#launch it

Summer is almost here and for many this means planning family camping trips, outdoor barbeques and fun in the sun. This month, we’re excited to announce several new features that highlight why Microsoft Edge is the best browser for shopping.  Online shopping with Microsoft Edge saves you both time and money. We’re also sharing new features and tips to make Microsoft Edge more personalized. Along with this, we’re making Microsoft Edge the best performing browser on Windows 10 with additional improvements this month for sleeping tabs!

If you’re running a Windows PC, you already have Microsoft Edge installed, so Launch it and check it-out

Traduction

L’été est presque là et pour beaucoup, cela signifie planifier des voyages de camping en famille, des barbecues en plein air et du plaisir au soleil. Ce mois-ci, nous sommes ravis d’annoncer plusieurs nouvelles fonctionnalités qui soulignent pourquoi Microsoft Edge est le meilleur navigateur pour les achats. Les achats en ligne avec Microsoft Edge vous permettent d’économiser du temps et de l’argent. Nous partageons également de nouvelles fonctionnalités et astuces pour rendre Microsoft Edge plus personnalisé. Parallèlement à cela, nous faisons de Microsoft Edge le navigateur le plus performant sur Windows 10 avec des améliorations supplémentaires ce mois-ci pour les onglets dormants!

This is the first episode of “Launch it  with Winnie”.  Here I want to discuss one of the most important things as a product manager.  You must be able to  create a minimum viable product (MVP). 

What is an MVP?  An MVP is the smallest solution possible, that you can build to solve the user problem. No matter the budget or the amount of time you it is important to get something out the door. 

Step one, is to determine the main goal of your solution. Once you have a goal or a problem you want to solve, you can come up with a list of requirements. In the agile world we call it a backlog of user stories. 

Step two. is to determine from your list of requirements what is needed for the MVP. What can you launch with? If you can go live without it leave it out! Ensuring at all times you are asking the question “Is this enough to solve the problem?” One you have a clear idea as to what is enough to solve the basic problem of the customer, build that and only that! When you have launched it you can come back to your list of requirements and add the next high priority item.  

T-minus 10,9,8…

We launched at the New York Tech Meetup on May 9th, 2012, a day I will never forget. Over the years, I’ve attended countless meetups and always wanted to be on stage, pitching my company to almost 1000 people, and on May 9th we had that opportunity. My dad (Brian) and I have been working together for almost 5 years, and I must admit, it is an added reward to work with someone whom you respect, enjoy, trust and love.

We started Launch.it with the idea to create the largest searchable database of everything new. That’s a big idea and vision! With our PR backgrounds, we started to work with PR agencies and startups, as they are the source for lots of news of the new, and so grew we created the term “PR Journalism” in order to try and push PR professionals to publish more blog posts and thought leadership pieces. Months before the platform was ready, we met with dozens of PR agencies, holding focus groups to get their feedback, input and ideas.

While Launch.it was very well received by most of the agencies and PR professionals, old habits die-hard and we didn’t want to become a platform of just news releases. As with most startups, we explored other opportunities where lots of news is announced at once… Events!

Why do people rob banks?

That’s where the money is! Why do people go to events? That’s where the news is! We sometimes joke that if it weren’t events, conferences, tradeshows, etc., most companies would not get their product(s) launched, as they need an industry event to announce their news to the public and media.

Brian has attended CES for over 35 years, and with me for the last 7 years. While attending in January 2012 (when Launch.it was in the development stage), we ran into a friend of ours who runs an affiliate show for CES (CEWeek, held in New York in the month of June). We mentioned we were building our publishing platform and how we could potentially work together, once it went live. It was quite amazing, that events such as CES, with over 3200 exhibitors announcing 20,000 new products, services and gizmos had no central online location to place exhibitor news for those who may wish to attend, are attending, and media searching for information about the event. Think about that for a second… the biggest show in the country has no technology to properly manage and distribute their show/exhibitor news in order to be found, shared or discovered by all attendees and media. **Light bulb going off**

The Pivot

The question…what business are you actually in? We soon realized we were in the container business. Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest produce none of their own content, but are just big containers for everyone else to put their stuff. Launch.it is simply a news platform for everyone else to publish their news.

