Where do you do your holiday shopping? Are you a last minute in store shopper? Do you shop throughout the year so you never feel the rush? Do you shop online? Here are some interesting stats on shopping trends this year.

2011 Shopping Stats:
*Shoppers spent much more money online this year than last year, and they did a lot of their shopping on tablets like the iPad.
*So far this holiday season, shoppers have spent $32 billion online, 15% more than last year.
*Last week was the heaviest online shopping week on record, and last weekend was the second-heaviest weekend.
*12% of online visits of retailers websites came from mobile devices. (i.e. Tablets and mobile phones.) Up from 5% in 2010).
*9% of sales came from mobile phones.
*Mobile commerce peaked at 10 p.m. on Cyber Monday.

Read the full article HERE.

Follow us on Twitter @dealmakermedia

New entrepreneurs nervously come to me with the question—“Is it a good time to start a company?  Will there still be money in 2012?”

Seasoned entrepreneurs ask, “Will investors still spend like drunken sailors or will we see a correction?”

Yesterday Dealmaker Media asked a panel of investors from Silicon Valley and Los Angeles to give their opinions on the future funding environment.

“To Start-up or Not to Start-up, that is the question”
Although the erratic spending of 2011 may slow, most investors felt it was irrelevant in the decision to start a company.  Mark Suster, Partner at GRP Partners said, “It’s always a good time to start a company regardless of funding.  I’ve done it in a boom and a correcting market.  It’s actually more difficult in a boom because it’s hard to differentiate yourself.”

After all, how much more room is there for additional Groupon clones or ways to share our photos?  The companies that will get funded going forward will try to solve real problems, not just copycat other business models as a get rich quick scheme.

Aydin Senkut, Founder and Managing Director of Felicis Ventures said, “It’s never a good or a bad time but there are good and bad ideas.  They say that the grape in the toughest terrain produces the best wine.  Sometimes the startups in the most challenging environments turn into the best companies.”

Facebook, for example, was started in 2004 when Silicon Valley was cautious and dry.  This was pre Y -Combinator, pre 500 startups, and pre Peter Thiel’s fund to back entrepreneurial college dropouts. It is now the biggest startup success story, boasting over 800 million active users.

Are Accelerators the New MBA?
With new accelerators and incubators popping up every day (I’ve counted over 100 internationally) the startup pipeline isn’t going to slow as soon as people may think.  Every engineer thinks they can start a company and every MBA thinks they can quit the corporate world (or their expensive tuition) to be ‘lean.’  Is this a good thing?

Paul Bricault, Venture Partner at Greycroft Partners said, “Right now there are a lot of crappy tennis camps and a lot of crappy tennis players.  But we don’t want to go and shut them all down!  We don’t want to discourage entrepreneurs rather we want to get more!”  Paul still feels like LA and regions outside of Silicon Valley are under capitalized.

Mark Suster, having started Launchpad LA sees the positive in providing more opportunities. “The accelerator support network and seed money widens the pipeline.  If it takes ten companies to produce two great ones then we need more.  It’s not a bad thing to convince people to leave their jobs and try something new.”

All investors acknowledged that the winners in any economy are the ones with a brilliant idea, rock star team, and ability to roll up their sleeves and work hard for their dream. However, Aydin commented that it just isn’t entrepreneurs that have to work hard in tight economies.  Investors do as well.  “We are not compensated for taking risks but for doing research for taking calculated risks,” he said.

Aydin travels all over the world to find, meet and invest with the best emerging companies, including the recently popular Angry Birds.

As 2012 approaches with a wavering economy we may be in for a funding slow down and belt tightening.  However, this isn’t a bad thing for entrepreneurs.   Those with passion for their ideas and a dedication to Lean Start up principals have everything they need.

As Fred Wilson once said, “Markets come and go. Good businesses don’t.”

Since this seems to be “The Year of the SMB,” we feel it’s important to share whatever information we can muster up about how to target SMBs and what things you’ll need to know to succeed. Here’s a start from Francine Hardaway and Fast Company on, “Ten essential things you need to know before you target small business.” Read the full article HERE.  Follow Francine here: @Hardaway

1) Small businesses don’t define themselves as small businesses. If you come up to them at a networking event and say “what do you do?” they’ll respond, “I am a hairdresser,” or I am a pool cleaner,” or “I make widgets that go into airplanes.” When you target them, go after them by vertical, or by neighborhood, not by “small business.”

