#simplib

When you think of an audio streaming service you will probably think of music related platforms like Spotify and Grooveshark. These are awesome freemium platforms where people can discover music, create playlists and interact with the community. Music is something that we are passionate about at Simplib and you will see that previous posts have showcased some amazing start-ups (like the wonderful guys at Dualo). 

Music isn't everything though. What I mean by this is that there are other forms of audio that we love to listen to. Podcasts are an amazing way for people to express themselves and communicate to the world around them. Most music platforms don't feature podcasts and other forms of audio but SoundCloud have nailed it with their audio platform. 

As the Simplib site of the day Soundcloud nail their offering in one simple line: "Hear the world's sounds". Thats right "sounds". These guys have an amazing platform (which I am sure you have used already) and millions of people around the world are using it. It is the world's largest community of artists, bands and podcasters which makes it a serious player in the world of online tech. 

As a website the experience is wonderful. It is dead easy to sign up and the user interface is very clean and simple. As a community it is just amazing. You can of course "follow" and "like" people and their audio clips but what makes Soundcloud unique is that you can focus on one specific part of a track and leave a comment there. This gives creators a much more accurate and informative level of feedback and makes commenting fun for the listener too. Users can repost clips (similar to blogging) and this gives normal users the chance to offer something of quality to the community. 

Soundcloud originally started up in Sweden but was established in Berlin in 2007 by Alex Ljung and Eric Wahlforss. With 190 employees now and over 10 million users it is certainly a large company. The platform is monetized with a premium feature that gives users more space and some additional features which would be handy for serious users and frequent creators. 

It is a great site and it is very popular on Simplib! Check it out here! 

I always like to write about the various obstacles that Start-ups have to overcome but one of my favourite issues (and most hated) is finding the right team. Loads of people out there have great ideas but how many of them actually get them off the ground? You might want to build a web app or produce a film but you are only as good as the people around you. Of course it is possible to have multiple skillsets but there are only so many hours in the day. Collaboration is a wonderful thing and there are lots of skilled people out there looking to work on new things. 

I have personally failed with a couple of ventures in the past and I found that I always lacked a solid team around me. Wearing a lot of hats is part of the start-up lifestyle but it is difficult to do things alone. If you have a load of cash then of course you can hire a developer or go through an agency but this is a temporary solution. You want people in-house who share your vision, take risks with you and are "partners" as a pose to employees or sub-contractors. 

Finding people to join you is tough but CollabFinder is a great solution for this problem. It is an online collaboration platform that helps projects and start-ups to grow by connecting skilled people.

Using the platform you can search for:

Developers

Designers

Artists

Writers

Scientists

Musicians

Film-makers

Product Managers

Engineers 

CollabFinder is a young start-up but the team already has some great case studies and success stories under their belt. The City of New York used CollabFinder for the NYC BigApps 2013 competition which was supported by Mayor Bloomberg. There are 664 people and projects in this group and this is just one example.

  CollabFinder are hosting groups for communities such as Nesta, Flickr, Ebay, UCLA and UC Berkley amongst others. It is free for individuals to sign up, collaborate and create projects whilst companies and universities pay for a group subscription. This premium feature allows organizations of all shapes and sizes to get their physical networks online so that their members can benefit from the platform. It is a great platform for events, meetups and co-working spaces too and is a lot cheaper than building a bespoke platform. 

As a website it is super clean and the user interface is so straightforward that a blind 86 year old tortoise could use it. There are already more than 4000 skilled users on the platform and this number is growing very quickly. There are 497 projects to join so if you are looking to get your hands dirty working on the next big thing then this is your chance. 

CollabFinder is run by Sahadeva Hammari, Gil Hildebrand and Simon Lawrence in NYC and they have all created this platform because they needed it themselves. This goes to show that if you have a big problem it pays off to create your own solution. It gets the "useful" badge from me on Simplib. What do you think it should get? 

