StartupHouse

Stories and lessons from the startup world

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Three SEO lessons to boost your website!

A few weeks ago, we had the chance to meet Adam Broadway, Funder & CEO of ‘Near Me’. Here are some insights of his knowledge and experience in SEO techniques. 

Fact: companies spent $65 Billion in SEO in 2016.

Before starting, there are some general advices you need to considerate:

for the conversion rate of your website (from click to revenue), you must have a primary and a backup goal that lead to the customer.

Be on social medias, but not all of them. Choose wisely, according to your audience, at least have a Facebook Page since they rank well on Google. 

Now, let’s dive in the subject, there are some tips and tools for boosting your business and website using SEO for an affordable price... FREE!

1- Keyword

Your first objective is to use the right keyword. For this, you need to know what people research the most; what are the most common words/sentences used when searching your business and its industry? Hopefully, Google Keyword Planner can help you, it only requires an AdWords account. 

While using the incognito window, search Google to see the best organic results for your chosen keyword. Analyse your competitors, why they appear before you? What content do they have?

Also, use Quora to get notifications about keyword’s subscribers.

Use the chosen keyword in the URL on every page of your website. 

2- Content

Have a credible and quality written content on your website. I know this could become complicated, especially for you geek and tech oriented folks, but it is extremely important. Blog post, article, critique...whatever you want to write, do it well. 

Use your keyword in the title and make it attractive/exciting. Think that the reader, who is your potential customer, will sees the title first and then decides if he is gonna open and read your content or leave your page. 

Have your email address and contact informations on every page of the website. 

To help you have quality content writing, check out WriteAccess.

3- External Links

You must have referring and reinforcing external links. This is the most powerful way to get a better rank on Google. Google’s algorithms measure the stability and the relevance of the page. If you only have pages talking about yourself (internal links) then this won’t show enough relevance for Google. In the other way, if you link your page to external websites with relative content using similar keywords (external links), you become more relevant, stable and expend your page’s awareness. 

For more tips, read the article: 9 SEO ideas for small business on a budget.

To measure your improvement, you can check Google Page Rank.

Julien Rosilio

StartupHouse

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Foundry program ex member insights

Traveling from Russia to the US with a vision for his startup in mind, Alexander Egorov was searching for the right location to base his product and enter the American market.

After two weeks of exploring different cities throughout Texas, Colorado and California, he ended-up in the city for entrepreneurs: Silicon Valley, San Francisco. He stumbled upon StartupHouse during his research for startup acceleration programs and was attracted to our Foundry Program. On January 2017, a new member signed up.

Alex, can you please briefly describe your experience at StartupHouse?

Alex: “It’s better than WeWork! Haha, honestly it was the perfect place for work, leaving and hanging out. You have everything in one spot which allows you to focus 100% on your business. It’s relaxed, friendly and well furnished with good amenities.”

As Alex was saying, one of the strengths of StartupHouse is the community. It serves as a driver that encourages the members to pursue their vision for the business they are building with help, advice and sometimes collaboration from one another.

After two months spent at StartupHouse in the Foundry Program, what did you gain out of it?

Alex: “The foundry program was definitely a good fit! My mentor, Elias, advised me in a way that made my business move forward with new concepts as reward programs for my distributors in order to gain loyalty. I considerably expended my network to potential customers and collaborators. I completed my product for the US market and had my first American clients. Also, the two other guys with me during the program became one of my closest friends, which is a unique added value that StartupHouse has. So, I would say that it was a successful experience!”

After his StartupHouse journey, Alex had to go back to his domestic market in Russia. Today, he has online retailer clients all over Russia, Europe and in the US. He’s currently in a process to develop his activity in the US market by deploying teams and targeting new customers.

That’s the story of one StartupHouse member — Alexander Egorov, founder and CEO of GIFTD, a concentration of knowledge of global motivational tactics for e-commerce and analysis of basic principles of online user behavior to help boost online sales: https://giftd.tech/.

If you have a vision for your business that you want to push forward, like Alex, join our early stage entrepreneur’s community at StartupHouse!

Julien Rosilio.

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A vision for California High-Speed Rail

Last Thursday, April 13, we had the chance to host an event in collaboration with ItaliaGeeks at StartupHouse. The theme of the day was “What California High-Speed Rail Can Learn from Europe” by Luca Giaramidaro.

Here is an overview of our speaker’s background & his insight on Californian High-Speed Rail.

