Google Enterprise Blog: Techstars assists tomorrow’s entrepreneurs with help from Google Apps, plus 3 more |  |
- Techstars assists tomorrow’s entrepreneurs with help from Google Apps
- Google App Engine helps MAG Interactive handle explosive growth of word game, Ruzzle
- Private conversations with restricted Google+ communities
- Calendar events that update when Google Groups change
| Techstars assists tomorrow’s entrepreneurs with help from Google Apps Posted: 05 Nov 2013 01:12 PM PST Editor's note: Colorado has enticed all sorts of pioneers since its Wild West beginnings. We're excited to highlight a handful of these trailblazers - the intrepid entrepreneurs, aspiring micro-brewers and ambitious thought leaders - who have helped create the adventurous and innovative culture the Centennial State is known for. Today, we hear from David Cohen, Co-founder and CEO of Techstars, a mentorship driven startup accelerator based in Boulder, Colorado. Join us next Wednesday for a Hangout on Air with David and fellow Techstars co-founder Brad Feld to learn more about technology in the startup world. Can you tell us about Techstars? Techstars is a startup accelerator program that pairs promising entrepreneurs and their companies with seed funding and mentorship from the top venture capital firms and angel investors. We started in Boulder in 2006, and over the last seven years, we've opened six new offices, graduated 234 companies, and helped create nearly 1,900 jobs.  Why do you think Boulder has become such a hot spot for entrepreneurs and startups? Boulder has a very "give first" culture. Investors, inventors, CEOs and engineers open their doors and ears to aspiring entrepreneurs, and they do it without expecting anything in return. People here genuinely want to help others, and it has really turned the area into a hotbed of innovation and entrepreneurship. How has Google Apps helped Techstars? Google Apps is a boon to our operation efficiency. We've saved a ton of money, which is huge in itself, but more importantly, we're far more productive than we could be with other solutions. The collaboration features in Docs and Drive alone have saved us hours we would've wasted emailing attachments back and forth, trying to reconcile changes. Do you see many of the Techstars startups using Google Apps? More than 80 percent of Techstars startups use tools from the Google Apps platform to run their business. Most of them began using tools like Gmail, Hangouts and Docs in their personal lives, so using the business version of the platform comes naturally for them. Google Apps is heavily ingrained in our startup culture. What's one of the major cultural benefits you're seeing with Google Apps? Hangouts have revolutionized the way our company, startups, mentors and investors connect and collaborate. Our program relies heavily on successful partnerships between co-founders, startups, mentors, venture firms and employees, so having the right tools to help everyone work is vital. We have dedicated Hangout monitors in each of our offices for ad hoc discussions, staff meetings, and mentorship sessions. We vet and interview Techstars applicants over Hangouts, since our applicants come from all over the world and conference calls don't quite capture their personality or company vision. And since our mentors are just as spread out as our applicants, we use Hangouts to connect them with the startups they're advising. What Google Apps product could you not live without? I could not live without Google Docs. I literally have 15 Google Docs open at any given time, so I know I've got everything I need in front of me and can switch back and forth easily between them to get my work done.    |
| Google App Engine helps MAG Interactive handle explosive growth of word game, Ruzzle Posted: 05 Nov 2013 11:45 AM PST (Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform blog) Editor's note: Today we hear from Daniel Hasselberg, co-founder and chief executive officer of mobile game development company, MAG Interactive, based in Stockholm, Sweden. MAG Interactive produces some of the most popular games in the world, including Ruzzle, which has more than 45 million players in 142 different countries.. When we launched our word game Ruzzle in 2012, we had no idea it would become an international sensation almost overnight. We initially promoted the game only to our family and friends, but within two weeks of our launch, Ruzzle was the No.1 game on the Swedish App Store. I believe if we hadn't used Google App Engine to build the backend of Ruzzle, we wouldn't have been able to scale fast enough with our own servers, which would have killed the app in the marketplace. There were about a million downloads of Ruzzle per month in the Nordic region, Holland, Spain and Italy through 2012. As we refined the game's social integration through channels like Facebook and Twitter, we grew rapidly in Italy and the United States. In 2013, Ruzzle became the No. 1 