Comments Off on Zack Miller Talks To Nibletz About The New Norfolk Startup Accelerator Hatch0LikeLike 11,335
Hampton Roads Virginia is a thriving community anchored by Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Hampton, Newport News and Chesapeake. They’ve got a lot of great technical talent coming out of the military bases in the community and a great feeder system of colleges like Norfolk State, Hampton University and Old Dominion University. They’ve also been put on the map with efforts like Start Norfolk.
So it was only natural that one of their own entrepreneurs Zack Miller decided to start an accelerator program for the region. He decided to put it in Norfolk which is the epicenter for Hampton Roads. Hampton Roads already has three accelerators in Innovation Research Park, Hampton Roads Technology Center and James City County Incubator. The region needed something like Hatch.
We got a chance to talk with Miller about Hatch. He talks about the importance of an accelerator in the region and also gives us a break down of Hatch’s first class in the interview below.
Comments Off on Virginia Startup: SpydrSafe Launches First Scalable DLP Solution For Enterprise0LikeLike 2,034
As more and more people fall into the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) category, the need for enterprise solutions for multiple managed devices has risen. Security is an issue that’s paramount to companies allowing employees to bring their own device to work. Security can also be a headache for IT departments.
Data loss is one of the main security threats that enterprise IT professionals are concerned about with people bringing their own devices to work. Before the rise in popularity of bringing one’s own device, IT departments could control the flow and security of data, especially in a Blackberry enterprise server dominated world. Now with BYOD the main element of security is gone and IT departments need to find a solution that will secure their data no matter who owns the device.
A Virginia startup called SpydrSafe is addressing that problem for people that are bringing their own Android devices to work. SpydrSafe Mobile DLP™, safeguards against data loss with innovative technology that delivers app-level protection on Android smartphones and tablets.
“Protecting corporate information on mobile devices presents enormous challenges for enterprise IT departments. The risk of data breaches is no longer solely an external threat as more employees use their own personal devices in the workplace (BYOD).” said Michael R. Pratt, Chief Executive Officer of SpydrSafe Mobile Security. “SpydrSafe Mobile DLP™ addresses the issues created by BYOD by providing enterprise IT the tools necessary to safeguard data that is accessed and used by mobile apps.”
The SpydrSafe solution consists of two main parts:
SpydrSafe Mobile DLP™ is an advanced mobile data loss prevention solution comprising SpydrSafe Mobile DLP™ for Android and SpydrSafe Security Manager™. The SpydrSafe Mobile DLP™ for Android app is available on either Google Play or Amazon Appstore for Android.
SpydrSafe Security Manager™ is a SaaS (Security-as-a-Service), cloud-based security management console used by IT administrators to add and enroll new users, assign users to groups, assign policies and access audit and reporting information.
About SpydrSafe Mobile Security, Inc.
Comments Off on Virginia Startup: SynkMonkey Keep Your Friends, & Your Plans In Sync INTERVIEW0LikeLike 1,611
We are all very aware of how difficult it is to keep plans in sync when it comes to life on the go running through a smartphone. Whether you’re a group of high school students, fraternity brothers or even golfing buddies, keeping your entire group “in sync” can be a challenge.
Now there’s of course Facebook and Facebook events but one of the huge disadvantages to Facebook is how hard it is to get distracted. I couldn’t tell you the number of times I needed an events address or to ping a friend for somewhere to go and then got sidetracked from my other notifications or even my wall. On the iPhone, iPad or Android phone this can be a wreck.
Enter Charlottesvile Virginia startup SyncMonkey. They combine three very key and important elements in events, activities and staying in sync. Those elements are calendars, mapping and friends. Using this app over traditional event apps keeps you in close contact with everyone that’s supposed to be there.
We got a chance to talk with Hunter Murchison of SyncMonkey about their excited startup, application and some big news, that they’re finally ready for Android. Check out the interview after the break and check out these great interviews, after this one.
A Portland Oregon startup up that specializes in producing smartphone apps for conferences and events, has been acquired by event planning software company Cvent. CrowdCompass is Cvent’s second acquisition in just one week. Last week Cvent, who’s based in Virginia, acquired Austin startup Seed Labs.
“Let’s be clear: We bought this for their people,” said Cvent chief executive Reggie Aggarwal. “We’re going to let the management team run the place they way they’ve been doing it.”
Mobile apps and technology have been changing trade shows, conferences and conventions over the past few years. It’s already been seen that the more robust your tradeshow app is the better. South By Southwest 2012 had a great app that covered every speck of the event officially produced by SXSW. As did the CES app earlier in the year.
Last fall the Oregon company raised $1.3 million led by the Oregon Angel Fund.
CrowdCompass was founded in 2009 and makes apps that connect event go-fers to specific events, other attendees and social media.
CrowdCompass corporate portfolio includes event apps for
E*Trade, Daimler, and Intuit; and meetings industry organizations, like The Meetings Technology Expo; and associations, like the American Bar Association, Association of General Contractors and American Society of Anesthesiologists.
“Cvent’s success is predicated on delivering best-of-breed technology solutions to our event industry clients and partners. This acquisition is an important step to ensuring we continue to lead the industry in the adoption of mobile technologies,” said Reggie Aggarwal, Founder and CEO of Cvent. “We selected CrowdCompass because it was clear that they are a leading developer of native mobile apps for business and association events. With experience building hundreds of apps for a wide variety of mid-to large-sized public and private events, the addition of CrowdCompass gives us unparalleled expertise in creating mobile apps for events. We have offered mobile friendly event web sites for some time, but the CrowdCompass product takes the mobile experience to the next level.”
