7 New Educational Startups Founded By Minorities in Tech
One of today’s most challenging yet promising markets is the educational system. If you want to see startups hungry to disrupt an industry, look no further. Founders are trying to solve the problems plaguing our education system: including reconciling student debt, providing students with the skills required to land a job both before and after graduation, and offering the best course material online regardless of age, location and educational level. Millions of people are headed to the Internet to learn. And now everyone, from professors to entrepreneurs, are looking to launch a platform to solve the problem of a broken traditional educational system — And many believe that Silicon Valley will have the answers.

Editor’s note: Wayne Sutton is an Entrepreneur, Advisor and Partner of NewMe Accelerator, a residential technology start-up accelerator/incubator for businesses that are led by under-represented minorities in the technology industry.

One of today’s most challenging yet promising markets is the educational system. If you want to see startups hungry to disrupt an industry, look no further. Founders are trying to solve the problems plaguing our education system: including reconciling student debt, providing students with the skills required to land a job both before and after graduation, and offering the best course material online regardless of age, location and educational level.

Millions of people are headed to the Internet to learn. And now everyone, from professors to entrepreneurs, are looking to launch a platform to solve the problem of a broken traditional educational system  – And many believe that Silicon Valley will have the answers.

If you look at the demographics (high school dropout rates, high unemployment and the number of people taking online courses) you’ll find a common denominator; minorities are leading in three categories. In 2011, only 57 percent of blacks and Latinos graduated from high school, compared to 80 percent of Asians and 78 percent of whites. While data reports that only 1% of tech startups are founded by African Americans, you’ll find a significant number of educational startups founded by minorities (women, Hispanics and African Americans) in the now-increasing 1% of minority tech startups.

So where are all these startups hiding you ask? Well here are seven up-and-coming educational startups founded by minorities that I believe will have an significant impact in the educational space  – not just for minorities but for anyone looking to learn online, current students and teachers alike.

1. UniversityNow
The mission of UniversityNow is to help ensure that affordable, high quality post-secondary education is available to people everywhere. To accomplish this, UniversityNow is building a network of the most affordable and accessible accredited universities in the world, starting with the launch of New Charter University.
Gene Wade, Co-Founder

2. Houlton Institute
Houlton packages courses into credentialed and non-credentialed programs targeting adult learners. By revenue sharing with partnering institutions, partners are able to monetize their expertise. Houlton creates one-of-a-kind online programs from its unique and exclusive partner network, which are disseminated via Houlton’s scalable, personalized, web-based learning platform.
Dennis Robinson and Dan Merritts, Co-Founders

3. Demo Lesson
Demo Lesson is a revolutionary online hiring platform that gives teachers the power to market themselves.
Mandela Schumacher Hodge and Brian Martinez, Co-Founders

4. Qeyno Labs
Qeyno Labs works with local partners and schools to bring technology-enabled career discovery into under-served classrooms using game-like rewards and mentorship from successful professionals.
Kalimah Priforce, Co-Founder

5. StockOfU
StockOfU allows individuals and businesses to buy “shares” of college students in order to help subsidize a student’s education costs.
Ty McDuffie, Founder

6. Pathbrite
Pathbrite delivers next-generation solutions that help students and learners of all ages collect, track and showcase a lifetime of achievement, and recommend pathways for continuous success.
Heather Hiles, Founder and CEO

7. Code Academy
Code Academy is an 11-week program that teaches people how to build web applications.
Neal Sales-Griffin and Mike McGee, Co-Founders

With these seven startups, and many, many more launching shortly, the educational system is ready for disruption. And after that, the real question is “What impact will these educational startups will have on our economy?”  And “Will they prepare students to land qualified jobs after graduation? Or provide them the skills to launch their own businesses?”

Do you see the educational system being changed by these new startups?

Startups Live & Die by These 5 Street-Smart Laws of Advertising
“Money alone isn’t enough to bring happiness . . . happiness [is] when you’re actually truly ok with losing everything you have.” – Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose Disclaimer: This article’s sole purpose is to address the core principles of advertising in a new and edgy  way. This is not for the faint of heart or those highly sensitive to socially charged public issues. So suck it  up and buckle up. You’re about to be taken to school (of hard knocks). Class is now in session.

Editor’s note: Evan Peelle is a Los Angeles-based marketer with experience in web-based startups and conducting online marketing campaigns, including PPC, mobile, and search marketing.

“Money alone isn’t enough to bring happiness . . . happiness [is] when you’re actually truly ok with losing everything you have.” – Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

Disclaimer: This article’s sole purpose is to address the core principles of advertising in a new and edgy  way. This is not for the faint of heart or those highly sensitive to socially charged public issues. So suck it  up and buckle up. You’re about to be taken to school (of hard knocks). Class is now in session.

Everyday we surge past the homeless never stopping to consider the power they possess to  advertise effectively with no budget(literally). Startups could learn a thing or two from these highly misunderstood band of street-smart entrepreneurs.

Seriously, they ARE testament to the fact that you and I have hard-wiring to market to others in attempts to meet our survival needs(both in business and in life). Carefully observe how these 5 use cases display the 5 levels of advertising power.

Note: You’re probably working at a business right now that’s been founded on one or more of these five principles. Observe carefully.

The Screamer

“The truth isn’t the truth until people believe you, and they can’t believe you if they don’t know what you’re saying, and they can’t know what you’re saying if they don’t listen to you,. . . unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.” - William Bernbach (1911 – 1982), Founder of DDB Int Agency.

