Monday, February 25, 2013

Reclaiming centuries-old wood for a new generation

Reshaping history 

By Taryn Plumb |  Globe Correspondent  

Friday, February 22, 2013

Fantasy sports for all

Feb 22, 2013
Startups & Venture Capital 

DraftKings recruiting the more casual fan

Taryn Plumb |, Special to the Journal
Jason Robins, CEO and co-founder of Draft Kings, is trying to broaden the audience for fantasy sports.

 
W. Marc Bernsau

Much as they’re intended for enjoyment, fantasy sports can often require a big commitment — and after a while, can even become a chore. All of which can prove to dissuade casual sports fans, or those who just can’t dedicate the time, according to DraftKings co-founder Jason Robins.
The goal of the Boston-based startup is to provide more manageable and bite-sized contests in the fantasy realm — and, in the process, ultimately reach beyond the “diehard” fans to anyone who’s ever had just an inkling of curiosity in fantasy sports.
Pointing to the $1 billion market — a global estimate for fantasy sports revenue that has experienced double-digit annual growth since 2007, according to IBISWorld — Robins said there’s a “huge population” of fans looking to enhance their sports experience.
“We’re really trying to broaden the audience,” he said.
Founded in 2011 by Robins, Matthew Kalish and Paul Liberman, the company’s mobile-friendly website offers single-day fantasy sports contests in professional football, basketball, hockey and baseball, as well as college football and hoops. DraftKings employs 13 people and is backed by a $1.4 million seed round of investing that was led last year by Atlas Venture.
Entry fees range from free to $500 or more, with prize pools in the thousands, depending on the number of players and the importance of the game. For instance, an end-of-season football contest paid out $250,000 to several winners, according to Robins, while a weekly Wednesday night contest throughout basketball season entices with a $50,000 prize pool.
Meanwhile, the company’s free mobile and Facebook app, “Fantasy Sports for Coins,” allows users to play in more of a video-game fashion, leveling up and using virtual money instead of real cash.
“It’s a much more a-la-carte, pay-as-you-go style,” Robins said. “Every day is a brand new season.”
DraftKings’ website, which launched last April, now has 100,000 users, while its app has attracted 250,000 users since going live last August, according to Robins. The two most popular sports have been football and basketball.
The biggest appeal of DraftKings, according to some users, is the flexibility: Users aren’t locked in for a whole season, and they can switch players in and out on a daily basis.
Tyler Tobin is what you’d call an avid player. The North Carolina educator uses DraftKings every day for basketball, football and baseball matchups, and recently won $20,000 through fantasy sports.
A writer for the industry site dailyfantasyradio.com, he also has a good pulse on the market, and said he sees DraftKings as “doing big things and being in a good position in the next couple of years.”
Ideally, he’d like to see the site add bigger contests and prizes, as well as more sports, such as golf (his personal favorite), NASCAR and soccer.
He predicted that fantasy sports will “keep exploding in the future,” particularly among men ages 20 to 40.
“It’s regular guys, with regular jobs, who are married, have kids,” Tobin said. “They play for that thrill of getting a little nightly competition.”

Original story link here.

Friday, February 15, 2013

"Renting" art

Feb 15, 2013

Startups & Venture Capital

Startup offers Netflix-like subscription mail model for art

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal

Jason Gracilieri is founder and CEO of TurningArt, which rents pieces of art to both consumers and corporate entities.
W. Marc Bernsau

