Startup News Archives - Page 47 of 53

Kansas City Man Buys House To Give To Startups!

Kansas City’s entrepreneurial and startup ecosystem continues to grow. Kansas City is home to some great startups like Neighbor.ly, AgLocal, Front Flip,Cognovant, Zippido and even Ray Ray’s. Even Helzberg Diamond’s, Barnett Helzberg Jr, has launched a new startup in his hometown.

Kansas City Mayor Sly James recently announced an initiative to make Kansas City a destination for startups. Part of that initiative called for those in the private sector to contribute to the growing ecosystem. James is calling on private sector businesses to step up to the plate and donate unused office space, equipment and mentoring time for new startups.

Although he doesn’t own his own company and fancy’s himself an “entrepreneur wannabe”, British Kansas City implant Ben Barreth has responded to James’ is call in a major way.

Barreth has started a new project called “Homes For Hackers”. His program calls for residents in Kansas City to make homes available for hackers and startup founders, rent free, and utility free for three months to let them get their startups off the ground. Barreth didn’t just announce a program and put up a fancy website. He put his money where his mouth is so to speak, cashed out a retirement account and bought the first home for hackers himself.

The house Barreth purchased is also located in the Google Fiber district of Kansas City, which means that the hackers working on their startups will be able to do it with 1gb fiber.

Barreth ran into an initial stumbling block when he found out, that since he wouldn’t actually be living in the house, it was an investment property. What that meant was that mortgage lenders needed 20% down rather than the 10% down he had prepared for.

Barreth hasn’t launched his own startup yet (we would consider Homes For Hackers a social startup), and he’s had no successful exits yet. In fact he said he had to Google what “successful exits” meant. He’s just a guy who felt compelled to do this.

Three months rent and utility free should be enough time for relocating startups to lay roots in Kansas City so that when the times up they can continue to take advantage of the resources their, like Think Big.

Barreth says that the only thing that startups will need to supply for themselves is food.

Linkage:

Check out Homes for Hackers and apply here

We found out about Homes For Hackers at the Hub at Startup Revolution

Startups you need to be here

Nibletz Teams Up With StarTropica For Strategic Content Partnership

Here at the nibletz world headquarters we are pleased to announce that we have entered into a strategic content partnership with Moises Szarf and StarTropica.

StarTropica, “cracking the startup coconut”, is the premiere startup and high growth technology website super serving southern Florida, specifically Miami.

Although just launched three months ago Szarf has been gathering and reporting on Miami area startup news continuously since then as both an outreach and traction tool for Miami’s fledging startup community.

We are particularly pleased to announce this partnership on the heels of the Startup America Regions Summit which served as a hyper advocate to promote startup communities working together and partnering for the good of the overall startup ecosystem across the country. Also, a strategic partnership with StarTropica at this time cements the foundation for our evolving plan for the nibletz.com brand and long term goals.

Our partnership with StarTropica will include story pick ups, custom content provided by Szarf and his staff as well as co-hosting events and meetups in Miami Beach (and who doesn’t want to partner when it means trips to Miami).

Nibletz.com content originating out of Miami Florida will either be diverted to the StarTropica staff, or cross posted from the Nibletz hub. Miami startups are encouraged to keep corresponding with StarTropica directly or feel free to email miami@nibletz.com

We look forward to increasing our coverage of the great startups in the sunshine state.

Linkage:

Check out StarTropica here

Nibletz Florida coverage is here

And this is for everywhereelse click it

Have You Tried Brad Feld’s Version Of Hacker News? The hub at Startup Revolution

Have you tried out Brad Feld’s version of Hacker News?

Most everyone in the startup community is familiar with Y-Combinator’s Hacker News. If you’re not, it’s pretty simple, it’s like Reddit but rather than all news it’s just hacker news. Most of the community contributed stories involve hacking, coding, design, development and startups.

One of the problems with Hacker News, for me at least, is that I am only looking for startup news. Hacker News gets a tremendous amount of contributions every day, so it gets to be cumbersome weeding through the stories to find the startup news relevant to me.