A few days after we launched at the NYTM, we began working with CE Week to white label our Launch.it platform. This enabled the focus to be on CE Week and not Launch.it, and thus CE Week News was created.

Obviously, we had high expectations, however, never imagined we would get over 60% of the exhibitors to sign-up, create an account and publish their news. Now, “news” is kind of a general term, as exhibitors can launch news releases, sell-sheets, brochures, fliers, images and videos. Exhibitors can save their event dollars on direct marketing materials, that most attendees WILL eventually throw away, and have greater productivity and outreach by placing their news online digitally.

My biggest pet peeve when doing PR, based on my SEO background, was copying and pasting news releases into emails, attaching them as docs/pdfs, which you can’t track, share socially, or generate SEO. With Launch.it, the tradeshow/conference is now able to link to stories in newsletters, share it via social networks, and even reference it after the show ends, as it is “evergreen” and never gets taken down.

*I just want to add that pivots are generally a good thing, and many startups use pivots as a strategy to move their company forward. Many people have the wrong conception of companies that pivot. Yes, it usually means you are changing directions, but hopefully for the best because you figured out something on the way that is a better opportunity. I am proud to say we pivoted within a month of launching into a bigger and more opportunistic marketplace.

Houston, we have lift off!

After the success of CE Week News, we were able to secure a meeting with CEA (who runs CES) communications team. A few months later, we had a signed agreement to do a pilot for Eureka Park, a section of CES filled with all the startups, SMBs, and companies just trying to make a name for themselves – basically the world we live in! To put this in perspective, and proudly so, our first show partner was the biggest show in the country, #1 on our list of potential show partners. If that doesn’t validate our vision, I don’t know what does. Wait! We signed the 2nd biggest show, CONEXPO-CON/AGG, three months later. And we won the “Innovation of the Year” award from the Circle of Influence Summit.

https://twitter.com/intlCES/status/288710424587825152

https://twitter.com/conexpoconagg/status/426412847451869184

https://twitter.com/SWEETSandSNACKS/status/451090172965158912

https://twitter.com/TeccSociety/status/401061036066750464

“Innovation of the Year”

It’s hard to believe but there is actually a show for everything. If you look around at all your stuff, you can start to realize how many different industries there are. So with CES and CONEXPO as our first clients, we gained a lot of credibility and momentum really quick. Launch.it signed a number of shows, domestic and international and our future in the event space looked very promising. The Launch.it name started to vibrate within the industry.

To be clear, we initially built a PR publishing platform and not an Event News Platform, which we slowly began to evolve into. I’m not saying we “faked it till we made it” but… We definitely were learning, changing and doing everything to make it as event centric as possible.

First major set backs

Unfortunately we can’t tell this part just yet for a few reasons and will certainly apprise you of details in a few months.

Our business model

When we first launched Launch.it in the PR space, we never intended to monetize right away, as we wanted to get traction and make the process as frictionless as possible. In the new event tech space though, we had to charge for our services, and after a few shows came up with two different models:

The show organizers would pay us a flat fee based on how many exhibitors would be attending their event. It was “free” for all their exhibitors who could publish as much news, text and images as they wished, and still had access even after the show ended.

It was “free” for the show organizers, and their exhibitors paid a nominal fee, agreed to by Launch.it and the organizers. As an incentive to the show organizers, we did a revenue share, so the show actually made additional revenue doing PR and digital media, and no dollars being taking away from their event budget. We really had high hopes, as this was the real “scale” business model with the potential to go viral at a show.

Finally seeing the big picture from 10,000ft

I want to now delve into the opportunities we saw, and challenges we faced, entering a new industry that we only “attended” before becoming active “hands-on” participants. For those who do not know the event/tradeshow community, it’s a very tight knit group with it’s own unique caveats, and personalities. There are really only a few major players who run everything and working/partnering with them can make life easier. Below are some facts/statistics we learned along the way that can be helpful to those venturing in the event space:

88% of the industry is run by independent show organizers (ISOs)

Most of the ISOs are member-driven associations where their yearly show generate 75%+ of their revenue (usually)

Reed, Messe Frankfurt and UBM basically control the other 12% with a number of other small organizers

Most shows are once-a-year

Shows start selling their exhibitor space for the next years show, while their present show is taking place. That’s a year lead-time! We generally launched three months prior to a show, so we always tried to sign the show six months before to be on schedule. If a show doesn’t work with you in the current year, then you would need to wait another year before you can even try again.

