GigaOM » Matt Brezina

What we are listening to: Sincerely CEO Matt Brezina

Om Malik — Sun, 13 May 2012 15:07:58 +0000

This is second edition of our weekly What we are listening to series. Last week we asked Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital about what he is listening to. This week, I asked Matt Brezina, co-founder and CEO of online-to-offline photo service, Sincerely. In his past life he was co-founder of Xobni, and is an avid music listener.

Om: What kind of music do you listen to when you work?

Matt: Mostly Hip Hop — Dr Dre, Wiz Kalefa, A Tribe Called Quest. Also, I listen to my brother’s music projects such as his bluegrass/americana band Brothers Comatose, Death Cab and other recordings he is working on. I am also a trumpet player, so i’m often listening to my jazz favorites like Roy Hargrove, Miles, Lee Morgan and Clifford Brown

Om: How do you listen to the music? (Tell us about the gear you use)

Matt: (My co-worker) Hua sits right across from me and he is the DJ in our non-developer area, so we listen to a lot of music straight from his Apple Thunderbolt 27-inch monitor. I listen to Pandora on my iPhone with stock iPhone headphones on my 2 mile bike ride to and from work every day. I have a Jambox for taking music to the park or my roof deck. I want to upgrade to the Big Jambox though.

Om: What are your favorite music apps/services?

Matt: Spotify for DJing parties. Pandora for cruise control while working or biking. We use Turntable.fm in the office on launch days.

Om: What are your favorite music blogs?

Matt: I don’t really read music blogs

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Sincerely’s card-giving app evolves into a charitable giving app

Kevin Fitchard — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:00:04 +0000

Sincerely is adding a charitable twist to the holiday and special occasion cards users generate with their mobile phones. Starting Thursday, customers can choose from a selection of Sincerely Giving cards on their iPhones, iPads and Android devices that are linked to specific non-profits. By paying a premium for the card, the giver places a donation to that charity in the receiver’s name.

CEO and co-founder Matt Brezina said Sincerely is starting with three non-profits, the National Breast Cancer Foundation, buildOn, and Thirst Relief International, but plans to expand the program to more. According to Brezina, Sincerely’s mission has always been to make the act of card giving more thoughtful. So far that thoughtfulness has taken the form of customization – allowing customers to insert their own photos, images and sentiments into the cards they send. Attaching a charitable donation to those cards is the next logical step, Brezina said.

Each non-profit has multiple card templates within the Sincerely Ink store, each of which can be customized with a giver’s own photos and messages. The cards run either $10 or $20, but 70 percent of that cost is giving directly to the non-profit selected. As with Sincerely’s regular cards, which start at ~~$1.69~~ $1.99 for U.S. addresses, the San Francisco startup prints out each card and mails it to its intended recipient.

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Postagram adds QR codes to connect physical & digital cards

Ryan Lawler — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:00:59 +0000

So you just got a Postagram from one of your friends. Great! But what if you want to upload it to the internets, to show off the cool post card someone sent you?

Until now, you most likely took a picture of that post card and sent it to Twitter or Facebook. Which is cool and all, but it also means that it was probably out of focus or there was reflection from the flash or it was off-center or whatever. In other words, your digital picture of a physical postcard of your friend’s digital photo ends up looking pretty crappy, which takes away the entire point of your post on the social networks.

The newest version of the Postagram app solves all those #firstworldproblems. It does so by adding a QR code to all post cards sent out, which — when scanned by a QR reader that was just added to the app — lets recipients download a digital copy of the photo and share it on Twitter. It also lets the sender of the post card know it was received — success!!! — and automatically adds the senders’ address to the recipients’ address book so they can send their own Postagrams in reply.

Matt Brezina, CEO of Sincerely (the company behind the app), admitted that most Postagram recipients have probably never scanned a QR code, which is one reason the post cards don’t actually mention “QR.” Instead, it instructs users to “scan the stamp with the app.” Once they do so, both recipient and sender will receive credit toward their next Postagram.

The notification aspect is just one part of Sincerely’s attempt to bridge the physical and digital aspects of sending a post card. Senders will also be able to get notifications and track the Postagrams they send, letting them know when cards and other Sincerely products hit the mail stream, when they reach the first post office, and when they get to the recipient’s local post office. And, of course, they’ll know when the QR code is scanned by the recipient.