A young designer at an architectural firm doesn’t have a lot of money to spend on fine art — but she wants to display it on her walls, and she doesn’t want to have to settle for cheap prints from a big-box store.
So about six months ago, the designer, Allison Price, signed up for TurningArt. The Boston-based startup offers a Netflix-like subscription mail model that allows people to rent pieces of wall art on a rotating schedule.
Now, the Somerville resident gets two, 16-inch by 20-inch works — one for the bedroom, one for the living room — per month, and has developed favorites in the watercolor maps of Emily Garfield, and the raw portraiture of Eunika Rogers, among others.
“I’m still developing my taste in art,” said Price, “so the best part is I get to try different things out.”
Which is the dual purpose of TurningArt, according to founder Jason Gracilieri: To make art more accessible to the masses, and in turn, make the masses more accessible to artists.
The nine-employee company, founded in early 2010, works only with artists who are living and independently employed — there are no Monets or Warhols in the mix. So, in addition to bringing a little culture to its user’s lives, TurningArt provides a platform for artists to present and ultimately sell their work.
Memberships start at $10 a month, and new customers are asked to broadly define their tastes, and then are matched with a personal curator. Every dollar they spend earns them credits that can be used to buy framed or unframed prints — ranging from $65 to $260 — or to cover up to 50 percent of the cost of originals.
“You can discover artwork from across the country in your own home,” said Gracilieri, a former engineer who founded the company after facing his own conundrum of a new apartment and empty walls.
Regina Valluzzi, a contributing artist from Arlington, puts it this way: TurningArt “allows people to test different ideas and try on different statements without having to make an immediate commitment.”
On the other end, the program costs nothing for member artists, who get a piece of the membership costs, as well as a cut whenever their work sells.
Valluzzi, whose landscapes, abstracts and line-drawings are inspired by her background in condensed matter and bioscience, has had work placed as far as Seattle and California — locations she’d be hard-pressed to break into on her own, she said. She also has access to a dashboard that she described as a “very rich and detailed sales funnel,” including how many people have come across her work in site searches, and how many of her prints are in people’s homes.
“They have been reaching exactly the people who respond strongly to my work; exactly the people I want to reach,” she said.
Although Gracilieri didn’t cite specific numbers, he did say that TurningArt ships “thousands” of pieces to all of the lower 48 states (they don’t currently serve Alaska or Hawaii), with customers ranging from corporate entities to everyday consumers.
The company is backed by $2.25 million in funding — $750,000 from a seed round in March 2011 led by NextView Ventures of Boston, and another $1.5 million in May 2012, also led by Next-View.
“There are thousands upon thousands of artists, and millions and millions of consumers out there with even more walls,” Gracilieri said. “The opportunity is huge.”

Original story link here. 

Why spend Valentine's Day in a (heart-shaped) box?

