TeachStreet™

If you’ve never used the technology before, Bluetooth provides a way to connect and exchange information between devices such as mobile phones, telephones, laptops, personal computers, printers, GPS receivers, digital cameras, and video game consoles over a secure, short-range (up to 30 feet) radio frequency bandwidth.

Picture: www.Bluetooth.com

After recent legislation (effective 7/1/08), Washington State law now makes it illegal to use your hands to talk on the phone while driving. The fine: $110. Money aside, there are also serious safety risks that go along with talking on the phone and driving.

So whether your impetus is abiding by the law, or being safe at the wheel, you’ll probably, if you aren’t already, soon be using a Bluetooth headset or dash unit. Here are a couple things to be aware of before you make your purchase.

Pairing

• Pairing is necessary because Bluetooth devices only communicate with each other after sharing a passkey (by user input). Since the Bluetooth address is permanent, a pairing is preserved, even if the Bluetooth name is changed. Pairs can be deleted at any time by either device.

• Some cell phones are not Bluetooth-enabled. So check your owner’s guide or contact your phone’s manufacturer to find other options for complying with the new law.

Phone Compatibility

• If you already have a phone you’re happy with, check your owner’s guide, call the manufacturer or check their web site to find out which headsets will be compatible.

• The array of headset styles is dizzying, so pick one that appeals to you. If possible, try it on before purchasing. Often the in-ear models work better for women and teens. The over-ear hook models will usually stay in place for those with larger ears.

Built-in Headset

• The easiest way to deal with hands free issues is to buy a phone with built-in headset.

• When you climb in the car, just pop off the headset and put it in your ear. When docked, the headset charges along with the phone and there are no compatibility issues – pairing them takes the push of a button.

• As always, check out all the features of any electronic device you are considering to make sure it’s best for you in every dimension prior to purchasing.

About Teacher Blogger Nancy Ferrell

Nancy has been teaching technology skills to those who didn’t grow up with computers since 1985. As Seattle’s Home Computing Coach, she empowers clients who use PCs, Macs and all kinds of hand held digital devices to reach new levels of confidence and competence.

I posted a link to the 10-minute King5 interview in the previous blog post, but I wanted to also post the individual segments (below), for your viewing pleasure (and, because my mom will be oh so proud ).

We wanted to give a special thanks to Tim Robinson of King5/Kong6/16 — he was fantastic to work with on the segment, and he and his team did a fantastic job — we couldn’t be happier!

Segment #1






Segment #2






Segment #3






Of course, it also reminds me that I’d love to learn how to make digital videos and improve my interviewing skills!

Update — check out TeachStreet on TV — so excited!

Sorry for the late notice, but we wanted to let our loyal blog readers know that we’re being featured on KING5 tomorrow morning — we don’t have definite times (a range is presented below) but the feature will be by Tim Robinson and will likely refer to TeachStreet several times between 7:30am and 9:00am (with a live Seattle breakdancing performance by TeachStreeter Daniel Etcheto at 8:15am).

So, set your Tivo!  And, if you haven’t been to TeachStreet in awhile, stop on by and find something new to learn!

Know that we’ll post some video of our performance (and that of Zach the Dog!) afterward — just wanted to give you all a chance to catch up live!

Tentative TV Times are:

KING 5 Morning News on Thursday 7/17

• 4:30-7 a.m. on KING 5
• 7-9 a.m. on KONG 6/16
• Live Segment time: 8:30 a.m. (approx.) — 3:30-minute long segment
• Will be several segments and “teases” during the morning newscast; may include @ 8:10 a.m. and/or the 8:27 a.m. 15-second tease.

Thanks to Lora Shinn (she’s the parenting columnist at NWsource (she also runs the blog Little Kids Big City — if you’re a Seattle parent, definitely check that out)) for showing some love for our humble little website — she interviewed our own Marketing and Operations Goddess, Ms. Katie Gruver about what we’re working to build, and we couldn’t be happier with her article about TeachStreet!

Personally, I loved her last sentence

“I liked the fact that I could find independent teachers, and unusual subspecialties — whether beekeeping or talking to kids about the birds and bees.”

Sorry… we couldn’t resist that syrupy title.