To date CrowdCompass has produced 435 event apps which have seen over 500,000 downloads for Blackberry,Android and iOS.
“Becoming part of Cvent will allow CrowdCompass to operate on a greater scale than it ever has before,” said Tom Kingsley, Founder and CEO of CrowdCompass. “Our technologies and expertise will be a great fit with Cvent’s unmatched reputation and client base; we’re looking forward to all the services we will be able to develop under the Cvent umbrella.”
“The CrowdCompass app demonstrates the excellence and innovation that attendees have come to expect from the Mental Health and Addictions Conference,” said Courtney Young, Digital and Social Media Specialist at the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare. “We had over 3,000 healthcare professionals and administrators in attendance, and the response to the app was overwhelming, with 80% of them downloading it. By offering the CrowdCompass app, we showed our attendees that we are listening to their demands and care deeply about their conference experience.”
Cvent was founded in 1999 by Reggie Aggarwal. Aggarwal took the company from a two person team to a team of over 900 in McLean Virginia, the city that was once home to America Online. Cvent has been profitable over the last ten years.
Capital Connection is an event 25 years strong, puling together all facets of the private investment industry. The day and a half long conference this past week included one day of early stage, and pre-funded companies called TechBUZZ while Thursday featured many of the regions biggest growth companies.
Wednesday’s TechBUZZ event featured 28 startup companies. 26 were vetted by the TechBUZZ committee while the 28th company was selected in conjunction with Startup America. The Startup America winner was CONT3NT.
One of the best ideas that we saw on Wednesday was Vienna Virginia based Kinergy Health. Kinergy Health was founded by health tech serial entrepreneur and CEO Neil Agate and connects family members, doctors and caregivers, managing a loved ones care, in the cloud.
As someone who has spent a good deal of time in the hospital in the last two years I can tell you that the idea behind Kinergy Health’s MyKinergy product resonated with me and my loved ones when I described it to them.
If you’ve ever been to the hospital, whether your a kid, in your thirties like myself, or well into your elder years, the time between doctor visits and the miscommunication that comes with those visits can be nerve wracking for the patient and their family. Your primary care doctor gives one order while your internist or oncologist gives another, and no one seems to know when you’ll ever go home.
Comments Off on Roanoke Startup: Lujure Wins Tech Excellence Award0LikeLike 1,561
The Roanoke-Blacksburg Technology Council held their annual awards banquet this week honoring local companies, and startups in the technology space.
A startup called Lujure Media LLC took home the council’s rising star award which recognizes the hard work of a locally based startup. Lujure has a web based application that allows Facebook users with fan pages to customize them quickly and easily.
Lujure also blogs about the business and semantics of Facebook and delivers information that is important to their customers. Lujure is a premium (paid) Facebook tool and according to Roanoke.com they have thousands of paying customers.
Lujure has generated over $400,000 in revenue in its first year. Their web application helps companies make their fan pages in less than 30 seconds. It’s a simple drag and drop method of putting together a Fan Page. Lujure has a number of different plans which are really based on two things.
The first factor in which plan you should take is how familiar you are with Facebook and Fan pages. This also takes into consideration either how much time you have to maintain your page and how much hand holding you need. Lujure has several plans from free to $3,000 per month. Obviously $3,000 a month may be a lot of money but Lujure gives you all the bells and whistles and does a lot of the work for you.
The other factor is how many enhancements you want.
Comments Off on Virginia Startup: FoodMeetsDrink Puts A Different Spin On Well, Food And Drink0LikeLike 1,958
When I’m on the road (which is 90% of the time) eating is usually easy, I know what kind of foods I like and I like to try restaurants that I can’t get anywhere else. I also have my favorite dives and regional chains based on where I am. It’s when I get home that dinner gets tricky. “What’s for dinner” can literally be a 3 hour process in my house because no one knows what they want or wants to articulate it in any reasonable fashion. By the time the decision is made it’s typically take out from one of the same four places from the previous day.
Well a Virginia startup called FoodMeetsDrink is about to help me with that problem. We are all well aware that there are a bajillion restaurant apps. Some are great, like Venga, others are useful, like urban spoon but so far there hasn’t been a good app that combines both restaurants and cooking at home. So to date we can’t find a good app that really answers the question “What’s for dinner?” Until now.
FoodMeetsDrink answers that question as co-founder Dave Forbes tells us: We answer the question, “What’s for dinner tonight?” by providing a visual method to create any combination of distinct ingredients and locate just the right recipe, local restaurant or food source for specific ingredients.
Comments Off on Leesburg VA Based Startup: Time Razor Promises You’ll Never Miss Out0LikeLike 1,393
Time Razor, a Leesburg VA based startup just recently took their project out of stealth mode. The company is venture backed and puts a new spin on events, and time management. TimeRazor was founded by Barry White (no relation to the R&B singer), who has a mixed background mostly in real estate development. However in the hustle bustle world of the DC suburbs we’re sure a developer knows a thing or two about time management.
What TimeRazor ultimately does is cut out the noise from other similar event recommendation apps. Through their proprietary software and algorithms TimeRazor combs through over 300,000 events a day and serves up suggestions and updates for events that the user would actually like to attend. They call this technology the “distillery”.
Kyle
Hampton Roads Virginia is a thriving community anchored by Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Hampton, Newport News and Chesapeake. They’ve got a lot of great technical talent coming out of the military bases in the community and a great feeder system of colleges like Norfolk State, Hampton University and Old Dominion University. They’ve also been put on the map with efforts like Start Norfolk.
