Tech Tip: Skimbit

Shiny Shiny - September 26, 2008
It's perfect for when you're trying to decided which winter jacke read more

There are lots of shopping bookmark sites out there (I'm a ThisNext girl), but when you want other people's opinions on something, they don't quite cut it. Skimbit aims to remedy this, allowing you to tag and store online finds, and invite people to rate and discuss them.

It's perfect for when you're trying to decided which winter jacket to choose, but I think it really comes into its own if you're trying to arrange something within a group, such as a holiday. It kills group emails dead, and you can easily see the popularity of each suggestion.

My big decision this week is a floor lamp (you can check out the option here) and it's been useful to collect all the options in one place. It's not perfect - the skimming tool doesn't pick up all images, thanks to some funky web coding (Homebase, I'm looking at you). But as somewhere to keep your life organised, it's a huge help.

ScarlettSusi
Shiny Shiny

The new brand ambassador - you

brants - September 26, 2008
Skimbit is a browser add on that allows you to make a project page read more

I have come across quite a few interesting sites which link shopping to social media. There’s Tribe Smart, which allows you to make a profile and use crowd wisdom to know about the product. And its not just a product, it could be a website, a movie. In the process, you end up meeting people who share similar interests. Skimbit is a browser add on that allows you to make a project page you can configure, for your purchase, add products from different sites, and then allow others to rate these.  Another startup working on a plugin based model is Notches, which works on two fronts - allows product sites that tie up with it to add review buttons to its product pages, and users who have downloaded it can review any product from any website. (via Center Networks) Meanwhile, there’s a very interesting online music sale model at PopCuts, which rewards you for spotting trends early. You can buy a track, and when someone buys it from then on, you get a cut. A very cool idea, I thought, and would like to see how it pans out. Just like the earlier site, you start meeting people who rock to the same tune.

Mashable has written about a widget based service called TurnTo, which works on the concept of social shopping. Deviating from the path of the above two, this one lets you add people from your existing circle of friends. During TC 50, which I’d written about earlier, a couple of startups working in the social shopping/reccomendation space were showcased. One was GoodRec, which shows users reccomendations of restaurants, books, movies nightlife, and displays the location on a map. It allows you to make reccomendations, which can also be shared on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed etc. According to StartupMeme, GoodRec scores over the existing player - Yelp, in terms of usability. Another player, who is into ’social’ based decision making is CityVoter, which ‘allows insiders who know a city best to share their insight with information, ratings, and reviews on everyday decisions’.The other startup is GoodGuide, which aims to provide users with information on social, environmental, and health related aspects of consumer products. With people becoming increasingly aware and conscious of the environment and the impact of their lifestyle on it, this is a good space to be, especially because of the clutter of ‘green’ goods that have been hitting the market. You can read more details on them here.

WOM is no longer a buzzword, it has become a fact of life, if not in ‘low involvement’ categories, at least in ‘high involvement’ ones. Amazon has recently been using passionate Kindle users as brand ambassadors.We are on our way to what this post (quoting from a report) very correctly describes as an ‘influence economy’. As more and more users enter the social realms of Facebook, Twitter etc, their purchase decisions are becoming increasingly influenced by their social peer group. I come across this regularly on twitter - social based decisions on everything from restaurants to laptops and mobile phones. The post also gives a simple path for brands to get invloved in this process. But the essence is that brands need to be truthful, transparent, listen to their customers, be accessible, and most importantly, have a great product, for the reality is that communities cannot be bought. It has to be earned, and this post has a few tips on that. RWW has shared some data on super influencers, from a McCann study done  among 17,000 active internet users in 29 countries.

Though brands are only beginning to take consumer voices seriously, it is great to see market leaders like Unilever and P&G understanding the limitations of current consumer research procedures, and making efforts to embrace online buzz. Meanwhile, HUL has introduced the concept of a customer ombudsman in india. The ombudsman works on behalf of the consumer and will tackle all cases that cannot be dealt with by Lever Care. A wonderfully radical move, which shows why they are market leaders. Read all about it here.  While on the subject, there’s a company called BazaarVoice, which helps brands create business value out of the positive consumer PR they generate. As fanboy cults emerge on Facebook and impromptu brand wars (among consumers) occur on twitter, I think this space has great potential. Speaking of Facebook, they’re also using users as brand ambassadors in Germany. (via Tech Crunch)

until next a sociaholic shopaholic?

brants

TechCrunchTalk video - Startup Young Guns and Old Hands

TechCrunch UK - September 21, 2008
What’s it like to be a startup now compared read more

Video from the live video stream of TechCrunchTalk, a series of four panel discussions focusing on start-ups and the investment climate in the UK and Europe, recorded in London on 18 September, 3pm and 6pm GMT:

3. “Startup Perspectives”
What’s it like to be a startup right now in the current economic, cultural and competitive environment?
Alicia Navarro, co-founder, Skimbit
Alfie Dennen, co-founder, Moblog.net
Keld van Schreven, Diary.com

And continues with…

4. “Startup Young Guns Versus Old Hands”

What’s it like to be a startup now compared to a few years ago?
Andy McLoughlin, co-founder, Huddle
Ian Hogarth, c-founder Songkick
William Reeve, Chairman, True Knowledge
Michael Birch, co-founder, Bebo

Mike Butcher
TechCrunch UK

Skimbit

Dennis jordan - September 17, 2008
It's how Skimbit uses social bookmarking read more

The last time I used this service it was called del.icio.us.
Seriously, I think the functionality is pretty much the same, but it's how Skimbit uses social bookmarking that makes it interesting.

Key phrases for this site are: collaboration, decision-making, web-clipping, social bookmarking.  

Okay, say you need to decide what hotel you and four lads will stay in in Paris. So you set up a Skimbit account, create a project called Paris Hotel, and invite everyone to join the project. Then each member can go off and clip suggestions from web searches at the leisure with a handy little button on their browser. Each suggestion is ranked by the critieria you set at the outset (price, location, near a bar). After a week or two, you have loads of options and a good point from which you can decide.

That's the collaborative part -- you can do it in Google Docs and it's only a little more ugly.

But I think the social part -- the ability to view some of the other users' decisions -- that will provide the web2.0 value; it'll play a role in organizing the web's content.

Dennis Jordan
Blog Dennis Jordan

Skimbit tries to crack the social shopping mode

Techcrunch - September 17, 2008
Now UK-based Skimbit is re-launching as a social read more

Social shopping services are a strange grab-bag of sites all trying to crack the nut of how to monetise social networking around shopping, which is most social when it is real-world, not virtual. In April Wishpot took $1 million Series A for a service that lets you collect and and share information about items you find online and in stores, via texting the site. Users can later view saved items, research prices, view ratings and reviews, ask friends for opinions or share recommendations. It competes in the same space as Kaboodle, Stylehive, Yahoo Shoposphere, Zlio and MyPickList. Kaboodle - which has has $5m in funding to date - lets you collect information from the web about things you may be interested in buying. The usual ’social shopping’ site of reference is ThisNext, where people recommend their favorite products so others can discover what’s best to buy online.

However, most of these sites are very defined and process driven. They just let users say “this is nice, this is nice, collect and store” and then not much else happens. The sites tend to be too much novelty and not enough utility.

Skimbit is a UK-based site is this vein, but which is re-launching as a social booking site for actually making decisions about the stuff you want to buy. In the process it has created a new and subtle way to generate affiliate revenues without bothering the user, selling to them, or using up screen real-estate with terrible ads.

Skimbit has recently been signing deals with US social sharing distributors like Add to Any. It has also gone live with an affiliate engine, which means the site now earns money from sales leads from its site to any merchant it is connected with, turning it into a kind of user-generated product comparison site.

Here’s a scenario:

You are trying to find a coffee table. You go to a big furntiture store online, and while there, as you click through the products you like you use the Skimbit browser plugin to add the product to your skimbit product page, collecting products as you go. What other social bookmarking sites do is put this into a flat list, usually with tags. Skimbit, however, puts the products into a project page which is pre-configured by you based on the criteria you think is most important, so price, dimensions, style etc. All the options you bookmark you then save with the image description. Once you have your project page with all the results you can compare like for like or order them ranked by dimensions etc. You then invite others, like your partner, to comment and rank the findings or they can add further to the project page.

An interesting side-note is that men don’t often “get” Skimbit because they tend to create lists and email them off to others. Women appear to respond better to the Skimbit project page because because they like the range of options to order the list for others, perhaps their girlfirneds, to contribute feedback, like “thumbs up, thumbs”, star ratings etc. The results are presented graphically.

The third and final step is a project whiteboard, a checklist, map and a meebo IM window. That’s the simple process. Skimbit also has a white-label version of this system for publishers/retailers, but Skimbit gets to retain all of the data produced by a white label partner.

