Software with soul

Over the past few weeks I've had my mind blown by several teams, each pursuing very different ideas, but with fundamentally similar views about what a "magically good" software experience feels like.

I've been trying to come up with a good description for the ideas these teams are pursuing, and the title of this post -- software with soul -- is the best I've come up with so far.

The vision that these teams are pursing expands the definition of functional web "software" -- the bounded universe of pixels on a screen, with forms, rules and datastores behind them -- to embrace unplanned, user-scripted events, pseudo-AI rulesets, even participation by live human "coaches", all within the software experience.

The explicit goal of the creative minds behind these projects is to develop an authentic, sustained, empathetic relationship with the end-user -- to make their customers feel powerful, magical and cared for by their software.

It's impossible not to see Steve Jobs' intellectual fingerprints on these kinds of creative aspirations. No technology company has done more to inspire digital creatives than Jobs and his lead designer Jony Ive. As researchers in the UK demonstrated earlier this year, Apple fans experience feelings similar to those evoked by religious icons when in the presence of Apple brand imagery.

But as good as Apple is at device design and experience-layer software, they've never really delivered the kind of emergent software experience I'm seeing in its early stages today (and this assessment includes the remarkable voice interface that is Siri).

The difference I see in these new platforms is that they are designed not only to deliver an emotionally satisfying experience when in active use, but to actually *anticipate* needs and pro-actively re-engage the user (e.g., via email, text and mobile push messaging) to help address them.

Some of the patterning for these experiences comes from the story-driven digital gaming world, where roles and characters can evolve over time based on player choices and interactions. The most exciting of these new tools take full advantage of modern mobile devices, not only as vectors for user engagement and notification, but as sensor packages that bundle relevant meta-data (e.g., location, time of day, proximity to real-world places and people, even local weather) along with user-created inputs to create rich intelligence about the users' needs -- often without having to ask.

Some of these ideas border on the creepy (the image at top is of HAL 9000, the malevolent software intelligence from 2001: A Space Odyssey), and part of the creative magic is to stay on the right side of that line with intelligent disclosures, permissions and settings. But in the right hands -- and with genuine empathy for the customer -- the accelerating capacity for software to bring joy is inspiring to behold.

To all the digital creatives out there who aspire to beauty and magic in their creations, it's a great time to be alive.

Welcoming Unbounce (our first Vancouver BC investment!) to the Founders Co-op family

Andy and I created Founders Co-op to serve entrepreneurs throughout the Pacific Northwest -- from Portland, OR through our home base of Seattle and across the border to Vancouver, BC.

We love our Portland-based portfolio companies Urban Airship and AppFog, but hadn't really given Vancouver our full attention until this year, when I attended GrowConf at the urging of our friend and regular co-investor Boriz Wertz.

As I wrote then:

"From the beginning, we thought of Vancouver as 'in bounds' for our investment activity, but after three years and more than 25 investments we still haven't placed a bet north of the border."

Until today.

We're delighted to announce our investment in Unbounce -- a company I first got to know on that August trip (thanks to Ian Bell and Brent Holliday for making the introduction over post-conference beers).

Unbounce is a great example of the kind of company that grows up here in the rainy Northwest: quietly excellent, intensely customer-focused, solving a real business problem and unafraid to actually charge customers money for the value they deliver. 

Unbounce helps enterprise marketing professionals execute quantitative market tests without IT support by making it drop-dead-simple to build, publish, manage and measure results from web-based landing pages. When I met them, they had already built a fantastic product and business with the help of a few local angel investors, but they saw a much larger opportunity that they could only address with additional capital and support.

We weren't the only ones to notice what Rick and his team had built. Mark MacLeod of Montreal's Real Ventures and Dave McClure of 500 Startups fame signed on early, and as the round came together several more excellent early stage investors joined the syndicate as well.

We're incredibly excited to be a part of the new investor team supporting Unbounce. Not only do we get to play a small role in the company's continued success, we also have a good excuse to spend even more time north of the border.

Congrats Rick + team -- welcome to the Founders Co-op family!

Make sure you handle the money

Third party monetization systems -- from AdSense and affiliate programs to display ad networks and in-app "offer walls" -- are a tempting drug for time-strapped entrepreneurs.

In the short term, outsourcing your revenue generation might feel smart: it lets you stay focused on on the "core" projects of building product and audience, without being "distracted" by the grueling and time-consuming work of asking customers for money directly.

