Nestoria Blog

This month we have the chance to speak with Thomas Sweetman, co-founder of London-based location based service Stickyboard.

Tom, thanks for chatting with us.

1. What is stickyboard? What problem does the service solve? What motivated you to start the company?

Stickyboard is a social enterprise aimed at connecting people with their local area. We provide each borough in London with their own online neighbourhood noticeboard where residents, groups and businesses can share the activities, news and events for all to see.

With increasingly mobile and time-poor populations, local areas are in need of a way for people to access relevant services quickly and efficiently, preferably in a way that puts money back into those areas. We see our enterprise as a way to do this. More personally I wanted to demonstrate social enterprise as a viable way of delivering services to people in a socially conscious AND economically sustainable way.

2. Who’s behind the service?

My brother James and I are the brains behind it. We work with a small team to keep things going and develop as we go.

3. Many start ups are in the Local/Social space, the most famous probably being Foursquare. No one seems to have broken through just yet to become a true mass phenomenon. Is it just a matter of time, or is more innovation needed?

I think the market failure is there, the desire is there but so far it has been a question of “almost, but not quite”. It will certainly happen in time but innovation will be required to refine the products in the market at present.

4. The last few years have seen a new wave of tech/internet start ups in London. How are you finding it? What would make life easier for start-ups like yours?

Very interesting! I think it’s a really exciting time to be starting up in London, particularly in the tech/social space. When I began I knew very few people in the sector but now we are part of a strong and vibrant community. Making life easier I would say though that a lot could be done to support start-ups: meaningful tax breaks, bank loans that recognise the cash-flow challenges of start-ups, streamlined grant applications

Many thanks Tom. Unfortunately I’m not sure we can help with getting banks to understand the reality of start-ups (or business in general, given that they live in a dream world called “bonus land”), but we can help with the vibrant community. Once a quarter we sponsor #geomob, a quarterly meetup for geo/mobile developers. Our next event will be September 15th, and we welcome anyone interested in geo or mobile topics.

To stay on top of Stickyboard’s progress, follow them on twitter.

past Nestoria interviews: Andrew Hudson-Smith, Saurav Chopra, and Gabriel Weinberg.

Fellow Nestorites!

Last week we celebrated a massive milestone here at Nestoria HQ - our little property search engine turned 5 years old! Given that most start-ups don’t live to see their first birthday, let alone their fifth, you’ll understand that we’re a bit chuffed at having made it this far. We’ve come a long way from our humble one room office in Soho in the sweltering summer of 2006.

Thank you to all the Nestoria users who are always sending us feedback and to our partners - especially those of you who bet on us really; we never forget!.

A lot has changed in the last five years. When we first launched we had only a few thousand listings in London. Today we serve up many millions of listings across eight countries in four different continents to millions of users every month.

It hasn’t been just us who have changed, but also the internet in general. Trends like twitter (if you don’t yet follow us, please do) and facebook (if you don’t yet like us, please do) were just getting started. Tools like Google Analytics were revolutionary rather than standard operating procedure. The pace of technical innovation has been relentless. Many thanks to all the developers who create the free software Nestoria relies on every day. I’m pleased that we’re now in a financial position such that we can give a bit back by regularly sponsoring events. As one example of many in two weeks several team members will be speaking at State of the Map Europe in Vienna. Regularly readers will know that we also now run the #geomob London events to encourage innovation in geo and mobile services in London. I hope to see you at the next event on 15 September.

One common response to celebrating anniversaries is to ponder what the future holds. Besides continued geographic expansion we’re hard at work on all sorts of things here in Clerkenwell (and at our new office in Madrid). Expect a few updates in the coming weeks and months. But rest assured all new projects will continue to have one goal in mind: making it as fast and simple as possible to find your next home.

The team and alumni celebrating in front of the the John Snow near our original office

And so in closing, let me especially thank all the team members who made it all happen the last five years. As a founder one of the things that gives me the most pride is watching team members grow. Growth is hard. It requires pushing yourself outside of your areas of comfort. It requires making mistakes and then learning from those mistakes. It has been an honor to watch not just a few, but many, team members go down this path. We’ve worked hard and we’ve learned a lot.

Some of this year’s crop of summer interns!

Many thanks everyone, it’s been a great five years - I look forward to the next five! BTW don’t worry if you missed out on the fun of our first five years - we’re hiring.

Come join us.

