Editors Note: We are experimenting with a new interview format here at The Startup Project. Our goal is to provide insight to the readers on how other Startups have handled important tactical and strategic decisions…along with a few light-hearted questions just for fun. As we publish more interviews in this format, you will hopefully gain some insight by comparing the responses and seeing how different businesses approach the same issues. Please let us know what you think of the new format if you have a minute!

Company/Product Q&A

What is the primary benefit that your product provides to its customers?

The Beam Brush is a manual toothbrush with embedded sensors that track and monitor brushing behavior, reporting the data back to Androids and iPhones. Personal health management, and gamifying healthcare at the consumer level, are huge growth areas for the tech sector over the next few years, and we focus on oral care applications

Company Structure and Systems Q&A

What type of legal structure did you choose for your business?

Beam Tech is an LLC.

Did you use an attorney or a self-service system like LegalZoom to form your business?

We were able to use a state run service system.

What system do you use for tracking expenses, revenues and other financial information?

Beam has a bookkeeper who manages all finances. We did use Quickbooks.

What type of email provider do you use? (Exchange, Google Apps, etc.)

Google all the way.

Do you use a customer relationship system or similar software to track your potential customers? (Salesforce.com, Highrise, etc.)

No. (not yet at least)

Do you primarily work on a Mac, PC, or Linux computer?

PC.

What type of smartphone operating system do you use?

Beam Tech develops for IOS and Android. I am using an Android phone as my personal right now.

Strategy/Marketing Q&A

How did you choose your branding and URL for your company?

The Brand for Beam and the Beam Brush was formed from a variety of sources. One of my partners, Dan Dykes, helped bring our colors, website, packaging graphics and “feel” to life. He has a great eye for design, though no training. Our name and logo was inspired by crowd source campaigns. I bottled all of this up with our core messaging and out it came!

Do you use Google AdWords to advertise your product?

We have structured programs created for Adwords and Facebook advertising in the near future.

Do you use Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter to get your message to potential customers?

I am a huge fan of Twitter, and our @beambrush account is definitely the first place I go with news about the company.

Do you primarily sell to end consumers or businesses? (B2B or B2C)

We are a consumer digital health company!

How did you get your first customer?

By getting great press and attracting attention to our site and product!

What is the number one quality you look for when hiring someone?

A willingness to learn brand new things constantly, and not being afraid to fail. Rocky Balboas. Hit them, they hit you back. Knock them down, they are right back up and ready to go again.

Did you seek outside funding from anyone for your business?

We have taken on Angel capital for Beam Tech.

 Miscellaneous Q&A

If you could recommend one book for any entrepreneur to read, what would it be?

My books are 140 characters long. Subscribe to the best startup resources on Twitter and frequently source articles written related to your space. It informs, it inspires, and it educates on an unmatched cycle.

Did you leave your job prior to getting your first customer?

This has always been my job, so yes.

What is your favorite word?

Xerox. (do proper nouns count?)

Star Trek or Star Wars?

Lavar Burton made reading fun. Trekkie.

Which website or reading material do you turn to when you need to take a break and relax?

Gizmodo, Mashable, Techcrunch, and GigaOM tend to rise to the top of my reading list.

If you could have a one hour discussion with another entrepreneur or business leader who would it be?

Tough pick. Elon Musk probably, already one of the best entrepreneurs of all time. You can’t turn this guy off. He has the ambition and the you-know-whats to disrupt any industry. I call him an “enterpriser” entrepreneur. People like he, Richard Branson, Mark Cuban can make any type of business fly because they inspire logical, creative, and aggressive ACTION with their companies.

What one piece of advice would you give to readers who are thinking about starting their own business?

Statistically speaking, you are going to be an entrepreneur at some point in your life (this is for the younger half of the readers), so you should be actively learning and looking for opportunities in areas where you have unquenchable passion. Today, we see the emergence of the “intre-preneur”, and tomorrow I think this will translate to a culture of entrepreneurship, at least in America.

A big thanks to Beam for taking the time to speak with us! Check out their website for more details about their company and their product. http://beamtoothbrush.com

Editors Note: We are experimenting with a new interview format here at The Startup Project. Our goal is to provide insight to the readers on how other Startups have handled important tactical and strategic decisions…along with a few light-hearted questions just for fun. As we publish more interviews in this format, you will hopefully gain some insight by comparing the responses and seeing how different businesses approach the same issues. Please let us know what you think of the new format if you have a minute!

Company/Product Q&A

What is the primary benefit that your product provides to its customers?

We get our customers’ content in front of more targeted potential customers than could be reached by any other means, short of spending heavily on advertising.

Our users create stand alone web pages called “Braggits” that can contain deals, photos and videos, the latest business news, job postings, lead generation, and more. They can then post these pages to all of their social networks and blogs, as well as our built in social network called the “BragForce”.

The BragForce allows businesses to connect with each other and share Braggits to each other’s social networks. The relationship works very well as long as the companies are not competitive and have something in common such as industry or location.

Does your product have a freemium component to it?

