The Blog of Burgher Jon

Its my first day of vacation so my mind has floated from place to place without staying on any one of them for too long.  In that vain, my post is going to be a good idea for a startup and a startup that sounds just awful presented in wandering mind, bullet point mode.

• The good idea (and it’s free to the first entrepreneur who takes it) is for a facebook-based cookbook sharing application.  Is there anything more historically social then swapping recipes?  There is an app (My Cookbook), but it’s rated with only 2.5 stars.  How has someone not made an investment in this and hit it out of the park?
• The bad idea is ChickRX, a webMD competitor specifically targeted at women in their 20s.  I’m in my 20s and know many girls in their mid 20s and most of them are rarely sick and even rarer spend time searching online about their illnesses.  The company was apparently started by two Harvard MBAs and has ALREADY raised $400,000.  This just sounds like well connected people with a bad idea to me (take that for what it’s worth though, it’s based on a perusal of the Tech Crunch article alone).

I don’t have time for a long posting this morning, but I wanted to pass on a bit of news that I noticed.  It seems Pittsburgh (or in this case PA’s) other public source of funding for Pittsburgh Entrepreneurs has announced its awards.  While Pittsburgh’s AlphaLab is the most well known local funding vehicle that’s built on public funds, there are others.  Last week, The Technology Collaborative announced that 8 of the 10 companies that will split the $1M they are contributing this year are Pittsburgh based.  While it’s great to hear that Pittsburgh companies are getting some money, there are two things that make me a bit uneasy.

First, I don’t necessarily believe in the dolling out of public funds to companies.  I think (and have mentioned in 1, 2, 3 related posts) that the role of government when it comes to the technology startup scene is to invest in the infrastructure (tax codes, zoning, etc…) that enables the startup scene to exist; as opposed to investing directly in that system.  Public funds have a tendency to produce wastes in such systems (as they do in all systems).  However, if the government is going to invest it’s better in those types of programs (small investments in small companies) then in giving giant tax breaks to big companies.

Second, the amount is actually quite low.  If you remember, back in February, the Technology Collaborative’s funding was slashed by $600,000 to $1.2M (which of course is higher then the $1.0M that it appears was actually given out.  I guess these funds got decreased further without me noticing the story, a shame.

If I had the funds and inclination to be a serial entrepreneur or very early angel investor, I’d like to think I’d come up with great ideas.  I have previously commented that I really wish I’d thought of GroupOn, Open Table and a couple of FourSquare apps.  Well, another one of those great ideas wandered across my computer screen a couple days ago, CardStar.  CardStar is a mobile phone app (currently supports Blackberry, Android and that thing with the bad reception) that allows its users to store loyalty program information on their phone.  So that’s your Giant Eagle (grocery) Advantage Card, your Blockbuster card, your Best Buy card, etc…  I carry my Advantage Card (or did when I lived in Pittsburgh), but while I WOULD like to get the deals associated with the others, I have a firm no clutter policy.  That’s why I think this thing is genius.

In addition to thinking that it’s something I would use, I can see at least two reasons it’s a good business:

1. It’s easy to monetize.  Charge the businesses that plug-in to that service each time a customer uses their card.  You don’t even have to charge them much, perhaps base it on the average purchase size at the company (e.g. Best Buy would get charged much more then Giant Eagle).
2. It’s growth pattern is easy.  It can spend the next few years going from only having some of those loyalty programs on its system to having nearly all of them.  Then it can become the way all loyalty programs work (or at least all the ones that don’t have enough backing to have their own app).

Well done founders, sounds like a good company to me.

Foursquare opened up its API in January, and not much happened.  The only reason I can understand why is that Foursquare itself doesn’t quite have the audience to demand the best and the brightest’s time on app development.  It’s getting there though, and fast.  This lead me to start thinking about the market as well as poking around the API and I think there are a few holes that app developers can fill and a few tempting ideas that will never gain legs.  I spent yesterday’s post on three apps (or categories of apps) that I don’t think will take off.  Today, the good stuff.  The three concepts that I think will take off on the Foursquare API.

