Startups

Twitter added new features to Tweetdeck today that make it easier to arrange and consume various feeds. Column headers now have “grab handles” in the top left corner so they can quickly and easily be rearranged. If you are looking at fewer than four feeds, the selected column will now snap its left edge to the sidebar; if four or more columns are visible, the selected column will still be in the center of the screen, like before. Finally, when you click a column icon twice, it will scroll to the top and reveal any Tweets you may have missed, a similar function to Twitter for Mac. Tweetdeck, which Twitter acquired it for $40M in 2011, is a web, mobile, and desktop client for sorting and reading many customized Twitter feeds in a short amount of time. Twitter seems to be working hard to keep their core “power users” loyal to digesting most of their media through the service; the company redesigned Tweetdeck two weeks ago and added some “often requested features.” Today’s updates are available now for web and Chrome, and the company says updates for Mac and Windows will “follow soon.”

This week on Founder Stories, I sat down with Airbnb co-founder Nate Blecharczyk. One of the things that strikes me as original to Airbnb’s founding team is that, unlike most startups I can think of, two of the co-founders are designers, and Blecharczyk, who’s a co-founder and CTO, is an engineer. “It’s pretty unusual, and I actually attribute a lot of our success to that combination,” says Blecharczyk. “We see things very differently because of our backgrounds and we’ve discovered that’s an asset. Sometimes it takes a little longer to reconcile our prospectives, but we find that if we take the time to do that we can come up with a superior solution. One that takes into account both points of view.” Nate continues by explaining how Airbnb has been able to bring the collaborative culture of the founding team to the rest of the company. He and I also discuss being selective about hiring, building cross-functional product teams centered around projects rather than roles within in the company, and transitioning responsibility to Facebook’s Mike Curtis who recently joined as Airbnb’s vice president of Engineering. Watch the full interview above to learn more. Editor’s Note: Michael Abbott is a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, previously Twitter’s VP of Engineering, and a founder himself. Mike also writes a blog called uncapitalized. You can follow him on Twitter @mabb0tt.

July 9-10, 2013 San Francisco, CA Tickets On Sale Now Combat Gent gives men no excuse not have a well-made suit. The online mens store has raised $1.84 million in funding from well-known fashion investors and is the first company selected for the new Fashion Tech accelerator program. The company is a direct-to-consumer brand that sells hand-tailored shirts, suits, ties, and denim.  Cutting out the retailer middlemen allows Combat Gent to charge only $160 for suits that still look classy. The suit is a staple of the male wardrobe that has remained largely unchanged for 150 years. Even entrepreneurs who favor hoodies and jeans need a suit every now and then.  However well-made suits are traditionally expensive and cheap suits look, well, cheap. Founders Vishaal and Mo Melwani and cousins whose family ran Versace boutiques. They grew up learning about the fashion garment industry and valuing designer clothing. After college, they saw many of their friends struggling to afford a decent work wardrobe and they decided to apply their experience to building a company that helped guys fee like “complete bad-asses without breaking the bank.” Combat Gent was founded in May 2012. It now has 72,000 active users and has done $100K in sales. It is part of a recent trend of male-focused e-commerce companies that simplify the process of shopping for men. Bonobos and Indochino are two well-known startups in this space. They provide  online, curated selections of staple clothing items with a focus on fit. Men who don’t have much time, energy, budget, or style-savvy can use these sites to develop a complete wardrobe with minimal effort. Investors seem to like this space as well. Bonobos has raised over $70 million and Indochino closed a $13 million round earlier this year. Companies like these are impacting more than e-commerce — they are also part of the larger “Made-in-America” movement. The harmful consequences of “fast-fashion” made headlines in April after a large multi-story garment factory collapsed in Bangladesh, killing more than 650 people. Bangladesh is the center of the worldwide garment industry. Large brands like H&M, Nike, and Gap outsource to Bangladesh where production is faster and cheaper. These lower costs come with unsafe, exploitative working conditions, however, and the April disaster brought the situation to the attention of American consumers. People want to patronize companies where they trust the sourcing and receive personal attention. Most of Combat Gent’s production happens in Los Angeles and the company puts a strong emphasis on details. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s VegasTechFund invested in this round, along with MHS Capital, Naxuri Capital, Greycroft Partners, Blazer Ventures, and Jake Bornstein of Flint & Tinder, and Berlin-based Point Nine Capital which marks the Combat Gent’s first step towards expanding into Europe. This financing will fuel brand development. Combat Gents also unveiled a new product offering of Italian shifts. The company partnered with Italian fabric maker Andreazza & Castelli and will offer Italian Super 120′s cotton shirts for $40. The company has offices in Los Angeles and Las Vegas and around 10 employees. Filed under: Business, Deals, Entrepreneur, Lifestyle .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat { width:278px; margin:0px 0px 10px 20px; padding:10px; float:right; border:1px solid #e4e4e4; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; color:#000; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .logo-date-wrap { width:100%; display:block; float:left; margin-bottom:8px; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat img { float:left; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .date-location { float:right; font-size:12px; line-height:14px; text-align:center; padding-left:7px; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:3px; border-left:1px solid #e6e6e6; color:#585a5b; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobile

