kbs+ Ventures

What Is The Most Exciting Thing About Being An...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:19:00 -0400

What Is The Most Exciting Thing About Being An Entrepreneur?

During the launch of Creative Entrepreneurship, we asked a variety of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists a number of questions about the lessons they’ve learned in their lives and careers.

In this, the second of the series, we asked “What is the most exciting thing about being an entrepreneur?”

Watch the video above, watch the preceding video in the series, and download Creative Entrepreneurship for free to read more about the topic from 25 other venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

Our Investment in SocialFlow

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:59:38 -0400

The team at kbs+ Ventures is excited to announce our investment in SocialFlow, a platform that is changing the way that brands engage users via social media. We participated in the company’s $10 MM Series B funding round which was announced today.

As Techcrunch notes:

The company now has solid traction in the enterprise, where brands like Walmart, Pepsi, Burberry and others are among the over 70 enterprise customers who have adopted SocialFlow’s technology. Its customers operate in a number of industries as well, including retail, automotive, consumer products, hospitality and more. Six of the ten largest media companies are actively using Cadence, the company notes.

At kbs+ Ventures, we focus heavily on identifying and investing in companies that leverage data in innovative ways across traditional and emerging ad stacks. SocialFlow turns billions of disaggregated pieces of social content into a predictive analytics solution for brands to manage how they deliver messages and engage with audiences across earned, owned and paid media.

Given that our team sits within an ad agency, we see and hear about how brands are leveraging social on a daily basis. From our vantage point, we believe that SocialFlow will be able to make a meaningful improvement in the lives of social marketers and we’re excited to partner with the company as it grows.

We trust that Missy, Frank and the entire SocialFlow team will continue pushing forward in innovative ways and would like to congratulate them on closing this round of funding.

What’s The Biggest Lesson You’ve Learned As An...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:08:00 -0400

What’s The Biggest Lesson You’ve Learned As An Entrepreneur?

During the launch of Creative Entrepreneurship, we asked a variety of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists a number of questions about the lessons they’ve learned in their lives and careers.

In this, the first of the series, we asked “What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned as an entrepreneur?”

Watch the video above, and download Creative Entrepreneurship for free to read more about the topic from 25 other venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

David Tisch + Creative Entrepreneurship David Tisch (@davetisch)...

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:01:15 -0500

David Tisch

+ Creative Entrepreneurship

David Tisch (@davetisch) of BoxGroup recently sat down with us to talk about early-stage companies, mentorship, entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, and how big companies can innovate. Watch the video above, and download “Creative Entrepreneurship” for free to read more about the topic from 25 other venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

Watch previous videos in the series with Seth Levine and Fred Wilson.

Fred Wilson + Creative Entrepreneurship Fred Wilson...

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 09:00:00 -0500

Fred Wilson

+ Creative Entrepreneurship

Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) of Union Square Ventures recently sat down with us to talk about his contribution to “Creative Entrepreneurship” and his MBA Mondays series. Fred shared his thoughts about why he started writing MBA Mondays and the topic of education around entrepreneurship and venture capital.

Watch the video above, and download “Creative Entrepreneurship” for free to read his contribution and the contribution of 24 other venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

Seth Levine + Creative Entrepreneurship Seth Levine (@sether)...

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:27:00 -0500

Seth Levine

+ Creative Entrepreneurship

Seth Levine (@sether) of Foundry Group recently sat down with us to talk about his contribution to “Creative Entrepreneurship”, which was about hiring for startups. Seth shared his thoughts about hiring, HR as a core competence, and the processes, technologies, and best practices behind hiring and building a team.

Watch the video above, and download “Creative Entrepreneurship” for free to read his contribution and the contribution of 24 other venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

Last week, kbs+ Ventures launched “Creative...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 12:42:00 -0500

Last week, kbs+ Ventures launched “Creative Entrepreneurship”, a curated informational and inspirational aid for entrepreneurs. The book brings together 25 contributors from the world of venture capital and entrepreneurship around the topics of how to build a business, how to fundraise, how to hire, and a number of other strategic and tactical topics for entrepreneurs.

