Startup News Archives - Page 37 of 53

Auburn Startup: GetCharitable Nominated For 2013 Mobility Award At CES

An Auburn Alabama startup that accelerated in Oklahoma City’s BluePrint For Business accelerated has just made history, by getting nominated for a distinguished 2013 Mobility Award at CES 2013.

GetCharitable, founded by Auburn University students Michael Isaacs and Kyle DeTullio, makes donating to charity extremely easy for the slackest of slacktivists. The app, currently available in the Google Play Store for Android devices, downloads a sponsored image daily.

Once the app is installed it’s so easy, GetCharitable says:

“That’s it! Once the app is running, you needn’t do a thing – just kick back and wake up each morning with the confidence that you saved a hungry child’s life as a new sponsored image appears each day.”

The Auburn startup was nominated for a prestigious “2013 Mobility Award” as part of the Mobiletrax event. Mobiletrax and the Mobility Awards were founded by longtime industry expert Gerry Purdy PhD.

While most exhibitors at the International CES are vying for “Best of CES” awards and nominations the Mobility Awards are a distinguished honor voted on by top level peers in the mobile industry as well as mobile focused media.

What’s particularly noteworthy for this honor in regards to GetCharitable is that this is the first time that such an early stage startup has been among the nominees. That alone speaks eons to the viability and prospects for the idea focused behind this mobile, socially conscious startup.

The winners will be revealed during a ceremony and banquet January 9th in Las Vegas during the International CES.

Linkage

Getcharitable

Accelerate MSP To Fund Up To 10 Twin Cities Startups

Accelerate MSP, Minneapolis startups,funding, startups

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman (photo: business journal)

The Minneapolis /St.Paul twin cities region is about to get another non profit aimed at funding startups. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman announced the new “Accelerate MSP” initiative before an audience of a few hundred at the St. Paul Regional Economic Development Forum in Minneapolis.

Accelerate MSP will “…help fill a critical need for seed and early-stage funding at the valley of death stage in commercialization,” Coleman said.

The new group plans to fund early stage startups with a seed investment anywhere between $50,000 and $500,000 dollars. They plan on funding 10 startups per year.

To date the new organization has raised $200,000 with another $150,000 request pending. Accelerate MSP has received funds from The City Of St. Paul, The Minnesota Department of Employment & Economic Development, the McKnight Foundation, Saint Paul Foundation, Surdna Foundation and the US Department of Commerce.

Ernest Grumbles, Tom Kieffer, Brad Lehrman, Joy Lindsay, Steve Mercil and Jay Schrankler and make up the founding board for Accelerate MSP. They plan on hiring a CEO early next year that will help administer the fund.

Linkage:

Source: Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal

This is the biggest startup event in the U.S., and you CAN afford it

Seattle Techstars Startup: SandGlaz Raises $500K

A Techstars Seattle startup graduate that specializes in collaborative project/task management has just announced a $500k raise. The startup, called SandGlaz, was founded in 2011.

SandGlaz makes it easy for high performance teams of 5-15 to manage and collaborate on tasks and projects which are managed in “infinite grids”. Users can break down task lists, add descriptions and set notifications and due dates. All this is managed through a drag and drop interface.

The funding round, led by private investors, will be used to launch more email integration, smartphone apps for Android and iOS, and launch a universal grid feature so that users can see all of their current tasks and projects on one screen.

There are already plenty of collaborative management tools out there already. Basecamp, Asana and even xtrant, offer teams of users the ability to manage tasks and projects together. However, SandGlaz CEO Nada Aldahleh, feels her startup serves the middle space between quick easy management solutions and more complex offerings like MS Project and SmartSheet.

SandGlaz seems to have all of the right things in the right places. Their revenue stream comes from their three tiered pricing plans. They offer a fermium model all the way up to team subscriptions. They also have their TechStars pedigree which definitely gives them a leg up in talking to investors.

Adlahleh spoke to BetaKit about their experience at TechStars:

“During our time at TechStars, we’ve been looking at how to improve our virality metric. I really think that virality is the key ingredient that every startup should be thinking about early on,” said Aldahleh.

Linkage

Check out SandGlaz here

Here’s more startup news from everywhere else

You need to be at the biggest startup conference in the U.S.

Tampa Bay Startup: MamaBear Giving Parents A Piece Of Mind

Monitoring your kids on the internet and on their mobile phone can be a sticky issue. Every parent wants to know that their children are being safe and that they are safe, everywhere they go and no matter what they are doing. Parents in this day and age have a lot more to watch out for than even 10 years ago. Child predators, cyber-bullying, texting and driving are all real problems facing parents and kids but privacy can be almost as sensitive.

