Startups Archives - Page 131 of 144

St. Louis Arch Angels Invest $3 Million In 2011

We love angel funds with great names like Arch Angels (get it St.Louis, Arch, Arch Angels?). The group of investors that has been around since 2005 announced their biggest year in funding was 2011 with $3 million in investments in a variety of early stage sectors. Their investments range from health technology, to beverages and even backing a downtown St. Louis accelerator fund.

The angel group has 47 members and have invested $26 million in 28 companies since their founding in 2005.

Their leading investments in 2011 were $500,000 to Pulse Technologies. The health care company is working on developing a medical device to boost the effectiveness in clot dissolving drugs.

The groups second largest investment was $173,000 in a beverage company developed by Robert Paul, a neuropsychologist who after hearing about brain drinks decided if it was going to be done right he would do it himself. Arch Angels investment was part of a $900,000 round that also included former executives of Anheiser Busch.

Arch Angels other investments were in two more medical companies, Katalyst Surgical which received $123,000 for opthalmic instruments and $220,000 in Venti a medical device company focused on diseases of the veins.

They also contributed $375,000 to Capital Innovators the downtown accelerator fund. Capital Innovators has backed 12 startups that showed off their projects at a demo day held in the beginning of the month.

source: Stltoday.com

New York Startup: Wendr Wins $25,000 Partnership With AB InBev For Mobile App Idea

(photo: adage.com)

Wendr is a new mobile social app that launched in February at the onset of Social Media week in New York. It has many of the same characteristics of the Ft.Lauderdale startup we profiled yesterday called MyNyte. In trying out both apps MyNyte has a more personal feeling to it. However Wendr is hoping to lend their technology to AB InBev (Anheiser Busch) the makers of Budweiser.

The two month old startup won a $25,000 partnership with the beverage giant in Manhattan Wednesday as part of Ad Age’s Digital Conference. The hackathon was called “Brand Hack” and the wet behind the ears CEO Sam Zises blew away the competition, not necessarily with the app itself but with his total package.

Ad Age’s Jason DelRay report that not only did Zises bring his customized app called “Buds By Budweiser” but he engaged the crowd at one point doing a wardrobe change on stage from his Wendr hat to a hat that was already emblazoned with a “Buds By Budweiser” logo. This is the kind of thing that gets investors and contest judges engaged with the people presenting as much as the idea itself. A point echoed by Fubu founder and ABC Shark Tank Shark Daymond John in a recent Google+ Hangout Townhall meeting with high school students studying business.

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Interview: Chicago Startup Toodalu Has It All Figured Out, Reward With Cash, Donate To Charity

Great things happen in Chicago, despite what anybody else says. Toodalu is one of those great things. Founded by three friends that met in (dare I say) Chicago’s thriving tech scene, Todd O’Hara, Ravi Singh and Chris Lubinski, they set out to provide another mobile startup that caters to the reward/engagement/loyalty space but they’ve hit something on the head with greatness, and that is CASH IS KING.

With the new Toodalu app when you shop at a participating merchant you get 5% cash back on your credit card and another 5% donated to charity. Which charity? Whichever one you want. We know that Target lets you donate to a ton of charities but with Toodalu you don’t need to have your charity on a list, it just needs to be a real charity.

“The user can choose ANY non-profit to give to! That’s the key element that excites our users and merchants. In addition, a user can select up to one hundred different charitable organizations to support and select how, exactly, they wish to distribute the giving by allocating percentages.” O’Hara told us in an interview.

Not only is Toodalu of epic greatness because they’ve already figured out the reward and the charity but it’s simple. We got a chance to catch up with O’Hara, who by the way Trevor was up at 10pm answering questions for us, way past the 5pm Pando curfew. The first thing we wanted to know is how did you stumble upon such a great idea:

Toodalu is a new breed of loyalty rewards. Just link any credit or debit card to your Toodalu account and when you use that card any partner location, 5% of every purchase is donated to the charity of your choice. We are proud to help charities raise boat loads of money while attaching purpose to the purchases of our users. The idea was born from the question,”how can we increase participation rates for charitable giving?”

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Startup in Space: Skybox Imaging Raises $70M to revolutionize Satellite Imagery

San Francisco: Skybox Imaging announced they had raised $70 million (US) in Series C financing. Led by Canaan Partners and Norwest Venture Partners, including Bessemer Venture Partners and CrunchFund. Khosla Ventures was involved in this round after financing Skybox in their Series A $3 million (US) and Series B $18 million (US) – Bessemer Venture Partners was involved in Series B as well.

What is Skybox Imaging? From their website:

Skybox Imaging is a commercial remote sensing startup seeking to revolutionize access to information that describes the daily activity on our planet. Founded in 2009, Skybox is designing, manufacturing, and operating the world’s first coordinated constellation of high-resolution microsatellites in order to deliver timely imagery and video of any spot in the world. Skybox headquarters is in Mountain View, California. For more information, please visitwww.skyboximaging.com and follow Skybox Imaging on Twitter.

