200 characters

This week, we've talked to Harald Trautsch, co-founder & CEO of Everbill.

1, What does your startup do?

We provide invoicing and other administrative processes as a SaaS application, accessible from any connected device.

2, What was to most challenging thing you had to deal when you moved from Vienna to Silicon Valley?

Silicon Valley has a much higher velocity than any other place I have been so far. You need some time to adapt.

3, Looking back 6 months, what would you’ve done differently?

I would have implemented fast prototyping and testing much earlier. It saves a tremendous amount of time and increases the quality of the UX/UI.

4, Which tool do you use to measure and optimize conversions on your website?

On our sales website we use standard tools like Google Analytics and others (Optimizely, Kissmetrics, Hittail). On the actual product website we have implemented proprietary KPI measurement.

5, Who’s the most important person in your team?

Our customer! We always have someone in our team talk to a customer to optimize user experience.

6, What’s the hottest startup these days, and why? (your personal opinion)

itap-mobile.com has the coolest remote desktop client, and launchgram.com aggregates news about movies, games, and tech not yet released!

This week, we've talked to Vit Horky, co-founder & CEO of Brand Embassy.

1, Please, tell us about your project

Brand Embassy is a next-level customer care platform. It helps companies to identify and easily engage dissatisfied customers across social media. 80% reduction of response time, 70% reduction in negative sentiment, 100% social care coverage across all social media platforms. Chosen by Telefonica O2, AVG, Diageo, Johnson & Johnson and other customer-empowering market leaders

2, Who is your main competitor?

Salesforce (Radian6), Exact Target (CoTweet)

3, How did you find your first paying customer?

Efficient personal selling thanks to customer-centric approach.

4, Looking back 6 months, what would you’ve done differently?

Focusing on international sales, sparing more time on proper identification of potential customers with high-potential of short acquisition process. Sleeping a bit more.

5, What’s the single most challenging thing you have to deal with at the moment?

Applying internal processes for increasing volume and efficiency of sales.

6, What is the hottest startup these days?

Besides Brand Embassy? Tough choice, though... I admire many startups of wide variety of products from gaming industry to energy saving and NGO. I am not regular game player, however I like guys from Ovelin, a Finnish-startup developing game apps that makes training on music instruments fun for people of any age.

This week, we've talked to Thomas Schranz, co-founder & CEO of blossom.

1, Please, tell us about your project

blossom is a lightweight project management tool for mobile and web application development.

2, What is the main differentiator between you and your main competitor?

We mainly focus on ease of use so people can enjoy their time with blossom. We deeply believe that managing projects should be a fulfilling experience.

3, How did you find your first paying customer?

He found us :) Inbound marketing works.

4, What works for you in terms of getting users?

We strive to provide useful content to our customers on twitter, facebook, google+, quora, mailing lists and our blog. Empowering people feels great and works wonders for attracting new customers.

5, If one wanted to buy you, what's the lowest offer you'd take?

We are not for sale.

6, What is the hottest startup these days in Austria?

Hard to pick just one, but I can tell you which ones we use ourselves: workio, Öffnungszeiten App, railsonfire, finderly and I'm sure I forgot a bunch :)

Thanks again to Thomas from blossom.io for doing this interview!

This week, we've talked to Bran Busovsky, co-founder & CEO of TranslateKarate.

1, Please, tell us about your project

TranslateKarate is a simple online translation toolkit to manage localization workflow.

2, Why did you choose to work on this idea?

Martin (the developer) came with it, as he was facing the problem too often and on too many places.

3, How long it took you to get from an idea to the MVP?

It took 2 years to realize, that the idea is actually “marketable” or even global. Since Nov 2011, TranslateKarate is being developed regularly.

4, Hypothetically speaking, how would you spend a $50k seed investment?

Development of the product, Sales and Public Relations.

5, Looking back 6 months, what would you’ve done differently?

Nothing. We are quite happy with our journey.Probably, If we would have been able to offer more commitment to Startup Wise Guys Accelerator in Tallin in March 2012.

6, What’s the single most challenging thing you have to deal with at the moment?

Stay in the project fulltime, with no funding at all ;)

Hey everyone! This week, we've talked to Shannon Bauman, Product Manager of Spring Metrics.

1, Please, tell us about your project

Spring Metrics is a suite of SaaS products that help Ecommerce marketers and owners increase their conversion rate on-site in real time. In other words, we help Ecommerce sites sell more stuff and make more money.

2, Why did you pivot from the web metrics tool to your current product?

We realized it would be more fun to improve Ecommerce merchants’ actual revenue outcomes by building on the analytics package we had already developed. Its a wonderful value proposition to be able to deliver a revenue increase in just a few weeks.