Spending Valentine’s Day outside the box


By Taryn Plumb
Globe Correspondent /  February 13, 2013 

 Meghan Hamilton climbed with Shane Welsh at The Boston Rock Gym in Woburn. 
Instructor Michael Hall teaches Nora Pyenson of Cambridge and her boyfriend Nick Forster of California how to tie knots at the Boston Rock Gym in Woburn, Mass. Friday, Feb. 1, 2013. (WINSLOW TOWNSON FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)
After a breakup a few years ago, Nikki Marin knew the easy — and clichéd — thing to do would be to sit at home alone, sulk, and rely on the healing powers of ice cream.
But instead, she climbed, spending countless hours at The Boston Rock Gym in Woburn, where she riddled out what she called the “puzzles on the wall.”
And little did she know that her cure for a broken heart would lead to a chance meeting with her future husband, Matt.  
Because it’s active, fun, and unusual, rock climbing has essentially “defined us as a couple,” said the Beverly resident, who was married last June.  
There are many interesting stories behind relationships. So why, then, on a day dedicated to love, should celebrations be confined to a heart-shaped box?
This year, check out these not-so-conventional ways to celebrate Valentine’s Day with that special (or hope-to-be-special) someone.
First: Try it Marin’s way. The Boston Rock Gym is offering two-for-one passes and intro classes through this weekend. (See info box for more details.)
If you’re an experienced climber, great; go off and explore with your sweetheart. Otherwise, take part in the three-hour intro classes, which cover the basics of climbing, from vocabulary, to knot-tying, to safety essentials.
“Climbing’s really natural, as long as you can access some of the inner kid,” said gym owner Chris O’Connell, describing it as both a physical and mental challenge, a problem-solving puzzle, and a centering, in-the-moment, and meditative activity.
As odd a way as it might seem to celebrate Valentine’s Day, climbing is actually a great way to forge — and strengthen — relationships, O’Connell said. To do it right takes cooperation, communication, and — most importantly — trust, all cornerstones of any good union.
Given that climbing partners have to be always communicating, “It accelerates the ‘getting to know you’ process a little,” he said. Even if that goes horribly wrong, at least you find out relatively quickly whether he or she is the one (or not).
Marin, who climbs regularly with her husband, finds that it continues to bolster their relationship. The teen director at the Ben Beyea Youth and Teen Center in Rockport and part-time Rock Gym instructor described the emotional support involved, as well as the sharing of goals and achievements.
And a bonus for the first-time daters? Doing something adventurous is said to make you feel more attractive, and also gets the adrenaline pumping.
“If people go on a date and really show that they can trust each other, communicate, and share goals, it’s far more romantic than eating a dinner or sharing a box of chocolates,” said Marin.
But if you’re looking for a little more advocacy with your exercise, head on over to Market Square in Newburyport Thursday night.
And don’t be late: Promptly at 5 p.m., a flash mob will break out in tandem with countless thousands of others across the world, set to the song “Break the Chain.”  
Organized by the movement V-Day — and locally by the The Dance Place in the Tannery in Newburyport — the “One Billion Rising”  event aims to raise awareness of violence against women. The name derives from the statistic that about 1 in 3 women in the world — or 1 billion — will be beaten or raped in her lifetime.
Fontaine Dubus, owner of The Dance Place, acknowledged that a flash mob is supposed to be “spontaneous and without warning.”
But they’re stretching the parameters of that a bit, because the event is ultimately about the cause.
“It’s beautiful; they’re going to be doing it all over the world,” she said. “Dance is universal; it speaks to everybody.”
Anyone is invited to participate (or just watch), but all are encouraged to learn the choreography ahead of time (available on YouTube).
Dubus described the dance as “pretty simple and repetitive.”
“Do what you can,” she encouraged. “Nobody's gonna mind a few mistakes.”
Want to be spontaneous and romantic?
Send a singing valentine.
The age-old barbershop favorite is still around, delivered courtesy of The Northshoremen. The Beverly-based group — together since 1948, and encompassing around 40 members — aims to deliver around 100 every Valentine’s Day, surprising loved ones at schools, in restaurants, sitting in their cubicles, even covered with grease at the car shop, according to organizer Jack Dowd.  
Cost is $50, and the valentine is “delivered” at a surprise time between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. by one of several quartets that roam from East Boston to the New Hampshire border.
Recipients get a rose, and four dapper men in tuxes, red bow ties, and cummerbunds serenade them with old classics such as “The Story of the Rose” or “Let Me Call you Sweetheart.”
Beyond shock or surprise, reactions most often include tears, laughter, hugs, kisses, and sometimes threats along the lines of “I'm gonna kill him,” Dowd chuckled.
If you still want a more conventional, chocolates-and-flowers experience, try a tour of the Taza Chocolate factory in Somerville at 2 and 4 p.m. Thursday, and at several other regular times throughout the week.
The 45-minute walk-through includes a discussion of the South American farms that provide the company with its cocoa beans, according to marketing manager Robin Ruttle, as well as the processes of harvesting, drying, fermenting, and bean roasting and winnowing. Depending on the production schedule, you’ll get a fair dose of mouth-watering chocolate being made right before your eyes.
This Valentine's Day, Taza is selling a special bar for $8: The 3-ounce Coco Besos, which includes chocolate shavings within the actual bar and, as the name implies, a good amount of coconut, too.
“The appeal of the tour is learning about where chocolate comes from,” said Ruttle, noting its Mesoamerican roots. “It’s something that a lot of people love, but that they maybe don’t know that much about. This is a way to be mindful about what you’re eating, and take a look at something you’ve enjoyed forever from a different standpoint.”

