Birdeez Launches from UCSB to Change the World – SB Audubon Society

Posted on June 26, 2013 by Jeff Simeon

Birdeez Team Launching Into Action to Change the World!
Left to Right – Thomas Kuo, Jeff Simeon and Patrick Toerner.

A version of this article originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Audubon Society‘s news letter – El Tecolote for June-July 2013.

If numbers are to be believed, only a quarter of those reading this sentence can identify birds. The US Fish and Wildlife Service reports that 74% of people who watch birds can identify fewer than 20 species by sight. We at Birdeez hope to change that and, in the process, change the world.

Birdeez is an iPhone app, but you can think of it as the un-iBird. Instead of being an encyclopedia, we built Birdeez to be the easiest app for anyone to pick up and start learning local birds. The app knows where you are and what birds are near you at any given time of year. Enter a bird’s shape, size and color and you’ll get a short list of birds that match. You can even save your bird sightings right in the app. We designed it to help anyone from 7 to 70 years old learn their birds. By connecting more people to the birds around them, we hope to create the next generation of environmental stewards. Continue reading →

Birdeez a “Feather in the Cap” – UCSB’s Technology Management Program

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Jeff Simeon

We’re very excited for the future of the Technology Management Program (TMP) at UCSB. They are now going to be offering Master’s Degrees, and they gave us a shout out in their announcement:

Joined onstage by a live falcon to help prove their product, the team of UC Santa Barbara alumni behind bird-identification app Birdeez took a top award at last fall’s DEMO conference, a prestigious Silicon Valley pitch competition.

So landed another proverbial feather in the cap of UCSB’s Technology Management Program (TMP). The Birdeez group –– at the time still students –– won TMP’s New Venture Competition mere months earlier, earning acclaim and cash to go with their potentially viable business. Future TMP-bred winners of the popular campus start-up contest may walk away with another prize still: a master’s degree.

Read the rest about this innovative program that launched Birdeez on UCSB’s Website, or the Santa Barbara Independent.

UCSB Grads Create Winning App Birdeez – SB Independent

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Jeff Simeon

Emiyl Carlson at the Santa Barbara Independent did a great write up about the team at Birdeez and our origin through UCSB. Our company is EcoLek, but for now we’re focusing bringing disruptive change to the birding market.

Their first project: an intuitive smartphone app that allows you to describe, identify, and catalog any and all bird sightings in your area, appropriately named Birdeez.

Read the rest on Santa Barbara Independent’s “For the Birds”.

New Venture Wonder Team Wins Big at DEMO with Birdeez App – UCSB TMP

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Jeff Simeon

Aww, shucks! Wonder team? Sure, we have the brains, the birds and the mustache to power this team, but we were still blushing from this compliment from UCSB’s Engineering Department.

A team of UC Santa Barbara alumni that took first place in the 2012 New Venture Competition market track has landed a DEMOgod award for their app Birdeez at the DEMO Fall 2012 competition.

Well, that’s just true. We guess we won’t fight it.

Read the rest of their coverage on the UCSB Engineering website.

An App for the Birds – UCSB’s Bren School

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Jeff Simeon

I hope to continue to make the Bren School, and the Eco-entrepreneurship Program there, proud with Birdeez!

Bird watchers know birds, right? Not necessarily, according to Jeff Simeon (MESM 2012), who says that most self-identified birders can name only twenty of the 900 bird species found in North America.

Simeon knows this from research he conducted for his Bren School Eco-E project, which was to develop and market Birdeez, a new iPhone app that makes it easy to identify, record, and share bird sightings. Things are going well for CEO and design presenter Simeon and his partners on the technical side, UCSB undergraduate economics student Patrick Toerner and PhD student Thomas Kuo, who studies computer vision.

Read the rest on the Bren School’s website.

Video of Birdeez Win at UCSB’s New Venture Competition

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Jeff Simeon

We were thrilled to win the New Venture Competition at UCSB at the end of May, and you can see the complete video of the competition on YouTube now.

To read a short summary, check out the information on UCTV

Birdeez Makes Birdwatching/Bird Identification Easy – Social Impact Marketing

Posted on June 24, 2012 by Jeff Simeon

I had a chance to sit down with Robin Eschler at Social Impact Marketing after an event put on by Startup SB. She really understood what we are trying to accomplish at Birdeez and summarized it nicely:

Jeff and his team, Patrick Toerner and Thomas Kuo, also hope to improve bird conservation and help our nation deal with “Nature Deficit Disorder.” By making birdwatching easy, the hope is to get more people enjoying the hobby and sharing it with their children. By encouraging children to go outside and learn to observe, not only will kids get up from the games to go outside, they will learn to appreciate nature and conservation while having quality time with Mom and Dad.

We talked about a bunch of things from environmental education to how Birdeez will work!

Read the rest and listen to the interview at Social Impact Marketing.

UCSB Announces Winners of Venture Contest – SB Independent

Posted on June 1, 2012 by Jeff Simeon

We’re still glowing after the win of the Market-Pull category at UCSB’s New Venture Competition! We’re thrilled to appear in this week’s Independent with our fellow winner, aPeel Technology!

Birdeez, a smart phone social networking application, has become popular already with bird watchers who can use the app to identify and report sightings. Birdeez project members are working to secure funding to further their venture.

Well, that’s not quite true. We’re just getting started, but she is right on when it comes to funding. And I like where she is going with our popularity among bird watchers too!

Read about the New Venture Competition and aPeel Technology on the Independent.

UCSB’s Bren School Incubated Birdeez, Covers our NVC Win!

Posted on May 20, 2012 by Jeff Simeon

I attended UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, where I first developed the idea for Birdeez. When I met my two awesome technical co-founders, Patrick and Thomas, we had a team that could make this idea reality.

The Bren School recently featured our win at the UCSB Technology Management Program’s New Venture Competition!

A team of would-be eco-entrepreneurs, including third-year Bren School master’s student Jeffrey Simeon, received the first-place, $5,000 prize in the market-oriented category of the competition, for his smart-phone application called “Birdeez.”

Read their perspective and about another great Bren Project on the Bren School website.

Birdeez Takes First Place – Daily Nexus

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Jeff Simeon

We were interviewed by the UCSB Student paper after our win at the New Venture Competition. They have great coverage of the event.

Teams faced extensive questioning following their presentations as judges proposed major points of concern, such as the questionable amount of market demand faced by Birdeez.

When the bird watching-enthusiast company received their first place prize of $5,000, TMP Program Manager Mike Panesis said the team was most impressive for its ability to overcome some of the greatest doubt facing competitors.

Read the rest of the great NVC coverage at the Daily Nexus.

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