99designs is a marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design. The company runs contests through which clients submit design briefs to the site along with how much they want to pay. Designers registered with 99designs submit their entries, and the client chooses which design they want and pays the winning designer. This approach has proved popular among entrepreneurs, given the proliferation and profitability of sites like 99designs, but it has often passionate critics. Read the full article »
Deal Radar heads into outer space with Slooh, which is both a Web-based platform that turns a computer into a telescope and an online astronomy community. Through Slooh’s SpaceCamera, members can access and even control telescopes that the company has positioned in both hemispheres to observe objects in space, including the moon, planets, and other galaxies. Read the full article »
This blog has covered various aspects of outsourcing in some depth; today we turn to a business model that is at the crossroads of the older outsourcing model and the growing preference for on-demand and SaaS services. uTest uses crowdsourcing for its customers to test their Web, desktop, and mobile applications through a large community of software testers worldwide. Through uTest, companies can get their apps tested across location, language, operating system, browser, phone maker, model, and wireless carrier (for mobile apps). Read the full article »
Deal Radar continues to focus on education with a discussion of Regent, an on-demand, SaaS provider of financial aid management solutions that make it easier for institutions to be current and compliant with the latest federal and state regulations and updates. Regent’s goal is to offer tools to automate and manage every aspect of the financial aid life cycle, and a system that enables institutions to standardize and centralize management of financial aid, increase productivity, ensure compliance and control costs. Read the full article »
This week’s Deal Radar series begins with coverage of Operational Memory LLC, which launched its first solution, a social networking application for enterprises, in September 2008. Founded in 2005 by two “soccer dads” who got to know each other and their areas of expertise over several seasons of girls’ soccer, the SaaS company is based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Co-founder Michael Trapp, an expert in systems/software development, and his partner, a mysterious senior executive at a Fortune 25 company whose name Trapp won’t divulge, worked nights and weekends to develop OpMem’s structure, features, and algorithms. Read the full article »
There was a time when technology venture capitalists would not touch a “content” deal. They only funded pure play technology companies. Gradually, as the Internet industry evolved, the notion of “paid content” brought about a fundamental change, leading to many content deals getting funded. Back in the summer of 2005, as I wrote about the emerging trends, I wrote a piece called Twenty-First Century’s Best Venture, suggesting that the Harry Potter franchise was one of the best entrepreneurial ventures to have been built in this century. Read the full article »
