Social network paradox

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Editor’s Note: Nina Khosla is a designer and founder of Teethie, a social blogging startup focused on building interest-based communities. You can follow her @ninakix.

Over the years, there’s been a radical change in the way we interact with our networks of friends online. It used to be that we had a few of our friends (online or offline friends) on a service, allowing us to connect to friends through the Internet and see what their activities were. Where the Internet used to be a somewhat scary world full of strangers, we suddenly had friendly anchors to explore that world with. Sure, most of our friends weren’t online, or at least not using the same services, but the familiarity was comforting and the ability to see what a few of our friends were doing allowed us to find new content and new friends.

We fell in love with sites that made us feel like there are people out there who are similar to us, who we are talking to and having common experiences with. But then, some of these networks — Facebook and Twitter in particular — began to grow explosively. Facebook facilitated a cultural norm of using its service to “friend” everyone we knew. All of a sudden we had tons of our friends everywhere we went. With the experiences gained sharing online spaces with a few friends, logic would dictate that having more of our friends online would make this experience richer. But that isn’t what happened.

Instead, there is a new trend happening: We’re not really paying attention to our friends we’re connected to online. Take Twitter, for example. Twitter used to be a great place for many early adopters to talk tech. It wasn’t so long ago that there were few enough people on Twitter that you could read every single tweet in your stream.

But as the network began to become more dense, and people found more people they knew and liked on Twitter, they began following hundreds of people, and reading all those tweets became impossible. This is such a fact of life that entire companies are based on the premise that you have too many friends on Facebook and Twitter to really pay attention to what they’re saying.

For example, Flipboard, among others, highlights its abilities to share with you the best of your friends’ Twitter and Facebook posts. These companies, and even Facebook’s news feed intelligence, are helping us deal with the disconnect we have with our friends because of our connectedness—they’re sorting through the deluge of information this expanded network created for us.

Therein lies the paradox of the social network that no one wants to admit: as the size of the network increases, our ability to be social decreases.

Like anything else, networks and the information flowing through them follow the laws of supply and demand. As the number of bits, photos and links coming over these networks grew, each of those invisibly began to decrease in worth.

Perhaps that explains the excitement over new products. When a smaller crew of people are using a tool, such as Foursquare, we can keep track of our friends’ locations and whereabouts. At a smaller scale, knowing this information and being able to expect that others have also seen it let us all in on a little secret, it made early use of Twitter feel somewhat magical. But as the number of friends begins to increase—particularly over that magic Dunbar number of 150—the spell begins to wear off. At this scale, we simply can’t easily keep track of it all. When our number of connections rises above 150 everything becomes simply comments, as real conversations tax our already limited ability to interface with the network.

What used to be a small community of web explorers and renegades had turned into nothing more than a large party of somewhat meaningless Foursquare checkins and an excessive use of hashtags. That mythical thing, social connection, doesn’t flow over these networks; information flows over these networks. The only reason the network ever felt meaningful was because, at small scale, the network operated like a community. But that breaks apart at large scale.

Which leads us to communities: Communities, the kind with clearly demarcated lines of membership, have always existed within the context of larger networks, and always broke off in bits and pieces to make them feel familiar. Communities, and the spaces that are given to them to form in, are the only way we are able to work with the network of the physical world. Our soccer team, our school, our workplace, our street, our town, all have their own communities. And I suspect that these are the only things that will make the digital world similarly manageable.

Communities give us an audience and a perspective. We know who we’re talking to. This doesn’t seem like a big thing, but it’s the glue that holds our communication together. It’s the difference between shouting out into the void, and having a conversation with someone standing in front of you.

What’s the difference between live tweeting a sports game or participating in an SB Nation game thread? A tweet is not an experience, it’s the broadcasting of an individuals’ experience to a vague and undefined audience. When I think about the kinds of things I tweet, they’re things like “I just read a cool article, check it out,” or “About to get on a plane,” or “GOALLLL!” if my team (the San Jose Sharks) has just scored.

