“I live in Chicago, and was an early adopter of Groupon….I thought I would have no problem finding someone to go with, but for whatever reason, I ended up throwing $160 out the window,” he said.

To that end, Petersen started DealsGoRoundto create an online destination where people can sell their Groupon- or LivingSocial-like vouchers. “At the time, there was no discussion about what happens when they expire…I thought there had to be a better solution.”

In February, Petersen quit his full-time job after treating the company as a side project for the past year. Today, he is announcing that he’s raised about half a million dollars in funding to take the company to the next level.

His decision was made right as the competition started to heat up.

Other companies touting the benefits of a secondary voucher market include CoupRecoup and Lifesta. In fact, Lifesta recently raised $1 million in capital to fund the company.

Petersen declined to say where the capital was coming from other than it was from prominent businesspeople in Chicago, which is also the hometown of Groupon. He says the angel funding will be used for engineering development of the products as well as customer acquisition.

To be sure, the secondary market is somewhat of a rogue phenomenon.

Petersen does not have permission or the blessing of Groupon or Amazon-backed LivingSocial to resell unused vouchers. In fact, when he’s broached the subject with the companies, the best he’s gotten is a no comment, he says.

In a statement, Groupon told us that its customers can easily give a Groupon to someone, by buying it for a friend. Otherwise, “we can’t guarantee the authenticity of Groupons sold on third-party resell sites.”

Well, neither can Petersen.

Right now, he’s offering a 60-day money back guarantee and if a voucher ends up being used or fake, they can reverse the transaction and give the person’s money back.

One way he tries to validate the purchase is by making every user get verified through a PayPal account. “We are hoping at some point to work directly with the deal providers, but for a majority of the time, it’s been a paper-based business, so even Groupon or LivingSocial doesn’t know if it’s been used or not.”

If a voucher ends up being fake, that person will not be allowed to participate again. However, he claims he has not had to exercise that guarantee even once.

To sell a voucher, a user must upload a PDF of the offer and set a price, which can be below or above what the paid for it. DealsGoRound takes 10 percent cut of the sale.

Currently, the company is operating in more than 50 cities nationwide.

He said inventory can differ drastically from city-to-city, but at any given time, each may have dozens or hundreds of active deals.

Last week, he said they sold more than 100 deals, but some weeks they sell less. Currently, they have 2,500 buyers and sellers who have registered on the site via their PayPal account, and the site registers thousands of unique visitors a week. Right now, the most expensive deal is $600 for a luxury car rental.

According to his homework, 10 to 20 percent of the vouchers go unredeemed, and it’s not because the people regret buying them. Rather they just won’t ever get around to using them before they expire.

Petersen points out that his margins are much smaller than Groupon’s or LivingSocial’s. While they make close to 50 percent of the purchase price, he’s only making 10 percent. Still, he believes that there has to be a healthy second market in order for consumers to be motivated to buy the originals. “The margins in the second market are nowhere near what they are for a Groupon clone. The second market is the natural progression. It validates the whole process.”

The degree of separation between Petersen, who lives in Chicago, and Groupon–the original deal site that’s also based there–is pretty much zero.

Up until DealsGoRound, Petersen was an entrepreneur in residence at Lightbank, a Chicago-based fund started by entrepreneurs, including a couple of founders of Groupon and other local startups. Petersen said despite his association with Lightbank, there’s no relationship between the fund and his new venture.

Outside the Moscone Center in San Francisco, people with blue suits and blue umbrellas rode around on Segways carrying an advertisement from Microsoft, which markets what the industry calls cloud-based software in competition with Salesforce’s. The ad showed a gray-haired man–symbolizing a corporate technology buyer, presumably–said to have favored a Microsoft offering because it works the way he does.

“I didn’t get forced,” the ad’s headline read, in a play on Salesforce’s name.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

2001: Incredible hype builds around a device known as “IT” and “Ginger” that is being built by inventor Dean Kamen. There’s talk among tech insiders that it could be bigger than the PC. Kamen says it “will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy.”

