TechCrunch
TechCrunch Is Coming Your Way, Boston
As TechCrunch powers through the major tech hubs of the world we’ve consistently missed Boston. That’s about to change. I’m pleased to announce our second Boston meetup on November 13, 2013, at the Estate, 1 Boylston Pl .
These meetups offer you guys the chance to hang out with TechCrunch writers and editors and take part in our pitch-offs, contests that allow start-ups from all over the world to compete to win a table at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York or San Francisco. The meetup will cost $5 to attend and include booze and lots of networking.
You can buy tickets here and we will open submissions for the pitch-offs later this month. You can read more about the event here.
Participants interested in competing in the pitch-off will have 60 seconds to explain why their startup is awesome. These products must currently be in stealth or private beta. We also offer Office Hours during our visit to your city. Office Hours are for companies selected for the Pitch-off, these 15 minute 1 on 1 talks will be held on the day of the event. We’ll hear about your company, give feedback, and talk about the best pitch strategy for the 60-second rapid-fire competition. Think of us as Adam Levine on The Voice. More information on Office Hours will follow in a post on TechCrunch.
We will have 3-5 judges, including TechCrunch writers and local VC’s, who will decide on the winners of the Pitch-off. First place will receive a table in Start Up Alley at the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt. Second Place will receive 2 tickets to the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt. Third Place will receive 1 ticket to the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt.
If you have any questions you can email events@techcrunch.com and if you’d like to sponsor the event drop the folks at sponsors@techcrunch.com a line. We’re looking forward to rolling into Boston and hope to see you there!
Tackk Raises $1.2M For Its Content Creation Tools
Tackk, which offers tools for creating content that combines text, images, audio, and video, is coming out of a beta today and announcing that it has raised $1.2 million in a second round of seed funding.
If the premise sounds a bit general, well, it is. When I wrote about Tackk a year ago, the company described the content that users could create as “e-fliers” — the online equivalent of the fliers that you’d see pinned on the bulletin boards of neighborhood coffee shops. That was pretty broad already, but when I spoke to CEO Christopher Celeste about the funding, he said his goal is to build a “universal content creation tool.”
There were two big advantages for Tackk that Celeste and the company’s co-founder Eric Brockmuller touted in our conversation. First, there’s the simplicity — using the Tackk template, it shouldn’t take much work or expertise to combine different types of media in a non-ugly way. Second, Tackk doesn’t force users to be “locked in,” with all of their media stuck on a single network. Users don’t need to create a Tackk account to create a Tackk, and they can post their content to social networks, as well download the content as a PDF.
Since launching a year ago, Tackk says it has received 700,000 unique visitors (despite minimal marketing), and its users have the used the platform to create photo journals, Craigslist postings, recipes, real estate listings, and more. You can see featured Tackk content here.
Brockmuller told me that Tackk was originally built to serve solely as a content creation platform, but it has added social features since then, like profiles and the ability to follow other users. Celeste said this allows Tackk to address both the creation and the consumption of content, but he added, “We’re not trying to create a Tackk social network. We want to empower people with the ability to tag and organize their content so that they can push it out for discovery.”
The new funding was led by ff Venture Capital, with participation from previous investors Hatch Partners and Drummond Road Capital. Celeste (who joined Tackk from Hatch) said that one of the appealing things about working with ff is that the partners aren’t forcing Tackk to specialize: “They know how to be patient with an early-stage play like this.”
AngelList Syndicates By The Numbers: 12 Deals, $3.5M Raised, 199 Angels Activated Syndication With $5.6M Committed
This weekend, the Twittersphere and news cycle was dominated with the reactions of a number of VCs and angels to AngelList Syndicates. According to the data we’ve collected from AngelList, there has been an explosion of activity around Syndicates but early indications are that people could setting the system up for even more to come.
