Dog Patch Labs is the name of Polaris Ventures‘ San Francisco-based startup incubator, that it launched a little over a year ago. So far, it has helped launch LOLapps and Thing Labs, the startup behind Brizzly, a new Twitter app that was first shown at our Real-time Stream CrunchUp last month. And now they’re adding to the team.
Ryan Spoon, formerly the Vice President of Marketing & Business Development at Widgetbox, is joining Polaris as a senior associate, with Dog Patch Labs being one of his key areas of focus. Like other senior associates, Spoon will also be helping to generally assess investment opportunities and work with portfolio companies, but he will be working out of the Dog Patch Labs at Pier 38 in San Francisco.
Polaris general partner Mike Hirshland describes the space, which they share with the startup Social Media, as sort of a “frat house for geeks.” It offers space for promising young entrepreneurs to work out of, giving them desks, bandwidth, lunch and coffee. And it offers all of this for free, with no commitment to Polaris required. The idea is that many of these startups aren’t quite at the investment-ready yet, but they can use the labs to work towards that.
Hirshland expects Spoon, who is also the founder of the sports social network InGameNow and the high school althete college recruiting service beRecruited, to be a great resource for the entrepreneurs that hang out at the Dog Patch Labs. And he certainly has the right experience for the labs, Spoon is also the founder of sfEntrepreneurs, and SF-based collective for young entreprenuers. He also worked at eBay for nearly 5 years as the manager of the Internet marketing efforts.
Here’s Spoon’s own post on the move.
Update: And as a few readers have pointed out, it’s definitely worth noting that Spoon’s father, Alan Spoon is a general partner with Polaris Ventures.
Why would anyone invest in Twitter apps? Is there any value in it? Can someone show me some great twitter apps that really create value?
Well, I wouldn’t dismiss all twitter apps out there. There are quite a few apps that really create value and have significant business model. One of my favorites is http://www.boilingpage.com. It shows hot Movies, Products, TV shows, Music, Books and Webpages among people in real time. And their recommendations are phenomenal. That’s definitely a killer app in my opinion.
One who has the users, has the dollars.
right. um, have you looked at the news for the past year?
youtube? dollars draining out the, well, drain….
users, non-monetized = loss of revenue, loss of VC dollars. loss. = Fail.
All the apps that help businesses connect with and track customers talking about them on Twitter have a pretty obvious business model.
Right. I second you. Helping business to connect with customers is a serious business model. Actually I took a look at http://www.boilingpage.com mentioned above and I do strongly believe it has the biggest business model — “recommendations”. By recommending right products based on what’s hot among people, I believe businesses can connect with customers better than ever. My few cents, hopefully BoilingPage folks are listening to this ..
Today was Stella Polaris day here in Copenhagen http://www.yout...h?v=dvgF9azPW1Y
9 hours of chillout and house music during the whole sunday on the park infront of the modern art museum. Groove Armada, Moby and some danish DJs entertained thousands of hippie dressed youths.
http://www.yout...h?v=9sFsuOL-qdM
“hey guys, got this great idea for some app site”
“cool, got ideas?”
“yeah sure”
*makes*
“so guys, we got this awsm thingy going on, wtf do you we call it?”
“dunno, what’ll attract an audience?”
“i know LOLapps”
“yeh thats good because lots of people know LOL”
“okay good thats decided”
what a god awful name, seriously.
As opposed to criticsquid?
sounds like a scary place to work.
Learn to read, citric != critic. Furthermore, this is an alias, not a business name. Idiot.
Wow – great catch for Polaris. Ryan was one of the few innovative people I knew at eBay. Congrats to them and to Ryan!
Thank Alan!
-b
Oh and congrats Ryan.
Thank you very much! took too-useful..
Alan Spoon is a honcho at Polaris. Nice family hookup.
I’m surprised that TC didn’t mention this in the post. Polaris making a hire isn’t quite the same thing as junior Spoon going to work for his daddy.
Congrats, Ryan! Best of luck at Polaris!
Good move for Polaris – Ryan is a rising star.
Congrats Ryan! Top notch guy all the way around.
congrats Ryan !
Great work by Polaris. Ryan is a superstar.
congrats Ryan! gr8 win to Polaris!
Congrats, Ryan! …and really, congrats, Polaris – I have had the pleasure of working with Ryan for several years both @ eBay and on SFEntrepreneurs – he is truly a tireless innovator. Entrepreneurs will be very lucky to have the opportunity to work closely with him at Dog Patch Labs…
love the first-name-basis comments here. heh. you go barack!
props mr. spoon… re-speck’.
That’s interesting! I saw on the website Alan Spoon runs Polaris. Any relation?
Awesome! A position where Ryan can work hands-on with multiple startups and contribute to their development is absolutely the right role for him…congrats!