Download “Creative Entrepreneurship” to read for free.

More photos here; photo credit Kyle Dean Reinford.

Hiring: Venture Associate Intern (Winter/Spring)

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 05:10:00 -0500

We’re hiring a Venture Associate Intern (Winter-Spring 2013). Here’s the details.

Who we are

kbs+ Ventures is the early-stage investment arm of the marketing services agency kbs+. We invest in early-stage (Seed and Series A) entrepreneurs focusing on innovation in advertising and marketing technologies. More about kbs+ Ventures, our portfolio, our investment and acceleration philosophy, and our team is at http://kbsp.vc

Who we’re looking for

Venture Associate Intern to assist with identifying and assessing potential investments and creating and distributing external communications.

Roles and Responsibilities

Assist in identifying and assessing potential investments
Assist in creating thoughtful, analytical research and case studies about innovation in advertising and marketing technology for distribution throughout kbs+, our clients, our portfolio entrepreneurs, and the broader industry.
Assist with Ventures external communications including research reports, newsletters, blogs and social media.

Skills and Requirements

Background in digital advertising preferred; at the minimum, a desire to develop a deep understanding of marketing and advertising technology is required.
Skills required include broad-based analytical skills, ability to understand and explain complex systems clearly through writing, and a passion for technology and entrepreneurship in general.
MBA-level internship.
This position is part-time (10 hours a week) from January 2013 to June 2013 and based in the office of the advertising agency kbs in Soho, New York, NY. Start ASAP.

Contact

Contact Taylor Davidson at tdavidson(at)kbsp.vc to discuss. Please send:

A summary of your background and interest
Links to your online presence (Twitter, LinkedIn, blog, etc.)
A succinct point of view on what you think the most interesting digital advertising, marketing, or media company is, and why.

"…PlaceIQ’s Duncan McCall about his brand new case study that demonstrates 118% in-store sales..."

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 17:21:17 -0400

“…PlaceIQ’s Duncan McCall about his brand new case study that demonstrates 118% in-store sales lift for auto parts company Meguire’s (3M subsidiary) after applying precise location targeting. The campaign used PlaceIQ’s data to identify areas with high indexes of the desired user profile (auto enthusiast) and nearby Meguire’s locations. Rich media ads from Medialets were then displayed to capture user interest and provide nearest store locations. The result was not only sales lift, but a $1.31 return for every campaign dollar invested, a 2x engagement rate compared with Medialets’ benchmarks, and a 150% increase in response rates such as watching a video, finding closest store, or browsing products. “After analyzing sales from markets exposed, compared to control markets not targeted,” McCall said, “this real measurable retail ROI indicates the power of mobile audience targeting using location data.””

- Place Off: A Week in the Life of the Mobile Local Revolution | Street Fight

[Rewind’s] redesigned app will soon add support for...

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 18:50:12 -0400

[Rewind’s] redesigned app will soon add support for Facebook and Instagram check-ins to help better understand the places your friends on those services have been. In the coming weeks, they’ll be turning on the scoring system, where you’ll essentially develop a Klout-like score based on your knowledge of certain types of venues. The hope is that a Mexican restaurant, for instance, will be able to reach out to and reward the users who are most knowledgable — and thus most influential — about Mexican restaurants.

(via Rewind.me redesigned from the ground up to help better understand your foursquare history)

Intent Targeting Is The Answer For Yieldbot CEO Mendez

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:18:13 -0400

Intent Targeting Is The Answer For Yieldbot CEO Mendez:

What is a typical use case for Yieldbot products today?

Publishers’ business is based on traffic, page views. However, they have never had a monetization system that intelligently understands what attracted the intentions of that traffic on every single page view of that site.

We allow publishers to see their site through the lens of intent by resolving every page view to multiple keyword values. They are ranked similar to “quality score” in search. We bring that all together into our analytics package where publishers are able to see through the words and the intentions of their visitors what’s working and what’s not working.

We are able to understand at the URL level – the URL of the page is our atomic unit of data collection. We are looking every single referrer and every single visitor that comes to those pages serializing the data from their clickstreams and how they got there. Then seeing what happens when they leave. Resolving all that to keyword values.