But if you want to build a big, valuable business -- the kind that investors like to back and strategic acquirers like to buy -- what feels like a time-saving shortcut on the road to success may actually be a nasty detour down the wrong road.

If you're the kind of entrepreneur who plays to win (and not just to make a quick buck), here's a piece of advice: make sure you handle the money.

Here are three simple reasons why...

1. Insight
   
   Every business exists by permission of its customers. If you solve a customer problem, you might get to live. Solve it better than anyone else and your customers will give you permission to grow, thrive, and maybe even lead the industry you choose to serve.
   
   If you aren't talking to your customers daily about what problems you solve, what solving those problems is worth to them and how you could do better (and be worth more), you aren't learning what you need to learn to survive, much less thrive.
   
   Third party monetization sets you on a path to maximizing what your money source values, not what your customers care about. You'll probably spend lots of time doing things that aren't good for customers but still make you more money, like increasing your rankings in search results, or generating more pageviews from the same content. The more those strategies pay off, the less time you'll spend thinking about -- and working on -- what makes life better for your *real* customers.
   
   We are entering an era of perfect competition for software ideas -- the only sustainable competitive advantage is solving a problem for your customer better than anyone else and continuing to learn and innovate so that you're always ahead of even your most nimble competitors. If you aren't listening, you aren't learning, and asking for money is a great way to find out what your customers really value.
   
   
2. Value
   
   Third-party monetization is subject to the same competitive laws as everything else on the web. The supply of web (and increasingly, mobile) content is effectively infinite, and more is being added every second of every day. With so much content available to them, third-party monetization networks have zero incentive to offer premium pricing to any individual participant; all but the largest publishers are functional equivalents, and the loss of any one publisher has a negligible effect on their overall yield.
   
   If your business creates value, it's important to capture as much of that value as you can to generate the cashflows and profits you need to grow and thrive. If your value creation is so limited -- or such a commodity -- that the "best" monetization option is to give your inventory away to someone else, you should probably be thinking harder about how to create more value so you can "climb the value ladder" to a stronger and more defensible position.
   
   
3. Control
   
   Price is a powerful signal: your price helps customers interpret your position in the competitive landscape, and changes in price (up or down) are levers you can use to drive or throttle demand, reward loyal customers, or steal share from competitors.
   
   When you set price and handle the money your customers spend on (or through) your product, you have greater control over this powerful lever. If you give that power to someone else, you have to work that much harder to differentiate your offering and manage seasonal or competitive pressures on demand. (Even when you "control" price, never forget that your customers retain the ultimate control, which is to take their business elsewhere -- so use it wisely).

What does this mean for entrepreneurs working on their next business? The universe of possible startup ideas is at least as large as the supply of entrepreneurs, but here are few rules of thumb I'd consider when choosing your next project:

• Solve a real problem - businesses exist to take away pain. The more pain they take away, the more they get to charge. The "pain" you solve with your next business could be boredom, or inefficiency, or the need to be loved -- just make sure the pain is real and strongly felt by many people besides yourself, or you may spend a frustrating several years of your life.
  
  
• Ask for money early - don't wait until your product is "perfect" (whatever that means) before you ask your customers to pay. If they won't pay, understand why not and what you'd have to do to move more of them from "no" to "yes". The work of turning 'no' into 'yes' is the heart of your discovery process as an entrepreneur.
  
  
• Don't expect scale to solve your business model problems - every business idea I've ever been pitched works great at scale. Even an economically dubious idea like Twitter starts to make a ton of sense when 200 million people use it. Most businesses -- yours included -- won't ever hit the scale at which that kind of magic happens, so make sure you have an idea of how real money gets made at every meaningful level of customer adoption. If you can't make that pencil, you probably should think again.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? You'd be amazed how many investor pitches on the market today don't pass these screening criteria. (I also know a bunch of investors who have done fantastically well by ignoring all three, so maybe I'm the idiot...)

[PLEASE READ BEFORE COMMENTING: Yes, I'm fully aware that Demand Media built a public company almost entirely on the back of AdSense. Smarter people than me have unpacked that story already. And yes, there are lots of examples of profitable businesses that rely heavily on 3rd-party monetization. My argument isn't that you can't make money this way, it's that your odds of attracting investment capital and realizing a strategic premium for your business are significantly lower if you do.]

The TechStars "recipe" -- patterns of a successful accelerator program

Software is eating the world and everyone wants (really, needs) to get in the game.