Dec. 3, 2001: Mr. Kamen unveils the “human transporter,” now known as the Segway, and predicts he will sell 50,000 vehicles in the first year. The two-wheeled device, which uses a complicated system of gyroscopes and other technology to balance, is supposed to fill the gap between walking and using a car. It goes about 12 miles an hour and uses relatively small amounts of power. Although the vehicle draws considerable interest, it seems clear already that the Segway is not going to be bigger than the PC. It does have prominent venture-capital and private backing, though, to the tune of $90 million.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Those ruthless, conniving bastards. Strategizing to thwart a rival.

I’m sure nothing of this sort goes on over at Google (GOOG), where everything is altruism and Segways and don’t-be-evil happy rainbows. Surely, the lobbyists Google employs are working exclusively to advance the company’s mission of organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful. They’d never do anything untoward like conspire to protect Google’s interests from a competitor. They’d never, for example, draft an antitrust complaint to the Justice Department that forced Microsoft (MSFT) to make changes to its new Vista operating system.

Please. This is business is usual. And if Google’s lobbyists aren’t holding a weekly “Screw Microsoft” meeting or some variation on that, then Google should get some new lobbyists.

Those ruthless, conniving bastards. Strategizing to thwart a rival.

I’m sure nothing of this sort goes on over at Google (GOOG), where everything is altruism and Segways and don’t-be-evil happy rainbows. Surely, the lobbyists Google employs are working exclusively to advance the company’s mission of organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful. They’d never do anything untoward like conspire to protect Google’s interests from a competitor. They’d never, for example, draft an antitrust complaint to the Justice Department that forced Microsoft (MSFT) to make changes to its new Vista operating system.

Please. This is business is usual. And if Google’s lobbyists aren’t holding a weekly “Screw Microsoft” meeting or some variation on that, then Google should get some new lobbyists.

Apple (AAPL) Co-founder Steve Wozniak revved his damn-the-judges juggernaut into high gear this week with yet another low-scoring performance on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” and a full-bore mangle of the Argentine tango last night.

Interestingly, as the trio of judges dinged him for the fourth week in a row, they also tried to compliment Wozniak at the same time, telling him they loved his spirit.

Oh, these judges know that a Silicon Valley mob riding Segways could run them down at any minute if they got too mean (and there was actually a video of just that possibility on the television show).

“The judges have forsaken me,” said Woz, sounding more and more like a very appealing nerd cult leader. “But the geeks shall inherit the earth.”

One judge, Bruno Tonioli, still had the temerity to speak the truth about Woz’s tango: “This really stunk.”

Retorted the cute-as-a-button-who-can’t-dance Woz: “I have three words for you: I’m still standing.”

That he is. So you better get out there and vote early and often (you can vote up to 10 times).

Results come tonight, but here is the video from last night:

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

In the less contentious spirit of DEMOfall and TechCrunch50, two demo conferences taking place simultaneously this week, we’re happy to bring you all the demos we had onstage at D6.

Here’s part three of the conference’s most popular demo, by well-known inventor Dean Kamen, who showed off his latest creation, the “Luke Arm” prosthesis.

The state-of-the-art bionic arm looks and feels to its user like his or her native limb.

The video of the demo is in three parts, all of which have been posted today.

In this segment, the DEKA Research founder and Segway creator talks about the FIRST Robotics competition, which Kamen founded to interest young people in science and technology.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

In the less contentious spirit of DEMOfall and TechCrunch50, two demo conferences taking place simultaneously this week, we’re happy to bring you all the demos we had onstage at D6.

Here’s part two of the conference’s most popular demo, with well-known inventor Dean Kamen, who showed off his latest creation, the “Luke Arm” prosthesis.

The state-of-the-art bionic arm looks and feels to its user like his or her native limb.

The video of the demo is in three parts, all of which I will post all today.

In this video, the DEKA Research founder and Segway creator talks more about how the arm’s control was designed and how it was received by a group of injured veterans.

