Dogpatch Labs » DPL San Francisco

DPL-SF: Remembering Our Inspirational Home, Preparing for Next Chapter

gusweber — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 22:46:32 +0000

Since 2008, Pier 38 has been the Dogpatch Labs, San Francisco (DPL/SF) inspirational home to nearly 250 entrepreneurs. Using the shared space and mentorship that DPL/SF has provided, these creative minds formed roughly 150 innovative companies.

Unfortunately, our Pier 38 home will soon be changing.

The Port Authority of San Francisco notified all Pier 38 tenants today that they must vacate the building by the end of September. This action stems from specific building code violations that were provided to Pier 38 building management in mid-August.

While today’s action creates a difficult set of relocation challenges, we want to use this moment to recognize and celebrate a few important milestones from our two-and-a-half years at Pier 38.

First, DPL/SF companies secured over $100 million in funding. Second, eight companies moved to acquisition, including AppJet, Wild Pockets, Thing Labs (Brizzly), Rec Rec, Movity, Fridge, and LOLapps. Other big names to remember include Instagram, Formspring, TaskRabbit, Yardsellr, StyleSeat, LearnBoost, MyPad and Recurly.

For our current and former entrepreneurs, the time spent at Pier 38 developing these and other companies has been significant. Long hours, group coffees, lunches, speaker presentations, successes and failures will all be remembered and associated with this first home.

We will also remember our dynamic Pier 38 neighbors, namely Twilio, 99 Designs, Jambool (Google), Social Media (Living Social), Automattic /Wordpress, Threadsy, and True Ventures.

Over the next few weeks, we will be working with each of our 18 current Dogpatch Labs residents to help them ensure that they have a suitable workplace going forward.

And as we seek a new location for Dogpatch Labs, our commitment to supporting early-stage startups is unchanged. We look forward to beginning a new chapter in our history very soon.

Updates from the Pier on DPL San Francisco

gusweber — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:13:29 +0000

If you’ve stopped by Dogpatch at Pier 38 over the past few weeks, you’ve probably noticed a bunch of new faces! We’ve had a whole new crop of awesome entrepreneurs working on some pretty cool projects. At any given time, across the 3 dogpatch location, there are over 80 companies at work, representing well over 225 entrepreneurs. Stay tuned for some updated from DPL in Cambridge and New York!

Here’s the rundown of who has joined us in San Francisco:

Bombfell: Bombfell’s the clothing subscription for guys that’s like having a fashion-savvy girlfriend send you one stylish item of clothing every month.

KarmaStore: Solves important problems around the world by connecting people who want to see change with great charities focused on making an impact.

LimeLig.ht: Is creating meaningful interactions with the world’s most interesting people

Open Home Pro: Open Home Pro is a platform for real estate agents to convert more leads and communicate more effectively with each other.

Rally Commerce: is a social commerce platform built from the ground up for online merchants.

RushRez: is a risk-free ad network for local businesses

SocMetrics: Socmetrics is a SaaS tool for finding social media Influencers for any given topic- e.g. we have the top 10,000 most relevant, authoritative, and influential people who tweet, blog, post videos on YouTube etc. about any topic, from Cloud Computing to Travel to Moms.

TapSense: is building exciting new distribution tools for mobile app developers. Stay tuned.

Zoom Learning: Zoom is personalized learning on iPad. We use cloud technologies and analytics to automatically update learning content, show performance report card and provide tips and tricks to improve and excel.

Looking to Apply to Dogpatch?

gusweber — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 17:18:03 +0000

We’ve created a standard application process that covers all 3 US locations of DPL. You can apply here: http://bit.ly/dplapplication.

Mashable Profiles Instagram & Touches on Dogpatch Community.

RyanSpoon — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 18:24:48 +0000

As part of their Scaling Startups series, Mashable profiled Dogpatch-alum Instagram: “Scaling Instagram: How the Photo Sharing Startup Avoided Catastrophe in Its First Days“. It is an interesting read considering Instagram’s instant, tremendous success… and it is also a testament to Kevin and Mike, who are terrific.

The article also touches upon the core of Dogpatch Labs: a community of entrepreneurs of different backgrounds and skills. As the Instagram team quickly (ie six hours after launch), co-founder Mike Krieger leverage the Dogpatch community’s input / experience:

Instagram, already fast-approaching 40,000 users, would need something much sooner to meet the weekend demand. “We needed to be on a platform where we could adjust in minutes, not days,” says Krieger.

So, Krieger, a former UX designer at Meebo with admittedly no experience scaling a startup, walked around the Dogpatch Labs coworking space in San Francisco — the locale of Instagram’s first office — and queried other startup founders about what to do. Officemates suggested that Instagram move its service to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

Instagram officially went from a local server-run operation to an EC2 hosted shop in the wee hours of Saturday morning October 9, 2010. Doing so was much like open heart surgery, according to Krieger.

Also fun: Mashable highlighted the Instagram picture of the Red Bull consumed during their all-nighter at Dogpatch

Updates from Dogpatch Labs SF

RyanSpoon — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 15:39:01 +0000

For South by Southwest 2011, we constructed a two-day long Dogpatch Labs SXSW and, over that period, hosted 100s of entrepreneurs. It was a lot of fun and a big success (TheStreet, Inc, NY Observer, etc).

The weekend also reminded me that there are a handful of exciting new companies who have recently joined Dogpatch Labs SF (see all here) and a couple great launches / announcements from former residents:

New Dogpatch Labs SF Residents

Adility is an offers platform for advertisers, publishers and developers. Adility has three core products: OffersApp for advertisers and brands, OffersDB for publishers and developers, and OffersAgency for sales teams. (Business Insider coverage)

ChartBoost: get your iPhone apps into the ranks.