Yes, our platform is free to use for all small business owners who only need a single account. Distributed organizations such as franchises and retailers pay a small monthly fee per location. We also offer a managed solution, where our writers and marketers will create your content and manage your social accounts for you, which is ideal for the business owner that simply does not have the time to do their own marketing or the resources to hire in house.

Company Structure and Systems Q&A

What type of legal structure did you choose for your business?

We’re organized as a C Corp. This was largely done because of our original funding and our intentions of raising more capital in the future.

Did you use an attorney or a self-service system like LegalZoom to form your business?

We hired attorneys to organize our business and help us to file our patents.

What system do you use for tracking expenses, revenues and other financial information?

We’re currently using Quickbooks.

What type of email provider do you use? (Exchange, Google Apps, etc.)

We use Google apps both for employee emails and for e-mail from the application itself. Gmail through Google apps has been incredibly easy to set up and use, both from the traditional mailbox perspective as well as programmatically.

Do you use a customer relationship system or similar software to track your potential customers? (Salesforce.com, Highrise, etc.)

No

What language is your software primarily written in?

We’re big fans of PHP and have used the language for most of our processing. PHP is easy to learn, and can be written quickly. It’s also one of the most popular languages for the web, which ensures access to developers and valuable libraries into the future.

Do you primarily work on a Mac, PC, or Linux computer?

We use all Mac and Linux machines. We pretty much all develop/design/or write on Macs and use Linux for our web servers.

Strategy/Marketing Q&A

How did you choose your branding and URL for your company?

BizBrag pretty much hit us like a bolt of lightning. After all that’s what you’re doing through our platform, bragging about your business. The rest of our Branding pretty much grew out of that. The web pages you create with your content are called Braggits, and the social network you share them with is your BragForce.

Do you use Google AdWords to advertise your product?

We’ve gone through the free $100 credit that Google offers just to see what came of it. It turns out that our target keywords cost about $10 per click. Considering that our service is free for small business owners, and there are likely more of them searching then people in charge of larger distributed organizations, it just didn’t turn out to be cost effective for us to continue paying. It’s certainly something that we will consider again once we have grown a little.

Do you use Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter to get your message to potential customers?

Absolutely. As a social marketing platform, these social networks are our bread and butter, and are major components of our marketing strategy for both our clients and ourselves. The BizBrag application can post to these and other social networks, and also goes a step further by encouraging your connections on our platform to also share your content. Our hope is to enable both small business owners and larger enterprises to create their own network of interconnected businesses that benefit from each other’s social success.

With Facebook our users are seeing a lot of success with content that either offers an exclusive deal, or content that is funny enough for people to share.
We’re also having a great deal of success with Twitter. It’s extremely easy for our user’s to share each other’s content to Twitter, getting it in front of more potential customers.

So far with LinkedIn it’s been a bit slow going, but we’ve recently introduced a feature that allows our users to post job offers. We’re expecting to see more traction on LinkedIn with these.

Do you primarily sell to end consumers or businesses? (B2B or B2C)

We’re a B2B company, and a big part of what we do is encouraging B2B collaboration between businesses that are complimentary and in the same general location. Using our application a bike shop and an adventures guide could share each other’s content across their social networks. This helps both companies get their content in front of targeted customers, as well as improving engagement with their social accounts.

This also works for larger distributed organizations, like franchises, because it allows the parent organization to send content to all of their franchisees, who can then customize it for their particular business and location and post it to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogs, with just a few clicks.

How did you get your first customer?

We almost certainly got our first customer the same way we get most of our users, through word of mouth. Our first paying customer came via one of our investors.

What is the number one quality you look for when hiring someone?

Beyond abilities, we like to hire employees with varied interests outside of work. We believe that a diverse work environment leads to more open and creative thinking. We like to encourage all of our employees to participate in the larger decisions we make, and debate is never discouraged!

Did you seek outside funding from anyone for your business?

Yes, we started the company with an initial round from angel investors. We are currently seeking a second round of funding to allow us to hire the staff we need to keep up with our current growth.

Did you consider any business incubators or accelerators?

No

 Miscellaneous Q&A

If you could recommend one book for any entrepreneur to read, what would it be?

From our CEO:

Good question… I have a book called ’100 Great Businesses and the Minds Behind Them’ by Emily Ross and Angus Holland that I would recommend. There are plenty of books about strategy, motivation, etc. Rather than reading those, I like to read examples and stories about those who DID IT, how and why they did it, and what they failed at. I like to read more books about ‘stories’ of companies. I believe that’s how an entrepreneur can learn about the real aspects of businesses, rather than what authors with MBA’s THINK about businesses.

Star Trek or Star Wars?

In our office it’s pretty exclusively Star Wars. You’re in for a much more lively debate if you throw out Game of Thrones vs. Lord of The Rings vs. Harry Potter.

Which website or reading material do you turn to when you need to take a break and relax?

We’re all Reddit junkies. We don’t just use Reddit during our breaks though, we hire from Reddit, get help with hard programming problems from there, get inspiration for our design, and more.

If you could have a one hour discussion with another entrepreneur or business leader who would it be?