Shows are the gateway

While events/tradeshows may be your partner and potentially pay you, your real customers, most of the time, are the exhibitors attending the show. Getting in touch with them can be quite tricky. When partnering with the event organizers, we would receive the exhibitor’s email and phone number, in order to contact them multiple times to launch their news. It’s pretty much an uphill battle when you have to explain digital/social media to someone who has never used it before and convince them to pay for it

You also need to remember that shows are just a few days out of the year for most companies, so they are busy doing other things and have little time to focus on exhibiting, even though they are probably spending a good deal of money on the show

You must remember, you are not the only person trying to get in touch with them to get them to do something. If you have ever exhibited at a show, you know exactly what I mean

Shows are still a few years behind with most technology. We take for granted, especially in the startup/entrepreneur/tech world, just how fast tech moves and the truly amazing capabilities of what technology can bring to an event and/or industry

Websites — Our average show partner had a website that hasn’t been updated in about 5 years, if they had a website at all. Words can’t describe how much I hate IE6/7, etc.

Social Media — About 50% of our show partners have Twitter and Facebook, but only use them a few months before, during and after their events. The % is significantly lower if you account for the actual attendees/exhibitors at the show who rarely use social media

No open APIs/SDKs — There is very little collaboration between companies in the industry as information is locked away and not shared with anyone else – I like to call it co-opertition (co-operation + competition)

Mobile apps — These are just starting to take off and become standard at most events, however, most of them are still not that good. Shows can pay upwards of $20,000 for a cookie cutter event app that is only needed for a few days a year – that’s ridiculous! The other issue is once it’s live, trying to get people to actually download and use it…

Lead retrieval, badges and business card — Almost every single show has paper name badges that still flip around most of the time, so you can never really see it. Progress is being made as we have now seen badges with RFID chips in them, so instead of using the standard grocery store scanner thing (which it really is) to scan a barcode, you can now use an app, so you get it right away. It’s a step forward, but stats show that only 25% follow-up with people they have met at a show. This percentage will need to be increased for success to be achieved. However, nothing beats an exchange of business cards for some reason

Gimmicky tech

Social aggregation tools: Always on display to show people what is going on “socially,” but I consider these gimmicky tools just that “gimmicky” as they are mostly for show and they all do the same thing

iBeacons: Everyone is very excited at the possibility of proximity based sharing, but most people actually have no idea what that means or have the capability to actually use it. This is years out

Oculus Rift: The whole point of events is to get people face-to-face (f2f), so why would I attend a show to put on a helmet to then be digital again? This is years out and depends on Facebook

Google Glass: Same as above, but depends on Google

QR codes: They just need to go away

After reading this, you are probably thinking, “this is a pretty tough industry to get into”, which could be said about almost any industry really, and you would be right. However, as I continued working within the event industry, I saw it only as an opportunity for growth to introduce them to new technology and just waiting for them to adopt and embrace it.

Shows are very cautious about what they use and for good reason – they only have one show a year and they can’t have any mistakes!

Spot – the coolest products

Over the past few months, we have been developing the Spot App based on everything we’ve learned doing Launch.it in the last two years. It has always been our belief that all products need a home and should be easy to find, share and discover. So, we created an intuitive mobile app to help do just that!

We are first and foremost a product recommendation platform. There is no app currently available for you to swipe through all new products. Spot Appwill curate from the top sites around the world, to create a central place to discover, find and share the coolest new products. How many times have you gone shopping and seen something you want, taken a picture of it, but then get home and can’t remember what it is? By using Spot App, you can take a picture, add the information (name, size, price, location, etc.) and then find it quickly again, and share it with friends.

We are going to build a mobile social network with a community of active spotters who will take pictures of the cool products they see in their everyday life. Using an intuitive tinder-like swiping UI/UX, followers will easily be able to say if they think it’s “Cool” or just “Ehhh” and if they “Want” it! If you’re trying to buy your friend a gift for their birthday or the holidays, just go to their Spot lists, see what they want and buy it! Why guess and feel guilty that they don’t like it?

