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Secret diary of an entrepreneur 86
Earlier this month, Blipfoto founder and CEO Joe Tree spent a week in San Francisco visiting some of the top technology firms operating in Silicon Valley. Here he shares his diary with Talk Business…
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lipfoto allows people to tell their stories through pictures, one day at a time. With over 15 million monthly views, it’s a fast-growing social media hub which allows its users to post just one picture a day to their journals. CEO Joe Tree has been visiting the most exciting, creative and innovative companies in the Valley, from household names like Google and Nokia to the energetic start-ups like Boxfish and Storify that will be the talk of tomorrow. As he wings his way over the Atlantic, he shares experiences from the trip, from Edinburgh to Palo Alto.
San Francisco: day 1
I’m in San Francisco for the culmination of Cross Creative – a programme I’ve been enjoying back in the UK over the last nine months. Nine of us have flown in for three jam-packed days visiting companies in the city and the valley, soaking up a little of what makes this place the global epicentre of just about everything new and cool. Things kicked off properly today, with a visit to Telltale Games – a developer producing episodic games
with well known brands like Jurassic Park, Back To The Future and Wallace and Gromit. They have a fascinating model, which sees customers subscribing in advance to new chunks – or episodes – of game content over several months, rather than buying it upfront all in one go.
Boxfish gathers every word spoken on television in the USA, UK and Ireland, and makes it searchable in real time – just like Twitter. Bonkers, but unfathomably useful (and arguably more so than Twitter because you’re searching edited content from professionals, rather than waffle from individuals).
ALL BONKERS. THERE’S NO OTHER WORD FOR IT. THE GEEKS REALLY HAVE INHERITED THE EARTH Their games are all based around strong stories and lend themselves well to this approach, but in that industry it’s brave to sell something you haven’t quite built yet. YouTube was meant to be next on the list, but disappointingly they were forced to pull out at the last minute. So, after a leisurely lunch in Palo Alto, we dropped in on a very young startup called Boxfish. They’ve been in stealth mode for the last six months, quietly developing their product for a beta launch this year, and it’s almost impossible to find anything out about them. But they let us in on their secret, and it really is quite incredible.
It’s the brainchild of two guys from Ireland, who uprooted and moved here because it’s the only place in the world they wanted to make it happen. Maybe it’s just because it’s home to so much of the stuff which dominates my life, but the energy in Palo Alto really is palpable.
San Francisco: day 2
First on the list today was the Googleplex for a two-hour tour and lunch courtesy of the Android Games product manager. Bonkers. Just bonkers. Completely and utterly bonkers. The scale of the place, the quirky stuff around every corner, the multi-coloured communal bikes,
March May 2012 2012 www.talkbusinessmagazine.co.uk www.talkbusinessmagazine.co.uk
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08/05/2012 13:43