This is where it gets interesting. Because although project pages by users can be private, Skimbit encourages users to make them public, so other people can leverage the long tail research, say for baby prams or shoes, mobiles you name it. So Skimbit is getting higher on these long-tail searches on Google, because the content is user-generated editorial, not spammy product comparison pages.

Skimbit’s revenue model is the same as a price comparison sites, based on affiliate commissions. If someone skims content from a site which is a merchant of Skimbit’s, that link is turned into a commission earning affiliate link. The key thing here is that this doesn’t disrupt the user experience, as it’s invisible. So the potential from earning a lot of revenue is higher because Skimbit is not pushing products at Users, the users are bringing their own crowd-sourcing around the products.

Users are encouraged to use Skimbit for things that don’t earn Skimbit revenues, which adds to the data and increases its status as an engine driven by users, not price comparison deals. It’s a sort of user generated comparison tool in the cloud which retains all user’s research. Think Mahalo for product comparison.

Mike Butcher
TechCrunch

TechCrunchTalk event will debate startups in Europe (Sold Out!)

Techcrunch UK - September 17, 2008
What’s it like to be a startup right now read more

We’re holding a little event in London tomorrow, “TechCrunchTalk”: a series of panel discussions focusing on start-ups and the investment climate. I’m delighted to welcome such internet stars as Michael Birch, co-founder, Bebo and William Reeve, chairman of the UK’s hottest search startup, True Knowledge, as well as some great people from the rest of the UK startups and VC community, listed below. The event will be followed by the TechCrunch/Seedcamp party. We pre-announced it on August 5 and announced the details on Sept 10 last week. BUT, unless you are already on the list you won’t get in. Tickets for both events are now sold out. Sorry about that - I’d love to be able to green-light everyone who wants to come - although at £15 a ticket we made it pretty accessible. I guess you just had to be quick.

However, watch out for our TechCrunch Party in Berlin on the 23rd of October, which will also be the official Web 2.0 Expo Berlin after-party. Details to be released very soon. Please email Petra Johansson (our amazing events person) about sponsorship packages. And just subscribe to the blog and you’ll be amongst the first to know the details…

Anyway, for those who are coming tomorrow, here is the low-down:

TechCrunchTalk is a TechCrunch curated discussion get-together for start-ups in the UK and wider continental Europe, which focuses on a number of current and relevant themes for the technology start-up community. Its aim is to generate debate and a voice for the technology start-up community, to identify trends, themes, issues, challenges and developments within the community, the industry and the local versus European environment.

The panels will be as interactive with the audience as possible and will have the following focus and panellists:

1. “Investment Perspectives”
What is the current venture investment environment for tech start-ups?
Stefan Menden, Associate, Straub Ventures
Salman Farmanfarmaian, Index Ventures
Sean Glass, chairman of Pikum and UK MD, Pikum
Paul Fisher, Advent Venture Partners

2. “European Perspectives”
What are the trends in Europe?
Toon Coppens, CTO & Co-Founder, Netlog
Ales Spetic, Managing Director, Zemanta
Joe Cohen, CEO, Seatwave
Jörgen Bladh, General Partner, Northzone Ventures

3. “Startup Perspectives”
What’s it like to be a startup right now in the current economic, cultural and competitive environment?
Alicia Navarro, co-founder, Skimbit
Alfie Dennen, co-founder, Moblog.net
Keld Van Shreven, Diary.com

4. “Startup Young Guns Versus Old Hands”
What’s it like to be a startup now compared to a few years ago?
Andy McLoughlin, co-founder, Huddle
Ian Hogarth, c-founder Songkick
William Reeve, Chairman, True Knowledge
Michael Birch, co-founder, Bebo

We’re very grateful to the following companies for their sponsorship:

Gateway2Investment, the g2i programme brings together the knowledge and experience of a robust consortium with a shared enthusiasm and passion for the growth of new businesses: Grant Thornton, Library House, E-Synergy, The Innovatory, Quotec and Pembridge Partners LLP.

Zendesk, providing on-demand Web 2.0 help desk solutions, deploying in minutes, Zendesk provides a complete support community portal that lets customers communicate directly with the internal help-desk

Heller Ehrman LLP, a leader in providing innovative legal services to clients throughout the world. With 650 attorneys and professionals in the United States, Europe and Asia, Heller Ehrman offers the full range of litigation, business and intellectual property capabilities needed to succeed in today’s competitive marketplace.

BuzzPal® The World Is Your Party® A seed-stage project with a positive message. Will it sprout? Join the team or add capital.

Kublax, syncs with all your bank accounts, credit cards and presents all the information in a user-friendly format so that you can track your incoming and outgoing cashflow and start to really analyse your personal finances. In today’s tough economic conditions, it is an indispensible tool to take control of your money.

TechCrunch Talk, is curated by TechCrunch UK & Ireland and organised by TwistedTree in association with rassami PR.

Mike Butcher
TechCrunch UK

New Media Business Exchange: UK startups meet the Time Warner empire

The Guardian - September 11, 2008
There are sixteen startups read more

I dipped into the New Media Business Exchange yesterday during a two-day conference organised for digital staff across the Time Warner empire - that includes CNN, AOL, Bebo, Warner Broadcasting and Warner Brothers - as well as various venture firms, UK Trade & Investment and even Tom Watson MP. It's amazing where he pop up.

First off, I asked Laurie Baird, director of technology partnerships for Turner Broadcasting's R&D wing, to explain why she set up the New Media Business Exchange: There are sixteen startups and small businesses presenting to executives today. This first batch each give us a seven-minute overview:

Skimbit: We've Elevator Pitched them before - it's a kind of social research tool that helps inform retail decisions online by fielding the opinions of your friends and family.

Jemima Kiss
The Guardian Unlimited - PDA: the digital content blog

Skimbit is speaking at Affiliates 4 U Expo!

a4uexpo - September 4, 2008
Alicia is talking about how to monetise user-generated sites read more

Affiliates 4U Expo in London October 14-15th is the largest affiliate conference in Europe. Alicia Navarro, CEO of Skimbit, is giving a talk on how to monetize user-generated websites while keeping users happy. Here is her lecture summary:

"Affiliate marketing always seems to be about selling something, buy this, look at this, compare this. It is publisher-driven content with an overt sales objective. Whilst users may find this content interesting while they are researching, they may become suspicious or wary of these sites.

Evidence shows that consumers are more likely to listen to recommendations from friends, family or a community of trusted users, but how do you monetise user-generated content without relying on traditional advertising or affiliate marketing? How do you work with your users to build trust and utility, so that you are front of mind when they do want to make a purchase decision? "

Anyone wanting to go to the conference can get 10% discount by using the ’SPK10’ promotion code.  Go to http://www.a4uexpo.com/london/

Skip the Shopping Mall to Kaboodle, CrowdStorm, or Skimbit

Pardon the Information - August 29, 2008
Skimbit is a new kind of aggregation and decision-making tool read more

Social Networks for Shopping

If you are like me then you feel that going to the mall is a drag, dealing with crowds is a major energy drain, and in-person research is too slow and cumbersome. However, if you like finding new products, creating a wish list, and sharing product recommendations with your friends, then you may enjoy Kaboodle, CrowdStorm, and/or Skimbit because they are online social networks for shopping and product research.

Kaboodle Shopping

Kaboodle is all about managing and sharing your shopping lists for past, present, and future purchases. Kaboodle is really easy to use because you can add Kaboodle action buttons to the top of your web browser that make it super simple to add online products to one of your Kaboodle shopping lists. Specific Kaboodle things to do:

    * Add your favorite products to your "Things I Can't Live Without" list
    * Share your shopping lists with other like-minded shoppers by joining groups, starting your own groups, or inviting friends
    * Add your desired products to your wish list and maybe one of your Kaboodle friends will buy it for you

You can be my friend on Kaboodle: Rob's Kaboodle Page or add Kaboodle to your Facebook profile to share your shopping lists with your Facebook friends.

CrowdStorm Shopping

CrowdStorm is a platform for sharing product information with other people. CrowdStorm focuses on electronic products such as digital cameras, TVs, DVD players, video games, and computers. CrowdStorm does not provide browser action buttons so you have to do everything directly from their site. Specific CrowdStorm things to do:

    * Ask trusted CrowdStorm users a question about a product
    * Add your review of a product
    * Browse other people's product reviews

You can be my friend on CrowdStorm: Rob's CrowdStorm page. CrowdStorm does not provide a Facebook application to install on your Facebook profile but they do have a CrowdStorm Facebook group that you can join to stay abreast of feature updates.

