From Croatia to Silicon Valley, Cleaning Up The Environment: Neno Duplan, CEO of Locus Tech (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In 1997 you recognized the potential for the Internet to be the front end interface to large amounts of data. What was your next step? Neno Duplan: That led to the beginning of Locus, which I founded in 1997. We had more domain expertise than anyone else in the world. I then set out

Read Full Article »

From Croatia to Silicon Valley, Cleaning Up The Environment: Neno Duplan, CEO of Locus Tech (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What types of companies were generating the large amounts of environmental data? Neno Duplan: Consulting engineering firms working for Chevron or oil companies. Almost every gas station on every corner can be considered a contaminated site because almost every underground storage container at those gas stations has leaked at some point.

From Croatia to Silicon Valley, Cleaning Up The Environment: Neno Duplan, CEO of Locus Tech (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Neno Duplan is the founder, president, and CEO of Locus Technologies, a provider of on-demand environmental data and information management solutions. Prior to starting Locus Technologies, Dr. Duplan held senior management positions with Canonie Environmental (W.R. Grace Company), The IT Group and D’Appolonia Consulting Engineers. Dr.

Read Full Article »

Building a Virtual World from Berlin: Smeet CEO Sebastian Funke (Part 7)

Sramana: Who do you view as your competition? Sebastian Funke: A product called Shaker debuted this year, and they are focused on helping people meet other people. That is exactly what we do and what we have been doing for the past two years. We are much farther along than they are. We see the possibility

Read Full Article »

Building a Virtual World from Berlin: Smeet CEO Sebastian Funke (Part 6)

Sramana: You now have a solid revenue stream and a good user base. Where do you go from here? Sebastian Funke: We don’t see Smeet as a single game. We see it as a social interaction platform. You can enter it through our website or through our application. It is a cloud of different rooms

Read Full Article »

Building a Virtual World from Berlin: Smeet CEO Sebastian Funke (Part 5)

Sramana: What are the most common gifts people tend to give each other? Sebastian Funke: They give rings, necklaces, furniture for virtual houses, and a lot of other items. We have a separate catalogue for gifts. People cannot buy them for their own use.

Building a Virtual World from Berlin: Smeet CEO Sebastian Funke (Part 4)

Sramana: Do you track specific key performance indicators within the virtual worlds or just those indicators related to new users? Sebastian Funke: Prior to this year we did not look at key performance indicators inside of our product because we did not have the capability to do so. There was not a clear user funnel.

Read Full Article »

Building a Virtual World from Berlin: Smeet CEO Sebastian Funke (Part 3)

Sramana: What is the Smeet virtual world like? Sebastian Funke: It is a browser-based virtual world where you can dress your avatar, chat with other people, and have private rooms which you can decorate with virtual items. Virtual items are purchased with virtual currency, and you buy virtual currency with real money that you buy

Read Full Article »