GigaOM » oren jacob

Led by former Pixar talent, Toy Talk raises Series A and brings funding to $16 million

Eliza Kern — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 23:13:04 +0000

Toy Talk, the artificial intelligence startup aimed at kids and entertainment and led by former Pixar CTO Oren Jacob, has raised a $12 million Series A funding round led by Charles River Ventures, bringing the company’s total funding so far to $16 million, a company spokeswoman confirmed Friday.

An SEC filing, first noted by Venturebeat, shows that the company recently raised $11.5 million as part of the Series A. The company earlier raised a $4 million seed round that was led by Greylock Partners and included First Round Capital, True Ventures (see disclosure) and a number of angel investors, the Toy Talk spokeswoman confirmed.

Toy Talk, which has been described as “Teddy Ruxpin meets Siri,” recently released a teaser video showing the concept behind the startup, which is still in stealth mode. Speaking at GigaOm’s RoadMap conference this week about the importance of good design in building a message, Jacob said the concept behind the company, launching in 2013, should be clear.

Jacob worked for Pixar on Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2 and Finding Nemo, and fellow co-founder Martin Reddy, who worked on artificial intelligence at SRI International, also worked at Pixar on films including Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, and WALL-E.

“Toy Talk is the name of the company – I think it should be pretty obvious what we’re trying to do,” Jacob said at RoadMap.

Disclosure: Toy Talk is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

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Meet RoadMap Book, exclusive for RoadMap attendees

Om Malik, Katie Fehrenbacher — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:00:58 +0000

Because GigaOM’s second annual RoadMap conference is focused on design in the age of connectivity, we decided to do something entirely not connected (go figure) for all our RoadMap attendees this year: we designed and printed an old-fashioned book, which we’re exclusively giving to everyone at RoadMap.

Our RoadMap book contains 10 interviews and essays with some of the leading thinkers in web, mobile, product and device design, including Mike McCue CEO of Flipboard, Nest CEO Tony Fadell, designer Christian Lindholm, and the head of design for Parlay Labs, Scott Jenson.

Here’s our TOC:

The reinvention of the store for a connected world, interview with George Blankenship, Tesla Motors
10 rules for designing the future, essay by Christian Lindholm, designer, entrepreneur
Attention to detail: designing for new frontiers, interview with Hosain Rahman, Jawbone
Marching backwards into the future, essay by Scott Jenson, Parlay Labs
The magic of good design, interview with Tony Fadell, Nest Labs
Find the story in your product, images & photos, Oren Jacob, Bobby Podesta, ToyTalk
The call of beauty over data, interview with Mike McCue, Flipboard
The qualified self: online identity finally comes of age, essay by Edward Aten, Swift.fm
Using data to design for your ears, interview with Tom Conrad, Pandora
The rise of augmented intelligence and data mapping, essay by Sean Gourley, Quid

Down the road you’ll be able to buy an ebook version of our book from GigaOM Books, but the printed and bound version will only be available to attendees at the RoadMap event. RoadMap will kick off bright and early this coming Monday morning (November 5)! Yes, it is rapidly approaching. See our awesome speaker list here, and buy the few tickets remaining here.

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How to design a store in a world of connectivity

Katie Fehrenbacher — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 12:00:54 +0000

Tesla’s VP of Worldwide Sales and Ownership Experience, George Blankenship, arguably knows more than anyone about how to design a disruptive brick and mortar store. Before he joined electric car company Tesla, he created the store experience for Apple, which has one of the most compelling in-store user experiences out there, and prior to that Blankenship pioneered store design at The Gap. Blankenship will speak at our RoadMap event on November 5th about how to design a store in the age of connectedness — is the store still relevant and what’s its purpose?