Skimbit Shopping + Researching

Skimbit is an online platform for helping you make decisions and, specifically, in relation to the aforementioned sites can help you make a product purchasing decision. Similarly to Kaboodle, Skimbit provides browser action buttons to simplify the information collection process. Skimbit action items:

   1. Create a Skimbit project (i.e., a product you want to purchase)
   2. Click your "Skim this!" browser button while viewing any web page that contains information for the product you are thinking about purchasing
   3. Compare your web research findings side by side
   4. Invite your friends to help you decide

If you are knowledgable about snowboarding goggles then you can help me on my Skimbit Snow Boarding Goggles Project. If you like Skimbit and are on Facebook then become a Facebook Fan of Skimbit.

Social Network Shopping Summary

Kaboodle is the most effortless to use of the group of social network shopping sites and, thus, is the most fun to use. Specifically, while viewing a product page and after you finishing adding the product to one of your Kaboodle wish lists, it returns you to the exact web page you were viewing so you can resume your online shopping. Thus, you can easily browse shopping web sites and seamlessly add products to your Kaboodle shopping lists.

CrowdStorm and Skimbit are not concerned about shopping lists and more concerned with helping you find valuable and relevant product information. For both CrowdStorm and Skimbit, I experienced some bugs and broken pages so they may not be ready for you to try if you have limited time to spend online.

Two other shopping sites you might find useful for researching electronic products include Bountii.com and SmartRatings.com. Are there are other online social shopping networks I should check out?

Robert J Miller
Pardon the Information

Not working for Google changed my life

The Inquirer - July 31, 2008
Alicia Navarro says the job that changed her life read more

Alicia Navarro says the job that changed her life was the job she didn’t get at Google.

In 2006, Navarro, who grew up in Australia but had spent four years in the UK, was contracting in Sydney when she came close to breaking the promise she’d made to herself never to work for a big company again. Google had a lot of good people and sounded kind of fun, and so, torn, she went for an interview for a project manager waving her IT degree from the University of Technology Sydney. And a second. And a third, a series that took a whole day. During that day someone asked her to come up with a product idea and talk about how she would market it.

Stumped, she pulled out an idea she’d had some years before, about creating a site to help people make decisions, based on the trouble she had organising a group holiday and finding an apartment to rent with her boyfriend. Both projects required a lot of laborious planning, email consultation, and comparison shopping. Her idea: a site that would let you browse the Web normally but help organise and share all the strands.

She started to explain this and, "It came together, because in the intervening years the user-generated content revolution had happened, and in that second I saw how it could work in today’s Web economy. I got increasingly excited, and at the end of the interview I realised I don’t want this job, I want to do this. She didn’t get the job, "and I couldn’t have been happier."

Skimbit is the result. At the beginning she continued working full-time in Australia, giving evenings and weekends to Skimbit. "I got a company in Romania involved in development, which was convenient since I could only work at night, when they were waking up. " All this was self-funded, and given that "Australia is not a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity," she wasn’t sure what to do next when a six-week holiday took her to the UK.

"It was life-changing," she says. "All on one day I met my friend, who sits opposite, an experienced entrepreneur who said, why don’t you turn this into a white-label service so you can offer it to other Web sites to use." He got her a meeting four days later – she spent the weekend frantically writing a business plan and borrowing a suit – with Wedding TV and some free office space.

"There was the miracle where they said yes, we love the concept." That one " yes" funded the development of the product. She went back to Australia for a month, moved out of her flat, sold her car, and squeezed saying goodbye to family and friends in between writing specifications.

"That was last September." Currently, Navarro is trying to close the first round of "proper funding" so the company can hire more people and "do the things I’m bursting to do".

To make Skimbit a white-label service, "We had to create a site where everything that can be customised is a variable you can set by customisation." For the future, Skimbit wants to connect all the publishing sites so that "If you are a Skimbit.com user you can access your content on any of our other publishing sites with a single sign-on, so your project is syndicated across the network." Also tricky was building a system Skimbit hopes to patent that uses affiliate links from the content users create so that both Skimbit and its partners gain revenues. "The technical sophistication behind that is incredible because we have to make sure the rewriting of the URLs is done correctly."

Skimbit was picked as one of 20 promising social media start-ups to present itself in San Francisco. There, she was asked how her service was socially sustainable or responsible. "I want to be part of the movement to help people trust the Web again," she told them. "There’s a real danger that where we’re heading is that people become disillusioned because it’s so hard to find something."

Wendy M. Grossman
The Inquirer

a4uexpo'sed - Issue Three newsletter

a4uexpo - July 8, 2008
This is a social decision-making tool, allowing users read more

a4uexpo'sed - Issue Three

Meet the sponsors

This week we talked to buy.at our platinum sponsor and they took part in our questionnaire. This is what they had to say...

We are really excited to be sponsoring the a4u expo as Platinum sponsor for the second year running and encourage everyone to sign up to attend this event. Each team in our office has taken the time to answer a series of questions; I have collated the answers below. I hope that the answers that are provided give you a better insight into buy.ats involvement in a4u expo and however if you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact events@buy.at.

You've signed the contract, what made you want to sponsor the a4uexpo for the second year?

The conference last year was the first in the uk affiliate marketing sector and was brilliantly organised. There were a wide variety of attendees and this provided buy.at with a great deal of reach. The conference is still positioned as the leading affiliate marketing event therefore for us as industry leaders, was a natural decision to take the platinum sponsorship. In addition, to last year's sponsorship, we are also collaborating with some of our key clients for the first nights entertainment. This will provide invited attendees with a fantastic opportunity for further networking!

How do hope the day will end? What do you want to take away from sponsoring the event and exhibiting?

The overall answer from our staff was with everyone at our stand ;) There will be plenty of space to grab a seat and have a quick drink to warm you up for the evening entertainment. Our affiliate development team and sales team will be on hand to meet with any clients that do not yet work with buy.at and are excited about talking through the services that buy.at can offer you.

Apart from the leads you will gain what else do you hope to achieve from sponsoring / exhibiting?

When sponsoring an event one of our key aims is brand awareness. The buy.at brand is well established however the recent formation of Platform A is something that you will all be less familiar with. We hope to give you further insight into how being part of Platform A is a great benefit to all of our clients, and affiliates.

With visitor requirements in mind, what will attract delegates to your stand make them stay and talk?

There are many approachable friendly faces at buy.at, and we pride ourselves as staff in being both informative and knowledgeable. We hope that giving you the opportunity to meet as many of our staff as possible in a relaxed environment will encourage you to visit our stand and we will endeavour to answer all of your questions and to provide a solution. If all else fails our stand is always worth visiting for the excellent promotional items, to use our chairs for a well deserved rest, or to have a drink and chat and yes the bar will be back!

Who are you hoping to attract to your stand?

The simple answer is everyone! There will be something for all, so please do make the buy.at stand a first point of call during the conference.

With the evolution of affiliate marketing what do you find the most inspiring within your sector at the present time?

We here at buy.at have noted a few things that we think will interest you - Apart from the interactive video creative making a big impact on the scene. The increase in innovative sites such as skimbit.com would be inspiring. This is a social decision-making tool, allowing users to skim a site for a particular product using a very sophisticated downloadable tool and creating a project for people to view. - More investment in the performance channel, and higher spend on CPA

What are you hoping to achieve in the future?

buy.at aim to be continuously at the forefront of the affiliate marketing industry and therefore the logical choice of network for affiliates and merchants in the industry. More Profitable Growth, Faster!

Why do you differentiate from others on the affiliate marketing business?

buy.at are now part of Platform A. We like to think that this differentiates us as we can now provide more tools (i.e. video/ behavioural targeting) for our affiliates. We also provide a one stop solution to merchants looking to work in the online market. This coupled with our uniquely personable approach differentiates us from other networks within the marketing space. For further details on Platform A please see http://www.platform-a.com/.

For the newcomers what's your best piece of advice for them?

Our staff were also once new to the industry and in asking them what really helped them when they started we have compiled the following pieces of advice - Talk to everyone! - Listen to as many seminars as possible - Ask plenty of questions - Arrange meetings with people that you work with and haven't had the opportunity to meet, it's great to put a name to a face - Attend all social events, the networking is very relaxed and informative - Take a pen and notepad to ensure that you remember the key learning's/ come to the buy.at stand and get one for free :) If it still all seems a little bit daunting pop along to the buy.at stand and we will have one of our staff introduce you to people until you feel comfortable enough to brave it alone.

Levels of satisfaction/importance what would you mark out of 10 the a4uexpo?

9

Finally.. tell us what to expect for the AM social event of the year the Thames Cruise taking place on the middle evening of a4uexpo?

