Style makeover show What Not to Wear returns to TLC on Tuesday night with an episode that incorporates the opinions and suggestions from its Facebook fans to determine the outcome of the show.
What Not to Wear — a series hosted by Stacy London and Clinton Kelly, who give women fashion makeovers and style tips — enlisted the help of the Facebook community to kick off its ninth season, airing on May 29 at 10:00/9:00 p.m. CT.
Filmed before a live studio audience in March for the first time, the show enlisted the real-time opinions of WNTW fans by asking which items the episode’s contestant Anna should throw out and which new items Stacy and Clinton should select for her.
“What Not to Wear fans are incredibly passionate about the show and the overall theme of personal transformation, as can be seen by the year-round engagement on the show’s Facebook page,” Stephanie Eno, senior director of production at TLC, told Mashable. “Knowing this, we wanted to give our viewers a special role in our season premiere and our contributor’s makeover.”
Before the taping, WNTW posted a message on its Facebook page encouraging fans to return to the site to play along later that day. It then posted pictures of Anna’s clothing collection, asking fans if she shouldkeep or toss items, and uploaded photos of potential outfits for Anna’s makeover. Fans voted on which items would best suit Anna’s body type and style.
User engagement on its Facebook page skyrocketed, with thousands of fans leaving comments and reactions. WNTW’s page also crossed one million fans during the taping.
“The level of post engagement as we filmed was unprecedented for the show, and we can’t wait to share the outcome of Stacy & Clinton’s makeover with the fans who helped make it happen,” Eno added.
The move of incorporating fan interaction into TV episodes is becoming a part of a larger trend. In fact, shows such as The Voice, Watch What Happens Live and Oprah’s Lifeclass are leading the pack as innovators in the social TV space, incorporating tweets and Facebook interaction into episodes.
In the 21st century, federal government must go mobile, putting government services and information at the fingertips of citizens, said United States Chief Technology Officer Todd Park in a recent wide-ranging interview. "That's the first digital government result, outcome, and objective that's desired."
To achieve that vision, Park and U.S. chief information officer Steven VanRoekel are working together to improve how government shares data, architects new digital services and collaborates across agencies to reduce costs and increase productivity through smarter use of information technology.
Park, who was chosen by President Obama to be the second CTO of the United States in March, has been (relatively) quiet over the course of his first two months on the job.
"The way I think about the strategy is that you're really talking about three elements," said Park, in our interview. "First, it's going mobile, putting government services at the literal fingertips of the people in the same way that basically every other industry and sector has done. Second, it's being smarter about how we procure technology as we move government in this direction. Finally, it's liberating data. In the end, it's the idea of 'government as a platform.'"
"We're looking for a few good men and women"
In the context of the nation's new digital government strategy, Park announced the launch of five projects that this new class of Innovation Fellows will be entrusted with implementing: a broad Open Data Initiative, Blue Button for America, RFP-EZ, The 20% Campaign, and MyGov.
The idea of the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program, said Park, is to bring in people from outside government to work with innovators inside the government. These agile teams will work together within a six-month time frame to deliver results.
The fellowships are basically scaling up the idea of "entrepreneurs in residence," said Park. "It's a portfolio of five projects that, on top of the digital government strategy, will advance the implementation of it in a variety of ways."
The biggest challenge to bringing the five programs that the US CTO has proposed to successful completion is getting 15 talented men and women to join his team and implement them. There's reason for optimism. Park shared vie email that:
"... within 24 hours of TechCrunch Disrupt, 600 people had already registered via Whitehouse.gov to apply to be a Presidential Innovation Fellow, and another several hundred people had expressed interest in following and engaging in the five projects in some other capacity."
To put that in context, Code for America received 550 applications for 24 fellowships last year. That makes both of these fellowships more competitive than getting in to Harvard in 2012, which received 34,285 applications for its next freshman class. There appears to be considerable appetite for a different kind of public service that applies technology and data for the public good.
Park is enthusiastic about putting open government data to work on behalf of the American people, amplifying the vision that his predecessor, Aneesh Chopra, championed around the country for the past three years.
