On track to have more than $100M in funding six years after its creation, Box.net rethinks file sharing from scratch – directly targeting enterprise giants like Microsoft and Oracle. Its 26-year-old CEO, Aaron Levie, explains why you should target the B2B sector:

• Tech startups are generally consumer-focused because founders in their 20s try to solve problem they know about. Business issues are less familiar to them, clearing the way for startups like Box.

• It is easier to be disruptive in B2B: “if you compare Box to something like IBM Filenet, or Microsoft SharePoint, you get almost a 10x improvement on productivity, speed, time-to-market for new products”

• Traditional B2B companies don’t get it. They try to sell all-inclusive, bundled solutions for ERP, CRM, email… (see Microsoft 365), while their customers are looking for lightweight, dedicated tools. SaaS involves far less fixed costs than these traditional solutions.

Source: SAI, Business Insider, Matt Rosoff This 26-Year Old Founder Is Raising $100 Million To Take On Giants Like Microsoft

Photo credit: ajleon

En France, OpenStreetMap, c'est une vingtaine de collaborateurs actifs (principalement des développeurs) qui font vivre la communauté de cartographieurs. 

Ils ont proposé une formation à la Cantine en juillet dernier, dont nous avons retenu les points suivants.

Pourquoi s'intéresser à OpenStreetMap ?

• Parce que c'est infini, et que chaque utilisateur peut cartographier ce qu'il souhaite, de la bande de Gaza aux bruits et odeurs du quartier de la Défense. Tout le monde peut devenir contributeur, que ce soit en ligne (avec une interface dédiée) ou avec son smartphone. Par exemple, on peut observer ci-dessous la différence de précision de la carte pour la Bande de Gaza avec Google Maps et avec OpenStreetMap.
  

• Parce que c'est libre, et que l'on peut ainsi imaginer tous les services cartographiques possibles sans avoir à se poser des questions de droit. A l'heure de l'Open Data, il est essentiel de s'intéresser à ces outils libres qui vont permettre de créer des services low-cost et innovants fondés sur ces briques. Le futur de l'open data ne se construit pas sans ces outils.
  Par exemple, des données libres de l'organisme  "the United States Geological Survey" ont été exploitées par OSM et le moteur de rendu OpenSource "Tilemill" afin de proposer une carte interactive des magnitudes enregistrées après le tremblement de terre au Japon et permettent aux secours de s'organiser plus facilement.
  

• Parce que c'est une première brique, et qu'à partir de ces données on peut imaginer tous les services possibles. Des moteurs de rendu permettent ainsi de customiser les cartes à sa guise, comme "Tilemill" par exemple ou "cloudmade". De multiples applications ont été développées à partir d'OpenStreetMap, par exemple une carte de circulation des trains en temps réel a été développée au Pays Bas. (http://kubus.mailspool.nl/spoorkaart/).
  

Rendez-vous le 2 Septembre à la Cantine pour la suite des formations.

Sources :

• Le site internet d'OpenStreetMap
• Le moteur de rendu CloudMade
• Le site de TileMill
• La carte interactive des tremblements de terre au Japon

• believing that you can engage users only by adding game features to an existing product is doomed to fail
• like social, gamification is a new “cargo cult”, an attempt to recreate successful outcomes by replicating features that worked for Facebook or Foursquare. Your product is different: why adding game features to it would “make you as successful as they’ve been”?
• instead, product designers should focus on providing a solid solution to people’s needs. Gamification can come on top of that to make the experience even better.

Best quotes:

• “Gamification is the monosodium glutamate of engagement: a low cost alternative to building something genuinely compelling for your users.”
• "Twitter doesn’t have game mechanics, and it’s truly engaging. Because users share things they care about, and Twitter does a great job getting out of the way and letting you do what you want to do."