2) Small businesses don’t want anything but more money or more customers. They don’t buy web sites, social media consulting, or any other service to be hip and trendy. They don’t buy new “solutions” if their existing solutions work. They buy only to get more customers. That’s why they have been great targets for ValPak, Yellow Pages, and Groupon.

Read more

Are you feeling lonely? Working from your “home office” and corner cafe starting to get to you? In today’s cloud fueled world, working on site has become less and less important. However, it can get pretty depressing pretty fast when you’re all by your lonesome day after day. So, why not work on your budding project from a collaborative space with a community of like minded individuals? You don’t have to be working on the same project to enjoy eachothers company and take advantage of useful resources. A number of shared workspaces have popped up recently, and to help you find the best ones closest to you, LooseCubes is here to help. LooseCubes is like the airbnb of shared workspaces and space holders have the option to list their offerings, and charge by the day, week, or month for a desk or a corner of a workspace. Visiting a foreign city? Moving to a new city? Tired of working in your pajamas all day? Get out there and meet some new people and get back to work!

LooseCubes was founded in 2010 by Campbell McKellar and is based in Brooklyn, NY.

Follow us on Twitter @dealmakermedia

When life gets too busy to buy your own underwear, maybe you should consider slowing down. However, if you just can’t, there are two companies out that have your back (or backside as it were). Consider them the “Netflix of intimates.”

Read more

You know those sites that are just lovely to look at?  Well, 500px is the pinnacle of beauty.  Founders Ian Sobolev and Oleg Gutsol have turned this Toronto based company into a “photographic community powered by creative people from all over the world.” It’s a place where artists and photographers can ”share and discover inspiring photographs.” Check them out and if you’re an artist, sign up: http://500px.com/

Follow us on Twitter @dealmakermedia

Cloud based systems management startup, ScaleXtreme, has announced the launch of their early access program! Since presenting on the Under The Radar stage in April, and winning BOTH the judge’s and audience choice awards, many of you looking for serious infrastructure solutions have been waiting to crack open the ScaleXtreme offering… Now’s your chance!

According to their blog, the early access provides:

- Installs in just a few minutes, no consultants required – unlike the older generation of products from the “big 4″ vendors like BMC, IBM, CA, or HP, our products can install in minutes and we even have auto-installers for Amazon EC2, Rackspace. You can get 100′s of machines installed in under 5 minutes. Unlike other heavy-duty enterprise software companies that make tons of money off of “consulting services”, our products are for IT operations and admins to use and deploy themselves. It is that simple.

- Full support for Linux and Windows – yes, our Windows support is real and not in “beta”. We give you equal support for both operating environments and in many cases you can even pull off operations between both systems through the same interface.

Click here to read GigaOm‘s piece on ScaleXtreme‘s launch or here to read an interview with CEO Nand Mulchandani from CloudTimes.org. You can also watch Nand’s winning Under the Radar presentation and slide deck here.

Congrats to Nand and the team and we expect to hear more great things in the coming months and years!

At Dealmaker Media, we were over the top when we first met Daniel Saks and Nicolas Desmarais from AppDirect. With the explosion of business and cloud apps crowding the internet, it only made sense that someone out there would make it easy to find and pay for applications that make it easier to get up and running with your business. With massive acquisition potential and a growing following after a huge presence at Under The Radar, AppDirect has announced a $3.25M round led by iNovia Capital. As a local business, with roots in Canada, we are huge fans of AppDirect and know you will be too.

Read more

Chirag Mehta, cloud computing blogger and software vetaran, has begun a blog series based on Under The Radar startups and we’re happy to feature his cloud-focused blog posts on our blog. His first installment is about NimbusDB, who walked away from UTR as the audience favorite in the scalability category! Their personalized M&Ms may have had a little to do with being the audience favorite, but we guess it had more to do with their technology.  NimbusDB delivers the key requirements for cloud-style environments, including dynamically adding or deleting nodes from a live system, unlike existing SQL databases. Watch NimbusDB CEO, Barry Morris, present at Under The Radar here.  Stay tuned for more of Chirag Mehta’s blog series, and check out Part 1: NimbusDB here.