The thing about all these is that they’re not a shared experience—they are my experiences, which I am sharing with you, but you probably cannot experience with me—my thoughts or fascination with the article I just posted, the feeling of getting on that plane, or the thrill of watching the Sharks tie the game. Perhaps you can compare your notes of your own experience of these things; that’s what most Twitter conversation seems to be, to me, but the experiences are not shared.

This differs from a discussion in a community, such as the type that occurs on SB Nation game day threads. The conversation does not center around any one individual’s experience, but rather the collective condition of the community. The conversation is the experience. Each comment is driven with the purpose of evoking and expressing the emotions that the community experiences, and particularly the ones they hold in common.

This habit of evoking and expressing common emotions is what drives inside jokes and their internet incarnation, memes. Sure, there are disagreements and differences in communities, but the magic is in the similarities: Knowing that everyone on there is also a Sharks fan and just swore at the TV over that goal is emotional and valuable. That’s what expands the sense of belonging and membership that people in a  community feel, and becomes a basis for the entirety of the rest of the discussion (even, especially, differences).

SB Nation is in real-time, but it doesn’t have to be: communities have sprung up for years on traditional, slow PHP bulletin boards. Lost fans populated message boards and blogs, uniting over their common love of Lost, and the way the show antagonized them—what is in that hatch?!

If the pattern of all our networks is to grow larger, as Facebook has pushed others around it to become, consumers will hit these limits on the meaningfulness of these networks. If we are creating social products, we need to create products that do allow people to be social, really social.

We need to build products that don’t just allow users to write and publish, we need to create products that encourage discussion, experiences, and lasting, meaningful relationships. These are the things that create real benefits for users and the products that inspire them. And thus, the future of the social web is no longer on a network, it’s within communities.

Teethie is stealth startup currently building a social blogging tool focused on building communities of like-minded individuals.

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Nina Khosla is a 22-year-old designer and entrepreneur that went Stanford and learned about Product Design. She’s a high school drop out, a ski racer, and is currently working...

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Seesmic is focused on social enterprise; Android, iPad Debuts Apps for Salesforce CRM

Leena Rao is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school Medill School of journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007 she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney advocacy and community relations in New York. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where it was ... ? Read More

Social application developer Seesmic makes a big step in social enterprise and debuting dedicated Android app and iPad app for Salesforce CRM product (Windows phone 7 will also be added soon), called Seesmic CRM. Android app will be published tomorrow morning at Salesforce at the annual Conference, Dreamforce and Seesmic launches iPad app within a few weeks.

For the background of Seesmic, which was founded by a French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur, allows you to monitor and follow up the social web. Seesmic desktop, Internet and mobile clients integrate with Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. Bonus using an application like Seesmic is the ability to combine your streams from a variety of social Web services such as YouTube, Foursquare, Techmeme, LinkedIn, and others.

But lately, Seesmic dabbling in the enterprise and launch more focused business functions. Last fall, Seesmic has deep integration with Salesforce enterprise social network chatter. And then earlier this year, Salesforce 4 million Australian dollars round in Seesmic.

Mostly Seesmic Android and iPad apps CRM lead all the functionality of Salesforce CRM for mobile phones. Users can search their Salesforce.com account from native applications; Search for leads, contacts, accounts, related activities and sets of chatter on the move; Creating and updating leads, contacts, tasks, and activities; Log calls and emails after meetings; and much more. And applications use mobile OS; to map users to their respective leads to their current location; upload photos and more. While prices had not been announced yet, Seesmic may charge a fee of $ 10 per month per user for the application.

Le Meur tells us that he does not compete with Salesforce CRM giant, because currently does not offer in-depth Android and iPad apps. In fact, Seesmic is working "hand in hand" with Salesforce mobile group to develop these native apps. And Salesforce particularly bullish on social enterprise at the end — "Welcome to the social enterprise» is the theme of the Dreamforce this year. As Le Meur said: "we are working with Salesforce, not compete with the company."

Of course it's interesting that Twitter's developer platform is shifting focus from building consumer and focusing on the enterprise. In March, Twitter basically told developers avoid compete with them on their own customers. It's not that Twitter doesn't want developers to build off their platform, they simply do not want developers to create clients that simulate Twitter's own services.

