Zerply

Dear subscribers and everyone else who has faithfully followed this blog, we've moved! Hope you can come and visit us over at our new blog and please feel free to subscribe there by clicking on the follow button.

Much thanks for reading and for continuing to read :)

/Eliza 

Quora, founded by the Facebook Mafia. 

(Facebook Mafia = the Facebook founders evil plan to bring World domination by controlling every living thing's social life. Or just a bunch of Facebook guys wanting to make the web more open and social. You decide which one to believe ;) 

Quora is a question platform. You ask whatever you like and then you let the 'experts' answer. They have many well-known Silicon Valley folk who  are very helpful when it comes to startup questions. There are also a few famous people along with many, many others. It's a site that has great potential and has already, for a long time, contained more value then Yahoo answers, and as the userbase grows the more valuable the information will become. Think wikipedia but at an informal level.

 The problem with Quora is how do you know the people answering the questions are good at what they say they good at?Going to their Quora profile will either give you a short description written by them or a link that leads to their website or blog. Sometimes the website or blog will then lead you to another site, say LinkedIn or Twitter, or you end up searching through their information. Wouldn't it be great if you could get verification by just glancing at their Quora profile? Or for that matter on peoples blogs and websites? A meter telling you the authors areas of expertise, verified by other people, without having to read testimonals? Do we think Zerply may have a solution? We do indeed. Am I going to tell you what it is? Not yet...it is still in the making, but feel free to take a guess or come with your own idea. 

/Eliza

If you haven't heard the rumors of color, you will soon. The group camera app, pulled in 41 million in seed funding and has sweeping social traction with big Silicon Valley names. As we are trying to find investors for our seed round it's easy to get all googly eyed, and or desparing as you hear of one company after another bringing in large amounts of funding. Getting money isn't easy, but it's not supposed to be either, it all comes back to hard work and pushing forward. The likes of Facebook, Twitter, Groupon tend to blind us to the reality that money, as cliche as it may sound, doesn't grow on trees. Yet, if you're a startup or thinking about starting a startup don't be discouraged because having a startup is, after all, a heck of a lot of fun, and there are plenty of people who have gone before leaving behind them small nuggets of advice spread across the web. The likes of Paul Graham, Fred Wilson, and Venture Hacks are oozing with pratical tips to get you going. And as everyone keeps saying there hasn't been more favorable times to raise money since the late 90's =) 

 Speaking of color, if you haven't seen the new theme for Zerply yet, you should head on over to the home page and unlock it. It's double rainbow bright and vivid:

We thought it would be nice to allow all of you to see what parts of the world are on Zerply. Our dear designer, Luke Beard, whipped this awesome graph up:

Download full size infographic: http://bit.ly/fNwUKj

 Looking through our users we wanted to emphasis those from Japan, as we all know the earthquake was a major crisis. If you haven't donated yet please consider doing so. Every little bit will help. American Red Cross is a great place to start. 

A while back Zerply launched our beta mobile theme, we had a bunch of users testing it out. And recently we launched it for everyone who is on Zerply. On your phone go to: zerp.ly/*username* to check it out.

For those of you who aren't on Zerply but would like to be, just click on the invite link below. After your signed up you can then access your mobile theme. There is enough to go around. Enjoy!

Invites: http://bit.ly/hPTrfa

P.S Please keep in mind that it's a theme and not an app - in other words you won't be able to access the inside of Zerply. Our mobile app is on our to do list. Please let us know if you're having any trouble or comments. Write us at doreply@zerply.com 

Someday perhaps paper business cards will be obselete, but for now almost everyone has one. Some are fat, some are matted, some are oddly shaped (most of them are pleasant looking though) and A LOT of them are black. What is it with people and black business cards? Does a black business card make you automatically a little bit sexier? Still business cards can say a lot about a company and the people behind it. 

Here are some of the first business cards of the big wigs of Silicon Valley:

Bill Gates: 

Photo from: Flickr

Steve Jobs:

Photo from: flickr

Larry Page : 

Photo from: financetwitter

Jerry Yang:

Photo from: Robert Holmgren

Happened upon any funny or beautiful business cards lately? We would love to see them =) 

Post them below or leave a link. 