The Screamer curses yelling absurdities to get attention. His audience doesn’t understand his message no matter how loud) and they avoid him like the plague. To survive in business it’s essential to have at least ONE clear message. Lack of empathy for prospects could cost us our lunch.

Hype works the same way, it’s divorced from a target audience and falls short of connecting with target audiences and what’s meaningful to them.

The Beggar

“Advertising is a tax for having an unremarkable product.” -Robert Stephens, Founder of the Geek Squad.

Begging is the oldest profession. He’ll get face-to-face asking directly for what he wants. “Change please?”, or the more ambitious, “Got five dollars”. He gets results by asking clearly for what he wants. Though his business is severely limited by the steep investment of time and energy.

It’s easier to receive payment when you can ask clearly and directly… if you ask enough people.

The Cardboard Holder

“Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.” - Leo Burnett (1891-1971), Advertising Executive, Named New York Times 100 Most Influential Men of the 20th Century.

These guys invented automated advertising. He finds heavy traffic(literally) and posts his message (Ad) for the world to see. The message gets leveraged across 1000’s of eyeballs everyday with little to no effort on his part. As a business using leverage to his benefit. His message appeals to an almost infinite number of people. He’d make a kick-ass Search Engine Marketer.

His strategy is to present clear compelling messages in front of large audiences.

The Street Performer

“Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.” - William Bernbach (1911-1982), American advertising creative director.

The street performer presents his talent to a captive audience. He salts the crowd, incites interaction, and gets involvement, making them a part of his own show. Using juggling, strumming, and dancing as sweat equity he demonstrates entertainment value. All the while risking lighting himself on fire (risk liability). As a business he’s a step above, understanding the power of giving value up front and then asking for money after delivering. This keeps them coming back for more, over and over again.

The talent model is one of exhaustive effort yet generates customer loyalty through participation.

The Funnel Builder

“What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.”- David Ogilvy  (1911-1999), Dubbed The Father of Advertising

These kids were tossing money off the pier. They were playing a game made by a homeless guy. He had made it out of cardboard, cups, and a blanket. People tried to get their money into the various cups ‘winning points’ in hopes to sink one into the elusive jack-pot!

It was a cash(coins) machine(asset), accumulating wealth while he was on the beach getting tan sipping mojitos somewhere. It was a funnel that attracted prospects with a value proposition. A perfect example of a user driven experience (giving the audience tools to play the game.)

Building an automated funnel that generates cash while you’re not around (no labor, low overhead) is the zenith of entrepreneurship. Do this and your golden ticket to financial freedom is guaranteed.

Live Your Own Dream

Does that sound familiar to any of us? The entrepreneur’s dream; raking in dough while sipping margaritas on the beach. Here’s the recipe to turning your startup into an automated advertising cash machine.

1. Listen to your customer carefully.
2. Use one clear and direct message to speak to their needs.
3. Find out where your prospects already are, then place your messages in front of them.
4. Give value up front. Incentivise them to take action.
5. Build your product around their secret hopes / desires or fears / frustrations.

Follow these timeless and proven laws of advertising to supercharge your start up, blow past your break even point, and wiggle into profit. Live it up my friends and make an asset that will pay you in your sleep (on the beach).

Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Xobot
Poor old Android is having a bad year. (Especially compared to last year.) Apple’s iPhone is soaring in China, and apparently overtaking Android in the crucial American market. Oracle’s lawsuit against Google has led to several rather awkward claims, eg that the word ‘license’ in the phrase “we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need” referred to “not a license from anybody”, a kind of license with which I was previously entirely unfamiliar. CEO Larry Page’s own testimony was labelled as evasive: “His denial of knowledge and recollection contrasts with evidence,” wrote Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents. What a headache. Way back in 2005, Android head honcho Andy Rubin wrote in a prescient email:

“If Sun doesn’t want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language – or – 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way.”

Just imagine if they’d taken the first road. It’s not widely understood in the industry that Microsoft’s .NET infrastructure is more open than Java in many ways; it and its flagship language C# are ISO and ECMA standards, available to anyone and everyone, legally bulletproofed by the Microsoft Community Promise. Imagine if the Android OS ran on an entirely different technical architecture. Wait, no. Don’t imagine it: examine it. Like a vision from a parallel universe, it now exists.

Poor old Android is having a bad year. (Especially compared to last year.) Apple’s iPhone is soaring in China, and apparently overtaking Android in the crucial American market. Oracle’s lawsuit against Google has led to several rather awkward claims, eg that the word ‘license’ in the phrase “we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need” referred to “not a license from anybody”, a kind of license with which I was previously entirely unfamiliar. CEO Larry Page’s own testimony was labelled as evasive: “His denial of knowledge and recollection contrasts with evidence,” wrote Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents.

What a headache. Way back in 2005, Android head honcho Andy Rubin wrote in a prescient email:

“If Sun doesn’t want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language – or – 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way.”

Just imagine if they’d taken the first road. It’s not widely understood in the industry that Microsoft’s .NET infrastructure is more open than Java in many ways; it and its flagship language C# are ISO and ECMA standards, available to anyone and everyone, legally bulletproofed by the Microsoft Community Promise. Imagine if the Android OS ran on an entirely different technical architecture.

Wait, no. Don’t imagine it: examine it. Like a vision from a parallel universe, it now exists.

Way back in 2001, Miguel de Icaza realized that if he ported .NET to Linux, he would open Linux up to a huge new developer community — and vice versa. The Mono Project was born. it wound up in Novell’s hands, where it continued to mature. Last year much of the Mono team founded a company called Xamarin, whose MonoTouch software lets developers write native Android/iOS apps using .NET technologies.