For software creatives and engineering-centric companies, participating in digital innovation and disruption is second nature.

But for the vast majority of people and organizations, IT has traditionally been treated like the slightly embarrassing nerdy uncle who shows up for Thanksgiving: he's welcome to stay, but he has to sit at the kids table, and everyone raises their eyebrows when he asks for a second helping of pie.

As non-technical organizations wake up to the power of software-powered innovation, they quickly realize how hard it is to attract top-tier technical talent to full-time positions. Once they hit the brick wall of hiring, the smart ones step back and ask themselves:

"How the hell do I get hackers to care about my brand / my data / my problems?"

There *are* patterns for success here, but they aren't found in the traditional recruiting playbook.

In the current market -- where demand for engineering talent far outstrips supply -- the most successful model for attracting elite software creatives to hard business problems is the "accelerator" model. Pioneered by Y combinator and TechStars, this approach is now being applied in dozens of cities across the U.S.

Big tech companies like Rackspace and Microsoft are now working with TechStars to apply the accelerator model to their business, and even non-tech players like Weiden + Kennedy (an ad agency best known for their work with Nike) are creating accelerators to bring software creatives into closer contact with their brand clients.

I just came from brainstorming meeting sponsored by a state agency with a mandate to deploy money (not a ton, but enough to make a dent) to catalyze software innovation in the public interest. I'm an unabashed advocate for the "TechStars model", and I did my best to articulate what I believe are the key elements of the pattern as an input to the discussion...

The "TechStars Recipe"

1. Scarcity
   
   The biggest single variable in a successful accelerator program is the quality of the class. Limiting the number of spots available and applying a rigorous screening model to all applicants are the bedrock of a quality program.
   
   TechStars has built such a strong reputation that it now screens >100 applicants for every spot, radically increasing the odds that the teams and companies coming out of the program are going to make a dent. Teams are screened for engineering talent, agility and openness to feedback; the actual problem they plan to solve matters far less than the skills and approach they can bring to it.
   
   Not every program will have the luxury of a huge applicant funnel, but maximizing awareness, enforcing scarcity and being disciplined about selection have a massive impact on a program's effectiveness and quality.
   
   
2. Urgency
   
   Deadlines brings out the best in teams and mentors. Twelve weeks is an insanely short time to create product, lock in on a go-to-market strategy, and make a case for outside investment. Knowing that a roomful of qualified investors will be waiting for you on Demo Day helps keep everyone focused on bringing it all together, and the level of sustained intensity created by a well-run program is incredible to see.
   
   
3. Commitment 
   
   Lots of people say they want to be entrepreneurs; few actually make the leap and commit to the hard work of building a business. If you want your program to actually produce companies (and not just hobby projects), requiring a full-time commitment to the program is essential. This means no outside professional commitments, no mid-program vacations, and no remote team members.
   
   
4. Proximity 
   
   For each class of companies, having a cohort of peers who have made a similar commitment and passed through the same rigorous screening process is both inspiring and energizing. Bringing all the teams together in a single workspace allows everyone to make the most of that commitment. It also ensures maximum leverage of the program's mentors, presenters and leadership. Having everyone in one place maximizes the odds of serendipity, the chance interaction between people and ideas that create breakthroughs.
   
   
5. Leadership
   
   Like any great company, an accelerator program is only as good as the people running it. Running a great program is an incredibly demanding job, requiring exceptional skills in fundraising, recruiting, people management, conflict resolution, inspirational leadership and public communication. All of this has to happen on a deliberately compressed schedule that typically requires 12+ hour workdays, late nights and frayed nerves all around.
   
   If you're recruiting a leader for an accelerator program, you can't just screen for skills and experience; the job requires someone with an intense passion for the entrepreneurial journey and an evangelical fire that inspires the same in others.
   
   
6. Mentoring
   
   TechStars calls itself a "mentorship-driven" organization for a reason. The core of the program is hands-on coaching from hundreds of mentors who have volunteered their time to help build the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders. Each team builds relationships with several mentors over the course of the program, getting world-class feedback on everything from product and engineering to sales, PR, customer acquisition, financing, hiring and organizational development. TechStars teams inevitably describe the mentorship they receive as the most powerful aspect of the program.
   
   Recruiting an all-star group of mentors and helping them engage constructively with teams are critical success factors for any serious accelerator program. This is harder than it looks -- the most effective mentors are typically people with lots of other demands on their time, and they need to believe in the model and have confidence in the quality of the teams selected to commit time and effort to the program.
   