Luca Giaramidaro left Italia after he obtained his Doctorate degree in Sustainable Design from “la Spienza” University of Rome. His American career started by a job at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) where he’s been working on large scale mixed use urban projects in Asia.

After this experience, Luca joined Perkins+Will, a global architecture and design company, where he executes aviation, transit, corporate, commercial, civic, healthcare, higher education, science and technology, and sports and recreation projects within the US and internationally.

This talented and visionary architect, urban designer and planner, is currently leading the design of the station site layout, accessibility, and connectivity for the California High-Speed Rail.

With the new administration promising huge investments in the infrastructure and California investing in the $64 billion plan for the High-Speed Rail,

Luca visited European’s best rail stations to study what he can take from them as an inspiration to create the perfect Californian Rail Station. His conclusion and vision are that the success of European’s best station is due, not only from the quality and services of the High-Speed Rails, but also from the over-all experience in those stations which make them a destination to visit, a spot to see, gather and enjoy for locals and visitors. This is the vision Californian High-Speed Rail needs to absorb from Europe. The life around their subway lines, surrounded by shops, cafés, restaurants, live music & art shows where the users are kept entertained.

This is where Luca’s expertise comes into play. He’s currently designing the Californian High-Speed Rail Stations that will provide the European subway lifestyle and experience.

Julien Rosilio

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Why I come to San Francisco for my startup

Devin Elliot is the member of this week, he is the founder and CEO of Unoceros, the next step in human connectivity. He considers himself "uneducated" because most of the people on his team have PhDs in applied mathematics, human and computer interaction. Their broader vision is to build the next phase of connectivity infrastructure - after cloud - with a distribute and accessible device network. It may sound very complex, but, making is shorter: "imagine the Cloud inside your phone. The other phones would also have their own Clouds and everything would be connected" he said.

Devin has an amazing life story. He has been an entrepreneur since a young age. After quitting high school, he started and sold his own business. After that, he successfully tried to come up with clean energy at Blue Marble Energy, but he left that company couple years later too. After some time Elliot found himself tired of the startup world. He found a stable work for himself, where he could get him some time to surf and be with his family.  However, an idea came to his mind and it would not go away. He tried his best to kill that idea, but he was no use.

In his own words " It's extremely difficult to start a company. It's an awful idea." According to him, one must only start a business if the passion for that subject can not be held back. "Your job as the founder is to work for everybody when nobody works for you, is " he said. Also, he states that necessary to start a company for the right reasons. "It has to be something that relates to your convictions in life." "Something that you can learn most to give as much as you can.".

Because of all those downsides of becoming a founder, coming to San Francisco sounds like an excellent idea. Devin's company is originally from Seattle, but he often finds himself coming back here to raise money and network.

San Francisco's ecosystem is unique. Unlike the rest of the world, here talking about changing the world is a pretty usual thing. The city is a big hub of hundreds of startups, very live and engaging. Cities like Seattle, for example, lack of entrepreneurial spirit compared to San Francisco. The city is more famous for big established companies such as Microsoft and Starbucks.

According to Devin, San Francisco is the easiest city to get startup investment and mentorship. Many times, who succeeds in the startup field here goes on to become a VC, which provides the community with more investment and mentorship. And every time he comes, for a more immersive experience, he stays at StartupHouse, where he finds comfort among an entrepreneurial and International community that embraces the new. He recommends coming to San Francisco for the unique networking opportunities this city can offer and, once you are around, come to one of our events. You will be amazed by how easy it is to meet people here.

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How to find time to travel despite being a startup founder.

This week we talked to Matt Shams, the founder of WOOLAH (beta http://woolah.co), a platform to turn your hobbies and talents into an income. He and his team, that resides in Dubai UAE, believe that people, in general, know what they want to do with their lives, but they don’t know how to start. That’s when the platform comes in to bring people together building a community around them. A safe place for normal people who wants to tell their stories. A podium for you to showcase your talent to the world.

Matt had that idea out of his personal experience. Since a very young age, he decided he wanted to travel and hike as often as possible. However, it was always very difficult for him to find the right people to do so. His “solo” traveler career ended back in college when he used online platforms such as Facebook and Meetup to connect with other people that had a similar interest. Since then, that small group grew into a 3000 + people community.

Having your own startup and taking the time to travel are activities that don’t really match that often, though. Matt, on the other hand, has very good reasons on why you should start traveling more:

1. Do weekend “micro” travels

Some people see traveling as a week-long program. As a startup founder, however, being a week away from the office may not be ideal. The truth, though, is that sometimes all your brain needs is a weekend off exploring or doing something completely different. It doesn’t hurts to take a weekend off and, if you can’t take a plane, try driving to the cities nearby. You will be amazed about how incredible the places around you can be.