Thus Seesmic found new user base in the area of business. Le Meur explains that the use of mobile and social enterprise of the future for Seesmic. While the startup will not relinquish their Web and mobile applications (Android app company has more than one million users); all efforts of Seesmic now completely focused on attracting social for business users, "said Le million euros.

Seesmic BlackBerry app shuttered a few months ago. You can watch Le million euros in a recent conversation with TechCrunch TV Andrew Kina here.

(Disclosure: TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington was an early investor in Seesmic.)

Seesmic is a powerful set of social media and collaboration tools that provide businesses and individuals with everything they need to build and manage their brands online. WITH ...

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HealthTech FAIL: lessons for entrepreneurs from startups health gone awry

Editor's Note: this is a guest post written by Dave Chase, CEO of Avado.com patient relationship management company, which was a finalist in the TechCrunch Disrupt. He was formerly a management consultant to medical practice, Accenture consulting for 25 hospitals and founder of Microsoft health business. You can follow him on Twitter @ chasedave.

Healthtech represents the sector is constantly growing, but from a pool of $ 1 billion that VCs poured into startups in the past year, medical companies only got about 3 per cent of the total. Not so many startups healthtech were able to provide these large enterprises cartridges; However, last week, I drew the attention of one company healthtech seem to be doing it right: Zocdoc, which raised $ 50 million round from summer time earlier this month and suggested some points to consider for startups looking to draw lessons from experiences in Zocdoc (check out the post here.

As the above company numbers from Rip in the post, a lot of startups have not yet really demonstrated the wisdom shown by Zocdoc, resulting in an increasing number of failures healthtech over the past few years. A recent study, inter alia, underlined the phenomenon. After interviewing 110 digital business health RockHealth has recently released the findings of the study, showing the gap between companies that actually receive funding and the many people who have come up empty.

This trip sheds light on why so many companies could not blow healthtech or had to undergo significant changes in order to survive. Below you will find some of the best reasons for startup failure healthtech:

The lack of specific attention or acceptance of terms

Is well known that insufficient attention kills startups in healthcare or not but it is especially common in health care. Healthcare industry suffers from an abundance of pain points and is in serious need of shocks, so it's tempting for new startups to try to resolve them to make the greatest impact. However, these startups ignores the old saying about how to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Too many startups biting off more than they can chew. It is better to choose one major pain to deal with and go with him.

Expected consumers to pay

With the exception of weight loss programs there are not many examples of consumers pay directly for health services. Over time, this may change, the greater burden of healthcare costs gets switched to consumers, as outlined in part II of a series of health disorders (see references below). Nevertheless, I would be very cautious of any business, expecting that consumers pay in the near-term.

Expected users to enter much information

Although I believe there are more reasons why Google Health is not expecting consumers to enter information is one of the major factors in why personal health records (PHR) failed to gain significant traction. Most of the PHR rely on individual data entry, and few are willing to do so.

Requires an enormous amount of money

This tends to occur during periods of bubble where there is a grand vision and frothy financial markets threw huge amounts of money. Eventually, they were not sustainable franchise.

Require multiple and complex partnership

These runs depends on too many partnerships are likely to run into problems, these partnerships often involve the established players. Unfortunately established players have significantly different sense of urgency. Many good ideas die on the vine, waiting for business development and legal departments on established players who do not share launch a sense of urgency.

There is no understanding of the dynamics of recovery

This is definitely the number one reason why healthtech startups failed. The results of the study RockHealth highlight an important aspect of this. On a positive note 77 per cent of the VCs think health IT investments will increase in the United States by the year 2011. Already 35 digital health care companies with $ 2 m + in year 2011. It is important to note that 80% of them receive funding are B2B (i.e. sale of health professionals in business, etc.), but most entrepreneurs digital health surveyed think consumers will pay for your product or service. Despite this most entrepreneurs digital health early build B2c companies.

Before it's too late, I hope these companies will find a way for anyone except consumers pay. This can be through advertising model or technology licensing for organizations. In this case, the consumer is a product, not the client. The client is an organization.