"The fellows are going to have an extraordinary opportunity to make government work better for their fellow citizens," said Park in our interview. "These projects leverage, substantiate and push forward the whole principle of liberating data. Liberate data."
"To me, one of the aspects of the strategy about which I am most excited, that sends my heart into overdrive, is the idea that going forward, the default state of government data shall be open and machine-readable," said Park. "I think that's just fantastic. You'll want to, of course, evolve the legacy data as fast as you can in that same direction. Setting that as 'this is how we are rolling going forward' — and this is where we expect data to ultimately go — is just terrific."
In the videos and interview that follow, Park talks more about his vision for each of the programs.
A federal government-wide Open Data Initiative
In the video below, Park discusses the Presidential Innovation Fellows program and introduces the first program, which focuses on open data:
Park: The Open Data Initiative is a program to seed and expand the work that we're doing to liberate government data as a platform. Encourage, on a voluntary basis, the liberation of data by corporations, as part of the national data platform, and to actively stimulate the development of new tools and services, and enhance existing tools and services, leveraging the data to help improve Americans' lives in very tangible ways, and create jobs for the future.
This leverages the Open Government Directive to say "look, the default going forward is open data." Also the directive to "API-ize" two high priority datasets and also, in targeted ways, go beyond that, and really push to get more data out there in, critically, machine-readable form, in APIs, and to educate the entrepreneur and innovators of the world that it's there through meetups, and hackathons, and challenges, and "Datapaloozas."
We're doubling down on the Health Data Initiative, we are also launching a much more high-profile Safety Data Initiative, which we kicked off last week. An Energy Data Initiative, which kicked off this week. An education data initiative, which we're kicking off soon, and an Impact Data Initiative, which is about liberating data with respect to inputs and outputs in the non-profit space.
We're also going to be exploring an initiative in the realm of personal finance, enabling Americans to access copies of their financial data from public sector agencies and private sector institutions. So, the format that we're going to be leveraging to execute these initiatives is cloned from the Health Data Initiative.
This will make new data available. It will also take the existing public data that is unusable to developers, i.e. in the form of PDFs, books or static websites, and turn it into liquid machine-readable, downloadable, accessible data via API. Then — because we're consistently hearing that 95% of the innovators and entrepreneurs who could turn our data into magic don't even know the data exists, let alone that it's available to them — engage the developer community and the entrepreneurial community with the data from the beginning. Let them know it's there, get their feedback, make it better.
Blue Button for America
Park: The idea is to develop an open source patient portal capability that will replace MyHealthyVet, which is the Veterans Administration's current patient portal. This will actually allow the Blue Button itself to iterate and evolve more rapidly, so that everY time you add more data to it, it won't require heart surgery. It will be a lot easier, and of course will be open source, so that anyone else who wants to use it can use it as well. On top of that, we're going to do a lot of "biz dev" in America to get the word out about Blue Button and encourage more and more holders of data in the private sector to adopt Blue Button. We're also going to work to help stimulate more tool development by entrepreneurs that can upload Blue Button data and make it useful in all kinds of ways for patients. That's Blue Button for America.
What is RFP-EZ?
Park: The objective is "buying smarter." The project that we're working ON with the Small Business Administration on is called "RFP-EZ."
Basically, it's the idea of setting up a streamlined process for the government to procure solutions from innovative, high-growth tech companies. As you know, most high-growth companies regard the government as way too difficult to sell to.
That A) deprives startups and high-growth companies from the government as a marketplace and, B) perhaps even more problematically, actually deprives the government of their solutions.
The hope here is, through the actions of the RFP-EZ team, to create a process and a prototype that the government can much more easily procure solutions from innovative private firms.
It A) opens up this emerging market called "the government" to high-tech startups and B) infects the government with more of their solutions, which are radically more, pound for pound, effective and cost efficient than a lot of the stuff that the government is currently procuring through conventional channels. That's RFP-EZ.
The 20% Campaign
Park: The 20% Campaign is a project that's being championed by USAID. It's an effort at USAID to, working with other government agencies, NGOs and companies, to catalog the movement of foreign assistance payments from cash to electronics. So, just for example, USAID pays its contractors electronically, obviously, but the contractor who, say, pays highway workers in Afghanistan or the way that police officers get paid in Afghanistan is actually principally via cash. Or has been. And that creates all kinds of waste issues, fraud, and abuse.