For anybody that attended the Dixie Queen event a few years back we can expect Tyson Pearcey to miss the boat ;) On a serious note though this will be the best evening networking session of the whole event. If you have attended a buy.at sponsored event you will know that it is one not to be missed. If this is your first event then come along and find out what we are talking about. Further details of our clients that are sponsoring and what they will be bringing to the evening will be released closer to the time. Space will be limited so not everyone at the conference will be able to get on the boat; we can however fit on 500 people. It is all about first come first served, details about how to get your hands on a ticket will be released soon!

a4uexpo.com Newsletter

Hello, boys: why investing in women makes sense

Spectator Business - July 1, 2008
Women have a strong track record as entrepreneurs and read more

Edie G. Lush says women have a strong track record as entrepreneurs and managers, yet struggle to find support from Britain’s male-dominated venture capital community

Women are under-served by the venture capital community,’ Herta von Stiegel, executive chairman of Stargate Capital Investments, told me at a recent Pi Capital lunch. I’m not entirely surprised by her comment, but I’m intrigued enough to investigate further.

The figures back up von Stiegel’s statement. In the UK, according to Management Today, about 25 per cent of the top 100 entrepreneurs are women. Yet less than 2.5 per cent out of a total of €3.5 billion of VC funding in the UK and Europe is going to companies with a female chief executive. The numbers are little better in North America. Nearly half of all privately-owned US businesses are at least 50 per cent owned by women; four out of five start-ups in Canada are run by women; US businesses owned by women have a two-year success rate of 80 per cent, well over the national average of about 50 per cent. Yet just 5.7 per cent out of a total of more than $20 billion of VC funding in North America goes to companies with female bosses.

Von Stiegel’s colleague Gita Patel looked at these figures and saw an opportunity. She founded Stargate Capital’s Trapezia EIS Fund – the first Venture Capital programme in the UK dedicated to investing in women-focused businesses. Stargate closed Trapezia EIS at £4.5 million and Patel and von Stiegel are now half way through raising £50 million in funds for Trapezia II. All the companies Trapezia II will invest in are led, directed or substantially influenced by women, or provide a product or service primarily to women.

As I speak to von Stiegel, it’s clear that she isn’t in this business as a matter of philanthropy. Quite the contrary, she thinks investing in women makes good business sense. ’Women in Europe represent an incredible market opportunity,’ she says. Some impressive facts and figures follow. European women have the highest GDP per capita worldwide, a life expectancy of 80 years, and are well educated. Furthermore, they drive 70 per cent of household spending decisions and 10 million of them are self-employed or run their own businesses.

And where they’re in business, women make an impact on the bottom line. A 2007 study by McKinsey, the management consultancy, looked at 89 top European companies and found that those with the most women on the board and at senior-management level outperformed others in their sector in return on equity, earnings before interest and tax and share-price growth.

But it isn’t just European women who drive performance. A study by the New York think-tank Catalyst ranked hundreds of Fortune 500 companies by the percentage of women on the board. They found that the top quartile outperformed the bottom quartile by 53 per cent in terms of return on equity.

If the business case exists, why isn’t there more interest in investing in women-owned businesses? I asked Margaret Manning, chief executive of independent digital media company Reading Room and this year’s winner of the Fast Growth Female Entrepreneur of the Year award. ’To be honest, while it’s slowly changing, the venture capitalist world is still an old-boys’ network. The VC community has a certain style and people tend to support people that they get on with – many times, this is other men.’

She’s careful to point out that it isn’t impossible to raise money – she raised £1 million in funding from Octopus Private Equity last year to grow her business. ’This was a VC that understood us implicitly – our first Octopus non-executive director got to know us well after interviewing us while studying for his MBA. And the current Octopus non-exec is female – and she’s lovely.’ If you apply either McKinsey or Catalyst’s analysis to Reading Room’s board and senior management team, Reading Room is destined for success – half of her executive directors and 56 per cent of her management team are female.

Judith Clegg runs Glasshouse, a club for entrepreneurs across all sectors that holds monthly events in London, New York, San Francisco – and soon Mumbai and Bangalore. She remembers the day she started at Arthur Anderson in 1993, when it was still a big deal that women in her division were allowed to wear trousers. She says, ’I don’t think it’s the case that there are a lot of VCs out there saying they don’t want to fund women. Most of the investors I meet just want to fund the best businesses they can find and have absolutely no problem in backing talented women.’

Clegg is no stranger to entrepreneurship herself – she was a founding director of Moonfruit – a website building service – with another woman and two men, raising £8 million from VCs. ’We benefited from of the some advantages of being female entrepreneurs. For example, we obtained a higher press profile because half of our founding team including the chief executive were women.’

While most venture capitalists would undoubtedly see themselves as modern investors, indifferent to the sex of the executives and teams in which they invest – the stories from the trenches tell a slightly different picture. Alison Kibble is the chief executive of Femeda, a company that makes a medical device for women who suffer from bladder weakness. Despite the fact that one in three women over the age of 18 have this problem and around $12 billion is spent every year on incontinence products, Kibble found it tough getting meetings with investors.

’Men feel incredibly uncomfortable talking about this subject and even amongst women it is often a secret problem. We sent our materials to many potential VCs and we knew they were immediately put to one side because the men receiving them just didn’t understand the problem or what we were proposing to do about it. A few that we did manage to get meetings with said they couldn’t possibly take us on as an investment as our product was too unsavoury.’

Kibble and her team were persistent, sending news-letters to VCs who had said no, and last year raised £2 million to enter into clinical trials of their product. Stargate’s Trapezia Fund is one of the investors who said yes.

Alicia Navarro, chief executive of Skimbit, has a somewhat less extreme example of what happens when she presents her website business to venture capitalists. Skimbit is a tool to help people make decisions – if you are looking for bridesmaids’ shoes or villas in France you wander around the web, ’skimming’ the relevant parts of the websites you’re browsing and compiling them with the help of Skimbit. Then you send the website location to your friends for them to add their comments to help you make a group decision. The problem is that this is primarily how women – rather than men – like to make decisions. ’Women generally ’get’ my company right away. But almost every single VC I’ve presented to has been male. As a result, part of my presentation incorporates an explicit description on how men make decisions – look at a few sites and choose a product – versus women, who look at many sites, canvas opinion, look at more sites, then make a decision.’ Navarro hasn’t yet raised money from the VC community.

Susie Willis is chief executive of Plum Baby, which makes organic baby food from ’superfood’ ingredients. She spent most of last year trying to secure the business and admits she found the process grim. ’I spent an incredible amount of time ensuring my presentation – and particularly the valuation of the business – was absolutely bulletproof so that when I presented to investors I had a completely sound story. So when I was grilled about the numbers I defended them vigorously. After one meeting someone called me emotional and suggested I shouldn’t be in these meetings. I was completely appalled. If I’d had balls I would have been called determined, bold and bullish. But because I’m a woman I get called emotional.’

Clearly her mettle paid off – Plum Baby raised £2 million from Octopus Ventures and Noble Fund Managers. Her product is now available in all major supermarkets and she expects her 2007 turnover of £3.5 million to double this year.

So if there’s a problem, what’s the solution? The government recently announced the creation of a £12.5 million fund which will be put aside to ’specifically encourage more women entrepreneurs’. The proposed fund intends to give potential women entrepreneurs the basics of writing business plans, running a company and pitching for investment.

Money talks, but interesting examples of policy in action can be found in other countries. Norway is six years into its experiment in encouraging not only female entrepreneurship in small companies but also in large ones. In February 2002, trade and industry minister Ansgar Gabrielsen dropped a bombshell on Norwegian corporate life by stating that all companies listed on the Oslo stock exchange would be required to have 40 per cent of their boardroom positions held by women. If companies failed to address the gender imbalance, legislation would be introduced to enable companies to be prosecuted for non-compliance. In 2005 the percentage of women on company boards had risen – but not enough, to 24 per cent – so the threatened legislation was tabled. This spring the government announced full compliance.

While no study yet exists of the economic performance of these near-gender-equal companies by comparison with to their male-dominated predecessors, a recent survey of the new female board members showed that most of them have significantly higher educational and professional qualifications than many of the male colleagues they replaced, or now sit alongside.

In a recent interview with the Sunday Times, Ansgar Gabrielsen quoted the same McKinsey study used by Stargate Capital to justify his decision to bring women further towards the forefront of Norwegian entrepreneurial life. My bet is that we’ll be hearing a lot more in Britain about ’investing in women’. Male chauvinists may be tempted lazily to dismiss it as Scandinavian-style political correctness, but the evidence says it makes remarkably sound business sense.

Edie G. Lush has been a reporter for Bloomberg, a political analyst for UBS, and is a regular contributor to The Spectator

Edie G. Lush
Spectator Business

LondonAmigo.com has partnered with Skimbit

LondonAmigo Blog - June 20, 2008
It’s the end of the week and it is always nice to look back and feel read more

It’s the end of the week and it is always nice to look back and feel that the working week has been productive! We are proud to say that CityAmigo Ltd has partnered with a very promising company called Skimbit. Skimbit has a very clever social online tool for decision making and we feel that it will be very useful for our users. You can now find this tool within our Shopping section and soon in other categories too, inside of the Survival Guide.