DailyCandy.com Seattle did us the nicest favor by featuring us in today’s Seattle DailyCandy Teachy Keen e-mail, and on the DailyCandy website, and the impact was incredible!  They pretty much boosted our traffic through the roof (our lawyers won’t allow us to give specifics, but the technical term is that the pop was awesome!), but what’s even better is that their audience resonated perfectly with what we’re trying to achieve with TeachStreet — helping to connect inquiring minds with great local teachers, school and classes.  We set records for new reviews, new classes and new registered members, which continues a nice growth trajectory that we’ve seen since launch.  And, it looks like our most popular searches from the DailyCandy crowd today were for knitting classes, learning photography, tennis lessons, plus some summer sailing classes — we love it!

Thanks to everyone — our new teachers who have been helping us since launch two weeks ago, and today’s recent arrivals — we’re having a blast, and hope you are too.

And, for those of you not familiar with DailyCandy, head on over to their site and sign up for some Seattle DailyCandy — really, we received so many e-mails from friends today who (a) wrote to ask us if we knew about it (uhh… yeah ) and then (b) to tell us that it’s their favorite daily, must-read email subscription — so, what are you waiting for?!?

Exciting day around the ‘Street — we’ve been live for all of 12 hours, and so far, so good. Have seen a bunch of really interesting (and fun) classes show up, including “Private Bird Behavior Consultations” and a bunch of great knitting and sewing classes from our friends at Stitches here in Seattle!

In addition, we’re honored to have received some awesome launch coverage including:

• Two posts by the uber startup blog, TechCrunch — both pre-TeachStreet-launch and post-launch!
• John Cook, at the Seattle P-I, announces “Seattle: Land of nearly 1,000 Yoga Classes” — thanks, John!
• Brier Dudley, at the Seattle Times, not only wrote a great TeachStreet article, but it includes an action-packed video with yours truly — Mom will be so proud
• Greg Sterling’s Screenwerk blog, which covers local media better than pretty much anyone (IMO), gave us a nice launch write-up — I realized that he uses a similar ‘cloud header’ theme!
• Monica Guzman’s Big Blog writeup, “Want to take a class?“
• Matt Marshall’s Venture Beat
• Mary Kathleen Flynn at Tech Confidential

My Mom’s going to be so proud!

TeachStreet Closes Series A Round of $2.25 Million

Madrona Venture Group and Bezos Expeditions Lead First Round of Funding for New Company Dedicated to Connecting Teachers and Students Online

SEATTLE, WA — April 21, 2008 – TeachStreet, a new company dedicated to helping students find great local teachers, today announced that it has closed a $2.25 million Series A round of venture financing. The round was led by Madrona Venture Group, with participation by Bezos Expeditions and several strategic Seattle angel investors, including current and former Amazon.com executives Jeff Blackburn, Michael George, Jason Kilar (currently CEO at Hulu.com), Kim Rachmeler, and Joel Spiegel; former CEO of Expedia, Erik Blachford; founder of ProgrammableWeb, John Musser; and former RealNetworks’ executive and current co-founder of Athena IQ, Dave Richards.

TeachStreet was founded by Dave Schappell, a former Director of Product Development at Amazon.com who most recently served as Vice President of Marketing at JibJab, the viral digital media studio. Proceeds from this first round of funding will be used to launch the company’s service in new markets, enhance product development, support sales and marketing initiatives, and attract new talent. Unveiled today in the Seattle market, TeachStreet features a comprehensive guide to more than 25,000 Seattle-based teachers, classes, instructors, and schools to provide both teachers and students with a better way to find one another.

“TeachStreet has quickly evolved from an idea on a white board to a company and a product that delivers great value to teachers and students,” said Scott Jacobson, a Principal with Madrona Venture Group, a leading investor in early-stage technology companies in the Pacific Northwest. “This is a testament to Dave, his vision for the company, and the strength of the team he has assembled. While the demand for local learning is vast and growing rapidly, the marketplace is highly fragmented, and students often lack the information they need to find the teachers and courses that best meet their needs. TeachStreet solves this problem for students and teachers, and we look forward to helping the company continue to execute against its vision.”

In conjunction with closing its first round of funding, TeachStreet added two high technology business veterans to its Board of Directors, including Scott Jacobson and Dave McClure, a Silicon Valley investor and strategic advisor to numerous start-ups. To further assist the company’s growth, TeachStreet has also formed a Board of Advisors, including Amazon.com executive Jeff Blackburn, and Gregg Spiridellis, co-founder and CEO-Guy of JibJab. The rest of the TeachStreet team includes product development veterans with deep experience in community development, Web 2.0 technologies, affiliate marketing, and search engine optimization from such companies as Amazon.com, Getty Images, JibJab, Jobster, and Zillow.

