow later on. I am a native French speaker and I have done translations as a professional so I’ll do French myself. Marketing-wise though, I am focusing at the moment on English speaking countries.

23. How big do you think you can get? Why? And how you are planning to achieve your goals?

If I am allowed to dream big and get all crazy then I’ll build an infrastructure to have an up to date database of the billions of links out there. That would allow me to be independent from external data sources. But also, once you have this data, there are so many ideas of products and features you can come up with.

24. Are you looking to hire a new workforce? And if yes, what job vacancies do you currently offer and where can potential applicants contact you at?

Not at the moment. We need to get the business sustainable first with both of us, myself and my partner. However we are looking for interns, specifically in marketing, that would be interested in helping out with promoting the service to an international level. They can get in touch through our contact page: http://www.linkody.com/en/company/contact.

25. Are you looking for partnership opportunities or funding from Venture Capitals (VC) or other funding sources? Or your business is self-sustainable? And if the first option applies where can potential partners / investors contact you at?

The business has been self-funded. That actually means that we have not invested anything than time up to now. We did not want to involve VCs or business angels at this stage because we knew we could do it just by ourselves and stay completely independent. Today we are not against involving some potential investors or partners.

26. What advice do you have for fresh entrepreneurs?

Choose a partner you already have worked with and who has complementary skills. Be ready to invest the time and effort. Be persistent. Believe in yourself.

Gozoop.com

Gozoop, a young and entrepreneurial digital services and products provider with presence in India and UAE has created a niche for itself in the ecommerce space

   

Start-Ups.Co had an insightful interview with Mr. ‘Rohan Bhansali‘; CEO of the India (Mumbai) and the UAE (Dubai)-based start-up “Gozoop”.

“Gozoop” is a web marketing agency based in Mumbai and Dubai.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Bhansali’ regarding his start-up company ”Gozoop”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “Gozoop” is all about?

Gozoop is a young an entrepreneurial web marketing agency based in Mumbai and Dubai.

We are young in the sense that the average age of our 50 member team is 22. We are entrepreneurial in the sense that we run our own in-house online businesses, blog networks and even make investments in other online businesses.

2. When has “Gozoop” been founded? And what stage is “Gozoop” currently at?

Gozoop started in April 2010. We like looking at ourselves as a start up.

Since we started we have grown to a team size of 50+ with presence in India and Dubai. We are pursuing starting off in Singapore soon.

We are also simultaneously investing in our product businesses – Zozolo and Decidebuddy.

3. What is “Gozoop”‘s business model and how does it work?

From the service point of view – We help companies and brands optimize their digital presence. 70% of our business is on retainer model.

As far as our products go we have Zozolo and Decidebuddy.

Zozolo.com which works on a SaaS model. Decidebuddy.com is a review portal which is still in pre monetization stage.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

Ahmed, Dushyant and I used to work at JPMorgan where we met. Initially Ahmed and I started a venture called RaAstudios. Dushyant was RaA’s first client wherein we helped him with his venture Blogertize.

Dushyant joint us in April 2010 to form Gozoop. Gozoop bought over RaAstudios in October 2010.

5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique about you and what’s new about what you make?

Am going to try not to give a cliche answer. I think what makes us different is our culture. This translates into quality and transparent service to our clients.

Other than that we look at our clients’ business from a business point of view, not just a service point of view. We can do this because we heavily invest in our own product businesses.

6. What is your growth like? And what milestones has “Gozoop” achieved so far?

Sales wise: We have been growing topline at more than 100% y-o-y since inception.

Team wise: We have grown from 12 to 50 in the 2.5 years of existence.

Milestones:
1. Setting up an office in Dubai in October 2011
2. Zozolo featuring on Mashable’s Fast Pitch.
3. Hiring our 50th team member in October 2013
4. Featuring on KillerStartups more for our work culture

7. Who are your competitors? And what is “Gozoop”‘s competitive advantage over them?

I see Socialize as a strong competitor – one we respect and even work with closely on certain campaigns.

In India there are a lot of players we compete with. Recently a lot of new found starts ups with a 1 -3 member team have been posing pricing pressures.

I think we make a great value proposition and since we cover all avenues of the web we become a natural choice of many clients.

8. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?

Since neither Ahmed, Dushyant or I come from a media background I think the main obstacle was getting people to believe in us just for our passion. Hard Work and luck helped us overcome this.

Other obstacles were cash flows at our early life cycle. We understood pretty early that cash flow and profitability are 2 different things.

9. What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?

Social Media is not JUST about Sales & we don’t OWN Google!

The challenge is educating the customers on the possibility of the web and how different avenues are beneficial for different purposes.

Even within Social Media, how we treat Facebook is very different from how we use Twitter.

Overall though companies are more educated today than say 2 years ago.

10. Why are you going to succeed?

I have the best team. I’ll say it again – I have the best team.

Dushyant – Task Master
Ahmed – Creative genius
Kiran – Reliable
Rajesh – Innovative
Prem – Passionate
Somesh – Leadership
Paresh – Committed
Bansi – Our Happiness Officer (HR)
Raghuji – Hard Working

Have named just a few of my team members but the truth is there are many more recent stars within Gozoop.

Check out our Facebook Page – facebook.com/Gozoop to understand what I am saying.

11. If “Gozoop” succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?

New Service Lines within the digital space and new geographies. Mobile too is providing a lot of opportunities recently.

What we are equally excited about is Decidebuddy. If we get the traction we envision, it opens us up to many new areas. We are very excited to explore affiliate marketing through Decidebuddy.

12. Why did you choose this idea and concept to build “Gozoop” based on?

Quite honestly, It just happened to us. Ahmed new how to code so we started by developing websites and web applications.

In 2010, Digital Marketing & Ecommerce were growing in India. We were at the right place at the right time. We built a team around digital marketing and seized the moment. Snapdeal.com was our first major client.

We saw a similar growth in Middle East in 2011 which we capitalized quiet well.

13. What have you learned so far from launching your idea?

1. People are everything.

2. Luck plays a big role.

3. Soft Skills are more important than Hard Skills.

4. Cash Flows & profitability are 2 different things

5. Opportunities will come, you dont always need to create them.

6. PR works beautifully

7. Be number focussed – Sales & Profitability

8. Get a good CA and Lawyer to help you through your growth

14. Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?

The biggest challenge is going to be:

a) Maintaining the growth
b) Managing the growth
c) Maintaining the culture
d) Maintaining the fun

From the hard front, Social & Web is evolving faster than earlier. Keeping up to pace with these changes is a challenge we will have to be up for.

Other external pressures such as overall global outlook definitely have an effect on us too.

15. What’s the benefit for the customer/user?

We help our clients create a fundamentally strong digital presence.

Our services include:

Social Media Presence
Online Reputation Management
Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Optimization
Affiliate Marketing
Blog Marketing
Media Planning
Website Development
Application Development
Web Business Consulting
Domain Consulting
Digital Education

16. How did customers / users find out about you?

We found them first by getting in touch with them. Of course we got a lot of Friend and family references too.

Now a lot of them find us through WOM, Google, Conferences, PR, etc.

We have a very strong Business development process which helps us touch base with a wide set of clients. Our sales targets our stringent.