Photos by Winslow Townson. 

Original story link here.

© Copyright 2013 Globe Newspaper Company.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Another bit of history gone

Newbury conservationists mourn loss of Bushee Estate 

 By Taryn Plumb | Globe Correspondent 

February 10, 2013

Let the games begin

Swaggers, jitters before ‘High School Quiz Show’


By Taryn Plumb
Globe Correspondent /  February 9, 2013 

Pittayut Phonboon of Sharon High endured a hair and makeup session before a recent taping of WGBH-TV’s “High School Quiz Show.” Rishi Solanki (right) and his Wellesley High teammates faced off against Chelmsford High. 

Quenton Hurst, or “Q,” as he prefers, seems a natural candidate for a quiz team — he’s interested in, as he put it, “bizarre facts,” “really obscure things,” and has a reservoir of “snippets” of knowledge.
The spiky-haired 16-year-old, who is representing Rockport High School in this year’s installment of WGBH-TV’s “High School Quiz Show,” also doesn’t lack confidence. He’ll be ready to deliver the goods “wherever they need me,” he said in an interview before a recent Sunday morning taping at the WGBH studios in Brighton. 
The other 15 high schools participating in the fourth installment of the show are Hopkinton, North Quincy, Acton-Boxborough Regional, Hingham, Brookline, Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School in Marlborough, Lincoln-Sudbury Regional, Somerville, Chelmsford, Wellesley, Sharon, Lexington, Needham, Framingham, and Wachusett Regional. 
As in past years, each game includes four rounds hosted by ubiquitous local personality Billy Costa: a team round, a head-to-head, a category round, and a lightning round.
The televised competition, which begins Sunday with a face-off between Hopkinton and North Quincy, will see the 16 teams — culled from an original pool of nearly 100 — duke it out for the championship and bragging rights.
One fierce matchup? Chelmsford and Wellesley.
Wellesley’s ace may be Merritt Losert, a soft-spoken 18-year-old senior with an interest in science, guitar, and mountain biking, and who is described by junior teammate Rishi Solanki, 16, as a genius.
Solanki, for his part, was preparing to mount a stiff offense against Chelmsford through his knowledge of current events and politics.
Sixteen-year-old teammate Brian Rappaport, meanwhile, planned to call upon his expertise on literary masters such as Dostoyevsky, evidenced by the copy of “The Brothers Karamazov” on his lap, as well as his inner “geography buff.”
But Wellesley’s challenge in the show comes down more to in-game dynamics than its breadth of knowledge, he said. “We have a lot of different areas covered,” he said as he sat in the studio’s green room. “Our main weakness is the strong personalities competing.”
Meanwhile, across the way, Chelmsford players Graham Lustiber, an 18-year-old senior, and fellow senior Tom Hoang, 17, were sizing up their rivals.
“They look pretty confident,” Hoang said with a smirk.
There was also a bit of pre-game scouting, they acknowledged. “We looked into them, yeah,” said Lustiber, who will bring strengths in math and physics to the game, alongside Hoang’s background in computer engineering.
Minor variations in tactics aside, most teams seemed to follow the same prep formula: watch past seasons of the quiz show (as well as a good dose of “Jeopardy!”), spend hours on Wikipedia, and meet with each other as schedules allow to run practice drills and, most importantly, test their reflexes.
“We crammed, really,” acknowledged Solanki, “but it works.”
A bit later, students from Rockport and Sharon gathered in the studio to do their own cramming and sizing up. (Each, coincidentally, were dressed in maroon polos to boast their school colors.)
Smartphones in hand, team members ran each other through a gantlet of last-minute practice questions, on topics ranging from Jane Austen and T.S. Eliot, to “Best Picture” nominations and math problems.
Sharon senior Pittayut Phonboon, 17, admitted to having some jangly nerves in the final minutes before the game’s start.
He’s struggled to find a center of gravity during competition. “I’m either too hesitant or too aggressive with my answering,” he said.
But he has his strengths as well. “I know a lot of random stuff that my friends might not know,” particularly related to history and military facts, he said. “I can fill in the gaps where these guys slip.”
Both teams were stinging from losses last year to the formidable Hamilton-Wenham squad: Sharon was dropped in the first round, while Rockport fell in overtime during semi-finals.
Rockport junior Alexandra Legendre, 17, planned to delve into her deep well of pop-culture knowledge, while senior Evan Razdan, 18, stressed the importance of reflexes: “Your reaction time, that’s a big thing.”
And while he acknowledged to being a little jittery, he said, “I’m not shaking-in-my-shoes nervous.”
As the teams prepped in the green room, headphone-clad staffers zipped in and out, checked name pronunciations, snapped pictures, and helped teams strap on microphone packs while a judge, Michael Gamerl of the Princeton Review, went over the rules.
Rule number one? Have fun. “We will, in fact, deduct points for anti-fun,” Gamerl quipped.
Players also must allow host Costa to finish reading questions before buzzing in, he said. Signals between coaches or team members, whether furtive or explicit, are expressly forbidden. And, finally, only first answers are accepted.
With the ground rules laid, the first teams filed into the studio as a divided and boisterous crowd shouted support, waving signs with big block letters proclaiming: “WHS!” and “Go Chelmsford!”
And, well, that’s as far as we can go, folks.
Want to know who taxed their brains the most? Tune in.
The first show airs Sunday, Feb. 10, at 6:30. Get everything else you need or want to know about the teams here: www.wgbh.org/quizshow/index.cfm. 