I have talked about hackathons, accelerators and incubators in previous posts and have showcased some fantastic companies out there like the team behind Startup Weekend. I did mention that there is a company very close to our hearts at Simplib and that is the wonderful guys at Bemyapp. Youri, Lucie and Alex have all loved their experiences at the Bemyapp events and have even bagged an awesome prize at one of the events. 

So lets talk about their website. From the very first second on their site you get the impression that this is a global organization with a huge network. I love the strapline "Developers, there is always a place for you" because this hints at the sea of talent that these guys have as part of their network. If you scroll down you will see that there are loads of events happening around the world in countries like the USA, UK, Spain, Italy, Germany and France which is fantastic. The Bemyapp brand does not just run hackathons and actually runs a load of really cool meetups, online challenges, workshops and much more. If you are looking for an event that promotes or showcases a specific coding language then you are also in luck. With the website you can filter through events by selecting tags such as CSS, Javascript and "googleglass". 

Going back to my previous point about the Simplib teams' involvement with Bemyapp it was awesome for the team to collaborate with other techies and build a wicked app. The guys got together at the Bemyapp NFC event in Paris and build a great team around their app. After a lot of hard work over the weekend it was amazing for the team to be recognised for their efforts and win the event! Out of this weekend a cool app called "Curioucity" was born which basically helps people to discover the city around them using NFC technology. You can physically interact with the area around you using the app and it is a great opportunity for different companies and brands to get involved. The name was changed to NFCity shortly after and is now undergoing some really cool developments and changes. 

Bemyapp are doing lots of different things and the agency arm of the business has proved to be incredibly powerful. Bemyapp have over 15,000 developers as part of their global network and have run over 250 events which is massive! They have an impressive client list with blue chips such as Intel, Samsung, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, RedBull and much more. 

Here at Simplib we love practical tools. Of course we do have a passion for the arts and can spend hours staring at pretty things online but time is a valuable resource. Tools that save you time and effort online are always needed due to the massive amount of content that is growing online at an exponential rate. 

Our site of the day is going to a very humble little website that needs more recognition! Bit.ly is a URL shortening service that shortens a URL by giving it a short and unique alternative that redirects to the original page. It is super simple and might seem very basic but these guys shorten over one BILLION links every month. Bit.ly became very popular on Twitter when it became the default link shortening service in 2009. With the Twitter character limit it was very useful for people to make the most out of their tweets and not have to worry about space. Bit.ly were eventually replaced by Twitter's own "t.co" service but they are still doing well and offering a fantastic service to the online community. 

Bitly, Inc was founded by Peter Stern in 2008 and the company is still based in New York City and is privately held. They seem to have quite a large team with 40+ team members listed on their site which is surprising! They have a nice monetization model which offers Bit.ly enterprise solutions to paying customers. As part of this companies can get advanced branding features and can generate their own short links (for example Pepsi now have "pep.si"). In addition to these offerings Bit.ly enterprise also provides users with more detailed analytics which is pretty cool. 

You don't need to pay to take advantage of their analytics feature however. As part of the free service users can drop a url into the top bar, generate a short link and immediately start monitoring clicks. It only takes a second to create an account and the whole process is very stress-free. It is very useful to use a Bit.ly link when you are trying to track progress and efficiency with an online marketing campaign. Let me give you an example:

You are part of a band and have just released your music video. You want people to watch it on all of your platforms but you really want to find out how useful each platform is for generating clicks on your link. 

You make a different Bit.ly link for Facebook, Twitter, Google + etc and then track each one from your Bit.ly account.

You will be able to see how many clicks you get from each individual network and have more of an understanding as to how useful each one is for you. This allows you to focus your time and effort on the most worthwhile network. 

So you can see that there are many practical uses for Bit.ly and it is not just about shortening links. We use Bit.ly links a lot and it is a great way to find out where our users are coming from. The best things in life are free so check it out on Simplib and start to save time! 

