Dogpatch Labs » Ryan

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Search Engine Marketing

Ryan — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:27:21 +0000

At Dogpatch Labs, we try to host at least one event a week – whether it be formal or informal, social or academic, large or small. Last week we hosted a session on search engine marketing best practices.

It was led by David Rodnitzky of PPC Associates. The session was called “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Search Engine Marketing” and David’s slideshow is included below.

When able and appropriate, we try to include presentations from Dogpatch Labs events and post them both on DogpatchLabs.com and on this blog (such as Facebook Connect Best Practices)

WSJ Visits Dogpatch Labs

Ryan — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:51:54 +0000

The Wall Street Journal’s Venture Capital Dispatch blog recently covered Dogpatch Labs: At Dogpatch, Polaris Unleashes Its Inner Angel.

“Venture investors who want to get close to young Internet entrepreneurs are trying a variety of strategies, aiming to get an early look at start-ups that might one day need a significant amount of venture capital.

Polaris Venture Partners, a well-known Boston-area venture firm, entered the fray with Dogpatch Labs, which it bills as “a frat house for geeks.” Launched in San Francisco about a year and a half ago, the labs have expanded to New York and Cambridge, Mass., providing a temporary home for entrepreneurs, many of the working on social media projects.

Polaris, a multi-stage venture investor that historically has made a significant number of seed-stage investments, so far has backed six companies from the labs.“ … read entire piece here…

Dogpatch Labs Featured in San Francisco Chronicle

Ryan — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:06:46 +0000

In their weekend article “San Francisco sees influx of tech incubators“, The San Francisco Chronicle’s Carlyn Said visited Pier 38 (home of Dogpatch Labs San Francisco) to study these emerging workspaces and communities.

In her exploration of San Francisco workspaces and incubators, Said arrives at a premise similar to our core tenet of open source entrepreneurship: “[Entrepreneurs] do it for the cross-fertilization with other entrepreneurs.”

Now with three locations (San Francisco, New York and Cambridge), Dogpatch has roughly 150 active residents (and an even larger list of graduates). We believe that ‘cross fertilization’ is important both within each space and across the three locations. And as we host events and have new residents join the lab, the key ingredient with search for is collaboration.

CNN Visits Dogpatch Labs New York

Ryan — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 01:15:54 +0000

As Internet Week New York kicks off next week, CNN visited Dogpatch Labs New York to understand how New York’s growing tech scene compares to Silicon Valley’s.

For the piece (“The next Silicon Valley? It may be New York“), CNN spoke to several of the Dogpatch Labs residents and Polaris partner Peter Flint about New York entrepreneurship, networking and culture. While opinions varied (see the video below), it is clear that:

1. The New York tech scene is growing rapidly, and
2. It has its own unique culture and community

As Peter Flint says in the below video, “I don’t know if New York will ever become Silicon Valley. In some ways, do you want it to become Silicon Valley? The culture here is very different than the culture there.”

With Dogpatch Labs hosting entrepreneurs in New York, Cambridge and San Francisco – we are excited to take part in each of the communities and hopefully add to the unique cultures.

You can watch the video on CNN.com:

Dogpatch Hosting DukeGEN Angel Pitch Night

Ryan — Tue, 11 May 2010 21:28:30 +0000

I am very excited to be part of a great evening at Dogpatch Labs tomorrow evening for the Duke Global Entrepreneurship Network (“DukeGEN”) Angel Pitch Night. We have eight companies backed by Duke graduates and founders who are pitching to a judges panel…. also comprised of fellow Duke alums:

- Jim Scheinman ’88, Bebo
- Josh Felser ’86, B ’90, Freestyle Capital
- Aaron Patzer ’02, Mint
- and myself ’03, Polaris Ventures

The event will be held on Wednesday, May 12th from 6-8:30pm in San Francisco at Dogpatch Labs (Pier 38, The Embarcadero). RSVP for this event on LinkedIn HERE. Space is limited. Attendees will be allowed into the venue on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Numerous companies applied and eight were named as finalists:

- BizeeBee - Small business messaging and scheduling. Founder and CEO Poornima Vijayashanker E ’04.
- Canvert - Pay per ring lead generation. Founder and CEO Scott Thomas T ’96.
- CoverHound - Better way to find insurance. Founder and CEO Basil Enan T ’03.
- FitNet - Empowering healthy living. Founder and CEO Dr. Jason Langheier M ’09.
- RefYo - Referrals on the social Internet. Co-founder and CEO Ed Spiegel E ’99 and co-founder and Director of Technology Kevin Lochner E ’99.
- Social Stir – Dating for social media interactions. Founder and CEO Allen Vance B ’07.
- Stinky Teddy – Search engine optimized for now. Founder and CEO David Hardtke T ’94.
- YouRock – Sponsorship of events and individuals. Founder and CEO Jeremy Cotter T ’02.

