Introducing LoKast!

Last week, the NearVerse team launched LoKast, our iPhone app at SXSW to much fanfare. PCWorld (http://bit.ly/9deHcW) and Billboard (http://bit.ly/bWuog) featured it as one of the top five apps at SXSW and other outlets Wired (http://bit.ly/b86ALC), VentureBeat (http://bit.ly/drZNCo) and TechCrunch (http://tcrn.ch/dzs2dA) all provided great coverage.  The first ‘disposable social network’, LoKast makes it easy to share media with others nearby and also allows you access to featured music artists so you can enjoy LoKast even if no one is around you.  Here are some answers to some FAQs, and we welcome your thoughts and feedback on the app.

What is LoKast?

LoKast is an iPhone app that enables users, music bands, businesses, and anyone else to share rich content when nearby others (300 feet).  Users create portals by adding photos, videos, music, contacts and links they want to publicly share.  LoKast automatically discovers other users in proximity and allows users to interact, discover and exchange media with each other.  Entire photo albums, videos, music collections can be shared on LoKast.

How do I use LoKast?

Download the app for your iPhone/iPod Touch at http://tinyurl.com/LoKast.  To use LoKast, ensure you and other users are either on the same Wi-Fi network and/or on Bluetooth.  Fire up the app, add content through the media manager, click LoKast and immediately start seeing others.  Just go into their portals and grab content they want to share.  At same time, other users can find your media and can view your LoKasted media collections in real-time.  Or just add additional media content that you take live or are talking about with others around you, and they can instantly view it on their phones from your LoKast.

Where do you see LoKast being used the most?

LoKast is a natural fit for events both social and professional.  Concert goers can use LoKast to get featured music, music videos, and other featured content from the band while the band is performing.  College students can use LoKast to socialize by instantly sharing a bunch of photos / videos taken at a recent party or trip or by recommending their favorite music to each other.  Friends can make social events more engaging, by taking group photos and instantly sharing them with the others around them.  Networking event and conference attendees can use LoKast to share demo videos and exchange contact information for not just themselves, but those of their relevant social networks.  Weddings, bars, at home, at work, at large events or at small private get-togethers – LoKast can literally help make any social event more engaging and interactive.

What about Privacy?

In version 1.0, LoKast users only add content they want to make publicly available so likely will be used in trusted environments.  Privacy will be turned on in our next release, allowing private LoKasts to be created.

What’s this music thing all about?

We wanted to build the most engaging app for our users and live music venues happen to offer just that.  We have partnered with bands and music distribution companies to bring you featured artists that go “digital stage” with their fans when they perform live.  There’s no better medium to get featured music, music videos, and other content from your favorite band while at a live show.

And in order to ensure that you are never quite “alone” when using LoKast, we bring those same featured artists directly to you on a weekly basis in LoKast, irrespective of their proximity to you.  These bands are independent rising stars – now you can download their entire, exclusive tracks and share those tracks with other users, even once the band is no longer featured.  It’s a great way to engage with LoKast when other users are not in proximity and also enables you to discover new artists.  Music brings us all together and LoKast helps!

How is this different than other file sharing apps?

We have great respect for the work the other apps have done in allowing you to share stuff with others.  We differ from other file sharing apps in several ways:

• We enable group interactions.  While other apps focus on 1-1 experiences, LoKast enables discovery and media exchanges with many users nearby of many media items at a time.
• We enable pull experiences.  While other apps focus on 1-1 push transactions, LoKast enables user to interact with others nearby on their own time, exploring their way through and getting the content they like.
• LoKast uses the NearVerse networking platform, so you always have the absolutely highest-speed and non-3G-dependent experience.  You can use LoKast in the subway or in a basement!
• LoKast is all about rich media.  While other apps focus on transfer of 1 contact and some photos, our core tech platform is built to share collections of larger rich media files like music, videos, photos, in addition to contacts and web links.

So check out LoKast and please chime in with your feedback and suggestions, and we’ll make sure to build LoKast to suit your tastes.  Get LoKast today and help us lead the next mobile revolution, the next transformation in social media – real-time, digitally powered, proximity interactions!

Thanks for all your continued support!

Get LoKast – http://tinyurl.com/LoKast

‘How To’ LoKast Video

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Cranking!

It’s been quite a week here in the NearVerse.  We’ve finalized a product name and made significant strides toward our launch while continuing to work the telco ecosystem (email me if you’d like more info).  While significant, I’m coming to terms with the notion that that true “cranking” – that is plowing through work product – whether it be an excel model, powerpoint preso, marketing document or other purely execution item happens after what is considered the “normal” work day.

From 9-6, it’s mostly about relationship building, meetings, calls, and a bit of cranking.  The real work at a startup happens from 6pm-2am and during the weekends, at least at NearVerse.  I find that I can focus the most when business activity shuts down.  New ideas, major deliverables and serious cranking happens when others are not working.  I manage to also slip in networking events, but for the most part, super productivity requires minimal disturbance.

