Fitbit, the market leader in the digital health and fitness device category and maker of the popular Fitbit Ultra Wireless Activity and Sleep Tracker, today announced it raised $12 Million in Series C funding from existing investors: Foundry Group, True Ventures, SoftTech VC and Felicis Ventures. The capital will be used to further accelerate the company’s strong growth trajectory. In the last 6 months, Fitbit has launched the Fitbit Ultra, expanded its retail and international distribution and introduced Aria, its new Wi-Fi Smart Scale.

The funding marks a pivotal point for the company. “We’ve moved beyond being a single product company and are creating incredible digital health products and experiences.  This funding will help us accelerate the hiring of the best hardware and software engineers, designers, product managers and marketers,” said James Park, CEO and co-founder of Fitbit. “This is the perfect time for passionate and smart people to join us as we create devices and services that improve the health of millions.”

“The digital health and fitness device category requires a deep understanding of consumer needs, an unquestionable ability to deliver a successful product and technical expertise built from years of experience in the industry,” said Brad Feld, Managing Director at Foundry Group. “Fitbit has demonstrated these traits while building and launching several successful digital health products and services and is clearly the leading company to grow this category to its full potential.”

About Fitbit

Founded in 2007 in San Francisco, CA, Fitbit is dedicated to delivering simple, innovative health and fitness products and services that help people lead healthier, active lives by giving them the tools to become more aware, motivated and fit every day. Fitbit’s Ultra Wireless Activity + Sleep Tracker is the leading wireless fitness tracker on the market, with distribution at leading national retailers such as Amazon.com, Best Buy, Brookstone, Radio Shack, REI and Target. Fitbit is funded by the Foundry Group, True Ventures, SoftTech VC and Felicis Ventures. For more information, please visit www.fitbit.com or connect with us on Facebook or Twitter. To join the Fitbit team, please visit www.fitbit.com/jobs, to apply.

I have followed boxee as a startup since it’s inception. It has garnered over $26 million over three rounds from notable VCs like Spark Capital and Union Street Ventures (I’m a fan of both). The major obstacle for Boxee clearly seems to be content. Content is king and it continues to ail the likes of Google TV, Netflix and Boxee. As cable providers continue to pay the big bucks for content, Internet hybrids like Boxee are still a work in progress in terms of licensing.

]]> http://www.startupaddict.com/technology/boxee-review/3469/feed 1 http://www.startupaddict.com/social-media-2/how-to-twitter/3400 http://www.startupaddict.com/social-media-2/how-to-twitter/3400#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:51:00 +0000 Tod Whipple http://www.startupaddict.com/?p=3400 As Twitter becomes the most buzzed about social network of 2011 many people are still asking themselves “How do I use it?” Unless you lived under a rock for the last few years you already know Twitter is a free micro-blogging service that allows people to send updates up to a 140 characters long. You can send your updates via mobile devices, sms, computers etc. Until recently Twitter has been the domain of the Technorati and brands trying to engage their audiences. It has become a wonderful service for expanding brand awareness, real-time customer service, networking and randomn laug-out-loud rants.

Twitter HQ announced a total redesign last month in an effort to simplify the short messaging service.  Twitter version 4.0 is attempting to reduce  the esoteric features like # hashtags and @ symbols making the service more approachable for the average person.  Twitter is also maturing into a full blown social network and trending service that is becoming extremely powerful.

So whether you are a newbie or a veteran with a 100,000 followers there are some essential tools and best practices on how to twitter:

Manage your outgoing feed.

In order to control your Twitter addiction and not waste time in your work day consider utilizing tools like Buffer, Hootsuite or TweetDeck. These posting tools will assist in  scheduling tweets over the course of a whole week or month. Take one or two hours a week and build authority & influence. You can still be spontaneous when the need arises but this way you’ll always have a tweet in the queue.

Manage your inbound feed.

Streamline your  follow list and enhance your signal to noise ratio. Stop following people who hog your twitter feed or deadbeats that don’t use it.

Be involved. Be Active.

Like any social network, being involved will pay dividends. Be sure to join relevant chats sessions. For example, if you are intersted in PR you may want to follow #prchat. You should pickup at least 2 or 3 followers per chat session this way. It also helps to search Twitter by keywords and follow influencers and other relevant people in your vertical. If your at a loss for who the real influencers may be check services like Kred, Klout and PeerIndex.