Fellow Nestordelphians,

this month we speak we return to the UK start-up scene Saurav Chopra, one fo the founders of the new service Huddlebuy. Prior to Huddlebuy, Saurav spent 10 years in global business development roles with Deloitte Consulting, Yahoo! and VC-backed startups.

1. What is Huddlebuy? What problem does it solve?

Huddlebuy is the group-buying website for small businesses which leverages the collective buying power and wisdom of small businesses. We help small businesses buy B2B goods and services at big company pricing.

Typically, small businesses end up paying 50%-100% more than a medium to large sized business for the same product or service. We allow them to benefit from the same kind of pricing/volume discounts larger companies get, helping them get more for less in these economically challenging times.

Our sole focus on saving SMEs money is particularly important at a time of rising inflation and weaker bottom lines. Small businesses are not getting the requisite help from the Coalition Government and therefore need to help each other as much as possible. Small businesses are the backbone of British business and to enable them to benefit from better service and product pricing genuinely supports growth.

2. Why does the world need yet another group buying site?

Offline buying groups have been providing considerable savings to medium and large businesses for years, while online buying groups have only been targeted at the consumer market. It struck us that if the man on the street can get such a great deal on a product or service online then the same concept should be applied to small businesses. Huddlebuy aims to act on this insight by providing small businesses with the great deals they deserve. As of yet, there are no group buying sites that cater specifically to the business-to-business space. Therefore, we are unique in our business proposition and model.

The other problem we are solving is helping companies efficiently target the fragmented small business marketplace. We encourage any reputable and reliable suppliers, which are looking to tap into the SME market, to come to us and create awareness of their products through Huddlebuy. For our suppliers we operate on a no sale, no cost model, thereby eliminating any upfront cost risk.

3. Real estate is an industry with many smaller owner/operators. What application does Huddlebuy have for them?

Based on UK BIS data, there are about 200K real estate agents businesses in the UK of which ~97% have 1 to 10 employees. Through Huddlebuy, each estate agent will have access to buying power normally reserved far larger competitors.

So how can we help? Some of the major costs for real estate agencies are generic in nature i.e. offices, IT, marketing, office supplies, telecoms, etc. Through the power of group buying, Huddlebuy can offer Estate Agents access to these aforementioned products at a heavy discount. With the real estate market facing potential stagnation a 20% reduction in the costs goes straight to the bottom line.

4. One of the most remarkable aspects of your service is the use of social media - a communication path that barely existed 5 years ago. What lessons might be applicable for someone trying to sell their home?

We are quite excited about how we have leveraged social media quite since our soft-launch in Jan 2011. We have amassed over 3800 twitter small business followers by providing practical advice to small businesses on how they can save money. Our articles are shared on a very regular basis driving more buzz for Huddlebuy.

We also have numerous social media features built into the site for example integration with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter for each deal and the advice-orientated articles on the site. We are also working on deeper social integration which help create more social proof around deals – for example a web designer will be able to see which other similar businesses have expressed interest in a product or bought a Huddlebuy deal. They will also be able to receive recommended deal feeds based on user behaviour from other similar businesses in their community.

We believe that real estate agents and landlords aiming to sell their homes can leverage social media in several ways to drive interest and increase demand for their property. Adding a video about the property on YouTube and a property page on Facebook and then sharing it amongst their friends and contacts can drive interest in the property.

Potential buyers should be able to sign in on a real estate website with Facebook Connect and be able to share a particular listing with their friends to get their feedback. Real Estate agents should also integrate feeds from social review sites such as Yelp/Qype to show reviews of interesting places near a specific property, help drive further interest in a property.

Many thanks Saurav, and best of luck with the new venture. It’s great to see someone creating a service that helps small businesses, especially in these times of austerity.

past Nestoria interviews: Gabriel Weinberg, Marc Wick, and Steve Chilton.

Fellow Nestorfriends,

I know many of you have been wondering where in God’s name the regular Nestoria interview series has gone to. Well, allow me to apologise. We’ve been juggling a few things and I must admit we let this service drop. Some of you might even have thought we’ve lost our love for seeking out conversations with innovators from the online world. Well, you are wrong. Interviews are back.

We kick off the 2011 series with a conversation with someone who, like Nestoria itself, is innovating in the realm of search. Gabriel Weinberg is founder and operator of US based, general search engine DuckDuckGo. If you haven’t tried it yet, you should. DDG stays true to the clean and simple philosophy while also emphasizing user privacy. Beyond his own projects, Gabriel is an active angel investor, and best of all, like myself Gabriel is an MIT alumni.

Let’s dive into the questions.