It feels like startups are taking more and more steps to make the website creation process as easy as possible. There are companies like Weebly, which offer drag-and-drop interfaces for building websites. There’s Barley, which doesn’t require any layout work at all. And now there’s Pagevamp, which allows you to turn a Facebook Page into a website. The company was founded by Atulya Pandey, Fred Wang, and Vincent Sanchez-Gomez, three University of Pennsylvania students (now graduates) who ran a small WordPress design agency while they are in college. What they discovered, Sanchez-Gomez said, is that the process is still too complicated for many people. Facebook Pages, on the other hand, are easy to create, but they’re not particularly customizable. “I think there are people, like my mom or my grandma, where if you said, ‘Hey, just make a WordPress site,’ they wouldn’t know what to do,” he said. “For them to make a Facebook Page is much more in the realm of possibility. And with Pagevamp, if can do that, then they can make a website.” I tried it out myself this morning, where I pointed Pagevamp at the TechCrunch Facebook Page and within a few seconds I had a not-terrible-looking website. (You can see a screenshot of the website, along with Pagevamp’s admin controls, below.) I could do some basic editing like choosing from different designs, but really, typing in the Facebook URL was all the effort required. Pagevamp launched its public beta at the end of March, and Sanchez-Gomez said users from more than 80 countries have created more than 7,000 sites. You can see sample Pagevamp-created websites for an Indian nonprofit, a musician, and a restaurant. Sanchez-Gomez said it can be used by both individuals and businesses, though it needs to start from a Facebook Page, not an personal account. Today the company is announcing that it has backing from the Dorm Room Fund, First Round Capital’s student-run investment arm, which means that it has access to the fund’s mentorship and network, as well as $20,000 in funding. Like I said, the initial websites created by Pagevamp are pretty simple, but the company plans to expand its functionality through add-ons. Right now, there are two — an add-on for managing website menus and another for adding custom pages. There are more in the pipeline, Sanchez-Gomez said, and ultimately he wants to turn Pagevamp into a platform for add-ons from third-party developers. (In fact, there’s already a developer sign-up page.) Creating a Pagevamp site is free, but you have to pay a subscription fee if you want to publish on a non-Pagevamp domain and if you want access to the add-ons.

The meteoric rise of daily deal sites like Groupon was almost as captivating to follow in the press as their precipitous fall. But according to the latest industry stats and projections, daily deal companies can’t be written off just yet. In fact, their comeback is underway according to industry experts and analysts like Boyan Josic. “We all watched the historic rise of daily deals several years ago, which was quickly followed by a jarring correction in the industry,” says Josic, the founder of Daily Deal Media. “Now we are seeing a slight surge in both merchant demand and the performance of Groupon and other deal sites that have made it through some testing times.” With SMS mobile marketing, mobile coupons, and expertly targeted mobile ads lighting a fire under daily deals once again, people are taking another look at this industry. So where exactly do things stand today? Groupon’s stock has seen its highest levels in nearly a year. On June 14, GRPN soared 17 percent on news that analyst Ross Sandler of Deutsche Bank upgraded Groupon to a “buy”, pointing to signs that the company has transitioned well beyond just email and daily deals. “This scale and independence makes Groupon an interesting acquisition candidate for larger entities looking for a global presence in e-commerce, especially during the current time period where the growth and sustainability of the model is still controversial among the investment community,” says Sandler. But it’s not just established daily deal titans that are ripe for acquisition or market expansion. “We are also seeing an uptick in startups launching in the deal space again,” Josic says. “Not so much pure daily deal plays like we’ve seen in the past, but many that have some sort of deal component built into their business model or are going after opportunistic niches. For example, Kidsy.co, which test-launched last month, provides activities for families with children and the ability to organize play dates with your friends or people in your neighborhood.”