Watch this video for free on GigaOM

Blankenship sat down with us this month to chat about some of his thoughts on the future of the store and this is a short clip of his thoughts. We’re using the bulk of the interview (including his work with Steve Jobs) for our RoadMap book, which we’re giving to all RoadMap attendees. Come hang with us on Nov. 5 and hear from Blankenship as well as other speakers on design in the age of connectedness, including Obvious CEO Evan Williams, fuseproject founder Yves Behar, ToyTalk CEO Oren Jacob, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom, Tumblr CEO David Karp, MINIMAL founder Scott Wilson and many others.

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Indie Doc Ready, Set, Bag! Uses Social Media and Food Banks to Find Theaters

Liz Shannon Miller — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:00:45 +0000

The theatrical market for independent documentaries is pretty tough these days (though I’m looking forward to escaping the heat and catching the just-opened Winnebago Man at the next possible opportunity). No one knows this better than Pixar CTO and independent film producer Oren Jacob, who has turned to social media — and food banks! — to get the word out about Ready, Set, Bag!, the independent film that explores the high-stakes world of competitive grocery bagging.

Ready, Set, Bag! is beginning to hit theaters nationwide starting August 6 in Seattle, thanks to Jacob and filmmakers Alex D. da Silva and Justine Jacob taking on the task of distributing it themselves. This means that in order to reach their goal of playing in 50 cities this year, Jacob is calling individual theaters in over a hundred cities across the country to find venues to play the film. What he brings is a unique marketing campaign with a strategy for engaging the local community as well as strong social media engagement on a national level.

Ready, Set, Bag!‘s Blip.tv channel has been gaining momentum over the past few months. As we wrote last March, the film has partnered with online video stars like mash-up artist Mike Relm, Auto-Tune the News creators the Gregory Brothers and Pop17 founder Sarah Austin to create promotional content. “They all have different kinds of audiences with not a lot of overlap,” Jacob said, “Which offers much wider reach than we have on our own.”

The Gregory Brothers’ contribution is due out later this week, and Relm’s first video remix from the film was posted a month ago on both Blip and Relm’s personal channel.

Austin’s contribution will consist of man-on-the-street interviews about going to the grocery store. Originally, the plan had been for Austin to interview grocery store employees at work, but while the filming of Ready, Set, Bag! didn’t experience many problems using those locations, “Grocery stores responded more positively to a film than they did to web video.”

All the ad revenue from the Blip.tv content is being donated to national food bank network Feeding America, which Ready, Set, Bag! is also working with to help identify local food banks near their screenings.

That’s where the local angle comes in — a portion of all Ready, Set, Bag! profits from screenings will go to a food bank in the area. “Typically, for every ticket sold we donate one dollar to the food bank, which for a $910 ticket would mean 1510 percent of the gross,” Jacob said via phone. “We have to negotiate it individually with each theater, but so far we’ve gotten 100 percent of people on board.” This means that not only is the theater doing something for the community, but those food banks contribute to the film’s local promotion by reaching out to their networks.

On the Twitter side, when the film’s trailer premiered on iTunes a few weeks ago (which according to Jacob “really opens up things for you”), buzz about the film began to grow. “We were seeing sixty, eighty, a hundred Tweets from around the world talking about our film,” he said. So @readysetbag began actively replying to them, always asking where an interested filmgoer was located so that Jacob could look into maybe booking the film there.

Jacob also challenges “trashtalkers” who watched the trailer and felt they could bag groceries better to post videos of themselves bagging — no one’s taken his dare yet (though he got “a few nibbles” last week), but more people (including prior competitors in the bagging championship depicted by Ready, Set, Bag!) are discovering the film, thanks to the trailer as well as Relm’s remix.

That, plus using the Facebook pages of small independent theaters to engage with those followers, has helped Jacob identify venues that might be open to playing the film. He also wants to encourage fans to create their own video content — crowd reactions, waiting in line, interviews with theater owners, and even their own visits to local Safeways or Ralph’s. “We’re hoping to have a community conversation about grocery stores,” Jacob said. “Everyone goes to them, but it’s not a thing we’re talking about.”

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