Kwingo Launches Mobile Language Apps
What do you do when you’re a successful, female, mid-career IT and operations executive with several big-name companies, and you decide to try something different? Why, you launch a mobile web apps company, that’s what!
Actually Lisa Foote first took some time to give back by using her executive skills for a year or so of non-profit charity work (with the United Way of Minnesota), after successful stints at Target, GE Capital, and Prudential. But it wasn’t long when the for-profit drive was back, and soon she was plotting, with husband Brad Roberts, a new business idea for solving language challenges in today’s increasingly global economy. And it just so happened that Web 2.0 technology was going to play a part — because Brad, who has a highly eclectic creative and business background, had become a self-taught Ruby on Rails developer.
The Birth of Kwingo
Foote and Roberts newly discovered life as entrepreneurs soon resulted in the birth of Kwingo.net, a venture they introduced earlier this year. Its mission is to bring simple, useful productivity tools to professionals working in field occupations using web-based mobile devices as a platform for delivery.
With her experience working in large enterprises, Foote knew that labor workforces were continuing to globalize, and that language challenges would just continue to multiply. Kwingo would provide the tools workers in the field needed to communicate with coworkers who speak a different language, helping everyone work more productively and safely. Read more
Enleiten: A Social GTD
If you have any interest in personal or group productivity, it’s likely that you’ve at least become aware of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system. It’s not only taken the corporate world by storm, it’s become the geek method/tool/approach of choice for moving far beyond a simple to-do list. The system has even spawned productivity sites like 43 Folders, an homage to one element of the GTD system, as well as its own blog and news site dedicated to GTD-centric productivity called GTD Times.
Due to the success of Allen’s GTD methodology and the sheer volume of software developers among the ranks of the faithful, tools abound for using the GTD method. From David Allen Co’s own Microsoft Outlook add-in to dozens of offerings for PC’s and Mac’s (as well as other types of tools), most work well but suffer from an increasingly evident fatal flaw: using GTD is a problem if all of your data is sitting on a single computer. More and more of us are on multiple devices and mobile…using a laptop, smartphone, desktop at home and the office (and even casually using computers in coffee shops, airports or at a friend’s house) and need to use GTD but be able to access it anywhere we have an internet connection.
In 2007 Eric Hedberg, an economics major from Carleton College, worked at Secure Computing and Stockwalk.com, the latter in financial sector software, and Hedberg became aware of the direction applications were taking by being delivered “in the cloud” (i.e., as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) hosted and available to anyone with an internet connection) and started looking at ways to implement a SaaS data warehousing/workflow management application for the financial services industry.
After some prototyping and user feedback, he and his college friends who’d joined him (Doreen Hartzell, CEO, and Steve Bentley, in charge of interface design) realized that the best part of what they’d built was the project management piece, which delivered collaborative online workspaces using a GTD model. That revelation spawned the current company focus, Enleiten, which is a collaborative GTD application delivered in the cloud and available for single consumer users, small groups or businesses. Read more
Commercial Real Estate Search Made Efficient
As the Internet increasingly becomes a platform upon which entrepreneurs and opportunists build disruptive and inefficiency crushing innovative Web applications, organizations like GoFishCommercial will emerge to do exactly that and make the inefficient, efficient.
After hearing about the company and taking the time to poke around the site, I had the chance to talk with Asher Silber, VP of Sales & Marketing for GoFishCommercial, in order to understand their current deliverable and a bit more about where they’re headed.
Kristi Oman (commercial real estate developer and property owner) and husband Zev, looked at the simplicity and effectiveness of Craigslist and knew they could build and deliver a site that would match that and add significant value to both the search process by buyers as well as to the owners of commercial real estate and their brokers.
What is particularly intriguing and innovative, however, is how GoFishCommercial has aligned the incentives of buyers, property owners and brokers, and done so in a disruptive and efficient way. Read more
Bellying Up to the ‘Bar for The Seven Deadlies
As part of Minnebar last Saturday I had the pleasure of sitting in on the “7 Deadly Mistakes of Start-up Marketing” presented by Curt Prins, marketing consultant focusing on emerging technology companies. In a full board room at Coffman Union on the U of M Campus, Curt took us through what he considers to the most common mistakes entrepreneurs make as they begin to develop and market their company or products. (I had a chance to Twitter those “mistakes” live but they deserve just a bit more focus.)
Mistake #1 Target Market Greed. A common problem that afflicts most new companies. In the quest to market to the most bodies, they target way beyond their sweet spot. The tighter the niche that you focus on the better results you will get. Curt demonstrated his point with a very simple “pie” chart. Cut out a slice, and then cut it again. Reaching that small piece of the pie will yield tastier results. Not to mention it’s a much better use of your marketing budget.
Mistake #2 Prospect Gluttony. Similar in nature to the above Target Market Greed, the more you wander outside of the group that really needs your product the more disappointing the results.
Mistake #3 Product Pride. It’s your baby! Clearly, it’s the answer to everyone’s needs…or do they even give a #*@? (Curt’s word, or rather, punctuation.) Your product is an extension of you and of course benefits you. Does it benefit your prospects? Read more
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The "Minnov8 Gang" Podcast