Be sure to pay particular attention to your analytics and metrics from the tools discussed above. This will reveal the optimal time to send tweets for retweets and clickthroughs.  Interesting tweets, funny tweets and relevant tweets will keep things fresh for your followers. Futhermore, don’t freak out when some followers drop off from following. In the end  it’s better to have 300 dedicated followers than 600 followers that could care less.

Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be. - Jose Ortega y Gasset

At Startup Addict I think of new year resolutions differently than most people might. I focus on annual goals rather than broad or cliche resolutions like losing weight or eating healthy. Reflecting on accomplishments and failures from the previous year is a great place to start. This cathartic process allows you carry forward any missed goals and outline your next annual achievements. Take a look at a few tips that help me craft a New Year’s resolution that matters:

Reduce your signal to noise ratio
There is so much information overload and multi-tasking going on today we tend to lose more ideas than we keep track of.  Easy way to combat that is to write it down!  The most obvious tool of all will help cut through and clarify the noise allowing you to see your goals clearly. Just by writing on a piece of paper, ipad or smartphone (whatever your poison might be) it helps bring goals from thoughts to reality. Another good technique if you are non-linear like myself is to utilize mindmapping tools to brainstorm and organize your goals. You can then break the goals down into milestones and tasks with an associated timeline. For those of you looking for some hard take away tips try streamlining your inbound communication channels (both offline and online). This will help you reduce information overload, increase productivity and allow you get more done. See below for some quick online wrangling tips:

Twitter 
Streamline your  follow list and enhance your signal to noise ratio. Stop following people who hog your twitter feed or deadbeats that don’t use it. Utilize posting tools that will assist in scheduling your tweets like Buffer, Tweet deck or Hootsuite.  These tools allow you to take 1 hour on a Monday to schedule a week worth of content on Twitter. Then you can tweet current events and news related content as it arises. In addition, these tools will report important analytics that will provide click through metrics and reveal your influence with your followers.

Facebook
Manage your notifications and responses in a timely fashion. Also, pick a scheduled time to respond so your not grabbing you phone every second someone leaves a comment. Facebook can be an enormous time-suck if you do not manage it correctly. The tools previously described can be utilized for Facebook as well as other social networks like LinkedIn. Allowing you to manage multiple accounts and identities while scheduling posts.

Email
Adopt a zero inbox philosophy or utilize helpful tools to help you clear it, like priority inbox from Google or Sanebox.

Develop Systems or Die
Nothing will kill productivity faster than working without systems in place.  You must work with a plan of attack and a purpose, systems will be your savoir.  When developing systems for your daily, weekly and monthly tasks think about how you would program a robot from scrtach to do exactly what you need done. Remember you are either developing systems to save you time or free your time for higher level tasks. You can start in one of two places when developing new systems or whether your revamping old ones.

1) Pay attention to what you do for work in a given day, week, month and what your current approach is to completing tasks. Maybe your new years resolution is to develop systems themselves!

2) Catergorize tasks and to-dos into organized buckets. For example, social media would be a broad bucket category that would break down into subcategories like, linkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, blogging, newsletters etc.  Your subcategories can then be broken down into tasks and to-dos. Defining your buckets is where mind-mapping pays off because “Marketing” could have dozens of subcategories that in turn have dozens of tasks and to-dos.

Don’t Procrastinate
Duh, no kidding. I know this is the king of platitudes but it needs to be said. There is no time like the present and getting something done now is step#1 in productivity enhancements.  The best technique that keeps me from procrastinating is realizing I only have 8,765 hours in any given year including sleep and non-productive time. Most of us are only productive roughly 10 – 12 hours a day which leaves about 3650 – 4380 hours of work that needs to be managed effectively for maximum productivity. So get busy because you used up 5 minutes of 2012 reading this post.

Good luck with your New Year’s resolution for 2012.

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Over the past 10 years or so, more and more large companies haverealized their way toward more sustainable and eco-friendly business practices. But how can your company go green without damaging profit margins? We take a closer look at how three large corporations managed to become more sustainable in their business practices.