In keeping with the last question, I would personally have to say Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, the co-founders of Reddit. Everyone at BizBrag has a great deal of respect not only for what they built, but for how they built and grew the business, and how they’ve stuck to their ideals even when doing so may not be the most profitable route.

What one piece of advice would you give to readers who are thinking about starting their own business?

I would have to say, be prepared to change regularly, and listen to your customers. We have a natural bias when it comes to our own ideas, or things that we have created. Often times though, other people will see other use cases or flaws that you had never considered. Talk to potential clients/customers before you even get started. Once you have, keep talking to them. Find out what they don’t like and change it!

A big thanks to BizBrag for taking the time to speak with us! Check out their website for more details about their company and their product. www.BizBrag.com

Share the tale behind the creation and launch of Get.com, why do you believe Get has such great potential?

We both hated how hard it is to shop online. If you’re being diligent and really want to find a good product, that actually matches your needs, you have to spend a good deal of time weighing the various
options, reading reviews, comparing specs, and learning just to be able to make an informed decision.
It occurred to us that we’re doing all this research every time we buy a product, and so are a lot of other people. Every day millions of people do the same research that other people have already done. There’s no place where that knowledge and experience is being preserved for the next people who comes along.
So we decided to create a place where people can come together to do that. Maybe you have knowledge about audio gear, so you help people with that, and other people have knowledge about fashion, so they help you. Everybody wins.
For a concrete example, imagine you want an electric toothbrush and you have sensitive gums. You would probably go to Amazon and search “electric toothbrush”.  Then you would see hundreds of electric toothbrushes to choose from. How do you know which of them are any good at all? How do you know which ones won’t irritate your sensitive gums? You would start comparing specs, reading people’s reviews looking for mentions sensitive gums, maybe Google it.
It’s a long and difficult process for something that should be really simple and it’s ridiculous. Are you really the first person who has sensitive gums and wants an electric toothbrush? Of course not, there are thousands of people who were in your shoes, many of which probably found a good solution through trial and error or extensive research. Wouldn’t it be really nice if you could save all that time by just asking them?

The domain name seems to be a critical part of Get – how much of a role did it play in the establishment of the site? In your opinion, how important is a great domain name to the success of tech startups in general?

The fashion today is to say that domains don’t matter.  We think they matter more than ever for consumer web sites. We’re trying to build Get.com into a brand that people come to directly when they want to buy something. That means they need to remember it and it needs to be easy to say, spell, and type.
If you’re a mobile app developer it probably doesn’t matter much at all, because your distribution mechanism is the app store. For an enterprise company it also probably doesn’t matter, because you’re getting your clients through sales calls and paid advertising.
Even for a consumer web site, like ours, you can certainly succeed with a lesser domain name, it just makes it that much harder, and startups need every advantage they can get.

Get has managed to raise $1 million in funding prior to launch – can you shed some light on that process? How would you advise other entrepreneurs approach investment for their own startups?

We had a pretty advanced prototype version of our site by the time we raised money. We’ve also have a track record of building projects together, so it’s not a huge leap of faith to think we can actually create stuff.
I think the only real “hack” for getting funding is to show traction. That’s the only time it’s ever easy for anyone. Short of that, at least build something to prove you can.

The success of Get will rely on the site forming a solid base of users in a relatively short time – how is the company working to achieve that?

So far we’ve found that it’s not hard to get people to talk about things they’re genuinely passionate about. People love to share their knowledge and we give them a great place to do that. We’re focused on
making it an even better place for that and getting the word out to even more people.

Finally, what advice would you offer to an aspiring entrepreneur dreaming of their first product launch?

Remove all the reasons why you can’t start and just start. Even if it’s in some setup other than perfect, just start in some way. You will learn a lot about your ideas that you could never foresee before you actually started and that’s a good thing. As you learn, don’t be afraid to tweak your original thoughts and go with what works and what you learn. Read Paul Graham’s essays and never surrender. You’re going to be amazing.

Dropcam is exceptionally unique in the world of startups – where did the idea come from? How did you design and develop the service?

After seeing my dad’s frustrations while setting up IP cameras around our Texas home, I thought, “there has to be an easier way to do this.” Since it seemed like lots of people would want to keep an eye on things while they were away, I was surprised to find that there was not —  you had a to be a tech wizard with a lot of spare time to get anything to work. So, I called up Aamir Virani, a skilled software engineer I knew from working at Xobni, and we quickly began developing a more consumer-friendly and approachable method for remote video monitoring. We wanted it to be extremely easy to set up, affordable and user-friendly, while not compromising video quality. Very early on, we pivoted as a company about three times helping us figure out exactly what our customers wanted. What we offer today is the product of the knowledge gained in this process: for instance, our cloud DVR service was the result of a pivot from live-only monitoring. Now, the DVR is really where our product benefits users the most, and we are continually improving it.
We are unique in that we are one of just a few hardware/software/cloud combination startups. We’ve proven the concept to investors and closed a $6M Series A round in September. (Led by Accel Partners, plus angels Mitch Kapor, Bradley Horowitz etc).