Android apps run on Google’s Dalvik virtual machine. “Dalvik’s fairly immature, and Mono vastly outperforms it,” says Xamarin’s CEO Nat Friedman. “So we started thinking: hey, what if we translated the entire Android OS to C#? It would run faster, and it wouldn’t have any legal problems.”

First it was just a thought experiment. Then it became more of a science project. And then the Xamarin team actually did it, by adopting and improving a tool named Sharpen that translates Java to C#, and using it to translate the entire Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) codebase. They did get a few side benefits — that improved tool, and better graphics handling — but mostly they did it for fun, aka the love of making something better. Oh, and they’ve now open-sourced the whole thing, under the name of XobotOS.

What does this mean? Good question. Maybe it’s an impressive technical achievement that’s ultimately inconsequential except as a bright feather in Xamarin’s cap. (If the idea was to get developers’ attention, they’ve certainly succeeded.) Maybe it’s Plan B for Google, in case there is some (unlikely) legal catastrophe.

And maybe the next company that thinks about forking Android for their own use — as Amazon did with the Kindle Fire, and as RIM had to have at least considered last year — will decide to go the Xobot route, for better performance, for legal cover, as a major differentiator, and to appeal to the huge and thriving .NET developer community. On the other hand, existing apps would either have to run on the IKVM virtual machine atop Mono (after tweaking it to handle Dalvik .dex files) which would mean a performance hit, or be Sharpened to C# and recompiled.

Still, at the very least, it’s a technically impressive and interesting feat. And who knows? Watch this space. It just might turn out to be a genuinely disruptive one as well.

New Start Up CodeNow.Com Lets You Build And Test Code In Real Time, In Your Browser
Trying new APIs is tricky. You can spend hours setting things up, gaining permissions, and learning syntax before you even get to write one line of code. That’s why CodeNow.com is cool. In short, it allows you to try APIs before you invest too much time into them and, as an added bonus, it acts as a code repository. The site is currently in private beta but it’s accepting users tonight.

Trying new APIs is tricky. You can spend hours setting things up, gaining permissions, and learning syntax before you even get to write one line of code. That’s why CodeNow.com is cool. In short, it allows you to try APIs before you invest too much time into them and, as an added bonus, it acts as a code repository.

The site is currently in private beta but it’s accepting users tonight.

Take a look at this screen:

In the left pane you have the code and in the right pane you have the results. This is a very basic piece Facebook call that returns a list of users. Once it’s part of CodeNow, however, you can run this code in a virtual machine or share it with one link.

Without having to do very much, you can change the code on the fly:

In short, you can basically experiment with almost any API, including services like Dropbox, Twilio, and Facebook. Then, if you’ve created something cool you can simply share it with others or keep it for yourself.

Founder Yash Kumar was a former Amazon employee and found the impetus to build the site when his boss came to him with a problem.

“A Product Manager came up to me complaining it took her 2 days to get a make a basic API call to Facebook. She had taken a programming class in college, but struggled with getting a basic app up and running. There are tens of millions of code literate users that struggle to overcome the basic barriers of setting up code and project environments. We plan to empower millions of such users to create, build and play with code,” he said.

CodeNow is the first AngelPad company to launch this year. They plan to monetize by offering API discovery by charging providers to take part. They are currently supporting Facebook, Twilio, and Dropbox and there are many partners on the wait-list for inclusion. They also include the API’s own sample code to ease entry.

Kumar used his experience at Amazon to build a system of virtual machines using AWS. They also sandbox code so developers can test apps without having to create official accounts. “Users don’t need to authorize and setup app keys or OAuth to run apps,” he said.

“CodeNow runs completely in the browser. There is nothing to set up. No software package, no Amazon EC2 server instance. Just type and hit run,” said Kumar. “We plan to empower millions of such users to create, build and play with code.”

Hootsuite Is Raising $50M At A $500M Valuation
It was just over a month ago that social media management platform HootSuite picked up $20 million in a secondary investment round that valued the company at $200 million. Now we have heard from multiple sources that the company is looking to better than double that: HootSuite is in the process of raising a $50 million round at a $500 million valuation. And what’s making this even more interesting are the investors that are being mentioned in connection with the round: HootSuite is looking to have discussions with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google — a sign of how the surge in social media investments is also giving a lift to companies that are figuring out ways to harness that for third parties.

It was just over a month ago that social media management platform HootSuite picked up $20 million in a secondary investment round that valued the company at $200 million. Now we have heard from multiple sources that the company is looking to better than double that: HootSuite is in the process of raising a $50 million round at a $500 million valuation.

And what’s making this even more interesting are the investors that are being mentioned in connection with the round: HootSuite is looking to have discussions with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google – a sign of how the surge in social media investments is also giving a lift to companies that are figuring out ways to harness that for third parties.

Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter were described by one source as all having a “great relationship” with HootSuite already, and that the company was looking to build a deal that would give them all “upside in Hootsuite’s success.”

We also reached out to HootSuite’s CEO Ryan Holmes, who wouldn’t comment directly on who might be investing but did confirm the $500 million valuation:

“At today’s run rate this would be a very fair valuation for investors, but we have yet to determine if we will bring in additional partners. That said, we have had quite a few inquiries,” he told me.

Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter’s networks already form the core of the HootSuite social media dashboard. Enterprises (and individuals) use that dashboard to monitor social media interaction across those networks, and they also use HootSuite for custom analytics and for executing and monitoring campaigns using other services like MailChimp, which HootSuite allows users to do through the web and via mobile apps. Customers include PepsiCo, Fox and the NBA among 3.5 million others.