The idea is actually to move to electronic payment, including mobile payment — and this has the potential to significantly cut waste, fraud and abuse, to improve financial inclusion, to actually let people on phones, to enable them to access bank accounts set up for them. That leads to all kinds of good things, including safety: it's not ideal to be carrying around large amounts of cash in highly kinetic environments.
The Afghan National Police started paying certain contingents of police officers via mobile phones and mobile payments, as opposed to cash, and what happened is that the police officers started reporting an up to a 30% raise. Of course, their pay hadn't changed, but basically, when it was in cash, a bunch of it got lost. This is obviously a good thing, but it's even more important if you realize that when they were paid what they were paid in cash that they ultimately physically received, that was less than the Taliban in this province was actually paying people to join the Taliban — but the mobile payment, and that level of salary, was greater than the Taliban was paying. That's a critical difference.
It's basically taking foreign assistance payments through the last mile to mobile.
Park: MyGov is an effort to rapidly prototype a citizen-centric system that allows Americans the information and resources of government that are right for them. Think of it as a personalized channel for Americans to be able to access information resources across government and get feedback from citizens about those information and resources.
How do you plan to scale what you learned while you were HHS CTO to the all of the federal government?
Park: Specifically, we're doing exactly the same thing we did with the Health Data Initiative, kicking off the initiatives with a "data jam" — an ideation workshop where we invite, just like with health data, 40 amazing tech and energy minds, tech and safety innovators, to a room — at the White House, in the case of the Safety Data Initiative, or at Stanford University, in the case of the Energy Initiative.
We walk into the room for several hours and say, "Here's a big pile of data. What would you do with this data?" And they invent 15 or 20 news classes of products or services of the future that we could build with the data. And then we challenge them to, at the end of the session, build prototypes or actual working products, that instantiates their ideas in 90 days, to be highlighted at a White House — hosted Safety Datapalooza, Energy Datapalooza, Education Datapalooza, Impact Datapalooza, etc.
We also take the intellectual capital from the workshops, publish it on the White House website, and publicize the opportunity around the country: Discover the data, come up with your own ideas, build prototypes, and throw your hat in the ring to showcase at a Datapalooza.
What happens at the Datapaloozas — our experience in health guides us — is that, first of all, the prototypes and working products inspire many more innovators to actually build new services, products and features, because the data suddenly becomes really concrete to them, in terms of how it could be used.
Secondly, it helps persuade additional folks in the government to liberate more data, making it available, making it machine-readable, as opposed to saying, "Look, I don't know what the upside is. I can only imagine downsides." What happened in health is, when they went to a Datapalooza, they actually saw that, if data is made available, then at no cost to you and no cost to taxpayers, other people who are very smart will build incredible things that actually enhance your mission. And so you should do the same.
As more data gets liberated, that then leads to more products and services getting built, which then inspires more data liberation, which then leads to more products and services getting built — so you have a virtual spiral, like what's happened in health.
The objective of each of these initiatives is not just to liberate data. Data by itself isn't helpful. You can't eat data. You can't pour data on a wound and heal it. You can't pour data on your house and make it more energy efficient. Data is only useful if it's applied to deliver benefit. The whole point of this exercise, the whole point of these kickoff efforts, is to catalyze the development of an ecosystem of data supply and data use to improve the lives of Americans in very tangible ways — and create jobs.
We have the developers and the suppliers of data actually talk to each other, create value for the American people, and then rinse, wash, repeat.
We're recruiting, to join the team of Presidential Innovation Fellows, entrepreneurs and developers from the outside to come in and help with this effort to liberate data, make it machine-readable, and get it out there to entrepreneurs and help catalyze development of this ecosystem.