Starbucks
Back in 2008 the coffee giant was under a lot of pressure from activists to clean up their business practices. Several  cash-register exorcisms, smashed windows and law suits later, Starbucks decided to reposition itself in the market. In an effort to green up its operations and win back customers, Starbucks introduced a string of initiatives, such as giving their used coffee beans to customers to use for compost, upping the recycled content of packaging and encouraging baristas to push ceramic mug options. But perhaps the most significant change was through their CAFÉ initiative. Starbucks undertook the Coffee And Farmer Equity practices. C.A.F.E. Practices seeks to ensure that Starbucks sources sustainably grown and processed coffee by evaluating the economic, social and environmental aspects of coffee production against a defined set of criteria, as detailed in the C.A.F.E. Practices Guidelines. These practices have worked to turn customers’ opinions around and today the group is bigger than ever.

Staples
Staple’s switch to sustainability was much easier to monetize. Where Starbuck found itself fighting for its reputation, Staples took a proactive approach to going green and was rewarded handsomely.

Staples worked on going green for quite some time now and are now reaping the financial rewards. It was reported that a small change such as switching from three-amp to two-amp light bulbs has saved the company $4.2million after expenses. Other changes include modifying their delivery vehicles to limit speeds to 60mph, saving the company $1.5million per year.

Clorox
While Clorox invested a lot of money into going green, the company has not lost money and believes the gain of customer trust for doing the right thing is paramount. In 2010 Clorox started going green through a transition in its’ seven beach plans across the country to move away from chlorine gas transportation.

The company started working with GreenPeace and the Sierra Club. It cost the company tens of millions of dollars in capital, yet they are now in a breakeven proposition in terms of business profitability. In addition, the press gained from doing this was invaluable. Clorox was mentioned in the New York Times as being exemplary in trying to do the right thing. The positive brand pay-off down is huge for customers looking to buy green products from a transparent company.  Customers don’t just see it as just  a company going green, they see Clorox as being committed to doing the right thing.

Visit MeetTheBoss for more executive learning lessons online.

I finally carved out some time to read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. The Lean Startup is a methodology rooted from the product development world of manufacturing and applied to new and existing businesses in the startup value chain.

A system developed by Eric Ries in an attempt to add more scientific method and structure to the startup process.  Through his own trial and error of failing startups he was able to extrapolate a lean startup model.  Here are some of the more interesting concepts out of the book.

Leap of faith assumptions

If you think you a have a solution to a customer(s) problem that will revolutionize the world you may want to pick up a copy of this book first. One of the most critical concepts the lean startup model dictates is proving out your “leap-of-faith” assumption. Every entrepreneur is making a certain set of assumptions about what consumers really may want or what problem you think you are solving. The only way to know for sure of your assumption is by validated learning. Successful existing businesses derive a formula for acquiring, qualifying, and selling customers in a targeted market segment. Moreover, costs to bring in and retain a new customer is known based on lifetime revenue of each customer. Unfortunatley a startup does not have the luxury of already making “traction” in a market.  Validated learning will help answer the following questions

• How do existing customers respond to our product over time?
• How profitable is it on a per-customer basis?
• What’s the ROI on acquiring new customers?
• What’s the total available market

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

In order to gain insight from your customers through validated learning a product or service needs to be presented. Once the MVP or minimum viable product is established, a startup can work on tuning the product. This book provides great advice on how to work faster, waste less and fail fast. MVP is all about transforming you startup idea into a a product with the minimal effort and cost in order to measure and learn. Get a prototype into the market place to see if there is a real market fit or if you need to go back to the drawing board.

Build-Measure-Learn

The first step is figuring out the problem that needs to be solved and then developing a minimum viable product (MVP) to begin the process of learning as quickly as possible. One of the more interesting concepts pointed out by this book is build-measure-learn. Optimization methods and increased conversation rates through A/B testing is important but the real power is testing your idea against the harsh reality for adoption and acceptance. This resonated with me as being a simple but extremely powerful concept. For instance, if I’m selling widgets does it really matter if I sell another 10 widgets per day because of my highly optimized landing page? or does it matter that I am selling 1000 widgets a day through an non-optimized landing page because my idea solves a problem and is accepted in the marketplace. – Great stuff!

Startup Addict Summary

The book could come off as gimmicky or just another startup self help book. However, within the first few chapters you will quickly realize what an essential read it is for all entrepreneurs and managers. The Lean Startup should be a tool in every entrepreneurs toolkit.  The book transcends rudimentary startup books and puts real world concepts and documented systems in place to help you develop your next startup successfully.