You can see how that relationship could become even closer and be even more beneficial for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google. Companies like Twitter and Facebook, built on consumer bases, need more inroads into the enterprise sector to further build out their businesses. LinkedIn, built on an enterprise customer base, needs to build out more products to serve them. And Google needs a lot more traffic and traction for its Google+ social media strategy.

A $50 million round would be a huge step up for HootSuite, which is profitable already but has reached that end at a relatively modest pace.

When HootSuite reported that OMERS Ventures, a Canadian VC firm, had taken a $20 million stake in the company in March, that was done through secondary purchases from existing shareholders, which included employees and also Blumberg Capital, Hearst Ventures, Geoff Entress and Millennium Technology Value Partners.

Before that $20 million deal, HootSuite had picked up investments worth $4.9 million: $3 million in debt and only $1.9 million capital investment.

Earlier this year HootSuite had reported an annual run-rate of $11 million in revenues. At the time it reported 140 employees and now expects to double that by the end of 2012.

Android Is Either “Winning” Because Apple Is Letting It, Or Losing
In September 2010, I wrote a post that ignited an absolute shitstorm around these parts. “Shitstorm” in this case meaning a post with a thousand comments, the majority of which were spewed up by rabid Android fanatics. The title of that post: Is Android Surging Only Because Apple Is Letting It? At the time, we were in the midst of a massive Android surge to the top of the smartphone ecosystem food chain. This was happening all around the world, but the focus of this particular post was the U.S. market. Based on some comments made by developer David Beach at the time, I wondered if, as the title suggested, Android was only doing so well in the U.S. because the iPhone was still only available on one carrier, AT&T? It’s time to revisit that thought because there’s now absolutely no question that this was the case. There’s now data to back it up. What’s more, despite what some surveys suggest, this trend may have fully reversed itself.

In September 2010, I wrote a post that ignited an absolute shitstorm around these parts. “Shitstorm” in this case meaning a post with a thousand comments, the majority of which were spewed up by rabid Android fanatics. The title of that post:

Is Android Surging Only Because Apple Is Letting It?

At the time, we were in the midst of a massive Android surge to the top of the smartphone ecosystem food chain. This was happening all around the world, but the focus of this particular post was the U.S. market. Based on some comments made by developer David Beach at the time, I wondered if, as the title suggested, Android was only doing so well in the U.S. because the iPhone was still only available on one carrier, AT&T?

It’s time to revisit that thought because there’s now absolutely no question that this was the case. There’s now data to back it up. What’s more, despite what some surveys suggest, this trend may have fully reversed itself.

Over the past few days, both comScore and NPD have put out data showing that Android still has a healthy hold on the U.S. smartphone market with their best market share numbers yet. According to comScore, Android controls 51 percent of the market. According to NPD, it’s more like 61 percent.

For comparison, Apple is the number two player with 30.7 percent of the market according to comScore, and 29 percent according to NPD.

On the surface, there’s one big glaring problem with these numbers. Actual sales data from the three largest carriers in the U.S. doesn’t seem to back up the comScore and NPD numbers. At all.

In the last quarter, the iPhone accounted for 78 percent of all smartphones sold through AT&T. On Verizon, the iPhone accounted for 51 percent of all smartphones sold. Sprint didn’t report their total smartphone sales numbers, only iPhone sales numbers, but estimates peg the iPhone percentage around 60 percent. The iPhone is not (yet) sold on the nation’s fourth largest carrier, T-Mobile.

That’s 51 percent of all smartphones sold on the nation’s largest carrier (Verizon). 78 percent of all smartphone sold on the nation’s number two carrier (AT&T). And 60 percent of all smartphones sold on the nation’s number three carrier (Sprint). Jay Yarow of Business Insider did the math: all together, the iPhone accounted for 63 percent of the smartphone sales in the past quarter on the big three carriers. The 63 percent number is close to the 59 percent estimated by Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt last week, as reported by Eric Savitz for Forbes.

And if you believe the Yankee Group, the big three carriers account for roughly 80 percent of the overall U.S. smartphone market. This equates to almost exactly 50 percent of the overall smartphone market in the U.S. for Apple.

It’s hard to see how Android could control 61 percent of the market when there’s only 50 percent to spare after the actual numbers are calculated. Maybe Android is huge with undocumented workers. Undocumented workers who love taking surveys, mind you. But I digress…

And, of course, there are other smartphones out there from RIM, Microsoft, Nokia, and the like. Even giving Android the other 50 percent of the market would mean all of the other players equal zero percent. (Sadly, perhaps not that far off, actually.)

ComScore at least has some wiggle room here. They don’t actually measure phone sales quarter to quarter, but overall market usage. So it’s certainly possible that after a few years of Android sales, they do still control the majority of the U.S. smartphone market. But their numbers get sticky when you look quarter-to-quarter and see that Android’s market share increased nearly four time more than the iPhone’s market share this past quarter. Again, that doesn’t sound right when the iPhone accounted for 63 percent of all smartphones sold on the big three carriers.

When I brought this point up a few days ago, comScore was quick with an answer. They told me that amongst the big three carriers, the iPhone subscriber growth actually did outpace Android subscriber growth, 13 percent to 11 percent. It’s just that overall Android growth from the remaining carriers (meaning T-Mobile and the regional carriers) more than wiped out that difference.

