About a month ago, Betabeat logged into the newly-launched Zaarly, an Ashton Kutcher and Mike Arrington investment that connects individual buyers and sellers in a design-y real-time Craigslist. It launched to much fanfare at South By Southwest. But we tried to get a pack of gum delivered to our offices, where the tech team stays sharp by chewing an inhuman amount of Dentyne Ice, for which we were willing to pay a handsome $10.

No dice on the Ice from Zaarly, though, or any of the other listings--there were maybe 10--we saw on the site, requests for dog-walking and Starbucks delivery. Yesterday Zaarly announced $1 million in transactions over the month--but today Zaarly is surfacing just six listings for us in Manhattan, including requests for a used iPad and black Verizon iPhone 4. Despite the company's 700-some Twitter followers in New York, there seems to be a rather severe shortage on both the buyers' and sellers' sides.

That's bad news considering New York is one of Zaarly's seven "core cities" targeted for maximum traction. Has anyone successfully used Zaarly for anything?

Fitocracy, which tracks workouts and turns personal fitness into a social game, has had a good six months. The two-person, bootstrapped start-up has users foaming at the mouth for invites--and we've got some!--and they've just hired a third developer to join the team working out of WeWork Labs. "Every time we've introduced Fitocracy to a forum community, people go nuts for invites," co-founder Brian Wang wrote on Quora yesterday in a call for angel funding. 

Fitocracy, which launched in February, encourages users to hook into their social graphs in order to broadcast their fitness activities, compete with friends and earn those little happy brain chemical rewards that are triggered when points are earned and "badges" are awarded.

The site blew up on the fitness section of Reddit and hit its first challenge: performance slowed to molasses. Fitocracy's founders decided it would be better to have a wait list than have new users experience a laggy app while they scrambled to upgrade their servers. The list has ballooned to more than 6,000.

Fitocracy also hired an early power user, Daniel Roesler, an engineer from Houston who lobbied for his job with home-brewed beers and programming advice over Skype.

But a similar start-up, Boston-based Runkeeper, is also doing really, really well; and just announced the Health Graph, an API that will aggregate data from scales, phones, and other fitness devices.

"People might consider us competitors, but we don't see it that way," Mr. Wang said. "For one, they're focused just on cardio, and mainly running at that while we're capturing much more. And beyond that, we see them as a data layer, whereas we're trying to do some interesting stuff on top of that with the so-called 'game layer.'"

YouAre.TV is the reborn version of CollegeOnly, the social network, video roulette and Facebook alternative for which fresh-faced founder Josh Weinstein raised $1.15 million from Peter Thiel, David Tisch, David Kidder, FirstMark Capital and other funds in the summer of 2010.

College Hype failed to catch on due to a combination of overhype and errors with the product design, so Mr. Weinstein decided to switch tacks. He launched YouAre.TV, technology that enables a frenetic, wacky interactive version of web television, at the New York Tech Meetup. Betabeat rated it "delightful-unmarketable" In its current iteration.

Now the General Assembly-based start-up is looking for a chief technology officer or lead developer to complement the hustle of its young founder.

"Previous company product iterations featured in dozens of major publications and garnered tens of thousands of users," the ad says. "VC-backed + angels include Peter Thiel and David Tisch. In discussion with major players in the entertainment space, partnerships/investment pending launch."

Web show host Aspen Steib left the start-up in April; YouAre.TV is currently a placeholder.

The cards being tested are "white cards," unbranded versions of the fully-designed cards, that the employees are testing at ATMs, stores and online. Next, BankSimple will print the first batch of branded cards and go through the same tests, according to co-founder Joshua Reich.

"We will be taking the necessary time to ensure that our systems are rock solid and that our card fulfillment operations can handle the demand. It is critical that we get this right from the very beginning. As our testing progresses, we’ll add family and friends. We’ll then begin inviting those who requested a beta invitation, on a first-come, first-served basis," the company said.

"It is difficult to change an industry. But we’re leaning into it and can’t wait to show you what we’re building. Thank you for your patience," they said.

BankSimple is not a bank--FDIC-accredited institutions will handle the money. BankSimple just handles the cards, customer service and access to an online account with Mint-like features via mobile devices and the web. But in the process, the company promises to eliminate surprise fees, ATM fees and obtuse banking language, all from one account which is attached to one card.

Potential challenges include: Resistance from customers to switching their money to an unknown brand with no physical presence. Resistance from traditional banks with the ability to influence policy. Thin margins due to eliminating fees. Plus all the normal start-up speedbumps.

Disclosure.