We went to TechCrunch Disrupt for a reason: it's right smack dab center in the middle of people we want to recruit. We invite people to check out the projects on WhiteHouse.gov and, if you're interested in applying to be a fellow, indicate their interest. Even if they can't come to DC for 6-plus months to be a fellow, but they want to follow one of the projects or contribute or help in some way, we are inviting them express interest in that as well. For example, if you're an entrepreneur, and you're really interested in the education space, and learning about what data is available in education, you can check out the project, look at the data, and perhaps you can build something really good to show at the Education Datapalooza.
Is open data just about government data? What about smart disclosure?
Park: In the context of the Open Data Initiatives projects, it's not just about liberation of government health data: it's also about government catalyzing the release, on a voluntary basis, of private sector data.
Obviously, scaling Blue Button will extend the open data ecosystem. We're also doubling down on Green Button. I was just in California to host discussions around Green Button. Utilities representing 31 million households and businesses have now committed to make Green Button happen. Close to 10 million households and businesses already have access to Green Button data.
There's also a whole bunch of conversation happening about, at some point later this year, having the first utilities add the option of what we're calling "Green Button Connect." Right now, the Green Button is a download, where you go to a website, hit a green button and bam, you download your data. Green Button Connect is the ability for you to say as a consumer, "I authorize this third party to receive a continuous feed of my electricity usage data."
That creates massive additional opportunity for new products and services. That could go live later this year.
As part of the education data initiative, we are pursuing the launch and scale up of something called "My Data," which will have a red color button. (It will probably, ultimately, be called "Red Button.") This is the ability for students and their families to download an electronic copy of their student loan data, of their transcript data, of their academic assessment data.
That notion of people getting their own data, whether it's your health data, your education data, your finance data, your energy use data, that's an important part of these open data initiatives as well, with government helping to catalyze the release of that data to then feed the ecosystem.
How does open data specifically relate to the things that Americans care about, access to healthcare, reducing energy bills, giving their kids more educational opportunities, and job creation? Is this just about apps?
Park: In healthcare, for example, you'll see a growing array of examples that leverage data to create tangible benefit in many, many ways for Americans. Everything from helping me find the right doctor or hospital for my family to being notified of a clinical trial that could assist my profile and save my life, and the ability to get the latest and greatest information about how to manage my asthma and diabetes via government knowledge in the National Library of Medicine.
There is a whole shift in healthcare systems away from pay-for-volume of services to basically paying to get people healthy. It goes by lots of different names — accountable care organizations or episodic payment — but the fundamental common theme is that the doctors and hospitals increasingly will be paid to keep people healthy and to co-ordinate their care, and keep them out of the hospital, and out of the ER.
There's a whole fleet of companies and services that utilize data to help doctors and hospitals do that work, like utilize Medicare claims data to help identity segments of a patient population that are at real risk, and need to get to the ER or hospital soon. There are tools that help journalists identify easily public health issues, like healthcare outcomes disparities by race, gender and ethnicity. There are tools that help country commissioners and mayors understand what's going on in a community, from a health standpoint, and make better policy decisions, like showing them food desserts. There's just a whole fleet of rapidly growing services for consumers, for doctors, nurses, journalists, employers, public policy makers, that help them make decisions, help them deliver improved health and healthcare, and create jobs, all at the same time.
That's very exciting. If you look at all of those products and services — and a subset of them are the ones that self-identify to us, to actually be exhibited at the Health Datapaloozas. Look at the 20 healthcare apps that were at the first Datapalooza or the 50 that were at the second. This year, there are 230 companies that are being narrowed down to about a total of 100 that will be at the Datapalooza. They collectively serve millions of people today, either through brand new products and services or through new features on existing platforms. They help people in ways that we would never have thought of, let alone build.
The taxpayer dollars expended here were zero. We basically just took our data, made it available in machine-readable format, educated entrepreneurs that it was there, and they did the rest. Think about these other sectors, and think about what's possible in those sectors.
In education, through making the data that we've made available, you can imagine much better tools to help you shop for the college that will deliver the biggest bang for your buck and is the best fit for your situation.
We've actually made available a bunch of data about college outcomes and are making more data available in machine-readable form so it can feed college search tools much better. We are going to be enabling students to download machine-readable copies of their own financial aid application, student loan data and school records. That will really turbo charge "smart scholarship" and school search capabilities for those students. You can actually mash that up with college outcomes in a really powerful, personalized college and scholarship search engine that is enabled by your personal data plus machine-readable data. Tools that help kids and their parents pick the right college for their education and get the right financial aid, that's something government is going to facilitate.