How Location Technology Can Change Publishing (and Pay for...

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 10:26:22 -0400

How Location Technology Can Change Publishing (and Pay for Content), at AdAge Digital Conference.

Drew Breunig of PlaceIQ summarizes the main points on his blog:

Location is cheaper to use these days. Now we just need to figure out why we should use it.

Innovating apps like News.me, Instapaper, Now, Dark Sky, and Square use location as part of the UI, not as a connected map.

When location is a UI component, it can be used by more applications. You don’t have to be a ‘location app’ to use location.

When location is more ubiquitous, it can be used as a rich metric to understand and value your audiences, which can help better pay for content and support larger mobile businesses.

Darren Herman of kbs+ Ventures and Drew Breunig of PlaceIQ,...

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 09:33:00 -0400

Darren Herman of kbs+ Ventures and Drew Breunig of PlaceIQ, presenting “The Evolution of Location and What it Means for Media and Marketing” at AdAge Digital West (#aadigital)

Adaptly Talks: Facebook Exchange: What Does it Mean for Advertisers?

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:57:40 -0400

Adaptly Talks: Facebook Exchange: What Does it Mean for Advertisers?:

adaptly:

Click here to download the full version.

On Thursday, September 13^th Facebook announced that its real-time bidding platform, the Facebook Exchange, is finally leaving the beta stages. The Facebook Exchange introduces a new way to purchase Facebook ads. Essentially, the platform…

"Native Advertising is quite the buzzword these days. Native advertising, IMHO can be defined as..."

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 07:24:55 -0400

“Native Advertising is quite the buzzword these days. Native advertising, IMHO can be defined as advertising engagements (sometimes units) that takes place utilizing the technology and the platform on which it exists upon and is in the natural flow of how the user interacts with the platform. If these units, subject to be different on any platform, contain something standardized that could be transacted through RTB, then we’ll see some of these units flow into auction based inventory sources such as public and private exchanges. I think that for the short term, we’ll see marketers using retargeting and re-messaging against native advertising units to continue the marketing dialogue with the consumer as this is much easier to deploy and a quick win.”

- Darren Herman in AdExchanger talking about native advertising and RTB, How Does Native Advertising and Real-Time Bidding Meet?

Self Service Still Requires Service

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 08:14:34 -0400

Self Service Still Requires Service

"The 0-1 innovation is going to come from the social places in ways we cannot imagine today…"

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 08:14:02 -0400

“The 0-1 innovation is going to come from the social places in ways we cannot imagine today…”

- Stuck In A Rut of Incremental Innovation | Darren Herman

PlaceIQ Study: Amazon Web Services

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 08:11:42 -0400

PlaceIQ Study: Amazon Web Services

"We target the location and not the user,” says PlaceIQ CEO Duncan McCall, describing the strategy of..."

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 09:27:42 -0400

““We target the location and not the user,” says PlaceIQ CEO Duncan McCall, describing the strategy of deriving probability from points on the map, rather than user behavior.”

- Data That Thinks ‘Big,’ But Acts Local | Street Fight

"The Dolphins worked with loyalty platform CrowdTwist to develop the program, and that company’s COO..."

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 18:30:59 -0400

“The Dolphins worked with loyalty platform CrowdTwist to develop the program, and that company’s COO and cofounder Josh Bowen said The Fin Club was built to appeal to season ticket members as well as those on the periphery. Like most offline businesses, the Dolphins struggle with identifying their customers and thereby building relationships with them. “We don’t know who’s coming into our stadium. We don’t who’s interacting with us. We know what we’re selling to them, but for the longest time and even still today, we don’t know who really comes,” Howard said. That’s especially dangerous when it comes to revitalizing ticket sales because it’s the fans who have been season-ticket members for three years or less are “where they see the most drop-off,” Bowen said. “So they want to get those people to opt in, because once someone’s been a member for more than three years, they’re almost always lifers.” To that end, the Dolphins and CrowdTwist will bring The Fin Club into Sun Life Stadium.”

- Miami Dolphins Connect Online, In-Stadium Loyalty | Adweek