Tampa Bay startup MamaBear has come up a mobile app that allows parents to monitor as much or as little as they want to on their child’s mobile phone. The first step though is the acknowledgement the app gets from the monitored phone (the child’s). Parents download the MamaBear app to their smartphone and then on their child’s phone. The child then checks in, both acknowledging the app is on their phone and letting their parents know where they are.

MamaBear from Mamabear App on Vimeo.

Parents can monitor locations, texts, social media, and more. In fact, MamaBear app also provides a list of words that could indicate the child is doing something that’s at risk or that they’re being cyber bullied.

MamaBear evolved out of a location based company that was working on providing businesses with location based business intelligence. One of the co-founders, Stuart Kime got into a conversation with a parent who had told him that her full time job was monitoring her kids’ social media pages. Kime along with his co-founders were able to come up with an app that gave parents a piece of mind all the way around.

We got a chance to interview Robyn Spoto, co-founder and company President. Check out the interview with her below:

Temecula California Startup: Sightly Inks $5.6M In Venture Round

Sightly, a startup based in Temecula California has just announced a venture raise of $5.6 million dollars. The company specializes in connecting and engaging local businesses with customers through video.

The companies innovative platform utilizes video across the web and where it matters most in this decade, on their mobile device. Sightly helps businesses develop and manage interactive video campaigns through a real time dashboard that allows businesses to monitor their own success.

The company started out as a business focused video production company however John McIntyre the founder and CEO of Sightly has abandoned the production house business for the current model where the opportunity really exists.

Moscow based Bright Capital Digital also sees the great opportunity with Sightly. They led this $5.6 million dollar round. The company also attracted new investor Foresight Ventures.

Existing investors, Floodgate, Tomorrow Ventures, Bullpen Capital, Mack Capital and 500 Startups also participated in the round.

“We believe that video – particularly on mobile devices – is going to drive how consumers find and choose local businesses,” McIntyre said “This funding from both new and current investors not only validates this vision but supports its realization.”

“Local is exploding,” said Mike Maples of Floodgate. “Sightly not only has a compelling vision of where the market is heading for consumers and local businesses, but they have a breakthrough approach on how to make that vision a reality and create a game changer in local advertising.”

Linkage:

Check out Sightly here

More startup news from everywhere else.

everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference is the biggest startup conference in the U.S.

Startup Weekend To Ring Opening Bell Friday

Startup Weekend was founded in Boulder Colorado in 2007, by Andrew Hyde. What we now know as the 54 hour hackathon style, team startup weekend event started out with a different model. When Hyde created Startup Weekend the goal was to bring a group together to work on one idea or concept all weekend.

That model evolved into what we know today as Startup Weekend and the thousands of clones out there. In 2009 Marc Nager and Clint Nelsen acquired Startup Weekend and made it an official 501c3 non-profit organization.

The following year they received major backing from the Kauffman Foundation.

Today Startup weekend has hosted events across 100 countries and 400 cities. Startup Weekend events are serious business for their hacker, entrepreneur and founder participants. In fact missile attacks couldn’t even thwart this Israeli Startup Weekend (at first).

Startup Weekend has also hosted global contests pitting participants in several cities and countries against each other. The Global Startup Battle is in its second year and took place last month as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week. Mega Startup Weekend is also another event that highlights the collective efforts of entrepreneurs at Startup Weekend events.

Startup Weekend will celebrate the creation of 100,000 entrepreneurs in their 3 years of existence in the current format. To mark the occasion Nager and Nelsen will ring the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday morning.

According to GeekWire Startup Weekend has raised $75 million dollars for entrepreneurship and created thousands of jobs.

Linkage

Startup Weekend can be found here

Here’s nibletz coverage of Startup Weekend

Check out this giant startup event

500Startups Backs Bangalore Startup ZipDial

Dave McClure and his 500startups continue their jaunt across the globe. Just last week we reported that McClure had made his first investment in a German startup. Today we’ve found out that 500startups has backed a company out of Bangalore India called ZipDial.

500startups is no stranger to Indian startups. In fact, an Indian email newsletter startup called TradeBriefs is in the current cohort based 500startups accelerator program, happening right now in Mountain View.

ZipDial founded by Sanjay Swamy, Amiya Pathak and Valerie Rozycki is a mobile marketing engagement platform that works based on a missed call. A call is initiated and then disconnects after one ring and then sends a text message.