17. Who are your current customers / users? Who are your target customers / users?

Our current clients are:

Commercial Bank of Dubai
Mad Over Donuts
Rajdhani,
Citigroup
QNET,
Cold Stone Creamery,
Pepperfry.com,
Fashlink,
Prestige Gallery,
Tim Hortons,
Club Apparel,
Seacod,

There are lot of ecommerce players and F&B names we work closely with. You can find our complete client list on our website: www.gozoop.com

18. Where do new customers / users come from and what makes new customers/users try you?

Mostly Word of Mouth and through out Business Development Process.

They try us because we have done great stuff for brands who have referred us to them.

What works in our favour is that a lot brands are realizing that having an online presence is no more an option, it’s a must.

Somewhere it’s about trust and our clients are willing to trust us. And we value that.

19. What do your customers / users say about your product and/or service?

Different customers say different things. We have built fantastic personal relationships with most. So they have been forgiving of our mistakes and all praises of our successes. We have been lucky to have good clients.

We try and maintain maximum transparency through our reporting systems. This helps maintain the good relationship.

20. How are you going to scale?

Geographically we are looking at Singapore to open up the South East Asia market for us in a big way.

Service wise, we are investing into Mobile and see good opportunities to grow here. We are also getting into more digital avenues such as Affiliate Marketing.

Product wise, we are betting big on Decidebuddy.com.

21. What’s the biggest missing feature? The one thing customers/users keep asking for?

Few things that our missing and customers keep asking for are:

1) Social Media ROI Metrics – sales from social media is still a very nascent field. A lot of developments have been made in this area though. Infact Facebook has recently launched a Customer Tracking feature that will help this cause for ecommerce players.

2) Better Web Analytics

22. Are you going to internationalize? And if yes how are you planning to expand your start-up’s operations accordingly?

We already have presence in UAE. We are working on Singapore.

For UAE we have permanently relocated 4 people from India to Dubai. We have a team that supports them here in India too.

For Singapore we currently just have one team member. We are still in very early days but are doing what it takes to pursue a Singapore presence.

23. How big do you think you can get? Why? And how you are planning to achieve your goals?

Big doesn’t motivate us as much as culture and quality does. Big becomes a derivative of good work and a happy team. We will not let growth grow at the expense of quality though.

The digital space is growing and we have been making the right investments in the right area. Our focus is long term and this has helped us build a sustainable company.

24. Are you looking to hire a new workforce? And if yes, what job vacancies do you currently offer and where can potential applicants contact you at?

We are currently hiring in our Mumbai office. We are looking for:

1) Senior PHP Developer
2) Creative Head
3) Business Development Exec.
4) Anyone who is passionate about digital marketing and fits into our culture.

Anyone interested can write in an email to our Happiness Officer Bansi – bansi {at} gozoop {dot} com.

25. Are you looking for partnership opportunities or funding from Venture Capitals (VC) or other funding sources? Or your business is self-sustainable? And if the first option applies where can potential partners / investors contact you at?

Currently we are happy with our “self sustainable” status. Things change fast though, so we need to keep ourselves open to coming out of our comfort zone when needed.

VC’s definitely open up a lot of opportunities but it’s important to find a partner who understands our culture and our motivations.

Partners can get in touch by email – Rohan {at} Gozoop {dot} com.

26. What advice do you have for fresh entrepreneurs?

Build a great team. Focus on soft skills. Be number drive.

When we started off we were very clear on our sales targets. Infact we were ruthless as far as sales targets were concerned.

Once we cracked Sales we started focussing on profitability optimization.

27. Finally, do you have any other comments that you would like to add?

Have fun with your team. It well help you get over the tough time. Be grateful for the success that comes your way. Destiny / luck / blessings play a big part.

Blossom.io

Blossom.io provides a very lightweight project management tool for mobile and web application development.

    

We had a fantastic interview with Mr. ‘Thomas Schranz‘; Co-founder & CEO of the US (San Francisco)-based start-up “Blossom”.

“Blossom” is a lightweight project management tool.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Schranz’ regarding his start-up company “Blossom”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “Blossom” is all about?

We provide a very lightweight project management tool for mobile and web application development.

Our tool is ideal for people who ship early and often and really love the products they create.

At Blossom we truly strive to understand the needs of product teams better than any other company.

If you are working on a mobile or web application we’d love to get you on board.

2. When has “Blossom” been founded? And what stage is “Blossom” currently at?

We started in Spring 2011, joined Seedcamp (Europe’s leading startup accelerator program) later that year and are making first revenue since mid 2012.

We are growing steadily ever since and are always looking for people who deeply care about crafting products to join us on our journey.

Ping us if you are interested or know someone who might be a great fit for us.

3. What is “Blossom”‘s business model and how does it work?

Our business model is very simple actually. We charge money for our tool on a monthly basis (SaaS).

What I especially like about SaaS is that it alignes the financial incentives of the company with the philosophy of building a great relationship with your customers.

It puts emphasize on delivering value on a continuous basis.

If people like what we do they stay and our revenue grows. As simple as that.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

We actually know each other for a few years. The first time all three of us met in the same place was back in January 2008 at a BarCamp in Vienna.

While all of us have a background in engineering we like to think of ourselves as all-rounders. We dig programming as well as UX, design, marketing and many other things.

That said we currently have different areas of focus.

Nik’s main focus is architecture as well as frontend and backend code.

Allan is mainly responsible for user experience, corporate identity and design.

My personal focus is on marketing, customer support and product.

5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique about you and what’s new about what you make?

While many project management tools for software products are built solely with engineers in mind we care a lot about getting the whole product team on the same page.

That’s the reason why we deeply care about a lightweight look & feel which works as well for engineers as it does for designers, marketers and product managers.

It is a small change in focus but it has huge implications in terms of wording, interaction design and data visualization.

6. What is your growth like? And what milestones has “Blossom” achieved so far?

When I look back some of the more meaningful milestones along our journey were

* Actually launching something
* Getting into Seedcamp
* Working on the product full time
* Switching from “free” to charging money
* Getting our first customer (Ex-Apple employee)
* Growing revenue to ramen profitability

7. Who are your competitors? And what is “Blossom”‘s competitive advantage over them?

The project management space is super crowded.

Even in the niche of project management software for mobile and web application development the tools are a dime a dozen. At the same time there is no dominant player in the market which makes the space really exciting.

What we are focusing on is to understand the needs of product teams better than any other company.

So in a sense we are focusing on a niche that we deeply care about.

8. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?

One of the hardest things to face for me personally is to decide which features to add to your product and which features to leave out.

Even harder is making the call to remove a certain feature that you’ve already shipped and that is used by your customers.

This is an ongoing challenge but it is exactly what makes crafting a product so fascinating.

9. What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?

I think one of the most obvious things to understand about crafting incredible products is that it is way easier if you have

* small fairly autonomous teams of about 5-8 people (2-pizza teams)
* that have a cross-functional skillset (UX, design, marketing, engineering)
* who deeply care about what they are doing

Just structuring your product teams in this way will solve a ton of problems that software companies are struggling with today.

10. Why are you going to succeed?

The way I see it we’ve already succeeded at the moment when we decided to start. Being able to focus on building tools that help people to create the best products on the market is incredibly satisfying.

What more can you ask for than to dedicate your time to have a sustainable impact on innovation and the way people live their lives?