The Spot App is launching in beta now and will go live around mid-December, so if you’re interested in testing it out and spotting for us, go to Spot.io and sign up! The app will fully launch in time for 2015 CES as we plan to Spot over 20,000 new products with your help!

If you would like your product feature, please email me [email protected] so we can have you in the app when we go live.

Thank you everyone for your support thus far, as we journey into our next phase.

At the CEWeek 2013 Lineshow (our client) this year, we had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know hundreds of new and exciting companies. One in particular, the ISOWALK stood out to us, not only because it was a really interesting product but because the founder Ron Goldberg was so endearing and shared with us an amazing story of how he came up with the ISOWALK to solve a real problem he faced. We knew we had to interview him and get more, so his story is below, enjoy!

So who are you and what is your background?

(Ron Goldberg) I'm a long time consumer tech veteran and like to describe myself as a "ninja Innovator," with a hat tip to Gary Shapiro's great book on entrepreneurship.  Prior to Isowalk, I've done two startups where the product ended up becoming mainstream technology. I started the first CD label dedicated to music created with MIDI and digital audio back in the 80s, called Periodic Music. It was the first outlet for what today we call 'electronica.' After that, I co-founded the Web's first portal for consumer electronics (etown.com). We attracted $25m in venture capital and pioneered many of the conventions that define e-commerce to this day. We created the first product comparison engine, the first multi-retailer shopping cart, the first multimedia 'knowledge bank' for consumer research, and the first shopping assistant based on artificial intelligence and subjective criteria. We were quite popular, and won just about every award given out in those days; "best of web" from Time, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Popular Science, Good Housekeeping, et al.  We unfortunately ended up as collateral damage in the Web 1.0 bust, but in practice the site lives on, particularly as CNET and BestBuy.com. I've also been a syndicated tech columnist for New York Newsday and the Los Angeles Times, and for two years I was the National Media Spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association. I went all over the country talking with TV, radio and newspapers, introducing people to new technologies like HDTV, home satellites, and PDAs, the predecessor of the smart phone. It was a lot of fun and put me in the front row of how the CE industry works, from design and manufacturing to marketing, sales and CRM. I've been helping that industry do all those things ever since.

How did you come up with the idea for Isowalk?

My parents were elderly, without much of a support network. They were both Holocaust survivors, so there were no aunts, uncles, cousins or other family members to help watch over them in their final years. The caretaking pretty much fell to me, and to some extent my brother, who lived further away. It was heartbreaking to watch our folks struggle so much with something as basic as mobility. It boggled my mind that a device that was so important to so many people was still so crude and unhelpful. The basic design of a cane hasn't changed since, well, ever.  I knew I could design something better. I was a consumer tech guy, and my brother is an aerospace guy. We put our heads together and came up with the basis for Isowalk.

Why is it better than anything else out on the market?

Canes-- any kind of cane -- are a truly terrible technology. They're really just a stick. Canes aren't designed to help you walk, their function is to keep you from falling.  They don't even do a good job at that, in fact they're shockingly unsafe. Nearly 50,000 people end up in the emergency room every year because of a fall from a cane or walker, according to the NY Times.  

Canes are also an ergonomic nightmare. One study calls them a "practical assault on the hands and wrist." A cane forces the hand, wrist and arm into completely unnatural positions, and then loads the user's weight onto some of the most fragile bones in the body. Direct pain is pretty much guaranteed. At the same time, the rest of your body contorts itself to compensate while you try to walk. That 'favoring' naturally ends up causing associated pains in the shoulder, neck, back, hips, etc. When you or someone you love needs to walk like this, day in and day out, for weeks or months, or maybe forever, you can easily see how this is a serious problem that needs solving. With the Boomer generation now turning senior, the problem is going to grow exponentially.

Isowalk was designed to provide active walking assistance, and make its assistance feel physically transparent to the user.  It's ergonomically correct, of course; our team includes 3 of the most celebrated orthopedic surgeons in the country. Isowalk is actually self-propulsive. Thanks to its unique geometry and strategic center of gravity, Isowalk automatically positions itself for each next step with virtually no physical effort. It's also much safer than a cane, having triple the ground contact. It's optimized and reversible for lefties and righties, and adapts itself to the individual user's specific walk through a patented shock relief system.  You can't really compare Isowalk to a cane, it's like comparing a fine athletic shoe to a flip-flop. Isowalk replaces the cane.

