PSFK Author:
Jeff Squires

We’ve all made a snide remark or two about those painfully slow “unboxing” videos clogging up the blogsphere. We never really got into them until we saw this recent clip showing the opening of a Samsung Omnia i900. So far, the video has already been seen by nearly 2 million people!

In our final installment of the NYC Innovators Series, PSFK spoke with with Michael Galpert of Aviary about how his company is enabling amateur artists to start flexing their creative muscles.

Michael explains how the high barrier of entry for existing design suites, such as expensive software and complicated interfaces, deter potential artists and how Aviary capitalized on that by creating an easy to use, web-based platform.

Aviary

Also check out:

Michael Sharon of Socialight
Philip James of Snooth

Earlier this week, we introduced Philip James of Snooth.com, a forward-thinking entrepreneur bringing location based services and personalized recommendations to the wine industry. For our second installment in our NYC innovator series, we sat down with Michael Sharon of Socialight, the urban navigation service for mobile phones and the web. Sharon shared a bit about his startup and how it’s helping users explore the world around them. In this video, Michael discusses the opportunities the iPhone presents for application developers and mobile advertisers as well as how Socialight is helping align brands with secret parties, art gallery openings and other local events.

Socialight

Some of you may remember our Bay Area Innovators series from a couple months ago, where PSFK met with a handful of Bay Area-based young entrepreneurs about the innovative companies and applications they’re creating. We thought we’d pick it back up and introduce a few more innovators from the Big Apple.

Philip James is the founder of Snooth, a web-based marketplace for wine that is making it easier for people to research wines that suit their personal tastes. The services enables users to find the perfect wine for any occasion, price range, or location. Philip goes on to explain how Snooth functions as a business and their future plans for integrating location based services.

Snooth

Continuing with our Bay Area Innovators series, where PSFK chat with Bay Area-based entrepreneurs about their innovative new businesses, we bring you Zack Rosen. We met Zack last month while we were out in San Francisco; he is the co-founder of Mission Bicycles, an online retailer that builds custom fixed gear bikes. We asked Zack to tell us a little bit about his company and what makes fixed gear bikes so special.

What is Mission Bikes?

We build custom fixed gear city bikes. Our customers choose the components and colors they want and we build them their dream bicycle. We conceived the company in November, staffed up in March, and have fulfilled over a hundred orders since April. Our website has pictures of our bikes and a blog with a lot of the back story

Why did you start the company?

Last summer I was sitting in a park in San Francisco admiring really beautiful bicycles people were riding in on and started wondering aloud with friends why bike stores in the city were not selling bikes nearly as nice as the ones we were seeing on the streets. There wasn’t a good answer, bike companies simply didn’t manufacture them. Idle talk about starting a company that could build custom bikes turned in to soggy napkin planning and before long we were taking our first orders from friends.

What makes bikes from San Francisco unique?

Custom fixed gear city bikes are not a San Francisco only thing, they are becoming popular in cities all over the US and increasingly over seas. Aesthetically they are very ‘clean’ looking, eschewing big branding and having a minimum set of components; one or no sets of brakes and no derailleur. There are website galleries of tens of thousands of hand assembled fixed gear bikes:

www.fixedgeargallery.com
www.velospace.org

What is it about fixed gear bikes that cause owners to develop such close relationships with them?

The best way to understand is to try riding one. It’s a very different experience from riding a ‘hybrid’ bike typically recommended for city biking. The geometry of the bicycle frame and the direct drive connection you have with the road makes it a much more involved experience. I personally went riding just to get around San Francisco and not particularly enjoying it to falling in love with cycling after starting to ride a fixed gear bicycle.

Thanks Zack!

Mission Bicycles

Check out what other SF entrepreneurs are doing:
Ramit Sethi of “I Will Teach You To Be Rich”
Gustaf Alströmer of heysan!
Joe Gebbia of AirBed & Breakfast
Ben Finkel of Fluther.com

San Francisco & Entrepeneurialism

While conducting our recent Bay Area Innovators series, where PSFK met with a handful of Bay Area-based young entrepreneurs about the innovative companies and applications they’re creating, we started wondering what it is exactly that attracts entrepreneurs to San Francisco in the first place. Essentially, we wanted to know how, or why, San Francisco fuels innovation and entrepeneurialism?

Participants include:

Ramit Sethi of “I Will Teach You To Be Rich”
Joe Gebbia of AirBed & Breakfast
Gustaf Alströmer of heysan!
Ben Finkel of Fluther.com
Jake Adger of Success Factors

Noticing that there were no standard protocols for communicating between mobile phones and desktop computers, Heysan! is a mobile web based service that enables people to use any Instant Messaging service to chat through their mobile device. The service is not only free, but works with any phone and on any network.

Gustaf discusses some of the popular devices amongst their young, urban users that are typically overlooked by the mobile industry and explains the unique relationship this audience has with the mobile web.

Heysan!

Joe Gebbia is the Co-Founder of AirBed & Breakfast, a new way of traveling that allows people to book rooms with locals to get a truly local experience. Travelers simply log onto the site and peruse the profiles of locals. Hosts provide descriptions of their accommodations, photos, as well as personal information about themselves. If travelers find a good match, they can book a room with a credit card just like any travel site - that is, if the host also approves their profile.

Joe discusses why people are interested in staying with strangers, how they deal with issues of safety, and how they are tying in with the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

AirBed & Breakfast

Carrying on with our Bay Area Innovators series, where we chat with Bay Area-based entrepreneurs about their businesses and how they turn a profit, we bring you Ben Finkel.

Ben Finkel is the CEO of Fluther.com, a community question and answer site where you can ask questions about anything and the community will help answer those questions. Ben discusses how they connect users questions to experts and what inspires complete strangers to help each other out.

Fluther