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May 06. 2012 10:39PM
Ben Petrin, left, and Jeff Vocell recently launched a new mobile business application for smartphones from their company, Trendslide, in the Amoskeag Millyard at abi Innovation Hub. Below, Vocell explains how a customer can quickly take the pulse of a business. (DAVID LANE / UNION LEADER)
App quickly brings ‘pulse' of a firm's sales data on iPhone, iPad
Ben Petrin, left, and Jeff Vocell recently launched a new mobile business application for smartphones from their company, Trendslide, in the Amoskeag Millyard at abi Innovation Hub. Below, Vocell explains how a customer can quickly take the pulse of a business. (DAVID LANE / UNION LEADER)
MANCHESTER — The new Trendslide app for iPhones and iPads — a business aid launched from the Manchester millyard 12 days ago — can pull a company's sales data together into a single graphic display.
”You can get a pulse from your business in 10 seconds flat,” said Jeffrey Vocell, 31, who cofounded Trendslide with Ben Petrin, 23. The display can present historical information back for about 12 weeks.
Vocell, director of product and marketing, and Petrin, lead developer, said they formed Trendslide to meet the needs of product managers who are trying to track their progress at any given moment.
Vocell said the idea for Trendslide initially came from Cory von Wallenstein, chief product officer at Dyn Inc. in Manchester, and Vocell and Petrin jumped on it. Von Wallenstein provided initial investment funding of $25,000, he said.
The app will help high-growth startups and tech companies gauge key metrics, Petrin said.
For example, he said, “If you're on the sales team, you're probably concerned with how many leads you have, how many deals you're closing; if you're on the marketing team, you're probably concerned with how are we driving traffic to our product and how many leads are we generating for our sales team, things like that.
“(Some) people right now don't really have access to that information right away, so it's hard to tell on any given day ... am I meeting my goals for this month?” Petrin said.
“And when your boss walks into the door you want to be able to answer that question.
“Right now there's just not a way to point to something and say, yes we're doing that.
“So that's what we're looking to solve,” Petrin said during company interviews last week.
After the initial investment from von Wallenstein, Vocell and Petrin won support from Incutio, which has offered them office space in the abi Innovation Hub in the millyard, at 33 S. Commercial St., as well as $100,000 in seed funding.
Incutio is based in Wrexham, U.K.
Vocell and Petrin said they are hoping they can proceed to secure venture capital funding of $1.5 million in a Series A offering to support build out of their enterprise offering.
At that point, they said, they'll also be hiring people to fill engineering and sales staff positions.
As the business model changes from free to subscription, Trendslide will offer a Prosumer version for $4.99 a month, which it will refund if the customer provides a work email address.
The enterprise version will likely be priced on a per-person, per-month basis.
Trendslide will be one of two companies presenting their business model to the New Hampshire High Technology Council Entrepreneur Forum on Wednesday, May 30, at FIRST headquarters in Manchester.
Petrin said the sweet spot for Trendslide is high-growth businesses with under 250 employees.
“They're so focused on building great products, that they don't have the time to build the tools they need to understand how they are doing, how they are performing,” he said.
“What they do need is an app they can install and quickly get insight into that without huge investments in developing their own tools.”
Vocell said competition for Trendslide comes from businesses internal tracking through spreadsheets as well as established business intelligence companies such as Roambi and Domo.
“Their start-up costs generally price them out of a real, true small high-tech growth business that Ben and I are really aiming this product toward,” Vocell said.
“Everything is architected in a way that we can continue scaling without bound,” Petrin said.
Users can install the app today by searching for “Trendslide” in the Apple App Store, or at the company's website.
Vocell previously worked as a product manager at Draeger Medical in Andover, Mass.
He runs the NH Startups blog and holds a B.S. in management, leadership and innovation from Daniel Webster College.
Petrin was formerly a software engineer for Brightcove.
He previously worked for von Wallenstein at Dyn and holds a B.S. in computer science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Trendslide is a graphical presentation of the data. “We're simplifying the workflow of sharing that information, communicating and detecting when problems are occurring like why are sales dropping this month? The types of things that you don't want to discover on the 29th of the month,” Vocell said — “early detection of the problems that you may be responsible for.”
Trendslide was developed for Apple's iOS on iPhone and iPad, but plans call for expanding to other devices.
“Once we prove out the product, we hope to have a Web application that can be used on desktops as well,” Vocell said.
Vocell said Trendslide uses industry standard encryption for communication.
“We don't have your passwords but you do grant our application permission to access those resources on your behalf, so we can securely fetch that data for you,” Petrin said.
“We are pulling in information from publicly available data sources like Google Analytics, Twitter and SalesForce.com,” Vocell said.
“We provide a common means to access that data across those different sources,” he said.
“You can do all this without a large investment into IT infrastructure,” he said. “It's as simple as downloading the app and configuring it. You can do it in a matter of seconds.”
Before going live April 26 with a launch at MassTLC Marketing Analytics Summit in Burlington, Mass., Trendslide went through beta tests with 500 users.
Key Trendslide features are:
-- Tracking business metrics from cloud data sources like Salesforce.com, Google Analytics and Twitter.
-- Realtime data alongside weekly and monthly trends to gauge historic performance.
-- Rapid sharing of trends via email.
Trendslide securely stores data on its own servers, Petrin said.