First of all, 13 percent (iPhone) versus 11 percent (Android) growth on the big three carriers still doesn’t sound right if the iPhone accounted for 63 percent of all sales last quarter. Second, if the big three do in fact make up about 80 percent of the overall market, how did the remaining 20 percent tilt the scales 4x in favor of Android (in terms of market share growth quarter to quarter)? It doesn’t make sense.

And then you look at NPD’s numbers. Yarow demolished those earlier. And sure enough, NPD reached out right away with clarifications.

Here’s the real issue: this rapid swing in favor of the iPhone seems to have exposed some serious flaws in the way these market analysts get their data. They’re hiding behind vague technicalities on how their numbers could be what they say, but they still don’t add up. Their problem is that we have actual numbers from the three largest carriers in the U.S., all of which are finally selling the iPhone and boasting about those numbers because they’re huge.

So how do the other guys get their numbers?

Surveys.

In comScore’s case, their MobiLens data comes from “an intelligent online survey of a nationally representative sample of mobile subscribers age 13 and older”. They don’t disclose the number of people surveyed, but you can bet it’s not a massive number. In NPD’s case, they survey 12,811 people.

Which numbers do you trust? Millions upon millions of actual sales reported in a legal manner by public companies or surveys of thousands of people?

Further, as Ethan Kaplan points out, “NPD and the like are incentive based surveys so naturally skew a certain way. Teens, college students, etc.” Several others have made this point over the past few days. The numbers comScore and NPD use in their statistically small surveys are likely skewed for a number of reasons. And again, now we have actual sales data that heavily suggests that’s the case.

By now, I probably have the Android fanatics really upset, so let’s throw out all these rational numbers and instead continue on with the dream that Android is “winning” in the U.S. Not winning in revenue or profit mind you — you know, things that actually matter for business, and things which Android will likely never be winning in any sense of the word — but winning in terms of overall market share. If you want to ignore all the above information and insist that Android is still winning there, that’s fine. But let’s jump back to the beginning of this post.

Again, the argument made in September 2010 was that Android was winning in market share in the U.S. because Apple was letting it win by only making the iPhone available on AT&T’s network. If Android still does control half to two-thirds of the market as the surveys suggest, what does it mean that on the three carriers where the iPhone is available, Apple now controls over 60 percent of these markets on a quarterly basis? (Again, this is fact backed up by actual sales numbers.)

It means that Android was/is winning in market share because Apple was/is allowing it to.

Android was previously the top smartphone OS for both Verizon and Sprint. But that was only because the iPhone was not available on either network until last year. When it became available, it quickly shot to the top. One type of phone outsold hundreds of other models combined. That’s pretty insane.

And it doesn’t speak well for the future of Android’s market share, survey or not. At least not in the U.S. (the rest of the world is more complicated for many other reasons). What if Apple finally puts the iPhone on T-Mobile later this year? Given what we now know — again, from actual data — is there any question that it becomes the top smartphone there? What about the other, smaller regional carriers? That’s already starting to happen.

Android’s only hope is to actually have a phone, or a set of phones, that are more appealing to consumers than the iPhone. But that hasn’t happened in the past four years, so what makes us think that will change this year? Or next year? All Apple has to do is say the word and they can win the market share battle in this country.

Actually, again, if you consider the numbers above, it sure looks like they already have won that battle.

500 Characters Or Less: Shortmail Updates Its iPhone App With Offline Mode, “Let’s Chill” Feature
There aren’t too many people who love email these days, but few of us can actually live without it. Thankfully, there are a number of startups that are trying to make email more manageable. One of them is 410 Labs’ Shortmail, which restricts messages to 500 characters or less. If anybody tries to send a longer message to your @shortmail address, the email will bounce and your sender will be asked to write a short message. This Twitter-like model should make for briefer and more focused discussion. Shortmail just launched its updated iPhone app today, which includes an offline mode, as well as the ability to “put a message on ice” and have the app remind you to answer at a later date. The update now also lets you see which of your recipients have opened your messages.

There aren’t too many people who love email these days, but few of us can actually live without it. Thankfully, there are a number of startups that are trying to make email more manageable. One of them is 410 Labs’ Shortmail, which restricts messages to 500 characters or less. If anybody tries to send a longer message to your @shortmail address, the email will bounce and your sender will be asked to write a short message. This Twitter-like model should make for briefer and more focused discussion. Shortmail just launched its updated iPhone app today, which includes an offline mode, as well as the ability to “put a message on ice” and have the app remind you to answer at a later date. The update now also lets you see which of your recipients have read your messages.

The highlight of the new app, 410 Labs co-founder Dave Troy told me earlier today, is its offline mode. Most email clients for the iPhone, says Troy, don’t handle being offline well. Instead, they usually “freak out” and throw error messages at their users. The new Shortmail app, on the other hand, simply notices that your are offline and just lets you reply to your messages in quiet. Once you are back online, it’ll quietly send your queued messages and sync up every other action you took in the app while you were on that long international flight.

The other interesting new feature in the app is its “Let’s Chill” tool. If you are familiar with Boomerang for Gmail, you already know how this works: instead of answering a message right away, you simply tell the app to put it on ice for the time being and then put it back into your queue at a later date.

One issue with the service, of course, is that it requires you to use a new email platform and address. The Shortmail team is quite aware of this and is working on making it easier for people to use it in conjunction with their existing email provider.

Last summer, 410 Labs raised $750,000 in a Series A round with participation by 500 Startups, True Ventures, Fortify Ventures and the Maryland Venture Fund.