Basically they seem to have come up with “micro-satellites” which they will use in an extraterrestrial network of many micro-satellites. They have found a way to cut the costs involved in satellite production and operation by very significant margin and thus have likely been able to gain a number of significant clients from Big Government, Relief Organizations, perhaps Google*. As Michael Arrington said over on his site

If a company was able to do that, and put a satellite into space at a small fraction of the current cost, they’d likely be able to lock down a number of high profile customers for a variety of previously cost-prohibitive applications. Confidentiality agreements and U.S. export regulations might prohibit that company from disclosing much, or any, of that information.

But investors would obviously have access to that information. You can draw your own conclusions as to why the company is hiring big data engineers in droves…”

Boca Raton Book Swapping Startup Wins FAU Business Plan Competition

A Boca Raton software entrepreneur putting two kids through college just won $15,000 in the Florida Atlantic University business plan competition. Mark Fredericks and his son David, a junior at FAU, pitched SwitchMyBooks which won the competition and the money to go along with it. They also won $80,000 in business services for the startup.

The contest was open to South Florida entrepreneurs and not just students at FAU.

SwitchMyBooks was born out of necessity. Fredericks quickly realized that spending $1000 or more per year on textbooks for college was a reality.

“The average student spends well over $1,000 a year for books,” Fredericks told the palmbeachpost. “That’s a huge burden.”

Sure there are other ways to get used textbooks online, however SwitchMyBooks has a more innovative approach on a local level. Students who want to sell their books using SwitchMyBooks simply list the book on the site. When they have a buyer the buyer pays a $.99 fee to SwitchMyBooksand then negotiates the actual sale of the book with the seller individually. They can then meet up, presumably on the same campus or nearby to actually do the exchange. The reservation fee lets the seller know they have a serious buyer and the buyer know they have the book.

FAU is the first campus to use SwitchMyBooks they implemented the site on campus last month. Fredericks has his sites on a nationwide rollout though. If he can get one million students using the site he could easily generate $5M in revenue.

Unlike other used book sites SwitchMyBooks users deal locally and don’t have to worry about shipping heavy books through the mail. They can also of course use cash versus Paypal or another form of online payment.

source: Palmbeachpost

Little Rock’s Verve Solutions, Offering Complete Energy Assesments, Wins Gone In 60 Pitch Contest

Over 200 entrepreneurs, startup founders and technorati turned out for a Gone in 60 seconds pitch contest Monday night in Little Rock. The contest was part of a tour that was created by Innovate Arkansas. Innovate Arkansas is a partnership that works with new technology based entrepreneurs to turn inventions and startups into viable businesses.

The Gone in 60 pitch contest, or G60 as it’s affectionately known in Arkansas, is a 60 second elevator pitch contest. The Little Rock event was held at Vino’s and saw about 20 pitches compete for prizes. The top prize was $1,000.00 and won by Verve Solutions.

Verve Solutions is an energy assessment, and efficiency solution provider based in Little Rock. The company was founded by Lolisa Crowe and Brian Broussard both twenty something entrepreneurs who both happen to be RESNET certified energy auditors. Also, both have a long history of energy conscious environmental leadership. Crowe was a volunteer with Americorps through the Clinton Foundation. Boussard has worked on earth day projects as well as on the campaign of environmentally conscious and landscape architect turned State Representative Mark Robertson.

The winning pitch was focused on how the current residential building was inefficient in terms of both environment and energy consumption. Home owners will have the ability to pursue energy efficiency improvement in a more affordable way thanks to Verve solutions.

So far the G60 has been to Fayetteville, Fort Smith and Rogers. The next stops are in El Dorado, Texarkana, Jonesboro and Conway.

For more information on G60 visit Innovate Arkansas

For more info on the winner of the Little Rock competition visit Verve Solutions

source: Arkansasbusiness.com

Kansas Startup Front Flip Takes Their Virtual Scratch Card Platform National

In Overland Park Kansas, home to Sprint, a new startup called Front Flip has been trying out a new and fun way of engaging customers and increasing loyalty in Kansas, Chicago, Columbia, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Orlando, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, and St. Louis. As we’ve reported with startups like Lokalty and FreebeeCards the loyalty, rewards and engagement space is heating up big time right now. Part of the reason is because local merchants are becoming tired of killing their margins with daily deals sites that only attract a customer one time, and that one time is typically at a loss.

That’s one of the reasons why Front Flip co-founder and CEO Sean Beckner created Front Flip.

“The market is ready for a change. Daily deal programs aren’t building customer engagement or rewarding loyalty — in fact, they have rather the opposite effect,” Beckner said in a release. “Front Flip’s mission is to help businesses engage with their customers in a fun and exciting way both inside and outside the store by increasing understanding and building customer loyalty.”