11. If “Blossom” succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?

We strive to truly understand the needs of product teams better than any other company. I don’t see us moving away from this philosophy anytime soon.

I believe there are many many opportunities in the product management and development space but right now we are focusing on what we have at the moment.

12. Why did you choose this idea and concept to build “Blossom” based on?

As we’ve worked for several companies and startups as well as on personal projects in the past we’ve basically used every project management tool on the market. No matter whether it was intended to be used for software development or not.

During that time we’ve got more and more frustrated with the tools on the market. Especially issue tracking & bug tracking software clearly wasn’t a good fit to how we’ve been working.

After some time we’ve decided that we’ll just write a project management tool that we’d like to use.

13. What have you learned so far from launching your idea?

Starting to charge money for our product was one of the most important steps we made since launching and looking back we probably should have done so way earlier.

The quality of feedback we’ve got since then dramatically increased. This enabled us to improve the product and go into the right direction way faster than before.

My personal lesson learned is that while “free” is a powerful marketing vehicle it can attract people to your product that might not be your actual target audience. This can make it very hard to focus on what the most important next steps are.

14. Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?

I think one of the most challenging things is and always will be to win the best people on the market as your customers, partners, investors and employees.

That’s why it is so important to do something that you really care about. If you don’t care, how will you find someone to join you on your journey?

15. What’s the benefit for the customer/user?

Our tool helps product teams to stay focused, aligned & on the same page even if the team is distributed.

It helps to show what’s going on, who is working on what, what’s coming next, potential challenges/blockers as well as opportunities.

Kanban is a great way to continuously improve the product you are crafting as well as the process that you are using.

16. How did customers / users find out about you?

Almost all of our existing customers came through word of mouth and inbound marketing.

We don’t do any sales, we try to share our philosophy around product management on twitter, our blog and at conferences.

Max Hersey, a friend of us calls this approach “Show don’t tell, share don’t sell” which really resonated with me and captures the essence of our marketing philosophy.

17. Who are your current customers / users? Who are your target customers / users?

On our journey we’ve won many interesting customers from huge companies with impressive product portfolios to small fast moving teams at YCombinator, TechStars, AngelPad, Seedcamp & 500 Startups.

I’d say the ideal product team that’s happy with our product is cross functional (Designers, Marketers, Engineers, … all in the same team), has a size of around 5-8 people and really cares about what they do.

18. Where do new customers / users come from and what makes new customers/users try you?

Our main channels for getting new customers on board are word of mouth, twitter, blogs and various other places on the web with content about product management and user experience.

Most of the customers that find out about us are actively looking for a way to improve their product development process.

19. What do your customers / users say about your product and/or service?

Here are a few quotes:

“Project management is a critical part of growing a lean startup, blossom.io looks like a promising product.” by Hiten Shah (Product at KISSmetrics)

“Solid UX, clean, blossom.io is marinated in high octane potential.” by Christopher Kahler (CEO of Qriously)

“blossom.io is nicely done. Good design, good thinking.” by Ryan Singer (UI design, code & product management at 37Signals)

https://twitter.com/rjs/status/284439056958496768

20. How are you going to scale?

We are hosting on Google App Engine and are using JavaScript and Dart for the frontend of our application. Scaling was fairly smooth from a technical point of view.

In terms of marketing we will continue to focus on inbound marketing and providing a product and service that people love to talk about.

21. What’s the biggest missing feature? The one thing customers/users keep asking for?

Tight integration with popular services like Bitbucket and Github are among the most frequently requested features.

Another thing that many of our customers are quite excited about are integrations with HipChat and FlowDock.

We are really excited about smooth workflows and we can’t wait to ship these integrations as soon as possible.

22. Are you going to internationalize? And if yes how are you planning to expand your start-up’s operations accordingly?

We’ve started out with an english version of our product. This enabled us to win customers from all over the world right from the start.

That said we will definitely look into localization going forward.

Text and language is an integral part of the user experience and I believe while it is not easy to do localization well it makes your product more accessible and valuable to a larger group of people.

23. How big do you think you can get? Why? And how you are planning to achieve your goals?

It’s hard to say how big the market actually is or how big it will be going forward but we believe that as the barrier to create mobile and web applications gets lower & lower we will see a few things in the future.

* More & more products on the market(s). This is just the beginning
* Faster iteration cycles
* Tighter & tighter competition
* The quality of products will increase way faster than in the past

These are great trends to be a part of. The next few years will be incredibly exciting. It’s going to be quite a journey.

No wonder that Marc Andreessen wrote about why software eats the world.

24. Are you looking to hire a new workforce? And if yes, what job vacancies do you currently offer and where can potential applicants contact you at?

We are always looking for people excited about crafting awesome products.

Some things that we are really excited about are interaction design, engineering, user experience, inbound and lifecycle marketing, service design, artificial intelligence and typography.

Just shoot us an email to hello@blossom.io or ping us on twitter.

25. Are you looking for partnership opportunities or funding from Venture Capitals (VC) or other funding sources? Or your business is self-sustainable? And if the first option applies where can potential partners / investors contact you at?

We are self-sustainable thanks to our SaaS business model but always looking for great people to join us on our journey to lift the world of mobile and web application development to the next level.

If you share our passion for crafting great products shoot us an email to hello@blossom.io or ping us on twitter.

26. What advice do you have for fresh entrepreneurs?

Ask yourself whether serving your customers for a lifetime sounds exciting to you.

If your answer is yes, you will have a great time.

Explainify.com

Explainify (explainify.com) is an animation and video studio specializing in the creation of short, to-the-point stories – Explainer Videos.

   

We had a very interesting and in-depth interview with Mr. ‘Eric Hinson’; Founder of the US (Arkansas)-based start-up “Explainify”.

“Explainify” is an animated explainer video production house.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Hinson’ regarding his start-up company ”Explainify”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “Explainify” is all about?

Explainify (explainify.com) is an animation and video studio specializing in the creation of short, to-the-point stories – Explainer Videos. We work with anyone that has a website, idea or business on awesome videos that are less than 90 seconds – the average attention span of the viewer.

Explainer videos are the hot new thing for businesses. They increase sales and conversion rates dramatically! It’s the easiest way to give your perfect “elevator pitch” every single time to millions.

2. When has “Explainify” been founded? And what stage is “Explainify” currently at?

We launched in January of 2012, but didn’t actively look for explainer video work. It was more of a means to pay the bills by doing some agency work that a friend had. It gave me some much needed time to get everything ready for things to be successful once I hit it hard. As far as stages go, we are building a network of great clients and trying to knock out killer videos for them.

3. What is “Explainify”‘s business model and how does it work?

Explainify offers multiple video packages. Our projects are customized to tell each client’s story most effectively, so pricing is often quoted to match the project priorities and creative direction. We start by discussing our client’s needs. Then, together we decide what would work best for them. We have a specific process that helps us and clients know what to expect.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

The team started with just my wife and I. I met her at an awesome bookstore her family owned. We’ve added one more since – and he’s a huge help! I worked with him at Rockfish, the agency I was at before launching Explainify. He’s a super fun guy, we get along great and make things happen together. My wife’s main focus is scripting, concepting and design. Stuart does animation and sound design. We all really do a little bit of everything and we love it that way. We all have a hand in every part of the project. We feed off each others strengths and creative abilities to come up with the best solution for our clients. It’s kind of like a being in a band. You may write an awesome sounding riff by yourself. When you bring that riff to rehearsal the other bandmates take it and expand on it making it even better than it was before.