“Bezos Expeditions is particularly interested in investing in marketplace-oriented communities that bring together distinct audiences in a fun and engaging manner,” said Melinda Lewison, a Senior Investment Associate with Bezos Expeditions, a personal investment company of Jeff Bezos. “This is a hugely underserved market at present, and we think the application of Web 2.0 technologies to a hypertargeted audience of teachers and local experts, who have traditionally relied on coffeehouse posters and Craigslist postings, presents a significant opportunity to build a high-growth online-to-offline community-based business model.”

“TeachStreet was created to address the huge gap that currently exists in the market for students and teachers to not only find one another but also increase the likelihood that they’re a perfect fit,” said Dave Schappell, founder and CEO of TeachStreet. “We believe that having such a strong group of investors from the very start significantly improves our chances of realizing our goals.”

About Madrona Venture Group
Madrona has been investing in early-stage technology companies in the Pacific Northwest since 1995 and has been privileged to play a role in some of the region’s most successful technology ventures. The firm invests predominately in seed and Series A rounds across the information technology spectrum including consumer Internet, commercial software and services, digital media and advertising, networking and infrastructure, and wireless. Madrona currently manages over $425 million and was an early investor in companies such as AdReady, Classmates.com, Farecast, Redfin, and ShareBuilder. To learn more, visit www.madrona.com.

About TeachStreet
Founded in June 2007, TeachStreet is dedicated to helping students find great local teachers, and empowering teachers with robust online tools to manage their teaching business. The free site provides the information that students need to make a good decision about their learning experiences, including student reviews and teacher recommendations, pricing information, location, teacher background and training, and more. TeachStreet is headquartered in Seattle, WA and backed by Madrona Venture Group. For more information, visit www.TeachStreet.com.

TeachStreet Unveils New Website to Help Students of Any Age Find Great Local Teachers and Classes

Launching in Seattle with More Than 25,000 Classes, Teachers, Instructors, Coaches, and Schools, TeachStreet Gives Lifelong Learners A Simple Way to Connect with Local Experts

SEATTLE, WA — April 21, 2008 – For the lifelong learners among us, it’s not always easy to find the right teacher. Whether hoping to brush up on their Spanish, learn how to swing dance, or prepare for the SAT, students have had to search far and wide — and often with little success. TeachStreet, the first website dedicated to helping teachers and students connect with one another in the real world, today took the covers off its beta site at www.teachstreet.com. Representing the largest free directory of learning experiences for students of all ages, TeachStreet features more than 25,000 Seattle-area teachers, trainers, tutors, instructors, coaches, and classes. Students can search for teachers across more than 500 subjects and filter the results according to map-based location, ratings from other students, teacher availability, promotional pricing, and more. For teachers, TeachStreet provides a simple yet powerful way to promote themselves online and manage their learning business.

“We have heard time and again from adult learners, and from parents looking for tutors and coaches for their children, how difficult it is to find relevant and up-to-date information to evaluate teachers. At the same time, teachers are craving easy-to-use tools to help market themselves on the Internet, manage their student rosters, and find more prospective students in their neighborhoods,” said Dave Schappell, founder and CEO of TeachStreet. “One of our goals with TeachStreet is to use the latest online technologies to facilitate real-world connections and provide anyone who wants to either learn or teach a new skill with a rich, geographically targeted website that feature’s a city’s best teaching resources.”

TeachStreet provides teachers and instructors with an array of free online tools to help them grow their business. These include:

• Online Profile Builder: In under three minutes, teachers can create a robust web presence where they can feature photos, sample lesson plans, pricing, and student references;
• Search Engine Optimization: TeachStreet was designed specifically to help teachers’ listings be discovered more easily on major search engines including Google, Yahoo! and MSN, providing teachers with an easy way to be found by students; and
• Scheduling and Management Tools: To help teachers organize their schedules and manage their workload, TeachStreet offers an assortment of calendering and management tools that let teachers focus their energy on what they do best.

With more than 25,000 Seattle-area classes, teachers, instructors, and coaches currently listed on the TeachStreet beta site, there’s a class for every interest. Classes and teachers currently available on TeachStreet include everything from the popular (tennis coaching, piano lessons, and cooking classes) to the esoteric (break dancing, surfing, and Texas Hold ‘em Poker, to name just a few). The site can be searched by keywords or visitors can scroll through TeachStreet’s extensive directory of classes, which are organized by subject. Currently, some of the most popular subjects in Seattle include: 918 yoga classes in 31 neighborhoods, 413 dance classes in 28 neighborhoods, and 131 dog obedience classes in seven neighborhoods. In addition, students are encouraged to submit reviews of teachers, and teachers are invited to enhance their profiles with lesson plans, class photos, and more. While this extensive coverage is currently limited to the Seattle area, TeachStreet plans to expand its service to other US cities in the coming months.

