LaunchUp had an attendance of about 70 people at Mountainland Applied Technology College. Great thanks to all the sponsors, presenters and companies. Keep up the great work!
PITCHES
PlayCallerIQ – Russell
When you attend a football game you see two things. Someone buried in their phone and the guy behind you calling out the next play.
We built a mobile phone app. It allows the user to call a play before the play happens. Run Left, Pass Short, Mid run etc.
We have iPhone and Android apps. Tweets are sent to the user when new plays are available. You can be sitting at home or the airport and use the app.
We use the Facebook API so you can get right in to it. We have a Facebook Challenge invitation that you can participate in. You can also Facebook post that shows you are the best.
Each Football team has their own twitter account and you can tweet your thought of what the play will be.
Our Light version is free.
We have a Competitive version that is 4.99 to download.
Beta for NFL post season games right now.
Advertising market is huge. 27.8 billion spent in 2011 in adverts.
NFL, College football and MLB. We want to tap in to the Fantasy Football groups.
ASK
Ways to monetize
Distribute the app
Recruiting beta testers, admins, and advisor with a passion for football.
Recruiting a CEO as well. I am still with Amber Alert GPS company full time. I am recruiting a CEO who is a sports fanatic. Needs to have good social and viral side of Facebook and Twitter.
?Q. You talk about offering location based. Suppose everyone is at UofU, then you can offer some snack stand advertising.
A. We have a location based app that I have produced on my Amber app so that is a great idea.
?Q. Advertising is 4.5 billion then give away for free.
?Q. Consider basketball since it is another sport
A. Haven’t found a good way to call plays with basketball. I would love to get more ideas on that.
?Q Do you have someone on the patent side?
A. I am looking for 32 admin fans. we have a lot of available times 25 times that people need to send out the notifications. we are recruiting individiauls that know their team.
?Q Adding gambling options?
A. We have wondered about how to do that in a good way. Everyone thinks that they are an expert but this will record and tell them their reality.
?Q. The advance in football explosion was site improvement? It has to look cool to be cool.
A. We would love your suggestions.
?Q. Game with levels that become more interactive. If I am not competing then I won’t use it. If I can compete against myself or the computer then I would do it.
?Q. Also provide additional user information as an insider like 80% accuracy in the pocket and 82% accuracy out of the pocket, those kind of hyper details.
A. Great idea. We want to be ready for next year to have the killer app.
?Q. Just offense or do you have defense?
A. If you are on the team you will be able to call either side of the ball.
?Q. If I have local feedback I might engage more?
A. We built the app very light.
?Q Give don’t sell. Let the games advertise and roll this out for you.
?Q For stadium access you can have WiFi interface then you can scale somewhat.
?Q Licensing?
A. We have not got anything for that.
AutoLime
“Zappos.com for cars.”
Alexander Kiss and Scott Putnam (speaking)
We have changed from building software for incredibly complex financial derivates to selling used cars.
We are a priceline.com for autos. You thought you could buy online but most of the sites are fishing to get you to a dealership. We want to provide a car dropped off at your home.
The wholesale auction market is completely automated. You can bid online on the car. We are grabbing that data and exposing that to consumers.
100,000 cars are available each day. We will manage those auction houses. We have someone monitor and place the bid and then, if you win, the shipping industry comes in. There are more than a dozen that I can give a VIN to with a zip code from and to and they give me a bid.
We don’t have an inventory then. We don’t touch the cars and we sell them before we purchase them. We are going to be transparent and on the side of the consumer. We will give price information from previous transactions. You have no idea what your care is worth. If you gave me a VIN and number of miles then I can tell you how much it is worth.
We have sold stuff a lot more complicated than cars.
The auction house already has all the information that is kept hidden by the dealers and we will make it available. When you look at all of the sites that say they are selling they are just dealer lead generators. Auto Trader is the worst.
Free shipping… we are working on the ability to even ship back.
Our Pitch
?Q Are you bidding right now with the auctions?
A. We are a licensed dealer and are using it but haven’t been hit by the industry. Our agreement as a dealer says that we are legally allowed to use it. If a commercial house like Mannheimer decides that they want to kick us out they can. In the end game we can actually go straight to leased vehicles and direct sell from companies.
?Q. What is the design?
A. All the sites look the same. They look terrible.
We put all the colors in RGB values and made the information cleaner so that you can look for Toyota Camry Red and find them.
?Q. Transaction fees with you?
A. A flat 100.00 fee. When you give us your zip their will be 125.00 auction and we will also estimate your shipping. So users will look at the bottom line.
?Q. 100.00 is your online revenue source?
A. If someone does bid 10,000 and it ends out winning at 9500.00 we also keep a difference.
?Q. Financing or money up front?
A. The user has to provide a $50 deposit. We require authorization from a loan company that we can trust them. With the auction houses we are able to put them back on the shelf at $125 as a re-stock if they don’t pay.
