Marisa's Poetry High-Tech Startup Blog

Michael Neeley CEO/President/Founder GraffitiTech, Inc.

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Sun Tzu, the brilliant military strategist, wrote this 2400 years ago in “The Art of War.”  Michael Neeley, CEO and Founder of GraffitiTech, Inc. used this tactic to subdue the taggers in the Graffiti Wars in Watsonville, CA while starting a new company in the Graffiti Detection Space.

On May 21, 2012 I saw Michael Neeley give his startup pitch at JumpStartDays (a joint venture between the Keiretsu Forum, the largest angel network in the world, and Max Shapiro of PeopleConnect).

Graffiti: Low Tech Augmented Reality or Crime? This is a hard blog post for me to write because I see graffiti as art, at worse a low tech augmented reality and at best a warning that I am driving in a dangerous neighborhood. However the municipalities and shop owners who unwilling are providing the canvas for this art see graffiti as an expensive public nuisance and a stigma on their business. Yes, it is a crime.

Costs of Graffiti? It is a 12 billion dollar a year problem cleaning the graffiti vandalism. Just like everything else a few taggers are doing most of the “art”. In Watsonville CA once 30 or so taggers were arrested, the graffiti abatement budget decreased by about 50%.

Market Differentiator? Traditional Graffiti abatement solutions, namely painting over the graffiti again and again, since the taggers see the newly painted wall as just a new canvas, are after-the-fact do very little to reduce the cost to community budgets. The GT-1 Anti-Graffiti System can help you mitigate damages or catch vandals in the act and after wide-spread adoption will act as a deterent.

Market Size? 100M

How Does it Work?  The device is patented and has already won two (2) security awards (Best in Monitoring at ISC West, in the USA and Intruder Alarm/Exterior Deterrent Product of the Year at IFSEC in the UK). The GraffitiTech GT1 sensor detects graffiti while it’s happening by detecting the aerosol signature within a 50’ range.  When a GTI sensor is combined with an existing alarm system, the device notifies the authorities the instant an act of graffiti vandalism occurs. The perpetrators are apprehended spray can in hand while they are still at the scene. In an effort to  minimize damages, one or more of GT-2 sensors can be connected to both audible and visual alarms (sirens and strobe lights) to immediately frighten the culprit.

Launch Date? The beta launch was last year, 2011. Established in 2011, GraffitiTech, Inc. was founded on the belief that “there are better uses for community funds (government, business, or personal) than painting the same wall over and over again.” A proven and patented innovative technology in combination with GraffitiTech consulting have helped communities to reduce their annual graffiti repair budgets by up to 50%. Impressive!

Revenue Model?  Recurring revenue.

Michael Neeley's Message to Taggers: "Don't Even Think About It"

Takeaway: If you don’t like really low tech augmented reality on your store or on the walls in your municipality, call GraffitiTech.

Preview:  Sun Tzu Series #6 of 20: Glooey, augmented reality.

This website and its content are copyright of Marisa’s Poetry Corner – © [www.marisaspoetry.com] [2012]. All rights reserved.

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Giovanni Tripoldi, Co-Founder of PriceSteps

As Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War in about 520 BC: “In conflict straightforward actions generally lead to engagement, surprising actions generally to victory.”  Sun Tzu has been quoted for 2,400 years because his quotes apply to war as well as they apply to business.

On May 2, 2012 at the BAIA (Business Association Italy America) Aperativo I met Giovanni Tripodi, the co-founder of PriceSteps. If you haven’t already guessed, Giovanni is Italian.

What’s in a Name? In the case of PriceSteps it is a new market space where the spontaneous formation of a group, made possible by social media, will reduce the price of each promotion item as a larger total quantity is ordered. In other words, the Price Steps down as more people bid. PriceSteps is an online and mobile based market place where a merchant (seller) offers a product, the price and quantitiy is decided upfront. The Price can change only if more product is sold. To accomplish this, there is a spontaneous formation of group buying to lower the price. The key is the quantity. The prices and and quantities are know upfront.

An Example? A merchant has 75 Canadian Solar Panel Poly 240W that he wants to sell. The start date of the promotion is 4/15/2012, the end date is 5/30/2012. The available quantity is 75. The unit order is 1.

If 1-10 are bought, the price is $1.21 each.

If 11-20 are bought, the price is $1.19

If 21 to 50 are bought, the price is $1.17

If 51-75 are bought, the price is $1.12

The buyer can commit to buy at a specified price or can put in a non-cancellable order that will be filled at the lowest price reach at the end of the auction depending on how many orders have been place.

Launch Date? The planned launch date is June 15, 2012 with the beta revision with customers.

Why PriceSteps? If you are a seller with a large quantity of product, you can actually make more money selling at a lower price if you can sell all of your product. If you are a not-price-sensitive buyer, you can buy one item at the highest price and be done with it. If you are price senstive you can buy some of the items at the higher price and wait ’til the end of the promotion to see if the item price drops and if you are cheap, you can specify (non-cancellable order) an amount of the product at the lowest price.

Where is the Surprise? All buyers at the end of the promotion pay the lowest price.

