Urbantic’s Michael Bean answers a few questions…..

1. Company/Product – 3 sentence description on what you do.

Urbantic helps you find places to go to and tell other people about interesting or weird places that you’ve been to. Say you want to go to a restaurant where the waiters are likely to flirt with you. You can click on the tag libidinous waiters and find the most salacious restaurants in the city. After your night out, you can write about your experiences and maybe even contribute one or two new places that you’ve discovered.

2. How will you make money/business model?

Local search makes money from local brands. Right now, big search engine search revenue comes from global brands or brands that don’t require a local presence. Brands that are highly localized are being ignored. For example Ritual Coffee Roasters is a great coffee shop in San Francisco’s Mission District but no one outside of the Mission knows about it because it belongs to a neighborhood. There are thousands of businesses like Ritual that have spent billions of dollars on local media like the Yellow Pages and supplements in the Sunday newspaper. Some of those businesses would be better served by using unconventional media.

3. Management Team – what is the previous experience of team? any 2nd or 3rd time entrepreneurs on your team?

Before Urbantic, Thor Muller started a web design company that was purchased by Frog Design, after that, he co-founded a content distribution company during the boom years and most recently started a web design firm called Ruby Red Labs. I’ve started a couple of interactive media companies, the most recent being Forio.

4. What stage is your company – alpha, beta, selling product, lots of customers?

Urbantic has 2,000 registered users. And we have essentially no revenue. Let’s just say Thor and I haven’t quit are day jobs. Thor has said these little web companies are sort of like local rock bands. Usually people will play in two or three bands simultaneously hoping for a break. Occasionally someone will try a solo project. I suppose Urbantic is still hoping for it’s recording contract, but we’re having fun in the meantime.

5. Year Founded? 2005

6. Who’s your audience?

Most of our audience are people looking for something interesting to do. Then there is a small but essential group that likes to tell people about what they’re up to. In that way, we’re a bit like a tiny, tiny eBay. Something like 95% of eBay users are buyers. But without those 5% sellers, the 95% have nothing to buy. In our case, the 5% sellers are the people who are writing about their experiences at restaurants, beaches, and neighborhoods and the 95% are the explorers reading about their experiences.

7. What’s your exit plan, if any?

A larger organization could buy Urbantic. But Urbantic is easily self-sustaining. It has enormous potential as a stand-alone entity.

8. Any technology partnerships in place?

Over the past year the definition of a technology partnership has become increasingly fuzzy because companies like Yahoo, Flickr, and Google publish their APIs. I doubt that any of those companies know about Urbantic and yet Urbantic benefits immensely from Google’s mapping API, and Flickr’s photos API, among others. And, in a small way, those companies benefit from Urbantic’s connections back to them through their API.

9. Any paying customers? Nothing to speak of.

10. Name 3 competitors today (or soon to be)

The local search space is getting crowded. Last year Yelp, and Judy’s Book each raised between $3 and $8 million. Backfence has also raised some money. But Citysearch is still the main player in this space.

11. What is your differentiator from the competitors?

Ease of exploration, depth, and richness of content. Most city search sites have one postage-stamp-sized photo of a place and a series of disconnected comments about that place. On Urbantic there are dozens of full-sized photos uploaded by users about places and people are having conversations about those places, not just isolated criticisms.

Also, other local search sites haven’t taken full advantage of tags. Urbantic’s liberal use of tags makes it easy to do pivots on related data. So you might be doing a search on karaoke bars and discover that Rx Gallery has something called joke-e-oke where you do stand-up routines from famous comedians. From there, you might discover that it’s close to the Powell Street Subway stop, or that it’s similar to 111 Minna.

12. What technology did you use to build ie:xml, ajax, lamp stack, ruby etc.

We’re using a LAMP foundation. In this case, the ‘P’ stands for PHP. The user interface uses AJAX extensively.

13. How can you blow this?

Urbantic’s lifeblood is community. The challenge is seeding that community and providing an opportunity to let it grow without forcing it. It’s tempting to throw a lot of listings onto the site so that people always find the name, address, and phone number of any place they’re looking for. But a directory listing without user content is soulless and provides no special value. We want  Urbantic to grow organically, through new users adding their own content. We’re often tempted to seed it with static content. So far, we’ve been able to avoid that temptation and let the users direct the growth of the site.