Follow us on twitter: @dealmakermedia

Startups typically engage in some pretty cool marketing tactics. Often founded by young entrepreneurs who were raised with computers in their cribs, most of their marketing efforts are web-based with clever graphics. Of course, we all love when the efforts are of the chocolate kind like the lime-green NimbusDB M&Ms at Under The Radar!

Sometimes a company  does something completely unexpected… UTR alum, HipChat, and founder, Pete Curley have wheeled and dealed their way onto a highway 101 billboard! What better way to reach thousands of technologists at once than to put a billboard just steps from Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Google, Facebook, and all the money on Sand Hill Road.

Pete Curley is quick to note in the following peHub article, that he is not, however, looking for funding, but he loves stopping by VC offices during lunch. There must be some great lunch spreads on Sand Hill! Check out Alastair Goldfisher’s peHUB article here.

Follow us on twitter: @dealmakermedia

In this age of Groupon crazes, it’s rare to come across an idea that feels original. But surprisingly, a new Australian/UK based startup launching yesterday called, “Cardnap,” has come up with something pretty clever. The 16 and 22 year old co-founders (if you’re feeling a bit like an underachiever right now, join the crowd) founded this startup that allows users to go online, search their favorite merchants, and find discounted gift cards. Discounts range from 10% to 50%, and as far as I can see the sources include CardPool, PlasticJungle, and Gift Card Bin. I also understand that throughout the course of this week a further two large gift card resellers will be added to Cardnap.

Read more

There’s been a lot of talk about music apps lately… One of my favorite bloggers, Louis Gray wrote an article yesterday titled, “What iTunes Needs to Take on Spotify, Rdio & Google.” He starts, “Ever since I gained early access to Spotify in late 2009, I’ve practically abandoned iTunes for purchasing music.” This got me interested…
Is iTunes falling behind the music curve? There are so many exciting players out there offering so many cool things, I’m tempted to say, “Yes.”

Read more

Image from: DonkeeHouse

Before my brother goes shopping for anything, he goes to look for a coupon. He frequently uses a site called, “RetailMeNot,” that allows him to search for coupons for specific products or brands, but he will also just try a google search. Surprisingly, he finds coupons for almost EVERYTHING. There’s 25% off here, $10 off there… the offerings are endless. He basically, refuses to pay full price for anything.

Read more

Back in July of last year, I pulled together a list of over 60 group buying sites that had sprung up in the wake of Groupon.  Now, that list has increased by huge factor, and the trend just keeps spiraling upwards. We recently learned about a few options though that simply had to be added to the list… Sites for Jews, people who are Gluten Intolerant, and more:

1. Jewpon (A Group Buying Site Catered to Jews).  Advertising, “We ‘ll send you Discount opportunities of up to 75% OFF on Kosher Restaurants, Events and Activities, Stores, Hotels, Judaica, Photography, Fashion, Israel, and a whole lot more…..”

2. JDeal (A 2nd Group Buying Site for Jews).  ”There’s nothing Talmudic about it. You don’t have to be a rabbi or a doctor or a lawyer to figure it out (although if you are a doctor or a lawyer, are you single?). Just follow these simple steps to take advantage of seriously surprising deals.” Read more

Tech startups are realizing there's money in 'money' and going after brick & mortar retail stores.

If you were at the Kabuki Hotel in SF’s Japantown Monday, you were certainly engulfed in the future of financial services and technology – or “Fintech!” Look mom, new buzzword! With an impressive panel of financial experts, technologists from financial companies, and a load of people with big ideas, the Future of Technology & Money Summit did a great job impressing upon the audience that our financial futures are in mobile.

Read more

We may have found a new home for Craigslist’s adult services…

A new startup, Frently.com, is offering a space for people to “rent friends” anywhere in the world. Ideally, you can hire a “friend” to help move, do yard work, or get a ride, but we all know that this will ride fast into dark side. Here are some indicators as to why this is nothing more than a modern ‘adult services’  websites (not that there is anything wrong with that)…

Read more

ps: lightbulbs are NOT creative visualizations of innovation.