2. Happiness to increases productivity

One of the keys success aspects for startups is high productivity. The company’s productivity many times has to do with the mood that the team is going through. For that reason, it is important to live a healthy life and (most importantly) be happy. Therefore, try the micro travel idea, or take a weekend to learn something new. Giving yourself a break from work is super important.

3. It is normal to feel unsure about traveling.

It’s going to feel weird at first, so just trust your intuition and go. Some places may seem dangerous or “too different”. Of course, you don’t want to go to a country in war. So, whenever you think of a place to go, think to yourself: “is it really dangerous or might it be only in my head?”. You’ll see that most of the times those barriers are excuses we make to yourselves.

4. Conclusion

Matt’s company is now raising 2 million dollars for their seed round. They have already raised 1 million dollars, but that has never kept his passion from traveling away from him. Actually, that may be why he’s been so successful so far. He is now expanding his team to San Francisco, where he met the StartupHouse. It is now his third time here and, this time he is staying for 3–4 months. According to him the convenience and the like-minded community always drags him back here.

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How to grow your startup based on "Word of Mouth"

This week the members we talked to were Jyrki and Ville, co-founders of Brella! Together, with their team in Finland, they are creating an online platform that is aiming to change the way we network during events. So far, they have partnered with big events all over the world and they have a personal collection of more than a thousand business cards from all the events they attended. If that wasn’t enough, word of mouth is their main customer acquisition channel at the moment. This blog post is going to go through the most important takeaways from our conversation last week.

The company has its roots in Finland, where the first versions of the product has been built and now they are aggressively targeting their largest target market, the US. Once they started their operations in San Francisco - CA, they chose StartupHouse as their working base because of its community and events startup related. Even so that they were the winners of our last StartupHouse Battlefield, which is a free pitch competition for early stage startups that takes place here. As the price, they got a free month of membership. Check out that event and many others in our calendar by clicking here.

Don’t lose your time, focus

Our life changes constantly because of people we meet on the way. So we’d better know the right people. Jyrki and Ville believe that networking is not being done the right way nowadays. There is a limited amount of people you can meet at the event. It would be great if we could meet everyone, but since we can’t, try to focus on the right people. That will make your networking more efficient.

2. The “help first” mindset.

In an event (or any networking space in general) a lot of people are seeking for the prize. However, with nothing to offer it gets very difficult to connect with people. So, before anything, try to find the value you have to offer to them first. Once you know what you can offer, try to find people that need that. Try to find what they are looking for. Manage the conversation to make it interesting to that other person. Networking is about creating meaningful relationships. Strong relationships.

In Ville's words: “All the businesses are run by people just like you and me. If you don’t know the right people, you are out of business. Being able to have the right people around you is essential. That is the most important asset you can have.”

3. Listen, be interested, ask questions, be genuine.

Once you focus on the right people and understand the “help first” mindset, the next step is to try to make a strong relationship out of that connection. You can do that by trying to find an emotional touch point.

Being genuine may be the most important lesson in terms of networking. People can easily read each other’s intentions. That is called emotional intelligence. So be yourself. As simple as it sounds, that is not an easy task, though. That requires practice.

Connecting with other people is about the passion and value you provide to the conversation. If you show that you love what you do and that you have a genuine interest to help the other person, those connections can create strong relationships. Bare in mind this key questions: “What do you have that will make other people remember you?”, “How did you make the other person feel?”

4. Conclusion

Platforms like Brella will help you with the first step, but the rest is all up to you. If you have any questions for them, feel free to come over to StartupHouse and meet them in any of our very frequent networking meetings. Access Brella for more information and good luck!

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Marketing first, Product later: How to build a legion of followers.

This week we talked to Kevin and Andy, co-founders of Beta Labs! (Charlie is the third member, but he was not there for the interview). They produce apps for very specific target markets.  Together for only 6 months, the applications they have built have a total of over a million users and, most importantly, everything was (proudly) self-funded. This blog post is going to go through the most important takeaways from our conversation.

Kevin is a software engineer born in Uruguay and Andy is an American that dropped-out college very young to run his own marketing platform. They were both looking for a co-founder with each other's abilities when they met here at StartupHouse. It sounds like a love story, but it actually just one of the every day happy endings that happen here. In Kevin's words: "All you need is to be open to the opportunities, surround yourself with new ideas, create a hard work mindset".