“As a guitar teacher trying to expand my student base, I think TeachStreet will be an invaluable resource. I’ve spent four years teaching guitar to students of all ages and that’s where I want to focus my energy, not trying to keep abreast of new technologies,” said Ryan Casperson, a guitar teacher based in Wallingford and early tester of the site. “In less than three minutes I was able to set up a full-featured online presence on TeachStreet and I now have a permanent address to send my students where they can get a true sense of my teaching style and how I work with students.” Ryan’s TeachStreet profile page can be found here.

About TeachStreet
Founded in June 2007, TeachStreet is dedicated to helping students find great local teachers, and empowering teachers with robust online tools to manage their teaching business. The free site provides the information that students need to make a good decision about their learning experiences, including student reviews and teacher recommendations, pricing information, location, teacher background and training, and more. TeachStreet is headquartered in Seattle, WA and backed by Madrona Venture Group. For more information, visit www.TeachStreet.com.

Last night was one of those nerve wracking moments for yours truly — let me paint the picture.

TeachStreet was chosen to present at Startup Demo 2007, along with 6 other local startups, at an event hosted by MIT Enterprise Forum of the Northwest. We were excited about our first public demo to a larger crowd, and the team made a big push to get us ready — we were fired up! I tested the demo beforehand at our offices, and then to be extra safe, we checked the live demo at the location itself — all’s looking great, right? Wrong! When I walked up to the podium, the first 1-2 minutes went smoothly… I was on a role… feeling quite the speechmaster, actually. Then, I moved to the demo itself. Drum roll, please. Yes, as you can guess, the site wouldn’t load. Tech veterans will say “it isn’t a demo until something malfunctions”, but in most of those cases, it’s in a conference room with a few folks wh0 will happily accommodate a 5 minute intermission, to give you a chance to research and fix the problem. In this case, I had a 100+ person audience, not to mention the field of judges, including John Cook, from the Seattle PI (thanks for the nice TeachStreet article mention anyway, John!)

We did what we could — and were really excited by the enthusiasm from the crowd, despite our technical glitches — it always feels good to be reminded about the excitement around our idea/strategy.

In the end, Brent Lamphier from Athleon Sport took home the first prize, and it was well deserved — his presentation was really crisp, and his demo came off flawlessly!

Note to self, and other startup entrepreneurs — don’t set up your development website server on port :2001 — much smarter to use the normal :80 (when the wireless switched over on us, we got bumped to a wireless hub that blocked :2001). See… we learn something new every day!

Earlier this week, we were excited to make our first public presentation about TeachStreet to a large room of people (150+). A few weeks ago, we applied for the TiE Funding Forum 2007, to be one of the six startups who got a chance to give a 5-minute presentation to a room full of people, and to be judged by a panel of Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors — we were excited to be chosen at all! We admit that we had high hopes of bringing home first prize (a few thousand dollars), and likely being flooded with investors carrying arms full of cash… alas, it didn’t turn out as originally planned.

All kidding aside, though, the event was fantastic. The presentation was met with a ton of enthusiasm, and afterward we were excited by the “flood” of people coming up to tell us how much they liked our idea. In addition, we made a number of new connections with local VCs and Angel investors — that was especially important, because to date, we really haven’t opened up much beyond our private Angel/investor contacts. In addition, we’ve been able to solicit a number of tactical suggestions on things to add to our presentation deck, questions we should be prepared for, etc. All in all, we know that this event was a big learning experience for us — getting that first public pitch out of the way is a big load off. Finally, the event secured for us our first print newspaper mention, and a great blog inclusion by the Seattle Times Brier Dudley — our own little humble beginnings!

Of course, this post wouldn’t be complete without highlighting the foes who vanquished little ol’ TeachStreet — first prize went to mortgage company revenue maximizer, Protelus and second prize went to Springstar, a company developing non-toxic pest control products (both were pretty cool, although we’re quite sure there were steroids involved… we’re having the commissioner investigate)

For those who are interested, I’ve embedded the presentation below — of course, it’s sans-audio/explanation/pitch, and thus may be a bit dry (there are very few words on the slides — I went for more of a Seth Godin / Guy Kawasaki visual pitch). But, you should be able to follow the flow — if you have any questions, fire us an mail or leave a blog comment — and, if you’re a competitor, stop reading now!

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