The Rockstart Accelerator

In Amsterdam is one of several world-class technology accelerators in The Netherlands. We entered ourselves into the competition earlier a few months ago, and came in the top percentile out of more than 500 companies, securing a place in the 100-day program.

LeadBoxer is a spin off from the Rockstart program, which utilizes the Lean framework methodology.
LeadBoxer is utilizing big data technology in order to make anonymous website traffic less anonymous, and function as an essential pre-sales tool. Currently being designed, tested & validated for the B2B market, the product works to create value from under-utilised traffic engagement.

If you are interested in being an early adopter for LeadBoxer, click here & sign-up for advance notification.

We jumped at the opportunity to participate because we’re eager to learn from the vast experience of the mentor community. As an additional bonus we are very energized by the cohort of our fellow start-ups from around the world (Portugal, Italy, Colombia, Argentina, Netherlands, UK). We will list those startups in a blog post to follow.

The program is divided into three parts;

1. orientation and exposure to methodologies, mentors, and validation interviews
2. construction and deployment (launch) of MVP – minimum viable product
3. scripting and rehearsal, build up to pitch to entrepreneurial and investor community

We’ve finished the first part and are now entering Phase 2.

So far, we can report that the opportunity to participate in the program has been extremely rewarding. We’ve been exposed to numerous entrepreneurial, technical, business, and sales gurus.

The fifteen hour days can be tiring 😉 but they remind us of launching Opentracker, back in 2003, and how rewarding that felt.

Stay tuned for more.

Star Wars and the Art of Life; Lessons from The Force Awakens. Devise good strategies. Measure. Improve and repeat what works.

I went to see Star Wars 7 last week. Afterwards, I had the same “Yeah, that was a pretty good movie,” reaction as I had read on the front page of the nytimes.com

In my post-game analysis, I realised the what, why, & how J.J. Abrams accomplished this.

In one sentence; they did this by drawing on successful elements of the original films, which they improved and repeated, while throwing out the rest.  In the same way, all of us who work on the internet can draw on basic knowledge and things-that-work from previous success. Identify a winning formula, refine on its success, discard strategies that don’t work. Repeat.

What does this mean in terms of Website Management?
Identify potential traffic sources, make an effort to contact them, refine your message, measure audience response, keep what works, throw out the rest. Bring back your best characters (Best Practices).

***SPOILER ALERT***

As far as I can tell, what the latest Star Wars movie does is; take 5 or more of the original elements (Luke, Leia, Han Solo, R2-D2, Darth Vader, Stormtroopers, the Death Star) and replace them (the replacements are: Finn, Rey, Kylo Ren, BB-8, Starkiller Base). First, the new elements are inserted into the identical plot from the original movie. The new elements are then joined by the original elements (Han Solo, Chewbacca, Millenium Falcon, R2-D2, C-3PO) and together they proceed through the new story.

A few examples of successful elements from previous Star Wars films found in The Force Awakens;
– an undercurrent of slightly goofy humor – the perfect balance of laughing at oneself
– an irreverent, likeable, Han Solo-type character with the same mannerisms and gags, who also leaves the heroine behind at one point
– a hero toiling alone with robot salvage on a small desert planet, destined for greatness
– an important data file hidden from the bad guys on a cute and likeable droid in the opening sequence while being shot at by stormtroopers
– an insurmountable obstacle defiantly overcome under identical conditions as in previous films
– an even bigger death star
– an identical cantina scene, complete with live band
– light-sabre duels in cavernous high-tech space stations
– C-3PO and R2-D2 making fun of each other
– the Rebels have an ability overcome obstacles of ludicrous (technical) complexity after a 5 minute morning stand-up
– and one incremental improvement – the hero is a pretty girl (at the moment there is a lot of call in the media for female action figure heroes)

Following up, we will publish a list of the comparisons which can be drawn between Star Wars The Force Awakens and Websites and Business Management. In other words, we will publish a list of successful Tips and best Practices which you should repeat.

In Conclusion, the new film is a fun, easy-to-watch shoot-‘em-up flick in which no one really gets hurt, with an important message: things (life) doesn’t have to be complicated to be fun.  Of course, this is also the art of making things which are hard look easy. I may have missed some of the details as I had my young son sitting my my lap squeezing my hands out of sheer unadulterated joy most of the time, but I think I caught most of the movie.

We are EXTREMELY pleased to announce a Forty-Four 44% percent improvement in our company identification capability.

Last week, we were able to identify just over 900 companies visiting opentracker.net. This week, we were able to identify over 1300 companies, over the same period of time.

For years, we’ve been working to develop and improve our report Location >> Company which shows you which companies are visiting your website. This is an incredibly valuable tool, in terms of lead generation. This report allows you to turn anonymous visitors into potential clients.

Top Sites feature in Safari generates pageview(s) by repeatedly loading indexed sites

We’ve noticed that the Top Sites feature in Safari sometimes generates a pageview when Top Sites are displayed. We confirmed this by noticing that we were “generating” visits and pageviews (clicks) to a site that we were not visiting.

The explanation for the reason that our profile kept showing up in the stats is that the site was being disaplyed repeatedly in Top Sites.

This is potentially problematic because it might give the false impression that a person was visiting on a regular basis.
We assume that this happens when Safari generates the Webpage Preview Images.
Definition of Top Sites from Apple website:

Top Sites: Safari automatically identifies your favorite sites and displays them as a wall of graphic previews. To visit one of your top sites, just click any of the previews.

Infinitely scalable read/write real-time data management

A recent article post on the BBC could have been written about Opentracker and the technology we have spent the past year developing. The piece, entitled ‘Data wars: Unlocking the data gold mine’ was written by Mike Lynch and ran on 12 April, 2012.

The premise of the article is that businesses and organizations wishing to stay ahead of the curve can do so by learning how to use technology in order to give meaning to the data they collect. Traditionally, data has been stored in databases and only later, if ever, consulted. With technology, it is now possible to consult data in real-time and make decisions based on what we learn.

“The availability of vast quantities of data on current or potential customers on e-commerce sites offers online retailers huge value – if they can gather and analyse this information efficiently and in a timely manner”

– a quote from the article which tells us about the potential value of (large scale) data. There is a catch: the information collected needs to be analyzed and understood today, as opposed to tomorrow.

Additional points;

• Online customers generate a lot of data (data trails) which, combined with social media targeting, can be used to add value, and generate leads and sales
• In order to be effective, decisions based on this data should be based on realtime reporting
• This is because the information loses its value (quickly) and so should be used as quickly as possible
• Keeping up with the demands of changing customers requires a structural solution ( like real-time data utilization)
• This is a question of scale necessitated by the current internet environment and the volume of customers (with millions of associated data points) that many websites currently manage

The key is to understand the data – leaving it exactly where it is – in order to create an infinitely scalable platform, and a powerful basis for analysis and action…and get to the heart of the issue – being able to process 100% of the information, structured and unstructured, to unlock real business value.

– quote from the article’s conclusion.

The main reason that this article caught our attention is because, as mentioned above, we spent the last year or so building exactly what the author describes: an infinitely scalable read/write real-time data management solution. Not only that, but as of yesterday, it runs cross-platform, meaning that we can present universal activity across apps and websites.

Q: What is the goal?
A: Given the importance of understanding user audience and being able to react in a timely fashion, Opentracker’s goal is to provide a realtime solution which is easy to read and reports on Total Engagement across apps and websites.

Q: How cool is that?
A: Very cool!