How Does  PriceSteps Find the Buyers? We used to say the answer to everything was “God” now it’s “Social Media” the new God. The “saints” are the smart phones.

Revenue Model? Payment for the listing, a percentage of the revenues from the merchants and of course, advertising.

Scaling? First a pilot that will target the local Palo Alto-San Francisco merchant market since the company is located in Palo Alto-San Francisco. The initial buyers will be acquired through social media, on-line advertising and local events. As the site becomes more popular, the company will depend on cloud computing and distributed database infrastructure to prevent major crashes due to a sudden increase of visitors.

The Team: Giovanni Tripodi, Co-Founder, with 22 years of experience in technical management, business development and marketing high-tech. Giovanni worked for Texas Instruments, Novellus Systems, Spansion and SVTC.

Abdul Rahim Khatri, Co-Founder with 14 years of experience in e-commerce including designing robust, scalable, high-volume, mission-critical enterprise applications and distributed software solutions.

Takeaway: “Straightforward actions” or creating a standard auction site would lead to a head-to-head confrontation with the clear market leader, eBay, creating a reverse auction for goods is brings to a head-to-head confrontion PriceLine. Often the surprising action is to do: “None of the above” instead to create a new market space. Another “surprise” was how difficult it was to understand exactly what this company did.

Preview: Yes, there are more Sun Tzu quotes and startups on the way, we are only at #4, with 16 more to go. Coming up: GraffitiTech (wonder what they do) and Glooey (augmented reality).

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Flying Abstract Jellyfish aka Creativity

As Sun Tzu said around 520 BC in his seminal Art of War: “If the mind is willing, the flesh could go on and on without many things.” Israel has managed to become a world technology center along with Silicon Valley, Shanghai, New York and Bangalore.  What Israeli startup founders have is the “willing mind” so they are able to start amazing companies “without many things.”

On Monday, April 23, 2012 I attended the Israeli Innovation Showcase at the Palo Alto JCC. After a keynote by Oren Zeev on the topic of whether or not we are in another bubble, Oren wisely answered that he wasn’t sure, there were seven (7) startup presentations by Israeli founders.

MyFavorite of the Seven. #4 DudaMobile, the Palo Alto startup founded by Itai Sdan and Amir Glatt in 2009. Coincidentally Oren Zeev (Partner at Primera Capital) is Chairman of the Board and was an early investor in DudaMobile. In 2010, Duda launched “a hosted technology platform for mobile devices.”

Sorry, No In-Person Interview or Great Photo of the Founders. My request for an in-person interview with either or both Itai and Amir was met with what I call “the guy no” which is when the person (usually a guy) being addressed, either pretends he didn’t hear you or completely ignores you. The result is the same. So, sorry readers, no photo of Itai or Amir, just some artistic jellyfish. The Itai and Amir pattern is that they both have BSc Computer Science and Mathematics degrees from the Ben Gurion Unversity in Israel, both worked at SAP and both have 10 years of startup/high-tech work experience.  So, no, this company was not founded in their dorm room at Ben Gurion University, both founders had willing minds and went “without many things” before hitting the high-tech jackpot with lots of hard work and relevant work experience.

What Does Duda Do? DudaMobile makes your website mobile, any website. One of the thoughtful features is that it automatically syncs with your regular website so that the changes you make to regular website are automatically updated in the mobile site for free. It is optimized for all smart phones (iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile), has a “click-to-call” widget (great if you are a restaurant), mobile map with directions and  it is WordPress friendly (most blogs, including mine use WordPress), offers free mobile analytics, for the free application there are dozens of templates from which to select or Duda offers ($$) advanced studio design for a custom mobile site with access to Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) and HTML (Hypertext Markup Language–yeah, I know you all know this).

Does the Website Platform Matter? No.

How Does the Mobile Site Look? The mobile site has the look and feel of a website.

Cost? There are three (3) plans:

1. Basic. This is what we like to hear: “Free.” However like free TV you will have ads on your site.
2. Premium. If you don’t want any ads, I know I don’t, then the premium model is $9/month which is very affordable considering that you have no design costs. Although if you don’t like any of the myriad of templates that they offer,
3. Hire a Pro. you can pay for a custom design, $499 for the 1st year, then $86/yr thereafter.

Editing? It’s all drag and drop.

Viewing Platform? You website will be visible on all the major smartphone brands.

Users? 100,000 plus and increasing rapidly.

Other Startups at Israeli Innovation? Yes, there were six (6) others who (unfortunately) shall have to remain nameless because I only feature one company per blog post. Their presentations, services and prducts were also impressive and all of their founders were Israeli and probably Oren was an investor in some or all of them.

Takeaway: In honor of the recent Kentucky Derby: De Camptown Races (Stephen Foster, music and lyrics) “Camptown ladies sing this song, doo-da, doo-da/Camptown racetrack’s five miles long/Oh, de doo-da day.” O.k. so it’s DudaMobile and not Doo-DaMobile…..

Preview: Sun Tzu Series #4 of 20 will feature Pricesteps and I cannot reveal the Sun Tzu quote at this time.

© 2012 Marisa Alma McGinnis

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