?Q. Do I have to give my bank account?
A. Similar to Amazon you have to be pre-approved. We will get a message back from the 3rd party. We have talked about maybe tying in to fantasy bidding so that people can see if they would have won.
?Q. What are you doing to attract people?
A. A large part of our pitch was wondering about cost of acquisition. Will people buy cars online? We want people to stumble upon this. We can grow slowly. We don’t want to alert the dealership yet because they are a huge part of the market and might turn against us.
?Q. Inventory management? If I have a favorite profile of a car I want to beat someone else out and want to see photos?
A. We load all the information in to the system. The auction house knows days in advance what is going to come up. All the cars come up with the conditions reports. We can alert you to a car coming up for auction.
Right now you have to place your bid on a day of the auction. If you place your bid you will find out sometime during the day that you won.
?Q. Would you alert someone that they have been out bid before hand?
A. We thought it was a very serious commitment and we don’t just want the last 10 second bid to come in like they do with Ebay. So we aren’t planning on doing last minute updates.
?Q Integration with financing companies so that the user just clicks to sign?
A. These shipping companies and finance companies are getting more online. Right now we want to make it as easy as possible. We want to make lending competitive and non-exclusive.
?Q. When are you launching? App plan?
A. We just got the design in December. We are doing friendly transactions right now. We haven’t built an App yet. We have thought about it and aren’t ready to go with an App at the moment.
?Q Are you just helping buyers and ignoring sellers?
A. Correct. We don’t allow private sellers. Dealers would start to put their cars on the system and use it badly. We have thought about a Jiffy Lube or Tunex who could help in that process. We are talking about it in the future.
FotoPunch.com – Patrick Burble
We are a SaaS company in Provo with 10 employees. This is the team All the founders are strong entrepresnuers.
We own modbod, undertease, iodevelopment, and superior countertops.
We are nationwide with our modbod products at Costco. We have to track Punch in/out times. We have about 1000 reps who work around the country. We need to track who is really clocking in, when are they clocking in and where. We can’t have supervisors with all those reps.
Our staffing company had them send manual faxes in to prove they were there and then the fax machine clogs up.
We need time theft avoidance. The idea we had is that we have PhotoBased Mobile Time Tracking. What we do is allow our reps to use their phone camera with our app. If they don’t have app they can still take a picture and can text the picture to fotopunch or use the app.
We geolocate the device, network date/time stamp and we have the patent on it. We clock employees in and out. We have not only employees having less hassle, but with the company they all love the biometric security without hardware costs. Everybody has a cell phone with a camera.
Home Healthcare is good. We are looking at Constuction, Staffing and Mobile service companies as well.
We have 9 companies beta testing right now with Private beta. Q2 will e an open beta.
?Q. Does the app remain open during the whole time?
A. We can ping your phone during your time that you are working. We can create a geofence to detect if you have left an area even with the dumb phones.
?Q. What kind of analytics for travel time etc.?
A. We have a ton of features that payroll and time and attendnace systems. The reporting with absence, leave, PTO. Efficiencies for multiple jobs is all in their now.
?Q High school attendance?
A. We are thinking about College.
?Q. I have a mobile service company. I can see how I would measure my employees. Does this offer notification to customer/job sites?
A. Yes we have it.
?Q. How about those who just leave behind a phone?
A. If they have 2 hpones we can’t stop them. We would normally register one phone. That is what they use to get text and phone calls etc. so it doesn’t make sense for them to leave it behind.
?Q. Outside of B2B my parents would have loved it to track me?
A. We want to focus on where the money is. I happen to be using this with my babysitters. I can pay from my PayPal account. This is not just the time in and out but also the payroll component.
?Q. Pricing structure?
A. There is volume discounts. From 2.49/user/month – 15.99/user/month depending on the features. We have other HR and payroll features. We have based the pricing on that. We have a free version for businesses up to 3 employees. Following Zoho model.
?Q. Patents?
A. Using a photo to “punch in and out.” Other than that I can not say.
?Q. How about when you don’t recognize the photo?
A. We create a review or exception report. We notify the user and the employer. Even if it is 95% recognition, the company saves when they only have to review 5% of report ins. The supervisor can go in where you manage exceptions versus the rule. We are working right now with the city of Hyderabad. They have 20,000 users they want to sign up where they need to only manage the exception and not the 20,000 workforce.
?Q. How are you protecting the personal data?
A. We are HIPAA compliant. Privacy as far as the photo is shown just to the employer. You can grant different rights to viewing of the different pictures.
ASK
Q1 beta round
Q2 open beta
Q3 national launch
Talent – Sales and Account management
?Q. Regular pings to the employee?