Urbantic’s Michael Bean answers a few questions…..

1. Company/Product – 3 sentence description on what you do.

Urbantic helps you find places to go to and tell other people about interesting or weird places that you’ve been to. Say you want to go to a restaurant where the waiters are likely to flirt with you. You can click on the tag libidinous waiters and find the most salacious restaurants in the city. After your night out, you can write about your experiences and maybe even contribute one or two new places that you’ve discovered.

2. How will you make money/business model?

Local search makes money from local brands. Right now, big search engine search revenue comes from global brands or brands that don’t require a local presence. Brands that are highly localized are being ignored. For example Ritual Coffee Roasters is a great coffee shop in San Francisco’s Mission District but no one outside of the Mission knows about it because it belongs to a neighborhood. There are thousands of businesses like Ritual that have spent billions of dollars on local media like the Yellow Pages and supplements in the Sunday newspaper. Some of those businesses would be better served by using unconventional media.

3. Management Team – what is the previous experience of team? any 2nd or 3rd time entrepreneurs on your team?

Before Urbantic, Thor Muller started a web design company that was purchased by Frog Design, after that, he co-founded a content distribution company during the boom years and most recently started a web design firm called Ruby Red Labs. I’ve started a couple of interactive media companies, the most recent being Forio.

4. What stage is your company – alpha, beta, selling product, lots of customers?

Urbantic has 2,000 registered users. And we have essentially no revenue. Let’s just say Thor and I haven’t quit are day jobs. Thor has said these little web companies are sort of like local rock bands. Usually people will play in two or three bands simultaneously hoping for a break. Occasionally someone will try a solo project. I suppose Urbantic is still hoping for it’s recording contract, but we’re having fun in the meantime.

5. Year Founded? 2005

6. Who’s your audience?

Most of our audience are people looking for something interesting to do. Then there is a small but essential group that likes to tell people about what they’re up to. In that way, we’re a bit like a tiny, tiny eBay. Something like 95% of eBay users are buyers. But without those 5% sellers, the 95% have nothing to buy. In our case, the 5% sellers are the people who are writing about their experiences at restaurants, beaches, and neighborhoods and the 95% are the explorers reading about their experiences.

7. What’s your exit plan, if any?

A larger organization could buy Urbantic. But Urbantic is easily self-sustaining. It has enormous potential as a stand-alone entity.

8. Any technology partnerships in place?

Over the past year the definition of a technology partnership has become increasingly fuzzy because companies like Yahoo, Flickr, and Google publish their APIs. I doubt that any of those companies know about Urbantic and yet Urbantic benefits immensely from Google’s mapping API, and Flickr’s photos API, among others. And, in a small way, those companies benefit from Urbantic’s connections back to them through their API.

9. Any paying customers? Nothing to speak of.

10. Name 3 competitors today (or soon to be)

The local search space is getting crowded. Last year Yelp, and Judy’s Book each raised between $3 and $8 million. Backfence has also raised some money. But Citysearch is still the main player in this space.

11. What is your differentiator from the competitors?

Ease of exploration, depth, and richness of content. Most city search sites have one postage-stamp-sized photo of a place and a series of disconnected comments about that place. On Urbantic there are dozens of full-sized photos uploaded by users about places and people are having conversations about those places, not just isolated criticisms.

Also, other local search sites haven’t taken full advantage of tags. Urbantic’s liberal use of tags makes it easy to do pivots on related data. So you might be doing a search on karaoke bars and discover that Rx Gallery has something called joke-e-oke where you do stand-up routines from famous comedians. From there, you might discover that it’s close to the Powell Street Subway stop, or that it’s similar to 111 Minna.

12. What technology did you use to build ie:xml, ajax, lamp stack, ruby etc.

We’re using a LAMP foundation. In this case, the ‘P’ stands for PHP. The user interface uses AJAX extensively.

13. How can you blow this?

Urbantic’s lifeblood is community. The challenge is seeding that community and providing an opportunity to let it grow without forcing it. It’s tempting to throw a lot of listings onto the site so that people always find the name, address, and phone number of any place they’re looking for. But a directory listing without user content is soulless and provides no special value. We want  Urbantic to grow organically, through new users adding their own content. We’re often tempted to seed it with static content. So far, we’ve been able to avoid that temptation and let the users direct the growth of the site.