Starts: Wednesday May 12, 2010, 06:00PM
Ends: Wednesday May 12, 2010, 08:30PM
Location: Dogpatch Labs
38 The Embarcadero (Pier 38)
San Francisco, CA 94111 US

Website: http://www.dukegen.com/angel-pitch-event
Industry: information technology and services

Intended For: Duke students, Duke alumni, Duke staff, Duke parents, founders, entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists, CEOs

Organization: The Duke Global Entrepreneurship Network (“DukeGEN”)

DukeGEN is hosting an event for the entire Duke community during which Duke founders of non-enterprise Internet businesses or consumer mobile application services, platforms, or applications will present their business concepts to a distinguished panel of Duke angel investors and early stage venture capitalists. Our panelists include Jim Scheinman T ’88, Josh Felser T ’86, B ’90, Aaron Patzer T ’02, and Ryan Spoon T ’03

Announcing Dogpatch San Francisco’s Newest ‘Class’

Ryan — Tue, 11 May 2010 01:04:09 +0000

We are excited to announce the newest Dogpatch Labs class here in San Francisco. It includes entrepreneurs and companies that have been part of the lab over the last few months and those that just recently joined (new additions: AdCru, Animoto, Burbn, FanPop, JibJab, LearnBoost, Milennial Media, Recruly, StickyBits, Task Rabbit and Wild Pockets).

As always, we look for great, exciting entrepreneurs who thrive in open and collaborative environments. And we aim to have a diverse collection of individuals, companies and verticals. The current batch of residents certainly represents that! You can view the TechCrunch write up here and rosters of all three Dogpatch Labs here.

Dogpatch San Francisco

AdCru is a pay-per-follower ad network for Twitter founded in September 2009.

Animoto (San Francisco) generates custom, professional-looking slideshows from user-uploaded music and photos. Their “patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology and high-end motion design” drives the web app. (TechCrunch coverage)

Burbn is a new way to communicate + share in the real world. (TechCrunch coverage)

Cardpool is a gift card exchange service where anyone can buy, sell, or trade their gift cards in a safe and secure environment. (TechCrunch coverage)

EGG HAUS is an interactive agency. We help our clients create and deploy engaging branded experiences on every consumer platform.

FanPop is a network of user-generated fan clubs for different topics of interest created and maintained by the community of fans.

FanPulse welcomes you to your world of sports. FanPulse (launching January 2010) is a new sports-service that lets you easily follow the sports you love and talk about them with your real friends. (TechCrunch coverage)

Formative Labs – working on ideas that solve problems and change consumer behaviors.

Formspring: Ask questions, give answers and learn more about your friends. (TechCrunch coverage)

Hollrr – Want to help your friends discover a great new product? A quick Hollrr is the easiest way to let them know what deserves a shout out. (TechCrunch coverage)

JibJab (San Francisco): Headquartered in Santa Monica and founded by Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, and backed by Polaris, JibJab is a leading e-Card business. (TechCrunch coverage)

LearnBoost is an education platform for secondary schools.

Millennial Media delivers the largest reach – 83% of the US mobile audience – through the largest mobile advertising network in the US. (TechCrunch coverage)

Mr. Tweet looks through your extended network to help you find effective relationships and information most relevant to yourself.

ProfessionL centralizes all your recruitment management needs into one unified web-based software application that can be used by any business that recruits (including recruitment specialists).

Recurly makes subscription billing easy for developers and organizations of all sizes.. (TechCrunch coverage)

The Start Project – turning ideas into action. (TechCrunch coverage)

Stickybits brings the physical and digital worlds together with barcode stickers which trigger audio, video, photo, and text messages when scanned. (TechCrunch coverage)

startupSQUARE is a marketplace where entrepreneurs can meet one another and brainstorm their next big business idea.