A. Yeah the check in at the place where they are supposed to show up. Security companies usually need a physical thing but now they can QR code it with the Phone GEO and the QR difference. A picture tells the whole story. Inside Costco there are certain dress codes. We had this problem with our staffing company a lot. Some of the clients were showing tattoos and the supervisor could take care of the problem immediately versus waiting for Costco to make the uncomfortable phone call to us about our sales rep.
With photo agregation you can have all the pictures and sort them here.
Restocking evidence for stores. The store can see that the “clock in” happened but the store shows a picture of the badly formed shelf. This is great for both sides.
AMP Session
Adam Hepler – cofounder with Jared Richards at Bluehouse Ski company. He has a business that is good that he has built since Bluehouse.
Adam:
I am not really comfortable at the mic but will share some things about some companies that I have started. I feel comfortable with the companies and it gets me excited. I ran a landscaping company working 6 months and then skied during the off season. We had over 100 landscaping accounts. I loved working the summers and we had good revenues for a college student.
Then I built some skis in my garage and a month before I got married I started up this ski company. We are five years in to it and sometimes it goes well. When I see pictures of the skis that I have designed and created like this picture, this is awesome. When you get to see what you made and people use it, then there is no better feeling. We have a team of sponsored riders that we take pictures of. We have won some awards on skis. We have some fun graphics on our skis too.
We were growing and it is a tough market now. For a while I was full time supported by the company. But at five years in to it it is a company that “sucks” because it doesn’t pay me full-time. I do keep connected though with something I love. When I go to do some “research” then it is great.
Last year I started to jump to something new. My wife found out about this new fingernail decal thing. We went about trying to find a place where you could buy them. They were $50.00 at just one place online. So I knew the production business and we went to an expo and did $4-5k in sales without any product. This is not just a random thing so we launched Jamberry nails. By October 2010 we launched and had $400k in revenue by December. Right now a lot of our customers want to sell nails for us.
Do you do nail parties? We hired some outside consultants and have begun to look at that. July of 2011 we launched the party plan model. We have this product that people love and it is consumable. It has been a crazy ride since then. We have not sold the company. Last month was our biggest month and we have been growing 60%. We sold 13,000 of our nails during the month. We expect to sell 300,000 this year. We have a market of all women. They all wear this versus skis which not everyone can afford so it has opened my eyes to getting the right market, model and then you get growth.
?Q. How do you assign the pricing?
A. We did some testing and checked our margins. We then asked our consumers and thy said $15. The alternative is $30.
?Q. The party model?
A. As far as producing we knew that we were not going to do big box. A lot of companies have gotten out there. We are still biggger, but this is the way that we can identify the niche and can present the product differently. When people get to try them then will buy a lot more.
?Q. just a company of product to an MLM did you get outside help?
A. There is a 3rd party that we hired. They told us how to structure. I wanted to make sure that we were profit focused on the direct sales model. I did not want it to be just opportunity. At our price point we are able to bring people in and build compensation plans. A lot of what the consultants said we have tuned.
?Q. How do you get the market?
A. It is a simple product. My wife and two sisters did the shows and made a ton of money. They got a lot of feedback and female exchange and we listen. It is still a work in progress.
?Q. How did you start production?
A. Initially we found a company in Salt Lake that sourced some materials but we have brought the production now inhouse. We have some large printers that do it. Then we add the adhesive etc. We have a finishing process that is somewhat secret. We are working on a lease for a place in Lehi where we can increase to 14-20k product per month.
?Q. Patents?
A. There isn’t any IP that we can get. Most of the materials are already classified. There are already some patents but there is no way to protect what we have.
In the Weeds – Steve Stauffer
I have never been an entrepreneur but I have seen a lot of startups. In 1999 I went to work in San Jose and worked with internet and software companies. I took one of the first companies public that raised $70 million and then they went bankrupt a year later. I was the senior manager on the Yahoo account when they were cool.
I have put somethings together to help the Financial people in your startup company:
Remember the metrics of Customer acquisition cost and customer
CAC Customer acquisition cost
CLV Customer lifetime value
Retention
Keep a bias towards change not status quo. Accountants don’t like change but small companies do. Don’t resist change. Your job is to advise the CEO as a CFO. The finance guy should be a coach and support the CEO
Any money you spend needs to increase value in the company. Also get great people by having incentives that don’t cost money but might cost time.
Never give a number without interpretation and color. 10% data 90% interpretation.
For 1 minute to prevent bad you need to spend 10 minutes doing something good.
Don’t just think about reducing expenses but making expenses more effective.
If you run IT use cloud-based solutions and let people choose their own equipment within reason.
Try to be as transparent and open as possible.
?Q How do you view the technology industry here in Utah versus when you were in CA?
A. I think software will continue to grow. We have seen a lot of new companies start up. We have seen companies in the area get investmnt and captial.
Announcements
The next LaunchUp will be a combined event with Startup Weekend:
saltlakecity.startupweekend.org Feb 2-4
In March our LaunchUp will begin our University tour at:
BYU Mar 1 6:30
