Pajama Entrepreneur

Affinity is a web-based CRM service designed for small to medium-sized businesses, particularly creative and professional services (web design firms, ad agencies, media companies), government and education, finance and property firms. Affinity was launched in 2009 by Hiive Systems based in Sydney, Australia. Geoff McQueen is the founder of Hiive. Hiive Systems is self-funded.

With Affinity, you can track:

• projects in real time
• marketing campaigns
• sales activities with prospects, leads, channels
• enrollments, fees and payments
• contracts
• memberships
• invoices

The service allows you to capture emails automatically, share files with your colleagues, view an activity stream that looks like Facebook, integrate your calendar and more.

The goal of Affinity is to give a business the tools to manage the workflow for its clients, the procurement of new clients, the billing and payment flows, in an integrated workspace.

Affinity charges $3525 upfront and $133.75 per month. You pay extra for certain modules and for training. The total setup cost if $9525; monthly cost is $193.75.

http://www.hiivesystems.com/affinity/

SF New Tech’s March 18 event in San Francisco is featuring French startups: TellMeWhere (DisMoiOu), GrandTweet, Green Ivory, All My Apps, and Wat Zat Song.

Go to http://march18sfnewtech.eventbrite.com/ to sign up.

Tickets:
$15.00 for early bird online tickets
$20.00 for all other (late bird) online tickets
$25.00 cash at the door if not sold out

Schedule:
5:30 pm – Doors & Bar Open
5:30 -7:30 pm – Schmooze and Free Tacos!
7:30 – 9:00 pm – Live Demos
9:00 – 11:00 pm – Schmooze

Location:
Mighty
119 Utah Street
(Cross street is 15th. Look for the big black doors!)
San Francisco, CA 94103

Attention, Pajama Entrepreneurs! Google has just launched the Google Apps Marketplace which is designed for users of Google. They integrate with Google Apps. If you have a developed an application or are thinking of creating one that works with Google Apps, then this is the place to sell it. It works a lot like the iPhone app store. People can review apps and pay for them online.

Go Tribal is an online application launched by Tribal Atmosphere, Inc., a startup based in San Francisco. The founding team is made up of four people: Shruti Challa, Chris Baclig, Eric Ma and Amara Humphry.

Go Tribal helps members get their friends together on very short notice for clubbing, coffee, lunch, dinner, and other social activities. It does this by allowing members to see when their friends are available. It works opposite to the formal “Evite” way of getting people together. This is also a great service for people who travel to a city on short notice and want to meet up with friends, business relations and even relatives.

Here is how it works: As a Go Tribal member you can broadcast when you are available, easily see who else is free and use the simple collaboration tool to finally decide what to do or where to go. From this, Go Tribal is able to grant members broad visibility into what their larger network is planning on doing.

“Getting my friends together for a casual dinner or even a night on the town is not as easy as it once was. Between our travel schedules, careers and relationships it is almost impossible to coordinate when everyone is free and decide what to do. Go Tribal is the perfect tool for us to organize ourselves and make it happen,” said Keylee Sanders (Founder of Style Studio and Former Miss Teen USA 1995).

“What makes Go Tribal different is its focus on social women and informal events. Unlike services like Plancast, Evite or Facebook, Go Tribal helps members form informal plans not just broadcast formal ones — while acknowledging women and men approach this activity differently,” said Ross Mayfield (President and Chairman of SocialText and Advisor to Go Tribal).

“We feel that technology is moving further and further away from facilitating meaningful physical interaction. Our driving vision is to create simple technology that enables friends to get together in the real world. Go Tribal is the first step in fulfilling that larger vision,” said Shruti Challa (CEO and Founder of Go Tribal).

The free web-based service is immediately available to the first 10,000 registrants. To start using Go Tribal, visit http://gotribal.com.

Similarities with Bookioo

I wrote about a Spanish startup called Bookioo, which started out as a social networking site where women can find friends on short notice to go to events, hang out, visit a museum, etc. — just like Go Tribal. However, Bookioo has expanded its concept to include dating site where men who want to join have to be invited by a female member; a man can see a woman’s profile only when she gives him permission to do so. Read more: Bookioo – dating and social networking site gives women full control.

Go Tribal and Bookioo focus on women’s needs and how women interact with one another. Most social networking sites are created by men and start from a man’s point of view. I hope we see more sites like Go Tribal and Bookioo.

Tjoos, an Australian startup recently profiled on Pajama Entrepreneur, has been acquired by Internet Brands, a publicly traded company based in the US. Tjoos was started by Bart Jellema, a Dutch guy who moved to Australia only a few years ago. He started Tjoos with a $15,000 investment from his parents. I met Bart in Sydney two weeks ago and he told me that Tjoos is already profitable. Bart has shown that you can start a business with little money, become profitable within a short period of time and have a decent exit. Tjoos has very few staff in Sydney; they outsource a lot of work to the Philippines.

According to the press release issued today, Tjoos (pronounced “choose”) grew by 150 percent to well over 1 million unique visitors in February 2010 compared to the prior year. This growth was driven by the site’s more than 500,000 coupons from more than 180,000 merchants.

“This is a hot area,” said Bob Brisco, CEO of Internet Brands. “Discount discovery, fueled by community participation, is growing very rapidly and will continue to do so. Consumers want deals, and coupons are a massive marketing channel for both small and large merchants.”

Tjoos offers interactive merchant management tools that allow online retailers to customize their listing to facilitate traffic and revenue growth. It also provides a versatile platform for content syndication via Twitter, RSS feeds, blogs, and widgets.