Whenever we have to purchase something (a holiday, an electronic equipment, a flat…) it can become a little bit of a nightmare if it is a shared decision. Instead of sending endless emails copying and pasting information, create a project and save it online, so that everyone can access it at anytime and follow the progression of the decision making.

LondonAmigo Blog

Skimbit signs distribution deal with Add to Any

TechCrunch UK - June 9, 2008
Skimbit, the UK startup with a social decision-making tool read more

Skimbit, the UK startup with a social decision-making tool which is rapidly heading towards being a social bookmarking player, has launched as the default ‘decision making’ partner with US-based Add to Any. Now whenever you see their ‘Share/Save’ widget, and click on ‘Consider for a decision?’ Skimbit’s ‘Skimmer’ widget is launched.

Skimbit has also gone live with its affiliate engine, which means the site now earns money from sales leads from its site to any merchant it is connected with, turning it into a kind of user-generated product comparison site.

Mike Butcher
TechCrunch UK

Brit start-ups invade the Valley

BBC News - April 24, 2008
British entrepreneurial talent is on tour in Silicon Valley read more

British entrepreneurial talent is on tour in Silicon Valley as part of a government-backed project to provide a window into the UK's start up scene.

Twenty companies were chosen from over a hundred for the first Web Mission 08 to showcase the high level of technology emerging beyond the Valley. Organiser Oli Barrett said: "Silicon Valley is such a hub of innovation you have to experience it first hand."

The project is supported by UK Trade Invest, Oracle, Sun and Make Your Mark.One of the biggest backers Stateside is fellow Briton Michael Birch who along with his wife Xochi founded the social media network Bebo. Bebo was recently sold to AOL for $850m.

He says: "The mission represents an amazing opportunity for the best of entrepreneurial UK talent to visit Silicon Valley and learn for themselves the differences that make the US a breeding ground for innovation and more importantly successful execution of ideas."

Future direction

One of the stops for the group was Web Expo 2.0 in San Francisco, a gathering of designers, architects, engineers, developers and businesses focusing on the future direction of the Web.

Damon Oldcorn, chief executive of Zebtab, a desktop tv application promoting sport and news, says he hopes to forge relationships and lay down plans to expand in the US.

"The game is back on again. We were here during the dotcom era with another company I built but that tapered off in 2001. It's pretty obvious the buzz is back. The money is here, the alliances are being struck and there are deals to be done and it's the place to be again."

Fellow entrepreneur Alicia Navarro isn't as convinced. She started SkimBit, billed as the world's first social decision making tool, around two years ago. Alicia says while the Valley is inspirational, her loyalties lie elsewhere.

"I want to be part of the movement that makes the UK a world-class place for entrepreneurship and I think coming here is a way to promote just how great a place it is to have a business."

Sheer force

Mr Barrett says putting the UK on the map was also one his main reasons for organising Web Mission 08. And he says he recognised early on that sheer force of numbers would play to his advantage and to that of the start-ups taking part.

"My hunch was that if companies come over here on their own they would find it hard to access amazing opportunities and individuals. However together in a group doors can suddenly be unlocked and that's what we have found on this first ever web mission."

And that approach definitely seems to have worked.
Since the Mission arrived in the States, they have been wined and dined and have visited the offices of some of the big names that dominate the skyline of Silicon Valley.

Oracle, Google, HSBC, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett Packard all opened their doors to these budding billionaires of tomorrow. High level executives and Venture Capitalists also took time to meet and discuss with the entrepreneurs how they can best tap into what Silicon Valley has to offer.

For Andrew Scott, the founder of Rummble.com a mobile technology company, having some personal time with those who have made it has been invaluable.

"Meeting and spending time with some of the founders of the more successful companies here like Jim Buckmaster of Craigslist and Michael Birch of Bebo has been great. Not just because they give you insights but because they also remind you that it was tough for them at the beginning as well. "

Open culture

The proof of just how successful Web Mission 08 has been might be measured by some in terms of deals done, but for Mr Scott it is something that cannot be summed up in dollars and cents.

"For me personally having this time with your peers has been great. Gone are the days when you would say 'Oh I am not going to talk to him because he does something vaguely similar to us'.

"There is an open culture building on the web and also in the way people are doing business. For our generation of entrepreneurs and start ups, we have all very much embraced that."

And while Oli Barrett is hoping that Web Mission 08 will turn into Web Mission 09, he is also looking further afield than Silicon Valley.

"The response we have had here has been so great that we would love to come back to Silicon Valley but we also want to consider other places such as India and China. So watch this space."

Maggie Shiels
BBC

Internet squatters facing eviction

International Herald Tribune - April 27, 2008
When Alicia Navarro began casting about for a memorable name for her new company read more

When Alicia Navarro began casting about for a memorable name for her new company, she confronted a brutal reality. All her brilliant ideas for an Internet domain name were taken.

"I came up with so many gems, only to be devastated to find that the domain name was not available," Navarro, a former executive at Vodafone, said. "It means that Internet entrepreneurs are having to come up with ridiculous words to name their businesses — Twango, Yugma, Stikkit, Rootly."

Add Skimbit, the invented name of her London Web-applications company, to that list. Her Web woes — like those of many others — are tied to the sharp acceleration of speculation in Internet names, a practice known as "domain tasting" in which names are registered by the millions and tested for their advertising prospects without charge during a five-day grace period.

Arbitrators like the World Intellectual Property Organization and the National Arbitration Forum attribute the record number of international trademark disputes last year to domain tasting. Since this form of domain name tasting emerged in 2005, for example, the number of disputes to come before the WIPO has risen 48 percent, to 2,156.

For companies like Microsoft, domain tasting creates the constant headache of chasing after typo-squatters — those who create and register Web sites with misspelled variations of the Microsoft name. For individual users, it means that millions of names are tied up in a constant churn of registering and returning names before fees are charged.

Now Icann — the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organization based in California that manages domain names — is considering steps to stamp out the practice.

The board of Icann will vote in Paris in June on a proposal to severely limit the number of domain names that can be returned without a fee, but the organization is facing resistance from domain name registrars, who are against ending the grace period.

These companies, which are licensed to register and sell new domain names, are themselves divided on the issue. Some argue that domain tasting is eroding consumer trust. Others insist that the grace period allows time to correct registrations that were spelled incorrectly.

A few registrar companies around the world account for about 95 percent of the system to register and dump names. A core reason for domain tasting, according to the Coalition for Domain Name Abuse, based in Washington, is that operators are looking for Web sites that bring in traffic — and ultimately revenue — from pay-per-click advertising links. Most often those names are similar to trademarked brand names.

"We call it a billion-dollar industry," said Phil Lodico, an Internet strategy consultant and vice president with the coalition. "Initially squatters were just individuals who could be located anywhere by their personal computers. They're still out there, but there are also these companies that have invested heavily in technology. They're just canvassing the net by registering hundreds of thousands of domain names. And these folks are well-funded."

Millions of names are registered and deleted after this five-day grace period, according to a subgroup of Icann, Generic Names Supporting Organization, which issued a report indicating that in March last year almost 80 percent of the 72.2 million names registered that month were "tasted" during the grace period and deleted. Most of this was dominated by 20 companies in the United States, Russia and Austria. The top three, Capitoldomains, Belgiumdomains and Domaindoormain, are registrar companies that each registered and dumped more than 11 million domain names in one month alone last year, according to Icann.

All three share the same address in Miami, with a contact number for a lawyer, Nancy Cliff, who did not respond to repeated messages. The Web sites for the three companies note though that they are fighting a lawsuit filed by personal computer giant, Dell, which is pressing "cybersquatting" lawsuits against the three.

That Dell dispute centers on the registration of domain names that are misspelling or types of prominent brand names, a technique known as "typosquatting," and which are also tested as part of domain tasting.

Microsoft has also targeted "domainers" that have tested and used variations on its name, filing 20 lawsuits to recover 2,000 names and $2 million in damages in Britain and the United States, according to Aaron Kornblum, an attorney with Microsoft's Internet safety enforcement group.

Icann's most dramatic recommendation is to eliminate the five-day grace period. But the group is weighing a more limited approach "because they believe it would be less controversial," said Liz Gasster, an attorney for Icann.

Instead Icann will vote on a plan in June that would bar domain registrars from offering a refund for any domain names deleted during the grace period that exceeds 10 percent of its new registrations in a month. The board has already voted to make their 20-cent per domain fee nonrefundable in 2009 to deter high volume domain tasters who are sampling millions of names.

"Most everyone doesn't like domain tasting, and they're still trying to figure out the best options," said Gasster, who noted that Icann was still seeking public comment on the issue.

As for Navarro, she is happy now with her company name, Skimbit, but in a different Internet universe she would have tried something else, like snippets.

"It's unfortunate," she said, "because the people who suffer are not always big companies that have a lot of money. It's the little start-ups where every little cent counts."