After I track down the startup news on Hacker News I just want to get to the story and barely have time to comment, even if I want to.

Brad Feld has introduced a new site similar to Hacker News but all about startups. The site is called The Startup Revolution Hub, actually has a nicer looking UI and is easier to navigate. Best of all I don’t have to weed out general coding and dev posts to get to the startup posts.

The Startup Revolution Hub was launched earlier this month and has already amassed 250 users. It functions like Hacker News and Reddit. A user can post a story, comment a story and move a story up or down by hitting one of the arrow buttons.

Right now the contributions range from startup news stories, startup founders announcing their startups, startup events, and even how to’s that startup founders and entrepreneurs would find useful. For instance we found “How to design infographics”

Community members are also sharing their thoughts, best practices and advice in posts like “Technical Co-Founder Confessions” and “The Hardest Part of Startups: Getting Past Zero”.

If you haven’t signed up for Startup Revolution yet, you may want to. Joining a community early has it’s advantages and I’m sure it’s going to get quite popular, quickly.

Linkage:

Startup Revolution Hub here

Hacker News here

Everywhere Else here

Entrepreneur Development Center Opens In Jackson Tennessee

When people think about innovation, startups and entrepreneurship, Tennessee is often overlooked. What people don’t know about Tennessee is there are 9 entrepreneurial hubs across the state, anchored by Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville and Chattanooga. The other five areas are a little more rural, but still breed innovation. As wide as Tennessee is, with nine unique ecosystems, no one in the state is ever more than an hour and a half from an accelerator or entrepreneurial hub.

Tennessee has been an innovator for over a century. Tennessee was a major hub for cotton in the 1800s. In fact, prior to their bankruptcy in 2008, the fourth largest investment bank in the world, Lehman Brothers, had actually started out in Tennessee in the cotton exchange business.

Major corporations like FedEx, Holiday Inn, Auto Zone, Service Master, Sax Fifth Avenue, Gibson and Kirkland’s call Tennessee home. Heck the internet was born in Tennessee, just ask Al Gore.

In that spirit, Jackson Tennessee has announced the grand opening of the Entrepreneur Development Center. The Entrepreneur Development Center will help budding entrepreneurs in Jackson and the Southwest Tennessee area develop their businesses from idea generation to business launch. The EDC will pair entrepreneurs with successful business leaders who will serve as their mentors during their time in the center.

The EDC will launch Tuesday October 23rd at the Aenas Building in downton Jackson kicking off at 11:30am. Kirkland’s Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus, Carl Kirkland will keynote the event alongside Matt Kisber President and CEO of Silicon Ranch Corporation.

“Through entrepreneurship, I’ve lived the American Dream” Carl Kirkland told Action News 5. The beauty of this country is that you can start with little more than a dream and build a successful business that provides jobs and economic growth.”

“Our new center strives to be the “front door” for entrepreneurs in Southwest Tennessee. We will help our entrepreneurs build their businesses by connecting them to the critical resources they need to be successful. These critical resources include experienced mentors, knowledge, training, seed capital and a supportive community.” Linda Garrard, Executive Director of the EDC told Action News 5.

Marci Harris, founder of award winning startup PopVox and other entrepreneurs will also be featured during the launch event.

The EDC will open just in time for Global Entrepreneurship week from November 12th -16th. In conjunction with Launch Tennessee, all nine startup ecosystems in the state will participate by holding entrepreneurial and startup focused events all week long.

Entrepreneurial leaders across the state like Sheldon Grizzle (Chattanooga), Michael Burcham (Nashville) and Eric Matthews (Memphis) have planned out a weeks worth of talks, discussions, conferences, parties and interactive engaging events across the state for GEW.

Linkage:

Check out the EDC in Jackson Tennessee here

No one covers High Growth tech news for the south east like Nibletz

Are you going to be here?