Urbantic’s Michael Bean answers a few questions…..

1. Company/Product – 3 sentence description on what you do.

Urbantic helps you find places to go to and tell other people about interesting or weird places that you’ve been to. Say you want to go to a restaurant where the waiters are likely to flirt with you. You can click on the tag libidinous waiters and find the most salacious restaurants in the city. After your night out, you can write about your experiences and maybe even contribute one or two new places that you’ve discovered.

2. How will you make money/business model?

Local search makes money from local brands. Right now, big search engine search revenue comes from global brands or brands that don’t require a local presence. Brands that are highly localized are being ignored. For example Ritual Coffee Roasters is a great coffee shop in San Francisco’s Mission District but no one outside of the Mission knows about it because it belongs to a neighborhood. There are thousands of businesses like Ritual that have spent billions of dollars on local media like the Yellow Pages and supplements in the Sunday newspaper. Some of those businesses would be better served by using unconventional media.

3. Management Team – what is the previous experience of team? any 2nd or 3rd time entrepreneurs on your team?

Before Urbantic, Thor Muller started a web design company that was purchased by Frog Design, after that, he co-founded a content distribution company during the boom years and most recently started a web design firm called Ruby Red Labs. I’ve started a couple of interactive media companies, the most recent being Forio.

4. What stage is your company – alpha, beta, selling product, lots of customers?

Urbantic has 2,000 registered users. And we have essentially no revenue. Let’s just say Thor and I haven’t quit are day jobs. Thor has said these little web companies are sort of like local rock bands. Usually people will play in two or three bands simultaneously hoping for a break. Occasionally someone will try a solo project. I suppose Urbantic is still hoping for it’s recording contract, but we’re having fun in the meantime.

5. Year Founded? 2005

6. Who’s your audience?

Most of our audience are people looking for something interesting to do. Then there is a small but essential group that likes to tell people about what they’re up to. In that way, we’re a bit like a tiny, tiny eBay. Something like 95% of eBay users are buyers. But without those 5% sellers, the 95% have nothing to buy. In our case, the 5% sellers are the people who are writing about their experiences at restaurants, beaches, and neighborhoods and the 95% are the explorers reading about their experiences.

7. What’s your exit plan, if any?

A larger organization could buy Urbantic. But Urbantic is easily self-sustaining. It has enormous potential as a stand-alone entity.

8. Any technology partnerships in place?

Over the past year the definition of a technology partnership has become increasingly fuzzy because companies like Yahoo, Flickr, and Google publish their APIs. I doubt that any of those companies know about Urbantic and yet Urbantic benefits immensely from Google’s mapping API, and Flickr’s photos API, among others. And, in a small way, those companies benefit from Urbantic’s connections back to them through their API.

9. Any paying customers? Nothing to speak of.

10. Name 3 competitors today (or soon to be)

The local search space is getting crowded. Last year Yelp, and Judy’s Book each raised between $3 and $8 million. Backfence has also raised some money. But Citysearch is still the main player in this space.

11. What is your differentiator from the competitors?

Ease of exploration, depth, and richness of content. Most city search sites have one postage-stamp-sized photo of a place and a series of disconnected comments about that place. On Urbantic there are dozens of full-sized photos uploaded by users about places and people are having conversations about those places, not just isolated criticisms.

Also, other local search sites haven’t taken full advantage of tags. Urbantic’s liberal use of tags makes it easy to do pivots on related data. So you might be doing a search on karaoke bars and discover that Rx Gallery has something called joke-e-oke where you do stand-up routines from famous comedians. From there, you might discover that it’s close to the Powell Street Subway stop, or that it’s similar to 111 Minna.

12. What technology did you use to build ie:xml, ajax, lamp stack, ruby etc.

We’re using a LAMP foundation. In this case, the ‘P’ stands for PHP. The user interface uses AJAX extensively.

13. How can you blow this?

Urbantic’s lifeblood is community. The challenge is seeding that community and providing an opportunity to let it grow without forcing it. It’s tempting to throw a lot of listings onto the site so that people always find the name, address, and phone number of any place they’re looking for. But a directory listing without user content is soulless and provides no special value. We want  Urbantic to grow organically, through new users adding their own content. We’re often tempted to seed it with static content. So far, we’ve been able to avoid that temptation and let the users direct the growth of the site.