Original story link here.

View a nice slideshow by Dina Rudick.

Copyright 2013 Globe Newspaper Company.

Friday, February 8, 2013

A VC veteran (and not yet a college graduate)

Feb 8, 2013
 
Startups & Venture Capital
 
Harvard student helps spread VC money to entrepreneurs at local colleges
 
Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal
 
Peter Boyce, co-founder of Roughdraft.VC, aims to provide support at the “earliest stage” for student entrepreneurs.

 
W. Marc Bernsau
 
Thanks to Hollywood, we all know that Facebook was born in a Harvard dorm room.
Yet Facebook’s beginnings are not exactly unique: Students at Harvard and other schools across the country are forever tinkering and innovating, coming up with ideas for businesses and sowing the seeds of startups.
It’s Peter Boyce’s goal to draw those ideas out of residence halls and foster them for real-world inception.
The Harvard senior, 22, is a co-founder of RoughDraft.VC, an investment fund run largely by and for students.
“We’re really trying to provide support at the earliest stage,” said Boyce, a New York City native who is studying applied math and computer science. “We’re helping students continue to be students, while also helping them build their products.”
Launched in December, RoughDraft.VC provides initial small investments – convertible loans with no discounts or caps – to projects born from the minds of students at Boston-area colleges. The initiative is funded by Cambridge-based venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners, and was co-founded by General Catalyst principal Bilal Zuberi.
Although Boston students are fortunate to be in a rich and supportive entrepreneurial community, Boyce said, their projects can often get stuck at the earliest stages because they simply don’t have the small amounts of funding they need to get started. The idea is to provide that early push, he said – whether it’s a few hundred dollars or several thousand – so that they can develop their product, and seek further assistance from incubators, accelerators, or more robust investments from larger investment firms. (RoughDraft.VC does not provide follow-up funding.)
“These are serious entrepreneurs,” Zuberi said. “They just happen to be students, broke like I was when I was a student, and a small amount of financial support could help them take their project to the next step.”
It’s something Boyce has wanted to see for years, he said. Describing himself as a “computer geek” who always followed technology trends, his first foray into entrepreneurship came with a computer consulting business he launched as a high school junior. In college, he established HackHarvard, a student-led endeavor now in its third year that provides support, mentorship, and various resources and technical skills – but not monetary support – to students launching their first startups. He also spent a year-and-a-half working at education startup Skillshare.
Ultimately, he said, he’s dedicated to helping student entrepreneurs because they’re in such a unique spot. College provides a “density” of talent and a lends itself to a “special coming together of skills,” he said. Plus, students can be perpetual optimists — they don’t always think about risks, barriers or limits.
“College students are well-placed to continue making some of the biggest technology companies that we’re going to see,” he said.
Which is where RoughDraft.VC hopes to come in. The group — comprised of students from Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Babson College and Tufts University — heard its first group of pitches in late January, and plans to make a funding announcement this month, Boyce said.
But much as he finds inspiration in his fellow students, others are equally admiring of his advocacy and tenacity.
“He has been passionate about entrepreneurship from the day he landed at Harvard, and I think this allows him to finally help create an institution that would continue to serve the student community beyond his stay on campus,” said Zuberi, calling Boyce a “community builder.”