5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique about you and what’s new about what you make?

The biggest thing is that we don’t make long explainer videos. We 100% believe there is no need to go over 90 seconds with our videos (and there’s tons of research to prove it). If we can’t tell your story in under 90 seconds, we’re probably not the best fit for each other.

We’re fortunate enough to be able to say no to people that we don’t think would be a good fit for us to work with. It’s not all about money – we want cool projects, awesome clients and most importantly – to have fun. We’d rather make less, enjoy ourselves and have a more successful result for our client.

6. What is your growth like? And what milestones has “Explainify” achieved so far?

Well, when Explainify was in its extreme infancy, I attended just about every networking event I could possibly get to. Trying to implant yourself into social circles that are already established is intimidating at first, and it can be uncomfortable trying to be your own “hype-man”…but the benefits of stepping out are well worth the awkwardness.

We’ve built up a great word-of-mouth network, done some cool projects that are getting talked about and even gained notoriety from Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.

All of this has really grown the business.

7. Who are your competitors? And what is “Explainify”‘s competitive advantage over them?

There are literally hundreds of explainer video companies from all around the world. We pride ourselves on our quality. I think it’s pretty cool that when you’re talking to one of us you’re talking to one of three people that have a huge hand in the project from beginning to end. You will definitely get that personalized feel! We pride ourselves on quality experience, design, animation, voiceover, etc. Since one of our team members is a professional musician, we can even do custom sound design that will blow your mind.

8. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?

Being 100% self-funded is difficult but rewarding. We have no debt and extremely low overhead, but if client’s delay payment we could have a tough time keeping things running smoothly. I know it’s not for everyone, but it’s been ideal for us all at Explainify and my family.

Trying to figure out how to fit so many projects into a schedule that’s already full is one we face. We love our clients and our work… and really, we just want to work with as many cool businesses as we can. So we do.

9. What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?

So many people think it should cost a few hundred bucks and take a couple days to produce a great video. This is nothing new. We experience it with everyone from startups to Fortune 500 companies. With the way animation and video goes, it takes a lot of hours to hand-craft a great story from concept to delivery. And we (…along with our clients) think we’re great at it.

Unfortunately, to get a video of quality that’s actually going to help your brand – it costs. We definitely do save you from the high costs of agencies and other video producers – but it still takes some cash to get the job done.

10. Why are you going to succeed?

Success is the byproduct when you love what you do and are passionate about what you have to offer. I think that others can tell how much we love our jobs when we talk to them about Explainify. We love building great relationships with business and companies of all sizes. We have a great product. We give each client plenty of personalized attention. We’re dedicated to quality. We love business and startups. We understand what goes into it and we want to help you tell your story in the most remarkable way!

11. If “Explainify” succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?

I have a strong live video production background. It’s a whole different animal, but we could start picking up higher end jobs much like Sandwich Video is doing. Startups that are well-funded (or established businesses) need their stories told in animation and video for the full effect. Some stories don’t make sense to be told in animation. Think Apple. Would you ever see a character animation in their ads? Nope. It’s just not going to happen.

12. Why did you choose this idea and concept to build “Explainify” based on?

It’s a great niche that I saw was underserved. There’s a ton of old broadcast folk that can’t seem to wrap their head around web video and I had been in the space for years. With the launch of so many startups and businesses that can’t seem to tell their story, explainer video was a no-brainer. I didn’t realize how much “competition” there already was when I gave my 2 week notice and as I really got deep into this world, it started coming to light. The good news is there’s still so much demand. I don’t feel like any of us really compete for work. I’ve talked with several CEOs of the big explainer video shops and they all agree. There’s plenty of work to go around.

13. What have you learned so far from launching your idea?

A ton. My business knowledge in general has been greatly impacted. I get to learn about all these different career paths people have taken, crazy ideas they have and what it took to get them there. It’s amazing to talk to someone about raising capital and in the next hour another person that’s built a new platform for shopping, followed by someone who has reinvented the world of trivia and so on…

Every day feels like watching a TED talk. I get so pumped about all the cool stuff people are doing in this world. All of them – seizing the day.

14. Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?

I’m not sure I’d call it a problem, but a difficulty we will likely face is scaling. There’s a high demand for explainer video and it’s getting bigger. Soon, we’re going to have to scale. Thankfully, right now, I’m not interested in being a mega-machine-business, but letting go of the reigns I hear is a hard thing to do. I want to make sure everything is perfect and be involved with everything. There simply isn’t enough time to do it all. We are going to have to have a bigger team and have people responsible for specific things instead of our small current team just doing it all on our own. Along with that comes managing 20+ projects, timelines, etc. We’ll see when we get there.

15. What’s the benefit for the customer/user?

The benefit is so much more than having a video that you can use to explain what you do to millions of people. You get the perfect pitch every single time. Infinity times. It doesn’t change. Nobody can tell your story incorrectly because we’ve perfected it into a 60-90 second video that tells it in a remarkable, fun way.

Your story is now written in a short way that you can use a million times over. Pitches, presentations, on your website. What we write is often used all over the place. You think you’re just getting a video and you quickly realize, “Wow. This is our story. People can understand and remember this.” and then you find yourself using it as your website headline, speaking it when you meet an acquaintance, or writing it over and over in your notebook (think middle school girl).

16. How did customers / users find out about you?

Mostly from word-of-mouth. We’ve had great clients that have been more than willing to share Explainify. They love us… and we love them. Sometimes we have people that are really interested in using us, but simply can’t afford it at the time. Even they share us. They think it’s that cool. That makes us very happy and proud of what we’re doing.

Other than word of mouth, articles like this one or the one on KillerStartups.com have been good generators. If you’re interested in us guest blogging, we’re open to do that too. Anyone?

We also have a newsletter that we send out about every month. Recipients often share this with someone they think would be a good fit for us. Feel free to sign up at http://explainify.com

17. Who are your current customers / users? Who are your target customers / users?

We have some awesome clients right now ranging from agencies like CollectiveBias to local startups like Truckily and Trivi.al. We’re looking to work with any awesome businesses. If you have a cool new product or service or you’re an established business doing something remarkable, we are in! Be it a startup or fortune 500. We’ve worked with them all and can match any brand/style/etc.

18. Where do new customers / users come from and what makes new customers/users try you?

We send out a good amount of emails and make calls all of the time. But, most of our customers come from word-of-mouth or Google. We have had some really cool shout outs from some people that have a huge online presence, which helps a lot. We have, what I think is a really cool website that is easy to understand, portrays our professionalism and attention to detail as well. Anyone can check out our portfolio of work and read testimonials from our happy clients.

19. What do your customers / users say about your product and/or service?

We’ve had nothing but great feedback. Client’s have been super happy with the entire experience. They love our work ethic, our interactions, our methods, our structure. The entire experience is a fun one. Some of the greatest feedback we have received comes in the form of positive expletives. Client’s love that they don’t just get a video. They get a team that knows what they’re doing with years of agency/marketing experience helping them really figure out who they are and how to best tell people about them. They also appreciate the knowledge we have with where the best place is to host their video (Wistia.com in most cases), how to display it on their site, how to get it out to the world, who to use for SEO and so much more.

