Tag Archives: On Grid Ventures

HBS Alumni Angels NY new Chairman: Jason E. Klein

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By David Teten and excerpted from his HBSAANY message on June 12, 2014. Original is here.

 I’m happy to announce that Jason E. Klein, CEO of On Grid Ventures LLC, will serve as the new Chairman of Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of Greater NY.  Jason (bio here) is an experienced angel and company builder.  I’m shifting to “Chairman Emeritus”.  I’ll still be very active in supporting our growth, while continuing to serve as a Partner at ff Venture Capital.

In December 2010, Richard Kane, then-President, Harvard Business School Club of New York, asked me if I’d like to found an HBS alumni-affiliated angel group in NY.   Since then, we have grown to be the 2nd largest angel group in NY, with 130 members (vs. about 150 for Golden Seeds in New York, the largest group).  We believe we are the second or third most active angel group in New York, depending on which metric you use.  33 of our members collectively have made 82 investments for $3.5m in 27 companies.  Our average check size per member per company per round is $43K, which is probably the highest of any angel group in the country.  We also have won over 800 investors and friends to our mailing list.

When Harvard Business School’s new Dean, Nitin Nohria, took office, he outlined five priorities to shape his agenda for the School during his tenure: curriculum innovation, intellectual ambition, internationalization, inclusion, and closer ties to the University.  Our accomplishments reflect those 5 priorities; we were inspired in part by the Harvard Business School U.S. Competitiveness Project, which challenged the HBS alumni community to address America’s declining competitiveness.

1) Curriculum innovation

HBSAANY has evolved into an educational organization, holding investor education events in NY, Florida, New Jersey, Connecticut, and San Francisco, as well as many webinars.  That said, doing is the best way of learning.  We saw over time that our investor group, just like Angel List and most other angel groups, was good at syndication and not so effective at leading rounds.  As a result, we launched the Fast Track program, which helps VCs and active investors who are HBSAANY members to syndicate rounds with members of our network.  To date, 11 companies have been approved for Fast Track, and 8 have raised capital from our members.  Following a lead investor is valuable education, as it gives the coinvestors access to the deal documents and some of the process used by the lead.

2) Intellectual ambition

In the past four years, I’ve been fortunate to publish two research papers on investing best practices, on origination and portfolio operations, partly leveraging the insights I’ve gained through my work with HBSAANY.

3) Internationalization

HBS Alumni Angels is a global angel group, given our chapters in 15 cities.  And of course many of our members in NY are international by background.  Because of that, we have been judges or speakers at programs in New York geared to investors and startups from Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Eastern Europe, Germany, Holland, Israel, Italy, the Maghreb, and Portugal.  I’ve enjoyed working with our friends at New York City Economic Development Corporation, VentureOutNY, and the Worldwide Investor Network .

4) Inclusion

In building the group, we had to figure out our origination strategy.  Most investor groups specialize by geography, stage, and/or industry.  However, our member base is much more diverse on all those measures than any other investor group I’m aware of.  In my research on how private equity and VC funds source investments, one of our conclusions was that VCs get better returns when they invest outside of the traditional geographic hotspots of New York, Boston, and the Bay Area.  This is a generalizable principle: you get higher returns where other investors are not.  Because of that insight, we co-founded the Venture Capital Access Program, a joint venture with the National Association of Investment Companies, focused on helping women and minority entrepreneurs raise capital from HBS Alumni Angels.  In a related move, we organized a series of joint pitch nights with the HBS African-American Alumni Association; HBS LBGT Alumni Association (September 8), and HBS Latino Alumni Association (October 6).  In the first full year of operation, VCAP attracted 159 applicants.  34 went through VCAP committee screening; 17 went to a HBSAANY pitch night; 6 attended the annual NAIC convention, and 3 received funding (Mirror Digital,Cyber IQ, and Bownce) from HBSAANY and/or other sources.

As far as we know we’re the only investor group in New York to have cast such a wide net in working with diverse communities.

5) Closer ties to the Harvard community

Although we’ve grown dramatically, fewer than 1% of HBS grads in the NY area are now members. So we have a long way to go!  In order to recruit members and source interesting companies, we’ve worked collaboratively on a wide range of events and other initiatives with many HBS special interest groups: HBS Healthcare Alumni Association; HBS Club of South Florida; HBS Club of Connecticut; HBS Alumni Angels of Northern California; HBS Women’s Association of Greater New York, HBS eClub; and of course our very close partners and friends the HBS Club of Greater NY.  We’ve also worked with the broader university: Harvard Club of NYC; Harvard Club of Princeton (NJ); Harvard in Tech; Harvard Alumni Association; Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs; Harvard iLab; Harvard Venture Partners; Harvard Social Innovation Collaborative; Harvard Aspiring Minority Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs; Harvard GSAS Business Club; and the Harvard Graduate Student Council.

