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Austin Startup: Kampfire.co Lets You Play Drinking Games Miles Apart

There’s an interesting new startup in Austin Texas. The startup, called Kampfire.co is hoping to bring together friends, family members and others to socially play drinking games across the internet, enabling both social and video. Of course the startup is only open to those 21 and over.

Co-Founder Joe Wallen told Nibletz.com that this idea came about because friends and family members after college sometimes want to get together for fun, adult socializing. He talked about how you could play beer pong with a buddy who may have been shipped off for the military (off duty of course), or frat brothers who’ve moved away could get together for an evening of fun and games, via the internet.

Now we’re not talking about avatars or animation we’re talking about a real video enabled platform to set up drinking games and play in remote locations.

We told you this was interesting. We spoke to Wallen a little more in-depth about it:

What is Kampfire.com?

The main product will be online gaming/social network, with an online store. This creates not only a forum for sponsors to market their products, but also to market our own line of apparel and merchandise. The targeted consumers are anyone, worldwide, who plays any of the drinking games offered on the website. We will not, however, be confined to cyberspace. The monthly and yearly tournaments can be held live, College vs. College, military branch vs. military branch, and tours are just a few of the other areas that will bring sponsors and new growth. Others are sure to follow once they see the billion dollar industry that we have created.

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Interview: Austin Transplant Startup Sprockster Is A Great Place For Kids And Families

After getting my start in media at the age of 12 for Radio Aahs (the precursor to Radio Disney), naturally kid focused startups occasionally catch my eye, especially when their done well, and with a little TLC.

Sprockster is one of those great kid and family focused startup. Sprockster is a gateway to family friendly entertainment. They have a collection of over 1,000 kid friendly songs, hundreds of music videos and they’ve promoted over 600+ family friendly events. Sprockster is reminiscent of the newest version of MySpace (post Justin Timberlake) except guaranteed family friendly.

Co-founder Jesse Atwell tells nibletz.com:

“Sprockster is an online community dedicated to the discovery and promotion of new and emerging family entertainment. Initially focused on kids’ music and kids’ music videos, the site features 1000+ streaming songs, 500+ original music videos, and has promoted 600+ family-friendly events. Sprockster’s users include parents, educators, artists, brands, educators, video producers, etc. Our artist members have profiles that typically include streaming songs, videos, upcoming tour dates, pictures, current news, and more. Any user can create an account and contribute and engage with artists and other users. If you’re looking to explore, discover, and talk about new family-friendly entertainment, Sprockster is the place!”

There’s definitely a hole in aggregation services for family friendly entertainment.

“…If you visit iTunes and search “Kids Music” the first song you get is “Kids” by MGMT. I LOVE iTunes and “Kids” by MGMT is a great, GREAT song. One of my favorites. But it’s not very helpful if you’re looking to sample, explore, and discover the next Laurie Berkner or Dan Zanes. That’s not necessarily a perfect example, but ‘Family Music’ is a special case and definitely deserves its own neighborhood in the musical townscape . . . the main point being that not everything you find on traditional platforms is family-friendly and there’s a need to kind of clear the clutter. This is what inspired Sprockster and – ultimately – what we are trying to solve” Atwell said.

Atwells co-founder is his wife. She has a background in child development while he has an extensive background in entertainment marketing and digital production development. Before founding Sprockster Atwell held positions at Sony Music and Hallmark Cards. While there are already sites dedicated to the discovery of music like iTunes, MySpace, and Pandora, the Atwells couldn’t find a solution dedicated to just family entertainment.”

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VC Investment In Austin Texas Jumps 47% In Q1 While Many Cities In U.S. See A Decline

Austin Texas is the place to be for startups every March during the annual South By Southwest Interactive festival. Startups from across the country, and the globe spend anywhere from $10,000 to several hundreds of thousands of dollars to have the biggest pop during the festival. Well what about the Austin startup scene the rest of the year?

We all know about Austin success stories like that of GoWalla who sold their company in an acquihire to Facebook. They shut the service down this year during SXSW before relocating to Paolo Alto. However there are a lot more startups in Austin, how many? Well there’s an Austin startup list website that lists over 1400 startups, ranging from easly stage companies to those that are funded or on the brink of acquisition.

While the rest of the country saw an 18% decline in venture capital investments and deal volume fell 9% over the same period last year, Austin saw a 47% increase in venture capital funding during the first quarter.

Austin venture backed businesses tallied up $250 million dollars in 32 financings in the first quarter, reports the Austin Business Journal.

That number was fueled by three huge deals. Apollo Endosurgery got a $47.6 million dollar investment. In February Kinner Software received a $40 million dollar investment and in March Pivot3 Inc saw an investment of $23.3 million dollars.

source: Austin Business Journal

Austin Startup: RxNetwork Launches Website To Find Best Local Prices On Prescriptions, App To Come

Austin based pharmatech startup RxNetwork has officially launched their consumer facing website designed to help people find the best possible prices on prescription drugs in their area. The site serves up both online and brick & mortar pharmacies by zipcode.

All you have to do is enter the prescription name, choose the right dosage and enter your zipcode. Once that information is entered RxNetwork searches local pharmacies whether they be stand alone or in big department stores like WalMart and Target, to find the best possible price for your prescription. Where applicable it also shows you the availability of a generic version of that particular prescription and the cost.

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Austin Named Best City For Small Business For Third Year In A Row

The Business Journals, you know the local tabloid sized weekly business newspapers, have selected Austin Texas as the best city for small business for the third year in a row. Raleigh NC, Oklahoma City OK, Houston Texas and Salt Lake City UT followed behind Austin this year.

Sure Austin is home to two mega festivals every year with South By Southwest (SXSW) and Austin City Limits, but it’s their year round support for local small businesses that has earned Austin this title, yet again. The actual scoring factors by the Business Journals were; growth in population, private sector jobs, per capita concentration of small businesses and the number of small businesses. The Business Journals declared a small business having 100 employees or less.

Austin’s strong number of startups of course contributed to this winning. Website austinstartuplist.com has found over 1400 companies that are in their startup stages and call Austin TX home.

Every year hundreds of startups flock to Austin’s SXSW Interactive festival hoping to get the buzz that Twitter, and Foursquare once garnered. Startups like Zaarly (2011), Highlight and Glancee have pulled traction out of the Austin festival but not the way Foursquare and Twitter have.

Austin is also a hot bed of acquihires the most notable being Facebook’s purchase and relocation of Gowalla from Austin to Paolo Alto.

We’ve spoken with several Austin based startups who sometimes feel like Austin’s startup scene is hot only in March. They’ve got some great companies, startups and events, all that we’ll be covering here at Nibletz as the voice for startups everywhere else. As for not being hot year round, Business Journals obviously thinks they are.

source: Inc