Shaun Terry is a co-founder of Active Locations, LLC.  Active Locations is the creator of Trist, a mobile software application that automatically recognizes when you are at a venue, and configures itself to provide branded venue related services.  The company is currently looking for beta customers and seed investors. 

What’s Active Locations all about?

Active Locations was founded on the vision that all venues will be self-describing in the near future. What we mean is that when you walk into a venue — a building, a stadium, a convention center, a mall, campus or concert hall — you will not have to  look up a sign board or ask a concierge for information. Every venue will automatically make available information about itself  to you. This will enable companies to monetize that information by providing useful services on top of that information. Trist is our first application that is built along this vision.  

I heard you guys are Android gurus.  What were you doing before starting this? 

Both my co-founder and I were among the original members of Sun Microsystems’ Java Design center. After Android platform came out, we knew that there were several applications that we had built during the Java/Web days that we could radically improve with the advent of mobile computing platforms and location services. We were recently placed in the Top 50 for Google’s android programming challenge, and so we decided to put our talents to good use and started to work on Trist.

What keeps you motivated and pushing ahead?

Having left programming for a few years – doing management and sales for Wall St. and Silicon Valley – we realized how much we actually love building software applications. This is in a way, a return to what we love doing, so that helps a lot. We also love it when potential users play with our application and say they love it! We’ve wanted to work together for a long time. So, I suppose what keeps us motivated is doing what we love, with people we like, and knowing that others will find the product useful and cool.

What would you consider to be a successful result for your company?

We started developing the software last summer and we’re now just ready to talk to outside investors. As neither of us had worked at a startup before, we applied to the Columbia/NYU inSITE program, and we were thrilled to be one of five companies that the program has taken on for the year. I bring this up because we define success based on the lifecycle of the business. We have an end-state definition of success for each stage in our development; we define success in simple, measurable steps. Next step would be in getting beta customers before release (and we are in active talks at the moment).

Lastly, of course, what’s your favorite drink?

Since we are doing the demo, we’ll stick to beer. Otherwise, we both enjoy vodka with soda.

So who are you guys and how did TeamHomeField.com get started?

Check out our website for the detailed story: http://teamhomefield.com/blog/about.  Here’s the shortened exerpt:

“According to the US government, we’re a Delaware corporation called Overtime Media Inc., but really, we’re 4 competitive athletes who set out a while ago to change the way sports video is handled on and around the web.

We’ve got business bios here, but here’s the quick rundown.

Reece transferred to Brown University in 2004 and met Dan his first day there.  For whatever reason, they became immediate friends and enjoyed playing lacrosse for the Bears.  At some point, reece threw this idea at dan about better using game video.  Luckily, dan was studying computer science.

At another point, Dan told reece about Joe who was Dan’s childhood friend and a stud lacrosse player at UVA, too.  then they graduated, dan went to work for Cisco, joe went to grad school at Syracuse, and reece took off around the world.

A while later, Dan was still at Cisco, Joe was working at Viacom and playing professionally.  Reece had been to a cumulative 25 countries, worked on a Hollywood film with these guys and started playing professional lacrosse for the Boston Cannons.

The idea came back.  Reece wanted game film.  Joe loved the idea.  Dan got the itch to build, read Atlas Shrugged (his first book ever) and took the plunge.  Within a month, Dan proposed to his fiancee, quit his job at Cisco and started the company with Reece and Joe.”

 
What keeps you motivated? 

I really want to see our product exist in the world.  I believe we’re really building something powerful in HomeField.  Also, my cofounders.  I am working for them.  We’re a team and we bust our ass so we won’t let each other down.

 
What keeps you up at night? 

Nothing.  I sleep like a rock, knowing that I’m working hard everyday on a great product. 

 
What would you consider to be a successful result for your company?

Absolute dominance.

 
What has been the most challenging aspect about building your startup so far? What has been the most rewarding?   

Most challenging has been defining an emerging market with a disruptive product.  Most rewarding has been all the learning and experience.  The phrase “same shit different day” never, ever applies to me.  Every day is different and I’m always learning.

 
What advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs?  

“Be here now…” Acknowledge the harsh reality of your situation, but know that you will succeed in the end. (Stockdale Paradox).  Help others.

 
What do you do for fun when not working on your company? 

Intense workouts everyday.  Keeps me sane. 

Lastly, with this being a Demos and Drinks event, what’s your drink of choice?

Bourbon and coke.

