… Ecommerce, Internet Security, Economics, and Entrepreneurship

Tag: internet security

The Problem: Sexting and Predators

It is hard for me to believe, but today is the nine year anniversary of buySAFE’s birthdate.  Time sure does fly by when you are having a good time. 

When I left buySAFE a few months ago, I promised to keep you up to date on my next entrepreneurial adventure.  In the spirit of start-up birthdays, I thought I would share with you a few interesting details about my next venture.

Sexting is rampant. Predators are everywhere. Obviously, buySAFE was founded to make the Internet safer for online shoppers, and we did that for tens of millions of consumers.  This time around, we want to make technology safer for our kids (Fatherhood has a way of inspiring you to do such things).  Our new start-up is tackling two serious, prevalent and complex problems: Sexting and Predators.  The market simply hasn’t provided any effective solutions for parents yet, and we intend to fill that gap.

The business was inspired by my brother, Tim Woda, who as the parent of older children, has had to confront these difficult issues directly.  It seems like every time I speak with a parent of tweens or teens, they express the same frustrations and fear about allowing their kids to use digital technologies.  Since there are more than 37 million kids in the U.S. and more than 1.2 billion kids globally between the ages of 9 and 17, I believe there is an interesting business opportunity here.

The following is a short video overview of the Sexting and Predator problems that parents face today.  If you have any feedback or suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment.  I welcome your assistance.  Also, please share this video with your friends and family.  I believe it is important that we educate parents to make sure they are fully aware of the digital dangers they must manage on behalf of their kids. 

I recognize that I haven’t told you how we are going to attack these scary problems, but I will over the coming months.  I wanted to tease you first!  🙂  Before telling you everything, we have to finish building out our product and raise a bit of capital to finance our public launch.  Both of these activities are ongoing (and going well), and I will share more as we make additional progress.

I will continue to provide you with regular updates here on this blog, but if you want to get more frequent updates, feel free to become a fan on my Facebook Fan Page.  I am using it to share my daily thoughts on this start-up adventure.  Thanks, and stay tuned!

Daily Roundup for 2008-03-15

  • HiveLive Inc., a Boulder-based company that integrates social and information networks, secured $5.6 million in venture financing from Grotech Capital Group and current private investors. Joseph Zell, a general partner with Grotech, will take a seat on HiveLive’s board of directors.
  • What’s most important to consumers when making a purchase online? Personal identity. Consumers are taking more notice of their individual online security after a string of recent identity theft cases made major headlines. According to a recent survey by the University of Southern California’s Center for the Digital Future, 61 percent of adult Americans said they were "very" or "extremely" concerned about the privacy of personal information when buying online, an increase from 47 percent in 2006. Prior to 2007, that number had been decreasing for the past six years.

Daily Roundup for 2008-02-29

  • The relationship between the venture capitalists of Sand Hill Road and the securities firms and power investors of Wall Street has long been a cozy one. VCs hoping for a return on their investments will need banks eventually, while Wall Street needs VCs to nurture the most promising startups until they’re ready to go public.  Or do they?  Lately, some of New York’s biggest players have been cherry-picking the best pre-IPO investments for themselves.
  • Although the tiny, family-run Joy’s Spa and Nail Salon in Adams Morgan may never get a critique in a newspaper, it’s received 42 reviews on Yelp.com.  Reggie Tull, the owner’s son and a massage therapist, said he noticed an increase in traffic with every new review posted on the recommendation site. He’s also surprised by the time writers invest in each posting.

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