I work in one of the world’s most innovative hubs: Silicon Valley….

I count myself among many lucky people to be surrounded by brainy creatives day in and day out… These people introduced me to the culture of transparency that fuels the innovation behind today’s most culturally disruptive ideas and technology.

Remarkable ideas aren’t unique or individual. Instead, they’re crafted when multiple people’s experiences serendipitously come together to create something far more meaningful than a lone idea ever would have been if built in secrecy for fear of it being stolen by someone else.

It’s through sharing that we create ideas that can change the world — and there’s never been a better time in history to connect and collaborate on the scale that’s possible today. We’re blessed with the tools to find like-minded people who share our ambitions, regardless of whether they’re in San Francisco or Saskatoon (yay, Canada!).

I think that because we live in the day and age we do, that together we share the responsibility for continuing to nurture an environment that inspires, educates and gives momentum to ideas that will write history for generations to come.

Here are 5 Components of Innovation, as I see it:

1. Risk-Taking. Progress does not stand still. If you hear the words, “we’ve always done it that way,” run as fast as you can. Creativity doesn’t take the shape of a cookie cutter and the “it is what it is” mantra just won’t fly.

2. Evolution. Innovation is iterative. I mean, hell, Google opened Gmail to the public in 2004, but it stayed in Beta until summer of 2009. Beta is a stage of product development meaning it’s still working out kinks and rolling out new features. Innovation isn’t a finished product; it’s a process. Put your idea or product out there and be prepared to make changes and admit that it’s not perfect (yet).

3. Confidence. You don’t need to be Steve Jobs, but you do need to live and breathe what you do with a passion that’s contagious. When you become a champion of change with a steadfast vision, you’ll naturally become a magnet for people who want to help.

4. Communication. Be transparent. Share your insights and make yourself and your team accessible to outsiders and open to feedback. Communication creates a sense of community (duh!) and encourages people to share a sense of ownership, creating a network of ambassadors.

5. History. Learn from what others have done before you. Build upon their successes and learn from their mistakes.

UPDATE: New York Times wrote an article about donothingfor2minutes today just a day after we published ours.  We think they have some interesting resources, even if they did copy us (Just kidding!)  Check them out HERE.

We are constantly looking for workplace productivity tools with the end goal being: How can we be as productive as possible, as quickly as possible? We look for startups with innovative ideas on workplace productivity tools and we proudly share those ideas internally, and with our network of companies, dealmakers, and investors in our Under the Radar Conference.
Read more

New Yorker Comic

Preface: Please excuse me as I rant about buzzwords…We all use them, we all know them, but sometimes it just feels like buzzword overload. That being said, here we go:

Read more

As a company of girls, lead by a CEO who spent ten years in the fashion industry, we love watching Fashion Industry Startups pop-up.  Here are four fashion startups that we think are big game changers:

1. FashionStake: New York based startup, founded in 2010 year by Harvard Business School alumnus Daniel Gulati. In a nutshell, here is what they do:

Read more

As someone who recently had their phone stolen, issues around mobile security have become much more interesting to me.

I realized how much personal information is now stored on my smartphone. My email, Facebook, and Twitter accounts are all available for use and browsing. All of my contacts and their information, all of my text messages, all of the apps I have downloaded, all of my bookmarked webpages and so much more.  After having my phone stolen,  I went through and changed over a over a dozen passwords just to be safe.  It’s a bit frightening how much information is really out there.

Read more

We work with startups everyday who are looking for guidance and advice about how to best run their businesses and tips they should know about to be successful.  We thought we would highlight this article from VentureBeat since it gives some good pointers for anyone embarking on founding their own company.

1. Personally interview every new employee until the startup has 50 employees. Then interview everyone that will manage others.

2. Spend 30 minutes a week on Mondays talking to new employees as part of their first day. Close the loop within a month by dropping by their desk to see how things are progressing.

3. Make a point of having lunch with every employee and learning not only names but some details about each one. When the startup reaches 50 employees, take out two at a time.

Read more

Imagine calling a taxi to pick you up at your exact location, telling the taxi driver where you want to go, paying the taxi driver, tipping the taxi driver, and arriving to your location in the shortest possible time. Nothing too extraordinary, right? Now, imagine the EXACT same scenario, without having to say a single word or pullout your wallet. Interested?