game download on Google Play and the App Store in Italy, Sweden, the United States and many other countries. Things were especially crazy at the end of last year. We were seeing about 700,000 new players each day from December 2012 through January 2013. We added 20 million users in a single month! It was incredible to see App Engine scale – and just keep on working – as we grew from about 5 million players to 25 million players in just a few weeks. Our decision to use App Engine as the platform for Ruzzle and our new game, QuizCross, was strategic. Some of us at MAG Interactive helped develop the server platform for one of the most popular music download services in the Nordic region, so we knew about the challenges of having to scale quickly. While we didn't anticipate Ruzzle's popularity, we did recognize even before creating the game that we could face scaling problems if we were successful. So we decided from day one to use a cloud solution. We looked at Amazon's platform but preferred Google's approach to cloud solutions. Google's scalability was an important factor in our decision, but we also appreciated the company's transparent pricing. The more efficient we became with App Engine, the less we paid. The Google Cloud Platform team has been great to work with, as well. They are very supportive and appreciate our feedback. The technical support experts at Google are amazing, too – very hands-on. They know the platform extremely well and can help us work through any challenge. We're also using Google BigQuery for business intelligence. We track millions of events in the game every day so we know what users are doing – or not doing – and how we should improve the experience. We really like that we can throw enormous amounts of data at BigQuery, and it still performs. It only takes a few seconds to get results, and there are no scaling issues. It's also easy to use. We have just one data analyst doing all the work with BigQuery but could probably use more people. If there are a few brilliant data mining experts out there who can imagine a future in Stockholm, please give us a call! One thing we've learned from our BigQuery analysis is that the more users play Ruzzle, the more they improve their skills. New players typically find about 18 words in the two-minute time frame they're given. After they play 100 games, they can find about 50 words, on average. I think that tracking player improvement is what keeps people playing and has helped to make Ruzzle so popular. BigQuery offers our company a lot of insight into the use of our games and how we can improve them. We're looking forward to expanding our relationship with Google as App Engine and Cloud Platform evolves.   |
| Private conversations with restricted Google+ communities Posted: 05 Nov 2013 11:01 AM PST Posted by Michael Cai, Product Manager, Google+ At most organizations, it's important to make sure that private conversations remain private. Google+ is an ideal tool for groups who want to have social conversations--without broadcasting their thoughts to the world. Today, we're adding an extra layer of security by rolling out restricted communities that only users in your organization can join. Whether it's designs of your beta product or notes from your team off-site, anything you post will remain restricted to the organization. You can decide if your restricted community will be open to everyone at your company or private, joinable by invitation only. While administrators can set restricted communities as the default for your organization, you can always choose to create communities open to people outside of your domain, so clients, agencies or business partners can join in the discussion.  Once a community is created, you'll be able to share files from Google Drive as well as videos, events and photos. Community owners can easily change settings, manage membership or invite other team members to join and jump into the conversation.   |
| Calendar events that update when Google Groups change Posted: 05 Nov 2013 09:31 AM PST Life is full of changes, especially at work. As some people retire or move on to new jobs, other people arrive to take their place. Even within a company, people often switch teams and take on new roles, which can dramatically change how they spend their time or who they need to meet with at work. Google Calendar should make it easy to manage your schedule at work, especially if you're switching teams and trying to attend a new set of meetings. Starting today when Google Calendar invitations are sent to members of a Google Group, the attendee list will automatically update as people join or leave the group.  This update will roll out to Rapid Release customers today and to Scheduled Release customers in the coming weeks. It will only apply to new calendar events created after the roll out is complete, but you can apply it to existing meetings by re-inviting the group.   |
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