It is awesome when you come across an absolute gem online. It could be a really funny video, an innovative work tool or an interesting article but how do you save this? At Simplib we believe that the traditional bookmarks bar in our browser just isn't good enough to handle all of the content that the internet offers these days. When you calculate how many interesting websites, songs, articles, videos, photos, apps, games, shops and tools there are it seems crazy to think that you have to organize all of these in your bookmarks bar. At Simplib we are trying to solve a huge problem here with websites so that people can easily save and share the websites that they love but you know this already! 

With Pocket you can surf the web and save the interesting things that you find for later viewing. What I love about this website is that you don't have to use a browser to save items with Pocket and can access it from over 500 apps. They also offer email saving so that you can drag interesting things into your pipeline from there. 

Pocket was previously known as "read it later" and was originally just intended for desktop users. It was created by Nathan Weiner back in 2007 and has been funded with over 7.5 million dollars to date. Some of these investors include Google Ventures, Baseline Ventures and Founder Collective so it really did get a great amount of recognition for it's early success. 

To date the app now has over 11,000,000 users and more then 850,000,000 items have been saved on the app which is amazing. Some notable app integrations include Flipboard, Twitter and Zite but as mentioned previously there are over 500 apps that integrates Pocket. There has been a lot of buzz around this app and Time Magazine listed Pocket in the 50 best Android applications of 2013 which is no easy feat! 

From a user perspective it is really easy to sign up and get started. Their user experience is delightful and there is no time wasted with long sign up forms and burdensome interfaces. What I love is their bookmarklet which makes saving extremely easy! At Simplib we love bookmarklets and our users take advantage of this function to save interesting websites for future reference. 

You should definitely check it out on Simplib here! 

There are so many different incubators and accelerators out there now. It really is a booming market. If you have a great idea these days you can turn up to a venue on a Friday evening and have a fully functional prototype and a team within 3 days! How on earth does this happen? It is fantastic to see these different schemes and events taking place around the world. If you want to fast track an idea and build a team quickly you can sign up to a hackathon like BeMyApp and build amazing products with amazing people. The Simplib team actually won the BeMyApp NFC Hackathon last year which was fantastic. They collaborated with some awesome people to create a NFC optimised mobile app that helps people discover interesting things in the city around them. 

We are also seeing more incubators and accelerators popping up now which is exciting. An accelerator is an intensive program where start-ups can develop their products and receive advice, funding and skilled support from their hosts. Accelerators in the USA like Ycombinator and Techstars have launched some amazing platforms like Reddit, Hipmunk and Sendgrid. For a start-up going into this scheme it would usually involve giving the accelerator between 5-10% equity of their company in return for some cash (usually 10-50k) and a kickass launch platform. Timewise these schemes usually last around 2-3 months and it is amazing what start-ups can achieve in this time. 

So going back to hackathons we can see that products can be formed in an incredibly short time. Our site of the day is going to Startup Weekend because they have created a 54 hour event that has now gone global! Developers, designers, marketers, product managers and enthusiasts can get together and collaborate with the aim of getting a start-up launched by the end of the weekend. 

Startup Weekend is powered by Google for entrepreneurs which gives it a really nice competitive edge over other events. It is very interesting to see how many events they have across the world and if there isn't one close to you then you can run your own event! It is a very straightforward process and with the right team and commitment the Startup Weekend guys will help you to host your event and stimulate entrepreneurial growth in your area. It is cool to see large companies sponsoring this company such as Coca Cola and Amazon and I believe that large companies are taking more of an interest in small start-ups now so that they can acquire young talent.

It is fascinating to see that over 36% of Startup Weekend startups are still going after 3 months and there is a huge network of over 45,000 Startup Weekend alumni around the world. Startup Weekend was founded by Andrew Hyde in 2007 and it has grown massively since then and brought thousands of ideas to life. We need to see more of this in the world and Simplib has greatly benefited from events and schemes like this. It is amazing to get into a room and meet new people who are hungry for success and willing to take the risks to get there.