20. How are you going to scale?

My goal in building this company is to offer us the lifestyle we want by continually telling the best story. In fact, I truly believe that the best story always wins. So ideally in a few years we’d love to have an established brand, a team of people to go to that we’re confident in. The team will most likely be setup as virtual offices around the world. This will allow us to really broaden the scope of work we can produce and increase output dramatically. We are taking it slow though. We’re into the organic growth model and really focused on delivering the best product at the end of the day. Quality, not quantity.

21. What’s the biggest missing feature? The one thing customers/users keep asking for?

We get asked a lot to do screencasts. These aren’t our thing. We’re not best suited to do them and in most cases, an explainer video is going to be way more effective than a screencast ever will be. These are typically done by bootstrapped startups from the very beginning. It’s a quick, cheap way to show people what you’re working on. There are plenty of people who can do them, but they just aren’t sexy enough for us to want to work on them.

22. Are you going to internationalize? And if yes how are you planning to expand your start-up’s operations accordingly?

When dealing with the digital world, yes, absolutely! It comes with the territory of being an online business. We however, won’t have a physical presence internationally anytime soon, but we are more than willing to work with businesses from anywhere in the world.

23. How big do you think you can get? Why? And how you are planning to achieve your goals?

Like I said before, we’re not focused on that. Crazy, right? We are focused on creating great quality video and an awesome customer experience… not so much growth. I know that nothing growing is dead, so we will grow. That’s for sure. Just not “how big do you think you can get” kind of growth.

We will grow by focusing on what we do best, making awesome videos. So far, it’s worked. People see them, share them and we get more work.

24. Are you looking to hire a new workforce? And if yes, what job vacancies do you currently offer and where can potential applicants contact you at?

Not really, just the occasional freelance designer or animator. Whatever is needed to get the job done.

 

25. Are you looking for partnership opportunities or funding from Venture Capitals (VC) or other funding sources? Or your business is self-sustainable? And if the first option applies where can potential partners / investors contact you at?

We’d love to find some way to partner with venture capitalists or incubators. If we could work something out where we are your go-to explainer video company for all of the businesses you are invested in, that would be ideal. We are totally down to do that.

Contact me at eric(at)explainify.com

26. What advice do you have for fresh entrepreneurs?

Be smart, work hard and stay centered. You can’t work 24/7 and function. Have a family life, drink some tea and don’t forget to have FUN! Also, get plugged into the entrepreneurship community. It’s super encouraging to meet and talk to cool, innovative people that are hustling just as hard as you.

27. Finally, do you have any other comments that you would like to add? Thank you for the opportunity to share with your audience. It’s been a pleasure.

Follow us on:

Facebook (/explainify)
Twitter (@explainify)
Instagram (@explainify)

If you know anyone interested in awesome video, send them our link:

http://explainify.com

Scavado.com

Scavado is a next generation talent search engine connecting recruiters with the best talent from all over the Web.

    

Start-Ups.Co had the pleasure of interviewing Mrs. ‘Lori Fenstermaker‘; Founder and CEO of the US (Denver, Colorado)-based start-up “Scavado”.

“Scavado” is the simple talent search engine for recruiters.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mrs. ‘Fenstermaker’ regarding her start-up company ”Scavado”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “Scavado” is all about?

Scavado is a next generation talent search engine connecting recruiters with the best talent from all over the Web. The platform scours the Internet for the best talent, looking deep into hidden talent pools to provide recruiters with the best options to reach those top candidates. Scavado does all the complicated search algorithms so recruiters can focus their energy on connecting with top talent, not learning complex search strings.

2. When has “Scavado” been founded? And what stage is “Scavado” currently at?

The first version of the app that is now Scavado was built in November of 2008 and used by our Founder and the internal recruiting team. In 2009 our clients started asking to buy it for themselves. In 2012 we rebranded to the name Scavado, enhanced the search capabilities , moved to an incubator in Denver and started scaling. We want every recruiter that still believes the best candidates are found to know about Scavado.

3. What is “Scavado”‘s business model and how does it work?

Scavado has a premium model. We offer a full access free trial for 24 hours. Following the trial prospects have the option to purchase a subscription on a monthly or annual basis. Sometimes prospects like Scavado but don’t have time and ask us to generate candidates for them. We have a team called Scavado Hire that does that. We generate revenue by selling seats of Scavado and by generating candidates for clients that don’t have the bandwidth to do their own candidate sourcing. We’ve also been approached by a number of HR Tech vendors to integrate with their tools. We haven’t inked any deals yet but are exploring those additional revenue streams.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

Lori and Tom met through a mutual friend.

Lori and Amy met while Lori was walking home from dropping her kids off at school. Turns out Amy used to recruit for Goldman Sachs in Chicago and Lori is a recruiter originally from Michigan. Their Midwest and Recruiting ties brought them together.

Lori is considered the recruiting domain expert and is known as the Chief Talent Sourcer. She supports customers if they need some sourcing inspiration, is responsible for product direction and also works on recruiting assignments occasionally. If Scavado doesn’t work for Lori, why would it work for anyone else?

Thomas came to Scavado with a history of helping growing companies address the challenges with operations and finance as they scale. Thomas spends his time at Scavado crunching numbers and making sure we can continue to grow while constantly working to increase the value Scavado delivers.

Amy Miller came to lead the services team at Scavado Hire. Amy and the Scavado Hire team offer a unique alternative to traditional recruitment firms that come with a high price tag. At Scavado Hire, we help companies find the best talent on a project basis providing a little or alot of help when needed.

5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique about you and what’s new about what you make?

Scavado is unique because we know the platform is not for everyone. Scavado will work best for active recruiters who want to stop spending all their time devising search strings and refocus on reaching out to the top talent. The platform is built to find hidden talent all over the web for proactive recruiters. It’s unique because it was built by recruiters, for recruiters to find the best people.

6. What is your growth like? And what milestones has “Scavado” achieved so far?

Scavado has been continuing to grow with new users finding and loving the program. Since the program gives users the ability to find great people everywhere and anywhere, we’re continually being discovered by more hiring managers and recruiters. A recent milestone achieved was winning Human Resource Executive Magazine’s Top HR Product of 2012 award.

7. Who are your competitors? And what is “Scavado”‘s competitive advantage over them?

Boolean Bar, Broadlook, TalentBin, SourcePoint, Search String Practitioners, Consultants and Boolean Training Courses.

What makes Scavado different is that the Scavado platform allows recruiters to stop wasting time learning complicated algorithms in order to find talent. Instead, Scavado does the search string work so recruiters can focus on connecting with talent from great sources all over the web. Scavado is a platform for the active recruiter willing to pick up the phone and get to work.

8. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?

We faced plenty of obstacles, from building the system to getting it out there. Our biggest obstacle is that we’re still running under the radar in the recruitment space. We’re still the underdog. Because our service isn’t for everyone, but instead recruiters looking to actively find the best people, it can sometimes be hard to get our message out there.

9. What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?

People don’t understand that you can’t just post and pray that the right people will apply for your positions. There’s a skill shortage at the moment, meaning that despite more people applying for jobs there are actually less people with relevant skills to hire. To find the best people, recruiters need to active seek them out. That’s where Scavado comes in.