“The reason for that is when your phone's off or you're out of the country, or for any reason, we can still be getting the latest data so that when you do come back on line, or come back from vacation, or back to the country, I should say, that data can be pushed directly to your phone, We want to handle all those problems for the user without them being concerned.”
For now, Trendslide is free. Its next steps are to transition to a subscription model and build an product for large business enterprises.
On the Net: www.trendslide.com. Write to dpaiste@unionleader.com.
”You can get a pulse from your business in 10 seconds flat,” said Jeffrey Vocell, 31, who cofounded Trendslide with Ben Petrin, 23. The display can present historical information back for about 12 weeks.
Vocell, director of product and marketing, and Petrin, lead developer, said they formed Trendslide to meet the needs of product managers who are trying to track their progress at any given moment.
Vocell said the idea for Trendslide initially came from Cory von Wallenstein, chief product officer at Dyn Inc. in Manchester, and Vocell and Petrin jumped on it. Von Wallenstein provided initial investment funding of $25,000, he said.
The app will help high-growth startups and tech companies gauge key metrics, Petrin said.
For example, he said, “If you're on the sales team, you're probably concerned with how many leads you have, how many deals you're closing; if you're on the marketing team, you're probably concerned with how are we driving traffic to our product and how many leads are we generating for our sales team, things like that.
“(Some) people right now don't really have access to that information right away, so it's hard to tell on any given day ... am I meeting my goals for this month?” Petrin said.
“And when your boss walks into the door you want to be able to answer that question.
“Right now there's just not a way to point to something and say, yes we're doing that.
“So that's what we're looking to solve,” Petrin said during company interviews last week.
Start-up
After the initial investment from von Wallenstein, Vocell and Petrin won support from Incutio, which has offered them office space in the abi Innovation Hub in the millyard, at 33 S. Commercial St., as well as $100,000 in seed funding.
Incutio is based in Wrexham, U.K.
Vocell and Petrin said they are hoping they can proceed to secure venture capital funding of $1.5 million in a Series A offering to support build out of their enterprise offering.
At that point, they said, they'll also be hiring people to fill engineering and sales staff positions.
As the business model changes from free to subscription, Trendslide will offer a Prosumer version for $4.99 a month, which it will refund if the customer provides a work email address.
The enterprise version will likely be priced on a per-person, per-month basis.
Trendslide will be one of two companies presenting their business model to the New Hampshire High Technology Council Entrepreneur Forum on Wednesday, May 30, at FIRST headquarters in Manchester.
Quick business insight
Petrin said the sweet spot for Trendslide is high-growth businesses with under 250 employees.
“They're so focused on building great products, that they don't have the time to build the tools they need to understand how they are doing, how they are performing,” he said.
“What they do need is an app they can install and quickly get insight into that without huge investments in developing their own tools.”
Vocell said competition for Trendslide comes from businesses internal tracking through spreadsheets as well as established business intelligence companies such as Roambi and Domo.
“Their start-up costs generally price them out of a real, true small high-tech growth business that Ben and I are really aiming this product toward,” Vocell said.
“Everything is architected in a way that we can continue scaling without bound,” Petrin said.
Users can install the app today by searching for “Trendslide” in the Apple App Store, or at the company's website.
Vocell previously worked as a product manager at Draeger Medical in Andover, Mass.
He runs the NH Startups blog and holds a B.S. in management, leadership and innovation from Daniel Webster College.
Petrin was formerly a software engineer for Brightcove.
He previously worked for von Wallenstein at Dyn and holds a B.S. in computer science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Graphical display
Trendslide is a graphical presentation of the data. “We're simplifying the workflow of sharing that information, communicating and detecting when problems are occurring like why are sales dropping this month? The types of things that you don't want to discover on the 29th of the month,” Vocell said — “early detection of the problems that you may be responsible for.”
Trendslide was developed for Apple's iOS on iPhone and iPad, but plans call for expanding to other devices.
“Once we prove out the product, we hope to have a Web application that can be used on desktops as well,” Vocell said.
Vocell said Trendslide uses industry standard encryption for communication.
“We don't have your passwords but you do grant our application permission to access those resources on your behalf, so we can securely fetch that data for you,” Petrin said.
“We are pulling in information from publicly available data sources like Google Analytics, Twitter and SalesForce.com,” Vocell said.
“We provide a common means to access that data across those different sources,” he said.
“You can do all this without a large investment into IT infrastructure,” he said. “It's as simple as downloading the app and configuring it. You can do it in a matter of seconds.”
500 beta users
Before going live April 26 with a launch at MassTLC Marketing Analytics Summit in Burlington, Mass., Trendslide went through beta tests with 500 users.
Key Trendslide features are:
-- Tracking business metrics from cloud data sources like Salesforce.com, Google Analytics and Twitter.
-- Realtime data alongside weekly and monthly trends to gauge historic performance.
-- Rapid sharing of trends via email.
Trendslide securely stores data on its own servers, Petrin said.
“The reason for that is when your phone's off or you're out of the country, or for any reason, we can still be getting the latest data so that when you do come back on line, or come back from vacation, or back to the country, I should say, that data can be pushed directly to your phone, We want to handle all those problems for the user without them being concerned.”
For now, Trendslide is free. Its next steps are to transition to a subscription model and build an product for large business enterprises.
On the Net: www.trendslide.com. Write to dpaiste@unionleader.com.