NH TechJots

SellMyTimeShareNow.com Prospers on eCoast

In 2003, Jason Tremblay and Mark Eldridge saw an opportunity and they took it.  Noticing that the timeshare resale industry is a $10-12 billion business and that there were no easy, reliable ways to sell timeshares, they created SellMyTimeshareNOW.com. 

How It Works.  Rather than serving as a typical broker that would take a commission, they came up with a simple advertising model: the seller would pay once to advertise the timeshare until it sold.

Pricing ranges from $199 for a timeshare owner looking to rent out his interest for a year to $497 to the owner looking to sell a timeshare outright.  The company itself does not handle the sale transaction, merely acting as a facilitator in the deal.  But earlier this year they opened a closing company to handle transactions and they're already up to 7 employees.

The Results.  By applying the FSBO concept to the timeshare industry, SellMyTimeshareNOW.com seems to be tapping into some real interest.  Each week, more than 1000 offers are made to purchase advertised timeshares, with a total offer value of more than $4 million.  Through a combination of search engine optimization and marketing, as well as other online marketing efforts, the site brings in 40-50,000 visitors per day.  And that seems to be the key to the company's model: put lots of interested eyeballs in front of motivated sellers.

Staffing.  Today, they are a rapidly growing business that employees 57 people, mostly in Dover, NH, but some in Orlando, FL as well. (And Jason told me in an interview that they're looking for technical, sales, and customer service employees in NH now.)

Funding.  SellMyTimeshareNOW.com reinvests its revenues into growth and has yet to take any outside funding.  However, Jason told me that they expect to be in the market for venture funding, perhaps later this year.  He also indicated they have had some interest in the company on the part of potential acquirers, though they believe the opportunity for growth is large enough that they would prefer to take on funding to take it to the next level.

Tags: timeshare, nh jobs, fsbo

NH Man Matches Scientists with Funding

Dr. George Kurzon of Peterborough has taken his frustration with the limited funding for scientists from agenices like the National Institutes of Health and turned it into a not-for-profit entrepreneurial venture.  Through a web site he founded in 2003, FundAScientist.com, Dr. Kurzon has been working to match scientists with great ideas to funders with money to invest. 

Because of his passion for the issue, Dr. Kurzon operates the site without charging any fees.  Here's how it works.  Funders and scientists register with the service.  Funders indicate the types of things they want to fund and scientists indicate what they're working on.  FundAScientist.com then finds matches and facillitates direct conversations between those with the ideas and those with the money.

Dr. Kurzon told me he developed the interest in this subject more than a quarter century ago: "About 1980 I read that Dr.Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, who won the 1937 Nobel Prize in Medicine, could not get funding from the National Institutes of Health. I was shocked to learn this....if he could not get funding, how could a young scientist with no track record get funding for an innovative research project?"

To date, the system has registered 300 scientists and 50 potential funders.  About 150 matches have been made, according to Dr. Kurzon.  But this just scratches the surface as there are some 10,000 scientists seeking funding every quarter who do not get the money they need.  Dr. Kurzon would like to continue to grow this service by reaching out to those 10,000 scientists every quarter to let them know another option exists.

This is an intriguing web site that certainly seems to do a great service by filling a hole in the existing funding infrastructure.  It potentially allows great science to move forward while turning a profit for smart investors.  I wish Dr. Kurzon luck in this effort.

Icovia Wants to Plan Your Spaces

Icovia was founded in July 2000 by Steve Street, who currently serves as CEO of the young company.  I had the opportunity to meet him last week at the NH High Technology Council dinner and had a good chat with him.  I thought readers of this space would be interested to know more, so Steve agreed to an email interview.

Why did you found Icovia?

In early 2000 I was Director of Consumer Experience at Furniture.com when it was clear that the company would not survive. I had more than 4 years Internet consulting experience working for other companies in the Boston/Cambridge area and ultimately fell back to what I knew. As I was contemplating starting my own web design and development company I was being approached by many companies in my network to do work for them. It made for an easy decision. Although we had shown significant growth and success for the first five years it was our ability to create unique online space planning solutions (now Icovia) that set us apart and created the opportunity for us to be an even larger business. To be successful though we had to learn what it means to be a product company and not a services company. This is something we continue to learn today but I feel we are excelling at.

Give me your elevator pitch.

Icovia is an online space planning solution that enables consumers to quickly and easily make fit based decisions about products they are considering purchasing. From home furnishings like sofas and treadmills to exploring the purchase of a new home. Icovia is easy to use and requires no software for the consumer to engage deeper into their space and gain the confidence to make a purchase. Over 160 companies license private label versions of Icovia to run from their website because what Icovia does best is convert web browsers into profiled, registered users, what we call leads for the business. We help identify and qualify consumers for businesses like La-Z-Boy, Thomasville, Nautilus, Kohler and Samsung.

What’s your business model?

We are an ASP and bill our customers on a monthly subscription basis based on the number of leads we generate for them in a month. This allows our value to be closely measured. In almost six years we've never had a business cancel our service other than 5 small companies that ceased operations.

How is the company funded?

Currently we are self-funded with no long term debt. We have engaged with Borealis Ventures to explore the possibility of a deeper relationship. We are most excited about the experience and connections that people like Jesse Devitte and Matt Rightmire bring to Icovia.

What does the future look like? 

We see Icovia evolving into a network where buyers and suppliers can interact in the context of space planning to design and manage their spaces.

Is there anything else you would like readers to know?

We are a growing and exciting company always looking for the brightest talent. We have a great team in place currently and invite anyone interested in learning more about joining us here to email a resume to (steve dot street at icovia dot com).

Parcxmart Wants to Change How You Pay for Parking

SeacoastVentures profiles John Regan, founder of Parcxmart:

Since 2003, a Hampton Falls company has been leading a quiet revolution to transform the common parking meter. Parcxmart specializes in smart card payment plans and it has targeted the coin-consuming parking meter industry — there are as many as 5 million meters in the country that generate an estimated $7 billion annually — as an avenue for consumers to pay not only for parking, but also for meals, coffee and newspapers. “When I took a look, I thought there’s a ton of money to be made,” said John Regan, Parcxmart’s founder and CEO.

Regan indicates he is looking for more funding and says "we are also in a capital gap between early and later stage investors and if we can’t raise more money, we could be a dinosaur."

His company's technology is currently being used in Bridgeport (CT), New Haven (CT), and San Jose (CA).

2 NH Companies in Red Herring 100

The latest Red Herring 100 list is out and 2 New Hampshire companies appear on it.

EqualLogic, a Nashua company that makes Storage Area Networks, was praised by the magazine for achieving a 17 percent market share.  The firm has raised $52 million over 3 rounds and employs 185 people.  The company describes itself as the "leading provider of iSCSI-based, all-inclusive storage area network (SAN) solutions that enable businesses - from Fortune 500 to small and mid-size organizations - to realize the economic benefits of consolidated, self-managing storage." 

The second Granite State winner was GlycoFi, a Lebanon-based biotech firm that was recently acquired by Merck for $400 million in cash.  It had $35 million in 4 rounds of funding and employs 58 people.  Frankly, I don't understand what they do (it's way beyond my comprehension as a lowly political science major years ago), but it has something to do with manipulating proteins using bioengineered yeast. 

Congrats to both companies!