3, Who is your main competitor?

We compete more for customers’ time than wallet. Our potential customers are very busy people, and helping them understand we can deliver with very little time from them is key. Other companies in our space include Steelhouse and Runa.

4, What works for you in terms of getting users?

That, my friends, is a question for the ages. We constantly experiment with different ways of reaching customers. This is by far our biggest day to day activity. We have had luck with webinars, blogging, email surveys and direct outreach.

5, Would you rather choose a rockstar programmer for 2 months or a top PR agency for a year?

I would have said a rockstar programmer when we started, but we now have multiple rockstar programmers who have built a fantastic product. At this stage, the PR agency would be a nice luxury to have.

6, What's the hottest startup these days, and why? (your personal opinion)

While not super new, I’d have to throw in a vote for Khan Academy - they have the potential to have a really positive effect on the whole planet.

Hey everyone! This week, we've talked to Paul Murphy, Founder & CEO of Calltrunk.

1, Please, tell us about your project

It’s combination: ARGOsearch is a search engine for the spoken word. Calltrunk is a cloud-powered call recording service. Put them together and you can search all your spoken conversations just like you do with emails.

2, Why did you choose to work on this idea?

We knew really important information was being lost because the conversations were not being captured or made searchable. We thought we knew how to fix it. So we did.

3, How long it took you to get from an idea to the MVP?

It took about 8 months before we had a solution which was really useful, simple and intuitive.

4, Are you and your co-founder(s) on a vesting schedule?

No.

5, Looking back 6 months, what would you’ve done differently?

We’d have focused on a different market segment. We initially went after the consumer market alone but it’s the business sector that already know they need this solution. Consumers are harder to reach. So we switched focus.

6, What's the single most challenging thing you have to deal with at the moment?

We’re partnering with a lot of different companies around the world. They all want slightly different things from working with us. We have to be careful to maintain focus.

7, What's the hottest startup these days, and why? (your personal opinion)

Bitcasa. Redefining cloud storage. Redefining pricing models.

We're back with yet another cool interview! This week, we've talked to James Gill, the CEO of a London based GoSquared.

1, Please, tell us about your project

GoSquared is a real-time analytics service. Everything you need to know about your site in real-time on one screen.

2, Why did you choose to work on this idea?

Everything else sucked. When we started, there was nothing real-time, and nothing simple for web analytics.

3, How long it took you to get from an idea to the MVP?

Started GoSquared back in 2006 as an advertising service. We're an old startup, but we build fast.

4, Are you and your co-founder(s) on a vesting schedule?

Yes - we're the founders, and we're more committed to GoSquared than almost anything else in our lives.

5, Looking back 6 months, what would you’ve done differently?

I wish I had the vision for the future of analytics that we have now.

6, What's the single most challenging thing you have to deal with at the moment?

Managing and growing a team that's twice the size of what we had 6 months ago.

7, What's the hottest startup these days, and why? (your personal opinion)

I love Square. I love Stripe. I love Simple. All payments related, all obsessed with good design.

We're back! This week, we've interviewed Marshall Huss, the developer of my favorite app, Nezumi.

1, Please, tell us about your project

Nezumi is the mobile app for managing your Heroku apps. It's available for iOS and Android.

2, Why did you choose to work on this idea?

I really love Heroku for hosting my Ruby apps and I wanted a way to manage them from my iPhone. At the time nothing existed so I wrote Nezumi.

3, How many hours do you work on your startup per week?

5-10

4, What works for you in terms of getting users?

Other developers. I have tried to make a tool that developers love using and would recommend to others.

5, Looking back 6 months, what would you’ve done differently?

About 6 months ago I did a complete rewrite and launched Nezumi 2 and it was the best decision I could have made.

6, What's the hottest startup these days, and why? (your personal opinion)

http://teamtreehouse.com/ is doing some amazing work bringing technology education to people who want to learn to develop software. But I am biased since I work at Treehouse.

This week, we've interviewed Ilya Beyrak, founder & CEO of Resultly.

1, Please, tell us about your project

Resultly is a website and mobile app for streaming results. It allows you to easily follow any interest across the entire internet. People use Resultly to notified to the minute that someone posts an iPhone to craigslist or a daily deal site offers a massage for less than 30 dollars.

2, Why did you choose to work on this idea?

I chose to create Resultly, simply because I wish something like Resultly existed. I noticed I wasted way too much time doing the traditional form of search when I wanted to buy a new product. Resultly makes the process more efficient and easier.

3, How long it took you to get from an idea to the MVP?