The last we heard from Diaspora, the four kids from NYU who raised more than $200,000 on Kickstarter on a proposal for $10,000 to build an open-source, decentralized version of Facebook. The start-up launched a site in alpha in November which was not well-received; people complained that it was just a "pretty Rails app" and that the process for setting up a Diaspora server, one of the most anticipated features, was impossibly complicated. The next update from the company came in January, which basically said, "hi people who gave us money, we're working on it." At some point the four founders moved to San Francisco to work out of Pivotal Labs there.

More than anything, our user feedback has been 'go faster.' So go faster is what we are going to do. If we are going to make Diaspora successful, we need the support from lots of different people. Recently we have been focused on reaching out to different groups and organizations, and seeing what we can do to get more people involved and invested in Diaspora. While it takes time away from coding, talking about Diaspora helps hone our vision, and gets even more people excited about what we are doing.

We certainly have not been good at updating people on our work, so unless you have been following us on GitHub, you are probably wondering where we are going. Diaspora is a long-term endeavor, and is about an idea bigger than a single feature set or trend. We are working on an outline of what we have learnt so far, and where we see Diaspora going in the next year. We look forward to sharing it with you.

 

Gilt Groupe is 3 1/2 years old and unlike many start-ups at that age, generates substantial revenue. Gilt Groupe claimed $170 million in revenue in 2009, Business Week reported. But the company is essentially a discount retailer--it sells luxury goods at up to 60 percent off the ticket price--and it's not a coincidence that it launched and grew during the worst recession since the Great Depression. There's a reason most people don't clip coupons. It takes effort to really save money, and when times are good it's just not worth it. Plus, there's the stigma associated with it.

There are some penny-pinchers among the very wealthy, but is that market big enough to support a $1 billion company? Amazon IPO'ed in 1997 at $438 million, around three times its net sales that year of $148 million; Gilt is now valued at twice its net sales, according to the WSJ.

You are TV.

The night started off, as you'd expect, with some hefty networking as founders, investors, members of the General Assembly and other curious parties milled around in advance of the first public demo night since New York's spiffiest co-working space opened in December. Scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m., MC Alexis Ohanian (Reddit, Breadpig, Hipmunk, East Coast Y Combinator Ambassador extraordinaire) didn't get the demo party started until after 7 p.m., fifteen minutes after the lights first dimmed.

The chipper founder was in a boostery mood. Good design makes things suck less, Mr. Ohanian told the Assembly, and New York knows design!

There were nine start-ups, all GA members, slated to present "something new" in a five minute demo with a five minute Q and A. Here's what you missed:

SkillSlate. A marketplace where skilled professionals and small businesses connect with local consumers. Need a personal chef to cook dinner in your kitchen for you and five friends? There are 26 personal chefs listed on SkillSlate in New York, along with 391 carpenters, 297 personal trainers and 283 dog walkers. Consumers create a "job ticket" for what they're looking for and the professionals bid on the job. Everything is publicly-viewable, so pros can see what others have bid, making it competitive.

MovableInk. Dynamic content for email, perhaps the most-lauded, anecodotally, by post-event minglers. Imagine daily deal emails that tick down time left, update as your friends buy the deal, and switch out photos based on real-time analytics of what content is most likely to produce clicks.

WingTipIt. An online "closet" of clothes, accessories, and products you collect from the site and across the web, with features for social sharing and feedback from friends on what to buy. The audience's attention visibly waned as the co-founders presented, due in part to their self-deprecating caveat that the room full of men would likely find it less interesting because men don't like shopping, although later they noted that the site "makes men seem like heros when they buy something the female likes." The site has more than 100 relationships with retailers who put content on it and push the service to their own customers; plus, it's "very viral in itself." Reminds us of Fashism, another GA start-up, and GoTryItOn.

Easel. This edtech start-up demo'ed an online white board that records video and audio as you use a simple graphical interface to teach a lesson. "As people participate we figure out what is the best content," founder San Kim said. (The non-profit, video-based lesson site Khan Academy was an inspiration.)

As Easel closed and Opani set up, Mr. Ohanian polled the audience. "Anyone thinking abotu going west?" he asked, then shunned the handful of audience members who affirmed. "Any city that closes at 1:30 just sucks," he said. "I can't encourage you enough to keep staying in New York." This from the YC liaison.

Opani. For $5 a month plus computing costs, Opani lets developers order up data analysis in the coding languages they already know (Python, R). The pricing plan is tentative and founder Ryan Witt asks the audience for feedback per Mr. Ohanian's "ask the audience" a question rule for the Q and A portion. Audience seems okay with it, although one questioner was concerned about what would happen if he wrote a janky app that ran off the rails and started racking up cloud computing costs. We shut it down when there's been inactivity, Mr. Witt said.

Clipik. Another start-up that strikes Betabeat as a niche Odesk, Clipik lets users order up simple video editing from freelancers and students, conducted entirely through the web. "You shoot, we edit."