Kamen also talks about the FIRST Robotics competition, which he started to get young people interested in science and technology.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

In the less contentious spirit of DEMOfall and TechCrunch50, two demo conferences taking place simultaneously this week, we’re happy to bring you all the demos we had onstage at D6.

Here’s part one of the conference’s most popular demo, with well-known inventor Dean Kamen (pictured here), who showed off his latest creation, the “Luke Arm” prosthesis.

The state-of-the-art bionic arm looks and feels to its user like his or her native limb.

The video of the demo is in three parts, all of which I will post today.

In this video, the DEKA Research founder and Segway creator talks about how he began the project after a visit to his lab by Defense Department officials, who told him that while battleground deaths were down, severe limb injuries were up.

Within a year, the prosthesis was built. In the video, Kamen shows the arm in use, including a man who is able to feed himself after more than a dozen years of being fed by someone else. Kamen also talks about how the arm can be controlled.

DEKA Research founder and Segway creator Dean Kamen comes to D6 to demonstrate his “Luke Arm” prosthesis. Named after the artificial limb worn by Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars,” the state-of-the-art bionic arm looks and feels to its user like his or her native arm.

• Walt and Kara welcome Kamen to the stage.
• So what’ve you been working on? Kamen recalls a visit with some very high-level people from DARPA years ago. The good news, they told him: Battle fatalities have greatly declined. The bad news: Many soldiers that survive battle have lost their arms. And the prosthetics we currently have don’t offer bilateral movement or fine motor control. Kamen says they charged him with developing a new prosthetic that could offer those things. “I looked at them,” says Kamen, “and I said you’re nuts.” We don’t have the technology yet. How do we interface with the human body? “You think you have trouble with the Vista interface,” quips Kamen.
• Kamen pulled together a bunch of creative folks, did a bit of research and decided to try to build the arm. DARPA asked him to build it in two years. Kamen said he’d build it in one.

• And almost a year later he had.
• Video of a man with two functioning arms demonstrating an exoskeleton version of the arm. He scratches his nose, picks up a pad of paper ….
• Kamen queues up another video that features an amputee who’s lost both his arms, using the Luke Arm after less than two hours of training. After passing a small ball to a colleague, the man pours a drink and then feeds himself for the first time in 13 years.
• Queuing up another video in which a man who has had the arm connected directly to his nerve endings controls the arm simply by thinking. Kamen says it took just a day for the user to learn how to use the arm to do basic things like picking up a glass.
• Kamen talks about the difficulty of this process–with so many possible degrees of freedom, how does someone wearing one of these arms learn to operate, say, a backhoe?
• Kamen says DEKA solved this problem by creating macros that could be programmed into the arm to shorten this process. Video demonstration of the “ball holding” and “power-drill operating” macros, among others.
• We took these things down to a Veterans Administration building to test them out. He found that the arm was difficult to attach because of varying degrees of amputation. Also found that many amputees don’t wear their current prosthetics, because they’re too heavy or uncomfortable or difficult to wear. Kamen worried that the Luke Arm would meet with a similar reception unless he solved these problems.
• DEKA went back into the lab and added a set of air bladders to the arm harness, along with a pneumatic pump that makes the arm not just more comfortable, but easier to use. Also quite powerful. Can lift weights as large as 40 pounds.
• Moving on to another video that shows an amputee using the arm to pick up grapes one by one and eat them.
• Kamen hopes someday to connect these prosthetics directly to the brain–non-invasively.
• On to the next Kamen passion: education. He thanks Melinda Gates for setting up the crowd, then makes his pitch: We’re the only country where minority kids and women get the message that they aren’t suitable for science or math careers. So let’s turn science, engineering, etc., into a fun sport. In short, he says, we got 23 companies to develop sports-like teams and an annual competition through FIRST (for inspiration and recognition of science and technology). The organization has grown: 13,911 schools from 38 countries. He asks the audience to help.