We never truly developed a MVP. We knew our idea was big and we needed to get past an MVP to attract attention. It took us approximately one year to get to our alpha version to which we started inviting users to try.

4, Are you and your co-founder(s) on a vesting schedule?

I am the sole founder and do not have a vesting schedule.

5, Looking back 6 months, what would you’ve done differently?

We would have started development of our iPhone and Android apps earlier. We have spent a lot of time over the last six months attempting to perfect the app has taken a great deal of our time. We also realized that the app is integral to us having a fully usable product for the masses.

6, What's the single most challenging thing you have to deal with at the moment?

Timelines. A lot of times in coding and development work like we are doing things just end up taking longer then you’d usually like. Making sure that we push new features into production quickly is the biggest challenge, often requiring some long days (and nights).

7, What's the hottest startup these days, and why? (your personal opinion)

Resultly of course (ha ha). if I had to say another one, the Chicago based Belly is really cool. Belly is essentially a loyalty card for small and medium sized businesses. Belly installs iPads at the front desks of restaurants and stores and you scan your phone when you enter and earn points that you can redeem for cool stuff.

This week, we've interviewed Claudiu Murariu, founder of PadiAct.

1, Please, tell us about your project

PadiAct increases your email leads by targeting your website visitors that are most likely to become future customers. Leads are sent directly to your CRM or email service app, ready to be followed up.

2, Who is your main competitor?

There are many products like Unbounce, KISSinsights or Olark that help you increase email leads but we consider them as complementary and not competitors.

3, What’s the single most challenging thing you have to deal with at the moment?

PadiAct is created with the mindset of helping websites increase conversion rates by learning the behavior of the visitors. The challenge is to find the best strategy in helping our users do that.

4, Who’s the most important person on your team?

We are not that kind of team. Members take different roles at different time with the sole goal of making customers happy. The whole team works like a super hero.

5, What works for you in terms of getting users?

Sending the email leads directly to the CRMs or email service providers of our users is really appreciated by our customers. The freemium model also works really good for us.

6, What's the hottest startup these days, and why? (your personal opinion)

I am a big fan of Airbnb, KISSmetrics, Dropbox. I love startups that are contributing to the internet world, develop new technologies and bring a positive attitude towards other fellow startups.

We're back! After a week off, we've interviewed Ben Arent of RedisToGo.

1, Please, tell us about your project

Simple Redis Hosting http://redistogo.com

2, Why did you choose to work on this idea?

We loved Redis and couldn't find a solution that worked for us.

3, How many hours do you work on your startup per week?

Full time.

4, What works for you in terms of getting users?

We are a featured add-on on Heroku, but are getting increasing amount of users from our blog http://blog.togo.io

5, Looking back 6 months, what would you've done differently?

Explored more creative product ideas. We've found our Redis Enterprise a bit hit. http://blog.togo.io/enterprise-redis-support/

6, What's the hottest startup these days, and why? (your personal opinion)

http://catpaint.info/ - Cause Cats.

This week, we've interviewed Alan Suchánek, Co-founder of a startup called By Square, one of the winners of Slovak Start-Up Development Program 2012.

1, Please, tell us about your project

The By Square is a technological platform enabling efficient and reliable encoding of invoices and payment orders into QR codes.

2, Why did you choose to work on this idea?

While working on another business idea we had a need for a solution such as the By Square. As we could not find such solution we have started working on the By Square.

3, How long it took you to get from an idea to the MVP?

We have started to work on the idea in October 2011 and we have introduced the By Square standard in March 2012.

4, Who is your main competitor?

We have built By Square not as a competing product, but as a platform that is needed by both businesses and consumers. Naturally, we want to exploit this potential for cooperation.

5, Hypothetically speaking, how would you spend your $50k seed investment?

People. Once you are working on a good idea people are the most relevant factor. We will be spending most of our seed investment on the right people.

6, What's the single most challenging thing you have to deal with at the moment?

Heat. It is 38 degrees Celsius right now and there is no lake or pool around.

7, What's the hottest startup these days, and why?

Cradle to cradle manifesto and Cradle to cradle products innovation institute. It is the most relevant initiative and business concept of last decades.

This week, we've interviewed Richard Voda, Founder of Work in Field, one of the winners of StartupAwards 2011.

1, Please, tell us about your project

Workinfield is a GPS tracking app that tells you where your employees are, where they’ve been and what jobs they do.

2, Why did you choose to work on this idea?

Fits in global trend that I believe in: mobility

3, Who is your main competitor?

TeleNav, Xora in USA

4, How long it took you to get from an idea to the MVP?