   
7. Promotion
   
   As the cost of starting a software business approaches zero, we are entering an era of perfect competition for talent, money and attention. One of the reasons top teams apply to elite accelerator programs is for the signaling value -- being lifted up above the noise and showcased as a team worthy of attention.
   
   Delivering on this promise requires the accelerator itself to invest in brandbuilding and communication -- creating a platform that can help its graduates stand out. The best advertising for any accelerator program is the success of its participants, but running great events, building relationships with influential media outlets and consistently producing compelling content about the program are all required activities.
   
   
8. Persistence
   
   Creating a successful accelerator program takes time, and the longer you stick with it the better it gets. There is a powerful positive feedback loop created by any program that can turn out class after class of great teams, working with engaged mentors, attracting high-quality investors, and realizing market success.
   
   Any accelerator that aspires to success should begin life with a multi-year plan and funding to match. Two years would be a minimum, and solid support for three or more years will radically increase your odds of building the kind of positive feedback loop that separates the really great programs from the also-rans.

For all of you accelerator veterans out there, what did I miss? Any of the above not as critical as I've made it out to be? 

So what are you waiting for?!

The best online marketing isn't always about conversion

Felix Salmon wrote a provocative piece this morning titled "The future of online advertising." In it, he makes a forceful case for the value of digital advertising as content, not just a gimmick optimized to drive clickthroughs.

He drives the point home by describing a recent speaking engagement to a group of digital advertising professionals:

"Most of the people in the audience literally didn’t know that when people buy Vogue they want to read the ads; in a very real sense, the editorial is something which just gets in the way."

In the old-school world of print and TV, this makes total sense. But to all of us in the digital world, ads have become nothing more than the top of a conversion funnel; an ad that doesn't convert is the definition of failure.

Taken to its logical extreme, all forms of online advertising trend toward direct marketing, and all direct marketing eventually becomes CRM. 

Consider Groupon, which has passed through these phases faster than most companies: they began with massive display advertising to build email lists; parlayed those lists into a repeat direct marketing channel that could blast new prospects in the door of local merchants; and are now attempting to slice and dice those lists into finely-divided cells of preference and location, to deliver "yield management as a service" to merchants that quickly wearied of one-time visits from bargain hunters.

Groupon's long-term success may be in question, but their meteoric rise was made possible not by slow and steady brandbuilding, but by applying the digital marketing playbook with massive force.

Salmon's point -- too easily forgotten in a world obsessed with "lean" methods and quantified results -- is that the best advertising is actually welcomed by consumers not just as content, but as entertainment.

An entire industry is emerging around "viral" ads -- branded messages that are so fun to watch that consumers seek them out, share them and watch them -- on purpose -- hundreds of millions of times.



This kind of advertising isn't what traditional agencies are used to producing. A handful of creative firms -- like Portland's Weiden + Kennedy, creators of the massively successful Old Spice campaign (an example is embedded above) -- have started to figure it out. But they've done so largely by embracing another key point from Salmon's article, which is to...

"... treat with suspicion the idea that it’s possible to deliver a beautiful, self-contained brand proposition online in the same way that you can in Vogue or on TV"

Effective digital marketing doesn't have to drive prospects into a conversion funnel, but the best content campaigns *do* produce measurable results in the form of "engagement": shares, saves, comments, +1's, Likes, remixes, even animated spoofs constitute positive signs that your effort to reach people has hit the target.

Most companies can't afford to pay a big-name agency to execute high-concept viral ad campaigns. But every company -- and especially early-stage companies with limited marketing budgets -- should make content-based marketing an important part of their marketing mix.

The term of art for this type of branded communication is "inbound marketing" -- so named because it draws customers in to "soft" engagement with content without an explicit ask, vs. "hard" conversion- and sales-oriented methods.

What does this "soft" marketing look like? Guest-authoring articles on popular news sites, publishing infographics and white papers, creating instructional videos, being a frequent and articulate commenter on relevant articles by others, retweeting helpful posts from experts on the topic: all of these play a role in the inbound marketing toolkit.

None of these methods are easily automated or outsourced, and most require hands-on engagement by the most time-stretched people in the business -- the CEO is often the person most qualified to both craft and deliver a killer inbound marketing piece -- but all of them deliver what customers crave most: a chance to get to know (and even like) your brand *before* being asked to buy anything.