MyPad is the best way to view Facebook on the iPad. It’s been downloaded over 3,000,000 times. (TechCrunch coverage)

Truvie: We’re a passionate team working on a building out-of-the-box hyper local solutions that will shape the future of web and mobile fraud detection, targeted advertising and content geo-fencing.

Yobongo is a mobile communication startup currently in private beta testing. The keys to the service are location, realtime, and identity. (TechCrunch coverage)

News from Recent Dogpatch Labs SF Graduates

SoundTracking: share the soundtrack to your life. (TechCrunch coverage)

Wild Pockets is an end to end solution that supports creators throughout the life cycle of 3D game development (Update:acquired by Autodesk)

Mashable + Dogpatch = Breakout Apps of SXSW 2011

RyanSpoon — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 00:49:57 +0000

As South by Southwest approaches, start-ups are polishing their applications and planning their launch parties. And today Mashable listed the “13 Potential Breakout Apps to Watch at SXSW 2011“. Of the thirteen companies to watch, three are Dogpatchers:

Also – a reminder that we will have Dogpatch Labs SXSW Sunday and Monday. If interested, click here to learn more or email me directly for more information. Several of us will be present!

- Yobongo (Dogpatch SF)

- Fast Society (Dogpatch NYC)

Fast Society Version 2 Launch from Fast Society on Vimeo.

- Instagram (Dogpatch SF)

Dogpatch Labs coming to SXSW!

gusweber — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 18:50:32 +0000

Polaris Ventures is excited to announce that it will bring its spirit of “open source entrepreneurship” to SXSW 2011, by opening a special edition of Dogpatch Labs. On Sunday March 13 and Monday March 14 Dogpatch Labs Austin will open its doors to entrepreneurs needing a place to work and hang out. DPL Austin will be located at Treehouse Pub, 501 East 6th Street – right in the heart of SXSW action. Similar to Dogpatch in New York, Cambridge and San Francisco there will be free desks, WIFI, food, space for informal meetings and a special SXSW foosball room! So if you are in between sessions and need a place to get some work done and prefer not to be in your room, hotel lobby or coffee shop, sign up at for a spot at Dogpatch Labs.

We would like to invite any and all entrepreneurs who are working on interesting projects to signup and tell us about yourself and your company. While we do not have unlimited space we will try to accommodate as many entrepreneurs as possible

Additionally, Peter Flint (@pflint), Mike Hirshland (@vcmike), Dave Barrett (@dbodbo) and myself (@ryanspoon) will be holding office hours at Dogpatch Labs and would be very interested in meeting with companies.

You can sign up here for meeting time slots: http://ohours.org/PolarisVentures

Here’s the full Dogpatch Austin Schedule:

9am-11pm DPL open for entrepreneurs.
3pm-6pm Polaris Office Hours: http://ohours.org/PolarisVentures
5pm-6pm Informal Open office hours with Partners
8pm-11pm DPL SXSW Party (private invitation)

Monday:

9a-11pm DPL re-opens for entrepreneurs.
3p-6p Polaris Office Hours http://ohours.org/PolarisVentures
8pm-10pm Partners vs entrepreneurs foosball tournament (private invitation)

Heading into 2011, Some Dogpatch SF Updates

RyanSpoon — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 17:17:21 +0000

As we head into 2010 winds up and we head into 2011, there is a lot of terrific news coming out of Dogpatch Labs. Here is a sampling from just the last couple weeks in Dogpatch Labs San Francisco. Of course, I have missed several exciting updates… and I apologize! We look forward to a terrific 2011!

There are several great new companies and entrepreneurs joining in January. Dogpatch Labs New York is currently taking applications (apply here) and you can always drop me a note for San Francisco here.

End of 2010 Dogpatch Labs Updates:

- Movity was acquired by Trulia earlier in the week (Movity is also a Polaris company). Read more…

- Instagram hit 1,000,000 users. Read more…

- Curated shopping site Everlane soft launched this week

- Trazzler launched a deal platform specifically for travel

- ChompOn launched a couple killer partners. Read more….

- Cardpool released a new marketplace version yesterday. Read more…

- Stickybits released a totally new iphone version to great brand feedback (Note: a Polaris company). Read more…

- Frid.ge released an enhanced version of http://frid.ge, including full email integration (Note: a Polaris company)

- AllTrails has the #1 noteworthy iphone app in travel. Download here…

- Fanvibe released a new iphone version and NBA integration. Read more…

- Yardsellr and Formspring recently closed follow on rounds of funding. (Note: Formspring is a Polaris company) Read more here and here…

Dogpatch Labs SF Collage via Instagram

RyanSpoon — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:03:05 +0000

Fun, quick collage I put together of Dogpatch Labs using Instagr.am – one of the exciting current Dogpatch Labs companies.

These are pictures taken of Pier 38 (where Dogpatch is housed) using various filters on Instagram.

Another Dogpatch Exit: Thing Labs / Brizzly!

RyanSpoon — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:59:35 +0000

Congrats to Jason Shellen and the entire Thing Labs team on yesterday’s announcement that Thing Labs was being acquired by AOL. Rich irony that TechCrunch, which originally reported that the deal was rumored, was also bought by AOL on the same day.

We are psyched to report that this is the third exit for Dogpatch Labs in under a year, following Google’s acquisition of AppJet and MTV’s acquisition of Social Express.

We will have exact numbers soon, but between financings and exits the number of Dogpatch success stories now exceeds 50. Way to go guys!

And last but certainly not least, Thing Labs also was a very nice return for Polaris It’s been a good September for us. Last week two of our portfolio companies had big exits: Internet Brands was acquired for Hellman & Friedman for $640M, and Asthmatx was acquired by Boston Scientific for about $450M.