How Great Entrepreneurs Create Their Own Luck
This is the story of how a young British fine artist accidentally became a materials scientist, founding a high-growth company that created a whole new product category. It’s also a parable for how great entrepreneurs systematically create their own luck. Jane ni Dhulchaointigh is the founder and CEO of Sugru, a London-based startup that makes an amazing moldable adhesive for repairing any physical object. It’s a cross between silly putty and duct tape, a space age rubber that can be molded into any desired shape by hand, and that sticks to a vast array of surfaces. With customers in over 100 countries, and all seven continents, Sugru has taken the world by storm.

Editor’s note: This post is authored by guest contributor Thor Muller, a New York Times best selling author. His latest book, “Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business” is available now.

This is the story of how a young British fine artist accidentally became a materials scientist, founding a high-growth company that created a whole new product category. It’s also a parable for how great entrepreneurs systematically create their own luck.

Jane ni Dhulchaointigh is the founder and CEO of Sugru, a London-based startup that makes an amazing moldable adhesive for repairing any physical object. It’s a cross between silly putty and duct tape, a space age rubber that can be molded into any desired shape by hand, and that sticks to a vast array of surfaces. With customers in over 100 countries, and all seven continents, Sugru has taken the world by storm.

What we see in Jane’s journey, so far from California’s tech startup scene, is the same thing we see in virtually all startups that work: the ability to harness serendipity, the unplanned discoveries, large or small, that end up being the turning points in careers and businesses. Hard work, training and process may be the foundation of success, but serendipity is where the magic happens. And even though serendipity is by definition unpredictable, its appearance is anything but random.

Jane’s stunning rise is the result of her mastering what we call the skills of planned serendipity, a set of behaviors that have allowed her, over and over again, to generate the chance discoveries, recognize the good ones, and take action on those that matter most.

Here’s how it happened, and what we can learn from her breakout success.

Start With A “Geek Brain” 

Jane originally studied to be a sculptor, an interest that had possessed her for years. She returned to school in 2003 to study commercial product design at the Royal College of Art. It seemed a prudent career move given the high demand for designers (and the lack of jobs for sculptors), but it was a switch that proved difficult. Her impulse was to follow her own interests over solving the narrowly defined product problems discussed in class. Before long, her background in sculpture combined with her insatiable curiosity led her to begin experimenting with new materials.

Jane was equipped with one of the great advantages in cultivating serendipity, a geek brain–what we define as an obsessive curiosity in an area of interest and the ability to notice anomalies, overcoming the conventional wisdom that constrains others. The geek brain gave Jane distance from the rote conventions of design school, allowing her to connect ideas from across domains in unusual ways.

Find Space to Play 

Having a mindset geared for recognizing unexpected ideas is rarely enough on its own—Jane needed an environment that allowed her to explore and put this geek brain to good use. The workshop at her college served this purpose well:

I was destroying things and putting them back together: chipping blocks of wood apart and putting them back together with other materials…One experiment I did was combining silicone caulk with very fine wood dust from the workshop. From that combination I made these fancy wooden balls. I found it fascinating that you could make something that looked like wood but had other properties—if you threw them on the floor they’d bounce.

Jane’s early explorations with her strange rubbery material was driven by a fascination with the possibilities of what she could make, rather than any specific purpose to which it could be put. This is the hallmark of a true exploratory mode, as premature focus can kill good ideas before they ever emerge. Still, as her discovery started to take shape, she began to spend more and more time wondering what it might actually be good for.

Be Opinionated 

Jane’s boyfriend noticed that she had been using her funny rubber to repair or customize things around the house—enlarging a sink plug that was too small, or making a more ergonomic knife handle. It had been so natural for her to use the rubber in this way because she personally believed in the value of repairing her things rather than running out and buying a replacement. The instinct was so natural, in fact, that she hadn’t even consciously registered what she was doing. It was only when her boyfriend drew her attention to it that she saw the opportunity in a flash.

Jane had stumbled on a product idea that mapped perfectly to a deeply held conviction: she hated waste. She was fed up with it and knew she wasn’t alone. “In the past, some people would have thought that repairing something is a compromise because you couldn’t afford to buy it new again,” Jane says. “But now there are increasing numbers of people who would rather repair or reuse than throw something out and needlessly buy something new because of the waste involved.”

Her insight was that this space-age rubber she’d invented could be an essential innovation in this cause. She saw the potential in her chance discovery only because she had an overriding purpose that gave her a unique perspective. “Every granny who finds it hard to open a jam jar can manipulate this material,” she said. “Anyone who has a stiff part on their bike can adapt it to be whatever the bike needs.”

Project the Possibility

The only problem was that the material didn’t actually exist yet. The makeshift rubber Jane had been playing with had all kinds of problems: it didn’t adhere to enough surfaces, it had a terribly short shelf-life, and it was too high maintenance to make a successful commercial product.

This was the do-or-die moment. As an artist, there was every reason in the world to give up—she had no business thinking she could solve this incredibly technical problem. Instead, Jane pulled a Jujitsu serendipity move: employing only her faulty prototype and her storytelling skills, she projected her vision as broadly as she could, telling anyone who would listen about it. Early stage entrepreneurs like Jane don’t always know what exact outcomes to expect, but they are willing to publicly put their ideas into the world, allowing them to connect with the as yet unknown people and opportunities that make their products possible.

It worked. Attention followed from the strength of her vision, attracting local press mentions, a set of science advisors, and a grant from the National Endowment for Science, Technology, and Arts.