SWEET. The social network we almost all use is finally letting us use our ever-so-clever photos in comments. That means no more clumsy Imgur links; now, the pics can appear directly as a comment. Here’s how it looks: As Facebooker Bob Baldwin put it in a public post this morning, “When I’m talking with a friend, sometimes showing a photo helps me tell a story much better than words alone. If we’re hanging out in person, I can show a photo from my phone, but on Facebook I’d have to post a link to a photo. … I hope this will make threads with friends more expressive and engaging.” Just like with so many of the Facebook features you already know and love, photo comments came out of a company hackathon. Baldwin, along with co-Facebookers Eric Faller, Zizhuang Yang, Ashwin Bharambe, Brandon Souba, and Alex Madjar, built the product overnight. “I’m so happy to launch, as this is the most exciting photos feature I’ve shipped to date!” said the man who will be everyone’s favorite nerd for the next 15 minutes or until NASA does something cool with Curiosity, whichever comes first. To try out photo comments now, you can post to Baldwin’s thread or just wait for the public rollout. Filed under: Social

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Last week, social location service Foursquare launched Time Machine, maybe the coolest thing it has ever done with check-ins. Now Foursquare is taking its users further back in time than their recent check-ins by making checking in to New York City locations a trip to the past. Foursquare has teamed up New York Public Library to show you incredibly rich historical photographs near your check-ins. After connecting your Foursquare account with NYPL’s new Time Traveller app, your check-ins in New York will show you photos of buildings and landmarks from the 1870s through the 1970s. While this new app isn’t nearly as fun as Time Machine, it’s good to see Foursquare doing more to make its experience unique. It also needs more check-in data from users to make its business model work, so perhaps this encourages more check ins by people like myself who love history and learning about New York. Photo via Foursquare Filed under: New York, Social

July 9-10, 2013 San Francisco, CA Tickets On Sale Now Tred is applying the idea of “trying on at home” to cars. The startup launched its home-delivery test drive service in the Greater Seattle area today for people looking to buy a new car and announced raising $1.8 million in seed funding. Buying a car is a big decision. Autotrader.com and Polk Automotive did a study in 2011 that found that new vehicle buyers spend 11.5 hours shopping for cars online and 7.5 hours shopping for cars offline. You have to research cars that are right for you, visit a dealership, take the car for a test drive, and negotiate price. This process is time-consuming and can be stressful, particularly with car salesmen lurking about. Potential buyers can schedule test drives for cars that interest them wherever and whenever is convenient. Tred has partnered with local auto dealers and brings those cars to consumers so they can experience it on their own turf. If you are deciding between two vehicles, you can schedule delivery of both at the same time and make side-by-side comparisons even when they come from different manufacturers. People can also do experiments like arranging bicycles in the trunk, installing car seats, loading groceries, or determining which car fits best in the garage and whether a car really suits their lifestyle. “Tred cuts the time in a dealership substantially and eliminates all the pressures of making car buying decisions on the showroom floor by bringing cars directly to where busy families and professionals are comfortable — on their own terms, during their schedule, and at the best possible price,” said cofounder and chief executive officer Grant Feek to VentureBeat. “So for the busy family, there’s no more worrying about the impatient toddler who doesn’t want to sit through pricing negotiations or long periods of time finalizing paperwork.” After the test drive appointment, Tred will send a price report and dealer contact information. The company said it works with dealers to offer “rock-bottom, no haggle” prices. It is able to do this because dealers appreciate the ability to focus on serious shoppers who are more likely to buy. When people are ready to buy, they bring their price certificate into dealership (within two weeks) for redemption. The price is predetermined and significantly cuts down on time in the dealership since you only go once. You know exactly what you want and exactly what to pay. You are under no obligation to buy. Another benefit of this model is objectivity. Tred’s auto experts are not loyal to a particular brand and can present the facts impartially. They do not make sales commissions, so there are no ulterior motives or pushiness, either. “There have been other Internet innovators who have entered this space and tried to work with local dealerships, but Tred is taking a different approach,” Feek said. “First, Tred is for dealers by dealers, and we don’t make a business decision without first consulting them and considering their ROI. Secondly, we’re committed to helping dealers participate in the customer-service revolution that is sweeping the rest of the retail economy. And we believe that doing so is the single best way to capture Gen Y and busy families and professionals.” Feek is a Seattle native who used to work in real estate development and finance. He founded Tred in 2012 and participated in TechStars Seattle. Chairman and CEO of General Motors Rick Wagoner, Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital, David Cohen, Maveron Capital, Fraser McCombs Capital, Great Oaks Venture Capital, and Founder’s Co-Op participated in the financing. It will support the company as it expands into new cities. Feek drives an Outback. Photo Credit: Tred Filed under: Business, Deals, Entrepreneur, Lifestyle .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat { width:278px; margin:0px 0px 10px 20px; padding:10px; float:right; border:1px soli