Third Wave Fashion

Tech Crush Thursday: Garrett Camp

It’s one thing to start a great company that people around the world use on a daily basis, but it is an entirely different thing to start THREE successful internet companies.

This week we are crushing on the man that did just that, Mr. Garrett Camp. Born in Canada, Garrett co-founded StumbleUpon in 2001, later moving the company to San Francisco in 2006. Just a year later, Camp and his co-founder, Geoff Smith, sold the company to eBay for $75 million. He continued to act as the company’s CEO until May 2012 after he stepped down (he remains Stumbleupon’s chairman) to focus on his another one of his ventures, Uber.

Launched in 2010, Uber is a mobile application that connects passengers with drivers of luxury vehicles for hire. The SF based company has raised over $50 million in funding and is solving transportation problems for busy city residents in San Francisco, NYC, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., Vancouver, Toronto, Paris, Berlin, Philadelphia, Dallas, London, Melbourne, and many more.

Don’t worry, Garrett didn’t stop there. He also started Blackjet, the company that helps consumers book seats on private jets faster than ever. If you struggle to find a last minute seat on a private jet traveling from New York to LA or South Florida, Blackjet is here to help. In 10 seconds, Blackjet will book your seat and guarantee seat availability. All you need is an invite code and you’re good to go.

This 2007 recipient of MIT Technology Review’s TR35 award, has one of the most impressive track records we’ve ever seen. What will he think of next? Only time will tell. 

Image via WSJ.

Tech Crush Thursday: Jennifer Darmour

Here at TWF we are all about the collision of fashion and technology. It’s what we do and it’s what we love. So, you can only imagine how excited we are about the recent movement of wearable technology. Enter Jennifer Darmour, Founder of electricfoxy & Interaction designer at Artefact.

Jennifer’s personal project for wearable technology started while a grad student at Art Center College of Design. She’s developed the award winning Modwells concept, a personal wellness modular, and has gone on to create many other tech integrated textiles.

Keeping to the healthy theme, Jennifer has also revolutionized the way we work out with her project, Move. “For wearable technology to become mainstream, it needs to move beyond the gadgets and really improve people’s lives.” Move is designed to bring together form and function in the gym. Attractive clothing with sensor-packed technology, along with a mobile app and cloud storage, work together to read your body’s position and muscle movement. The program determines if your form is correct, while providing real-time feedback. A trainer built into our workout wear? Yes, please! 

Jennifer’s latest project, Zip, focuses on bringing together fashion and music. The garments have built-in music controls, as well as many other tech-focused features.

If you’re heading to SXSW, be sure to check out her wearable technology event!//

Got a little time? Check out these other fashion tech startups participating at SXSW!

Tech Crush Thursday: Kevin Systrom

With over 100 million users (as announced Tuesday), Instagram has grown from two young guys renting desks, to a record breaking acquisition with Facebook. Although Instagram was launched a little over two years ago, we can’t help but be impressed by the company’s growth and success (not to mention we are more than slightly addicted to the app). 

Welcome, Kevin Systrom, CEO and Co-founder of Instagram, to the TWF Tech Crush Thursday hall of fame! After graduating from Stanford University, Kevin got his first taste of the startup tech world as an intern at Odeo, which later became Twitter. He also worked at Google where he worked on a number of product as well as their corporate development.

In 2012, Systrom and his Co-founder, Mike Krieger, sold the company to Facebook for an announced $1Billion. Although the sale went through, Kevin made sure that Instagram would continue to operate outside of Facebook. He also retained quite a bit of control over the photo-sharing company, allowing him to continue to make important decisions. For example, Kevin decided to remove Instagram photos from Twitter’s news feed, not at the request of Facebook, but to bring users to Instagram’s new website.

Yes, there have been some controversies surrounding the app and recent changes, but with 100 million users in just 28 months, it looks like the man behind Instagram knows what he’s doing.

Tech Crush Thursday: Christian MacLean

This Thursday, we are crushing on BeauCoo’s Co-founder and CEO, Christian MacLean. Christian watched his wife Victoria (also a Co-founder) spend hours online talking about fashion and brands with other women trying to determine if the items shown on the models would fit her body. That’s when he came up with the idea for BeauCoo, a social style network that aims to connect women with other women who share a similar body type in order to make online and offline shopping social, fun and realistic.

