A Market for Individual Service Providers

Back when I was getting my MS in Computer Science a few friends of my mine kicked around the idea of building a website for people looking to hire local service providers.  It was never fully baked, but it was enough to get me to starting learning Scheme.

So imagine my surprise and excitement to learn that a good friend and classmate of mine at NYU, Brian Rothenberg, is a member of the core team that launched SkillSlate.com, a venture-backed start-up whose mission is to connect consumers with individual service providers ranging from Brooklyn movers to DJs in New York, and many other categories in between. I think its great, given that it’s usually cheaper to hire an individual person to do a job for you rather than a company that has more overhead and marketing costs.

SkillSlate’s solutions is to provide individuals a profile that encourages service providers to advertise their rates and describe their services, as well as provide an introduction of themselves through photos, ratings and softer data. The directory puts the information together to allow consumers to search for their ideal local individual service provider, resulting in a positive experience for both consumers and service providers.

I think its a great concept, and I’m very excited to see where Skillslate goes.

Encouraging Innovation

Last week at the New York Tech Meetup the top three teams from NYU’s Hackathon presented.  NYU put on the Hackathon, and had local startups (with open API’s) come in and give some advice to the competitors on how to build on top of their APIs (drop.io, Foursquare, etc.).  The students then had 24 hours to build something cool – it could be anything, but it had to be cool.  And while the results were probably never going change the world, it was really impressive what the students were able to crank out in only 24 hours.

What was also cool, was seeing NYU foster a program that encourages students to work with other real world entrepreneurs to build real apps and release them into the wild.  Through my 20 odd CS courses in undergrad and in my masters, I built lots of cool things, but was never encouraged to work with local startups and never encouraged to build anything that would exist beyond academia.  In fact, I think I was never asked to build (or come up with the idea for) something that had never existed before .

Now that’s not say I couldn’t have done it on my own, I’m just impressed with the effort NYU is making to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit in its CS students (and I’m a little jealous).

My Unfair iPad Review

I didn’t pre-order an iPad.  Given my business school status I thought it a luxury that I should skip.  I also wasn’t convinced that it would be more useful (useful – I didn’t saw awesome), then my current Hackintosh Dell Mini 10v.  But I couldn’t help but run (literally run) up to Apple store on 14th this afternoon to check it out in person.

To give a little context.  It was very busy, with people queuing up behind each other to wait to play with an iPad.  I waited about 5 minutes – which was fine because I planned to take my time.  They didn’t seem to be sold out (but I didn’t ask).  I only played with the device for 5 minutes myself, so everything below is completely unfair.

Thoughts:

• Virtual keyboards still suck.  Typing was better than my iPhone, but I still think I would refrain from any serious composing on the device.  Although, maybe I would learn/adapt.  It seems I will have to, given the state of the smartphone marketplace.
• Gorgeous, the screen is brilliant.
• Games!  I’m not the first to say this but games are going to be huge on this.  I played EA’s NBA game and FlightControl (a personal favorite).  I thought “real” video games were silly on the iPhone, but it worked great (even though it was just an iPhone port).
• Ports of iPhone games feel like “driving your new BMW on the sidewalk.” (courtesy @gruber) It was like going back to watching hockey in standard def after being on HD for a year.  Devs are going to have two resolution (minimally) and probably two UI’s.  Also this makes it seem fair that iPad apps will be more expensive.
• I’m curious about the long term potential of physical mice.  I don’t think we’ll ever have touch screen desktops, but for on the move touch screen is very attractive.
• The bookstore seemed good.  What will ultimately sell me on this is actual trial.

Ultimately, it’s beautiful.  I’d love one with a slide out keyboard (will never happen).  And if money were no object, I’d buy one.  But for the time being my Dell Mini running OS X is good enough.