Indy’s Powder Keg Startup Conference Announces 12 Startups In The Super Bowl

Startup evangelist, entrepreneur and founder of Verge Startups (Verge Indy), Matt Hunckler has been hard at work producing the upcoming Powder Keg regional startup conference in Indianapolis. Powder Keg is taking place in downtown Indianapolis with one amazing opportunity for 12 great startups, in a startup competition of Super Bowl proportions (can we say Super Bowl?).

“The Big Game” startup competition (see what we did there) will take place at Lucas Oil Stadium next Thursday, which just happens to be the same venue for last years Super Bowl. You know, the one where another Indiana startup evangelist put together this little Shark Tank party with Mark Cuban.

Yes, Indiana has it like that and Powder Keg will continue the tradition of great startup events produced by Hunckler on a much larger scale. Powder Keg has a great list of speakers including illusionist David Blaine, Scott Case (who’s also speaking at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference), Dave Knox from RockFish and co-founder of The Brandery,and Erik Martin General Manager at Reddit. The event will feature two powerful days of sessions, the Startup Bowl, Startup Showcase and three great parties (what’s a startup event without parties).

Yesterday, the Verge Startups team announced the 12 startups competing for a $15,000 startup growth prize sponsored by Microsoft and Elevate Ventures. Here’s the list:

CoatChex
CoatChex is focused on bringing innovation and value through today’s technology to an industry that hasn’t been touched in decades. The patent-pending process optimizes coat check-in and retrieval functions and reduces the risks that are commonly associated with checking coats, making it the hassle-free solution to running a secure, profitable, and efficient coat check station.

Team Mash
TeamMash is a daily email for sports fanatics. Every day, their editors scour the web for the best sports content. Each morning, they email you a mashup of what happened with your favorite teams in the past 24 hours. It even contains links to hand-picked articles from around the web.

FoundOPS
FoundOPS is developing an operations platform to help small field service operate more efficiently by gamifying carbon savings. In one, easy to use cloud based system, they’ve incorporated GPS technician tracking, drag and drop dispatching, and intuitive customer service management. The platform is provided for free, but customers are incentived to purchase premium features such as route optimization, QuickBooks integration, and BI reports in order to increase their carbon savings.

Adproval
Adproval is a service that streamlines the process of direct ad sales for small and medium bloggers while allowing them to maintain relationships with their advertisers. Working with an approved advertiser lets bloggers use their voice – by means of product reviews, featured posts, etc. – to back them as a sponsor, making ad space on that blog more valuable. Bloggers set up their sponsorship offerings with Adproval and put a page on their blog where advertisers can choose what they want and make an offer. If the blogger finds the advertiser suitable and approves of them, the ad image is automatically uploaded to their blog, the payment is automatically transferred, and the relationship is managed through their dashboard on Adproval.

Lisnr
Lisnr aims to change the way that consumers experience audio by turning what has historically been a passive experience into an interactive engagement platform. Lisnr is an app that allows music or any other audio medium to passively trigger consumer interactions, direct to their mobile device, during a consumer’s listening experience. Lisnr is completely source agnostic as notifications can be sent from audio being played anywhere.

PetBookings
PetBookings.com is the first and only website to offer instant and confirmed online reservations to the $3.5 billion professional pet care industry. They are launching v2.0 of their website platform Friday October 5, 2012 and are armed with some remarkable test data going to market. Pet owners (B2C) are not only experiencing the convenience and benefits of booking online with instant confirmation, but pet care facilities (B2B) are also seeing a significant impact on their bottom line.

Lesson.ly
Lesson.ly is a teaching and learning marketplace. It’s like iTunes, but with lessons and courses instead of songs and albums. It is “the simplest way to learn” and is currently in beta-testing.

Bonfyre
Bonfyres are private groups created around events where you can share chats and photos. All of these shared photos become part of group photostreams, called Memories, and are accessible only to others at that bonfyre. Simple event planning, private real-time sharing and collective group photos in one app, just like it should be.