Jason Calancanis thinks that Syndicates could fundamentally change venture capital going forward. Hunter Walk talked about the possible competition amongst angels as a result, and Fred Wilson explained that Syndicate leads need to be prepared to actually act as a lead investor after the round closes. Mark Suster drew out very balanced arguments “for and against” Syndicates. With all this chatter, we wanted to hear from AngelList on what the actual numbers and engagement look like.
For background, Syndicates allow any accredited investor on the AngelList fundraising platform to essentially create, lead and collect carry for a fund of angel money for a specific startup. Ahead of connecting with a startup, a syndicate can draw backers on AngelList, which are financing commitments in their network. Syndicates launched privately in August, but debuted to the broader accredited investor community last week.
Syndicates
So far, AngelList has seen 12 syndicated deals (half of these deals are still in progress). For these deals, $3.5 million has been raised in the first month. It’s important to note that this doesn’t represent all the capital that startups using syndicated deals have raised. For example, Shyp raised a $750,000 syndicate, and $2.1 million in total. Even of the non-syndicated portion of the $2.1 million, we’re told the vast majority, including from Hunter Walk and Satya Patel’s new fund Homebrew, came via AngelList. AngelList has seen 529 separate investments into those 12 deals, across 413 unique investors.
Backing
Co-founder of AngelList Naval Ravikant says that number of backers joining syndicates really increased over the weekend–in fact, the demand was overwhelming. He says 45 Syndicate leads have some backers for future deals (basically 45 mini-seed funds have been formed). Adding to this, 195 Angels have “activated” syndication, implying that they would accept backing, and there are now 484 unique backers on the site.
Backers can back Syndicate leads, even without a startup that the lead has committed to investing in. So far there has been $5.6 million committed to leads from backers. We’re told all of this capital is committed for each syndicate lead’s first deal (As a backer, you are committing an amount to every future deal made by the Syndicate Lead until you stop backing them). And almost all of this activity took place over the weekend.
These are early numbers but as Ravikant explains much of this activity, especially when it came to backer participation, came from the weekend. The number will become clearer when we see more deals being matched up between startups and Syndicate leads, and when we start seeing leads do multiple deals backing startups. It’s worth noting that it’s in the later numbers and engagement where we’ll see if Calacanis’, Wilson’s and Walk’s speculations will become a reality for the VC world.
Anfacto Lets You Create Single-Purpose Android Devices For The Workplace, Restaurants And Events
While there are plenty of enterprise mobility and device management companies, they may not go deeply enough in controlling the end-user experience for an employee or a customer.
Many of these enterprise mobility startups use standalone apps that a tablet user can switch in and out of to the browser. That might be a security risk for restaurants that, for example, want to let their customers order from an iPad or a distraction for teachers that want to manage attention in the classroom.
Anfacto, a startup with talent from Google and an earlier company called 3LM that Motorola acquired, is building custom versions of the Android OS that let enterprises offer single-purpose devices for the workplace, conferences or the classroom.
“This is a level of control you can’t have with an application,” said CEO Hristo Bojinov.
Anfacto’s Android variant called FleetOS could let customers like UPS give their drivers Android tablets that they can use exclusively for tasks like scanning packages.
“The idea is that we can lock down the experience from a user standpoint,” Bojinov said. “The customer can go in and decide what applications and features can be run.”
He said a conference could give away tablets to attendees and push applications to them while they’re roaming around the event. Or a company like TaskRabbit or Uber could give their contractors phones specifically for managing errands or drives. Or they could partner with a hardware maker that wants to make tablets exclusively for kids with only specific, child-friendly apps.
The company is already profitable through a few early contracts, and took some strategic funding from DoCoMo Capital. They say FleetOS competes against expensive legacy solutions in the older Windows PC market.
Bojinov said he got the idea for the company because so many hardware makers were asking for it. Their solution has a policy server where an IT administrator can set the rules for what’s allowed or disallowed on their devices. They can also manage graphical resources like wall papers to offer a more customized or personal experience.
The company has 12 people on its team, with most of them in Palo Alto. They’re also opening an office in Bulgaria, where Bojinov grew up.
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