18 months

5, What's the hottest startup these days, and why?

I have no idea. They come and go.

6, If you only had a $100 advertising budget, how would you spend it?

I would buy few bottles of wine and drink it with my team. Maybe we would get an idea, if not at least we would have had a good time.

This week, we've been talking to Roman Leinwather, Founder of Getquantify.

1, Please, tell us about your project

Getquantify is collaboration web application, developed with the popular GTD (Getting things done) system in mind. It helps companies to manage their projects more efficiently.

2, Why did you choose to work on this idea?

I am running tiny creative studio in Prague where I work on quite a few projects at the same time. I needed a tool which would help me to manage them. Creating a full featured collaboration app while keep it simple and clear for end user was a great challenge.

3, How many hours do you work on your startup per week?

About 20. Mainly evenings and weekends.

4, How long it took you to get from an idea to the MVP?

It took me about a year, but that included learning the technologies, few web languages & frameworks, server configurations and so on. Again, only during the weekends and evenings.

5, What's the single most challenging thing you have to deal with at the moment?

The most difficult for me is to find a time to market the application while developing new features.

6, Looking back 6 months, what would you've done differently?

I am constantly learning from the experience. I would not done things differently. The question is: if I could do things better and there the answer is always yes.

In our most recent interview, we've been talking to Martin Jerkovič, Co-Founder & Chief of Studentive, one of the winners of StartupAwards 2011.

1, Please, tell us about your project

Studentive is web platform that connects students and companies through simple tasks in order to find and recruit talents.

2, How many hours do you work on your startup per week?

I feel like working 70 hours a week, but in fact it’s less. The most important thing on doing your stuff is efficiency which is not that easy to follow. I need to work on that.

3, How long it took you to get from an idea to the MVP?

We got plenty of feedback, implemented it and after release nothing seems to be working. Users don’t know what they want. Company is the one to find out. I’m really not sure if we are that far (MVP).

4, What's the single most challenging thing you have to deal with at the moment?

User’s behavior shows that problem we solve is deeper than we expected. Next big challenge is to find out whether procrastination of students is involved within our concept. God help us if yes :)

5, Who's the most important person on your team?

When building things the most important person is builder. Talking about startups, it’s developer. I will rather answer the question who is the least important person right know. It’s me.

6, Would you rather choose a rockstar programmer for 2 months or a top PR agency for a year?

Product has to be perfect. This is the rule I follow since very beginning of my entrepreneurship. Viral marketing and PR stuff must come from product itself. Top coder is priceless in every situation.

7, What's the hottest startup these days, and why?

I really like Quora. I’m overwhelmed by its knowledge base provided by top people in startup industry and it’s still growing! If I have ever invested in startups, Quora would be first to do so.

Today, we've been talking to Rasťo Molnár and Peter Komorník, the founders of InstFeedback (the winner of StartupWeekend Bratislava 2)

1, Please, tell us about your project

InstFeedback is a simple tool allowing presenters to receive instant feedback after their presentations and improve based on their past performance and audience’s comments.

2, Why did you choose to work on this idea?

Timely feedback is one of the most important tools for learning and growth. Many people these days struggle with their presentations and we want to help them do it better.

3, Hypothetically speaking, how would you spend your $50k seed investment?

There are three areas where we would primarily focus the investment: product development, marketing and user education.

4, Are you and your co-founder(s) on a vesting schedule?

We have implemented an agreement under which the ownership shares will be evaluated and re-weighted in few months based on actual performance and value added.

5, Tell us about your competitors

There are several companies which are trying to provide real-time feedback but our goal is to make feedback super-easy for the presenters and their audience.

6, What's the single most challenging thing you have to deal with at the moment?

Right now we are working hard to test the product with first users, improve the user experience based on their feedback and add new features.

Today, we've been talking to Oliver Dlouhý, CEO of SkyPicker.com

1, Please, tell us about your project

Hi, our project is called Skypicker and it's a European low cost air tickets search engine which is able to find the ABSOLUTELY lowest fares.

2, Who's the most important person on your team?

I'm the author of the idea so I think I'm quite important. Also Jožo, our developer is pretty important. He created the whole search engine. Big thanks to Jožo!

3, How long it took you to get from an idea to the MVP?

Almost a year.

4, How many hours do you work on your startup per week?

Non-stop. Always thinking about it. Execution takes 4-8 hrs a day.

5, Hypothetically speaking, how would you spend your $50k seed investment?

I would travel to Dublin, got drunk with Mr. O'Leary from Ryanair and persuaded him to love and support Skypicker.

6, What works for you in terms of getting users?

Facebook, discussion boards, WOM.