1. What is DuckDuckGo, and why did you start it?

DuckDuckGo is a general purpose search engine designed to be your starting place for Internet search. The motivation for starting it (a few years ago) was two-fold. First, I was getting tired of the increasing spam and pseudo-spam (content farms, commercial content and the like) that seemed to be cropping up all over the place. Second, I realized that there were other sources of data that had information better than what Google was currently providing, e.g. Wikipedia, delicious, and lots of vertical search engines.

2. Is it really possible for a tiny start up to compete with Google directly? What are some of the ways you differentiate yourself?

People just care about the search experience, so if you can deliver a better search experience, then you can compete with Google directly. We’ve been trying to better that experience with way less spam, way more instant answers and real privacy.

3. What’s your opinion on vertical search engines like Nestoria versus horizontal search engines like DDG?

I think that for every query, there is usually a vertical search engine out there that would handle it better than a general search engine alone. That’s why it has been my long-term goal to get you information directly from that best vertical search engine where possible. So I think they can be complementary.

4. Like Nestoria, many parts of DDG are written in the programming language perl. Perl faces a bit of a paradox - on the one hand lots of folks say perl is dying. On the other hand, those who use it talk about the “Perl Renaissance”. What’s your take?

I’m not sure I have a viewpoint into its real trajectory. From my perspective of using CPAN modules and getting help online, not much has changed — there continues to be great resources out there that are continually updated.

5. You do a lot to support opensource software. What are some of the most exciting open source projects that might have an impact on the search community that you see coming?

Solr (now an Apache project) has come a long way and can deliver pretty good search for most situations. It is build on Lucene and there is also now a good book on it too.

Many thanks Gabriel. We agree it is possible to offer a great alternative to the big boys of internet search. Anyone interested in keeping up with Gabriel should follow him personally and/or duckduckgo on twitter.

past Nestoria interviews: Marc Wick, Steve Chilton, and Remy Sharp.

It seems to be the season for conferences, and conference sponsorship announcements.

Earlier this week we told you about the State of the Map ‘11 sponsorship.

Today, it’s the turn of WhereCampEU ‘11 - “the geo unconference for Europe”. We’re proud to be one of WhereCampEU sponsors again.

WhereCampEU is a great event featuring the cutting edge of European digital geography practice (and even some theory!). You can read more about last year’s event in our interview with the WhereCamp kingpin (and ex-Nestorian) Chris Osborne.

This year, WhereCampEU will take place in Berlin, on 27th and 28th of May. Do keep an eye on WhereCampEU blog and Twitter account for more details. 

We’ve got our plane ticket booked, so we hope to see you there!

If you followed Nestoria blog over the years you’d notice that it is around this time of year that we typically announce our sponsorship of State of the Map, annual gathering of the OpenStreetMap (OSM) community.

This time we were very early off the blocks and are delighted to reveal that Nestoria is the first sponsor of the State of the Map Europe ‘11 conference, to be held on 15th and 16th July in Vienna.

Lately, OSM has been going from strength to strength. Direct involvement of the likes MapQuest, Microsoft Bing or Rambler.ru just serves as the further validation of the OSM’s success.

Nestoria too is proud to be a part of the OSM community. We have been involved with OpenStreetMap over the years. You can read about some of our use of OSM technologies, community event sponsorships and interviews on our blog.

We are extremely glad to be linked to State of the Map Europe ‘11 in Vienna. The conference will be hosted by the illustrious Techniche Universität Wien, alma mater of my famous compatriot Milutin Milanković.  We are looking forward to hearing about the growing adoption in the countries such as Russia, and catching up with other exciting project within the community.

We are hoping to tell you more about the conference soon. Untill then, hope you’re keeping the dates in your callendar clear and that we might see you in Vienna!

This year the 50-overs cricket competition will be hosted by India with the help of its neighbours - Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. After a comprehensive Ashes Victory, a few of us in the office are hoping England can take their test form into the 2011 Cricket World Cup.

If a World Cup was not enough, the spectacle of Indian Premier League will kick of as normal afterwards.

2011 is an exciting year to be in India, especially if you love cricket. We want to take this opportunity to remind you all about our new service in India: www.nestoria.in. So far, the feedback has been very positive (see Watblog.com or Brajeshwar.com).

We hope you’ll bear us in mind if you need to search for great properties to buy or rent across India. We know that the likes of Kevin Peterson, Ravi Bopara and Eoin Morgan might be looking to rent somewhere during the World Cup and IPL.