Can you share your thoughts regarding the price point of Dropcam? What approaches did you consider to monetize the service? (subscriptions, one-off payments etc)

We wanted to be approachable for all types of consumers and keep in mind both their budget and what they may use our cameras for. A tiered subscription plan allows us to effectively reach several different types of users.
In terms of the product cost, we wanted to provide every quality feature that our users would find useful while still making Dropcam an affordable and useful product.
Security is naturally an area of focus for the company – how difficult is it for a small startup to ensure the safety of their customers from online attackers? What advice for fellow entrepreneurs can you offer in that regard?
All video data transmitted through our website is encrypted with bank-level security. We make every effort to ensure no one can see your video. Dropcam lets you look in on what’s important to you and for most people, that’s personal; be it kids, pets, or a second home, so keeping that video private and secure has always been top of mind. In order to view a shared stream you must create an account with us – this is another layer of security we added in order to keep your video yours.
Many tech start-ups whose product is the users (Facebook, for example) provide a software product for free and depend on user data for ad revenue, so they have a different relationship with customers’ privacy.
Ensuring private and secure video storage has been a core value of Dropcam from the beginning.  You have to emphasize security from the start and stay vigilant.  Our goal is to keep improving and protecting, and that’s how we think startups should approach security.

How do you approach marketing such a niche product? What are your thoughts on the use of advertising for such a product?

Word of mouth is important for us. Our happy customers are our greatest ambassadors. We also have a PR agency that we rely on for media and brand exposure. As we are still in the startup phase we have yet to engage an advertising agency.

If you could change one decision which you have made as an entrepreneur, what would it be?

In the early stages of Dropcam, we spent a lot of time in partnership discussions – ranging from other startups to large corporations. In the end we determined this wasn’t the best use of our time. A common move of a company that doesn’t know what it is doing is to partner with a bigger company. If I could do it again, I would spend 100% of my time hiring great people and building the product and no time on partnerships in the early stages of a startup company.

Basis is a startup which aims to revolutionize the heath and fitness industry, offering a unique wrist monitor which tracks activity levels, caloric burn and sleep patterns. The hardware connects seamlessly to a social online tracking application, making Basis one of the most innovative products in the industry since the launch of Nike Plus. Today we are lucky enough to have the founder of Basis, Nadeem Kassam, on The Startup Project.

The unique story behind creating and launching a hardware-based startup (as opposed to exclusively software) is comparatively unknown in the world of modern entrepreneurship. Can you share the story behind designing and manufacturing the product? 

This product is over six years in the making and I had no idea how complex it was going to be to develop a hardware product.  I persevered through the long R&D phase as I just felt it was so necessary to bring this technology to the world. I have learned that hardware is just somuch more complex to build. You need a lot of time and people from a variety of fields: electrical and mechanical engineers, offshore prototype development, firmware programmers and software engineers to make all that data available in a compelling format. 

I have been fighting weight loss issues ever since I moved from Africa to North America as an early teenager, and this was the type of tool I really wanted. The type of tool that can passively collect my body metrics and give me data and actionable steps to improve my wellness each and everyday. By making it social and rewarding we can make wellness fun.

We are proud to have built the world’s first connected heart rate and health tracker wearable on the wrist. The multi-sensor Basis B1 band continuously collects data like heart rate, calories burned, physical activity and sleep patterns. It links to a personal online dashboard where users can easily view performance, share data, earn rewards, and engage with the Basis community.

Basis has received funding from Norwest Venture Partners and DCM, can you describe the process behind acquiring that funding? What advice can you offer to fellow entrepreneurs looking for investors?

Like many startups, we met with lots of different venture firms in our search for a team that believed in what we were doing and felt “right.” I ran into Tim Chang at the Summit Series Miami conference a couple of years ago. He was at Norwest Venture Partners – and we hit it off immediately. At that time, I was the only full-time person at Basis so Tim and I stayed in close touch while I made some key hires and progressed our product development. Then earlier this year, I met Jason Krikorian from DCM at CES.  I’ve always admired hisexperience and track record at Sling Media. By then, we were at a point where it made sense to raise significant funds to bring the Basis band to market and in March we announced a $9 million round from Norwest and DCM.

My main advice to entrepreneurs is to identify a rockstar team when speaking with VC’s. Describe your dream team as VC’s canhelp you get to those types of people. 

You have formed a fantastic team of talented people at Basis – how did you approach hiring for the company?

Thank you. We are really proud of the team we have assembled. We very deliberately sought the best talent to represent all the different elements that we have brought together in the Basis band. Ourteam hails from companies like EA, Google Health, Flip, to name but a few. It is widely known that attracting top tier talent in the Bay Area is no easy feat with companies like Facebook, Apple and Google to compete with.  At Basis we have a higher mission to help people become more well. That vision, our technology and the current team members are very attractive to top tiertalent that are looking do something meaningful with their careers.

Basis will soon be launching – how are you preparing for that?

