Meet the Entrepreneurs Who Are Reinventing Philadelphia
Rather than regurgitating 9hrs worth of Founder Factory live blogging, I thought I’d just let one of today’s Founder Factory organizers share his excitement in his own words.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhEOu3ECQeU
Dave Speers is an online marketing consultant and start-up junky that has worked with a wide variety of Philadelphia businesses. Dave spends most his time annoying really smart people at Indy Hall co-working collaborative.
Dave Speers is an online marketing consultant and start-up junky that has worked with a wide variety of Philadelphia businesses. Dave spends most his time annoying really smart people at Indy Hall co-working collaborative.
About LTLprints:LTLprints provides custom life-sized, self-adhesive prints to the U.S. and the U.K. Customers may upload images via LTLprints.com, including their own personal photos, snapshots, and artwork. All prints are made to order, removable and reusable, and available in three different sizes for purchase. The prints are tear resistant and safe for nearly any wall.
Everyone enjoys a change in décor once in a while, but may be hesitant about the commitment of a permanent solution such as wallpaper or paint. A new trend in wall décor is arriving in the U.S. with the launch of Philadelphia based LTLprints.com, where customers can add “Larger Than Life” self-adhesive prints to walls with the comfort of knowing each print is removable and reusable. All prints are customizable and add a touch of personality to any space. “We’re excited to show off this great new site and expose Philadelphia to a great innovation in wall decoration,” said Kendall Schoenrock, LTLprints President and co-founder.
The decision to launch LTLprints.com in Philadelphia was inspired by Schoenrock’s education at Villanova University and past entrepreneurship success in Conshohocken, PA. Schoenrock was the top performing sales associate and angel investor in TurnTide, an anti-spam service provider acquired by Symantec in 2004. Since his departure from TurnTide, Schoenrock has been an angel investor and consultant for numerous other startups in the Philadelphia area. Schoenrock’s partner and LTLprints.com CEO is Carsten Petzold. Petzold, former chief operating officer of Spreadshirt.com, is a native German and fellow angel investor. Petzold and Schoenrock co-founded LTLprints in September 2008, joining forces after enjoying individual success with similar startup firms, Spreadshirt.com and Wallhogs.com. Their previous experience and shared vision of unique, customizable printing led them to start LTLprints.com, bringing excitement and a personal touch to the walls of homes and businesses across America.
LTLprints are a fun new twist on wall décor. Each print is custom made, and will stick to almost any flat surface. LTLprints can be moved around, pulled off one wall and pressed to another, and will easily come apart if accidentally stuck together. The print leaves no mark or residue on the wall, and will stick to the new surface with no trouble. The process is simple. Customers digitally upload their picture or design, answer a few quick questions, and LTLprints will ship within 72 hours of purchase.
Though similar products and services such as www.Fatheads.com are available in the oversized graphics market, LTLprints distinguishes itself through the unique customization tools available. Competitor websites have catalogs and licensed persons available for purchase; LTLprints allows you to upload your own images or shop via the online catalog. All catalog images can be altered, edited, and customized per order. The ability to personalize and alter each image allows LTLprints.com to stand out in this niche market. “We’re ready to make Philadelphia walls more fun,” said Petzold.
Entrepreneur, Statesman, diplomat, educator, inventor, author, printer, philosopher, scientist, shopkeeper, musician, economist, public servant and American hero.
“Duck Duck Go is a new search engine, like Google. We help you spend less time and effort searching by combining results you are used to with much better info from human powered sources like Wikipedia.” in their own words
There is no bigger skeptic when it comes to startup search companies. To this humble mind it just seems way to hard/crowded/overwhelming to take on monsters (in size not ideology) like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. The amount of energy and capital they have to put into R&D and marketing makes the idea of competing almost laughable. So why would anyone, especially someone smart enough to get into MIT, put their life on the line to do just that? Quite honestly, because it might just be the smartest way to make money.