Source: Teambox blog, Gamification, social and other cargo cults

From Jason Cohen and others:

1. I built this software for myself, and then it turned out a million people wanted it exactly how I originally envisioned it.
2. I wish we had spent less time talking to prospective customers before designing interfaces and writing code.
3. Thanks to a software patent we filed, we never had a serious competitor.
4. Our most effective marketing campaigns where the ones filled with buzzwords and non-specific claims.
5. I wish I had spent more time reading and weighing the pros and cons of various philosophies instead of just jumping in and doing what I thought was morally and financially sensible.
6. Those arguments about the name, logo, and design color were critical to our eventual success with Enterprise customers! (CliffElam)
7. I learned everything I needed to know about starting and running a successful business by reading blogs. (anactofgod)
8. I new exactly what I was doing when I started so I didn't have to learn anything along the way. (Alisa)
9. I am glad we interviewed customers and did not move forward with our product until we got 40+ people to tell us they will buy our product when launched! (Ricardo D. Sanchez)
10. Everyone I spoke to about starting the business agreed that it was a good idea. (Max)

Sources: Jason Cohen, 10 things I’ve never heard a successful startup founder say

Vinicius Vacanti, co-founder of the successful deal aggregator Yipit explains why he decided to quit a comfortable job at a private equity firm to start his own business.

His experience is typical of the New York startup scene, the “Silicon Alley”: since the financial crisis, many talented Wall Street employees leave their job to create their own startup.

Vinicius’s whole blog is entitled “How To Make It as a First-Time Entrepreneur”, and gives us useful insights on the risks and benefits of creating a web-based startup today.

Source: How to make it as a first time entrepreneur

Juniper Research has released a report suggesting that annual smartphone shipments will triple by the year 2016. They estimate that smartphones will overtake feature phones and reach one billion shipments every year. Competition in the smartphone market is intense and Juniper expects a price war leading to $150 budget smartphones. The report suggests that the price drop will be largely due to ease of development on open-source OS’ especially android and falling costs of key components.

• Smartphone market to increase 230% in 5 years.
• New competitors likely to develop economy smart phones.
• Demand for higher-end phones to remain robust due to new features.

Source: Juniper Research Press Release

Consumer Reports announced that consumers are not as excited about near-field communications payments as the tech industry paints them to be, and apparently, nor should they be. The report highlights a number of challenges presented by using cell phones and digital wallets in lieu of traditional cards. Of consumers polled, only 5% have used their phones to pay for something in the last month, perhaps understandably low considering the age of the technology, however of those who have used it one in four faced significant transaction errors. While a usability gap remains between digital wallets and traditional cards, analysts at Juniper research still believe that the mobile payments market will triple to $670B.

• Problems remain with transaction errors, security and fees.
• Consumers reluctant to switch from established payment methods.
• Optimism about growth as technology spreads.

Source: GigaOM - Consumers need to be sold on the benefits of mobile payments

In the face of an uncertain economy, media executives are optimistically betting that now is the time to invest, particularly in digital revenues. 94% of media executives polled by KPMG said that they believed digital revenues would increase over the next year, most of them agreed that traditional revenues would also rise. Leaner companies and ever increasing adoption rates of interactive technologies are setting the energetic tone for media and communications companies, who are seeking to expanded further into the digital market.

• Mobile commerce expected to have the biggest impact.
• 70% of executives believe their company will be involved with a merger or acquisition in the next year.
• However less optimism about increasing company head counts over the next year.

Source: VentureBeat - Media executives see digital revenues on the rise

Until recently the investment process in the high-tech industry has been ironically low-tech. Fundraising has largely based a face-to-face process of meetings and personal relationships, presenting a huge barrier to entry for some of the most promising companies. Eighteen months ago AngelList set out to change that by developing a curated social network connecting startups with different levels of investors

AngelList began as an email list to let wealthy angel investors know about hot startups, but in the past year has grown to encompass over 2,300 investors and 10,000 companies. Part of AngelList’s success comes from its exclusivity, the list is maintained through reviews of both investors and companies to make sure that it runs smoothly, and according to founder, Naval Ravikant; ‘Because the intros to angels are curated, the conversion rate for angels is much higher than in real life’ (via Forbes). The site has driven funding rounds down from months, to a matter of days or even hours.In fact there has been so much demand that the site has been accused of causing a frenzy in seed funding, the response was to lock down volume and focus on quality rather than quantity.

For all its success however, the site has yet to monetize and the founders do not seem to be in a rush to do so. There is certainly potential for AngelList to be acquired by a larger network such as LinkedIn, but there are no plans have been announced as of yet.

• 2300 investors.
• 10,000 companies.
• 400-600 fundraises (almost 2 per day)

Sources: Forbes.com - AngelList takes angel investing to warp speed, Gigaom - Bringing Sand Hill Road to cyberspace