/Eliza 

 Facebook is slowly taking over our lives. Most people don't seem to mind because they do it in such a way that even the things that you hate, the privacy settings, the new photo sharing, the buttons popping up on every page single page you visit, aren't enough to keep you away from friends and family. Though sometimes, you need to be careful on what you allow Facebook to do. Ethan Sopenski, our evanglist and just a plain likable guy learned the hard way, or some might say the right way, depending upon how you look at it. He recently went to a meetup, where startups meet with each other, which he registered for online, he used the Facebook API to register and didn't really think twice about his profile picture which they used for his name tag, so he ended up with this on his shirt:

 Though he looked a little silly with a picture from his boyhood with a fake mustache it did help to brake the ice on many conversations, and it makes for a rather funny story.

What do you think, is Facebook taking over the internet? 

Speaking of Facebook, Zerply recently started a Facebook page feel free to like us if you want. 

 Our team has been split. Straight down the middle, poor Ethan is now left with the old couple, Eliza and Chrisofer, while Taaniel and Luke have flown back to Europe, Taaniel  to Estonia, Luke to England. Reduced to only 3 people instead of 5 we have a lot more room in the office, but our hearts are of course a little sadden. Thankfully with the likes of Skype, Gchat, Facebook, Flow, ect we are never more than a click away from each other. Our work shall continue and Zerply will continue to get better and better. We are, of course, able to do what we do because of our users, and our users have been more than helpful. Last month we decided to try out Uservoice a very convenient tool to hear the voices of our users, we have been amazed by the response as more than 30 people have contributed with ideas and thoughts. We can not, unforntuantly, meet all of the wishes, but many will be impletmented in the near future. If you haven't posted an idea yet, please feel free to do so. 

 Right now we are working on the inside re-design as well as bringing in financing. Pitching is what they call it, when you present your idea to an investor. Christofer and Ethan have been working hard on giving a presentation worthy of an Oscar nomniee. Though in comparsion I think Christofer and Ethan could have presented the Oscars better than the hosts the other night. Well almost anybody could have (ahem) - Poor Anne Hatheway and James Franco. Here are a few sneak peeks into the deck, which is a startup term for powerpoint slides. Of course, they are a work in PROGRESS. 

Can you guess whose been working on them? And no, we WON'T be keeping the last slide ;)

 The weekend brought with it a lovely sweet tooth delight for us over here at the Zerply HQ. If you live in either Beverly Hill, Chicago, NYC, or Palo Alto and haven't tried Sprinkles cupcakes yet, you have to! They are the most moist, creamy, melt in your mouth cupcakes ever! This coming from a former cupcake skeptic. Not only are their cupcakes amazing, but their story is too. A husband and wife team, Candance and Charles Nelson, left their glamours six figure paycheck to pursue their dream of a cupcake bakery. They took what money they had, re-located to Beverly Hills, and opened shop. The very first day, they sold out in an hour. Not only have they opened several stores since 2004, but their goals include a 20 year plan to become a great American brand. 

 Of course not everyone will have the success that the Sprinkles have experinced, but that is not really the point, the big picture is that they stepped out of their comfort zone, moved to the place they thought they would have sucess in and worked hard. It reminds me of the startup world. It isn't always glamorous nor is it easy, but sometimes leaving the comfort of a paycheck, the familiarity of a hometown and chasing your crazy idea is exaclty what needs to be done. 

In the midst of the very big task of re-designing the inside of Zerply, and perhaps inspired by our romantic, five person Zerply Valentine's dinner ;) Luke and Taaniel spent last night optimizing Zerply's public profile, coming soon, for the iPhone and Android. Although Luke is biased and can't take his eyes off the iPhone. Here's a sneak peek taken by Luke: 

Also, we've been busily preparing to meet with investors and getting our pitches down and figuring out our story. If any of you are interested in startups some of the best advice we have come across is from the website called venture hacks, besides having a really cool logo they are extremely entertaining on subjects that should be boring. Here is Ethan, our cycling evangelist, resting his legs, for a few hours, and working away. 

/Eliza