I look forward to seeing our group prosper under Jason’s leadership.

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HBS Alumni Angels NY new chairman: Jason Klein

How the GeoWeb Will Change Consumer and Business Behavior

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Reposted from Street Fight.

How the GeoWeb Will Change Consumer and Business Behavior

30 JULY 2013 BY 

The new Google Maps personalized interface.For about 2000 years, ever since Ptolemy wrote his treatise Geographia, maps and geography have helped humans understand their surroundings in the context of their neighbors, their town, their country, the Earth, and the Universe. For about 400 years, since Mercator figured out how to portray the curved Earth on a flat piece of paper, not much changed in the world of geography — until the launch of 24 GPS satellites by the U.S. Department of Defense about 30 years ago.

Digital location-based technologies are now a transformative force for consumers and businesses, particularly when coupled with the rapid adoption of mobile and the growth of big data. I’m a big believer in the future for “GeoDisruption” — the potential for consumers and businesses to interact in fundamentally new ways to take advantage of increasingly precise location-based technologies.

This is the debut of a column I’ll write for Street Fight exploring the growth of the “GeoWeb” and the emergence of GeoDisruptive trends and companies. When I’m not writing columns, I am the CEO/founder of On Grid Ventures, an investment and advisory firm focused on digital and location-based technologies.

GeoDisruption:  Where we are
Location-based technologies have already been a dislocating force in many industries.

  • Automobile marketing at the local level used to be all about newspapers and television, and companies like Autotrader, Cars.com, and Autobytel have used geo-based lead generation to irrevocably shift in-market auto buyers and local car marketing spending to the GeoWeb.
  • GPS has made paper maps obsolete.
  • General B2C platforms like Yelp are changing the way we evaluate local services.
  • Vertical B2C platforms like OpenTable are changing the way we find and book nearby restaurants.

The major portals and aggregators are all making increasing bets on the potential for GeoWeb.  Google, with Google Maps and Places; Yahoo, with its leadership position in local news and content aggregation; IAC, with CityGrid and UrbanSpoon; and AOL with Patch.Google’s recent acquisition of Israeli startup Waze for over $1 billion is a high-water mark in the development of the GeoWeb as it affirms the importance of user-generated, location-based content.

GeoDisruption:  Where we’re headed
While the growth ambitions of Google, Yahoo, and others will continue to be fed with more acquisitions of GeoWeb companies, the application of location-based technologies is increasing more broadly in three areas: Business-to-Consumer, Business-to-Business, and Consumer-to-Consumer.

  1. B2C marketing (i.e., GeoMarketing) will continue to be transformed as innovative companies apply location-based technologies to how they acquire, transact with, and retain customers. GeoMarketing will be essential for most local retail and service businesses, and the landscape is ripe for vertical players in areas beyond automotive and restaurants, across the entire local landscape. Early stage companies like BeautyBooked are already trying to become the dominant search and booking platform in verticals like place-based salon services. ReachLocal and Yodleare growing fast as companies that help local businesses reach consumers, and national marketers are increasingly shifting dollars to locally targeted digital marketing and promotion.
  2. C2C interaction (i.e., “GeoSocial”) can also be further shaped as individuals increasingly become comfortable with sharing their location with family, friends, colleagues, and people with similar interests. Foursquare has jumped to an early lead as the platform for consumers to share their location, but Facebook, Google, and others are gaining fast.
  3. B2B companies that enable location-based innovation (i.e., “GeoInfrastructure”) continue to be a hotbed for venture investment.  Location itself is nice, but it needs to be in the context of an individual, the surrounding locations, time of day, and other factors.  This all needs to be accomplished respecting an individual’s privacy. Companies like Jumptap and Place IQ are finding new ways to provide marketers with context that makes location relevant.

While I have a background in computer science, I’ve never been a fan of pure technology. I am a believer, however, in the potential for increasingly accurate digital, location-based, real-time data to better inform the decisions we all make every day on where to go, with whom, what to buy, and other areas. The rapid proliferation of mobile devices is certainly an enabler, but the greatest innovation will come from insights into how a consumer’s behavior varies based on his or her specific location. We’re now a long way from zip-code targeting, and more GeoDisruption is on its way.

