Startup News Archives - Page 46 of 53

Bethlehem PA To Hold First Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley Next Week

The 54 hour weekend hackathon to build startups that we know and love “Startup Weekend” is coming to the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania next weekend. After you’ve cleared your house of ghosts and goblins and a week before Startup Weekend’s big global jamboree, entrepreneurs, developers, founders, and startup ecosystem partners will converge at Ben Franklin TechVentures for Startup Weekend.

Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley, is an officially sanctioned event being administered in conjunction with the Startup Weekend organization based in Seattle, which receives major funding from the Kauffman Foundation. All “official” Startup Weekend events follow the same general format.

Registration will begin on Friday evening at 6:30pm at Ben Franklin. That will be followed by great networking dinner where attendees will be able to size up the competition and the possible teammates for the weekend. At around 7:30pm the “Friday Night” pitches will begin. We’ve covered a lot of startup weekends and you can see plenty of Friday night pitches here at nibletz.com.

The Friday night pitches are 60 seconds and hard timed by a Startup Weekend official. In that 60 seconds you need to sell the audience your idea and why it should be built over the next 53 hours. After everyone who wants to pitch has been given the opportunity, community voting will commence. It’s a rather diplomatic process. Usually the pitchers will hold up a sign with their startup name on it and attendees will put a sticker on the idea they like the best. At the end of the process, those with the most stickers will have their ideas developed.

Friday evening typically tops off with team selection and then some icebreaker time with the teams. From there the teams break off and start working on the startup idea.

Saturday, the community coaches come into play. These seasoned entrepreneurs and local business folks are there to help answer questions for each team and provide ideas and suggestions. The coaches for Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley are: Mark Lang, co-founder of the Northeast Ben Franklin Technology Partners; Yuriy Portyko, General Partner at Smart Start a cross-atlantic incubator and early stage venture capital investor; Scott Gingold, serial entrepreneur with several exits; Amar Reddy, Founder & CEO of Smart IMS; David Easton, Senior Business Development Manager Smart IMS; and Shahri Naghshineh, CEO Surface Chemistry Discovery.

Saturday is also the day that most teams take to the streets, the phones, the emails and the interwebs to get customer validation on their startup project. All the while designers, developers and coders are working on pitch decks, wire frames, prototypes and products.

Sunday is the day the teams put the finishing touches on both their products and their presentations. At 5:00pm and not a second later, the selected teams will have five minutes to pitch their idea and have a brief Q&A with the judges. Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley judges are: Jim Gordon, President & CEO Robert Rothschild Farm; Bob Moul, CEO appRennaisance; and Wayne Barz, Manager of Entrepreneurial Services – Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley is being organized by: Anthony Durante, Wayne Barz, Anthony Josiah Braun, Mark Koberlein, Tim Lytle and Santiago Rivera.

Linkage:

Official Startup Weekend Lehigh Valley here

Check out Ben Franklin here

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$1.1 Million Awarded To 18 Startups In MassChallenge Awards

MassChallenge, the largest accelerator program in the world, celebrated their awards dinner for their most recent session in Boston Tuesday night. The dignitaries, entrepreneurs, celebrities and investors that filled the Boston Convention and Exhibit Center were there to see the best of the best of startup innovation coming out of the program that’s gone on to produce hundreds of millions in follow on funding and exits.

The 18 startups that received cash awards were narrowed down from a field of over 1200 applicants and then a pool of 26 finalists.

The four startups that won the diamond award of $100,000 each were:

Global Research & Innovation Technology

LiquiGlide

Rally Point

Strong Arm Technologies.

12 gold winners took home $50,000 cash prizes each and they were:

Bounce Imaging

Coach Up

Guided Surgery Solutions

Lab Automate Technologies

Ministry Of Supply

Nordic Technology Group

BuysideFX

Dynamo Micropower

Integral Research

Lovin Spoonfuls

NBA Math Hoops

Recovers.org

Ten startups were selected to stay on with free office space until next years class arrives in May.

In addition to those prizes directly from MassChallenge and it’s supporters, there were several community awards given out as well. Lovin Spoonfuls and NBA Math Hoops were the recipients of the $30,000 John W. Henry foundation prize for social impact.