Squarejive
Squarejive is a free mobile application that recommends things to do nearby. The app is built upon a mosaic design that allows users to seamlessly find and share events across Facebook, Twitter, SMS Text, and Email. With Yelp integration, the app also includes business profiles for over 400 venues in Indianapolis. They intend to launch Squarejive version 1.0 on October 13th at the Broad Ripple Music Festival.

Modulus
Modulus helps developers spend less time configuring servers and more time building products. Modulus does this by providing a complete platform that companies can use to host and scale their internet-based applications. We add to that an integrated database and file storage solution, and wrap everything under a powerful statistics engine.

Visit Apps
Visit Apps empowers Convention & Visitors Bureaus (CVBs = tourism agencies) to harness the mobile channel to deeply engage their visitors. Visit Apps has built a proprietary platform that allows any CVB – from the quaintest of towns to a bustling metropolis – to have their own mobile app. Visit Apps is a SaaS startup in the explosively growing mobile sector (available in iPad, iPhone and Android devices). The Visit Apps team is led by Santiago Jaramillo (serial entrepreneur of University Storage & MyMusicCamp.com).

Diagnotes
In an effort to eliminate the problems associated with effective communication and care during on-call medical encounters, Diagnotes has developed an integrated software solution that provides critical information, secure communication and convenient documentation for healthcare providers via their smartphones, focusing initially on on-call physicians and the 50-100 million such patient encounters conducted annually in the US.

Tickets for PowderKeg are still available for $299 check the link below.

Linkage:

Get your tickets now for just $299 here for Powder Keg

Source: Verge Startups

Then, we’ll see you in February for this

Boulder Startup Orbotix Hits Target With Sphero Ball

We’ve covered Boulder startup Orbotix since the beginning. We began covering them at our previous Android website when we saw the Sphero ball at a Show Stoppers event during CES 2011. We also covered their Techstars pivot, which came about when working with their mentor Brad Feld, and we covered their biggest fan, President Barack Obama.

Orbotix is the startup behind the Sphero ball. Sphero is a smartphone controlled ball. The concept in itself can bring tons of fun, maneuvering the ball throughout the house, teasing the dog and cat can be hours of fun. However, Sphero isn’t just about the ball. They’ve built some great interactive apps (games) like golf. The control the user has with their Android phone or iPhone, over the ball, is world’s apart from other smartphone controlled toys.

While the company launched in 2011 after going through the TechStars program in Boulder, Chief Executive Paul Berberian feels like this distribution deal with Target is their big consumer launch.

“The name of the game in consumer electronics and gaming is getting in front of customers,” Berberian said to the Boulder County Business Report. “We feel like we’ve been out there for a long time telling our story, but most people have never seen a Sphero. This is essentially our launch.”

The Sphero ball has limited distribution in some Apple stores as well as some Brookstone stores but of course Target means they’ll reach the masses. It’s also a great time to get into a retail stores shelves as Americans prepare for the busy holiday shopping season.

Target already has a good selection of interactive smartphone accessories. Their toy section is filled with iPhone and iPad games that have a physical component like fishing, and even an Angry Birds game where you move the bird across the screen. Target’s smartphone accessories section, located within their electronics department, stocks the iCade mini arcade machine accessory as well as some of the “cooler” music accessories.

Sphero will be stocked among the smartphone app accessories section and available online at Target.com as well.

Linkage:

Check out Sphero here

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The Case Triple Threat Steve Case, Jean Case, Scott Case Speak At Startup America Summit

Startup America is holding their fourth quarterly “regions summit” in Chicago Illinois at 1871. The summit brings together nearly 150 regional Startup America influencers, commonly known around these parts as “Champions”.

Startup America champions from as far away as Puerto Rico arrived in the windy city last night for this three day conference meant to bring together regional startup leaders to share best practices, triumphs and even failures that each region can learn from.

To kick off the summit attendees were treated with a Case Triple Threat. Startup America CEO (and founding CTO of Priceline.com), Scott Case, kicked off the festivities. Case and Startup America’s Donna Harris have been busy over the last year flying around the country helping to launch Startup America regions. Scott Case (not related to the other two Cases) spoke briefly welcoming everyone to the event.

