Governor Patrick Breaks Ground at the CIC

To most people the idea of being your own boss is highly alluring, but the significant risks that go along with not working for an established firm scare away many would-be entrepreneurs. This Tuesday, in honor of “National Entrepreneurship Week,” Governor Deval Patrick encouraged Massachusetts entrepreneurs to reach for their dreams at the ground breaking ceremony of the soon to be expanded Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC). (Image courtesy of: CIC)

“I welcome you and every other risk taker to The Commonwealth of Massachusetts because you are what makes the economy forward looking,” Patrick told the over 500 entrepreneurs that attended the event. “If you don’t recover, then we don’t recover,” he added.

According to Patrick, strong small businesses are what have given Massachusetts an edge against other states in this recession. Recent statistics show that over 85% of the state’s economy is supported by small businesses. Presently, the CIC is home to 175 of Massachusetts’ startups. The center’s expansion will increase this number to 375 upon completion in July.

Patrick made several key announcements during his visit. One of which was that the redesigned website for MassChallenge, a global startup competition centered in Massachusetts, is now live. According to the website, MassChallenge strives to “connect entrepreneurs with the resources they need to launch and succeed immediately.” You can visit masschallenge.org/about-us for specific information about the organization’s purpose and what they can do for your small business.

Another notable announcement was the commencement of the 90-day StartHere campaign. As the name implies, the objective of this initiative is to encourage individuals to start their new businesses in Massachusetts by stressing the support networks and resources in place in the state. A key component of this campaign is the Open House Series, during which innovative Massachusetts’ companies will speak with potential entrepreneurs about their experiences in the Bay State. Furthermore, It’s All Here, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, MassChallenge, and the New England Venture Capital Association will be holding open office hours at the CIC for interested parties. (Image courtesy of: masschallenge.org)

Patrick also revealed that The Massachusetts’ Office of Small Business and Entrepreneurship will hold its annual celebration of Young Entrepreneurs at the UMass Boston Venture Development Center on February 25th this year. Additionally, the CIC will launch its Entrepreneur Speaker Tour Series shortly, which will include speaking engagements at many Massachusetts’ state and community colleges.

Finally, Patrick unveiled a new “Venture Capitalist-backed” Google Map. Included in this virtual map, which can be found at: www.massitsallhere.com/starthere, are the locations of all the venture-backed companies in Massachusetts. The state hopes that this map will spread awareness about the number of successful startups in Massachusetts and provide a way for small businesses to network.

Sometimes all it takes to motivate someone to take on the risks and rewards of starting her own business is the encouragement of a single individual. In this case, Governor Deval Patrick, along with several Massachusetts’ businesses and organizations, have made it clear that they not only support entrepreneurs, but that they are asking them to step-up and do their part to assist in strengthening the economy of their state. In many ways Deval’s speech at the CIC’s ceremony was a call to arms to potential entrepreneurs across Massachusetts.

For more information visit: http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/business/x640762511/Gov-Patrick-visits-expanding-Cambridge-Innovation-Center

Salary.com’s Founder Resigns as CEO

Some people are strong believers of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” motto, while others feel that change, even in something presently successful, is necessary to prevent stagnation. Kent Plunkett, founder of Salary.com, subscribes to the second school of thought. After 10 years as CEO of his company, he has decided to resign, granting Salary.com the “opportunity for fresh leadership.” (Image courtesy of: Salary.com)

Based in Needham, MA, Salary.com, was established with the objective of delivering “on-demand compensation and talent management software.” Currently, the company reaches thousands of corporate subscribers and over 100 million individual users.

Plunkett will remain Chairman of the Board at Salary.com, while the role of interim CEO will go to Paul R. Daoust, until the position is permanently filled, following a formal search.

Plunkett expressed his confidence in Dauost to interviewers, saying: “We have recorded 35 consecutive quarters of revenue growth and I remain optimistic about the company’s long term growth potential. I am highly confident in Paul's leadership of the company’s executive transition plan and believe that Salary.com has a very strong foundation for our next chief executive to grow the company to the next level.”

Since 2006, Daoust has served as a member of Salary.com’s board of directors. Before assuming this role, he worked with human resource consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide for 28 years--five of which he served as CEO, tripling the company’s profits.

Salary.com’s lead director, Robert Trevisani, feels Daoust will serve well as interim CEO. Recently, Trevisani spoke on behalf of the company, “The Board is confident that with Paul joining as interim chief executive officer, Salary.com has the leadership in place that will enable the company to continue prospering while it searches for its next permanent chief executive officer.”