SEO is dead? The link spammers haven't gotten the memo

In the past year some really smart folks that I respect a lot have declared the death of SEO. And while this may be true for high-quality / high-concepts sites building on new domains, it clearly hasn't stopped the old-school, gray-hat (and worse) SEO hustlers from plying their trade.

When even low-traffic specialty bloggers like me are regularly targeted with link-spam offers like the one below (which I just received today), you know the trade is alive and well...

It's hard to believe that a Blogger link is worth $40 to me - makes me wonder what the link buyer is paying ($100?). My favorite part is the line that "the link would go to an education site", backed up with the heartfelt footer message. I don't think I want to know what kind of "education" that site is selling...

The Money API

The web is a platform, and every modern web developer relies on Application Programming Interfaces -- APIs -- as critical building blocks in their development process.

ProgrammableWeb -- a pioneer in the cataloging of public APIs -- currently lists 4,290 APIs on their site, from mega-platforms like Google Maps, Twitter and Facebook to uber-niche offerings like We Feel Fine (an art project that harvests feelings from blogs)

But of all the APIs out there, the ones that interest me the most are those that deliver money. 

In the early '90s, the Internet was just a place for goofy personal webpages and IRC chat. There weren't enough people online for advertising to make much sense, and e-commerce sites made some money for the sellers, but not for anyone else. It was free and fun, but there wasn't much money in it.

In 1994 CDnow brought the real-world concept of referral marketing to the web, and in 1996 Amazon introduced its Associates Program and took the idea mainstream. With a few lines of HTML, affiliate marketing programs turned any online publisher into a paid sales agent, generating commissions for sales of products they never touched. All of a sudden, those goofy personal webpages could make you money! The money API was born.

At about the same time that CDnow was introducing their pioneering BuyNow affiliate program, clickable banner advertising was taking root at HotWired, the digital publishing arm of Wired magazine (the media bible of the web's early adopter set). This innovation was quickly followed by the development of the first ad server (in 1995), paving the way for the rapid development of an automated, ad-supported web.

Search marketing was the next big innovation in web monetization, but it wasn't until Google introduced their AdSense program (based on the 2003 acquisition of Applied Semantics) that the web's greatest money-spinner was offered as an API.

Like an affiliate program, AdSense-enabled publishers could now earn a share of revenue for the ad clicks they generated. But unlike any program that had ever existed before, Google could match their ads to your content, not the other way around (an innovation that's now worth about $10B a year to Google, or 28% of their total revenue).

Now, instead of hustling on behalf of someone else, you could write about whatever you wanted and Google would find you relevant advertisers and start sending you money.

AdSense is still the most amazing "money API" on the web, but its best days may be behind it. As user attention shifts from PC-based web browsing to social networks like Facebook, social game environments like Zynga's Ville franchise, and (my personal favorite) the app-centric world of iOS and Android devices, the field of 3rd-party monetization is suddenly wide open again.

There aren't any clear leaders yet. Despite the fond hopes of traditional ad network operators, in-app monetization on mobile devices isn't anything like web advertising. And selling virtual goods is huge business for game publishers and the big platform owners, but that hasn't yet translated into a truly portable money API for games.

You can bet that Facebook is cranking away on an embeddable social advertising API to rival AdSense, and Twitter is thinking deep thoughts about how to monetize the intent embedded in their stream without pissing users off. But what about the rest of us?

We've already made a couple of very obvious "money API" bets at Founders Co-op -- like Urban Airship in mobile and Big Door in gaming -- but our core belief in the power of "money platforms" is written all over the portfolio.

Consider Bonanza (a selling platform for indie fashion retailers), or Deal Co-op (a white label platform for daily deals entrepreneurs), or GroupTalent (a labor market for high-end dev teams), or Smore (a promotional publishing platform for small business owners) -- all of these services exist to help a specific group of entrepreneurs make more money, more easily.

If you're an entrepreneur looking for inspiration for your next startup, think about what a "money API" would look like in the markets you know best. If it doesn't exist yet, is legal, and uses the magic of software to help a lot of people make a lot more money, I'd love to hear about it.

The Island of Misfit Toys

I was asked to speak to the Tech Club at the UW Foster School of Business tonight (thanks again for the invite, Saurabh).

During the discussion, one of the students in the group asked how I planned my career. My off-the-cuff response was that there wasn't a lot of planning in it -- I actually tried to follow a traditional corporate career path and just didn't feel like I fit in any of the big companies I tried.