The first talk of the morning was a fireside chat between Harris and Startup America Chairman, and AOL Founder, Steve Case .Case has been traveling the country on his own talking to startup and entrepreneur communities throughout the United States. At one point Case pointed out, if you make great products no one cares where you’re from.

Case is no stranger to starting a company and raising money outside Silicon Valley. He’s started companies in Detroit Michigan before, but of course he’s most known for his little internet startup that launched out of Tyson’s Corner Virginia (a DC suburb) before anyone even knew what the internet was. Case told the familiar story of how no one really understood the internet back than and how it was just for a “bunch of geeks”.

Steve also brought home the point that Startup America, in it’s current form, is on a SWAT team mission to launch regions across the country over the next three years, and build growth within the organization. However the mission for Startup America is to have the regions function independently during that time. After that, the Startup America national office will function more as a support piece rather than a mouth piece.

The work the team at Startup America has done is nothing short of greatness though. With the addition of Startup Utah, just yesterday there are now 30 Startup America regional partners.

The third case of the morning was just before lunch. That’s when Case Foundation CEO and Steve’s wife, Jean Case came and spoke about her fearless movement within the Case foundation. The foundation just launched an initiative across the country looking for fearless people who will be the cornerstone of startups, and the economy to come.

Check out our video of Steve Case wrapping up his fireside chat with Harris below:

Linkage:

Check out Startup America here

Here’s nibletz’ coverage of Startup America here

You should be here, Scott Case will!

MassChallenge Reveals Final 26 Startups Of 2012

MassChallenge, the world’s largest global startup accelerator competition announced the final 26 startups that will compete before the judges. The 26 startups will pick between 10 and 20 startups who will be announced at MassChallenge’s high profile awards ceremony event on October 23.

This year’s MassChallenge competition opened up on March 1st and attracted 1,237 applications from 35 countries and 26 U.S. states. From there 125 startups were chosen to participate in MassChallenge’s 3 month accelerator program. The accelerator program offered the startups free office space, access to resources and one of the best mentor networks in the world.

All 26 startup teams will have one minute each to pitch their startup to over 1200 attendees at the awards ceremony. The stakes are high, with over $10,000,000 in prizes with no strings attached. There will be over $1,000,000 in grants awarded and $9,000,000 worth of in-kind benefits.

Unlike many other accelerators, the entire MassChallenge program is non-equity based, meaning that participating companies, and companies that receive monetary awards, give up no equity.

Here are the 26 startups:

*Akrivis Technologies*	*Black Island Wind Turbines*	*Bounce Imaging*	*BuysideFX*
*Capital Market Exchange (CMX)*	*Cellanyx Diagnostics*	*CoachUp*	*Dynamo Micropower*
*Global Research Innovation & Technology (GRIT)*	*Guided Surgery Solutions*	*HelmetHub Corporation*	*iAgree*
*IntegralReach*	*Lab Automate Technologies Inc*	*LiquiGlide*	*Lovin’ Spoonfuls Inc*
*Ministry of Supply Inc.*	*NBA Math Hoops*	*Neumitra*	*Nordic Technology Group (NTG)*
*OnDeckBiotech*	*RallyPoint*	*Recovers.org*	*Strong Arm Technologies, Inc.*
	*Ubiqi Health*	*WindGap Medical Inc.*

MassChallenge features top notch judges from the Boston tech community and from around the world. This years judges are:

*Colin Angle*	*Co-Founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board, iRobot*
*Sam Bastia*	*Global Strategy Executive, Verizon Communications*
*Josh Boger*	*Founder and former CEO/Chair, Vertex Pharmaceuticals*
*Desh Deshpande*	*Serial entrepreneur and mentor, Chair A123 Systems*
*Paul English*	*Founder & CTO, Kayak.com*
*Corinne Grousbeck*	*Brand Strategist & Advisor at Gemvara*
*Wyc Grousbeck*	*CEO, governor, and co-owner of the Boston Celtics*
*Jamie Kiggen*	*President, Riverside Company*
*Jit Saxena*	*Founder and Former CEO, Netezza*
*Niraj Shah*	*CEO and Co-Founder, Wayfair (formerly CSN Stores)*
*Amy Stursberg*	*Executive Director, Blackstone Charitable Foundation*
*Mike Wilens*	*Special Advisor, Senior Fidelity Management*