Investors, clients, and other stakeholders of Salary.com must be anxious to see where new leadership will take the company. With Daoust only serving as interim CEO, it’s likely that just as people warm up to his leadership style, it will be time to bring in the permanent replacement. (Image courtesy of: Salary.com)

It’s only natural for change to evoke a mix of trepidation and excitement. In this case, it will most likely be months before Salary.com will know if its change in leadership will cause a renaissance in the company or leave the board begging its founder to take back the reins.

For more information visit: http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0589077.htm

Frustration Spurs Creation of a Stand-Out Rental Search Service

Necessity is the mother of invention, is what they say. This proved to be true for Anton Pavlov and Schien Dong, founders of TheRentables.com, a website designed “to streamline” locating a suitable rental property.

Dong and Pavlov found that time and time again after finally locating a promising listing online they would see “call for availability” written in its description. Naturally, contacting the landlord of every potential rental candidate, which often involved frustrating days of phone-tag, was inefficient and quickly became frustrating. The pair saw a market in creating a service that compiled available rental properties into a single fast and easy to explore website. (Image courtesy of: TheRentables.com)

“I know what I'm looking for, you either have it or you don't, so let's not make it any more difficult” was the guiding principal under which the pair worked. This mentality yielded a
website where users simply enter a city and state into a search box and available rental locations within the area are displayed. TheRentables.com credits Google’s search technology as the inspiration for this simple search concept, which eliminates the complicated search-by-feature forms that many real estate websites use.

TheRentables.com further benefits from Google’s technology by including a Google Maps Street View window in every listing. Street View offers a way for users to test the claims made in rental listings. For example, a user can take a virtual walk around her potential new home to see if there actually is a bus stop on the corner and verify that the post office really is within walking distance. In this way, users can prescreen rental candidates without having to visit a single location in person.

Now, less than a year after the website’s creation, TheRentables.com lists about 34,000 rental properties. While searching the TheRentables.com is free and basic listings on the site are free, the company plans to monetize their service by charging for premium listings, which will receive increased visibility on the website, and by offering an off-line software for use by landlords managing multiple rental properties.

Representatives from TheRentables.com have traveled to various colleges stressing the convenience of their service to seniors who will soon be looking for their first place and other students looking to live off campus. TheRentables.com is also looking to partner with other real-estate websites to offer even more listings on their website.

TheRentables.com was definitely not a first mover in its industry. Many people have been using Craigslist or other online services to search for rental properties for years. But, anyone who has used Craigslist knows that, while is works, its interface sometimes makes you feel as if you are using a website from 1992. And those of you who have used other online rental websites will know all too well the pain of filling in lengthy search forms up-front only to find that the site has no listings that match your criteria. (Image courtesy of: Craigslist.com)

By launching its service in 2009, TheRentables.com was able to learn from the shortcomings of other online rental search services and take full advantage of the potential of Google’s free technology. Founders Dong and Pavlov knew these benefits would drive the success of TheRentables.com in a market that other less-determined entrepreneurs might have viewed as already saturated.

This success is a good reminder that sometimes it’s not necessary to create an entirely new way of doing things, but simply to improve upon an existing method. It is often more realistic to view progress as a string of several key improvements by several people than a collection of massive jumps forward by a few geniuses.

For more information visit: http://therentables.com/

Investors Find MA Startups Worthy of $355 Million

You don’t need to consult an economist to know that we are in the midst of a recession. Although stories of hardship and unemployment are easy to come by, one bright note is Massachusetts’ tech and life sciences startups, who received over $355 million this January in venture funding.

This funding was split between twenty-eight equity deals, according to research firm CB Insights. While $355 million is a staggering number in itself, it is even more impressive when you consider this amount is 273% more than the amount of funding Massachusetts startups in the industry received in December of 2009.

Southborough, MA-based software company IkaSystems nearly accounted for the $130 million December-to-January increase in funding in itself, receiving $120 million from a single deal. The largest venture capital deal in the life sciences industry, at $35 million, went to Cambridge, MA-based Alnara Pharmaceuticals.

(image courtesy of: www.xconomy.com)

Electronics, Internet, and telecommunications, all saw a decrease in funding in their sectors as compared to December. The internet sector, for example, raised only $7.1 million in January from three deals, which is a decrease of 82% from the $40.7 million the sector received from nine deals in December.

So, while all industries in Massachusetts did not benefit as much as tech and life sciences in January, investment money is clearly still pouring into the state, proving that even in a weakened economy deserving businesses will be given a chance to grow.

