Entries from January 2010 ↓

YouTellYou bills itself as a photo-story magazine published by its readers.  At its heart, it’s a cross between Flickr, Wordpress, and Life Magazine.

The Pitch:

On YouTellYou, anyone can create and publish a photo-story in minutes linking to their Flickr, Facebook or Smugmug account or uploading the photos from a their computer. The stories are presented in an online magazine, according to number of views, ranking, category, publishing date.

YouTellYou is NOT another photo hosting service: the emphasis is creating and sharing our stories via our pictures. The YouTellYou target author is someone that is willing to share information and is looking for a large audience.
YouTellYou aims are to be easy and quick for the authors, elegant and easily navigable and searchable for the readers.

The possibility are endless: travel diaries, breaking news, family events, sport events, nature photography etc.
YouTellYou offers a publishing platform to the reporter that hides in all of us.

Accomplishments to date:

Live since Jan 6, 2010

Reviewed by:

• ReadWriteWeb
• University of Missouri
• KillerStartups
• Makeuseof
• Startupmeme
• Blogs in USA, France, Holland, Germany, Brazil, Spain, Japan, Italy

Development plans:

YouTellYou needs 2 developers to make the website secure and scalable, 1 designer to make it gorgeous and 1 internet marketer to spread the word and get traction, readers and authors.

Key Challenges:

• Spread the word and make the website go viral
• Build a smartphone interface to allow people to post stories “on the go” with audio comments

Principals & Previous Experience:

Ruggero Domenichini, Senior Business Analyst and Project Manager, Italian by birth, in New Zealand since 1996 (citizen since 1999)

What they want from an investor:

~ NZD 300,000 to fund development and staff over the next year, with significant business mentoring to produce a business strategy for the next stage.

Dave’s commentary:

Ruggero Domenichini, the founder of YouTellYou seems an energetic and passionate man with plenty of real-world experience in IT and creative flair.  Like many start-up founders, he’s developed his product to the beta launch and now need to build a team to turn his product into a company, as well as cash to make it happen.

Contact details:

Ruggero Domenichini (founder)
email: rujero@youtellyou.com
mob: +64 21 683305
skype: ruggero.domenichini

Note: If you plan to act on any information on this site, please be sure to read the disclaimer.

Bill Payne is one of the USA’s most decorated Angel investors. In 25 years, he has invested in more than 50 companies, mentored hundreds, and founded four angel networks. In recognition of his contributions, Mr. Payne was awarded the 2009 Hans Serveriens Award, the US Angel Capital Association’s highest honour.

Thanks to BNZ, the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, The ICEHOUSE, and many other organisations, Bill will be spending six months here in New Zealand as the BNZ University of Auckland Business School Entrepreneur-in-Residence at The ICEHOUSE, working on a variety of projects including running seminars for angel investors, mentoring startups, providing advice to government, working with tertiary education institutions on commercialising their intellectual property, and hopefully building some international syndication opportunities.

He has a busy schedule and will be visiting many regional centres round the country, but is keen to meet with a wide variety of people while he’s here.  Bill is a very personable, approachable, and straight-talking guy, and we caught up with him over a Skype call to find out more about how we can get the most out of him while he’s here.

In the podcast, Bill talks about his own investment interests, how to put together a deal that satisfies everyone, how the “first-to-market advantage” is vastly overrated, and obtaining follow-on investment offshore.

You can download or listen to the podcast:

You can contact bill directly on bill@billpayne.com, and you might also be interested in Bill’s ICEHOUSE blog.