“Over 400 entrepreneurs from across the globe came together in the Boston Innovation District to address some of the world’s most challenging problems together with the tremendous resources in the Boston startup community,” said MassChallenge Chief Mentorship Officer Karl Büttner. “MassChallenge 2012 represents another great example of the growth, energy and excitement that can only be produced through collaboration. It is truly inspiring to work closely with the hundreds of MassChallenge mentors and judges who volunteer their time, effort and advice to help the 125 MassChallenge startups grow.”

Linkage:

Find out more about MassChallenge here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here’s more startup news from “everywhere else”

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Maryland Startup: EasyWebContent Is Startup America’s 10,000th Member

We knew that the Startup America partnership was getting really close to it’s 10,000th member. We’ve been tracking that progress since the beginning and when the member counter hit 9700 last week we knew they were close.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, or are brand new to nibletz.com “the voice of startups everywhere else”, Startup America is an organization spearheaded by the Case Foundation and blessed with a billion dollars in funding from the federal government under the Obama administration.

Startup America has multiple benefits for entrepreneurs and startups. It’s free to join, and at the last count there were over 93 benefits to members, ranging from a pretty snazzy mileage perk on American Airlines, to substantial savings on Dell computers and a libraries worth of free e-books. All of the “perks” are related to starting a startup or resources a startup would need as they grow.

Startup America is very inline with the mission here at nibletz.com. In fact, Scott Case, the CEO of Startup America (and no relation to Steve Case), will be speaking at the upcoming “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference”.

As for their 10,000th member EasyWeb Content, they come from neighboring StartupMD. Founder Payman Taei explained to Startup America in a blog post, that they were running a web design business. What they found was that there were a lot of companies that wanted to get online but didn’t have the budget to do so.

There are a bunch of “DIY” website builders, for instance GoDaddy has a product called “Website Tonight” that allows users to create websites in minutes. But remember, at the core GoDaddy is a domain name registrant, and not a design firm.

With EasyWebContent’s background in design, they’ve built a tool that gives small business owners the ability to build their own, sharply designed websites and content.

Check out the video below with Taei who talks about Maryland and Startup America. Links below:

Linkage:

EasyWebContent is here

While you’re at it go here too

FedEx Announces $50,000 Startup/Small Business Competition

Nothing screams crazy startup entrepreneur like FedEx and Fred Smith. In fact business folklore says that when Smith wrote about his idea, that eventually became the largest logistics company in the world, for a paper at Yale he got a C. Think about how crazy the idea would be in the early 70’s to connect trucks and jets to deliver packages overnight.

In recent years FedEx has begun to pay homage to Smith’s entrepreneurial roots by opening up their own FedEx labs, and sponsoring the FedEx institute of Technology at the University of Memphis, among other things.

Now the company has followed in the foot steps of other companies like Pitney Bowes, and developed a small business (read: startups) contest.

Our good friend James Dowd at Startup Memphis reports that FedEx will award a total of 6 small businesses cash prizes totaling $50,000. There’s one $25,000 grand prize and the five other businesses will receive a $5,000 prize.

The business must have less than 100 employees and crowd voting will be done through Facebook. The voting started October 1st and runs through November 24th, and it’s not too late to enter. The winners will be announced in January.

“FedEx has long recognized that small businesses are incredibly vital to the health of both the global economy and local communities,” said T. Michael Glenn, executive vice president of Market Development at FedEx. “Providing these grants is yet another way for FedEx to show our support for small businesses as we continue to create programs to help give them a head start and access to new opportunities.”