Follow Unplanned Paths

The grant wasn’t huge, a mere £35,000, but it was enough to start testing materials—as long as Jane did the testing herself. To do that, she realized, she would have to do something that was not only unexpected, but would have seemed absurd a few months before: she’d have to diverge from her career path and be trained as a lab technician and set up her own laboratory. She wasn’t waiting around to find a CTO who knew better. This former art student must learn to be a materials scientist.

It took her two years of painstaking trial-and-error, but eventually she created a brand new, patented class of silicone that worked for her aims. Only Jane’s immovable sense of purpose kept her going through month after month of laborious formulation and failure, long before her work would bear fruit. This is a recurring paradox of serendipity: stick-to-itness—the ability to stay committed to a purpose—is often the very thing that allows new paths to be recognized and taken.

Design Openness into the Product and Company

Initially there was tremendous pressure to fit the new product into a well-worn category that the traditional business world would understand. Then it struck Jane that she could create a brand designed to activate the creative spark in people. She could leave the product’s purpose intentionally open—the tagline would become “Hack Things Better”—so that customers could use their own imagination. One of the first things she did after launching the product was create an online community for customers to share their ideas. Creating permeability at the edge of her company allowed new directions and opportunities to serendipitously emerge.

As a result the company and its customers have developed a truly symbiotic relationship. That “perfect fit” Jane had been seeking for her unusual rubber years ago? Her customers are telling her what it is—or rather, all of the perfect fits they’ve found. Repairing computers, cables for laptop chargers, phones, and outdoor equipment have emerged as the leading uses for her one-of-a-kind product. Jane is finding the company being pulled by customers in directions she could never have imagined during those years of painstaking materials research, but in each case the path is perfectly aligned with the company’s purpose.

The Kind of Luck That Matters

Entrepreneurs often cite “luck” as a key ingredient of success, yet this means far more than just being in the right time, right place. The luck that builds careers and companies is the kind that unfolds gradually, choice by choice, as people recognize and seize surprise opportunities, attracting others to them long before it’s obvious that their business is the next big thing. These skills of planned serendipity are not vague, metaphysical concepts; they can be mastered by any of us, and can shape how we run our startups as they grow.

We can learn how to make our businesses luckier.

Image via [stock.xchng

Facebook’s Patent Acquisitions? They’re More About Google Than Yahoo
In the past few months, Facebook’s patent portfolio has grown exponentially as a result of acquisitions of patent portfolios from IBM and Microsoft. After acquiring 650 AOL patents and patent applications from Microsoft, the company now has approximately 1,400 patent assets. Amazingly, only 46 of these assets (24 issued patents and 22 published applications) were originally filed by Facebook. In recent years, Facebook has consistently looked to the outside to augment its IP holdings with strategic acquisitions of patent assets. The company paid 40 million for the Friendster social networking patent portfolio, acquired a group of patents from Walker Digital, and another from Hewlett-Packard. These deals expanded the portfolio to approximately 160 patent assets prior to Yahoo’s lawsuit being filed. After Facebook’s IPO decision, and the subsequent patent suit by Yahoo, Facebook has kicked its patent acquisition program into overdrive.

In the past few months, Facebook’s patent portfolio has grown exponentially as a result of acquisitions of patent portfolios from IBM and Microsoft. After acquiring 650 AOL patents and patent applications from Microsoft, the company now has approximately 1,400 patent assets. Amazingly, only 46 of these assets (24 issued patents and 22 published applications) were originally filed by Facebook.

In recent years, Facebook has consistently looked to the outside to augment its IP holdings with strategic acquisitions of patent assets. The company paid 40 million for the Friendster social networking patent portfolio, acquired a group of patents from Walker Digital, and another from Hewlett-Packard. These deals expanded the portfolio to approximately 160 patent assets prior to Yahoo’s lawsuit being filed. After Facebook’s IPO decision, and the subsequent patent suit by Yahoo, Facebook has kicked its patent acquisition program into overdrive.

Many point to the Yahoo lawsuit as the reason for the Microsoft and IBM acquisitions. The the AOL portfolio could useful to Facebook in defending itself against Yahoo. However, now Yahoo is trying to have other patents Facebook bought after being sued by the web portal invalidated because Facebook purchased them specifically to use in a retaliatory counter-suit. In any case, it would have been significantly cheaper for Facebook to settle with Yahoo instead of taking this aggressive approach.

So who is Facebook so worried about that it would spend so much on buying intellectual property? The types of patents being acquired tell part of the story. Facebook has emphasized acquiring older assets, which it could not have developed on its own. Facebook’s oldest patent was filed in 2004, the same year the company was created. A typical patent application currently takes approximately 3-4 years to be issued. Developing a patent portfolio in the social networking space is challenging because the popularity of social networking companies has resulted in the space being littered with both patent and non-patent prior art. As a result, companies, such as Facebook, that initially largely ignored growing their IP portfolios, cannot rely on filing its own applications to develop a substantive IP portfolio.

The IBM and AOL patent acquisitions give Facebook access to IP that is significantly older than Facebook’s own IP. Older patents are subject to fewer prior art, making them more difficult to defend against. In addition, older patents provide leverage for the asserting party by allowing collection of up to six years of damages from the infringer. Such patents are therefore especially helpful in dealing with established parties having significant resources and sophisticated legal teams.

The technology areas of the IBM and AOL patents are also telling. The patents Facebook acquired from IBM are rumored to be in the networking and software space. AOL’s patents are largely directed to email, instant messaging, web browsing, search, ads, mobile, & ecommerce. Together, these are technology areas that Facebook likely never expected to find itself competing in when the company was first founded because it may not have realized that their product would evolve into the messaging/advertising/ecommerce platform that it is today. These are also technology areas that are core to Google, one of Facebook’s biggest threats.