One dataset that's particularly spectacular that we're making a lot more usable is the EnergyStar database. It's got 40,000 different appliances, everything from washing machines to servers that consumers and businesses use. We are creating a much, much easier to use public, downloadable NSTAR database. It's got really detailed information on the energy use profiles and performance of each of these 40,000 appliances and devices. Imagine that actually integrated into much smarter services.
On safety, the kinds of ideas that people are bringing together are awesome. They're everything from using publicly available safety data to plot the optimal route for your kid to walk home or for a first responder to travel through a city and get to a place most expeditiously.
There's this super awesome resource on Data.gov called the "Safer Products API," which is published by the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC). Consumers send in safety reports to CPSC, but until March of last year, you had to FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] CPSC to get these. So what they've now done is actually publish an API which not only makes the entire database of these reports public, without you having to FOIA them, but also makes it available through an API.
One of the ideas that came up is that, when people buy products on eBay, Craiglist, etc, all the time, some huge percentage of Americans never get to know about a recall — a recall of a crib, a recall of a toy. And even when a company recalls new products, old products are in circulation. What if someone built the ability to integrate the recall data and attach it to all the stuff in the eBays and Craigslists of the world?
Former CIO Vivek Kundra often touted government recall apps based upon government data during his tenure. Is this API the same thing, shared again, or something new?
Park: I think the smartest thing the government can do with data like product recalls data is not build our own shopping sites, or our own product information sites: it's to get the information out there in machine-readable form, so that lots and lots of other platforms that have audiences with millions of people already, and who are really good at creating shopping experiences or product comparison experiences, get the data into their hands, so that they can integrate it seamlessly into what they do. I feel that that's really the core play that the government should be engaged in.
I don't know if the Safer Products API was included in the recall app. What I do know is that before 2011, you had to FOIA to get the data. I think that even if the government included it in some app the government built, that it's important for it to get used by lots and lots of other apps that have a collective audience that's massively greater than any app the government could itself build.
Another example of this is the Hospital Compare website. The Hospital Compare website has been around for a long time. Nobody knows about it. There was a survey done that found 94% of Americans didn't know that there was hospital quality data that was available, let alone that there was a hospital compare website. So, the notion of A) making the hospital care data downloadable and B), we actually deployed it a year and a half ago in API form at Medicare.gov.
That then makes the data much easier for lots of other platforms to incorporate it, that are far more likely than HospitalCompare.gov to be able to present the information in actionable forms for citizens. Even if we build our own apps, we have to get this data out to lots of other people that can help people with it. To do that, we have to make it machine-readable, we have to put it into RESTFUL APIs — or at least make it downloadable — and get the word out to entrepreneurs that it's something they can use.
This is a stunning arbitrage opportunity. Even if you take all this data and you "API-ize" it, it's not automatic that entrepreneurs are going to know it's there.
Let's assume that the hospital quality data is good — which it is — and that you build it, and put it into an API. If nobody knows about it, you've delivered no value to the American people. People don't care whether you API a bunch of data. What they care about is that when they need to find a hospital, like I did, for my baby, I can get that information.
The private sector, in the places where we have pushed the pedal to the medal on this, has just demonstrated the incredible ability to make this data a lot more relevant and help a lot more people with it than we could have by ourselves.
If you're anything like me, your phone buzzes all day long, alerting you to completely useless things like app updates, Facebook likes, and chain emails from your grandma. Here's how to keep your phone from bugging you all day without turning your notifications off entirely—but still staying on top of what matters. More »
Enlarge / Infogr.am's splash page lets you choose between creating a new design, or accessing previously stored works.
Let's say you want to compare the airspeed velocity of various unladen swallows. You could put that data into a spreadsheet, or present it using a graph. Chances are you'll pick the latter.