Jibe. Social recruiting! Jibe requires a Facebook or LinkedIn login for anyone applying to a job, and then shows job seekers who they know at the company they're applying to--say, Bank of America--and gives them the option to list those employees as references or ask them for recommendations. The site has gotten more than 200 people hired at big companies since January and has had 150,000 users register through Facebook or LinkedIn. A member of the audience had one question: "Why would I want one of those jobs?" Mr. Ohanian was an exemplary Pizza Hut waiter at one point, he shared, and his boss was always asking him if he had friends who needed work. And "like six of them got hired." Social recommendations are weirdly important in hiring.

Shoutem. A simple iOS and Android mobile app builder with a suave-looking superhero mascot, Mobilizer, which Mr. Ohanian was very taken with. The service allows for adding standard features--wall, badges, check-in--to your mobile apps, and for easy updating of said apps.

YouAre.TV. The funnest demo of the evening. YouAre.TV is a pivot by the now-defunct CollegeOnly, which died of hype, and founder Josh Weinstein took the stage to ask the audience to reimagine everything as if it had been designed after the internet. What would television be like? In Mr. Weinstein's mind, it's a trippy interactive game show that puts anyone with a webcam into the game. With a few bumps, Mr. Weinstein successfully pulled up the app on the projector and disappeared into a back room as low-quality audio echoed through the Assembly and the audience scratched its heads. It was almost Dadaist. Mr. Ohanian was the guest on the demo game show, and won "a server" for correctly guessing the day after Thursday and before Saturday.

Once the demo was over, Mr. Weinstein asked the audience why they don't watch TV. Because it's not interactive, one audience member answered. Because I don't like commercials, another said. What do you want from TV? Mr. Weinstein asked. "Quality, unlike what I just saw," one member of the audience said, drawing big laughs. Mr. Weinstein handled the hater gracefully. "I thought that was a great demo," Mr. Ohanian said as he closed the night. Betabeat liked it too.

The event wrapped around 8:45 p.m. Betabeat congratulated General Assembly co-founder Matt Brimer on the packed house and smooth event. Would the format be the same next time, with nine demos? we asked. "Maybe a few less," he said.

Jennifer Fleiss

"We don't ever want to make decisions only based on our buyers' whims," Rent The Runway co-founder Jennifer Fleiss told Racked. Rent The Runway is a web-based service for renting dresses and accessories for a few days at a time, addressing the "closet full of clothes but nothing to wear" dilemma. The start-up is two years old, and given that dresses on the site run from $50 to a few hundred and the fact that the site's traffice looks like a snake climbing some stairs, we're guessing they've been generating not-insubstantial revenues.

How do they do it? Science. Ms. Fleiss meets with someone from her analytics team four times a day, she said. "They do everything from telling us how much inventory to buy—which styles to buy, how much of which styles, how much of which sizes—to looking at it from an operations perspective, what's our turnover from the day it leaves the warehouse to the day it comes back, to looking at which locations our warehouse should be in to optimize shipping to all our customers. They will look at marketing analytics, to see what our drop-off rate has been at checkout; comparing two ads we've run and seeing how they've been doing; are we tracking in terms of our member acquisition through partnerships versus paid acquisition versus general direct acquisition."

Racked also asked Ms. Fleiss, the dataphile, what colors were in. "I think in general, red is our most popular color. Gold sequins, especially around the holidays, is really popular. But the general point is that it's those statement colors—black is our least popular color—and one-shoulder is our most popular silhouette. It's this idea that it's something you're less likely to buy," she said.

Daniel Doubrovkine

"I knew that I chose not to inform my boss and CEO about such a minor project being open sourced. I feared that the announcement or the source code included confidential information about our business or an incompatible license. I was convinced that I missed something very big and important and dreaded the consequences for my team and my job." That's what was going through the mind of Art.sy's head of engineering Daniel Doubrovkine after receiving an email from CEO Carter Cleveland with the subject line, "Immediate action required (RE: Our latest open source project)."

He needn't have feared. "The Engineering team just open sourced an awesome tool called Heroku-Bartender," Mr. Cleveland enthusiastically wrote. "I want everyone to check it out and read through the comments. Open source is a great way for us to establish engineering credibility while contributing to the community-at-large. Thank you and congratulations to Engineering."

Mr. Doubrovkine shared this story in a post on opensource.com, "Thinking open source: How startups destroy a culture of fear," about the open source generation, in which he compared his young hacker days of pirating expensive software with the wonderland of free open source tools available now. He also gave a nod to Mr. Cleveland: "It’s about Carter and his relentless work that creates a culture of trust and general awesomeness at Art.sy."