1. Meetup Apps that Focus on People Who are Already There – One of the apps that I said would fail was PocketCrowd, which allows you to specify where you’re going to be so that a group of people you already know can form there.  While I think this idea will fail, apps that make a crowd out of the dispersed individuals who are already at a particular place will takeoff.  Foursquare itself already does this for my friends, if I check in at PNC Park and then realize that one of my friends is at the game, I can meet up with her for a beer.  What foursquare doesn’t do natively, but an app could do is help like minded people who are already in the same place, meet for the first time.  It’s not a great leap of imagination to think dating is the best use case.  That’s where the app “Singles for Foursquare” comes in.  I’m aware that flirting with a girl on the phone while you’re at the SAME BAR SHE IS is a little retarded.  I’m not saying I’m going to use this app, but I am saying that enough people will to make apps in this space viable.Current Example: Singles for Foursquare, RunnersUnite! (by Pittsburgh’s own Dick’s Sporting Goods)
2. Scrapbooks/Analytics – One of the leading reasons people use check-in tools (as I previously discussed) is so that they know where they’ve been.  It creates a cool kind of automated life story.  There will be room for applications that help people piece together that story better then Foursquare itself does.  I see two kinds of applications in this space.  The first allows you to annotate your check-ins with photos and stories.  This type of app will supply you with the basics (the time you arrived, the friends who were there, etc…) but then expect you to build a scrapbook page or delete the record.  If you’re a guy and don’t believe this app will happen, check-out how many pictures your girlfriend has been tagged in on facebook.  The other app is a type of analytics, using Foursquares information to build maps and Feltron like reports.  If you’ve never seen the feltron reports, click here.Current Example: Couldn’t find a scrapbook, CheckoutCheckins.com is map overlay, Foursquare has a stats feature already that does the analytics (though it leaves room for improvement).
3. Recommendations – Another thing Foursquare does poorly (though you never know when they’ll correct this and steal your market) is surfacing recommendations.  My guess is that Foursquare will be doing this better (and mixing the user supplied recommendations with ads) soon.  In the mean time though, it’s difficult to see all the recommendations for places near my current location.  It’d also be cool if I only saw recommendations from people who were “like me” and within a radius that I define (am I willing to drive or does it have to be a walk?).Current Example: tipfinder

These are just my guesses based on a feel for social media.  Do I have any dissenters?

Foursquare opened up its API in January, and not much happened.  The only reason I can understand why is that Foursquare itself doesn’t quite have the audience to demand the best and the brightest’s time on app development.  It’s getting there though, and fast.  This lead me to start thinking about the market as well as poking around the API and I think there are a few holes that app developers can fill and a few tempting ideas that will never gain legs.  I’m going to spend this post discussing a few ideas that people are trying (or are likely to try) that I don’t think will work.  Tomorrow, I will post a few ideas that I think there is room in the Foursquare ecosystem for.

The three coming failures in an otherwise booming segment (location-based):

1. Foursquare clients – There are certainly some holes in the official client that would seem to make room for Foursquare’s own Seesmic.  I am betting against it though.  I have too much confidence in the guys at Foursquare, especially now that they are so well funded; I expect any momentary advantage a client gains over the Foursquare official clients is likely to be erased quickly.  Foursquare has too much to gain from advertising within its own client to allow another client to pass them up.

   Current Example: Kickball

2. Foursquare games – Even Foursquare itself is getting away from the concept of a game, why does anyone think that adding a more complex game on top will be successful?  There are companies that will fall for the alluring possibilities though, and they will fail.  I don’t think the game aspect of foursquare will ever catch on, not with their point system or anyone else’s interface.

   Current Example: fiddme (kind of)

3. Planning Tools – The beauty of Foursquare is the check-in concept, people can’t check-in until they’re there.  Don’t count on people using Foursquare for advanced planning, and “pre-checking in” to alert their friends where they will be.  Yes, they have a nice database of location data and that helps people plan, but there’s lots of location data on the web.  People will continue to use phones, email, texting, twitter etc… to plan meetups, Foursquare will remain for the spontaneous actions once you’re there.

   Current Example: PocketCrowd

These are just my guesses based on a feel for social media.  Do I have any dissenters?