Original story link here.

Friday, February 1, 2013

Easy to say; not that easy to put into action

Feb 1, 2013

Startups & Venture Capital

TrueLens: Helping brands meet consumers

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal

Roy Rodenstein, co-founder and CEO of TrueLens, says the company’s Socialgraphics tool can provide a much broader view of the customer.
W. Marc Bernsau

Every day, people all over the world post, share, “like” and upload billions of comments and photos to social media sites.
And the challenge for marketers has been to wade through all that — and use it to their advantage.
Cambridge-based TrueLens aims to help businesses navigate the social media mire, in an attempt to find, target and get to know their current customers, vet potential ones, and ultimately market the right products to the right people at the right time.
As CEO Roy Rodenstein said: “It’s a simple problem to state, a difficult one to execute.”
TrueLens’ “Socialgraphics” tool collects what the company calls “expressions” made publicly on social media sites, then applies a proprietary blend of algorithms, natural language processing, brand taxonomies, and sentiment analysis to ultimately classify the individual poster, and analyze and identify their brand preferences and perceived offline behavior patterns. That data is then layered onto a company’s existing customer relationship management software and database. The company also has access to a cloud-based dashboard that allows them to interactively browse customer data.
Rodenstein said the Socialgraphics tool’s goal is to get to know consumers’ interests, influence on others, media habits, where they shop and spend their time, and what brands they like and buy.
“It’s a much broader view of the customer,” said Rodenstein, who co-founded TrueLens in late 2010, and whose previous business, Going.com, was acquired by AOL in 2009. “Customers are people, too. They’re not just a row in your database. They have a lot of richness in terms of their interests, their hobbies, their attitudes.”
And when marketers understand that, he said, they can provide more targeted and effective marketing, build long-lasting relationships, and, ideally, make more money — because they’re going after known or prospective customers who are more likely to click on a link rather than the “unsubscribe” button.
Simply put, “better customer data equals smarter marketing,” said Chris Sheehan, managing director of CommonAngels, an investor in TrueLens.
Most people are bombarded daily with irrelevant marketing from all directions, he said. But as a consumer in the future, Sheehan said, “personalization may be so effective that I never feel like my time is being wasted, and my needs are anticipated and met without all the effort that it currently takes.”
Inevitably, such tools are going to become standard throughout marketing, Rodenstein predicted. But as for now, he said, they’re just “scratching the surface of all the potential ways that we can learn from this data.”
The company, which has roughly a dozen employees, announced in early December a $1.2 million funding round led by Google Ventures. Its plans are to further invest in its core technology and engineering team, Rodenstein said, as well as to ramp up its own marketing and sales.
So far, the company has amassed what Rodenstein called “dozens” of customers, largely from retail, e-commerce, finance, credit card companies and the banking industry — including such global names as Adidas and Neiman Marcus.
“Our broad vision is to really improve the relationship between consumers and companies, to make it as mutually beneficial as possible,” Rodenstein said.

Original story link here.