10. Why are you going to succeed?

We’re going to succeed because we have a great product that recruiters can really use to do their jobs better. We know our target audience and understand what these people need to succeed in their search for the best people. We know we can’t target every recruiter, because Scavado isn’t for everyone. But for the recruiters looking to get out from behind a computer and start connecting to talent, Scavado is the perfect solution.

11. If “Scavado” succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?

We already have subscribers using Scavado to find sales leads and other data. These are clearly areas where Scavado can also help users find top quality information due to the nature of the platform and how it scours the Internet for the best leads. However, we haven’t focused on that because there is so much to be done in the talent marketplace. Our number one concern at the moment is in helping recruiters.

12. Why did you choose this idea and concept to build “Scavado” based on?

It felt like you needed a Ph.D in sourcing to find any good candidates. There were too many search algorithms and Boolean search strings and not enough finding actually prospects to connect with. As a recruiter myself, I was tired of wasting hours doing what Scavado does quickly and easily. So Scavado was born. It allowed me to cut out the search strings and just get down to the business of finding the best people. Soon, others wanted to use the platform for themselves.

13. What have you learned so far from launching your idea?

A lot of people have the same headaches with online candidate sourcing that we had. It’s no surprise, since many recruiters spend more time sourcing candidates online than they actually do speaking with candidates about open positions. This is why people are responding to Scavado and finding it so helpful in their sourcing needs. Scavado finds talent everywhere across the Internet but, more importantly, it does so quickly.

14. Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?

In six months our biggest problem will probably be how to alert new customers to the value of platform. We’ve always been a bit under the radar but we’re hoping to be able to help more recruiters with Scavado. We want to make the lives of recruiters easier, which is why we need more recruiters to know about the platform. We’re hoping our new competitive pricing plan will help get more recruiters in the door and will give us better word of mouth.

15. What’s the benefit for the customer/user?

The biggest one is time saved. Boolean strings and search algorithms take so much time and effort. After all that work and searching, which can sometimes take hours, you haven’t even spoken to an actual human being yet! Scavado takes out that headache so recruiters can focus on what’s important:people. Scavado lets active recruiters get out from behind string searches and pick up the phone to connect with the best talent.

16. How did customers / users find out about you?

We started out as a platform I was intending to use to make my own recruiting easier. I was struggling with the fact that it felt like I spent more time coming up with search strings than I did connecting with actual human beings. But once people saw how fast I could find candidates, word of mouth spread fast about Scavado. Now we have a dedicated online presence, attend trade shows, and were just named a Top HR Product of 2012.

17. Who are your current customers / users? Who are your target customers / users?

Our current customers and users are corporate recruiters, sourcers, 3rd party recruiters, RPO recruiters, independent recruiters and even hiring managers of small companies. Basically anyone who could get value out of an easy-to-use system like Scavado. Our target customers are active recruiters who want to stop searching and start connecting with the top talent in their field. Scavado isn’t for everyone, but the right kind of recruiter can find the platform is perfect for their needs.

18. Where do new customers / users come from and what makes new customers/users try you?

Our new customers come from everywhere online. Blogs, recruiting organizations, group discussions, Google searches, associations, social media. People usually try us when they have a super tough requisition they can’t fill the easy ways. Because Scavado scours the Internet to find the best people, it can easily find hard to fill positions and tough to come by talent. Our users are savvy and want to get moving to find the best people for the job.

19. What do your customers / users say about your product and/or service?

Our customers love how easy our product makes it to get out from behind a search string and connect with actual talent. Now instead of spending endless hours learning complicated search algorithms they can connect with the top talent they need and find talent everywhere on the Internet. Customers often thank us for the platform and tell us stories about how they’ve managed to find the right talent for a difficult position thanks to our platform.

20. How are you going to scale?

Our new pricing model will allow us to scale. Most HR Tech companies target only the enterprise users. Anyone that recruits whether they are an in house recruiter at a Fortune 500 company or an independent recruiter just starting out; they can afford Scavado. With our new $99 a month plan we’ve opened up the door to a wide variety of different recruiters and different recruiting needs. Instead of having to run Scavado up the chain, this pricing allows companies to try the service without a huge loss if they don’t find enough value from the platform. We think it will bring in a wider variety of recruiters looking for a better solution for finding talent.

21. What’s the biggest missing feature? The one thing customers/users keep asking for?

This is a tough question because what makes Scavado so well liked is it’s simplicity. Users like that Scavado works like a next generation talent search engine, like Google but for the top talent you need for your open positions. I would say the most requested feature is searching the users looking to search their own desktop or database to see if they already have the name Scavado turned up.

22. Are you going to internationalize? And if yes how are you planning to expand your start-up’s operations accordingly?

We have no immediate plans at the moment to internationalize. While that might be a great goal for the future, we’re happy with where we are at the moment with the company. If in the future the company grows to the point that the international market seems viable we would love to open Scavado up to international markets. No matter where they’re located, recruiters would be able to find value in Scavado’s talent finding platform. However, at the moment we’re happy with our stage of development.

23. How big do you think you can get? Why? And how you are planning to achieve your goals?

There are a ton of recruiters out there, which means our potential customer pool could be quite large. However, Scavado isn’t for everyone. Scavado is for recruiters who are truly looking to go beyond search engines to find talent everywhere and, more importantly, actually pick up the phone and connect with that talent. I would love it if 2,000 recruiters were using Scavado.

24. Are you looking to hire a new workforce? And if yes, what job vacancies do you currently offer and where can potential applicants contact you at?

We are looking to expand our online reach and connect with both current and future customers. Social media is the wave of the future and as such we’d like to dip our toes more into online marketing in order to connect with new customers and spread our message. As such, we will be looking for a Social Media Manager soon. Contact us at info@scavado.com

25. Are you looking for partnership opportunities or funding from Venture Capitals (VC) or other funding sources? Or your business is self-sustainable? And if the first option applies where can potential partners / investors contact you at?

We aren’t actively looking for investor opportunities at the moment. We are bootstrapped and proud of that fact. We’ve worked hard to put together a platform and user experience that we’re proud of. However we are always open to conversations. We can be reached for conversations about investments and partnership ideas at: thomas@scavado.com

26. What advice do you have for fresh entrepreneurs?

Have thick skin, if you have a good idea people will try to squash it. Especially online. My mentor once told me that you haven’t made it until people are bashing you or your product. If you don’t believe in your product no one else will either.

SellingtotheMasses.com

Selling to the Masses consists of three elements: webinars and weekend trainings that help entrepreneurs figure out where they want to go with their new consumer product ideas; mentors from Fortune 500 companies and major universities who work directly with entrepreneurs; and a product incubation lab where we bring our network together to support the most promising products.

   

We had a very insightful and in-depth interview with Mr. ‘Jeff Clapper‘; Partner at the US (Arkansas)-based start-up “Selling to the Masses”.

“Selling to the Masses” is a Consumer Product Accelerator that Helps You Get your New Product into Mass Market Retail.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Clapper’ regarding his company “Selling to the Masses”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “Selling to the Masses” is all about?

Most new products fail. Between the moment when you get a great idea and the moment when you breathe a sigh of relief that your product is successfully launched and selling, there are so many individual points of failure that it’s a wonder any products make it to market.