1. Know your target market before building anything

This is not intuitive. For many startups, the logical pathway is to create a good product and, only after that, use marketing to reach out the customers. The downside of that method is that, once the funders start to understand the customers better, the product has to go through a lot of changes. This process is commonly called a pivot. As you may know, it takes a lot of time and it costs a lot of money.

Once you know well who you are going to build the product to, your startup can  save a lot of money and time, which are essential to any startup development. Therefore, start asking yourself who you are building that product to and try to understand them. What do they like? How much money do they spend in average in similar products? etc...

2. Reach out the market influencers

Nothing is stronger than a friend's recommendation. Once you know your customer well, try to find the people that they look up to, the influencers. Their recommendation can have a huge impact on your customer's choices. It is not easy to find the right people for each segment, but once it is found, the Return on Investment is enormous.

3. Be specific, produce in scale.

Once you know the customer and the market influencers, the third step is to build your product. It is important to keep in mind that the product has to be very specific for that customer you already know. That way, the product can penetrate the market very well. Once you conquer that segment, you can go try to understand another one and so on. That way, you'll end up creating several small products for different types of customers.

4. Conclusion

It takes a lot of time to build a big product that works for everyone. That requires a lot of technical skill, marketing budget and so on. You can avoid that, though. The way Andy and Kevin found to do it is to build small and very specific products. If you have any questions for them, you may be lucky and meet Andy and Kevin here at StartupHouse. They are always coming back to the place that everything started. You can also check their website if you'd like: http://beta.uy/

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Top 3 lessons from a startup that is raising a millionaire investment on it's pre-seed round.

Top 3 lessons from a startup that is raising a multi-million seed round.

Getting that million dollars investment may sound like a dream for many of us. Here in Silicon Valley, however, some young game-changers entrepreneurs are not only aiming to reach it, they wanted it during their pre-seed round. This week we had the chance to talk to one of those entrepreneurs who shared with us the top 3 main tips that will help you to get there as well.

Orion Parrott is the CEO of Lendsnap, a StartupHouse alumni who went to YC summer batch right after the foundry program. His startup that helps customers to get a better deal on their mortgage by automatically gathering their qualifying documents. The current lack of mortgage options created by the large bureaucracy of the applications makes millions of people lose their time and money every year. Orion wants to change that reality. Here are the main takeaways from our conversation:

1. Aim That Trillion Dollars Market

Realistically, all investors want to find the next Uber, or the next AirBnB. However, in order to make a billion dollar company, you have got to make sure that the market you are targeting is big enough. For example, Lendsnap is going for a market of 2 Trillion dollars in Gross Merchandise Volume. Only in the USA,18 millions of people get mortgage every year. Those numbers clearly show that there is space in the market to grow and that may be one of the most attractive market qualities for investors.

On the other hand, just because your market is not as big right now, it doesn’t mean that it can't grow further in the future. Make a long-term plan for your startup. Take Uber, for example. They went from black cabs to taxis, and now pretty much any kind of delivery or transportation.

2. Surf the Trend Wave

It’s no secret that the banking system will not sustain itself the way it is if it doesn’t adapt to the latest tech changes. As investors turn their eyes to that market, it gets easier to FinTech companies to raise money. In 2015, that segment investment hit the all-time high: US$19.1 billion! Investment growth in a specific market is a very good sign in any investor’s eyes. Therefore, try to stay as close as you can to the top investment markets of the moment.

3. Weekly Results

Even though having a big prospect market and “surf the trend wave” are very important tips, all of that is worthless if you don’t have a good team with actionable results. Before raising money, make sure that your company is ready for that investment. A good way of doing that is joining a Foundry Program. Orion has joined the StartupHouse Foundry Program in San Francisco. That has helped his team with workshops, mentors, and have created a weekly result culture in the company.

Conclusion:

Those aspects create the necessary momentum and mindset that are necessary to sustain a continuous growth. Once the desired growth is achieved, as long as there is enough market to grow to, your startup will be much closer to that big investment you have always dreamed of. To conclude, some of Orion's own thoughts about the subject:

"Lendsnap has received funding from Y Combinator to build the modern mortgage. By linking to consumer accounts to automatically gather original financial documents, we help lenders deliver the easiest mortgage experience ever. Before Y Combinator, the StartupHouse Foundry Program network and mentors propelled our success forward by helping us define essential steps to building business value, understanding our customers, and focusing on metrics that matter."

