Tag Archives: neato

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Goldman likes to call RelSci “the Death Star of business development.” … The model is apparently so enticing that Goldman won hundreds of clients and, the company says, nearly eight figures’ worth of business in 2013, which was RelSci’s first year since coming out of stealth mode.

“Relationship Science: Harnessing Big Data for Power Networking” via Inc Magazine.

I read about this fascinating company on the train this morning. RelSci is a hyper-exclusive social network that is trying to build a digital networking of relationships between the top 1% of people (power-wise) in the world. 

Check out what their engineers have been doing for the last few years:

“This not only requires constantly scraping the Web for updates but also building rich profiles from tens of thousands of databases, ranging from SEC filings to paparazzi photos to tax records. These pieces have in turn been joined to link everyone through past and present employers, board memberships, investments, donations, politics, and even siblings, children, and spouses.”

Incredible stuff. 

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It’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while. It felt to me like a typewriter company running an ad talking about how computers were just a fad and might lose your information on a floppy disk.

“How You Know You’ve Got the Right Startup Model?” via Mark Suster at Both Sides of the Table

Good read by Mark that hits on the struggles that disruptors face when up against large, entrenched encumbants.

Sometimes the battles are funny (the Public Storage commercial) and sometimes they’re scary (what Seattle did to Uber and other ride sharing companies), but regardless they help prove that you’re scaring the crap out of folks who are currently making the $$ in that industry.

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It’s the longer term view that is more worrying. Once a manufacturer is on board with an Android Wear device there is every chance they will be restricted to Android Wear for any ‘wearable’ that they release, or they lose Android support across the range – the same deal as the Open Handset Alliance with Google Play. That leaves Google in the driving seat for this new-found market.

“This Is How Google Can Dominate The Smartwatch Industry For Years To Come” via Forbes

Just like an new hardware platform, wearables will benefit from a decent level of hardware standardization to encourage early adopters (both consumers and developers).  

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Great data in this report from Business Insider. 

Some great stats in here:

  1. 80% of smartphones globally run Android.
  2. 60% of tablets globally run Android.
  3. 60% of all new computing devices run Android.
  4. Android is now as popular with global developers as iOS.
  5. Android device fragmentation is improving: 61% of users are on Jelly Bean.
  6. iOS is very strong in the U.S., but weaker globally.
  7. “Mobile-first” is now “Mobile-also”; phablets and tablets are growing fast.
  8. Wearables are “new and next” but still in the early stages of adoption.

The Future Of Mobile! [SLIDE DECK]

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NYC invaded Austin, TX at SXSW Interactive and at the NY Tech Meetup event on Saturday, March 8th, where our home-grown startups demoed their products for the global tech community to see. As a member of the NYC tech community myself, I recognized quite a few of the prominent faces in the room that made it a great event for those who wanted an authentic taste of the NYC tech scene. Present  were the leading men of Fueled, Social Media Week and Startup Threads, in addition to representatives from NYCEDC and, of course, David S. Rose, Founder and Chairman Emeritus…

Long live Mongo!

These Are the New York Companies that Killed It at SXSW

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Tango, a messaging app and mobile social network, has raised $280 million … Eric Setton, CTO and co-founder of Tango, says 70 million of its 200 million registered users are active every month.

Tango Raises $280 Million via Business Insider

I used Tango for a short while on my Windows Phone before Skype was released on the platform. Not a surprising valuation for Tango given the recent WhatsApp purchase and their MAU’s. Their monetization and virality model seems focused on not dissuading users in any way (i.e. no core functionality behind paywalls).