There is nothing more simple than turning up to a venue on a Friday with an idea and then leaving with a start-up team + prototype. It gets the "Simple" and "Useful" badges from me on Simplib! Check it out here! 

March 2013 was a very difficult time for Europe. Banks closed down in Cyprus for almost 2 weeks straight and people lost their livelihoods. Companies started to shut down and it really was a terrible time for people living in Cyprus. For start-ups this was an even bigger kick in the teeth because there was literally nowhere to go and no cash available.

However this is not a sad story. Amongst the chaos in Cyprus a small team decided to give the economy their middle finger and got to work finding a solution. Hector Kolonas, a young entrepreneur and online marketing consultant found that there were empty desks everywhere and that start-ups could be using these spaces to push an economic recovery. Hector and his team got to work and started getting entrepreneurs and freelancers into working spaces with their new company Desk&Co. 

Desk&Co started off as a simple 3 page website but saw explosive growth. They have not only conquered Cyprus but have actually gone international as part of their evolution as a company. They are currently working with some of the best office spaces in the UK, France, Poland and Greece which has been tremendously successful so far. What is awesome is that the company is still in it's infancy and is looking to branch out into other countries. If you can't find somewhere close to you then let them know! They have a button on the top bar which says "I don't see my city". Click on it and they will personally get you into the best office space in your area. 

Not only are these guys sourcing space but they are also launching an exclusive network that connects start-ups and freelancers to other people in their space. This would be an invaluable community to be part of and shows a lot of potential. 

You don't have to be a freelancer or an entrepreneur to get involved because you can also offer up your space on their platform and start filling your empty seats. It is free to register and list your spaces and Desk&Co then take a fee for successful placements. It is a company that initially launched to save an island in crisis but it has now gone worldwide. To become part of this movement check it out on Simplib here! 

I have written articles in the past about the struggles that all entrepreneurs come across on their journey and it is interesting to see how much we all share in common. I can safely say that fundraising is a pain in the backside for anyone regardless of how good their proposition is. It takes time, it is often costly and distracts teams from concentrating on building a great product. A lot of tech start-ups these days can only achieve profitability through long term investments and a solid growth strategy which can be perceived as big risk to investors. Thanks to the economic downturn in 2009 bank lending is a dream so equity based investments are the only option for most budding entrepreneurs.

If you were seeking investment ten years ago then you would most likely have had to pitch to a group of angels or a VC. This is a great route to go down if you have the time to make these connections but it can sometimes feel like jumping through hoops. What if there was a way to get your community to invest in you? 

Crowdfunding is a recent phenomenon and has led to the creation of lots of fantastic fundraising platforms on the web. Take a look at Kickstarter for example. People can pitch an idea to the world and raise funding from their target audience in a matter of weeks (and in some cases hours). It gives founders a chance to express themselves much more casually and build an invaluable relationship with their early adopters and investors. 

Our site of the day is going to Crowdcube who are based in Exeter, UK. It is a platform for UK entrepreneurs to raise business finance via equity Crowdfunding and has had a great deal of success. They have successfully raise more than £17,000,000 through their platform and have even raised funding through their own platform which is awesome. There are around 60,000 investors registered on the site which is an incredible number when you think about it. Most start-ups have trouble finding one investor so think about the possibilities of pitching to 60,000 in one go! 

It's still a young company so it is remarkable that they have successfully funded 92 companies. Crowdcube is FSA regulated for your own piece of mind and investors can also benefit from up to 50% tax relief on their investments through SEIS. I like the fact that they explicitly state the risk of investing on the site too. The site has a very friendly feel about it but doesn't shove it's proposition down your throat. 

If you are an investor or a start-up it is essential that you check this site out. Even if you don't fall under the above it is really interesting to check out the campaigns! It gets the useful badge from me on Simplib! Check it out here!