Startup Of The Week: Fund That Flip
I am starting a new blog segment called the "Startup Of The Week" or S.O.T.W.™ for short where I plan to highlight a great startup each week. There are several startups working to make the world a better place and I want to tell you a little bit more about them. The Startup Of The Week for the week of January 25th is Fund That Flip.
I am starting a new blog segment called the "Startup Of The Week", or S.O.T.W.™ for short, where I plan to highlight a great startup each week. There are several startups working to make the world a better place and I want to tell you a little bit more about some of them. The Startup Of The Week I have selected for the week of January 25th is Fund That Flip.
Fund That Flip
Founder: Matt Rodak, CEO
Headquarters: New York, New York Operating: United States
One sentence pitch: The easiest way to fund your real estate investments.
In my words: Fund That Flip connects real estate investors, starting at only a $5,000 minimum, who are looking to invest money with house flippers that are looking to borrow money for an upcoming renovation.
In their words: "We are technology, real estate and financial service professionals on a mission to create new opportunities for Investors to take advantage of the positive returns real estate can provide. At the same time, we are helping re-developers access a new source of capital so they can focus on what they do best – finding and rehabilitating homes so they are again livable. Leveraging our team’s diverse expertise and new legislation passed as part of the JOBS Act, we are building the preferred real estate investment marketplace for investors and re-developers."
Accomplishments:
How it Works:
If you want to learn more or let me know your thought on this week's Startup Of The Week you can contact me here.
The Acceleration of Unicorn Startups
CB Insights just made this great infographic to help visualize the rate at which new billion dollar unicorn companies are being created. It seems to be as increasing trend since the start of 2014. There are now 142 total unicorn companies...
CB Insights just made this great infographic to help visualize the rate at which new billion dollar unicorn companies are being created. It seems to be as increasing trend since the start of 2014. There are now 142 total unicorn companies with a total cumulative valuation of $506B. This is up from 30 privately held technology companies worth more than $1B about 18 months ago.
Last month Mark Suster wrote on how he believes this trend is being driven by a fundamental change in the the structure of the Venture Capital industry and how money is entering the market. Let me know what you think is driving this change in the comments.
You can click to enlarge the infographic below.
This Made In NY Drone Just Doubled Quadcopter Flight Time
Easy Aerial, a New York Founder Institute company, has recently launched a Kickstarter campaign for their newest addition to the Easy Drone family, the Easy Drone XL Pro.
Each year, The Founder Institute helps launch dozens of technology companies across the globe. Once founders graduate from our 4-month program, they quickly begin using techniques like crowdfunding campaigns to drum up interest and obtain funding.
Easy Aerial, a New York Founder Institute company, has recently launched a Kickstarter campaign for their newest addition to the Easy Drone family, the Easy Drone XL Pro. In just a few short days the company has raised $21,238 of it's $30,000 goal. This is their second time on Kickstarter with a new and updated drone that has been improved upon from the previous version with testing and feedback. Last time on Kickstarter, Easy Aerial successfully raised $45,627 and shipped all of it's rewards by its promised dates.
What is incredible about this drone is that it is the longest flying personal quadcopter drone, with 45 minutes of flight time. It also has the ability to lift a pro camera, which many others drones are too small to do until you reach a budget of almost $10,000. The Easy Drone Pro XL only costs $1,495 to super early bird Kickstarter backers.
Easy Drone’s frame is made from carbon fiber and aluminum and is extremely rigid, yet it can be taken apart completely without tools and carried in a small backpack. Because of the modular design it is very convenient for transportation. Easy Drone has the largest frame size relative to travel pack, flight time and lift capacity on the market.
The maker of the drone, Easy Aerial, is an up and coming modular drone design company based out of New York City. They have already built a bit of a name for themselves with the consumer version of Easy Drone that did really well on Kickstarter. They have also been featured on AlleyWatch, InsertCoin, InterDrone, TechDay 2015, and Maker Faire. Check out the companies new kickstarter here.
Getting Featured On BGR.com
Last week I was walking down 5th Avenue in New York City and noticed that people were already outside in line waiting for the iPhone 6s to come out more than a week before it's release.
Last week I was walking down 5th Avenue in New York City and noticed that people were already outside in line waiting for the iPhone 6s to come out more than a week before it's release. So I snapped a quick pic, tweeted it out, and kept walking. That was it.
Then I Friday I saw on a mention on Twitter that the photo I took last week was featured on BGR.com, Boy Genius Report. Thought that was pretty cool. It goes to show the importance of always creating and putting something out there, can pay off even when you don't expect it to. The link to the full BGR.com article is above and a screenshot of the mention in the Boy Genius Report article is below.
Early Pitch Decks of Billion Dollar Unicorn Startups
Here are the early pitch decks of unicorn startups, those worth over a billion dollars. Check out the early pitch decks of Snapchat, AirBnB, Buzzfeed, Facebook, and Square.
That photo app you were just using, the news feed your looking at, the website you just closed to book your vacation, all those companies had pitch decks long before most people ever heard of their name. Now those companies are worth billions of dollars. So what does early success look like? Here are the early pitch decks of some billion dollar startups, "unicorns"; Snapchat, AirBnB, Buzzfeed, Facebook, and Square
Snapchat - $16 Billlion Valuation
AirBnB - $25.5 Billion Valuation
Buzzfeed - $1.5 Billion Valuation
Facebook - $261 Billion Valuation
Square - $6 Billion Valuation
Why Periscope Should Embrace Landscape Video
Why should Periscope embrace landscape video. The answer to this question is one word. YouTube.
Periscope App
Why should Periscope embrace landscape video. The answer to this question is one word. YouTube.
The best Scopes are done by people who know how to engage their audience via video on a mobile device. We could spend months waiting for the best Periscopers to naturally emerge in the wild and eventually nail down how to get viewers to engage on the platform. Or we could enable a group of people who have spent years perfecting the skill of engaging and curating a mobile camera experience on a day to day basis. The YouTubers. The users of a company whose very slogan is "Broadcast Yourself".
In many ways Periscope almost feels as if it should have been bought by YouTube and not Twitter. A little bit of proof that Twitter is on point with its innovation and acquisitions.
Normal everyday people are unsure of what to say or afraid to engage with the camera when on periscope. But YouTubers know their audiences and are not shy in that experience. They know how to talk to an audience and how to engage them. We love to watch them. So here is the trick.
Periscope already allows you to save a Scope to your camera role when you are done. If Periscope embraced landscape mode it would allow YouTubers to every time use Periscope to initially record their videos while engaging with users in real time, then save that video to their camera role, and finally use that video for uploading to YouTube. Create once, while directly engaging your audience, and then easily syndicate!
You can do this process currently but then you have a vertical video with black bars on both sides. And lets be honest, nobody wants to watch that. Vertical Video Syndrome is bad. And if you rotate your phone while on Periscope, as an attempted solution, you will have some very angry commenters coming at you pretty quickly because the comments do not rotate. A few simple additional UI changes when the screen is rotated could be a game changer.
Content creators on all platforms do a lot of work. They have to syndicate content and manage audiences on multiple platforms. By periscope enabling this one feature it would enable YouTube content creators to more easily use one action for multiple platforms. In return, periscope would get next level high quality content creators for its platform. It's a no brainier.