TaskRabbit(formerly runmyerrand.com) helps individuals and small businesses in a community outsource their tasks and deliveries, leveraging the latest technology and the social networking paradigm.

Trazzler helps you answer one question, “Where should I go?” by recommending trips unique to your location and Travel Personality.

Twylah: your personal assistant on twitter.

Wild Pockets is an end to end solution that supports creators throughout the life cycle of 3D game development

Yardsellr – In the tradition of neighborhood garage- and yard-sales, Yardsellr makes it easy for you to list and sell, or find and buy whatever you want. Yardsellr helps spread the word about your item within your online “neighborhood” – social and messaging networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Live Streaming Game Jam Workshop 2010

Ryan — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 01:05:42 +0000

Tonight Dogpatch Labs is hosting Wild Pocket’s Bay Area Game Jam Workshop. Wild Pockets is one of the several new Dogpatch Labs residents moving in on May 1. Tonight’s workshop is being streamed live via Ustream (embedded below) and starts at 6:30pm pst. It will be followed by a Dogpatch Labs Social Gaming evening complete with pizza and keg:

View live stream of Game Jam 2010 workshop here on Ustream

Stream videos at Ustream

Dogpatch Labs: PR for Startups

Ryan — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:00:14 +0000

Wednesday evening, Dogpatch Labs hosted a “PR for Startups” event alongside Anthony Ha of VentureBeat and Jason Kincaid of TechCrunch. Topics included:

- what is newsworthy
- how and when to engage press / bloggers
- who to engage and with what tact
- when to use internal vs. external PR leads

Below is a list of 11 great takeaways written by David Hua of Wellsphere and Health Central. The pictures are from Dogpatch resident Art Chang (of FanPulse). Art also has a list of six takeaways from the evening – available on his blog.

Takeaways from PR for Startups Event (by David Hua)

1. Short and Sweet – Send concise emails stating what your company does and why it is interesting. 48-72 hours of notice before a launch is recommended.

2. Video Walkthroughs – Emails with a youtube video walkthrough (1-2min) is helpful

3. The Elephant in the Room – Don’t be afraid to compare yourself with the competitor. Do show how you are different.

4. Pay attention to the Calendar – Plan your launch with the calendar in mind. Do not release your news around big events, announcements, or a busy day of news.

5. A Day in the Life – Tech Bloggers put out 3-6 posts a day. If it is a slow day for them, email them something interesting and cc their tips@URL.com email (launches, acquisitions, and funding are big news items)

6. Headlines – Don’t suggest one and don’t use a misleading subject line, it’s annoying

7. Assets Ready – In the follow up email or phone call with the writer, make sure you send an email with screen shots, company information, and video (optional).

8. Build relationships – If you know something interesting that doesn’t pertain to your company, send the tip along to the writer, they are helpful.

9. Meetups - Invitations for lunch, dinner, and events are welcomed

10. Clear communication every step of the way – Be very clear what you mean about “exclusive”. (i.e How long a particular writer has an exclusive for? Notification if you are moving on with the news to another publication.)

11. Traffic Observations – Techcrunch sends firehose amounts of traffic over the course of a few days whereas VentureBeat sends a consistent amount of traffic over a longer period of time

Register for San Francisco Office Hours (March 31st)

Ryan — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:32:43 +0000

The next Dogpatch Labs San Francisco office hours will be Wednesday March 31st from 9:00 – 11:00am. Office hours are informal and a good opportunity to meet, tour Dogpatch and interact with other residents / entrepreneurs.

If attending, please grab your free ticket on Eventbrite!

Where: Dogpatch Labs at Pier 38 in San Francisco (Townsend and Embarcadero)
What: Office Hours
When: March 31st at 9-11am
Who: Ryan Spoon (Polaris Venture Partners) and various Dogpatch residents + office hours attendees

Foodspotting, EGG HAUS Featured on TechCrunch

Ryan — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:27:00 +0000

As their iPhone App launched today, Foodspotting was featured on TechCrunch as a “location based game that will make your mouth water.“

The iPhone app is a location-aware guide to restaurants… and uniquely, to their dishes and foods. Users take snapshots of their dishes – called “foodspottings”. The application was built by Dogpatch Labs San Francisco resident EGG HAUS, Inc. (who also built DogpatchLabs.com). Congrats to both!