With Google and Microsoft in a technology arms race reminiscent to the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War (guess which one is the USSR) they are acquiring tech companies left and right that could potentially give them any tactical advantage against the other, sort of like satellite states. Just recently MSN started integrating the technology from the recent purchase of search company Powerset that is not dis-similar from Duck Duck.
Created by MIT Alum Gabriel Weinberg, Duck Duck Go was made available to the public on September 25, 2008. Gabriel was kind enough to put a Phast Pitch together for Phillypreneurs and we’d love to introduce you to him and Duck Duck Go:
More specifically, here’s how Duck Duck is different then the big 3 (Google, Yahoo, MSN)
# Top results for most topics are from human powered sources, e.g. Costco. (Note the much simpler link titles and descriptions.)
# We have special pages to help you separate topics with similar names, e.g. apostle.
# Related topics, news and images are displayed on the top right (instead of ads!), e.g. Weezer.# We have special pages that group related topics, e.g. Communication disorders.
# Official sites are labeled as such and put right on top so you don’t have to think about it at all, e.g. Bill Gates.
# Ability to search other sites directly, e.g. !youtube another bubble (sites list).
# Keyboard shortcuts: → ← ↑ ↓, Enter (go), n (news), i (images), r (related topics), h j k l (arrow alts.), and / (search box).
# Automatic highlighting of the last link you visited when you click back.
# Detects phone, tracking, and car #s; zip, book and product codes; and street and IP addresses.
While I don’t think Google has to start building its Duck Duck defense strategy just yet, I do think that companies like Duck Duck and Powerset make complete sense as acquisition plays for Google and Microsoft (Yahoo is out of the picture now that it’s on the sales block itself). So watch Duck Duck and Gabriel’s twitter feed for meetings in Mountain View or Redmond in the next year or two.
PS
Attention Developers: Duck Duck does have an API and we would love to hear about projects you develop with it.
Dave Speers is an online marketing consultant and start-up junky that has worked with a wide variety of Philadelphia businesses. Dave spends most his time annoying really smart people at Indy Hall co-working collaborative.
Despite the euphoria of the past week, not even the first official Monday of the Phillies reign as World Champions was enough to cancel out the weekly weekend withdraw. No, it would take something just as exciting but a little more personal to chase away a chronic case of the Mondays. Something like this note from our friend John Valentine over at Philly startup Tapinko :
“I just wanted to follow up and thank you for the awesome press you gave us. Within a couple days of the Phillypreneurs TapInko post, we received some unsolicited phone calls from investors on both coasts interested in feeling us out for potential investments. The blog has amazing breadth in readership! TapInko is still going strong as we continue down the LORE, BFTP, and angel funding paths.”
We obviously can’t take credit for any of Tapinko’s success but it does a blogger good to know that our little passion could be apart of helping others pursue their’s, so much good that the smile that’s stretched across this face might last long enough to make a dent in next week’s inevitable Monday too. Here’s to continue success in Tapinko.
Dave Speers is an online marketing consultant and start-up junky that has worked with a wide variety of Philadelphia businesses. Dave spends most his time annoying really smart people at Indy Hall co-working collaborative.
Snirch (http://www.snirch.com) announced the launch of a groundbreaking search engine that provides relevant search results created by real people, not algorithms. Unlike other human-powered search engines, Snirch shares its advertising revenue with search experts who provide well thought-out result pages for relevant search terms. This unique revenue-sharing model empowers regular people to tap into the search advertising market that is projected to grow to $37 billion by 2011.
The site creates an attractive opportunity for anyone with subject-matter expertise, web research skills and a little creativity to build home-based businesses by writing search content. Snirch estimates that certain keywords currently monetize in excess of $1,000,000 in annual advertising revenue. “There is a lot of money in search” said co-founder Michael Ross, “which translates into great income potential for our contributors.” In exchange for researching and compiling relevant content for popular search terms, the company plans to share 50% of its advertising revenue with its experts.