In the past year, Google introduced Google+, a direct competitor and challenger to Facebook. While Google+ has only had moderate success to date, Facebook likely felt exposed against Google’s significantly larger and ever-expanding patent portfolio. These patent acquisitions provide Facebook with some protection as the competition between the two companies heats up. In addition, the rumors of an Android-based Facebook phone have been revived, which could bring Facebook directly into the litigious mobile space, where Google is one of the main players.

Interestingly, this is not the first time that Facebook and Microsoft have worked together with Google in mind. In October 2007, the two companies entered into an Internet advertising partnership. That deal was seen as a way for Microsoft to counter Google’s Internet advertising position. It makes sense that the two companies would again collaborate to respond to a potential threat from Google.

Thus, while the acquisitions may be helpful to Facebook in dealing with Yahoo, it is likely that these acquisitions have less to do with Yahoo than with Facebook’s anticipation of future litigation. Specifically, Facebook appears to be preparing for increased competition with Google. It bears watching whether the companies will look to their patent acquisitions as part of this strategy. Of course, such protection has the added benefit of helping to increase Facebook’s IPO value, making this decision a no-brainer for the company.

Facebook’s Mobile Viral Channels Are Working For Wooga, Europe’s Biggest Social Gaming Company
Viral channels are slowly and inevitably starting to matter for mobile game developers. For ages, many top developers would try and climb up the charts through a combination of mobile advertising, offer walls, free app promotions or more nefariously, download bots. But as the charts have been become crowded with north of a half-million apps and as Apple has clamped down on less savory means of acquiring users like bots, other ways of getting users are becoming more important. Wooga, which is Europe’s biggest social game developer, is an example. Today, the Berlin-based company is saying that it has crossed 11 million downloads, which is respectable considering that the company only really entered the mobile space three months ago when it brought Diamond Dash to iOS.

Viral channels are slowly and inevitably starting to matter for mobile game developers. For ages, many top developers would try and climb up the charts through a combination of mobile advertising, offer walls, free app promotions or more nefariously, download bots.

But as the charts have been become crowded with north of a half-million apps and as Apple has clamped down on less savory means of acquiring users like bots, other ways of getting users are becoming more important.

Wooga, which is Europe’s biggest social game developer, is an example. Today, the Berlin-based company is saying that it has crossed 11 million downloads, which is respectable considering that the company only really entered the mobile space three months ago when it brought Diamond Dash to iOS. For those who are unfamiliar, Wooga is a Berlin-based social game developer that is second only to Zynga in terms of daily users on Facebook. It’s raised more than $32 million in funding from investors including Balderton Capital and Highland Capital Partners.

Diamond Dash was one of the first games that launched after Facebook introduced viral channels for native mobile applications in October. So it’s an important litmus test in seeing how marketing is changing on the iOS and Android platforms. After Diamond Dash launched on iOS, Facebook drove about 18.5 million clicks to the game’s landing page in the iOS app store.

Because of Diamond Dash’s tight Facebook integration, the game has an unusually high share of users who connect to the social network. About 64 percent of Diamond Dash’s players connect to Facebook, up from 28 percent in December.

That’s a super high share. I often hear from mobile developers in the social networking category that about 25 percent of their users might log-in through Facebook. EA PopCap, for example, says that only about 20 percent of its Bejeweled Blitz players on iOS connect to Facebook even though the game is big on the social network too.

Wooga uses Facebook to create a real-time leaderboard for players and let users gift their friends. The company adds that mobile gamers who log in with Facebook are eight times more likely to pay. If they do pay, they tend to spend about 50 percent more than non-Facebook connected users.

That said, Facebook alone is still not enough to drive any single game to the top of the charts on iOS. Diamond Dash is doing well in European markets, where it sits in Top 50 grossing for Germany and Top 20 grossing for France. But it sits at around 200 in the U.S.

Facebook is also seeing some definite competition from Twitter as a driver of traffic to mobile apps. Twitter has a special deal with Apple to have its sharing features deeply integrated into iOS while Facebook-Apple talks have been at an impasse for years.

Before OMGPOP sold to Zynga for $180 million in cash and plus an earnout, I had been talking with the company’s chief executive Dan Porter about where the developer’s hit game “Draw Something” was getting users. He told me that about 50 percent of the game’s downloads were probably coming from word of mouth and social networks, instead of the app’s top ranking in the store.

Porter also said that Twitter was probably more important than Facebook for driving new users to Draw Something. He said that on Facebook, “You are competing with stream stories about Spotify, Pinterest, other games, Fab.com and so forth. Twitter and Instagram are more available and less congested right now.”

One other game developer and venture investor is also rethinking Twitter as a mobile game marketing tool too. Charles Hudson, who runs Android game developer Bionic Panda and is a venture partner at SoftTech Venture Capital says that while the game developer community dismissed Twitter early on, the picture is starting to change with the success of Words With Friends and Draw Something.

“I’ve come around to thinking that Twitter could be a really useful channel for games that are designed to target really large mass-market audiences given the broadcast nature of Twitter,” he wrote in a recent blog post.

So it’s still early days in seeing this shift from focusing on getting high rankings to viral promotion.

The real test of Facebook should be coming in a few weeks. Facebook only has viral channels for native iOS apps right now. They should be launching these channels for native Android apps any day now.