Selling to the Masses is the brainchild of a group of experts in mass retail. We know how to get consumer goods from concept to successful roll-out because we’ve done it — but more than that, we understand mass retailers. We know all the steps along the way, from design to fulfillment to marketing and promotion. We know where the pitfalls lie and how you can leap across them.

Selling to the Masses consists of three elements: webinars and weekend trainings that help entrepreneurs figure out where they want to go with their new consumer product ideas; mentors from Fortune 500 companies and major universities who work directly with entrepreneurs; and a product incubation lab where we bring our network together to support the most promising products.

2. When has “Selling to the Masses” been founded? And what stage is “Selling to the Masses” currently at?

Founded in 2011, Selling to the Masses is still in its early stages. We have our mentors on board, our research is has been done and our training materials are completed, and we’ve held one weekend workshop as well as several webinars.

We’ve been able to identify the people who can benefit most from our trainings and mentoring, and to fine-tune our message. We’ve identified the strategic partners our clients need in order to get from idea to shelf, and we’re building our list of investors.

Obviously a project of this size takes a lot of work and preparation. Fortunately, we have the background and connections in place.

We’re currently working on getting the word out to the inventors and entrepreneurs we want to serve.

3. What is “Selling to the Masses”‘s business model and how does it work?

We provide low cost and free webinars to identify innovators with ideas that have a good chance of success. We encourage those individuals to proceed to the weekend trainings.

While the weekend trainings are profitable for us, we see them primarily as an opportunity to nurture ideas and entrepreneurs who will benefit from our incubation lab.

We benefit as trainers and as investors when the companies we mentor attain their goals.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

Selling to the Masses is a project of 101 Ventures, a team of former Walmart executives and entrepreneurs working in the consumer product space.

We were discussing the work of Harvard’s Dr. Clayton Christenson, who estimates that of the roughly 30,000 new products that launch each year, 95% are doomed to fail.

We could see that some of the failures were the result of poor design, a lack of follow through, or a weak idea. But we could also see that some product failures were the result of a lack of knowledge.

Working with mass retailers like Walmart requires a lot of specialized knowledge — it’s not just common sense. An entrepreneur will have to work with and within a huge system. For many, it’s like having grown up on land and having to learn to work underwater. Without knowing how the system works and how to thrive within in, an entrepreneur can end up failing horribly right at the threshold of success.

An older company of ours, 8th & Walton, is the #1 training company for Walmart suppliers. We realized that the people who weren’t yet ready for mass retail, but needed to get there, needed to be served just as we served those suppliers.

5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique about you and what’s new about what you make?

There are other business incubators, but they don’t focus on consumer products to be distributed through mass market retail.

Companies that support inventors and innovators who want to create new consumer goods tend to see them through getting their products to market.

Getting on the shelf at mass retailers like Walmart, Home Depot, or Target is the eventual goal for these companies, but going about that goal wrong can mean failure beyond just failing to meet that goal. The investment required just to get an appointment with a buyer can put a small company out of business if they don’t make it — and an unprepared company that makes it into Walmart can be destroyed by a failure there.

We grew up in the Walmart vendor community, a very specialized neighborhood. We know exactly what it takes to make sure that an entrepreneur is ready for mass market retail. We have the top-notch trainers who can convey that information well and experienced mentors who can support entrepreneurs through the process.

6. What is your growth like? And what milestones has “Selling to the Masses” achieved so far?

Since we’re less than a year in, we’ve seen phenomenal growth — from zero.The main work we’ve done so far has been setting up the network of training and support for innovative companies.

At this point, we have not only the training materials and the mentors, but we have also identified the resources our clients will need. For example, we’ve found fulfillment houses with the capacity and flexibility to serve this specific population, and tech companies with the specialized skills innovators in the consumer goods space need.

Our first weekend training was successful, giving participants a good start in moving toward their goals, and we’re currently working with several innovators to bring them to the next step.

7. Who are your competitors? And what is “Selling to the Masses”s competitive advantage over them?

As a business incubator, we’re not really in competition with other incubators. Our direct competitors are probably product coaches like Matthew Yubas or Lambert and Lambert.

These coaches tend to focus on patent issues and on the details of manufacturing. Sometimes marketing and distribution channels are considered. These topics are certainly very important. However, it’s easy to put a great deal of money into product development and exploration of distribution channels — and then have to redo a lot of that work when you decide to go with mass retail.

We focus specifically on those products destined for mass marketing. That means that we can help entrepreneurs make sure that their packaging will work for Walmart, that their logistics plans are realistic for mass retail, and that they have the business systems in place that they will need to have in order to succeed.

8. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?

Entrepreneurs invariably face challenges — and that’s how we like to think about them, as challenges rather than obstacles. A challenge, we figure, is something difficult and exciting, while an obstacle is a problem.

Our challenges included the need for extensive and intensive research, the need to identify and then persuade a strong network of mentors and strategic partners, and the difficulty of reaching serious innovators in the consumer product space.

We overcame and are overcoming those obstacles with hard work and persistence.

9. What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?

Mass market retail is more complicated than people think. When you read about how a company was destroyed by a mass retailer, it’s usually really a story about an unprepared company that flung itself into mass retail without the necessary knowledge.

We have a national business fairy tale in which a nice person with a great idea becomes hugely successful almost by accident. That makes a great movie, but it’s not much use as a blueprint for entrepreneurs.

10. Why are you going to succeed?

We’re going to succeed because we have something people need. It’s a knowledge economy today, and we’re fortunate enough to have some very specialized knowledge, including not only the how-to, but also the network.

We also have good ways to share that knowledge with the people who need it. Because we’ve already established a successful training company, we can use the lessons learned there to succeed in this new venture.

11. If “Selling to the Masses” succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?

We plan to support innovators in the consumer product space in many different ways. In fact, we already do.

As we work with companies in the mass retail space, in areas ranging from training to promotions, we notice unmet needs. If we can identify a good way to meet those needs, we put those plans into action.

At the moment, a way to get effectively from idea to mass retailer shelf is the unmet need we’re focusing on.

12. Why did you choose this idea and concept to build “Selling to the Masses” based on?

About 95% of new products fail. In an uncertain economy, that awareness is bound to limit innovation. We see even large, established companies hesitating to make investments in new ideas.

And yet it is in new ideas that our nation will find increased strength and prosperity. That by itself is a good reason to help innovators succeed.

We believe — based on experience — that we have what it takes to support innovators in the consumer products space.

13. What have you learned so far from launching your idea?

So far we’ve seen that there are a lot of people with great ideas, and a lot of people whose ideas are not good candidates for mass retail.

We’ve seen that it’s hard for people who have great ideas to figure out which group they’re in.

We’ve seen that there are a lot of fears acting as barriers to entry for consumer products, and that people usually think their lack of funding is their biggest problem, even though it isn’t.

14. Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?

It may be too early for us to make that prediction. we haven’t run into enough problems yet to be able to go beyond basic risk assessment to real prediction.

Like most start ups, we’d like the answer to this question to be something like, “We’ll be so overrun with terrific clients that we will need additional parking and a new building.”

15. What’s the benefit for the customer/user?

Getting a product into mass retail is the biggest thing that can happen to a company in the consumer products space. It can be the best thing, the thing that leads to wealth, or it can be the worst thing, the thing that leads to ruin.