It looks really cool, how did you design and manufacture it?

We're still in beta, so mass production is yet to come.  We're considering making it in the US, there are lots of incentives out there. Overseas manufacturing obviously has its place as well, and our team has lots of experience there. As far as design, I'm a big believer that form always has to follow function. In this case, we were lucky because in creating the ergonomic and engineering functions, it so happened that the resulting forms were not only unusual, they were beautiful. Attractive aesthetics and a feel of invisibility were important design goals, but they came about naturally. We're still refining the final cosmetics, but people already love the way it looks. 

What will the next version look like?

We plan a series of these for different users and applications, and at different price points. We'll retain the basic form factor for most of them, but end up extending it through different sizes and gauges, colors, etc. The connected models will also follow the look we've established. We like the idea of people being able to customize Isowalks easily. We plan on offering 3D files that users can print for ornamentation, identification and such.

How did exhibiting at CE Week work out for you?

It was an amazing experience, and quite a public unveiling! We got a lot of media coverage of course, and it was fabulous seeing Isowalk wow them at the fashion show of wearable technology, looking particularly great on a senior-aged model.  Aging should not be a stigma, and accessories should not stigmatize the user. Even more rewarding was the look on people's faces who were already using a cane because of age or disability, or in one case, someone who'd just finished using a cane for an injury recovery. These kinds of people immediately get it.  They all wanted an Isowalk asap of course, for themselves or their parents!

The reaction from the consumer electronics industry was also really gratifying. It's interesting to watch that industry eyeing the healthcare industry and vice versa. They know they're destined to be together, but the cultures are very different. One is built on innovation, the other likes legacy. The CE industry's reaction to the 'smart' Isowalk was very excited, and exciting for us.  There are lots of great apps that are not just possible now, but accessible too

How was your experience using the Launch.it news platform to get the word out at the show for Isowalk? 

It gave us one of our first web pages outside of our own site and our Indiegogo campaign, which is ending August 21.  It gave us a great-looking link to point people to, with appealing presentation and our key message points clearly highlighted.  I'd recommend it to anyone. The SEO is well thought out and you get a nice place to put your pic, press information and video. We got a lot of pickup once the news got out. 

Why did you decide to do a kickstarter and would you recommend it for others? 

We are on Indiegogo, not Kickstarter, it's a more open platform. Kickstarter won't accept any project that has anything to do with wellness or personal care. We were actually a bit taken aback by Kickstarter. We had seen them allow a successful campaign for a walking aid in the Fashion category, but they wouldn't allow ours in the Technology category. We were ruled a "medical device," which is a bit absurd. I like their site and use it, but I think there's a touch of the arbitrary in their curation, and that's regrettable. Indiegogo was much easier to work with, and because they're not in bed with Amazon, they're able to bring in a more international audience. We've been getting contributions and interest from all over the world. 

In a general sense, I'd recommend crowdfunding to any entrepreneur who has a project or business with merit. You obviously need to spend the time to market the campaign, and if you needed to raise a lot of money -- I've seen projects that tried to raise over a $1m -- I think a tiered approach is probably a good idea.  

Where can someone find more information on the Isowalk and purchase it?

We've got a simple page at www.isowalk.com that plays our video and points the visitor to our Indiegogo campaign.  We'll launch a full site for Isowalk when the campaign ends, including a blog on the merging of CE and healthcare, and participatory areas where we'll interact with our contributors and users through polls and other collaborations. 

We're just now starting to get attention from media, contributors and other attracted parties.  They range from academia to private equity to ordinary people who just think that Isowalk is something good for the world, and worth a contribution. The initial units that we're offering to contributors will be special limited editions, and since the campaign is being used for tooling and molds, they don't reflect what the final cost will be on these. There will be multiple models for different kinds of users and markets, at various price points. We think that everyone who needs this technology should have it.  We know they're going to want it.

Make sure to check out the indiegogo campaign below!