Global Research Innovation won an additional $15,000 Perkin’s School For The Blind Assistive Technology Prize. PlenOptika won $10,000 as part of the same prize.

Rainbank and Bounce Imaging were recipients of a $15,000 prize from VenCorps for the greatest potential to positively impact New York City.

125 of the startups selected from the original 1237 applicants were part of the four month accelerator program. A round of judging narrowed those 125 startups down to the 26 that were competing Tuesday evening.

Linkage:

Source: Boston Herald

Check out MassChallenge Here

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Knoxville Startup: Credit Virgin To Educate And Protect Young Adults From Credit Whoas

Nate Buchanan a graduate of the University of Tennessee and the founder of a new startup called “Credit Virgin” is looking to help as many young people, and college students make their credit lives easier. The Knoxville news reports that when Buchanan and a friend went to rent an apartment, the friend couldn’t get approved for the apartment because he had no credit history. It didn’t matter that the friend worked fll time and both perspective tenants made more than enough to afford the apartment. Because Buchanan’s friend hadn’t established any credit they were turned away.

Of course Buchanan knows that as young adults between 18-24 credit can be a double edged sword. Although it’s not as prevalent as it was in the late 90’s and early part of the 2000’s, there are still plenty of credit card companies and other finance companies that prey on college students who are already racking up enormous amounts of debt with student loans.

According to the UT Federal Credit Union, the average college student graduates with $8,000 in credit debt,outside student loans.

Through Credit Virgin, Buchanan hopes to first educate college students and young adults on the pro’s and cons of credit and how to establish credit via videos delivered on the startups website. He hopes to also integrate the site with a credit card evaluation tool which will compare terms and conditions as well as interest rates and other need to know information about credit cards typically offered to college students.

Buchanan hopes to also offer a credit monitoring service for students and their parents so they can monitor their credit together.

Credit, when used responsibly, can be a tool for young adults starting to establish themselves.

“Younger people don’t realize the implications of that until they go to buy a car and they have to get a loan, or they try and buy a house and don’t have a down payment,” Melinda Wood, Vice President of Marketing at the UT Federal Credit Union said to the Knoxville News.

Linkage:

Source: Knoxville News

Find out more about CreditVirgin here

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Purdue Startup: FoundOps Wins Startup Bowl At Indy Powder Keg Conference

photo: TechCocktail

Last week downtown Indianapolis and Lucas Oil Field (home to this years Super Bowl) played host to the first Powder Keg conference.

Powder Keg piggybacked off Connections 12, ExactTarget’s annual conference for their digital marketers.

The signature event for this year’s Powder Keg conference was the first ever Startup Bowl. The Startup Bowl pitted 12 regional startups against each other in a traditional pitch contest. To put a very cool spin on it, conference organizer Matt Hunckler, held the Startup Bowl at Lucas Oil Field.

Derek Pacque and his startup CoatChex was among one of the 12 contestants. Pacque is somewhat of an Indy startup celebrity. He turned down a $200,000 investment from Mark Cuban in the first episode of Shark Tank Season 4.

Pacque’s mini celeb status wasn’t enough to thwart a duo of entrepreneurs from Purdue though. It was their startup, FindOPS, which took home a prize package worth $15,000.

FoundOPS founders, Jon Perl and Oren Shatken admit that their startup isn’t the sexiest. FoundOPS is a useful mobile app that offers route optimization, data collection and GPS tracking.

FoundOPS is in the hot enterprise space, targeting field services. Companies with field workers will take advantage of the many features found in FieldOPS mobile app.

What were the judges looking for?

“What’s their go-to-market strategy? Have they identified their market correctly? Where do they fit, versus their competition?” Judge Christopher Day, Managing Principal at the Nabudar Group told the Indianapolis Business Journal.

FoundOPS had all the components the judges pool were looking for. Startup America CEO and Founding CTO of Priceline.com, announced the winning team at the end of the event.