For more information, visit: http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2010/02/11/happy-2010-bay-state-startups-ring-in-the-new-year-with-355m-in-january-venture-funding/

3Play Media to Perfect its Voice Transcription Technology

Even if you’ve never created your own business, most people would guess that getting things moving is not easy. Naturally, nothing jumpstarts a company like a substantial cash infusion.

This week 3Play Media (http://3playmedia.com/), a Somerville, MA company, gained $450,000 in seed money from angel investors to perfect its audio transcription technology. In “conjunction with” this funding, the lead investor, Tole Khesnin, joined 3Play as its director of marketing, taking the company’s employee count to five. Khesnin now works alongside the company’s four founders: Josh Miller, Chris Johnson, Chris Antunes, and Jeremy Barron--all graduates of the MIT Sloan School of Management.

According to 3Play’s blog (http://blog.3playmedia.com/) “Tole is a serial entrepreneur and fits well with the 3Play team.” Tole co-founded MK Engineering, which was sold to GE Energy, founded Digital Pickle, which was sold to Paran Holdings, and co-founded Level 9 Technology, which he still plays a part in. To further increase 3Play’s knowledge arsenal, they are seeking a developer and quality assurance manager.

While only three years old, 3Play’s patent-pending technology, which “parses audio to produce a text transcript,” has managed to gain tremendous attention. But using a computer to generate text from audio is only Step 1 in their 3-step conversion process. Step 2 involves trained employees verifying the computer’s output and making corrections as required. 3Play feels this is a necessary step, considering that the complexities of English will make a perfect computer-generated audio-to-text conversion unlikely. Finally, Step 3 is the “human quality review.” In this step, another set of employees verify the work of the human editors. This 3-step process, complete with built-in redundancies, ensures the best-quality output.

(image courtesy of: http://3playmedia.com/)

One interesting feature the 3Play technology includes is the “Keyword Density Meter.” When someone searches an audio file for a particular word, the meter displays how many times the word appears in the file by showing green horizontal bars across a black rectangle, which represents the audio file in its entirety. Naturally, the more green bars shown in the display, the more times your search term appears in the audio file.

Another tool, the “Live Transcript with Word-to-Word Linking,” ties in directly with the Keyword Density Meter. When someone clicks one of the green markers in the meter, the tool takes them directly to that point in the corresponding transcript. Conversely, if someone clicks a word in the written transcript, the corresponding media file will load to that point.

“Our technology is built to handle anything from a one-off project to large media libraries,” 3Play’s site attests. The company suggests using its technology to convert media archives into written transcripts. Once completed, the transcripts offer an alternate way to receive information, as compared to viewing the original media, and add the above-mentioned search capabilities.

Using the technology to produce lower-cost closed captioning for DVDs and television shows is another application of 3Play’s technology. The company explains that their computerized process can often under-price having the job completed off-shore. Pricing for 3Play’s service is not immediately available on their website. Instead, interested parties are encouraged to contact 3Play “for a more personalized service.”

It will be interesting to see how 3Play Media uses its seed money to perfect its technology and rise to new levels of success.

For more information visit: http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2010/02/08/daily4-3Play-Media-finds-funding-from-angel-investors.html

CareerEncore’s Logo to Gain World-Wide Visibility

As a winning submission in American Graphic Design and Advertising’s (AGDA) annual competition, CareerEncore’s logo will be featured in the compilation “American Graphic Design and Advertising 25” (on sale here). CareerEncore’s logo will also be visible on the AGDA’s website at http://www.americancorporateid.com/cognito.html under Cognito’s, the logo’s creator, company page.

The AGDA prides itself on being a “showcase [for] the best graphic design and advertising in the USA.” Their annual compilation has readership in North America, Europe, and Japan among other nations. Furthermore, the AGDA’s website boasts thousands of visits every week.

All submissions to the AGDA are judged based on concept, execution, and appropriateness by a panel of “experts.” Adjudicators include prior AGDA winners, graphic design teachers, and industry professionals. A complete list of panel members can be seen here.

Some of the twenty plus categories the AGDA considers include: print advertising, billboards, direct mail, posters, packaging, stationery, and CDs. The final compilation will include works from several hundred design companies from various parts of the globe. The AGDA strives to give all submissions equal footing by keeping the identity of their design firm secret until after winners have been selected based on their merit. This has lead to a mix of winning entries from both large, established companies, and tiny, up-and-coming firms making it to the final stage of the competition.

The AGDA markets its compilation as a reference for aspiring designers and issues the encouragement that “many trendsetting styles” appeared in the work since its inception. So whether you’re in the creative design industry, or just have an interest in what the latest trends in the field are, pick up a copy of “American Graphic Design and Advertising 25” and look for CareerEncore’s logo inside. (Image courtesy of: AGDA)