You can find a complete study of RockHealth in embedded below for your viewing pleasure:

The following is a series of health violations listed above:

Health violations: Pharma 3.0 will encourage the transition from life science investing HealthTech
Health violations: providers will use the HealthTech differentiate and produce better results (part II)
Health violations: providers do newspaper industry mistakes (part III)

Fragment image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

Avado is a patient relationship management platform that enables health initiative, a partnership between the individual and their health & wellness vendors and gives individual health related records.

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Dave is CEO and co-founder of Avado. Avado is a patient relationship management platform that empowers a health partnership between individuals and their & health wellness providers during ...

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Event site transactions sells 5 million ticket Goldstar, adds function automatically place you and your friends

RIP Empson-writer at TechCrunch. He did not find friends here, he is here to win and you don't forget it. You can contact him at rip [at] techcrunch [dot] com ? more

Ticket sales for enterprises, nothing beats, "sold". But whether the flight is selling all their tickets or sports team fills their Stadium, the show must go on. Enterprises with perishable inventory can benefit from daily transactions model and those that you can make money on additional goods (purchase, which make up for revenues lost in offering discount) you can often break even — Take movie theaters and sports venues, for example.

This occurs when a company called Goldstar enters into the field. Gold Star-based membership site live entertainment half price tickets that allows sites to unload their additional tickets, make some extra income and generate word of mouth marketing.

GoldStar, which currently has relationships with more than 5000 place partners (from Cirque du Soleil and Ticketmaster in San Francisco) and paragraphs Matt coffin, Emmy award-winning actor Neil Patrick Harris and former Ticketmaster CEO Sean Moriarty as members of the Advisory Board wants not just become a "Groupon entertainment tickets.

To differentiate their models from the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial, Goldstar avoids revenue sharing with merchants and monetizes, instead taking a fee for each ticket ($ 4.50 in average), allowing entertainment — or show themselves — to take home the full cost of each ticket sold.

So far this model works for the ticket site entertainment as Goldstar recently announced that it sold its five millionth ticket and now has more than 2 million members in more than 20 major markets in the United States. The site currently offers 1200-1500 half price tickets every day.

Of course, as anyone who has used ticket discounts knows — so far so good, just satisfaction of scoring a deal on tickets, we want to be able to go in a movie or show and sit with our friends. Unseat. Me, for example, the attack is a friend, allowing subscription owners to offer their tickets with friends until their sale of anonymous people at StubHub.

Today, gold star announces its own solutions to ticket buyers and suppliers to address this problem with its characteristic "Sit with friends". GoldStar in new patent allows Goldstar members who purchase tickets for personal reference, then they can share with friends via email or social network of choice. Users can use this link to buy tickets in the same event and automatically get seated with their friends.

With five million tickets sold, the Goldstar has come a long way since he sold his first party tickts horse Ballet in Pasadena back in 2003 year. The company never accepted outside investment, however, managed to stay profitable — with only a dozen staff. GoldStar CEO Jim Mccarthy said that the key to the armed forces of resistance to large sales La Groupon was to cultivate its existing relationships with the places and shows instead focus on closing new merchants who can never use the site again.

From the perspective of the future road map, Mccarthy said that Goldstar is looking to expand into new cities in the United States and to improve its core technologies of construction of the new features, such as sit with friends that encourage people to get out to see live entertainment — in spite of the tough economy.

Founded by former GeoCities, Warner Bros., eToys, Overture, Morgan Stanley and Noah's bagels staff in 2002, the Golden Star is a website that is dedicated to helping its users to go to ...

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ModoPayments will finally monetize-registration?

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ModoPayments’ simple and comprehensive solution for providing mobile payments is interesting and what’s more, its offer-based approach may have finally cracked the code for monetizing check-ins. This is something that mobile location-based service providers (LBSs) like Foursquare, Loopt, Gowalla and ShopKick have, no doubt, been laboring over since their inceptions. And while ModoPayments is, at present, a non-NFC mobile payments platform, they plan to integrate with NFC too, when NFC reaches retail maturity.