Linkage:

Source: IndyStar

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Photo: TechCocktail

37 Startups, So Far, Vying To Compete In Invest Maryland Startup Competition

Like most state governments Maryland is taking startups seriously. The state’s economic development arm is doing whatever it can to support local startups in the state and attract new startups to come to the state to develop. One of the biggest initiatives to come out of Annapolis is the Invest Maryland Challenge, startup competition.

The challenge opened up to applicants last month and the application process continues through December 13, 2012.

The basic requirements is that your startup has less than 25 employees and less than $1 million dollars in annual revenue. The startups also have to be in the tech or life sciences industry.

Applicants are competing for $300,000 in grant money and business services. Startups must either already be based in Maryland or plan to relocate to Maryland to grow. Also, all startups must be legal entities and in good standing in the states where they are based.

While the Baltimore Sun seems to be concerned with the fine print, it’s pretty standard for economic development contests where grant money and relocation is involved. So far all of the 37 startups that have applied are either based in Maryland or the immediate surrounding areas (Northern Virginia and DC). Take a look at the list of the startups that have applied so far:

1. Direct Dimensions Inc, Owings Mills, MD

2. MyoTherapeutics , Silver Spring, MD

3. Handteq, LLC, Baltimore

4. Parking Panda , Baltimore, MD

5. ClickMedix, LLC , Rockville, MD

6. Tots2Tweens, Frederick, MD

7. SIALUU, Baltimore MD

8. KneeBouncers.com , Sykesville, MD

9. Omic Biosystems, Inc., Rockville, MD

10. Closing the Gap, Lanham, MD

11. Brain Biosciences, Inc., Bethesda, MD

12. StudyHall, Washington DC

13. Firejack, Inc. , Columbia, MD

14. WeLearn Educational Software, Baltimore, MD

15. B’more Organic, Baltimore, MD

16. Family Business, Rockville, MD

17. Clear Guide Medical, Baltimore, MD

18. Shreis Scalene Sciences, Gaithersburg, MD

19. Stupil, Laytonsville, MD

20. Rafagen, Inc., Rockville, MD

21. FiberCell Systems Inc., Frederick, MD

22. ConverGene, LLC, Gaithersburg, MD

23. Printless Plans, Baltimore, MD

24. Juxtopia, Baltimore, MD

25. Solar System Express, Baltimore, MD

26. Internet Security Advisors Group, Severna Park, MD

27. TDP Biotherapeutics, Inc., Gaithersburg, MD

28. Green Gap Solutions, Rockville, MD

29. Athena Energy Corp, Bowie, MD

30. Subject7, Potomac, MD

31. Paniagua’s Enterprises Inc. , Baltimore, MD

32. NuSomnea, LLC, Severna Park, MD

33. DioGenix , Rockville, MD

34. zeroK NanoTech, Montgomery Village, MD

35. Car Fare Compare Inc. , Crownsville, MD

36. Fiteeza, Fairfax, VA

37. Differential Dynamics Corporation, Owings Mills, MD

The contest is also open to startups outside of Maryland who are willing to relocate.

Linkage:

Apply here today

Source: Baltimore Sun

Here’s something fun.

MadeInTx.co To Serve As Directory & Hub For Texas Startups

Colleen Brady, a Texas entrepreneur is on a mission. The mission she’s chosen is one she plans to launch without immediate plans for a profit.

Brady has started MadeInTx.co, a site she hopes will serve as a directory of Texas startups and eventually a centralized hub for Texas startup information.

MadeInTx.co looks to be the builtinchicago.com for the state of Texas. This is no east feat as Texas is both the second largest state in the country and the second most populated state in the country.

Texas also has multiple “startup communities”. Dallas, Houston, and Austin serve as major hubs of innovation. Austin also plays hole to south by southwest, the annual festival in March that serves as the launching ground for startups all over the country.

Brady admits that there are several startup and entrepreneurial resources throughout the state, but none quite like this.

“It’s something I thought was missing, so I decided to go ahead and put it together,” Brady said to the Austin Business Journal

Brady continued:

“Talking with startups here [in Texas], I found there were great resources, but something was missing. I wasn’t finding a good place to do research on [local] startups”

Molly Ryan, a reporter for the Austin Business Journal, validated the need for MadeinTx.co:

” have looked, but I have yet to come up with an online list of local startups either. Sure, there are networking groups, incubators and online forums — but not a single site where I can find a clean-cut list of when startups were founded, where they are located, etc.” Ryan said.

