Tag archives: jovoto

the betacup – how are we doing so far?

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Saturday, 10 April 2010

How are we doing after 1 week?

+ 65 ideas

+ over 300 comments

+ almost 30,000 views of ideas

+ almost 1,000 registrations to submit ideas

In addition, the contest has good press and is the subject of steady twitter conversation all of which is helping to move the numbers above.

But how good are the ideas?

Here are some good examples:

+ new cups – some are created from existing waste materials, some while you wait and others are designed to disappear when not in use (while also checking into foursquare)

+ new recycling or reuse options – cups can be used to distribute seed or if we had more ways to collect used reusable mugs, perhaps more people could use them.

+ new behavior – these ideas explore ways to encourage behavior to reduce or eliminate the use of paper cups.

I personally believe this last category is where the best solutions will be found (I’m not a juror, but I will be voting with everyone else for the community prizes).

One of the big changes in recycling is the cost of tracking. For example barcode scanners are ubiquitous, so barcodes can be used to track and reward reuse. In fact the cup (or the lid) can become the more valuable kind of plastic (the kind you buy stuff with).

Going one step further, loyalty card programs result in interesting data for segmenting customers for selling more stuff, but they can also be used to cause better behavior.

Beyond the ideas, we’re excited to see how the process unfolds

Because submissions are public some interesting things are happening.

+ comments – feedback is already resulting in iterations, so we think some of the submitters are benefitting and enjoying the feedback

+ teaming up – it has happend once already and there seem to be some discussions already (this is how the netflix prize was won, so this is interesting, for sure).

+ juror expert feedback – we have already seen some of the jurors weigh in with their particular expertise, so we’re looking forward to seeing how this helps submitters to identify and address prospective issues with their submissions.

We’ve just started, so why not submit an idea or encourage other people to check out the betacup challenge.

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Investing in the future of creative work: Jovoto

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Saturday, 30 January 2010

Jovoto Logo

I first met Bastian, founder and CEO of Jovoto, almost one year ago, when I was doing research for my Berlin School thesis. Crowdsourcing for the creative industries was just gaining momentum and through my research work, I was finding similar looking companies such as Ideabounty, Crowdspring, 99designs, etc.

But after my first conversation with Bastian, I realized Jovoto was doing something quite different. They had found a new way to work with creatives based on a creative driven approach which emphasized interaction and ownership of one’s work. First I entered a contest and then convinced one of Mutopo’s clients to try it out. After a few months, it was clear that not only did the vision make sense, but the community was producing fantastic results through an unusual collaborative-competitive process of responding to client briefs.

We love what the community is doing, so when the opportunity came to invest in Jovoto, we immediately said yes – we’re glad to finally make it official.

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Area of Interest for 2010

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Sunday, 3 January 2010

We were inspired Fred Wilson’s Areas of Interest post (and resulting comments) a few days ago

The areas themselves are interesting -

We are looking forward to the iPhone vs Android clash because of some of the technical differences as well as some of the different ways in which they work with their developer communities.

We also like the intersection of augmented reality and gaming and would venture to throw in work by people like 42  Entertainment immersive entertainment.

And we do like energy and education – we hope to announce investments and client projects in both of these areas shortly.

But most interesting to us, is the process of telling people what you are interested in and engaging in dialog about these areas. It is still very unusual to have such an open dialog about what areas look interesting and why.

We think Fred is demonstrating the trend we are most interested in: organizations that generate much of the value from the community around them, not just their full-time employees/partners. [update: last check there were almost 200 comments]

As an example, Craigslist has 32 full-time employees and because of the way they work with their community, they have fundamentally changed the economics of classifieds, killing off much larger organizations by completely changing the economics.

We are willing to bet the Fred and his team at Union Square will reap similar scale benefits as their community helps them do work that would be impossible to do if they only had internal resources.

Craigslist is relatively new, but old when compared with companies like Twitter that is benefitting substantially from innovations coming from its user and develop community. Less than 3-year-old Jovoto has found a new way to provide creatives services by enabling creatives to work compete and collaborate in design contests. Similarly young, Local Motors is redefining the way cars are designed, built and marketed.

The result is not just a large change in economics as tasks are shifted out of organizations but also a changing relationship from customer to collaborator. This changes fundamentally how organizations are structured and how they compete so we’d love to be working with people who are figuring this out (or want to figure this out).

What do you think?

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