NYU Venture Meet-Up

On Monday the NYU Venture community had a demo meet-up. There was an interesting mix of students and alumni there. The 5 presenters were all impressive with well-polished demos and applications. A number of them had come out of the NYU business plan competition, and it was to great to see that the business plan competition is churning out real start-ups.

The presenters were: OMGICU, Parse.ly, TheHotList, Me and Gogi, and ComiXology.

I was really impressed with Me and Gogi’s presentation. They sell customizable cereal online. Given the market’s move towards increasing health consciousness as well as individual customization the idea makes a lot sense to me. The product is more expensive than the cereal in the local store, so it’s not for everyone. Additionally, they’ve had some great press recently – appearing in O Magazine for example.

TheHotList is a data aggregator over Facebook (and Foursquare) that shows who is expected to go to bars/clubs in a given city based on public event RSVPs. The data that it overlaid on maps was pretty impressive, with some interesting stats (girl/guy ratio was particularly well received by the crowd). I’m not sure how they’re going to monetize it, but it reinforced the value of aggregating the massive amount of data within Facebook.  (An interesting aside about the relative sizes of Foursquare and Facebook.  TheHotList guys said that they use Foursquare data, but the check-in rate is so infrequent that it provides very little data in the general cases – this jives with my personal experience that only 1-3 people checkin to NYU Stern on any given day)

Finally, ComiXology demoed a very slick comic book app for iPhone and one would assume iPad eventually. The have deals with all the major publishers (not exclusive), and have enabled in app purchase of new books. The app was nice, they claimed that the comic book market is 6 B worldwide, but you have to wonder how much of that is US. Having not poked around, I imagine there is a lot of competition in the space and everyone is doing basically the same thing. Also, I wonder at what point the publishers will release their own app, and not have to share revs with anyone.

All-in-all very cool. Great to meet a bunch of NYU alums interested in the start-up space. Hopefully there will be more soon.

Foursquare

I recently re-started using Foursquare.  I thought it was interesting with my first go-round, but the lack of friends to follow/compete with kept it from being all that fun.  At the time I thought the gaming aspects were hokey, but now I find myself competing with my friends for points – to the point where I’ve even considered checking in to bars that I walk by on my way home.

Yesterday though I got really excited about Foursquare.  I was on a walk along the Highline with my wife and checked-in and saw that another friend was also on the Highline.  While we didn’t run into each other, it was cool to know they were around and we kept an eye for them.

I think this is what is exciting about Foursquare.  Its an app/social network that is aimed at fostering more (not less) real world interaction.  As we connect more and more virtually, I think there is huge value in this, although it doesn’t lend itself to easy/straightforward monetization.  Additionally, I fear that the check-in feature only needs quick user interactions.

nyc vcic

I’m helping out to run the northeast regional VCIC competition at NYU today.  VCIC is a “flipped out” business plan competition where students judge real entrepreneurs (pitch, due diligence, and term sheet negotiation) and ultimately decide to invest one company. All the while, they are judged by real VCs from NYC.

It’s been very interesting to watch, maybe more so than actually competing (NYU can’t compete while also hosting).  As much as one can learn from professors in business school, I realize more and more that there is a real life interaction/experience that can’t be taught.  Some of the teams clearly had solid understandings of both VC and the markets that the entrepreneurs operate in, but were unable to build a relationship with/interaction positively with the entrepreneurs.  In real life these smart people would fail – I’m not sure how business schools can get around this, but I think I’ve probably learned more from watch 6 teams present today than I have in the course I’m taking on VC.

I would encourage participating in more case competitions, and more course work tied into people in real business.

It’s also been great to see established NYC VCs discusses the various deals with each other, and also to grill the student teams.

Getting Started

I’ve been thinking it might be nice to keep track of some of my thoughts as I embark on my MBA.  Writing things down often helps me organize my own thoughts, and maybe some othe wayward applicant might be able to get some insight from this.

That, and I find that I end up emailing links to friends a lot.  Maybe I should centralize that process, and stop clogging their inboxes…