Everyone here is busy! We revealed the final design of the Basis B1 band in September at Health 2.0, a conference that took place in San Francisco, and our CEO, Jef Holove, will be demoing at MIT’s technology conference, emtech, in a couple of weeks. Watch this space for more details on launch plans.

We’ve recently announced the appointment of an advisory board that includes medical, social and gaming luminaries like Kevin Colleran, long-time executive at Facebook and one of its first ten employees; Kai and Charles Huang, co-founders of RedOctane and creators of Guitar Hero; Patrick McGill, global corporate development, media and entertainment specialist; Daniel Kraft, MD, a Stanford and Harvard trained physician and innovator who chairs the Medicine track for Singularity University and its FutureMed Program; and Jeff Rosenthal along with his co-founders of entrepreneur organization Summit Series.

What advice can you offer to fellow entrepreneurs looking to launch a startup?

Ideas are a commodity, too many people have them. True entrepreneurs are relentless implementers. My advice is to not sit on your ideas, act on them! Surround yourself with talent and feed from their creativity and energy. Failure is good as at least you tried and probably learned valuable lessons for your next venture. Do not be afraid to fail and embrace change. Do not be afraid to pivot your business as you learn from the market and customers you want to attract. Be a visionary while paying attention todetail as you chase your passions and dreams.  Right now I am living my dream and appreciating it everyday!!

Many startups employ specific strategies or techniques when launching, what approach did you take with FeeFighters? If you could do it all over again, is there anything you would change?

We officially launched at Finovate conference in the Spring of 2009. Launching at an event like we did gave us opportunities to generate buzz and get our name out to many people all at once. This is a good approach is your product fits into a specific niche like ours.

Differentiation is critical to the success of a product in any market, how does FeeFighters stand out from it’s competitors? Where did the idea behind FeeFighters come from?

FeeFighters is the solution to a very big problem in credit card processing. Sean, the CEO, had the idea when he was shopping for a credit card processor for a previous business. He did a ton of research, talked to many salespeople, and still ended up choosing a processor that overcharged his business by $40,000. He thought that if he had such a problem getting a good deal on processing, other business owners would feel the same way. He began asking around and blogging about the topic of credit card processing and found a captive audience. There needed to be an easy to use solution for business owners that would help them compare rates as well as ensure ethical practices by processors: FeeFighters. The company really came out of providing the best service to empower business owners in an industry where they are used to getting ripped off. Our business is validated daily by frustrated business owners who wish they had found it earlier. Samurai, our newest product, came out of a similar situation. Our online customers were complaining about gateways..they were archaic, hard to integrate, and lacked critical features. We built a gateway, Samurai, that solves all of these problems from the ground up.

Share the story behind the building of FeeFighters, what challenges did you face?

The challenges come from misperceptions about credit card processing. It’s a very deceptive industry and because we were telling the truth about the rates processors offered on FeeFighters, many business owners thought they were higher than what they were being offered by salespeople. The truth is that processors usually quote much lower rates with layers of fine print padding on other fees that make them exponentially higher than what’s on the FeeFighters marketplace. The challenge is educating the customer to recognize deceptive practices and use our marketplace instead of going to other vendors. It’s basically a trust issue that many marketplace business face.

What marketing strategies does FeeFighters utilise? What are your thoughts on the use of advertising for a software product?

Much of our marketing is inbound. By providing useful information on our blog as well as ebooks, infographics, and video, we can show potential customers our expertise and draw them to use our service. We like to communicate with business owners via social media, although it is a nascent space for B2B businesses like ours. Advertising is tricky because our industry is crowded with credit card processing ads that have high CPCs with low intent users. We’ve found it more effectively to optimize our site and produce useful content. PR is also a great driver of traffic to the site…by positioning our CEO as an expert in the field, we’re able to get a lot of press from comments he gives to media.

Finally, what advice can you offer for aspiring entrepreneurs and founders?

1) Identify a real problem, see if others agree that there is a problem, and build a solution. The best businesses are not novelty software, but actually solve real problems.

2) Build, launch and iterate quickly. We are always improving our product, and getting it out as soon as it was ready gave us the opportunity to iterate in real time based on customer feedback.

Zimride is really one of those ‘I should have thought of that’ companies – can you share the story behind the development of the idea and the creation of the service?

Our CEO and Co-Founder Logan Green was inspired by what he saw on a 2005 trip to Zimbabwe—a grassroots public transportation system— and he derived the company’s name from that country.

Logan has a background in transportation and web development, and he created the first car-share program at UC Santa Barbara and served on the board of the Santa Barbara Metropolitan Transit District.  It was here that he started to tackle the problems in our current public transportation system.

While at Cornell, in a course about city & regional planning, I really imagined what the next evolution for transportation could be—it’s grown from canals to light rail to railroads to highways, but that can’t be the end point. Changing the physical infrastructure is not the solution—we believe the answer lies at the intersection of Collaborative Consumption and the Social Graph. So, I relocated from New York City to Palo Alto in 2008 (using Zimride actually) to join Logan on his mission to reinvent transportation.

How did you approach the launch of Zimride? What techniques did you utilize in gaining media attention for the launch?