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Startup Kentucky Preparing For Take Off On Friday

Scott Case and Startup America are going to Kentucky Friday to launch the Startup Kentucky initiative. Startup Kentucky, like the other Startup America partnerships around the country, will draw from the resources of the nationwide organization of volunteer entrepreneurs. Startup America is totally free and we are members with Startup Maryland.

If you’re in Kentucky the festivities will be held at Nucleus: Kentucky’s Life Sciences and Innovation Center LLC, 201 E. Jefferson Street. Joining Startup America CEO (and founding CTO of priceline.com) Scott Case, will be the Start Up regions managing director Donna Harris.

The launch events are great because entrepreneurs and startup founders from across the state turn out for a great speech from Scott Case and networking that can’t be beat at a grass-roots level. Did we already mention that joining Startup America is free. Case is no stranger to Startups, in addition to launching 18 Startup Partnerships across the country, Case was on hand when President Obama signed the JOBS Act into law on April 5th.

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3 Fort Lauderdale Entrepreneurs Launch MyNyte A Mobile Nightlife Social Startup

Three young entrepreneurs in Ft. Lauderdale have teamed up to launch an innovative new social mobile startup called MyNyte. The focus is to answer the question “What are you doing tonight” and then team up with your like-minded friends to do the same thing. Essentially, the app helps eliminate the hours of planning, phone tag, text tag, email tag, voicemail tag and any other kind of tag you can play as you plan your evening.

This app is pretty hot, how hot? Well Tyrese for one has been tweeting about it. MyNyte’s co-founder Jimmy Caylor says that Tyrese isn’t the only celebrity that’s checked out the app. A social mobile startup like this could not have picked a better market to introduce itself in as south Florida. We all know that Miami, South Beach and Fort Lauderdale are the hubs for night-time entertainment.

The three guys that founded MyNyte are no strangers to nightlife and the partying scene. Through their own personal experiences and the experiences of their friends they’ve made sure that MyNyte has everything taken care of.

Planning your night- MyNyte helps you scout the perfect places. Whether you’re looking for an upscale night of martinis, cocktails and lounging or you’re looking for the hottest clubs with the best people MyNyte uses your profile to match you up with the action.

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Madison WI Based Digital Estate Planning Startup Entrustet Acquihired By Largest Competitor SecureSafe

A big problem that many of us will face in the next 50-60 years is one that hasn’t been around before. That is, what happens to all these accounts, all these cloud stored files and all this data when we pass away. Nobody likes to face mortality but it’s definitely something you want to keep track of.

That masterful idea you’ve been working on your whole life, will it be buried with you? Will your legacy be carried out? What about all those passwords for your bank accounts and credit cards? What if you use online desktop office software like Google Docs. Heck I haven’t used Office since the beta of Google Docs. What if my life was cut short, where does the data go?

Companies like Madison Based WI startup Entrustet have been working on that. Entrustet was founded by Jesse Davis and Nathan Lustig with a vision to give users a piece of mind when it comes to your data. They want to allow people to quickly, easily and securely prepare last wishes for their digital assets.

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MA Startup: Copiun Closes $5M Series A Round For Entreprise Alternative To DropBox

Cloud based storage is a hot topic these days. We’re all anxiously awaiting for Google’s product in the space, said to be called Google Drive. The top contenders in the space already are the popular Dropbox and equally as popular Box.com. Both services offer user the ability to store any kind of file they’d like in their own personal space on the cloud. Both are also using promotions with vast amounts of free storage to attract personal users. However some IT departments don’t feel that traditional cloud based storage offerings are adequate for enterprise.

That’s where Massachusetts based Copiun comes in. Founded by CEO Puneesh Chaudhry and plans to tackle cloud based storage secure enough for corporate IT departments. Chaudhry has found that many people like DropBox however they want it more secure.

“They are saying, can you make my corporate data accessible on these devices, in a secure way,” he told the Boston Business Journal.

While making cloud based data services more secure for enterprise they are also tackling the BYOD market of prosumers as well. More and more people are choosing to bring their personal device to work. There are a variety of software solutions that allow IT departments to securely allow those employees to use a separate “area’ of their phone for business and another for personal.

“You could be sitting in a Starbucks and not connected to the corporate network, and whatever data your company has authorized to be accessible on a device, you can access it, edit it and sync it back. And it only goes to the corporate repository,” Chaudhry said in the same interview.

Copiun’s current $5 million dollar series A round was led by Maryland Venture Capital Firm Novak Biddle Venture Partners. They previously received $1.86 million dollars in a 2010 round led by Boston venture groups; Hub Angels, Launchpad Ventures and Beacon Angels.