“We’ve been impressed at how effective ZipDial has been for us, usually 2-5 times more effective than Facebook or just SMS. We see its value for brand and SME advertiser clients and are excited to see it grow globally,” Satyan Gajwani, CEO, Times Internet (who participated in the funding round along with 500Startups) told SiliconIndia

“500 Startups has proven repeatedly to add value with its global network of mentors helping their portfolio companies grow. Working with the fund is strategic for ZipDial as we invest in our international expansion into other emerging markets,” says Valerie R. Wagoner, CEO and Founder of ZipDial, as reported by Silicon India

Linkage:
ZipDial is on the web here.

More startup news from everywhere else.

everywhereelse.co is the largest startup conference in the U.S.

Miami Getting A Health Tech Startup Accelerator

Health tech is a huge space. It, along with its sibling, “bioscience” is one of the fastest growing segments of startups world wide. Health tech focused accelerators can be wildly successful, especially “everywhere else”.

In startup communities “everywhere else” it can be easier for investors to understand health tech, as opposed to the latest, greatest, social local mobile event discovery app. Presumably, health tech startups have a direct path to helping people, fighting sickness or driving costs down.

Lift1428, an innovation design, strategy and communications firm, the Miami Innovation Center at the University of Miami Life Science & Technology Park and its developer, Wexford Science + Technology, and the UM Miller School of Medicine, have teamed up for Project Lift Miami, a new health tech focused startup accelerator in Miami, reports the Miami Herald.

The new Project Lift Miami accelerator is a 100 day program for new startups and entrepreneurs. They will select between 10-15 startups and entrepreneurs to participate in the program. Each startup will receive between $20,000 and $30,000 in seed funding.

However, like most accelerators, this program is not about the funding. All of the teams will have access to a nationwide network of top level mentors who have committed to the startups well beyond the 100 day program.
“There’s so much regulation and there are privacy issues and other barriers to entry that are different in the healthcare industry. Having the access to the environment we have here to test your idea and prove your concept is a great advance,” said Robert Chavez, Executive Director of Project Lift, who is also executive director of business intelligence at UM’s Miller School, told the Herald “That kind of mentoring you won’t get at a general accelerator.”

Linkage:
Apply now for Project Lift

More startup news is here

See a bunch of Miami Startups at the largest startup conference in the U.S.

Everywhereelse.co Getting Close, Less Than 8 Weeks Til The Biggest Startup Conference In The U.S.

The biggest startup conference in the United States, everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, is happening in less than eight weeks. February 9-12th 2013, over 1700 entrepreneurs, startup founders, investors, designers, and developers will converge on downtown Memphis Tennessee. Make no mistake about it, this is a national conference with less than 15% of the ticket sales zipcoding to Tennessee.

Over 400 of the tickets sold have identified themselves as angels or VC’s and their email addresses check out.

The conference officially starts on Sunday February 10th with a preview of the Startup Village. Over 100 startups from around the world will be exhibiting in the Startup Village. Startup Village exhibitors have three changes to win part of $50,000 in cash (and then prizes) in three different contests. The first contest will be a video contest that will launch on January 15th and is open to all of the startups in the village. The second contest will be a hard 2 minute speed pitch contest in front of an audience of investors Sunday afternoon. The third contest is an audience choice contest which will allow the over 1700 attendees who’ve purchased tickets to the event to vote for the startup they like the best.

We have the strongest speaker line up of any conference this size. Scott Case, founding CTO at Priceline.com, Several TechStars founders, Mike Bott GM at The Brandery, Gabe Lozano from Lockerdome, Sarah Ware, Award Winning Author Tracy Myers, and many more that we can announce when ticket sales close.

everywhereelse.co The Starutp Conference will give startups, entrepreneurs and founders unparalleled access to some of the best investors in the world and networking opportunities not available from any other conference. We’ve been able to do this because of our great sponsors and keeping ticket prices low. (Regular price $99 attendee $550 startup/early bird pricing $59 attendee $425 startup which includes 3 tickets)

We can’t wait to see you in Memphis!

Linkage:

everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference website

Get your Startup Village booth or attendee ticket here

Merry Christmas Instagram: Facebook’s Mobile Photo App Hit With Class Action Lawsuit

While millions of people across the world were preparing for Christmas and undoubtedly filling their Instagram feeds with pictures of carolers, cooking, food, presents and of course Santa Claus, A woman from San Diego, Lucy Funes, and the law firm of Finklestein & Krinsk launched a class action lawsuit against the photo giant.