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Startups Fight Climate Change

The scientific community is in full concession: Humans are heating up our planet through the release of methane and carbon into our atmosphere. Yet every day, we proceed with “business as usual” policies, fully aware that in just over a decade, we could be past the point of stopping runaway climate change. This crisis will affect everyone and will disproportionately affect low-income communities. Most of the countries most affected by climate change are also the least responsible for the emissions, and the countries most responsible are the least willing to cut down. New waves of climate refugees will flood borders, droughts will increase, food security will be jeopardized, and billions of dollars in assets will be lost if we allow emissions to remain at a constant level.

Governments have been slow moving and ineffective in stopping a changing climate. Small organizations and startups are essential in filling in the gaps left by enterprise and big government. In this article, I will give an overview of two small organizations (Rainforest Connection and MyDomino) near San Francisco that are providing essential services that fight climate change.

The Rainforest Connection (RFCX) is a small non-profit that focuses on empowering park rangers and conservationists through big data analytics. By placing small communication boxes (see below) in critically impacted hot-spot regions, RFCX can monitor and label measurable, recordable, and verifiable sound data in real time. They are currently able to recognize chainsaws, motorcycles, and large vehicles. The team is currently working on gunshots, bird sounds, and other audible metrics that can improve rainforest health through either direct ranger action or indirect leveraging of policy. Some of their locations include Ecuador, Brazil, and Indonesia.

Their boxes use recycled cell phones, solar panels, and high-intensity microphones to capture rainforest data.

MyDomino is an energy concierge service that facilitates the transition to clean and energy efficient power. The solar market is crowded and complicated to navigate. MyDomino’s fully stacked team of energy experts can help steer you in the right direction. Whether it be finding the right electric car for your budget, or providing useful energy and cash saving tips for your home, MyDomino is the impartial organization that has your back. They are committed to helping you find the right products at the right cost to positively impact the climate and lower your energy bills.

There are many opportunities for making a large impact in fighting climate change. By using more sustainable soaps/ detergents, buying more organic foods, eating less meat, or buying long lived energy efficient products, you can make a tangible contribution to this global solution. However, nothing beats scale. According to the MyDomino website, “if 60 people switch to LEDs, that’s like taking 25 cars off the road for a year. If just 25 people go solar, that’s like planting 97,000 trees”.

If you have an idea that will help fight climate change, there are a plethora of resources at your fingertips. GoodCompany ventures and their subsidiary Climate Ventures 2.0  offers small projects 1 M in funding and a stipend of 25K for promising green tech or services. Rainforest Connection graduated from the Silicon Climate accelerator, a non-profit working to spur innovation at the intersection of Silicon Valley and the climate change movement. If your idea pertains to solar, Powerhouse is the world’s premier incubator and accelerator dedicated to solar. If you want to be in South Market San Francisco, StartupHouse is an excellent low-cost coworking/ incubator space designed for early stage startups.  

Climate change is one of the largest threats facing the human race. We have the technology to address it, all we need is the will.

-Julien Morgan

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Lessons Learned From Failed Startups

The Need For Focus

The startup world is more saturated than ever before. Undownloaded social apps, failed hardware companies, and nonvisionary software services crowd below the tech giants of Silicon Valley. By interviewing Spencer Martin, Co-Founder of Quitly and Supplyr, I learned the correlation between focus and the success of a company.  

In February of 2016, Spencer joined a Y- combinator custom packaging startup in San Francisco. As the VP of sales, he pushed the company to pivot towards providing bulk B-2-B sales as opposed to their standard small order B-2-C clients. After about two months, Spencer discovered a problem. f

“The founders hated each other and fundamentally disagreed with each other’s vision for the company.”

After the company imploded, Spencer co-founded Supplyr with his father. Their company sifts through the “95% of unreliable Chinese factories” to find the 5% of trustworthy factories for hardware startups and fortune 500 companies. Supplyr does sourcing for GoPro, Nest and Fitbit while also brokering different products.

Like many entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, one startup is not enough. Spencer spent all his extra income on new projects such as his smoking alternative application called Quitly and his branded screen protector company named Color Guard. Although Spencer is bullish on wifi technology and electronic cigarettes, the consumable hardware industry is in decline. There are underlying changes that happen frequently in the tech industry. For example, the dot-com boom allowed big data companies to identify patterns and opportunities, which allowed them to secure a “moat” around their business model.