Brady plans on officially launching MadeinTx.co next month. She already has 40 startups in Texas that have submitted information.

Linkage:

MadeinTx.co

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Kauffman Foundation Official Leaving To Launch Match.com For Teachers

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is known for their vast support of startups and small businesses across the country. Through multiple sponsorships, partnerships, research, data initiatives and educational information, the Kauffman Foundation serves as the backbone to a web of startup events, and evangelical efforts across the country.

Munro Richardson, is stepping down from his position as the vie president of education at the Kauffman Foundation to pursue a startup of his own. According to the Kansas City Star, Richardson is teaming up with Alicia Herald the Executive Director of Teach for America in Kansas City, to launch what is essentially a match.com for teachers.

The startup is called myEDmatch.com and is expected to be a national job site with a social focus, and profile/resume highlights specifically for educators.

“It’s a mashup of LinkedIn, CareerBuilder and eHarmony,” Richardson said of the startup to the Kansas City Star. “It’s right at the intersection of education and entrepreneurship. It’s a for-profit opportunity that actually could be important in addressing a real problem.”

The key problem is that primary and secondary schools are spending too much time and resources on trying to fit teachers with their missions. They could be using that time for educating. With myEdmatch.com schools and teachers would have a better platform to see if they’re a better fit and use less resources.

So far there’s nothing quite like it on the internet. Teaches will be able to focus their efforts on finding real jobs in education and educators will be able to view teachers resumes and weed out candidates they may find on other sites that aren’t as qualified .

Both Richardson and Herald have the educational background to back this venture. Richardson is a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University as well as a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Herald holds an MBA from Washington University.

Richardson has been at Kauffman since 2002. He helped develop the Kauffman Scholars program and also helped launch the charter school. His last day at Kauffman is October 31st.

Linkage:

Stay up to date with myEdmatch.com here

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OpenTable And Fishbowl Veterans Join DC Startup Venga’ Rebrands To My Loyal Family

Back in March we brought you the story of Washington DC startup Venga. Venga began as a more traditional restaurant discovery platform similar to the likes of Urban Spoon. While they were accelerating at The Fort in Washington DC they pivoted to a more restaurant centric focus.

During their customer discovery they went to restaurants and talked to the owners to see what they really needed in an app.

When founders Sam von Pollaro and Winston Lord took to the streets to talk with the restaurants themselves they found that while traditional restaurant discovery apps could provide spikes in traffic, they weren’t receptive to the restaurant themselves. Apps like Open Table weren’t talking to the restaurant point of sale systems so there was no way the restaurants could take advantage of the well procured background data on the users.

Venga, with the help of Fortify, embarked on a new product to create mobile centric loyalty programs for customers. Now surveying customers on exits, and even rewarding them isn’t new however working it all back into a mobile focused program to benefit the customer and the restaurant is. Venga now has a tool that helps restaurants keep track of customers, their likes and dislikes and their service experiences. The restaurant takes that information, along with order information and then they can send each customer more targeted offers via email rather than a generic email blast.

Venga had already started picking up traction with their new product and have found that it was a great space to be in. Venga is data driven and pulls from customers previous checks to create detailed profiles, letting restaurant owners and marketers know exactly what hits their customers buttons and what will bring them back in for more.

The company has started ramping up their staff and with that they’ve brought on Fishbowl’s former Regional VP of Sales, Bob McKay as Vice President of Sales. Michelle Baker has also joined Venga as an account executive. Her experience includes marketing positions with Fishbowl and Open Table. They’ve also rebranded their consumer facing product as MyLoyalFamily.

“Bob and Michelle’s passion and demonstrated knowledge of the hospitality industry and its distinctive needs will be an invaluable asset to Venga as we continue to expand.”von Pollaro, said in a statement. “With Michael, we are getting one of the top software engineers in the area with expertise in scalability, which is critical in a business that collects and processes as much data as we do.”

Venga also beefed up their tech team by adding Michael Dumont as Lead Software Engineer.