Source: Boston Business Journal

TutHopper Wins Startup Weekend – Kansas City

Kansas City: TutHopper took the top prize at the Startup Weekend in Kansas City. Like many (if not all) discussions about startups, the inevitable comparison to either a hot company like Pinterest or Path or even the mighty Facebook, Tuthopper is being compared to the site codecademy.

I usually cringe when I hear a colleague of mine begin a conversation with a startup with “So your app is like blank company but different, right?” That just starts everything off on the wrong foot (IMO). In the case of TutHopper, I think it is absolutely fair to make that connection, because it really is very similar in scope and practice to Codecademy the only difference being TutHopper is focused on children.

The TutHopper team was made up of 10 members (2 of whom are women) Carrie Royce, Cindy Fisher, and then Justin Murray, Kyle Webster Adam Arredondo, Coty Beasley, Eze Redwood, DJ Good, Troy Norris and Jon Kors. This team, like all the other participants in the weekend, came together on Friday following a presentation of the favored pitches. Then the group of 98 participants split into 13 different groups to put together a product that could at least be marketed as well as have a polished pitch prepared for the judges. Out of the 13 teams, 12 teams made their pitch at the end of the weekend. Discussing the idea behind TutHopper and why it is important, Carrie Royce stated,

“Kids have a greater capacity for learning if they’re exposed to concepts early on—reading, math, even foreign language. And in essence, programming is a foreign language—a language that kids are going to need in the future given the increasing role technology plays in our lives,” said Carrie Royce, team member of TutHopper and CMO at Red Nova Labs. “But the education system in the U.S. isn’t taking on that challenge. Computer games are an ideal way to get kids engaged in learning programming outside the school system. If the games are sufficiently fun and challenging, kids will be proactive about signing on and learning at increasingly complex levels.”

Meanwhile fellow team member Adam Arredondo shared how it was behind the scenes for the team,

“Our team was unselfish and hardworking with enough comic relief to keep everyone upbeat,” said Adam Arredondo of the group’s vibe. “It was a huge relief that the judges were able to look past the technical errors during our presentation and see the tremendous potential TutHopper really has.”

The following are prizes for first, second, and third:

First place – 3 months of free space at Office Port for up to 5 people. And a booth at the Sprint Innovation Summit where several Sprint execs and investors will be accessible for potential funding and advising.
Second place – $1,000 worth legal services
Third place – Organizer high-fives, coke and smile.

Coming in second place was Keyzio “Where every house is for sale.” Basically if you find a house that you are interested in purchasing you can take a photo with the GPS coordinates embedded in the meta data in the photo and when you arrive home you are able to send a postcard notifying the currents owners your interest, even if the home is not on the market. And in third place was the Grüple team with yet another option for mobile payments. Grüple is an app that creates, notifies and provides different groups with simple and quick ways to conduct monetary reimbursements.

Chicago Startup: FlyWhim Wants You To Imagine If You Bid On Airfare Like Hotwire

Are you familiar with Hotwire? Most people who travel all the time have either used Hotwire, checked Hotwire or know about Hotwire. They were the first on the hotel booking scene with blind box bidding on hotel rooms. The way it was originally designed to work is hotels would load up their unused inventory, you would see a price and general location but not the hotel name and you could get between 40%-70% off your hotel stay. They would tell you the name of the hotel and the address after you booked.

Hotwire doesn’t quite work like that anymore. Sure they still do blind box bidding but you get the same deals as you’d get with just about any hotel site. For last-minute booking the only app really doing it right is Hotel Tonight, but that’s another story for another day.

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Omaha: Food Fight App For Restaurant Ratings Wins Hack Omaha

Quick take every preconceived notion you have about a restaurant ratings app and throw it out the window. We’re not going to be talking about the next Urbanspoon or Open Table or even the next Venga. But to set the stage we need to talk about Hack Omaha first.

The Hack Omaha challenge was this past weekend in Omaha Nebraska. The event was a three-day event, similar to a startup weekend, which started on Friday and ended this past Sunday at 6:00pm. During this time the “hacker” teams needed to use some portion of publicly available government data and turn into something useful, or in Omaha Food Fight’s case, useful and fun.

While you’re probably thinking crime prevention heat maps, city park guides, community planning apps, and things like that, those were all represented but Omaha Food Fight took the cake (you see what we did there?).

The other teams were:

Safeomaha.org- An interactive crime heat map.

Omaha Bounty Hunter- “The Price Is Right” for stolen property values.

Play Safe Omaha- Map of safe places for kids to play.

Valuation and Comparison Interface: a property value comparison app.

HSW Project- relationships revolving around campaign finance.

Slum Lord Next Door- Search neighborhoods for major code violations

Is It Clean- is the place you’re going to eat at safe.

Voting Registration app- needs no description.

Omaha Food Fight- The winner.

(source: SPN)

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