Jason E. KleinJason E. Klein is the founder/CEO of On Grid Ventures, and investment and advisory firm focused on the startup and reinvention of businesses capitalizing on digital and location-based technologies.  Follow him on twitter @JKNews.

Magazines from Time Inc. and Conde Nast make content shoppable with 72Lux

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From the MPA:  The Association of Magazine Media, published 5/13/13, by fbell@magazine.org

Readers look to magazines to be informed, inspired, for entertainment, and—let’s be honest—to find stuff to buy. Enter 72Lux, whose tagline is “Transforming Publishers into Retailers.” 72Lux‘s technology, Shoppable, allows digital publishers to sell products directly from within their editorial. Moreover, 72Lux has established relationships with over a hundred retailers in the apparel, beauty and consumer packaged goods industries, and has recently started moving into home, electronics and books. For any new publisher that starts working with the company, 72Lux handles all of the relationships and manages the technical integration with the retailers.

Heather Marie headshotHeather Marie, co-founder and CEO of 72Lux, was on the founding team of a digital media company called Affinity Labs directly before founding 72Lux almost three years ago. “Our biggest challenge is handling the demand. As soon as we brought our technology to market and everyone saw what it could actually do, we’ve had so much interest.” Marie, who runs a team of 10 people, estimates that 30% of their business is working with Magazine Media brands. “Publishers are increasingly enabling integrated, shoppable content because they’re seeing that it’s great for the consumer. Historically, publishers have been driving so much demand for products and not getting the credit for it, so [our technology] is something that is very obvious and easy for publishers to leverage as they begin launching their commerce initiatives.”

Several studies have shown that consumers want to buy the products that they’re reading about in magazines, but because products are often difficult to track down and buy, the demand is often left unsatisfied. It’s frustrating to the user and there is a lot of value in that placement to the advertiser and the publisher. “There is still some concern left about making sure that the content maintains editorial integrity,” said Marie. “We’re challenged with integrating the technology in a way that shows that we’re not changing editorial strategy; we’re just launching new functionality.”

Years ago, the strict separation between church and state made the idea of making content shoppable nearly impossible, acknowledged Marie. As a result, initial strategies revolved around setting up dedicated online stores on magazine websites. But the evolution of digital media makes those sentiments more fluid. “It’s not really a matter of consumers being concerned if a publisher is recommending a handbag for a particular reason. If consumers like a product, we shouldn’t make it hard for them to buy it.”

This year 72Lux added Teen Vogue (who plans to unveil their e-commerce addition in July) and Essence to their growing roster of publishers. Dawnie Walton, Deputy Managing Editor at Essence, oversees the editorial content strategy for digital at the magazine and helped spearhead the partnership with 72Lux. Still in its infancy, Beauty Matchmaker, a product finder customized for the beauty needs of Black women, launched a few weeks ago on Essence.com with initial promotion mainly via their online channels, with upcoming print promotion slated for their June issue. “Our challenge was a good one,” says Walton. “It was very early on, in trying to conceive of everything that the reader would want. We wanted to make sure that when most of our readers encountered [Beauty Matchmaker] they could find something that works for them. This tool is going to continue to grow, we’re going to continue to add recommendations and try to update it seasonally, so that is something that is always going to be a challenge that we’re faced with: making it as robust as possible.”

The technology is not restrictive, giving publishers the ability to incorporate it into their websites as well as within their tablet editions. “Essentially,” said Marie, “99% of publishers out there are looking to add e-commerce, the majority of them by the end of this year. It’s a really big goal.”

Ultra Light Startups, May 9, 2013

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Jason KleinBrad HarrisonRahul GandhiBrian Cohen

Join us at Ultra Light Startups:

Thursday, May 9, 2013 from 6:30 PM to 8:30 

Microsoft, 1290 6th Ave, New York, NY 10104

sign up at http://ultralightstartups.eventbrite.com/

Investor Panelists

Agenda

  • 6:30pm – Pizza, networking and introductions
  • 6:45pm – 8 startup pitches; investor panel provides actionable advice following each pitch
  • 8:15pm – The audience votes for the best startup; winners announced and prizes awarded
  • 8:30pm – Drinks at nearby location

Objectives

  • To help early stage startups refine their investor pitch
  • To provide actionable advice and feedback for each presenting startup
  • To provide insight on how investors evaluate startups and pitches
  • To award prizes to the most viable startups, based on audience voting

Hosts

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