Based in Dallas, Texas and led by CEO Bruce Parker, ModoPayments is a startup with a goal to do exactly what their tagline says – “convert redemptions to payments and make payments mobile”. What exactly does that mean? First, know that ModoPayments definitely has a payments piece and I’ll come to that in a moment, but a supremely important part of their business plan is creating and tying value offers to the purchases they enable in order to enhance and promote their mobile payments solution. They create monetary savings that users can cash in on if they transact with ModoPayments instead of another tender.

It has often been stated that mobile payments are a solution searching for a problem. Indeed, what is the big deal about pulling a card out of your wallet vs. pulling your phone out of your pocket, to transact? Where is the value to drive the mobile payment other than convenience?

Modo thinks it has to do with offers and they have integrated a framework for redeeming merchant offers with their payments platform. This makes sense to me. If I had to choose between paying with my Visa card in my wallet or my Visa on my phone (that also happens to give me a big discount on the purchase) I think the choice is obvious. So right out of the gate, ModoPayments has tied a distinct consumer value proposition to their service in order to drive usage (they hope). Google Wallet has a similar concept. It will definitely be a motivator.

The platform makes it possible to, in the words of Bruce, “generate a mobile payment transaction at any location that accepts either Visa or MasterCard with no change to POS and no change to the phone that uses ModoPayments.” It can exist as an SMS or native app solution; customers can choose either touchpoint.

I’ve heard this one before, but their scenario is really simple and honestly sounds like it might work.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

First, a customer creates an account at the ModoPayments website and registers a credit card with that account. When it later comes time to pay for something at a participating location, the customer texts “VISIT” to the Modo short code or else they check-in with the Modo native app. (In the text scenario, Modo will try to triangulate on a customer’s network location. If they can’t locate them, ultimately they will just ask the customer via text—‘are you at X location’ and via process of elimination, locate them).

After Modo have verified that the location matches up with a supporting offer, they will create a randomized credit account number for that location which is good for one transaction only. They then load it with money that the merchant or other 3rd party has set aside for the specific offer.

Next, they will grab the difference still needed to complete the sale from the customers registered credit card. In essence, they are creating pre-paid card numbers that will only work for a limited time and that are loaded with money from both the offer provider and the customer.

Then, they send half of the account number to the merchant and half of the number to the customer. The two sides combine their numbers to create the actionable account number to complete the transaction. (The merchant half of the number may or may not be static and therefore might not even need to be sent).

Pretty tricky. So here they have tied a distinct merchant value proposition to their service—no costly POS change required plus a mobile marketing channel.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

Logistically, that is how they are enabling the mobile payment but another concept they are focused on is information sharing. Using the ModoPayments framework, users can track their entire purchase history, merchants can see anonymized purchasing trends to track/create effective offers and the location element will act as a security feature and help bolster the ability to relax chargeback percentages in order to turn those into profit.

For example, normally for “card-not-present” credit transactions (like Modo’s) an extra percentage is taken from the merchant who accepts these card-less numbers as protection against fraudulent purchases in case there is a chargeback.

Because ModoPayments has these sophisticated technologies that can prove exactly where a transaction is happening and by whom, and because they also control the randomized account numbers they can potentially minimize chargeback risk. This will allow them to work out acquirer relationships in such a way that they keep that usual 1% markup and turn it into profit. I am not sure how they are going to pull that off, but it’s a great idea.

MONETIZE CHECK-IN

I think the payments piece alone is cool and the info sharing piece is borderline scary but what I really zeroed in on is what this could mean as a payments solution that benefits the check-in concept. Customers can check-in with ModoPayments via text or native app, but Bruce said that other LBSs could also own the check-in part if they want. Modo is open to that.

So here’s the thing…if pulled off correctly, this service could finally monetize check-in in a way that hasn’t happened before. Modo could provide the framework for the offer and mechanism for transacting, while the location service could act as the visible marketing channel. That extra 1% could be sliced up a few ways so everyone could get a piece of the action. Then, it just becomes a volume game.