The question is, how do you create a graph that not only looks nice, but presents said data in a coherent, easy to understand way? You could go the traditional route, and make something basic in Microsoft Office or your productivity suite of choice. Or, if you have a bit more skill, you could opt for the flexibility of Adobe Illustrator instead. But perhaps you have neither software nor skill, and just want to make a simple graph or chart.
Infogr.am takes the same approach that Tumblr took to blogging, by turning the otherwise daunting task of creating great infographics into a process that's dead-simple. You bring the raw data to Infogr.am, and the site's online tool can help you turn that data into a nice looking chart or full-blown infographic in minutes. It's really that simple—assuming you have a Facebook or Twitter account required to login—though, at times, to a fault.
Alexandra sez, "I'm writing to tell you about Modkit, a new interface for
microcontrollers like Arduino. Modkit uses a graphical programming
language based on the kids' programming language, Scratch. To
write an Arduino program, you simply snap little blocks of code
together. Basically, I think Modkit will make microcontrollers
accessible to a much wider audience (younger, less tech-savvy,
etc.). Modkit also has a lot of other cool features, like
automatic hardware detection, both an in-browser and desktop
version, and lots of supported hardware. They're running a
Kickstarter campaign right now, so I thought I would pass along
their website!"
Chrome/Firefox: There's no shortage of browser extensions that help you download Flash or HTML5 video, but few give you the myriad of options available from MediaPlus. More »
JavaScript keeps advancing by leaps and bounds, but is it powerful enough yet? Is the Web ready to take on all the challenges we throw at it?
I talked with Seth Ladd, a web engineer and Chrome Developer Advocate at Google who's working on Dart, but still, I'm happy to say, interested in JavaScript itself. He's been working with larger projects and larger teams figuring out how to build bigger, faster, and more complex applications than most of us care to dream about.
Seth's constant push - "we can do better" - takes a hard look at where we are today with web programming, acknowledging decades of improvement but looking hard for the next best thing.
Highlights from the full video interview include:
Speed - is JavaScript fast enough yet? [Discussed at the 2:12 mark]
60 frames per second - can the browser look that smooth? [Discussed at the 3:21 mark]
Dart - Structure, tooling, and reaching both JavaScript and C++ programmers [Discussed at the 6:27 mark]
"Dart compiles to modern JavaScript today" [Discussed at the 9:16 mark]
"JavaScript is becoming the bytecode of the Web" - many languages compile to JavaScript [Discussed at the 11:16 mark]
View Source isn't what it used to be - is Github the answer? [Discussed at the 12:07 mark]
You can view the entire conversation in the following video:
Yesterday at Maker Faire Bay Area 2012 we visited the Electric Imp booth to chat with the startup's founders and get some hands-on time with the tiny wireless computer. What is the Electric Imp? It's a module containing an ARM Cortex M3 SoC with embedded WiFi that's built into an SD card form factor. While the device looks just like and SD card, it's not pin-compatible with the standard -- the idea is to leverage a reliable and affordable connector for the Electric Imp. The module is not very useful on its own -- it only comes to life when inserted into one of several boards, which provide the Electric Imp with power and access to the real world. In turn the device gives these boards a brain and an Internet connection. Eventually the company hopes that appliance manufacturers will incorporate Electric Imp slots into products to make them network aware.
We talked with CEO Hugo Fiennes (formerly with Apple) about the past, present and future of the Electric Imp so hit the break to read more and to watch our hands-on video.
Cable channel TBS is teaming up with Facebook to add more branded comedy entertainment options for advertisers.
The high-rated comedy network is utilizing Facebook to extend distribution with another recent partnership — Jason Bateman and Will Arnett’s digital ad and production company, DumbDumb. TBS will work with DumbDumb to give six brands up to six short-form customized comedy videos.
According to Facebook, the TBS and DumbDumb partnership will help brands distribute and promote content across multiple platforms, while engaging with Facebook’s 901 million active users.
“Facebook and television work perfectly together, as Facebook has become the location where viewers discuss, experience, and share what they watch and what they love, creating true word of mouth at scale,” says Carolyn Everson, VP, Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook.
Sources close to Facebook said that the content is going to live on a variety of channels, but the brand sponsors will ultimately decide where that content lives — whether that be on their own sites, on TBS.com, or the brand or TBS’s Facebook page.