• Mashable on Evan Williams’ Keynote:http://mashable.com/2010/03/15/sxsw-evan-williams/
• Coverage by CenterNetworks:http://www.centernetworks.com/tag/sxsw
• Coverage by The Austin Chronicle: http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Guides/sxsw

For Foursquare and Gowalla, this is likely a double edged sword. Pro: it’s going to drive an explosion of adoption for location-based services, which is a huge win. Con: it’s going to drive an explosion of competing location-based services. Overall, I’d bet that it’s a big net positive. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Regardless, from an entrepreneur’s perspective, this announcement is huge and promises to spur a tidal wave of innovation and opportunity. Get your surf boards ready! Read more about the news here:

http://mashable.com/2010/03/09/facebook-location-launch/

It’s a short and sweet read that features many NY tech leaders including Fred Wilson, Charlie O’Donnell, Owen Davis, and Kevin Ryan. Whether the 2010 numbers will reflect the growing tech industry here is still to be seen, but I’m hopeful. As a baseline, here are some hard numbers on the VC industry from PE Hub showing some *early* positive signs for 2010 pickup:

“Last decade, the New York region accounted for approximately 8.3% of all U.S. venture capital investment. This ranked third, well behind New England (12.5%) and barely in front of the Southeast (8%). For context, Silicon Valley snagged around 34 percent. The percentages for number of companies funded — as opposed to dollars invested — were fairly similar.

Last year, New York accounted for 8.1% of all venture dollars invested in U.S. companies. New England again ranked second (12.4%) and the Southeast came in fourth (5.5%). Again, the number of companies was fairly similar (New York companies comprised 8.6% of the total).

Finally, let’s look at the first 66 days of 2010. This is where things get a bit interesting. New York still ranks third, but is fairly close to New England in terms of percentage of dollars invested (13.8% vs. 14.3%). On the other hand, it’s back to its traditional level in terms of number of companies funded (8.4% for New York vs. 18.7% for New England).”

With brand advertising rapidly moving towards the social media space, I wouldn’t be surprised if these 2010 estimates are beat.

Read more here: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/03/02/facebook-made-up-to-700-million-in-2009-on-track-towards-1-1-billion-in-2010/

Here are a couple of points highlighted in bold from Ken’s section plus some thoughts from 2009:

1. The internet’s revolutionary power as a distribution network will transform content.  Definitely a true statement, and even more disruptive than imagine.  It’s neat to hear Ken mention how the internet could be a powerful tool for enabling new forms of content such as being a tool for independent film producers.  Given the limitations of the time, Ken stops at saying that it could enable distribution of trailers.  Who would’ve thought Jaman.com for indy films.
2. The internet to transform customer service: discussion boards are the future!  The internet continues to amaze the world in creating new ways for people to interact, including ways for businesses to interact with their customers.  Hello, social networking.  Hello, Twitter. 
3. “Imagine if you had a 1,000 subscribers… that’s a nice little business.”  Today, 1K users is barely enough for a sample testing group, let alone a beta product, let alone a business.  Bummer dude.
4. Let’s work together with the existing media ecosystem.  Or not.  Now that we have enough confidence and staying power, the industry is all about disruption and even shrinking markets. 
5. Bandwidth problem will get solved.  Always bet on technology. 

Marc Andreesen’s portion has great info as expected.  Here are some that I found amusing:

1. “We tried NOT to do two things: invent anything new; solve any hard problems.”  For startups, determining what NOT to build is just as important as deciding what to build.  Marc highlights that they will not be trying to solve the problem of ‘search’ – who would’ve expected Google to build an empire there.  Entrepreneurs can often find opportunities by understanding of what tough problems are not being solved by existing companies.
2. “It took us three months to realize interactive TV wouldn’t work and may never work…”  Online video has exploded in the past few years with mobile video on the horizon.  I personally find it one of the most interesting and fun areas to explore as both a consumer and techie.
3. The applications that are going to be successful over the next several years are the ones that will enable communication.  Web 2.0 and Web 1.0 aren’t really that different after all.
4. The future: deeper integration into desktop environment.  True to a degree, but then again, why not just skip the desktop and live in the cloud.   Marc’s other predictions on a more ‘graphical, immersive navigation’ and convergence are still pushing forward today.
5. Techies love Dilbert comic strips.  This has certainly stood the test of time.

Larger Tech & Media Companies:

• AOL
• Massive (acquired by Microsoft): ads in video games
• Microsoft office (mostly sales)
• Yahoo office (mostly sales)
• Google office (mostly sales)
• NBC’s digital media group
• Fuse.com
• Right Media (acquired by Yahoo)
• Joost – online video
• Hulu – online video
• Viacom (plus their properties MTV, etc.)
• IAC
• Forbes.com

Startups

• AnyClip
• Clickable
• foursquare
• Hunch
• Meetup.com
• MediaMath
• Squarespace
• Tumblr
• Xanga