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.

When I started at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, I wanted to find an idea to change the world for the better. Joining the Audubon Society in rural Virginia when I was 11, I know my long-term interest in the environment was inspired by my direct observation of birds. I also observed that mobile technology has been changing people’s lives, but unfortunately most people use it to detach even further from the natural world.  At Bren, I began looking for an idea to that would do the opposite––plug people back into nature. Birds seemed like the golden opportunity, and that led to Birdeez.

If Birdeez was hatched at Bren, it was incubated in the Technology Management Program  (TMP) at UCSB. That program and its New Venture Competition gave me the chance to connect with fellow UCSB students Patrick Toerner and Thomas Kuo. Working together, we have what it takes to make this idea a reality. A year ago in May, Birdeez won first place at the New Venture Competition.

Last October at a Silicon Valley event called DEMO, we launched Birdeez. We even won over the tech crowd to be selected as one of the five best presentations at DEMO.

We have a long way to go to change the world, but we’ve certainly started. Since DEMO, Birdeez has been downloaded thousands of times nationwide. We’ve been using it with groups of children to introduce them to the world of birds. We hope you’ll help us by using Birdeez with your kids and grandkids.

Birdeez is available for iPhone at GetBirdeez.com. Let us know what you think and shoot me an email anytime at Jeff@GetBirdeez.com.

Showing off the Birdeez App at NoozHawk – Photo by Lara Cooper

I recently had the chance to sit down with Lara Cooper at NoozHawk, a local Santa Barbara news agency, and talk about the big update to Birdeez and the direction we’re going. It was a lot of fun, as is the article!

I really like the subtitle:

Entrepreneur gives even novices an edge in identifying winged wonders

Only problem, it should say Entrepreneurs! This is not a one man show. There is no Birdeez without the talents and skills of Thomas Kuo and Patrick Toerner.

Read the rest of the Birdeez story from NoozHawk.

Read all about it on Pacific Coast Business Times.

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.

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”.

Birdeez is an iPhone app that makes it quick and easy to identify birds, then collect and share your sightings. Today’s featured startup, EcoLek, launched Birdeez at DEMO Fall 2012 and went on to win a DEMOgod award for their innovative product and presentation. A DEMO first, the Birdeez team was accompanied on stage by a live falcon for their presentation. (Watch the video below). Learn more about how and why this Startup California startup makes bird watching simple and mobile from its founder, Jeff Simeon.

Read the rest from my interview on the Startup America Website (s.co).

A team of UC Santa Barbara students including ECE Ph.D. student, Thomas Kuo, has landed a DEMOgod award for their app “Birdeez” at the DEMO, The Launchpad for Emerging Technology and Trends, Fall 2012 competition.

Read the rest on UCSB’s ECE website.

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.

Birdeez makes birdwatching fun and accessible for novices and experts alike. It not only quickly identifies wild birds through geolocation, a recent sightings list of birds and some quick entries regarding size, shape and color, it also helps scientists track birds to gain more data from every sighting. Plus, it is the intent of the Birdeez team that it will promote greater interest and understanding of our natural environment by making birdwatching fun and easy for children and adults alike.

Listen to the interview below!


Or read about it on Social Impact Marketing, the home of Socially Conscious Investing.

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.