Creating a Blog using Collaborative Consumption Services

I am fortunate to see dozens of innovative new internet products and services every month.  But, it is not often that I have the opportunity to utilize those products in a business context.   So, it was fun (and effective) to use two new services to create the logo and design the layout for this blog with minimal effort, at a very reasonable cost and, hopefully you'll agree, in a high quality way.

I chose crowdSpring to create the logo for my blog.  crowdSpring is a marketplace of designers who submit proposals for logo and graphic design projects.  I offered a $300 payment and received 50+ submissions for logos.  I was able to give feedback on the logos, easily share them with my colleagues for reactions, and ultimately iterate with the designer on the one I chose.

Two Categories of Great Apps

If you are like me, you love smartphone apps.   But, you are also overloaded by the number of apps that exist in the app store and also that you've downloaded to your device.  As an investor in both Tapjoy and Flurry, I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes a great smartphone app.

To help me make sense of the overload, I've come up with two categories of great smartphone applications.
 

Flurry: Mobile Analytics & the App Economy

In January 2010, Flurry, a mobile application analytics and monetization provider, announced that it had closed a $7 million Series B, led by InterWest.

Q: Why was Flurry an attractive investment for InterWest?

Doug: Three reasons: the market, Flurry's leadership position in that market, and their executive team.

Clearly, there is a tremendous market potential here. The use of mobile applications has exploded in the past year. Apple's App Store alone has seen more than three billion downloads — and the market is just getting started. There is an obvious need for a service that can help developers understand how their applications are being used and, by leveraging that powerful data, effectively monetize their applications.

The Annual Kickoff Meeting

I attended the annual kickoff meeting for one of my portfolio companies recently.   The company is called Spredfast and they did an absolutely fantastic job with their meeting.  For a fast growing company establishing an annual kickoff meeting is a huge opportunity to create a strong culture and establish positive momentum for the new year.

Here were the key aspects of the meeting that I attended that I would recommend other companies establish as part of an annual tradition:

1) Educate - In any rapidly growing company, at least half of the people in the room each year will be new employees.   A company kickoff is a perfect opportunity to educate employees about the market opportunity and the company's positioning.  In particular, give a product demo and describe the vision for future products.  Get them on board with that vision and make sure each employee can give the company pitch.

CarWoo! Q&A

Here’s a Q&A I did for the InterWest Web site a few months ago about one of the companies I’ve invested in….

In October 2010, CarWoo!, a service that allows consumers to purchase cars online after comparing competing offers from local car dealers, announced a $4.2 million Series A financing, led by InterWest. The company also announced the appointment of Doug Pepper to its board.

Q: WHAT MAKES CARWOO! AN INTERESTING INVESTMENT FOR INTERWEST?

Doug: This year consumers are expected to purchase 12 million new cars in the United States. 98% of buyers will research their purchase online — and then the vast majority will drive to one or more dealers to make the actual purchase. At the dealership, they’ll face the prospect of in-person negotiation — a process that most consumers dislike. CarWoo! offers a way for consumers to compare competing offers from dealers in the privacy of their homes, saving time and money. In a nutshell, car buying is a huge market that CarWoo’s service promises to disrupt by elegantly solving a very real consumer problem.