I kept switching to smaller and scrappier gigs until I found my real home in the company of entrepreneurs.

This got me going on the topic of the entrepreneurial community, and the incredibly warm welcome typically extended to anyone who shows up with a sincere desire to make a difference. My analogy -- which may not make sense to anyone who didn't grow up watching those stop-motion animated Christmas specials from the '70's -- was the "Island of Misfit Toys" section from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

In my experience, entrepreneurs are the "misfit toys" of the corporate world. At first glance, we look like anyone else in business -- we believe in markets and capitalism, we sing the praises of job creation and innovation -- but spend a little more time with us and our imperfections come in to view...

We're impatient and demanding... we value autonomy and creative freedom more than money... we think the world can be a better place, and we're just naive and egotistical enough to believe that we can help make it that way. 

Strangest of all, when we find other people who think the way we do, rather than look for ways to compete with or cut down what they do, we look for ways to help.

A few weeks ago Micah Baldwin wrote a great piece on the same theme called A Weirdo's World. He said a lot of true things in that post, but the idea that stuck with me the most was this one, describing the community of software entrepreneurs:

"We are an offer help first culture, and that mentally is finally beginning to seep into the world at large."

I don't know if Micah's right about the back half of that sentence but he's dead-on right about the first, and that's why I'm so glad I found my way to the Island of Misfit Toys.

Founders Co-op takes a bite of Smore (delicious!)

We just invested in Smore -- a member of the TechStars Seattle class of 2011. If you've been following our investment activity for a while now, you'll understand why.

Last spring I wrote a post titled "'Platforms' aren't just for developers: accelerate your startup by empowering others." As I said then:

"...any system that honestly seeks to makes life easier for passionate individual entrepreneurs to chase their vision and realize their dreams is nothing but goodness in my book."

Smore is a commercial publishing platform that makes it easy and fun for non-technical people to create beautiful, functional "online flyers" -- promotional webpages with a specific purpose, like selling a product, advertising a service or, promoting an event. Once you've published your flyer, Smore brings the same level of ease and user delight to tools for promoting your page (via email, social media and search engine marketing), and to understanding the effectiveness of your page as a marketing tool (via easy-to-read data visualizations).

In short, Smore turns every business owner that wants to be on the web and doesn't know how into a design and online marketing rockstar. And if that isn't empowering entrepreneurs I don't know what is.

The founders -- Gilad Avidan and Shlomi Atar -- are what my friend (and fellow unicorn) Aviel Ginzburg likes to call "unicorns" : pixel-perfect design obsessives who also happen to be gifted full-stack developers. They came all the way from Israel to participate in TechStars Seattle and in three short months have lined up a stellar group of mentors and investors. We're delighted to be in that group. Welcome, guys!

Here's just a sample of their work...

.

Welcoming Beamit Mobile to the Founders Co-op family

We're delighted to announce that Founders Co-op is now an investor in Beamit Mobile -- a member of the TechStars Seattle Class of 2011.

Co-founders Matt Oppenheimer, Josh Hug and Shivas Gulati are on a mission to blow up the current market for international money transfers by taking full advantage of the global ubiquity and advancing technical capabilities of connected mobile devices.

Almost $1 billion is transferred between individual recipients across international borders every day. 

Current approaches are inconvenient, expensive and slow, making the market ripe for disruption. But this is also an industry wrapped in red tape and notoriously "leaky" due to fraud, so it's not for the faint of heart. To manage risk and hone their approach, the team is beginning with just one international market -- the Philippines -- from one U.S. jurisdiction -- Washington State -- and that alone is a $300 million opportunity. But as they made clear in their Demo Day pitch yesterday, their ambitions are global and they're moving with lightning speed.

Matt's background as the Head of Mobile and Internet Banking for Barclay's Bank in Kenya gives him unique insight into both the opportunity and risks presented by this market. Chief Product Officer Josh Hug's experience as CEO and co-founder of social book-sharing service Shelfari (acquired by Amazon) adds proven customer experience (and customer acquisition) chops to the team. Add in Carnegie Mellon-trained startup vet Shivas Gulati on the engineering side and you have a core team with the chops and discipline to make a hard run at a very big idea.

We've been sitting next to the team for the past three months as they cranked through the crucible of TechStars and we're incredibly excited to have the opportunity to carry the relationship forward as investors and advisors to the business. Welcome to the family, guys.