In the technological “yin-yang” of software and hardware, one must be completely focused on an industry to anticipate change and pivot towards the opportunities of tomorrow. If you allow yourself to be spread thin, it is more challenging to maintain a long-term vision, which can compromise the survival of your projects.

Every VC in the Silicon Valley will question a company’s vision and team, but too few question the focus of its members. Without focus, there is no acumen or vision, and the stability and strength of a team cannot be forged out of a mutual understanding of those two principles.

Come to StartupHouse to focus on your vision and provide a co-working space for your team.

-Julien Morgan

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Get Stronger

We were evolved to be active, but the modern condition has chained us to sitting and stagnation. We huddle around screens for hours at a time, and our sedentary life is creating chronic conditions that result in millions of dollars spent on healthcare and death.

We need to get stronger and be more active, but ensuring proper form and preventing injury is extremely challenging. Most people do not want to pay for expensive personal trainers or spend dozens of hours researching body mechanics. People may turn to Youtube, but the trainers there are not verified, give misinformation, and cannot provide feedback on an individual's form. If you look to the app store for fitness apps, you find computer made work out routines or more unverified trainers giving non personalized workouts. There has been no online fitness community that offers verified trainers a platform to help make people feel better, stronger healthier, until now..

MyTraining in an online platform for verified personal trainers to post workout routines, videos, and tips to the general fitness community. People can pick and choose workouts based on preferences, get feedback, and post their own videos. MyTraining is creating a positive strength building community of fitness enthusiasts, verified personal trainers, and people just starting to workout. Unlike other applications attempting to replace the trainers, MyTraining helps promote the trainers. According to the global wellness institute, fitness is a $446 billion dollar industry, and MyTraining is taking it by storm.

MyTraining’s CEO and founder, Rudi Leismann (Center), started as a banker in brazil. He traded stocks of other companies, but was unhappy. He wanted to build something that would add significant value to people’s lives. Rudi is an avid fitness enthusiast and has won a benchpressing competition in Brazil. However, when he was starting to workout, he could not find any application or resource that empowered personal trainers or provided a fitness community, so he and his partners started MyTraining. They knew Brazil was not the right place to start, so Rudi took a leap of faith and moved to San Francisco. He has overcome the language barrier to secure real funding and differentiate himself in the Silicon Valley. Rudi has been in San Francisco for nearly six months and always stays at StartupHouse because “it is not just a co-working space, but a community of real entrepreneurs”.

MyTraining has a fantastic team: Paulo (CTO: Left), Matt (Community manager: Right), Conrad (Designer), and Fernanda (Customer Success). Rudi is currently part of the StartupHouse community, and MyTraining is poised for a full launch in 3-6 months. Their demo is on the app store and currently has over 50k active users. If you are a personal trainer, go to their website for a personalized account.

Get the DEMO!

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- Julien Morgan

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From Junkyard to Web Development

From junkyard to web development, Armando Flores lives the American dream. Armando’s roots are traced back to a Saginaw Michigan, where he first found a love for art and creation. By drawing with his older cousin, the young artist knew he wanted to be involved in the creative world. Even at school, Armando found himself in the back of the class sketching and doodling.

His desire to express his creativity led him into customizing cars with his brother.

He wanted to find new ways of breathing life into more ideas, so he left the automotive world and studied mechanical engineering at Michigan Tech. There, Armando began learning Photoshop, Illustrator, and HTML.

Flores knew he wanted to be involved in the tech industry. A friend pushed him to consider moving to San Francisco, but he wasn't quite sure how to get out there. So on a whim, he applied as a volunteer at the HTML5 Developers Conference in SF. Once accepted, he was really excited to visit SF, and the StartupHouse was his friend’s initial recommendation. He was immediately drawn by its location, price, and community.

After the developer’s conference, he chose to stay in San Francisco and try and find work as a web developer. After a bit of searching and quite a few rejections, he began building his portfolio through small gigs and little design projects. Once people realized his design potential, members of StartupHouse started approaching him for larger projects: Lumin, Ziero, and Teamwork Online.

Armando has now been part of the StartupHouse community for two years. In his words, “StartupHouse has given me the opportunity to meet new friends and clients from extremely diverse backgrounds. Because of Startuphouse I’ve been able to experience some amazing things, from the people, to events, and conferences. Living in Startuphouse puts me really close to where the action is, in SF ”.

Armando is currently taking on new clients as a freelance UI Designer, he enjoys traveling for inspiration, and exploring new places.

Contact Armando Flores if you are looking for an experienced UI Designer and Web Developer.