Finally, the app seeks to connect users by letting any Sincerely or Postagram user send a card to another user without actually having to know his or her address. With the new feature, called Sincerely Magic, the iPhone app will scan your address book and users will be able to connect so long as they have another user’s email address. If the intended recipient already has his or her address stored by Sincerely, an “S” will appear next to his or her name in the sender’s address book.

The idea, according to Brezina, is for Sincerely to become the new White Pages, by allowing users to send gifts without having to know anything more than an email address. And when/if it reaches critical mass, users won’t even need a physical address for their friends if they want to send something cool. That’s the plan, at least.

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Book time with a startup founder this weekend through Exec

Ryan Lawler — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:01:50 +0000

Exec launched a few weeks ago with an ultra-easy-to-use system for booking executive assistants to do various odd jobs around San Francisco. Now it’s extending that service to include booking time with a few startup founders, according to the company blog.

On Saturday, April 7 from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Exec will let users schedule phone or Skype meetings with different serial entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley. For the Saturday test, it’s also extending availability outside its current local market. That means users will have access to founders that they might not otherwise be able to reach, either because they don’t have the connections or because they’re physically located outside of Silicon Valley.

In the first few hours after the plan was announced through a blog post, Exec had already received about 15 requests, according to Exec founder and CEO Justin Kan. He told me that most had been focused on how to pitch their startup ideas, raise funding and learn more about best practices for early-stage startups.

Startup founders that Exec is booking time with this weekend include:

Alexis Ohanian (Reddit, Breadpig)
Steve Huffman (Reddit, Hipmunk)
Matt Brezina (Xobni, Sincerely)
Tikhon Bernstam (Parse, Scribd)
Justin Kan (Justin.tv, Exec)

Unlike the usual $25 per hour that Exec charges for its services, time with the startup founders will cost $100 an hour each, with a minimum of 30 minutes for each virtual meeting. Those founders are donating their time, and all money raised will be going to the founders’ favorite charity, DonorsChoose.

To book time, Exec is asking users to include the hashtag #execfounders in the job description, to bring up the special pricing and founders available. For Exec, it’s a way for the startup to test variable pricing based on special skills, something that it’s been working on the back end, but its current system doesn’t allow. Whether that functionality will eventually make it into the app remains to be seen. In the meantime it’s a fun way for the startup to connect users with possible mentors and to raise a little bit of charity money as well.

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For Some Web Startups, Freemium Is the Way Forward

Jennifer Martinez — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:59:43 +0000

While web-based companies like Facebook and Twitter have yet to operate on earned income, a string of others have adopted the freemium business model, which involves offering a paid premium service in addition to what’s already being offered for free. Venture capitalist Fred Wilson outlined the attributes of the freemium model in a 2006 blog post, citing Flikr and Skype as examples of companies that had already embraced it. Xobni’s launch of its new Xobni Plus paid service today highlights the rise of the freemium model as companies look for ways to make money online.

Many startups have gone freemium over the years, among them Jott, whose service translates spoken messages into text and inserts them into email and other web services; online storage service provider Box; Evernote, which allows users to store notes in the cloud; career web site LinkedIn and Internet radio provider Pandora.

Xobni, which makes software that helps people organize their Microsoft Outlook accounts, has been planning to introduce a paid service for awhile. (For an outline of the new features on Xobni Plus, watch this video.). Co-founder Matt Brezina said the company was inspired by LogMeIn’s paid system and even received consulting advice from the remote services technology provider, which went public last month. Moreover, Brezina said the company was unwilling to take the traditional, ad-supported route. “When you build a business model around advertising, your customers are the advertisers, so you do things the advertisers want,” he explained. “If you build a business model around service products…the customers are the user and you end up giving the user what they want.”

But startups aren’t the only ones making the switch to freemium. Under pressure from cheaper and free services on the web like Google Apps, even Microsoft will begin offering a mix of free and paid services with Microsoft Office 2010. The free version of the Office suite of products, which offers less functionality than the paid version, will be available on Windows Live.

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