Instagram quickly found themselves under fire from irate users. Even some of their more infamous users like Kim Kardashian said they would quit using the service. National Geographic had taken down their Instagram feed. All of this stemming from a change in Instagram’s Terms of Service (TOS). You know those long legaleeze pages that you just automatically agree to so that you can start using an app.

In the originally changed TOS Instagram had basically said that they could use your photos for whatever they want without compensation. They also said they may choose to advertise alongside your photos, they didn’t have to tell you and you wouldn’t make any money from it. Of course, whether or not you agree with these terms, no one forces you to use their product. All the while, if you do, you’re making an agreement to abide by their terms.

Nevertheless, Instagram founder and CEO Kevin Systrom went ahead and back pedaled on the parts pertaining to copyright and using a users photos. The language about advertising remained in place.

Funes, most likely started the ball rolling for her class action lawsuit before Systrom apologized and changed the terms of service again, however the suit was filed. The lawsuit says customers who don’t agree with Instagram’s terms can cancel their profile but forfeit the rights to photos they previously shared on the service.

“In short, Instagram declares that ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don’t like it, you can’t stop us,'” the lawsuit says.

Instagram catapulted to fame over the last few years. They were acquired by Facebook in early 2012 for what was believed to be a cash/stock deal worth $1 billion dollars at the time it was announced. Because of Facebook’s decline in stock valuation the deal is only worth about $715 million dollars now.

With the long holiday weekend it’s hard to tell if Funes will still push forward with the lawsuit since the new TOS language doesn’t lay claim to a users photos the way it previously did. We’ll hopefully find out more shortly.

The holidays are a big time for Instagram. They may see a little downtrend this year partially caused by users unsure of what’s happening with the Terms of Service and also because their sharing via Twitter went through a major overhaul earlier this month.

Linkage:

Source: Yahoo/Reuters

More startup news from “everywhere else”

Did you know everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference is the largest startup conference in the U.S.

Partnership With St. Louis Rams, Paying Off For Startup, Bonfyre

St. Louis startup Bonfyre is socially engaging and powering events in ways that other social event sharing apps just haven’t been able to perfect. When you think about an actual bonfire, you know the big huge ones, everyone at the bonfire may take away something different from that event. If you’ve ever been to enormous bonfires like the ones at Bonaroo in years past, hundreds and hundreds of people could be at the same event and share totally different experiences.

The same thing goes for any large event. Football games make a great case use for the Bonfyre application. Here you have tens of thousands of fans that are watching the same game, with different favorite players, different favorite teams, and in different places throughout the stadium. In this day and age all of those people are sharing to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social networks. Everyone has a different perspective and different shares. Bonfyre is bringing that all back together.

The St. Louis, venture backed startup was founded by Raymond Gobberg and Mark Sawyier. They’ve received $750,000 in venture capital from Arch Angels and Cultivation Capital. It’s another St. Louis startup that Rick Holton is all fyred up about.

Bonfyre was fortunate enough to get into a partnership with the St. Louis Rams early on. Now Bonfyre and the Rams have been through their third sponsored game. The St. Louis Business Journal, is reporting that during the game between the St. Louis Rams and the Minnesota Vikings, fans used Bonfyre over 17,000 times. 20 percent of those participants shared 1800 chats and photos.

The Rams are taking advantage of Bonfyre’s social network and outreach and they’ve baked ticket giveaways and behind the scenes photos and chats with players into the game experience via Bonfyre.

“The app allows us to further connect with our fans to help increase the value of their experience before, during and after a game,” Brian Killingsworth Rams Vice President of Marketing & Branding for the Rams told the Business Journal.

Linkage:

Check out Bonfyre here

Here’s more startup news from “everywhere else”

everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference is the largest startup conference in the U.S.

Atlanta Startup: CloudSherpas Announces $40 Million Dollar Raise

CloudSherpas, an Atlanta based startup has announced a VC raise of $40 million dollars as well as an acquisition of CloudTrigger, a consulting company that specializes in Salesforce.

TechCrunch describes CloudSherpas as a “cloud brokerage”. The company is a reseller of Google Apps and services as well as Salesforce products. They also consult on everything cloud.

But their own intellectual property also puts them in a category by themselves. CloudSherpas has a treasure trove of their own proprietary extensions as well as those stemming from their acquisitions.

TechCrunch is quick to point out that CloudSherpas is themselves a product of a merger. Back in March they merged with New York company GlobalOne. At that time they received a $20 million dollar investment from Columbia Capital, who had previously invested $15 million in GlobalOne.

This $40 million dollar round was led by GreenSpring Associates and brought their total vc funding to $62.6 million. Columbia Capital and Delta-V Capital joined in the new round. Australia-based Queensland Investment Corporation, an institutional investment manager, also participated.