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- Julien Morgan

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Don’t Stay Home

Connectivity is the bedrock of culture. Modern applications give us instant communication to millions of people, yet we are constantly fragmented and separated. Even when in groups of people, we spend time indoors and isolated. We need something that gets people out of the house and making friends for a culture to form.

Tinder and other dating apps shows us that people are comfortable meeting people online, and Pokemon Go reveals that software can facilitate friendships based on mutual interests. However, one is only for dating and the other is for people that like Pokemon. There needs to be an application that connects groups of people through a common interest.

Peppers is that application. Peppers allows individuals to create groups of friends within the app to connect with other groups that share like minded interests. This app brings people in mutually liked groups together, opening up conversations and opportunities to invite other groups to parties, concerts, and almost any activity imaginable. People can share videos of relevant activities, request to join groups, and message different groups at a moment's notice.

The founders of Peppers are two entrepreneurial cousins from San Paulo. At the young age of seven, they knew they wanted to start a company together. After designing a video game at the age of ten, Lucas and Luigi dedicated their time to education. When they got their engineering degrees, they started working on an “instant freelancing app”. Due to non-intuitive labor laws, the Pepper Cousins put this idea on the back burner. Noticing that true bonds form in groups, they created Peppers to allow individuals to create authentic friendships.

Their convictions were not understood in São Paulo, so they went to the place that is encourages entrepreneurs to thrive.

Lucas and Luigi took the city by storm. They signed up for Stanford classes, coded Peppers for IOS and Android, and established new connections by joining StartupHouse: a low cost co-working space in the heart of San Francisco. After one months they said, “StartupHouse has provided the constructive atmosphere necessary to make Peppers happen. People are extremely helpful and genuinely interested in making an impact”. They are set to release the app for IOS and Android at the end of august. If you are interested, contact [email protected].

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- Julien Morgan

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Metrix Health -- Data Driven Healthcare

Time is the most valuable commodity in healthcare. A few minutes can be the difference between life and death, and an extra hour every day can make or break a doctor’s mental health. However, medical practitioners lose countless hours to inefficient administrational processes and ineffective clinical workflow. Many healthcare facilities frequently underutilize their clinical resources leading to staffing inefficiencies, which translates to lost revenue and increased labor costs for the facility. In an analysis of errors reported by surgeons at three teaching hospitals, lapse in communication was a causal factor in 43% of surgical errors.

“Communication error was a causal factor in 43% of surgical errors.”

–  Gawande AA, Zinner MJ, Studdert DM, et al. Analysis of errors reported by surgeons at three teaching hospitals. Surgery  2003; 133: 614-21.

“In 16,000 hospital deaths, communication errors were twice as common as inadequate skill.”

–   Wilson RM, Runciman WB, Gibberd RW, et al. The Quality in Australian Health. Care Study. Med J Aust  1995; 163: 458-71.

Based on these data, there is a market need for an affordable, data-driven approach to streamlining streamline health care practices across healthcare facilities. Metrix Health allows medical operational optimization through data analytics of patient demand and staff supply. With the help of smart patient safety bands, staff security badges, and equipment sensors, a select staff can instantly know the location, electronic medical record, and heart rate of all their patients.

The overall vision is that, Metrix Health’s solution will automatically optimize workflow to quantitatively save clinicians time and improve the quality of experience for patients. Thus, busy physicians have more time to spend in the operating room, treating patients at the bedside, and spend less time waiting or searching.

In the future, Metrix Health envisions clinicians will spend less time on non-clinical tasks, such as manually calling, typing notes on the computer, or searching for specific employees and patients.  By bringing artificial intelligence to healthcare, Metrix Health intelligently understand how people are resources flow within healthcare facilities.

Metrix Health has currently developed a working prototype and has partnered with Microsoft Azure for cloud computing to bring this affordable healthcare intelligence

They are now further developing the technology and are aiming to set up systems in outpatient surgical centers. Metrix Health was founded in 2014 by a former Stanford physician and a full-stack enterprise engineer.   Based in San Francisco, Metrix Health is currently a member of StartupHouse. After two months of co-working, CEO, Dr. Matthew Thomas said he has “loved meeting and learning from interesting boot-strappers in the tech capital of the world”.