Launched in Philadelphia, Snirch was recently accepted into the Wharton School’s Venture Initiation Program, which provides guidance and resources to aspiring entrepreneurs. The company is currently running an alpha-stage site that allows search content creation on an invite-only basis. Snirch looks forward to recruiting experts in various fields to expand its user-generated database of search results.
Snirch is a Philadelphia-based company providing a highly relevant, human-generated search results through a community of highly motivated experts in various fields.
Entrepreneur, Statesman, diplomat, educator, inventor, author, printer, philosopher, scientist, shopkeeper, musician, economist, public servant and American hero.
No? Well then, let me be the first to introduce you:
What is Tapinko?
Tapinko is an online management SAS for purchasing and managing a variety of offline ads (e.g. multiple newspapers, billboards, text messages, etc). In other words, Tapinko is an offline ad management application. Tapinko has initially focused on the college Newspaper market, including UPenn, Harvard and Tufts. It’s one of the early stage start ups to graduate from the first DreamIt class at the beginning of the month.
Who is Tapinko?
Peter Groverman (Co-founder), Nicolas Warren (Co-founder) and John Valentine (Corporate Development). Peter first felt the need to simplify offline ad management as a student. After only being able to sell eight months of advertising for a twelve month calendar, Peter realized that there had to be a much better way to sell offline advertising, whether it be newspaper, billboards or urinal ads. Bingo (insert light bulb), create an intuitive and user friendly market place for offline ads online. After some prodding from his friends and family, Peter embraced his entrepreneurial passion and recruited his friend, and web guru, Nic Warren to start work on what would become Tapinko. It wasn’t until after his first year of Villanova Law school and recruiting a promising classmate, John Valentine, that Peter was ready to make an all or nothing bet on Tapinko.
Who do they have to beat?
Google Print Ads, Google Audio Ads, Google TV Ads, Tactician,
How are they different?
Instead of embracing the obvious broker model of connecting publishers and businesses directly, and therefore cutting out the traditional and entrenched sales reps, Tapinko has created a tool set that existing ad sales teams (or anyone) can use to organize and execute their buys.
How are they paying for it?
Friends, Family, DreamIt and Visa cards are at the ready if it comes to it. Now that’s the sound of an entrepreneur who’s got the start-up bug! Before it comes to that though, they are actively pursuing Angel and VC funding.
Peter Groverman pitching on DreamIt funding day.
To the whole Tapinko team we wish you the best of luck and look forward to hearing about your many successes!
Dave Speers is an online marketing consultant and start-up junky that has worked with a wide variety of Philadelphia businesses. Dave spends most his time annoying really smart people at Indy Hall co-working collaborative.
“The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.” - J.K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement Speech
It’s not something that your typical ego-centric entrepreneur wants to talk about; the fact that she/he has failed at one point or another. The evolutionary reality is that like the progression of life itself, failure is an essential ingredient of individual and organizational success. So this past Saturday a diverse group of innovators ranging from professors to programmers to graphic designers humbled themselves enough to get together to share, and more importantly learn from, one another’s mistakes.
Hosted at Indy Hall by Alex Hillman, Amy Hoy, Thomas Fuchs and Tony Bacigalupo nearly forty people came out to share in a the first Philly ‘fail session’.
Read more about the first FailCamp at IndyHall:
Alex Hillman’s recap
Kevin Lee, of Story Slam fame, gives his take on the unique session
“We took that feedback and, on the fly, spun out a new format to try. We set a 10 minute timer and asked people to share a problem/failure they were experiencing at this current period of time, and then within the same 10 minute window, gave the room an opportunity to speed-coach.” - Alex Hillmen
By the end of FailCamp it became obvious that we had tapped into something fundamentally ignored in the entrepreneur community; the fact that inventors and technology creators are constantly on the edge of failure and need help from their community to keep from going insane.
*FTW = For The Win
Dave Speers is an online marketing consultant and start-up junky that has worked with a wide variety of Philadelphia businesses. Dave spends most his time annoying really smart people at Indy Hall co-working collaborative.