We initially launched as one of the first third-party applications on Facebook in 2007. In fact, we received $250,000 in seed money from a Facebook (fbFund) grant the same year.

We knew we wanted Zimride to have a social element to it, and Facebook was the perfect platform to connect our users so they could build relationships and share the experiences through Zimride.

We then used our success with the Facebook App to establish partnerships with universities and corporations to create private ridesharing networks for those communities. We also landed partnerships with concert producer Live Nation and car rental alternative Zipcar, further solidifying Zimride’s influence and reach.

Zimride is the kind of service which requires the ‘critical mass’ point to be reached relatively quickly – how are you approaching that challenge?

In order to build critical mass, we knew we had to attract young students and commuters who are already hooked into existing social networks and could benefit from the low cost of ridesharing.

Zimride grew virally via online social networks and through the success of the university and corporate communities we partnered with. It was clear that as more and more people began to use Zimride, there would be a corresponding growth in the level of trust for the effectiveness and safety of our rideshare services.

Initially we only allowed users from verified social networks, such as colleges, universities and companies to use the platform. This gave us a consistent, large and dependable user base. Then in August 2011, we opened our first public route, from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The route was so successful that we’ve quickly included the reverse route from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

What have been some of the greatest challenges you have faced as an entrepreneur? How did you overcome them?

As a startup becomes more successful, there will be many opportunities to grow in a way that is not true to the integrity of the company. Logan and I have had a very clear vision from the start, and we have not let ourselves get off track or compromise our goals.

What final advice can you offer to aspiring startup founders?

Know what your company stands for and don’t compromise on that. Build an amazing team of people more talented than you who fit your company culture. Have the courage to walk away from a career that doesn’t challenge or inspire you to execute on a vision you believe in. Keep yourself healthy and make time to sleep and exercise

Firstly, where did the idea behind Fampus come from? How did you design and develop the final product?

When I was a freshman at The University of Wisconsin-Madison, I found campus life to be extremely overwhelming. There was so much to do and learn, so many people to meet, and I didn’t even know where to begin. I was extremely involved in high school and wanted to replicate that experience in my college life, so I began looking and asking around for a central location to find everything happening on and around campus. Much to my surprise, there wasn’t one. After several frustrating experiences and missed opportunities, I decided I’d had enough. I reached out to my dad, an entrepreneur, and said that I had an idea for a website that would bring everything happening on and around campus to one location, and would be able to recommend things I might be interested in based on how I used it.

We asked a lot of questions and reached out to others who had experiences in the technology field, and it evolved over the next three years into the www.fampus.com we have recently launched at seven campuses. Now, however, there are several additional components supplementing the original concept and students can also share their experiences at events through photos, comments, check-in, etc.

Fampus has launched into an exceptionally crowded market – competing with big players like Facebook in the event space – how does Fampus differentiate itself? What advice can you offer to fellow entrepreneurs in this regard?

There are several ways that we feel Fampus differentiates itself among other sites that may deal wholly or partially in the event space. First of all, we are in no way trying to be Facebook – we all love Facebook and think what they are doing is great! That being said, Fampus allows users to search out events and receive recommendations for events in a way that Facebook doesn’t allow. We feel that Fampus supplements Facebook – Fampus is a platform for organized events that are open to the entire campus, regardless of whether you know them or not. It is the most comprehensive database of events found anywhere and the information on our events is accurate. Members of our team dedicate their day to making sure that if the price says $20.00, you can come with a twenty-dollar bill in your hand and know that you will get in. Additionally, photos on Fampus are organized by event, rather than person. If a concert comes to town and you want to see everyone’s photos from one event in one place, Fampus makes that possible for you as a user. Also, if you are unable to attend an event you are able to see events unfolding live through a feature we call the MainStream.

How are you monetizing the service? What approaches did you consider?

We are monetizing the site through advertisement-based revenue. We did a lot of research regarding ads, because everyone seems to operate under the assumption that “everyone hates ads”. Our research showed us, however, that as long as the advertisements are not intrusive, and they are local or relevant, college students don’t actually mind minimal ads.

Fampus.com has always been and continues to be a free service – this is also true of our mobile application.

The web design of Fampus is fantastic – can you share some detail on the design process? In your opinion – how critical is web design to the success of any startup?

Well thank you! The team of developers that helped build and design the site has been outstanding. We have implemented cutting edge technology and a sleek/clean interface that we feel resonates well with the college demographic. The design process has been as we tried to get the right look and feel, and we are all very pleased with this final result. That being said, Fampus is continually evolving and we take into consideration all of the feedback we receive to determine what the next direction or development in design and technology will be!

I personally feel that web design is extremely critical to a start-up. I have always been taught that you only get one chance to make a first impression, and for a website, that is in the design. There is a sense of legitimacy found in certain websites upon first glance, and that was definitely something we were looking to achieve with the design of Fampus.com.

What plans for the future growth of Fampus do you have? The site is currently only for college students – do you have any plans for expansion into other markets?