Doreen Carvajal
International Herald Tribune

The British are coming back soon

TechCrunch - April 24, 2008
Along with a bunch of other European firms exhibiting at Web 2 Expo read more

Along with a bunch of other European firms exhibiting at Web 2 Expo this week (including 20 from Ireland) were a group of 21 UK startups selected from over 100 applicants by TechCrunch UK, working in conjunction with the UK government. Announced in March, the trip was dubbed WebMission and most of the firms had never visited the Valley before. So I thought I’d give you a heads-up about the firms, who, after a week of meetings and networking parties here, head back to the UK tomorrow - and will probably be back soon, given the friendly reception in SF and the Valley. All of these companies can be found in CrunchBase. Read about them after the jump (and in no particular order)…

Skimbit: The social decision-making tool, Skimbit will work a little like del.icio.us. You click a ‘Skim this!’ button to collect options for a decision such as choosing a holiday villa or buying a gadget. Skimbit interrogates the page you ’skim’ to collect the relevant data for the decision making. Today it won agreement with widget distribution network Gigya to include Skimbit in their Wildfire tool. Skimbit says it is also in talks with AddThis, the bookmarking and sharing tool. The Addthis button currently appears 20 billion times per month, but Skimbit would potentially be the first social decision-making tool in its network. Skimbit aims to close a seed round in the next month and hopes to land more publishers for its white-label service, as it did with Wedding TV in December.

Mike Butcher
TechCrunch

Web Mission - the anticipation builds

Startups - April 18, 2008
You would think considering I am going to meet the founders of Craigslist read more

You would think considering I am going to meet the founders of Craigslist, Bebo, Friendster and the Guidewire Group in a few days, I would be panicking about what I was going to say... But no, it seems the only way one’s mind can deal with the enormity of what one is about to embark upon, is to focus on really insignificant things. Like: how am I going to get from Palo Alto to San Francisco on Monday... and, I wish I had prettier business clothes... and, I have no idea how to tip US-style!

Yes, that is right, I am off to Silicon Valley, which strangely makes me think more of breast implants than semi-conductors, but then, I’m a girl. Yes, I’m a girl, who runs a web start-up (which makes me a minority) , based in London (even further in the minority), and off to Silicon Valley for the first time. What’s more, I’m of Spanish heritage, and Australian nationality. So with this mix of cultures, demographics and experiential history, I wonder what adventures shall unfold over the next week!

I am the founder and CEO of Skimbit, a social decision-making tool that helps you research and make decisions online, with the help of others. I was chosen along with 19 other of “UK’s most promising” start-ups, to head over to the US as part of Web Mission 08. There we will network, pitch, schmooze, research, promote, and partner with as many people as possible in what I am increasingly nervous will be an exhausting, exhilarating non-stop week.

I shall document my daily trials, tribulations, triumphs and tirades via this blog, so come and join me on this journey of discovery!

Alicia Navarro
Startups.co.uk

Innovations in Journalism

Journalism.co.uk - April 16, 2008
Ever tried to organise an event or share research on email for more than two people? read more

Ever tried to organise an event or share research on email for more than two people? Nightmare, hey? Fear it no longer. Today’s IIJ is social scrapbook and decision-making site Skimbit.


1) Who are you and what’s it all about?

Hello, I’m Alicia Navarro.

Skimbit is start-up I founded, it’s a web tool for gathering the best bits from sites you like, so you can analyse, share, and get feedback on your findings.


2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?

Skimbit is great if you are compiling research and want your results presented in a visual, professional way.

You can form groups and together you can compile research on a chosen topic - all to the same web page. You can also use other people’s research as the basis for your own projects.


3) Is this it?

Hell no! We have exciting product developments in the pipeline, including more ways to skim a page, more ways to view and analyse findings, and a very exciting new user interface upgrade.


4) Why are you doing this?

I came up with the idea for Skimbit after organising one too many group holidays. The process of copying and pasting links to villa or cottage sites into an email, sending to friends for feedback, and collating everyone’s responses, was arduous and inefficient. I also found the process of researching the purchase of a TV difficult, because there were so many factors to consider other than price.

So I designed Skimbit to specifically deal with these issues but found that it had even more wide reaching uses - in fact, a huge proportion of our users have the service for compiling business research.


5) What does it cost to use?

Absolutely nothing! We do offer a white-label of our service that companies can license, and we customise it fully so it becomes part of their site, but for the general public, its free.


6) How will you make it pay?

We earn revenue from licensing out a white-labelled version of the service, and we earn advertising revenue, and soon we will earn some affiliate commissions. But the core ethos of Skimbit is that we don’t influence the content for our benefit: Skimbit is your tool for conducting research, and we don’t push products or sites at you.

Oliver Luft
Journalism.co.uk

Why the UK is a great place to build a Start-up!

CenterNetworks - April 15, 2008
There is a lot of talk at the moment about the relative merits of building a start-up read more

There is a lot of talk at the moment about the relative merits of building a start-up in Europe, and of the UK trying to become more like Silicon Valley in its approach to start-ups.

Being an Australian who moved to London to launch her start-up, I can relate a very personal tale about why I chose the UK as the most compelling place to be entrepreneurial.


1. It’s easier to stand out from the crowd

The London web start-up scene is relatively younger than in Silicon Valley, so it is smaller, and more co-dependent on each other. We all want to be successful, and as there isn’t so much competition yet, we aren’t afraid of helping each other. This smaller community means its easier to get to know everyone, and become known. I arrived in London in September, and within a few months I have met, become friends with, or at least know of most web start-ups, journalists, VCs, Angels and other key players. I imagine in the Valley its a little more competitive and crowded, so it is harder to stand-out and become known.


2. Excellent source of cheap smart developers

The proximity of mainland Europe to the UK is a huge boon. We have access to one of the fastest growing bases for outsourced off-shore development in Eastern Europe, with countries like Romania, Ukraine and Latvia sprouting firms full of hard-working, smart, well-spoken developers, with only 1-2 hours time difference from the UK. The developers of my site, Skimbit are based in Romania, and they cost me half to a third what it would cost me to hire local developers; they speak excellent English, are completely up to date with new technologies and trends, and are only an hour away on a plane to visit them face-to-face. Having worked with my team in Romania while based in Sydney, I fully appreciate the benefit of working in similar time zones.


3. Market to an untapped audience with propositions you know will work

Besides being a fan of affordable development resources, UK’s proximity to Europe also represents a huge market opportunity. Everyone is so busy targeting the US, that they forget the rest of the world is out there, speaks relatively good English, and is web savvy. You can take a concept that works in the US, and market it to a European audience, with confidence that the model works, with less competition. Of course, web applications should be international in their outlook, but there are so many web applications that seem hugely popular in the US, that no one has ever heard of here, possibly because marketing efforts for these sites concentrate on the US. In my start-up’s case, there are a few web applications that do some of what Skimbit does, and I consider this a strength, because no one has ever heard of any of them in the UK, so I have validation my proposition is going to work, and an untapped audience to market to in Europe.


4. Benefit from the helpfulness of other entrepreneurs

I’m not the only one who wants to make the UK, and London specifically, an exciting base for global entrepreneurship. The city is buzzing with creative, smart, passionate entrepreneurs, investors, journalists and mentors, and what I have found particularly special is how much everyone wants to help! Everyone tries extra hard to help, get you introductions, give you feedback, lend you advice... It feels like one very extended family here! There are a few key networking events to go to, and within a short amount of time, if you are personable, passionate and polite, you will be surprised how much everyone will give you free help.

It might be like that in the US, (I will soon find out, as I head to Silicon Valley in a week!), but I suspect the distributed nature of tech centres in the US (Silicon Valley, New York, etc) and lack of public transport in the Valley may work against the creation of as close knit group. There is a lot to be said for meeting up for a few drinks with an experienced investor and businessperson, and to constantly be bumping into the same group of people at each networking event, which enhances the perception of intimacy in the London scene.

Of course, there are some huge disadvantages to being based in London. Cost of living is sky high, and funding of start-ups, although getting more common, is not as easy to get as in the US. The weather is also a little more gloomy, although you can conclude that makes it more compelling to work even harder indoors! But the wonderful thing about London is that you truly feel you are at the heart of global events – even though you have your head down working hard, you are always aware that there is a world of politics, art, theatre, music, sport and travel all around you, and I think it provides a very necessary balance, as well as a useful motivation, to keep working hard.

Alicia Navarro
CenterNetworks

Elevator Pitch: Skimbit wants to be 'just social enough' to be useful

The Guardian - March 28 2007
Skimbit is a new kind of aggregation and decision-makign tool that wants to help read more

Skimbit is a new kind of aggregation and decision-makign tool that wants to help centralise your web research. Alicia Navarro founded the site to scratch a personal itch in 2006, working with overseas developers from her base in Sydney.