Linkage:

Check out Venga here

Check out their consumer facing site here, MyLocalFamily

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Providence Startup: LoveGov, Politician Dating

With the second Presidential debate behind us and the third and final debate just days away, politics is on the forefront of everyone’s minds. No one with a Twitter account or Facebook account can escape the political races this year.

A new startup in Providence Rhode Island, is looking to add its hat to the political ring. The new startup called Lovegov is applying an algorithmic like approach based on user entries to political questions and statements to formulate possible candidate choices for the user. In other words Lovegov is the match.com for citizens to find political candidates to possibly vote for.

Now of course this is a machine designed to make the process easier and no machine should dictate the way you vote, however Lovegov is providing extremely valuable information to its citizen users.

For instance, you may not know where a candidate stands on issues that may be of importance to you and not necessarily a whole lot of others. Lovegov is going to pair you up with candidates that have commonalities with you. You may be surprised to find another candidate aligns more with you than the one you planned on voting for. What Lovegov really does is empowers voters with information so they can make a more conscious decision.

“These matching mechanisms help people understand and identify causes and organizations to get involved with,” Lovegov founder Joschka Tryba told masshightech,com . “And we feel this matching mechanism is innovative because it enables users to get immediate intuition as to how they relate to another political entity, person or group.”

Lovegov has three employees in their Providence headquarters and is seeing sign ups rapidly increase. For now they’re focusing on politics in New England, but plan a nationwide roll out over time.

Linkage:

Here’s Lovegov

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Seattle Startup Bibo Launches Social Drinking Beta App

There are very few areas where the phrase “There’s an app for that” doesn’t apply. The social drinking space is starting to produce a whole new crop of apps. On nibletz.com alone we’ve featured Wisconsin based startup Trinker, New York startup Drynk.me, Pittsburgh startup Grail, Baltimore startup BeerGivr, and Oklahoma startup Drink Easy.

Each one of these startups addresses social drinking in a different way. A few of them are about buying a buddy a drink either in person and charging it to your phone, or from afar. Some are about taking pictures of drinks and sharing them, while others are more like mobile based wine lists.

Seattle startup Bibo is hoping to become the social discovery platform for drinks. Their new iPhone app allows users to rate, and share beverages socially. It also allows you to search for drinks based on your physical location. Now you don’t have to walk into a strange bar or restaurant just to find out if they have your favorite craft beer or mixed drink. Bibo solves that for you in the palm of your hand.

Similarly to Drynk.me, Bibo wants to become the largest location based picture database of drinks in the world. The platform works in reverse as well. Say you go into a bar that you like for ambience and atmosphere but the bartender there doesn’t do your favorite cocktail. Well with Bibo you can show the bartender how to make that drink that will keep you coming back.

The co-founders of Bibo are no strangers to discovery. Natan Antolin, Mac McClian, Steve Jacobson met in late 2011 while working for a job search platform.

Bibo works with local bars, lounges, night clubs and restaurants to procure all of their drink data. From there restaurants and bars can be featured based on the drinks they serve.

At this point in time the drink space is anyones game. We’ll see if Bibo can bring it.

Linkage:

Check out Bibo here

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Chicago Startup Everypurse Blows Out Kickstarter With PowerBag For Women

A new startup in Chicago has taken Kickstarter by storm with their integrated purse, charging bag. This bag designed for women, is a clutch style handbag on the outside. Inside though it has a battery charger that will fit most of the current line of smartphones via USB.

Integrating bags and power charging solutions isn’t new though. Michigan based Power Bag has been doing it now for two years. That company, founded by Homedics founder Ron Ferber, offers a full line of backpacks, rolling luggage, and messenger bags with integrated charging solutions and a variety of batteries for every work and travel scenario.

While Powerbag offers a “tablet bag” which I’ve personally been carrying around for nearly a year as a Murse (read man purse), it’s not a purse by any stretch for a woman.

In fact our reviews coordinator Allie Fox told Ferber and the PowerBag team personally that they were missing the boat by not offering a variety of stylish bags for women.

No worries now though because Everpurse has done a really good job of producing just that. The purses come in a variety of colors and in fact it looks like quite a few men have signed up on Kickstarter to buy a purse for themselves. Everpurse offers a black leather purse that looks no more feminine than half the leather iPad cases out on the market today.

