Slumbering Bear

One of the startups that I toured is Zimride. They’re a ride-sharing platform for college students originally (trust factor). Now, they offer it to the public. The passenger pays the driver in exchange for the ride to wherever they’re going.

I recently started using their service, as a driver, and it was awesome experience. I learned about their stories, where they came from (they were foreign), and got some helpful tips for my trip to Germany. I have another passenger ride signed up, too, so there’s a lot of volume depending on where you’re going.

If you drive consistently, this platform is definitely one to check out. I hear they’re launching an app for smartphone users, soon.

If you’re a developer, particularly for the mobile space, you probably thought about launching in the iOS market. Logical, since Apple controls the smartphone marketshare majority. And, if it best suits you or your company for whatever reason, you then decide to launch on the Android app marketplace. This sequence of launching is no surprise. In fact, Instagram, did it. However, you should take the time to find the differences through the backend developing into account, too.

Apple focuses a lot on their own ecosystem. Meaning, they don’t like to collaborate. They like to be on the forefront of innovation, and they like to do it their way. Sure, much respect to that. However, when you’re developing an app for this market, Apple likes to control things, too (No surprise! Also, take a look at development costs). I speak on a very high level in terms of this (Won’t go into much detail). Some things Apple likes to control is definitely the design of an app. There are certain parameters that developers must meet, or else the app can’t be launched. These parameters, I suppose, must match Apple’s standards of simplistic design and purposes. For instance, developers can’t put an option to accept donations within the app, or even put a link within the app that leads the user to a donation website. These kind of barriers, although Apple tries to keep a theme, may seem unwanted for a new developer.

On the Android development, it costs less to launch an app, for one. And, there aren’t any restriction parameters at the level Apple enforces. It’s a much easier barrier to entry. However, like I mentioned, the iOS market IS more popular. No wonder that’s an easier choice for strategic purposes.

Those of you who are interested, check out this table comparing iPhone, Android, and Windows 7 functions

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Would we see something happening like LinkedIn again? Nevertheless, I won’t have enough cash to even touch this, since I’m either at Germany or my money will be spent for Germany.

People are saying that the next Tech bubble is coming. But I think it’s coming from the B2B side, and not the B2C side. Yes, LinkedIn and Facebook are massively popular with the consumers. However, many don’t know about the software as a service (SaaS) and cloud companies and how they’re utilizing it. Now this side is the true bubble.

Cabulous is run by a team located at The Hatchery. Many, and the list was huge, startups rent out office space and develop their projects. Sometimes, they even merge if they feel like their projects work well with another.

During the tour, I saw a lot of different companies on the showcase wall. It gets me excited to see the amount of collaboration occurring. These startups work in tight spaces where the privacy level is almost nonexistent. A cool thing that I saw was that IGN Entertainment was stationed in the same building (probably a higher floor than The Hatchery)!

Anyways, back to Cabulous. Cabulous is a taxi driver and dispatcher platform. Taxi services sign up for Cabulous and receive a tablet for dispatching and for taxi drivers. Since taxi drivers are independent of their own businesses, trying to catch one may be difficult. Cabulous developed an app for taxi-needers. All one has to do is press a button to choose a taxi and that taxi driver may choose or not to take your fare. Furthermore, you can track wherever they’re going.

They are currently focusing on San Francisco taxi companies and users, even though, they also do business out of state.

For my class, we had a tour around San Francisco’s startups. I’ll be explaining who they are or what they do as best as I can and how they’ll impact our lives.

If you’re an avid event-goer, you might be familiar with Eventbrite. The founders, Kevin Hartz and Julia Hartz, are husband and wife. Eventbrite provides the platform for people to create events, share them and handle the ticket sales smooth and simple. They want their service applicable to any type of event, making the process of attending one as easy as possible. They’ve been in rapid growth in recent years, expanding their employee base.

After a Q&A with the Director of Recruiting, Miles Parraco, Eventbrite convinced me of the most exciting thing I like about them: their work environment. It’s no surprise they were rated best places to work at for two years running. When you enter their office, you feel a sense of ease. It’s large with a bright orange wall. All employees and their executives work in this big communal-organized space. The side rooms, normally office spaces for execs, are turned into conference rooms. But what I really liked is their hiring decisions. This is what I love about startups; they have a lot of focus on employees getting along. Eventbrite would rather hire someone for 50% good-nature and “nice” qualities and the other 50% would be skills. Regardless if someone who’s incredibly smart and top-notch, if they’re even slightly rude they would turn them down. This is the result of Julie Hartz’s focus on the “brite-ness” part of the company, calling each employee a briteling.

Because of such rapid growth and the popularity of Eventbrite, I would expect to see them in a lot of event transactions. Even though there are a lot of competitors out there dealing with the same type of service, I like where Eventbrite is going.

No doubt any of you in my generation uses a dating service to find interesting people and meet each other. You probably think it’s lame and for desperate, lonely people in their mid 30’s. If you’re into the startup world, you may know StartupDigest, a great resource of content and events related to the startup tech culture. The StartupDigest team recently launched Cupid Curated, an invite-only dating service, curated by femme-fatales. Yes, a selection of badass girls-only decide if your application is worth the acceptance.

Most targets that they accept are people who:

1. graduated from college (a good one at that)
2. doing something within their passion
3. doing something interesting

It’s a new way to connect to potential dates by filtering out a lot of people and targeting the “interesting” ones.

Google Drive launches soon, being a one step up from Dropbox. Collaborate with teammates by sharing files and supposedly editing them together and also giving instant access to Google Docs. This definitely comes in handy for group projects. Furthermore, Google Drive offers 5 GB of free storage (Dropbox offers 2 GB).

Even though I use a good amount of data through Dropbox for personal files and projects, I might just jump on the bandwagon to Google Drive. I use the Google Docs feature quite often and Google Drive offers more space than Dropbox.

I find it surprising that this product is closing in on its launch date now, considering other cloud storage services have been accessible for a while. Based on this move by Google, Dropbox will seriously have to adjust their prices or find viable features to keep compete with Google. I wouldn’t mind if Dropbox ante up 10 GB of free storage. It’s moves like these where the smaller guy gets it tougher than the bigger guys.