For example, a merchant has an offer and advertises that either directly though ModoPayments or within say, Foursquare. If the Foursquare check-in helps drive the offer redemption through ModoPayments, then they get a piece of that transaction, affiliate-style. It would therefore behoove Foursquare to help advertise it. This could be the part of their puzzle that has been missing and could be very attractive to the major LBSs while at the same time could help to drive ModoPayments adoption.

WHAT ABOUT NFC?

I’m rather pessimistic about NFC’s short term viability for completing mobile payments in the retail space. No doubt it will be a useful mechanism once the merchant value proposition is defined. As it stands, that has yet to be clarified for me, in toto.

Sure, consumers want it, but is that enough of a reason to validate merchant expense incurred purchasing and installing the hardware needed, just so a small percentage of early adopter consumers can leave their wallets at home? Consumer desire is one thing but there needs to be a clear, strategic and financial value for the merchant too, especially if they are footing the bill for NFC enablement (e.g. buying hardware).

It’s a big, credible expense and there are just too many unanswered questions in my mind to think that NFC payments are as close as the Google Wallet announcement would lead some to believe. Forrester’s Charles S. Golvin and Thomas Husson have said that

“Relying on an installed base of phones that is today indistinguishable from zero, a single payment system, a single card issuer, and a modest network of merchants capable of accepting these phone-based payments means that the near-term impact will be negligible.”

That’s why the POS-less concept ModoPayments has put together is a great interim step.

Don’t get me wrong, I think eventually NFC will embed and payments solutions will have to incorporate with it and account for it. It’s definitely one way to solve for the physical proximity needs of a mobile transaction. It’s still a couple of years away though. That’s just my opinion.

And really, I’m not sure consumers care if their mobile payments solution incorporates NFC, 2D barcodes or a freakin’ chip in their butt…they just want an easy way to purchase that matches the evolving mobile lifestyle of traveling light, planning on the fly and managing on the go. It’s just how people are staring to do things. We all know this.

Ok, they might actually care about a chip in their butt. You get my point though.

WHAT’S NEXT
ModoPayments has a few pilots scheduled to launch in Dallas in the coming weeks, so we’ll hopefully be able to get a look at how this concept is playing out in the real world. I will definitely be watching for when and how those pilots work out. They will also be presenting at Finovate 2011, in New York later in September. Until then, check out their light and clever little video at modopayments.com.

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Quixey raises US $ 3.8 million, for functional search engine for your applications

RIP Empson-writer at TechCrunch. He did not find friends here, he is here to win and you don't forget it. You can contact him at rip [at] techcrunch [dot] com ? more

Quixey, on the basis of the Palo Alto startup that builds functional search engine for your applications, today announced that it closed the US $ 3.8 million series a funding round. Investment venture partners led the WI Harper group and the United States, with the participation of Webb investment network, along with subsequent investments, Eric Schmidt innovation. Series round adds to Quixey $ 400 K, grew in April from innovation endeavours to attract investment to $ 4.2 million.

We've all heard (and maybe even prototyping) quip "there is an app for that." It's really excellent quality of the Mobile revolution: there really is an app for just about everything you can think of, from call taxis for managing schedule scan for cancer or heart murmors skin. But it's also overwhelming, and find the application you want is not easy. There are a lot of noise and a lot of flawed approaches to app engine.

Quixey entered the game with the intent to build a new type of search, molded specifically for the unique features of the search for these everywhere, but sometimes elusive apps. Their decision came up with "functional search", which not only scans the major App stores, but blogging crawls, review sites, forums and social media sites to create a truly comprehensive picture of what the application can be done through reviews, Word of mouth and demos.

Quixey for search engine enables the user to enter queries like "baseball report and get a list of applications that provide only that (which they can then filter by platform). And the best part search Zarins Windows and Mac apps, iGoogle, extensions, and much more. It's not just the iOS and Android.

Although the Quixey seemingly to compete with the likes of Chomp and other, startup also has added value offers in the nutritional status of the search for other App stores, search engines and Web sites — just like Google — to facilitate the diffusion of its search engine for third-party sites throughout the Internet.