Right now we have launched at seven schools in the Midwest, but absolutely plan to expand. The goal is to be the go-to place for students to find everything on campus and we often say we would like to expand to around 300 schools. As of right now, we are laser-focused on colleges, and we know this is a service that will benefit them greatly and allow them to gain the most from their college experience.

Finally, what advice can you offer to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to take the leap into entrepreneurship?

My advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is definitely to take the leap, dive into your project, and learn as much as you possibly can along the way. I don’t believe that a failed venture is ever a true failure, because the people you meet and the lessons you learn throughout the process are invaluable.

First of all – can you share the story behind the development and launch of Top10? Where did the idea originate?

Top10 has been a powerful concept in popular culture for a long time. We wanted to take a concept that people already strongly identify with, and use that to create a new kind of platform for doing two things: recommending the stuff you love in a fun, social and collaborative way, and through that build an amazing resource for people to discover new things.

We think that finding and buying things on the web is a pretty dry process. With Top10, we wanted to build something a more natural solution, and do it in a way that reflects the way people interact in the real world.

We’ve just launched the very first version of the Top10 – which is all about creating lists and curating the results.  But this is really just phase one – and lots more cool ways of recommending and discovering new things are in the pipeline.

Top10 is a social recommendation service, part of a market which -debatably – has become predictable and sterile for consumers. What makes Top10 different to the abundance of recent social startups? Why can Top10 succeed where others have failed?

Firstly, I’d disagree that social recommendation is a sterile space. It’s hard to define exactly, but a lot of the most interesting services out there are using the power of social networks to help people discover things – from Foursquare to Twitter to Quora to Pinterest.

Whilst there are some amazing services out there, we don’t think there is anything that makes recommending things fun, and then harnesses that data to help people buy things – which is what we’re building at Top10.

The company has recently announced a $3.5 million funding round – can you share the story behind that? What advice can you offer to fellow entrepreneurs looking for funding?

We spent a few months working very hard to build a working beta of the Top10 platform before approaching the investors we wanted to work with, and it went from there.  I wanted to make sure we had a set of investors that could help in all areas of the business, beyond just providing money – from advising us on scaling and growing the company, through to relevant sector experience and fantastic networks. We think we’ve found that with the team we now have behind us.

At the moment, the market for accessing and securing investors to back your technology idea is very open. But unless you have an amazing track record as an entrepreneur, you’ll struggle to get backing for an idea alone.  My advice would be to get something amazing built (even if it’s really simple) before you go out to seek funding. Have a clear view on how you’re going to get traction for your product. Investors want to back great people with a strong vision and a product that shows what they’re capable of – so make sure you have all that in place before you start looking for money.

Top10 is based in London – do you believe that being outside of the typical Silicon Valley startup space has had any impact on the success of the company? How important is the location of the headquarters of a startup to its success?

The Valley is definitely the most connected place to build a startup right now.  It’d be wrong to suggest that London is a better place to be based than Silicon Valley, but its definitely becoming a lot more viable as a base to build a global business from, and it’s working really well for us so far.

The talent wars in the Valley have made it very tough for startups there to secure great people. In London there are a lot of ambitious developers that want to do something amazing, and there aren’t a massive amount of places to do that – that’s been fantastic for us in building a passionate and talented team.

Europe in general is becoming a much more exciting place to be from a tech point of view, and there a number of big successes that show what’s possible (see Spotify, Skype, Rovio, etc).

It’s important to be based somewhere close to talent, customers and investors, so location is clearly important – but as the tech sector becomes more global, there are more options than ever.

Finally, if you could offer only one piece of advice to an aspiring entrepreneur, what would it be?

Find incredible people to work with, and don’t try to do it on your own. Very few people are capable of building a company based on one person’s vision, and you are much more likely to succeed if you find an great team that shares your enthusiasm and brings complimentary skills to the table.

Share the story behind the design, development and launch of Podio - what were the greatest challenges you faced?

We started as just three guys in a basement in Copenhagen, with some Thin Lizzy records and a generous coffee shop next door. We had actually worked together on some collaboration and social software projects before starting Podio, and we discovered that the adoption of these social tools depended heavily on the amount of ownership people took. So, the process of starting Podio was very much about solving that challenge, making prototypes and testing those to see the reaction of users. I even made a physical App Builder – a sort of game board where you could build apps and map your work flow and processes with various playing cards, we used that for prototyping, and it helped us understand what people really wanted to achieve.

We started Podio, because the way we work was broken. We wanted to empower people to work the way they want, which is in a more collaborative way, with workflows tailored to their needs. We found out that the only way for that to happen was to give the power back to the people who do the job, by creating a tool that enables them to define and build their own workflows and processes. With this the Podio App Builder was born.

Six month after our launch Podio users have build or modified more than 200,000 apps, to get their work done, in their own way.