Commercials will also air on TBS to drive viewers to the brand’s web and social platforms.
Turner Broadcasting announced a partnership with Funny Or Die earlier this month, forming a strategic alliance between the comedy website, TBS and Adult Swim.
Funny Or Die is well-known for helping advertisers provide branded entertainment, and other companies like Buzzfeed are using emotional intelligence to help marketers engage in social media. Increasingly, branded content partnerships are proving to be a smart way to build virility and shareable content with a targeted audience.
It’s a smart — and forward-thinking — approach for TBS to offer these branded spots to their advertisers. At the television upfronts last week, lots of networks talked about giving advertisers more value across multiple screens, but few offered concrete examples of how they planned to do it. If TBS succeeds, this could become more common across the television landscape.
“We are not just talking the talk about innovation; we are actively developing ways for our advertisers to creatively immerse their brands through a multi-screen approach that delivers great video to an engaged and interested audience on Facebook,” says Donna Speciale, president of Turner Entertainment and Young Adults Ad Sales.
What do you think about comedy ad production companies like DumbDumb or Funny Or Die? Would you like to see more marketers approach this method of advertising? Let us know in the comments.
Whether you believe that evaluating startups is a matter of art or science, it’s hard to argue that more data doesn’t make the job much easier. But, for the most part, comprehensive data on early stage tech companies is hard to come by.
Over the past few months, the Startup Genome project has attracted about 35,000 signups and 17,000 active business users – and amassed a healthy amount of information — with a free data-driven benchmarking tool for startups. On Thursday, it launched a new tool that brings data analytics and startup code-cracking to investors.
Co-founder Bjoern Herrmann said Startup Genome started out as an academic project, but is evolving into something more sustainable as it attracts interest from startups and investors around the world, as well as Fortune 500 companies and other kinds of stakeholders. It recently raised a small amount of seed money from seasoned entrepreneur Steve Blank and others through Angel List.
Just as the Startup Compass tool helps entrepreneurs use data to allocate resources and align their teams and stakeholders around key decisions, Herrmann said, the new Investor Compass does the same thing for people either considering new acquisitions or monitoring current investments.
“Investors ask a lot of questions trying to understand the market better,” he said. “We make this process much easier.”
Using machine learning and artificial intelligence, it automates analyses to benchmark a startups’ key performance indicators (KPIs) against other similar companies, so investors (and startups) can see how their KPIs stack up against their peers. It also runs more than 50 red flag tests to calculate a company’s risk profile and venture fundability. The tool lets investors quickly review indicators such as customer acquisition costs, profitability timelines, team size, user growth and burn rate.
“It also provides an assessment of where the company is in the company lifecycle – one of the common problems for investors,” Herrmann said. As opposed to previous attempts to quantitatively analyze startups, he added, Startup Genome doesn’t apply traditional financial models to startups, but identifies the unique metrics that they believe are most relevant for startup success.
Right now, information in the system is fed in by the startups themselves and anonymized to protect their privacy. Investors only see individual startups’ data with permission from the company, otherwise they see benchmarks that include clusters of similar companies.
Herrmann said their plan is to increasingly automate the data collection process through APIs, starting with data from Google Analytics. In the next year, he said, they plan to build APIs that will allow startups to share data from Salesforce, Quickbooks and other applications. The new sharing mechanism will also make it easier for startups to share data with investors, who might currently ask for monthly Google docs or spreadsheets.
The founders say they don’t think entrepreneurship will ever be a “paint by the numbers” kind of activity, but they do believe that more data and science specific to startups could help more entrepreneurs identify the signals that could help them succeed.
New York-based CB Insights also tracks private companies, including startups, although it’s more focused on financing and mergers and acquisition. Hermann said Startup Genome’s dashboards can be used to track the development of a company, while CB Insights and similar research firms might be more valuable for portfolio management.
As a Kauffman Foundation report and venture capitalists like Fred Wilson have pointed out, the VC industry has not delivered returns that exceed the public market for more than a decade. More data alone isn’t the solution to the industry’s problems, but it could certainly help investors save time and potentially make smarter decisions.