To have the ability to charge your phone without the need for a plug is a definite plus, and far outweighs how unmanly carrying a purse around could be.

Everpurse trumps PowerBag in another department as well and that’s charging the device itself. All of the PowerBag products require the user to plug a standard “wall wart” AC charger into the wall and then into a weather protected charging mechanism on the bag, or directly into the battery pack.

Everpurse uses a white, stylish looking induction charger that you could easily put on a foyer table, coffee table or night stand. Simply place the Everpurse on top of the induction charger and you’re good to go.

People love it and so do we. We can’t believe that no one has taken this concept to market yet. The best part is that the product idea came from a busy social worker who realized her phone was dead after 6 hours on the go every day. People call me crazy because I carry several on the go charging apparatus but the one thing that drives me absolutely crazy is a dead phone.

Everyone seems to love Everpurse. They blew it out of the water on Kickstarter raising $238,187 of the $100,000 they aimed to raise.

Now that the Kickstarter campaign is over, start looking for Everpurse, soon.

Linkage:

Everpurse.com

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nibletz.com Becomes The First Site To Integrate With 500 Startups “Markerly”

Markerly founder Sarah Ware has teamed up with nibletz.com as their beta guinea pig

We’ve covered Markerly pretty in depth over the past few months. Their rockstar woman founder, Sarah Ware, will even be a panelist at the upcoming “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” event in February.

When we first started reporting on Markerly it was a browser plugin that allowed you to very easily highlight, clip and share any content on any website. Markerly allows you to share to your social networks, email or even your own personal Markerly account so that you can have text later on, and the source information from that text.

We installed the browser plugin a few months back and would share content from nibletz.com and other startup focused online magazines periodically using the Markerly tool.

Well, last month Ware and her DC based startup got accepted into Dave McClure’s 500 startups program in Mountain View California. We have a pretty good relationship with Ware and we weren’t surprised when she called to tell us that just under two weeks into the program they were making a mini-pivot.

We won’t go too much into what that mini-pivot is, we have to save some of the suspense for the 500 startups demo day early next year. But we will tell you that Markerly is now integrated within nibletz.com.

All you have to do is select text like you would to copy and paste, anywhere, in any article within nibletz.com. Regardless of whether you have the browser plugin or not, once you select the text you want a hover button will appear above the text. At the moment the button allows you to share the extracted text to Twitter, Facebook or by email.

When you share your highlight, those who check it out on your social networks will be taken to our original story and they’ll even be able to see the highlighted text within the story.

Markerly is a great tool in that regard. I’m willing to bet on a daily basis someone shares a link with me either by email or instant message and with that link, minimal text. Well the problem arises when I’m sent a link to a 1000 word story. I don’t have time to read 1000 words just to get to what someone else wants me to see. Using Markerly I can see the text that someone wants me to see within the entire body of the story so I can grab the context at my leisure.

While we’ve seen some of our readers adopt the browser plugin Markerly product and share across Facebook and Twitter, the team at Markerly has made it insanely easy for anyone to capture the experience (you see what I did there).

Right now it works on any desktop/laptop/PC/Mac browser and hopefully down the road it will work on Mobile as well.

So go for it, try it, select some text in this story and see what happens.

Markerly is actually solving two problems for nibletz.com. The first is the sharing problem I described above an also the more traditional social sharing problem. We have share buttons at the bottom of each and every story, and we encourage you to use them. However, we know that we have some long stories here at nibletz.com so when you can’t wait to share something, highlight it and send it out immediately using nibletz.com now powered by Markerly.

Linkage:

Check out Markerly here

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Cuban Backed Boston Startup Apptopia Heating Up, Sells First $25,000 App

Back in march we reported on Boston area startup Apptopia. They’re making a name for themselves as a second hand market for app developers. They essentially do what Flippa does for websites, except for mobile apps.

Mobile app developers may find that they’ve built an app that’s picked up a bit of traction, but they’re ready to move onto something else. Rather than abandon the original app idea or it’s user base, an app developer can turn to Apptopia and sell the app and the accompanying intellectual property to someone else.