Based out of Calgary, Canada, the company originally launched on the iPhone and recently (as in this week) expanded to a full website. What’s really great about MacLean and the entire BeauCoo team is the focus on making shopping a positive experience. They want women to share and discover stores and styles that will “make them look and feel great.”

MacLean is now working on a BeauCoo Android app which they hope to launch in the next few weeks, as well as an API that will allow online vendors to use BeauCoo and its social network to improve content discovery on their sites.

For the time being, MacLean and the BeauCoo team are focused only on women shoppers (using Facebook Connect to keep men out). But they are considering allowing female members to invite their significant others to the service. As for a men’s version? Stay tuned.

Follow them on Twitter to keep up with this fascinating startup.

Tech Crush Thursday: Adam D’Angelo

From Facebook CTO to Founder and CEO of Quora, Adam D’Angelo is well-known in the tech world to say the least. Launched in early 2010, Quora is a collection of questions and answers, edited and organized by users. Once answers are added, Quora users can up-vote or down-vote said answers, as well as suggest edits to fellow users, in order to measure the user’s legitimacy. 

Recently valued at $400M (according to TechCrunch), Adam has grown Quora into a household name. He also recently announced (just yesterday) that Quora is launching a blogging platform that automatically distributes posts to its Q&A site. Thanks to the company’s voting system, homepage feed, and mobile text editor, anyone with quality content can find readership and grow their following. 

We can’t wait to see what else this young tech genius has up his sleeve. Until then, we will continue to get our answers for life’s questions on Quora. 

Image via Alto Nivel.

Tech (Design) Crush Thursday: Swissmiss

Let us introduce you to Tina Roth Eisenberg, also known as swissmiss. Originally from Switzerland, Tina came to New York after finishing her studies in Geneva and Munich to pursue a career in design in 1999. After working at many high-end NYC design firms and assisting in the design of the award-winning Visual Thesaurus, Tina started a personal visual archive called swissmiss. Years later swissmiss has grown into a popular design journal, with over 1 million unique visitors a month.

“Influenced by renowned Swiss design and a lot of fresh air,” Tina is known for her clean, minimalist, less is more look. In addition to running the swissmiss design blog, Tina teaches, runs a Brooklyn-based collaborative workspace called Studiomates, organizes a monthly lecture series called CreativeMornings, and is the investor of the app TuexDeux, and recently set out to change the world of temporary Tattoos with her latest project, Tattly.

Now a resident of Brooklyn with her husband and kids, Tina recently spoke at TYPO SF, where she discussed taking one’s personal projects seriously. Not only does she have great taste, but gives great advice as well.

Tech Crush Thursday: Chris Sacca

When you’re dubbed as “possibly the most influential businessman in America” by the Wall Street Journal, there is no questioning that you’re going to get our attention.  Chris Sacca is the brilliant mind behind Lowercase Capital, one of the largest venture funds in America with currently more than fifty consumer web, wireless, and mobile tech start-ups under its belt.

Chris began his career in venture funding in not-so-ordinary circumstances as he graduated cum laude from Georgetown University.  He quickly began carving out his space in law and business when he became an attorney in Silicon Valley’s Fenwick & West law firm, and later a Telecommunications, Media and Technology advisor to the 2008 presidential campaign to elect now incumbent, Barack Obama.  After that he was a legal and corporate development executive at Speedera Networks, one of the world’s largest streaming and digital media distribution companies, as well as Head of Special Initiatives at Google Inc. where he founded and oversaw their alternative and wireless divisions. 

When he’s not skiing or giving his time to charity, you can find Chris in the pages of Fast Company and Business Week as well as on networks like CNBC, CNN, NPR, and BBC as an expert in venture capital/capitalism, innovative entrepreneurialism, and value network development (a.k.a disruptive technology.)

Wish List Wednesday: The Phorce Bag

Looking for that perfect holiday gift for the techy guy in your life? Well, we have found it! The Phorce Bag can transform into a briefcase, a backpack, and a messenger bag, while charging all of his electronic devices. We’re talking iPhones, tablets, Macbooks, you name it!

There are two versions of the “world’s first smart bag,” one that can be used to charge devices via three USB portals, and the other is built for Macbooks and features a MagSafe cable. We’re pretty sure any technology obsessed guy (or girl) would love this bag. Convenient and classy!