We decided to launch in the US in March 2011. We’d been in stealth mode for more than a year, so we had revenue and users on Podio already. But, being based in Denmark, Europe, we had to spend some time thinking about how to launch in the US. We wanted the launch to be spectacular and preferably to last more than one night. We also wanted the launch to embody the values of our product; empowerment, openness and being social. During our stealth mode years we had weekly workshops in the office and around Europe. Here we engaged with users face to face, seeing them build apps for their specific needs and improving the product accordingly. So, we decided to open a physical App Store in San Francisco, and to invite people to various events during a three month period.  (see extensive coverage here) . For the actual official launch day the store turned into a great party with our band, The Podios, playing. But, more importantly, we had established a base where people could walk in from the street, talk to us, try Podio and meet the people behind it. We had thousands of people visiting us in the store and on our US “Future of Work” tour, where we visited NYC, Boston, Chicago and L.A, meeting new friends, clients, and users. (More on the tour here)

The company was founded in 2009 under the name ‘Hoist’ – what led you to change the name? In your opinion, how important is a name to the success of any startup?

Your company name is crucial in two ways; what it means to you and what it means to the world. In a startup it’s all about getting people moving in the same direction, and the name you pick is important in making that happen, it’s where a lot of your identity is born. Secondly, there should be a story associated with your name, the story you are going to tell everyone about what you do, why you do it and for whom. With Hoist the story was that people used to hoist sails as a team, it was a team effort, and a great example of working collaboratively. But, we found that the sound of Hoist was too hard in some languages and we could’t get hold of the .com domain. So, we went on the look out for a better name with .com available. That’s when Podio came up. Podio means platform in latin and it really underpins our ambition: we want to be the platform for work. A platform, or a podium, for individuals to take charge of their work and processes. It’s sort of a stage where everyone can perform. Podio also has a pleasant sound and can be pronounced in most languages without sounding foreign or awkward. So, the decision to change name was not as hard as you might think. Now people working for us and the most vivid fans refer to themselves as “a Podio”, and of course our band is called “The Podios”.

If your company has an original long term vision, or a long lasting commitment, your name should be long lasting too. I would say that real words (or compounds) are more trustworthy in that case. You can play around with words, dropping certain letters in order to get a .com domain, but you will most likely end up having to spell it out every time you talk to people, and that’s a bad start.

Podio employs a freemium pricing model – can you shed some light on your decision making process in regards to monetization? What options did you consider?

From the beginning we wanted to have paying customers. We were self-funded and needed revenue, but more importantly we wanted customers to validate our pricing. You can read thousands of books on this, but nothing beats stating your price early on to get a reaction from your potential clients. Where to put your upgrade trigger points really depend on your market, competition, and so on. One tip is to avoid only focussing on the free part, instead, spend equally or even more time on the ‘Mium’ part of your offering. Make sure you don’t cripple the free version, so that it becomes useless for it’s audience, and then look for strategies where the premium version is a logical extension of the free.

Podio has grown at a rapid rate, with over 23 employees now at the company. How did you approach the hiring process? Can you offer some advice to fellow entrepreneurs regarding this challenging area?

This is one of my favorite areas. You will only make a difference with a great team that is motivated. First of all, your vision has to be bold and brave. That will help attract the right people from the out set, and it will get you the right amount of critical questions from the start. From the early days we had some really bright people involved, for example Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, who made an early seed investment in Podio (back then Hoist) and has been involved ever since. When you work with people that share your vision, your vision will be amplified and further refined through what you do. This is also where your culture is formed, half of it is what you do and how you do it, the other half is aspirational. This is the foundation for the hiring process. We had Kasper Hulthin join us while we were still in a basement in stealth mode, and we build a revenue base, even before we launched. From there on, Tommy Ahlers joined as CEO. He had recently made an exit with his company ZYB to Vodafone, and had tons of experience, also in growing teams. Together, we managed to get onboard some of the greatest talent from all over Europe. Today we have 11 nationalities in our office in Copenhagen. And we recently opened up our US office in San Francisco. If you look at yourself as a multinational company from the beginning, even when you are two or three guys in a basement, it will make recruiting easier for you down the road, especially if you start out in Europe.

Mobile applications form a critical part of Podio – how central were they to your planning prior to launch? Are mobile applications crucial to the success of a modern consumer-focused startup? 

Well it’s all about timing and resources. Podio is a web based platform for work, it’s all your workflows, processes, contacts, and communication in one place. It’s also where you shape and build your workflows with our App Builder. Making all that mobile is not a trivial task. Secondly mobile is often viewed as an extension of a web experience. But when looking closer, your mobile behavior and needs are quite different from your web behavior and needs. There is a lot of overlap, but it’s not an extension as such. So, identifying the differences is vital. For example, in Podio you might need a different way of organizing your work depending on what device you are on, maybe you need something on you mobile that you don’t have on in the web version, and vice versa.

 What is the single most important piece of advice you would offer to an aspiring entrepreneur?

If in doubt, do it. Then, get bright and experienced people involved from the start, and tell them what you want. Someone once said “It’s not about who you know, it’s about who knows you” and I like to add to that “and do they know what you want?”. It’s also crucial to know the space you are in and exactly what value you create. Is the need widespread or is it confined to your friends? Get your prototype or beta out and test it with real people, not just the ones you know will like it.