Many mobile app developers are incredibly good at coding and design but they may fall short in the marketing or sales department. For some developers the thrill in itself is the development process. Apptopia is the perfect place for those developers who may not necessarily have the skill set or drive to push their app to an actual business model. In some cases Apptopia may actually save some really great apps and get them out to market, in the hands of a more business savvy owner.

Apptopia is also a great place for multi title app publishers to increase their portfolio size.

Apps can sell on Apptopia, with the business plan, intellectual property and user base in tact, from anywhere to a few hundred dollars, upwards to tens of thousands of dollars.

Such is the case with an app that modeled itself after humor site 9GAG. The Android based app, which in some opinions was better than the official iOS 9GAG app, (and had more downloads than the official app) recently sold on Apptopia for $25,000.00.

On the sale of the 9GAG app, Apptopia founder and CEO Jonathan Kay told nibletz.com

“The 9GAG app that sold for $25k on Apptopia boasts stats that include over 855,000 downloads & 37,000 ratings. This is great to see as this app (built by an independant developer) is far out performing 9GAG’s offical iPhone app (which has less than 10% of the stats). 9GAG plans to enter the Android Market “later this year,” but i would be quite shocked if they built something from scratch versus acquiring the best available option (and customizing it to fit their brand/API). In my opinion this is what makes the acquisiton so interesting – there is a massive opportunity to then flip this back to 9GAG when they are ready. Just remember it’s about the users, not the technology.”

That’s definitely not chump change, especially for developers that may not have as much skin in the game.

To date Apptopia has facilitated the same of 83 different apps from the original developer to a new buyer. Sure with the hundreds of thousands of apps available today 83 doesn’t sound like very many, however Apptopia has been growing exponentially since their launch earlier this year.

Why does this work?

“Probably 80% of people who want to get involved in mobile either don’t know how to code an app or don’t know an app developer,” Kay said. “So there’s this massive demand, but kind of a little bit of a barrier to entry.”

The model alone has attracted an investment from Dallas Maverick’s owner, entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban. The secondary app market will naturally continue to grow. As the word spreads about Apptopia people will start utilizing the service as a go to spot for app developers to sell their apps outright.

Kay also pointed out that there are some developers out there who are developing directly for Apptopia.

Linkage:

Check out Apptopia here

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Washington DC Tops Inc’s 500 List Of All Time

The Inc 500/5000 conference just wrapped up in Phoenix Arizona. The three day conference highlights the private sector companies, both big and small, that are the fabric of our American corporate culture.

The Inc 500 is a list published every year by the premiere business magazine, that lists the 500 fastest growing companies in the country. The list, first published in 1982, has become the benchmark that many companies set for growth in their formative years. Companies like Pandora, Zipcar, Zappos and even companies with rich history now, like Toys R Us and 7 Eleven have topped the list.

The Inc 500 is a subset of the Inc 5000 which shows off an even broader range of US companies, those who are the fastest growing 5000 companies in America. Each of the Inc 5000 companies are featured on Inc’s website. The 500 companies are featured in Inc’s traditional magazine in the September issue.

The Kauffman Foundation, the non profit foundation in Kansas City that procures important data relating to startups, innovation, corporations and growth, recently analyzed the last 30 years worth of Inc 500 companies.

They found that over the past 30 years worth of Inc 500 lists, Washington DC has produced more companies that have appeared on the list than any other metropolitan area, in the country. In the last 12 years alone Washington DC has been home to 385 companies that have appeared on the Inc 500 list.

On a state by state basis California and then Texas topped Kauffman’s list. Virginia (which borders DC) was in the number 3 spot and Massachusetts was number 4.

When the list was adjusted for population Indianapolis ranked 6th, Baltimore ranked 15th, Philly ranked 19th and Louisville Kentucky ranked (20th).

When examined by county, Virginia had three of the top five counties with Fairfax City, Falls Church City and Arlington County. Motley County Texas and Broomfield County Colorado topped that list.

Check out the interactive map of the data in the links below

Linkage:

Source: Inc Magazine

Kauffman’s data set

Something worth checking out