Navarro moved the business to London late last year after securing a major UK client and is still running the firm herself with just 4 part-time employees. London's entrepreneurial scene is far more vibrant than Sydney, she says, and she plans to take on six new staff after securing funding.

• Explain your business to my Mum.
You can use Skimbit for all sorts of group decisions, like choosing accommodation for a group holiday, planning the various aspects of a wedding, or choosing a home with friends, or for more private decisions like researching a TV or car. It's like an online scrapbook that is populated automatically with sites you pick.

If you are trying to find a nice cottage for a weekend away with friends, or researching the purchase of a sofa, what you probably do now is search around various sites, and when you find something you like, you copy and paste the weblink into an email, write a few notes about it and then email all your friends to discuss it. The process is very cumbersome and time-consuming, and good options often get lost in the fray.

With Skimbit, when you find a site you like you simply click a button we install into your browser and we automatically skim the best bits from that site. We create a project webpage for you with these bits so you continue your normal search, and continue skimming, eventually compiling a page with all your options presented in a way that makes it easy to compare and analyse. Friends can view and give feedback on the page, and then Skimbit collates this and tells you what the consensus is.

• How do you make money?
The free Skimbit.com site earns money from advertising, and sponsored projects. We also have a white-labeled version of the site called Skim-in-a-box which we license out to other portals so they can offer it on their site, or to businesses needing a tool to collaborate with their clients on project decisions.

• What's your background?
I have been a product manager for internet or mobile web applications most of my working life, so it wasn't a huge leap to design and build my own internet application. The main thing that prepared me for running Skimbit was the fact that I always used to be the organiser for group holidays and always used to research the purchase of anything fanatically, so I designed Skimbit to solve the very problems I discovered on a daily basis.

• How many users do you have now, and what's your target within 12 months?
We are still very small, about 1300 visits a month, as we only went into beta November of last year, and have had almost no money to market and publicise our site. However, our traffic doubled in the last month, and one of our white-label versions of the site on Wedding TV has had 20% growth in the last month, entirely organically.

We anticipate hitting 22,000 visitors in 12 months.

• What's your biggest challenge?
Currently - its operating on a tight budget and making the most of every single penny. Convincing busy professionals that Skimbit will really help them is also a big challenge, especially as its a new concept and these busy people don't really know they need it yet.

• Name your closest competitors.
Kaboodle in the US is quite similar to Skimbit, although they have more of a social shopping focus, whereas Skimbit can be used for all sorts of internet research or decision-making tasks.

• If you had £10m to invest in another web business, what would you invest in?
KnickerPicker.com - they have a clever and fun site to help people buy lingerie.

• Are we in the middle of a new dot com bubble?
Definitely - there are some exciting new applications out there, and what I am realising is a huge proportion of people have never even used a web application other than maybe Facebook and YouTube.

I recently commissioned a survey about this, as I was amazed that even though everyone in the tech world raved about Twitter and Delicious, almost all my friends - who were all reasonably tech-savvy professionals - had never heard of them. It turns out only 5% of people regularly use and contribute to a large number of social applications. It made me realise how huge a potential market we have - and the 'dot coms' that can market effectively to these social application newbies, will do incredibly well.

• Where do you want the company to be in five years?
We want to be a well-respected, appealing site that is part of the way people use the internet.

• Are you the next big thing?
Definitely - we think there is a huge demand for a simple free all-purpose tool, that isn't forcing you to be social or to buy something. We like to think of ourselves as 'just social enough' as we are more about helping you collect and manage your internet research, than about forcing you to share your life with strangers.

Jemima Kiss
The Guardian Unlimited - PDA: the digital content blog

Skimbit's Collective Bookmarks-test

Mashable - March 28, 2008
Skimbit is a new service that’s designed to provide you tools for easily collecting research read more

Skimbit is a new service that’s designed to provide you tools for easily collecting research items across the web, turn that into a cohesive file within your Skimbit account, and share your collection with others in order to receive the feedback that will help you reach a decision. It’s kind of like a community-driven Delicious folder.

For instance, let’s say you’re looking to purchase the iPod IPod Touch. You can download the Skimbit browser button, and add webpages to your Skimbit iPod Touch project whenever you come across an iPod Touch review or related information as you surf the web. A handy Skimbit sidebar will appear once you hit the browser button, and here is where you can insert all sorts of useful information, such as a description of the page, and other criteria.

This criteria is one feature that I really appreciate with Skimbit’s service, because what appears for the criteria section is actually determined by the user that created the initial project. So in your research for the iPod Touch, you could indicate that the specific type of information you’re looking for is in regards to price, current features, and upcoming features for the next model.

Now, when you bookmark a webpage, you’ll have these key points accessible, so you’ll remember to “fill in these blanks.” If you’ve decided to share your project publicly, and allow others to add bookmarked items to your project, then the criteria will be displayed for them as well. This really lets others know the exact information you’re looking for, so the data that’s collected will be the most relevant.

Other options for community feedback on a project include ratings, comments, and action items. For public projects, any Skimbit user can offer their two cents. Projects are broken down into three main categories: the bookmark display page, the feedback page, and the Next Steps action items page. While the bookmark display page can be a little confusing at first, I was even more lost when going to the feedback page. This is because the feedback given for individual bookmarks has been somewhat removed from context.

While this is an attempt to level the incoming information across various users, it may end up being more confusing in the end. The Next Steps page is also helpful, as it enables users to draw up tasks needed in order to come to a decision or follow through on a decision regarding a specific project. While this isn’t a fully functioning task-management service, it does offer the basics that could help get a project under way. Integration with other task management tools could aid in Skimbit’s use case for this particular feature.

Kristen Nicole
Mashable

Outside Insiders

The Guidewire Group - January 6, 2007
I had a great conversation with Skimbit the other day, a company wanting to position itself as the leader read more

I had a great conversation with Skimbit the other day, a company wanting to position itself as the leader in “social decision making.” The site is a unique merging of social bookmarking and social shopping. It’s relatively new and needs a little more cash to move forward (wink wink nudge) but I expect strong innovation out of Skimbit in the coming months. What’s especially interesting to me is that, rather than trying to slap the word “social” onto another online community, Skimbit is actually aiming to create a not-so-social community. CEO and founder Alicia Navarro recognizes that the majority of consumers out there aren’t interested in sharing every detail of their lives with strangers. That most people don’t spend the majority of their days online and instead turn to the Internet as a - wait for it - resource for information. I know - shocking!

But seriously folks. Alicia hit on one of my personal bugaboos in the technology world and one that few Valley insiders acknowledge much. Were I to venture onto Digg, Facebook, Delicious or the like and dare to type, “I don’t get it” in the comments, I’d be flamed out of online existence. Yet that is the prevailing sentiment I hear from friends and associates outside Silicon Valley. You should have heard the reaction when I tried to explain Twitter to a stay-at-home-mom with three boys. Sitting at a computer for more than 10 minutes - heck, sitting anywhere - is a luxury for her. Text messaging every action of your day to a Web site - that doesn’t even register.

It can be lonely for a technologist in the burbs. I find myself wishing for a few uber-geek cocktail parties to attend or flashy launches of companies with vowel-less names. But most of the time, I’m enormously grateful to live outside the hub of all things tech. It gives me, and therefore Guidewire, a desperately needed perspective on the viability of companies and products. We’re striving to be Outside Insiders, if you will.

We can create micro-blogging services and social networks for each other till the cows come home. But until we recognize and strive to understand the real computing needs of everyday consumers, we can’t truly effect a change in people’s lives. And isn’t that what technology is supposed to do in the end?

Carla Thompson
The Guidewire Group

Skimbit

Ideahub - December 28, 2007
Skimbit is an innovative ideablogging site that helps you to make a decision read more

Skimbit is an innovative ideablogging site that helps you to make a decision about something - socially.

By skimming the web and accumulating data snippets you can build a kind of online scrapbook of information about a subject so that you can share it with others (i.e. friends or business associates) who can vote and comment on it on the way to making a decision like should we buy this house or rent this villa or take this holiday. It’s a kind of subject-network rather than a social-network in that there is both a clear "idea" focus and an appropriate level of privacy for the social activity.

What’s also interesting is the Skim-in-a-box offering, which is a white-label version of Skimbit that could be used for all sorts of business or individual purposes (e.g. to find locations for a shoot or solicit feedback on wedding venues) by integrating it with a web site or blog.

Stewart McKie
Ideahub

Conversation With Skimbit Founder Alicia Navarro

CenterNetworks - December 20, 2007
I met Alicia Navarro when I posted my selections for the Mashable awards read more

I met Alicia Navarro when I posted my selections for the Mashable awards. Alicia is the founder of a social decision making tool called Skimbit out of London. I've enjoyed learning more about the tool via our email exchanges and I asked if she'd be willing to participate in an interview so that ya'all could learn more about her service. She agreed and our conversation transcript is below.