Imagine This:
1. Pull out your smartphone.
2. Open your taxi app.
3. Virtually “hail” a cab.
4. Immediately watch as a cab accepts your fare and proceeds to your exact location.
5. Enter the address of where you want to go into your phone.
6. Hop into the cab as it pulls up.
7. Watch the fare increase as you proceed to your destination.
8. When you arrive, pay the driver through PayPal or another online account.
9. Rate the taxi driver.
10. Hop out of the cab at your desired destination.
Read more

Here’s a cool new start-up to check out: LikeOurselves…

All around us there are millions of connections just waiting to be made. At Dealmaker Media, we believe in “Growth through Connections,” and here is a new start-up that, like us, is hoping to help facilitate these valuable face-to-face connections.

LikeOurselves is a new UK-based start-up that is hoping to help users answer this question: “How do we find the people we want to hang out with – without planning, right now, right here?”

Here’s how it works: Users go to LikeOurselves using their mobile phones and select what type of connection they are looking for… i.e. Someone to play tennis with, people to talk business, Venture Capitalists, Yale graduates, wine connoisseurs, single parents, a casual date, or anything else under the sun.

Then, users share their location, and see who is around them that they might want to meet up with. You might see that there is a Yale Graduate at a nearby cafe, and a Venture Capitalist at the bar across the street. Cool, huh? LikeOurselves says sharing your personal details is optional since privacy is important to them.

This service is LinkedIn in real life (and maybe a great company for LinkedIn to someday aquire!) It gives us connections at our fingertips, for fun, for business, for advice, for anything.

For now the Beta start-up is working on a small scale in London. They are looking for funding, and here’s their pitch:

We are a lean startup based in London. By lean, we mean that we haven’t eaten in a while and we are hungry. The more users we have, the more people you can meet – so please spread the word on your Twitter, Facebook, blogs and shout from your rooftop “Get addicted to meeting people – go to likeourselves.com now!”

So… if you’re in London, try it out. And if not, keep an eye on LikeOurselves. This could be huge!

Register for Grow Conf and Follow Us On Twitter at @growconf

DealMakerMedia follow us on Twitter at @dealmakermedia

I want to plan a trip to Bali (why not go to paradise on this fictional vacation?) with three of my closest friends. Normally, we would send strings of emails with links to various hotels, locations, and activities to get the ball rolling. Inevitably links get lost in the shuffle, decisions get put off until last minute, and one person ends up having to take responsibility for the whole trip. Travelstormer aims at changing that. Launching just over a month ago, Travelstormer provides a service where friends, family, or travel companions can login, and start brainstorming a vacation together in an organized and structured manner.

So, back to my Bali trip. To start, I sign up for free account with Travelstormer and creates a new trip… I’ll call it: “Bali: The Pipe Dream.” Then, I send the invite to my three friends and the brainstorming begins. My friends sign-in, click on the trip, and start conversations on whatever they want. We can start a brainstorm about travel dates, locations, activities, accommodations, transportation, etc. If for example my friends and I need to find dates where we can all travel, I can even start a brainstorm where we all put dates into a calendar and Travelstormer shows us when we are all available.

The Expenses tab is especially useful. Travelers can input what they’ve spent, and everyone can remain updated about who owes money still, how much, and to whom. The Expenses tab shows who owes what, and we can use a service like WePay to collect payments from eachother if needed.

Users can also delegate jobs on the Tasks page and ensure people follow through on things. So, we can all make sure someone has booked the hotels in Ubud, and gotten the scuba trip from Seminyak. It’s all been laid out for us.

We can also privately message each other, and get updates when someone makes a change to the Travelstormer page.

This service seems like it will be especially useful for people organizing Bachelor and Bachelorette parties, destination weddings, young people doing around the world travel, and family reunions trips, to name a few ideas.

UK-based Travelstormer has been built by entrepreneurs George Coltart and Colin Armstrong, in partnership with London agency Harmonypark.

This seems very useful. Will you use it?

Register for Grow Conf and Follow Us On Twitter at @growconf

DealMakerMedia follow us on Twitter at @dealmakermedia