For more information and contact details visit www.metrixhealth.net

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- Julien Morgan

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Wake up: Save Lives

I almost died last year. On a drive home from Los Angeles, the driver got drowsy and steered his Golf into the center divide of highway 5. The car was totaled, and we were lucky to be alive. This accident could have been prevented if my friend had DashPilot, a small and un-intrusive piece of hardware that monitors the driver for signs of drowsiness and fatigue. If DashPilot detects either, it will give a non-repetitive audible and visual alert to bring the driver to attention. Their mission is to prevent the more than 60,000 annual automotive collisions due to fatigue and distractions on the road. DashPilot is perfect for truckers, people doing long distance road trips, and precautionary drivers.

DashPilot was created this year on the StartupBus. After developing the product in only 72 hours and winning second place in the pitching competition, they were invited to stay at StartupHouse. When reflecting on his stay at StartupHouse, DashPilot’s brand promoter, Garret Dowd said, “it provided not only a great co-working space in the heart of the SF startup community, it also provided the ability to connect with other highly motivated entrepreneurs who are working on their own projects. This ability to also build friendships and connections was very valuable”. They now have a working prototype and are currently finalizing their team, continuing to code, and searching for people with experience in machine learning and computer vision algorithms. If you are interested please contact: [email protected].

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Intelligent clothing for a better you.

Wearable technology has been around since the 1980's, however, a crucial component has been missing since its beginnings: DESIGN. Wearable tech has always been done by engineers, the results have been unpractical clothing with a lot of functions, until now.

MACHINA creates wearable machines by seamlessly integrating fashion and technology. They provide the user with wearable technology that is invisible, functional, and intuitive. They accomplish this by using flexible electronics, an elaborate integration process, and an evidence based design and testing process that is begins by thoroughly understanding the use cases for technology, and combining it with a deep understanding of the fashion industry. 

An example of its use is in the video below.

  Over the years MACHINA have launched different kinds of products, from t-shirts with different political messages printed into them to their most famous product called the MIDI Jacket. It was a well loved product for dancers, dj's, produces. Another product would be their hoodies with embedded speakers in them which allow you to listen to music in a wireless way from your mobile phone. Currently you can purchase the AUDIMUS Collection of Hoodies through their online store . All models, available in colors black and white. They are now developing OBE. A state of the art technology which can be easily embedded into clothing to have a full immersive experience through motion and haptic feedback while using Virtual Reality. 

Check out OBE in use Here!

Four years ago, Antonio, Machina’s co-founder started the company as his thesis project in college. He was told that the idea was too futuristic, not viable and got kicked out of college his last semester for standing up for his idea. Two months later, Antonio and Linda (the other co-founder) raised their first round of funding for Machina. Now they are partnered with clothing distributors in Mexico City, New York and San Francisco. They moved back into StartupHouse in April 2016, and have enjoyed getting to know the interesting people in our community. Order the clothing from their website. Follow them on Instagram and Twitter!

- Julien Morgan

[startuphousesv]

Making Style Easy

Say goodbye to buying clothes that don’t fit! Thanks to StartupHouse’s new community member: MyLine. Far too many people waste time trying clothes on in stores and buying garments online only to return them due to a poor fit. To solve this problem MyLine created a web-based virtual reality shopping service with a gaming interface that allows individuals to input their body’s dimensions to create an ‘avatar’ that can try on clothes from different vendors.

Once the ‘avatar’ is created, MyLine can recommend different outfits that follow a desired aesthetic and compliment the user's body dimensions. MyLine allows a user to search online clothing databases using keywords and body dimensions for the perfect outfit. A user can save different outfits to his or her virtual closet, share outfits with others on social media, and follow the virtual closet of different people in the community. The service is perfect for clothing designers, online shoppers, and fashion enthusiasts. MyLine has VR compatibility and will soon open booths in high traffic malls with the Oculus Rift so people can get the full MyLine experience.

Established in 2015 by a group of designers, engineers and creative minds, MyLine's mission is to help make custom, well made, clothing and taste-fit styling accessible to everyone. After a year of development MyLine is up and running for men’s high quality tailored suits that range from $399-$1000, outcompeting other high quality suits that are usually priced around $1000-$2000. Their next step is to expand the service to women’s clothes, hire a senior marketing team, and partner with more clothing companies. MyLine is currently at StartupHouse for a co-working space, to grow their network, and learn from experienced boot-strappers. After a month of co-working at StartupHouse, Aubrey Wang (CEO) said, “Come to StartupHouse if you want to experience San Francisco”. MyLine currently has a team of 10 people. If you are interested, send an email to Aubrey.

Go to MyLine’s Website to try the DEMO!

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- Julien Morgan