CloudSherpas reportedly employs 350 people and plans to have a head count of 500 in the coming year.

Linkage:

Find CloudSherpas on the web here

Source: TC

Click here for everywhereelse.co the largest startup conference in the US

Maryland Media Firm: Discovery Communications, Backs “Pinterest For Learning” Grockit

The Maryland mega media firm that owns cable channels TLC and the Discovery Channel, Discovery Communications has made a financial and strategic investment into valley startup, Grockit.

Grockit has iterated several times since coming onto the scene in 2006 as a video test prep course for standardized testing. They relaunched at TechCrunch 50 in 2008 as a hybrid of test prep and a multi-player learning game.

Today, they’ve iterated again, keeping their feet firmly implanted in social learning. They’ve added a new product to the mix called Learnist, which allows teachers and students to discover, share and clip content from the web to a clipboard. Grockit’s Founder Farbood Nivi told TechCrunch that the Learnist product has seen 400% growth and doubled their user session length from 10 minutes to over 20 minutes.

While Learnist targets students in grades K-12 quickly checking out the site you’ll find that in can easily be expanded to assist with socially learning anything from K-college and beyond.

TechCrunch is reporting that the financial investment from Discovery Communications was $20 million dollars. GigaOM is quick to add that the strategic partnership includes shared technology, marketing, distribution and promotion. Of course everyone is thinking that Discovery will integrate the Learnist and Grockit technology into the web/social companion products for Discovery’s top brands.

“We think of our audience as people who are curious,” said Roy Gilbert, CEO of Grockit said to GigaOM. “We’re blurring the layer between things I need to learn in the classroom – common core [content] – and general nonfiction media. People are coming to the internet, not just to do differential equations but to learn about what’s going on in Syria.”

Linkage:

Checkout Grockit here

More startup news from “everywhere else” here

Here’s more info on everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

Chicago Startup: ParkWhiz Raises $2 Million, Parking Startups Are Hot In Chicago

Monday we reported that Chicago parking startup SpotHero had raised $2.5 million in funding. That was big news for the ExcelerateLabs alumni that’s currently working out of 1871. Now, we’ve heard that another Chicago parking startup called ParkWhiz has raised $2 million dollars.

ParkWhiz’ funding round was led by Hyde Park Venture Partners. Hyde Park Angels, Amicus Capital, Alexis Ohanian, Garry Tan, Henry J Feinberg, and Amreesh Modi also participated in the investment, according to builtinchicago.com. Ohanian is the co-founder of Reddit and Tan is a partner at Y Combinator.

ParkWhiz has been around a little longer than Chicago rival SpotHero. They originally came on the scene in 2006 and in the past 6 years have generated over $10 million in parking revenue to operators. They also have access to over 3 million parking spaces.

One of ParkWhiz’ major success stories is the partnerships they’ve formed with organizations that are key in the big event space. ParkWhiz is partnered with StubHub, Ticketsnow, several NFL and NCAA teams and other sports and entertainment venues.

“This financing allows us to realize our next stage of growth, beginning with the hiring of 20 additional employees,” said Aashish Dalal, CEO and co-founder of ParkWhiz said in a statement. “The wealth of knowledge and experience of our new board members will help us aggressively deliver unique capabilities to our customers and further solidify our position as the market leader.”

More than 1 million people have used ParkWhiz.com, the largest, fastest growing, online parking reservation company in the U.S. ParkWhiz allows users to compare price, location and amenities. Drivers may reserve special event parking and purchase discounted downtown parking at up to 80% off drive-up rates. The company works with over 2,000 parking lots nationwide, giving customers access to over 3 million parking spaces. ParkWhiz’s national footprint has enabled them to provide parking spot inventory that far exceeds their closest competition.

Joining co-founder Aashish Dalal on the company’s board will be Ira Weiss of Hyde Park Venture Partners and Henry J. Feinberg, former partner at Technology Crossover Ventures, the world’s largest technology oriented Venture Capital firm. Mr. Feinberg is currently the Chairman of Maxim Revenue Management Solutions.

“ParkWhiz offers a transformational service for finding optimal automobile parking,” said Henry J. Feinberg. “ParkWhiz will change how consumers and parking lot owners and operators do business similar to how Expedia changed travel, Netflix changed entertainment and Zillow changed real estate.”

Linkage:

Find ParkWhiz Here

BuiltinChicago Here

More startup news from “everywhere else” here

and the everywhereelse.co startup conference here (it’s the biggest in the U.S.)