Linkage:

Enter the contest here

More startup news from everywhere else

Boom! And it’s on

Kansas City’s Think Big Accelerator Becomes Latest Microsoft Bizspark Partner

Kansas City’s brand new Think Big Accelerator has just announced that they are the latest partner in the Microsoft Bizspark program.

Think Big Partners and the Think Big Accelerator for emerging early stage, high growth potential startups just announced their first class of six startups last week. The six startups will participate in the accelerator program for 22 weeks of intense training to prepare the startups for a demo day to investors at the end of the session in January.

The six startups selected to go through the program received a seed investment between $18 and $25,000 dollars in exchange for 6-8% equity.

The six startups are:
H2OCloud (New York, New York): H2OCloud is a cloud-based application that connects music fans to bands in a mobile-based platform. H2OCloud helps bands create more revenue through better marketing, smarter asset management and improve the overall fan experience and artist-fan interaction.

inCharge (Kansas City, Missouri): inCharge is a kiosk-based mobile phone charging station that provides digital out-of-home targeted advertising to the consumer. inCharge’s initial focus is high teledensity overseas markets.

Kahootz (Kansas City, Missouri): Kahootz is a consumer-focused online calendar platform that provides users with easier ways to combine, share and manage all obligations and profiles on one easy-to-maintain social-based platform. Kahootz also enables user-controlled, privacy-enabled, permission-based business-to-consumer markets through event promotion syndication.

Keyzio (Kansas City, Missouri): Keyzio has been defined as the Match.com for real estate for two people who don’t know they are trying to find each other. The Keyzio platform connects people and helps them find, buy and sell real estate that may not normally be available through MLS.

Phone2Action (Los Angeles, California): Phone2Action uses location-based mobile technology to instantly connect constituents to their lawmakers making in-the-moment advocacy easier.

Weejay (Kansas City, MO): Weejay is a virtual jukebox application that allows customers to control music in particular venues through mobile devices. Weejay’s venue management feature dashboard enables total control of music for a specific venue and creates better revenue opportunities for venue owners to enhance the overall patron experience.

With the announcement of their partnership with Microsoft’s BizSpark program, these six startups will receive a higher level of Windows Azure cloud access, setting up each entrepreneur for success in the cloud. Microsoft BizSpark will also provide the six startups in the Think Big Accelerator program with consulting, insight, mentorship and expertise.

“We are excited to have Think Big Partners join our BizSpark Plus Partner Program,” said Mark Relph, Senior Director, Strategic and Emerging Business Team at Microsoft. “Think Big Accelerator startups have the potential to spur business growth in the Midwest. With Windows Azure, startups can save the cost of investing in IT infrastructure and only pay for technology resources as they use them. We look forward providing member startups with access to technology, resources and business connections.”

“The partnership we have developed with Microsoft will not only benefit the startups involved with the Think Big Accelerator program, but will also help to strengthen the entire Kansas City startup community,” said Herb Sih, co-founder of Think Big Partners. “We are excited to already provide Midwestern startups with the benefits of the Microsoft partnership, such as the Azure Cloud and Windows 8 App Kickstarts for developers. This is a great partnership for our startups, the accelerator and Kansas City entrepreneurs.”

Linkage:

Learn more about the Think Big Accelerator here

Learn more about Microsoft BizSpark here

Learn more about an awesome startup event here

Nashville Startup Jamplify Exhibiting At DEMO Courtesy Of Startup America

As we reported earlier this morning, Startup America revealed the 8 startups that won their contest for a free trip to DEMO in Santa Clara California this week. Four startups are exhibiting in the DEMO Showcase Pavilion. The other four startups are presenting on the main stage.

Nashville Jumpstart Foundry graduate Jamplify was one of the four startup selected for the exhibit space in the DEMO Showcase Pavillion.

Jamplify is a hybrid, promotional, crowdsourcing platform. With Jamplify’s finished product, you get the most logical promotional vehicle for bands, musicians, and bloggers that’s available to date.

Jamplify crowdsources people for promoting the bands that they love. Rather than crowdsourcing for actual capital Jamplify is crowdsourcing for social capital and human capital, and then there’s the payoff.