The support of Selling to the Masses can help entrepreneurs determine whether they’re more likely to succeed in mass retail or to fail. If they have a good chance at success, our training and support can make it much more likely.

16. How did customers / users find out about you?

Our customers have mostly found us through our website, through word of mouth (including social media), and through referrals.

We’ve been featured in some major publications, including The New York Times and Inc. magazine, and that has also helped us to spread the word.

Finally, we do some email marketing.

17. Who are your current customers / users? Who are your target customers / users?

Our current customers are divided between inventors with new concepts that haven’t yet been produced or finalized, and small companies with local distribution who are ready to work toward national distribution through mass market retail.

We’re probably most helpful to the latter group. Innovators who have had some success in specialized retail and are ready to go big are ready for what we have to offer.

18. Where do new customers / users come from and what makes new customers/users try you?

We have some visibility in the Walmart supplier community, and that probably increases the number of people who choose to work with us. Of course, the mentors on our list also have fans who come to us for the opportunity to work with them.

We think that once we get some momentum going, we’ll be able to rely primarily on word of mouth.

19. What do your customers / users say about your product and/or service?

There are two common responses.

The first is that the experience is eye-opening. People go into the consumer goods innovation process with so many misunderstandings about retail, mass marketers, customer behavior, and how buyers work with suppliers that the first conversation with us can be transformative.

The second is that we’re truly helpful and supportive. We’re tough, it’s true — we don’t want to give people unrealistic expectations or jolly them along when we think they’re not going to succeed. We’re not about improving anybody’s self esteem. But that very thing is what makes us helpful.

When people finish our training, they have a whole new set of actions steps and a realistic set of goals.

20. How are you going to scale?

We’re not planning to set up little incubation labs all over the country. We plan to keep our weekend training program open for everyone who’s willing to make the investment of time, money, and attention — and to keep the incubation lab highly competitive.

We plan to scale our trainings by adding facilitators and venues, possibly going to distance learning for some aspects of the program.

21. What’s the biggest missing feature? The one thing customers/users keep asking for?

This was a little bit of a surprise for us. We found that people were coming to us from companies that already had a preliminary deal with a mass retailer — they had been picked up by Walmart.com or Amazon.com, for example, or had their products in a few stores. It was only at that point that they realized that they needed some support.

We decided that we were best able to meet their needs in a different company. We really want Selling to the Masses to be for people with a new idea, not for those who are right on the verge of major success.

22. Are you going to internationalize? And if yes how are you planning to expand your start-up’s operations accordingly?

We’re open to people from other countries right now, though we haven’t yet had contacts from overseas.

In today’s flat world, we don’t see a reason to get too focused on location. I should mention that we do already have international involvement with some of our other companies, and we have team members who have specialized in international business, so it’s probably easier for us to say “Yeah, no problem” about internationalization than it would be for many other companies.

23. How big do you think you can get? Why? And how you are planning to achieve your goals?

We’re in the center of the mass retail universe here in Bentonville. I think a lot of people have been astonished at what’s been happening in our little Arkansas town, and we’re ready to be astonished by what happens with this company.

One of the things we see on the horizon is a boom for Northwest Arkansas, perhaps comparable to the boom Silicon Valley experienced in the 20th century. We hope to be part of that boom.

24. Are you looking to hire a new workforce? And if yes, what job vacancies do you currently offer and where can potential applicants contact you at?

We’re not currently hiring. We have a wonderful team of mentors, and our standards for those mentors are very high.

We also have, through our parent company, 101 Ventures, a great support staff.

Staffing is often one of the biggest challenges for a start up, so we’re thankful for our excellent team.

25. Are you looking for partnership opportunities or funding from Venture Capitals (VC) or other funding sources? Or your business is self-sustainable? And if the first option applies where can potential partners / investors contact you at?

We certainly welcome investors — not just for our idea, but also for the entrepreneurs and innovators we’re supporting with Selling to the Masses.

Our primary clients are the innovators who are developing new consumer products, but we think we’re also providing some great opportunities for investors.

We have a special page at our website for investors:

http://www.sellingtothemasses.com/about-us/for-investors/

26. What advice do you have for fresh entrepreneurs?

It’s easy to become focused on ourselves as entrepreneurs and think about what we want to get out of our idea, instead of what our customers will gain — but that’s really the important thing.

Gozoop.com

Gozoop, a young and entrepreneurial digital services and products provider with presence in India and UAE has created a niche for itself in the ecommerce space

   

We had a quick chit chat with Mr. ‘Iyer Premkumar‘; Head of Online Marketing at the India / UAE – based start-up “Gozoop”.

According to Mr. ‘Premkumar’; Gozoop, a young and entrepreneurial digital services and products provider with presence in India and UAE has created a niche for itself in the ecommerce space. Best known for its unique work culture, Gozoop is a team of 46 digital enthusiasts with an average age of 22.

Gozoop’s business currently consists of 3 verticals – service, products and web properties.

On the services fronts it helps brands and personalities with their online presence.

Services include Social Media Marketing, Online PR, Search Engine Marketing & Optimization, Media Buying, Web Design & Development and Mobile Applications.

Gozoop’s clients include Commercial Bank of Dubai, Carrefour, Mad Over Donuts, Rocket Internet, Snapdeal, FashionandYou.com, etc.

Gozoop launched it’s flagship Facebook Commerce product under the brand Zozolo.

The product featured in Mashable’s Fast Pitch 2010 and was the only entrant from Asia.

Subsequently Gozoop launched a Social Loyalty product that is currently being used by a number of brands to monitor their social media engagements.

In August 2012, Gozoop launched DecideBuddy.com, an online buying guide that helps consumers filter, review and purchase products and services. Currently serving Indian consumers, Decidebuddy soon plans to launch in UAE and Singapore.

The story of Gozoop is incomplete without highlighting it’s work culture that has attracted a lot of press not only in India but also on international news portal.

It’s Saturday team parties, handwritten letters to the parents of employees, monthly weight loss competition and weekly cupcake suprises are just some of the things that make its culture unique.

With offices in Mumbai and Dubai, Gozoop is well positioned and working towards setting up in Singapore, Delhi and Bangalore.

Gozoop is 2 years old (Culture Driven), 45 member team, average age 23 years, self funded, Incubated 2 ventures Zozolo (It was one of the Top 10 entries at Mashable Fast Pitch Competition. Here’s Ahmed’s pitch at the competition in California – Under the Radar 2010)and decidebuddy (A community based review platform) operations not just in India, but also in UAE and Singapore.

We have been covered by Killerstartups, Yourstory to name a few and have been selected at Mashable’s Fast Pitch Under the Radar Nov 2010. Below are the links:

http://www.killerstartups.com/rising-startup-stars/gozoop-is-doing-awesome-stuff-for-web-and-mobile/

http://yourstory.in/2012/04/gozoop-an-innovative-digital-agency-that-is-bringing-socialloyalty-and-social-commerce-to-the-forefront-in-india/

http://www.socialsamosa.com/2012/04/featuring-a-social-media-agency-gozoop/

http://www.audiencematters.com/article-final.php?title=Gozoop%20online%20expands%20its%20presence%20in%20Mumbai%20and%20Dubai

http://startupjourney.blogspot.in/2012/08/team-culture-building-gozoop.html