I was reminded of this today.  On Saturday, my beautiful wife Lisa attended her niece’s birthday party, I wanted to attend but I couldn’t help but realize that I could crank hard during that time.  I accomplished so much but there is so much more to do.  While she was at the party, one of her uncles remarked that there’s no way he could work that hard – Lisa quipped back “if it were your company, you probably would”.   Needless to say, the bottle of wine we enjoyed upon her return was well worth the cranking.

At a startup, every waking hour has to be spent creating and being productive, else it just seems like you’re wasting time.  There aren’t enough hours in the day as it is for eating, working, having fun and hopefully sleeping.  The first 3 days of last week, my colleague, Brian and I worked 48 hours and we were only midway during the week.  As I write this (2am Sunday morning), I am sure that my partner Boris, after cranking all day Saturday, will be at it again at 7am.

Today, I cranked from 4pm to 11pm uninterrupted and while it was super productive, there is still so much more to do.  Marketing, sales, BD, product, HR, etc. –  the point is clear – as an entrepreneur, you have to find the time to crank, and when you do, crank hard!  I would love to hear what you guys have to say about this.  Tips are appreciated.  Let’s crank!

Vertical, Horizontal or Both?

Balancing Business Development and Consumer Development in Mobile

Business development at an early stage mobile startup is a tricky endeavor.  While Steve Blank’s notion of customer development is spot on, mobile startup business development is complicated by several factors.  If you decide to sell a consumer app (going vertical) that can then be leveraged into a platform for operators, handset makers and content providers (horizontal), your customer development process (pre-BD) gets murky.  You can survey all you want, but getting an app into consumers’ hands early is critical.  Unlike the Internet, you cannot set up a web service, call it beta and send out a few hundred invites and continue to iterate.  If launching an iPhone app, the best feedback will come from the ad-hoc distribution that apple allows to 100 folks before it is live in the store.  You can iterate this and then launch in the store, but every time you want to change you have to reapply.  So sending an app that may not resonate will earn you bad reviews and put you in a hole from the outskirt.

The mobile ecosystem, while changing rapidly, is controlled by a few large players.  While you are working the consumer app launch, you may want to start talking to carriers and handset makers if you are thinking platform distribution.  You go ahead and spin up discussions with big content providers, large operators and big OEM’s.  Before you realize, a good BD effort will lead to several meetings that could progress to serious conversations.  But your product still isn’t ready for prime time.  The big telco ecosystem wants to see telco-grade product.  So you pull back on BD and build for telco-grade.  When you re-approach the big guys, most of your contacts have moved on so you have to begin the process again.  Now you find yourself in an interesting conundrum – a consumer app that isn’t fully vetted and a supposed telco-grade system with a BD pipeline that needs to be rejuvenated.

So, what do you do?  You can’t do both and expect major success.  Again, focus, pick one.  Either you build a vertical app for consumers, iterate as fast as possible, get traction and then figure out the big guys.  Or you go horizontal from the beginning and try to cut big carrier deals, which is more expensive and time consuming but possibly more lucrative.  At least startups have a choice in the new mobile ecosystem.  What do you think?

Taking the Plunge and the (de)Merits of Diversification

Before taking the entrepreneurial plunge, I spent several years in the venture capital business with RRE Ventures and internships with Chart Venture Partners and DFJ Gotham.  It was a great experience and I was able to gain insight into many different sectors.  I reviewed hundreds of plans, met a ton of excellent entrepreneurs and invested in a handful of companies.  Everyday I felt a little bit smarter.  Needless to say it was a great ride.

When I decided to join Boris and start NearVerse, I applied the same rigor and diligence to the opportunity as I would to a venture investment.  That is: How disruptive was the technology? What were the economics of the business? How large was the market or how fast was it growing? How big of a problem were we trying to solve? Were we too early to this market? Could we lead and build an incredible team around us? What about Google? Etc, etc….

My diligence results pushed me to take the leap and embark on this adventure called entrepreneurship.  But, that was pretty much it for the similarities between investing and entrepreneurship – the evaluative process.  Everything since the day I decided to take the plunge was almost the exact opposite of the venture business.  Drastic lifestyle changes, selling versus buying, depth versus breadth, operating versus advising, etc. – the list goes on.  Both sides of the coin are fabulous and orthogonal experiences, but there is one insight I would like to offer regarding the notion of diversification.

As a VC, portfolio diversification is critical to success given the high failure rates of high-tech startups.  When applied to entrepreneurship, the opposite if true.  What I mean is, the more you try to diversify away risk, the riskier your venture will become.  When you have “a portfolio of one”, you have to be razor focused (especially at the outset) else you risk spreading yourself too thin and not executing.  You have to pick a market, a clear product strategy and just nail it – complete focus, not diversification is essential to entrepreneurial success.  I’m sure folks have heard this all before, but seeing it on both sides is can be quite a wake up call.  I hope you enjoyed these two cents and stay tuned for more musings during this adventure.

Intro

Hey All,

I decided to finally start a blog after all these years in technology and startups.  I am a former venture capitalist turned entrepreneur.  I co-founded NearVerse, a mobile software startup changing the way the mobile internet is consumed.  You can follow me on twitter and a find short bio on linkedin.  After almost a year building NearVerse, I thought it worth while to share some perspective and document this incredible journey.  I’ll start updating more frequently in the coming weeks.

See you soon in the NearVerse,

Vic