Allen: Can you provide a brief background about yourself?

Alicia: I'm of Spanish-Cuban descent, born and bred in Sydney, Australia, and now living in fabulous London (as is almost every other Aussie). I have worked in web and mobile application product management for many years, for big companies and start-ups, and finally swore to myself that the next company I would work for was my own! I had the idea for Skimbit years ago, before the whole web 2.0 craze, and it was funnily enough in a failed job interview with Google that I resolved to finally go for it!

Allen: What is Skimbit and where did you come up with the name?

Alicia: Skimbit is a social tool for making group or tricky decisions, like organising various aspects of a holiday or wedding, choosing a TV or car, or moving home etc.

It skims the best bits of sites you like (that's where the name comes from!) and presents them in a way that makes it easy to compare and analyse. Your friends and family can then view your findings, give their feedback using a variety of mechanisms, and this feedback is then automatically aggregated and represented in a fun graphical way. This makes it easy to pick a winner! You then have a set of tools - like maps, checklists, notepads, etc - to help act on the decision.

Allen: How does the service work?

Alicia: When you find a site you like, you click the button we install into your browser, and the title, description, image and decision-making criteria are skimmed and added to your project page. Eventually you have one page that has all the results of your internet research in a way that enables you to sort/filter/compare based on decision making criteria like price, location, number of beds, etc. This is quite unique as far as we can tell.

You can then invite people to view your findings, and everyone can give feedback via ranking, rating, thumbs up/down or comments. We compile these results and show you a summary of results in a fun graphical way, ie. ranking is represented by a horse race, and the winning horse represents the option with the highest average rank.

Allen: Why is Skimbit different from other social shopping sites?

Alicia: We feel quite passionately about this... Skimbit was designed primarily as a useful tool for making internet research and collaborative decision-making easier, rather than as an outspoken community that will eventually be advertised to within an inch of their lives :) There are social aspects, but its not as in-your-face as other social sites. We believe there is a huge proportion of the population that don't use social sites (other than Facebook of course!), don't care what strangers think or do, don't have the time or inclination to share their personal life with strangers, and just want to get about their life more effectively.

We forget sometimes working in this space that there are a lot of people out there that aren't like us... and Skimbit is aimed at them. We do have a 'public projects' section, but we find most users like to do Private or Shared projects, and we are fine with that. We like to think of ourselves as just-social-enough!

Allen: Is Skimbit just for shopping?

Alicia: Not at all... here are some examples of how its used: Compiling lists of competitors, preparing bibliographic information for a school project, picking a cottage for the weekend, deciding which sofa to get for the living room, collecting ideas for themes or colours for a wedding... it's a tool for collecting results of internet research, so the end result doesn't have to be a purchase. In fact, you don't even need to pick a winner... think of it a bit like social bookmarking where more than the URL is bookmarked.

Allen: I know you are located in the U.K. - where is the service accessible from?

Alicia: It's a global site - www.skimbit.com. As it's a social tool, its location independent. Use it wherever you are! We don't sell anything on it, we don't mind where you are from. We have users from Iran, Poland, Russia, Taiwan... everywhere really!

Allen: What's the team like at Skimbit?

Alicia: There is little ol' me that has done much of this on her lonesome for some time. I have had an amazing team of offshore developers and designers. And now I have a finance and marketing person in house. We are looking to grow further soon!

Allen: Funded or unfunded? Looking for funding?

Alicia: Up until now its been self-funded (painfully - someone donate me some new shoes please!) and we have been lucky enough to get a government-backed loan due to the innovative nature of our white-labelled product - Skim-in-a-box which we license to other portals and companies like wedding planners, concierge services, interior decorators etc. We have one amazing client already, Wedding TV, who have recently launched their version of the Skimbit service under the name Decision Manager at decisions.weddingtv.com. We are thrilled as it's a world first to offer this type of social decision-making service as a white-label hosted solution.

And yes, we are embarking upon an investor roadshow in January/February to get Angel funding. Interested parties please do contact me to be included in the process.

Allen: Who are your competitors? How does this compare to another new startup: The Point?

Alicia: Our main competitors are sites like Kaboodle, Osoyou, and eSnips. We all have similar 'skimming' solutions. However, as far as I can tell, Skimbit is the only site that is a generic internet research and decision-making tool, that 'skims' everything you need from a site to be able to analyse it later, and that provides such a useful feature set for giving feedback, performing analysis, and seeing the results of that process. And we really believe that the fact we don't overly push the social aspect of the site will appeal to loads of busy people. We think there is room in the market for more than a few players, this space is about to explode! We aspire to do a simple job effectively, without too much fuss, and give busy people a useful tool for their day to day internet research and decision making, and we know there is a massive market of people who are after such a service.

The Point seems to be about campaigning issues - quite different from what I can see.

Allen: What's the business model look like?

Alicia: For our free Skimbit.com site, we have contextual ads based on the type of project you are creating. We can offer advertisers compelling advertorial-type exposure, which we anticipate will be hugely compelling. Our clickthrough rates are higher than average, because people using our site are specifically looking for something, and are more open to relevant ads shown on project pages.

We are also launching the Skim Spot in January, which is a sponsored project that our community is invited to give feedback on. The advertiser gets a community of people engaging with their brand, exploring the different options on their site, and exposure on our homepage. We are in talks with some big names to be the inaugural partner for this type of innovative advertising proposition.

And finally, we have Skim-in-a-box, from which we earn setup and license fees on a monthly basis. We also retain revenue earned through the embedded Google search on all site instances.

People first question always seems to be 'What is your traffic like?', but we are a young company and are building that up. What we DO have is very different and equally indicative of success: we have a delighted client in our first few weeks who is licensing our technology, we have interested press due to our unique focus on the less social members of the public, and we have a genuinely useful tool that can add value to your day to day life.

Allen: What is the greatest business lesson you have learned in your career?

Alicia: You can't do it alone. Well, you can, but you go a little bit insane. Since I moved operations to London from Sydney, I have been surrounded by supportive and helpful parties, and am finally getting an inhouse team, and it makes such a difference. However, would I have changed anything I did? Nope... I'm pretty proud to have gotten as far as I have on my own, particularly as a single non-techie female working from home while working a full time job in Sydney. :)

Allen: Which new RSS feeds are you reading these days?

Alicia: I think Leisa Reichelt's blog www.disambiguity.com is fab, and the fact she is another Aussie female in London has nothing to do with it! I love her view on technology and on usability.

Allen Stern
CenterNetworks

Skimbit announces beta and first customer

TechCrunch UK - December 10, 2007
Skimbit launches it’s formal beta trial this week read more

Skimbit, described as a social decision-making tool, launches it’s formal beta trial this week. The free service is designed to let you manage the results of web searches, say for a holiday, wedding or shopping trip, and aggregates the feedback from friends and family to make it easier to come to a group decision. Notionally Skimbit is meeting a need, since about 88% of adults conduct some sort of online research prior to making a decision. No surprises there.

Skimbit founder and CEO Alicia Navarro has pretty much built the site herself, with contractors. Skimbit.com’s revenue model is based on wrapping contextual advertisements around your research, so in theory there is more targetting as a result.

However, I see a better future for it as a white-label service, which it also offers as ‘Skim-in-a-box’. Indeed TV channel Wedding TV now offers a Decision Manager, helping its users plan their weddings. This is a useful extra for the site and provides more reliable revenues for Skimbit, which rather begs the question of whether Skimbit is really a Web “feature” or a has a future as a company. At least if they get more users and white-label clients, they’ll find out.

Mike Butcher
TechCrunch UK

Wedding TV adds social tool to help brides get advice

NEW MEDIA AGE - December 6, 2007
The Wedding TV channel has added a social read more

The Wedding TV Channel & Skimbit partner to deliver first social decision-making platform

Press Release - November 22, 2007
The Wedding TV Channel and Skimbit have announced read more

Skimbit launches first social Decision-making tool

Press Release - December 10, 2007
Skimbit announced today its beta launch read more

Skimbit, the world’s first social decision-making tool, announced today its beta launch. The free service is designed to manage the results of your internet research by skimming the best bits of sites you like, and presenting your findings in a manner that makes it easy for friends and family to collaborate and make a group decision.

Rather than copy and paste web links into emails and sending to friends for feedback, which can be a cumbersome and messy process, Skimbit skims the title, description, image, and decision-making criteria of options you find, and presents all these findings on one page for others to compare, analyse and rate. Skimbit then automatically aggregates this feedback, and presents the results in a fun graphical way, so a group decision can be easily made.

Skimbit is ideal for all sorts of group decisions, like organising accommodation for holidays with friends, or picking bridesmaid shoes for your wedding. It is also invaluable for other decisions in your life, like researching the best baby bassinette or plasma TV to buy.

View full press release