So it comes as no surprise then that Eric Schmidt innovation Ventures invests in search a great application. Attraction of external information and data from blogs, review sites and beyond, really adds an additional level of depth search applications (especially in being independent of the platform), as well as nutrition search through Web sites gives Quixey the ability to scale and be mixed with the very place it scans. Startup will use its new investment to continue achieving partnership with App stores and other app a great third party resources, and teammate Quixey, there are more than 25 potential partnerships in the pipeline. More partners, the more effective it becomes search engine.

This is an interesting new approach this "functional search, and from my experience so far, works as advertised. Chimes to let us know what you think. More about Quixey here.

Quixey is a functional search engine for your applications. Use the applications in your daily life. You are using Google apps on your phone, in your browser, social networking and ...

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Killer startups? BlackBox releases report/application to help avoid Deadpool founders

RIP Empson-writer at TechCrunch. He did not find friends here, he is here to win and you don't forget it. You can contact him at rip [at] techcrunch [dot] com ? more

It's not just green — or entrepreneur. The inherent risk of becoming an entrepreneur or startup founders is high. Sleepless nights, sweat equity, bribing new users come to your product — it's all part of the nerves, spinning and teeth grinding process. That's why these thugs mainly pirates in nature. But it's true that question several startups to ever make it far enough to find a buried treasure or piggyback on Facebook before fame; in fact, cold, hard reality is that more than 90 per cent of all startups fail.

This is why four young international entrepreneurs (Ziba Herrmann, Max Marmer, Fadi Bishara, Alexander Markov) created a so-called report launch genome because they wanted a deep dive into what makes a successful launch — and that causes so many to drink from a cup of FAIL.

67-page report, created in collaboration with scientists from Stanford and Berkeley, collects data from 3200 startups to date in order to work towards the creation of foundations for a new foundation for a more effective assessment of startups — by measuring thresholds and main stages of development, navigate through the early stages of a Web company. (Read our initial coverage of the launch of the genome report here.)

The report, which has a comprehensive and scientific approach to the analysis of trends launch was a success; has been downloaded 15000 times and in more than 150 publications in 20 different languages. But perhaps more importantly, the report (and subsequent data, add new companies and entrepreneurs) has already begun to show some interesting results — this can actually benefit those very people analyze. Namely, co-founder of Ziba Lasse Herrmann tells me the number one cause of the startup failure: premature scaling.

Herrmann said that group study found that 90 per cent of the startups that are 70 percent scaled prematurely, which sometimes subtle and sometimes dramatic impact on the success (or lack thereof) of their business. Self-destructing and not competition is the bane of most startups, it seems.

Thus the team behind the report, which also created the business Accelerator, called Blackbox (designed for the use of data collected from their R&D projects), wants to move beyond static reports and a tool for startups that will help them to deal with this widespread problem of premature scaling.

Today team Blackbox produces start compass, a tool built to be a recipe for premature scaling by comparing the progress of the company "5 main interdependent aspects", according to Herman: customers, products, teams, business model and finance. Compass provides entrepreneurs with the dashboard for monitoring progress on these parameters, helping them better priorities on a monthly basis, as well as help them find any inconsistencies in these measurements.

According to Herrmann many startups have problems whose solution priorities follow, not to mention measuring their effectiveness once they do, "almost always land in the proverbial grey zone". He gave these issues as classic examples of start of uncertainty: "good 5 per cent, increase retention? I have enough users to announce product market fit? Currently, step on the gas pedal and scale? "

Compass, then, is a simple benchmarking tool to reduce this grey zone by evaluating the startup type and stage of development and then compare the data of other startups of the same type and the stage — on 25 core indicators, to help them better understand their current location (and the efficiency of their direction).

For those who wish to check the Compass beta you can find it here. BlackBox is looking for feedback from entrepreneurs and founders, too, as she wants tools that actually benefit those who are there in the wild and woolly world accent — not only to researchers. This joint project, Herman said, and one that can have real consequences more data it collects.

Readers who want to check the Blackbox mini genome report report Launch: additional premature scaling-up can be found here.

BlackBox set out to find a scalable way for faster startup. As part of our opening we started genome project start to uncover mechanics as startups ...

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