Jamplify is like the kickstarter for fan based, crowd based musical promotion. As a fan of a band or a promotional ambassador you can agree to promote a band or musician. Based on your social graph and the amount of people that you actually touch with the campaigns short, trackable url you will become eligible for prizes from the band or artist you’re promoting.

Jamplify arrived at Nashville’s Jumpstart Foundry from New York City where the founders worked on Wall Street.

Check out their video pitch from Jumpstart Foundry’s demo day in August below:

Linkage:

Check out Jamplify here

DEMO here

Startup America here

Everywhere Else here

Florida Startup: Seek.ly To Launch Online Speed Dating At DEMO

Online speed dating isn’t a new concept however it’s one that could use some definite improvements. Online dating sites typically bury their users with superfluous messages. They also give off false positives by matching users with people that aren’t interesting or compatible.

Florida startup Seek.ly plans will eliminate those problems and others to make online speed dating more spontaneous the way that it is when you go to an in person speed dating event at a local restaurant, bar or singles meet up.

Profiles be gone!

While at first this may seem like a crazy idea, one way that Seek.ly puts that spontaneity back into online speed dating is by eliminating profile pictures, and questions. To often people eliminate potential dates by profiles. The other down fall is that profiles are often blown up or only show the absolute best a person has to offer (or what they perceive is their best). With Seek.ly there’s no BS around the profile, more time is spent focusing on getting to know the person.

“Seek.ly does not have profile pictures, questionnaires or compatibility testing because we know that at the end of the day those processes just can’t take the place of human interaction. By eliminating these crutches, seek.ly users are more inclined to get to know the person and not the profile. I’m very excited about our public launch and validating these ideas.” said Susie Steiner, Founder of Seek.ly.

Steiner and co-founder Kim Randall will launch Seek.ly today at the fall DEMO conference in Santa Clara California. They’ll have six minutes to wow those in the audience and those watching from home. Online speed dating needs a makeover and Seek.ly is confident they’ll deliver.

“We are ready to take Online dating to the next level and I am very excited that we are launching our video speed dating platform at DEMO Fall 2012,” said Kim Randall, Co- founder of Seek.ly LLC.

Linkage:

Check out Seek.ly here at seek.ly

Check out DEMO here

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Toronto Startup Picatic Launches; Protects Event Organizers By Crowdfunding Tickets

Toronto startup Picatic has an excellent proposition for event organizers,”Never lose money on an event again”. They can guarantee this proposition for event organizers that use their platform for their events.

Picatic’s EventTilt platform is a crowdfunding site to fund events. Users take to the traditional crowdfunding model and essentially purchase tickets early for an event that an organizer has posted to the site. If the event gets enough early tickets from the crowd, those that crowdfunded the event will receive discounted tickets based on their contribution. Should the event not get enough commitments than the user’s card isn’t charged and everyone walks away happy.

With EventTilt event organizers can finally host events without worrying that they won’t sell enough tickets to break-even or make the profit they expected. The platform eliminates all of the financial risks of hosting an event by offering a preset number of early tickets at a discount. Once discounted tickets are sold the event Tilts and tickets go back up to full price — the event is on! For events that don’t Tilt within the time allotted, EventTilt will refund buyers 100% of their ticket price.

Just like other crowdfunding sites Picatic can also offer other incentives to those that purchase their tickets early. Incentives like early admission, VIP access,T-shirts and other swag can be used as incentives to the buyers.

“EventTilt is changing the way we plan and market events. Our goal is simple, create a platform that not only ensures events get the funding they need to be successful but also helps organizers engage with their most loyal supporters.” CEO and Co-Founder Jayesh Parmar said in a statement.

There are a few other crowdfunding startups in the ticketing and event space like GigFunder and Queremos. While many view Picatic as a way to eliminate risk for event organizers, others wonder if it’s worth backing or committing to an event that may or may not happen.

Picatic has raised $200,000 in seed funding and their site is up and running.

Linkage:

Check out Picatic on the web here

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