Colorado Startup Archives - Page 2 of 2

Colorado Startup: Mile High Organics Closes Seven Figure Round

Boulder Colorado startup Mile High Organics has announced that they’ve closed a seven million figure seed round. The exact number wasn’t reported. However, there are some big names in the round including Dave McClure’s 500 startups and TA Venture of Kiev Ukraine. Mile High Organics will use th money to expand it’s high quality, cost-competitive grocery deliver service with new products and services.

We recently featured Mile High Organics in one of our stories about trending angel.co startups from “everywhere else”.

“The key difference between Mile High Organics and other grocer services is that we emphasize quality of product and service while being price competitive,” said Mile High Organics CEO Michael Joseph. “Part of the reason we are able to do this is by distributing to Colorado’s entire Front Range through one distribution center — as opposed to dozens of stores.”

While grocery delivery services are hardly new, Mile High Organics is more like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s delivery, or even perhaps your neighborhood grocery co-op delivery rather than a huge supermarket. Online grocery services have been experiencing a huge surge. A recent Nielsen survey showed that consumers spent $12 billion in online grocery services since 2010. That figure is expected to more than double to $25 billion by 2014. In 2011 the online grocery service industry as a whole did $35 billion in sales

Despite a weak economy, Mile High Organics has seen tremendous growth since its launch in June 2010. The company employs 40 people and is currently hiring several more positions. It allows its customers to incorporate fresh, organic food into their diet for their best health and best life. In just less than two years, the company has achieved recurring orders by delighting thousands of members. Mile High Organics recently became the first U.S. Department of Agriculture certified organic online retailer, solidifying their industry leadership and consumer trust.

“We see Mile High Organics emerging as an important player in the online grocery industry,” said David McClure, founding partner of 500 Startups. “They are disrupting the $600 billion grocery industry in the United States.”

“Mile High Organics is an innovative player serving the largest consumer market in the United States, focusing on local organic food products and minimization of environmental impact,” said Viktoriya Tigipko, managing director of TA Venture. “The company is developing a truly disruptive e-grocery model to compete for the burgeoning natural and organic grocery market. We are very excited about our investment in Mile High Organics and are confident that the company is uniquely positioned and capable of becoming a leading player in the U.S. organic grocery delivery market and expanding its business to other countries.”

Mile High Organics now offers more than 600 grocery products, with an emphasis on providing as much local, seasonal organic produce and groceries as possible. It is the only Colorado retailer that supplies completely non-genetically modified foods, free from synthetic pesticides and chemical inputs.

Linkage:

Find out more about Mile High Organics Here

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Boulder Startup: Mocavo Announces $4 Million Dollar Round

Boulder startup Mocavo has announced a $4 million dollar funding round to expand their business of helping people find their ancestors. Yes the site competes with Utah genealogy giant Ancestry.com but in playing with the site for just a few minutes, the search function was much easier and the results were much more precise.

Mocavo offers a great search engine for free, that will even let you access records, newspapers and other citations for free. They let you drill down if you become a premium member which is free for the first week.

Mocavo was part of the TechStars program last year, graduating out of their 2011 class.

Mocavo’s COO Ryan Hunter thanked Boulder and TechStars in the Wednesday announcement. He reconfirmed their commitment as part of Boulder’s startup scene and even announced some job openings they plan on filling with the funds from this round.

“As a Techstars 2011 team, we want to say how thankful we are for Boulder’s startup community, and that we will continue to support our town. With Foundry’s investment, we now have the resources to rapidly grow our technology with a talented team of product engineers and developers. We have immediate openings for front-end developers, back-end developers and interface designers”. Hunter said on Mocavo’s Blog.

The $4 million dollar round came from the Foundry Group. Seth Levine, Foundry’s Managing director will get a seat on Mocavo’s board.

Our friend Sean Ludwig at VentureBeat reports that Mocavo’s previously raised $1 million dollars in an Angel round “from a long roster of angel investors (most of them named Dave) including Dave McClure, David Cohen, David Bonderman, David Calone, Dave Carlson, and others.”

source: VentureBeat

Denver Startup: DailyCloset To Open Monday

A new woman owned, Denver startup in the daily deals space is slated to open tomorrow. The #startup called DailyCloset, is going to offer daily deals on a variety of women’s clothes and accessories.

DailyCloset realizes that the daily deals space is getting crowded. They plan on differentiating themselves by making their #dailydeals more socially appealing to their users. Users will be encouraged to comment and share the deal of the day via their Facebook account.

“In addition to providing a product for purchase, we utilize the featured item as a centerpiece that engages visitors and stimulates conversation,” said Charles Cunningham, Chief Marketing Officer with Dailycloset.com. “We want to see users talking about the product and respectfully share their opinions, whether good or bad.”

DailyCloset is going to kick off their site tomorrow morning at 9am EST at dailycloset.com their first deal will actually be free while supplies last. DailyCloset has teamed up with AJ Morgan to give away hundreds of free sunglasses. Each user will be able to get one pair of free glasses and all they have to do is pay DailyCloset’s flat rate shipping fee. After they run out of the initial free pairs they will have more available for $4.00. The deal lasts for 24 hours like all the deals on DailyCloset.

DailyCloset will also have a weekly drawing for a free handbag tied in with liking the site on Facebook. Every day at 5pm EST DailyCloset will post a new daily deal. The deal will end at 4:59pm the next day.

The free deal starts at 9am Monday.

Linkage:

Check out DailyCloset.com here at their website

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Colorado Startups: RockyNet Launches Program For Tech Startups Interested In The Cloud

RockyNet a big data and cloud based technology company in Louisville Colorado has announced a new program that will be useful for Colorado area tech startups. The new program is called RockyNet Thrive is aimed at early stage and emerging technology startups that rely on big amounts of bandwidth and collocated facilities in their business models.

Through the new program, Colorado startups will have access to mentoring on the cloud, consulting on how to leverage the cloud and a host of cloud and big data services for free. RockyNet also plans to continue consulting and supporting the startups as they emerge into profitability.

RockyNet defines startup as any Colorado registered business who has been in business for 3 years or less and has less than 15 employees.

RockyNet’s President Paul Mako said: “RockyNet Thrive is our way of leveraging our cloud and collocation infrastructure to help new businesses grow into the rebounding economy. If these companies are given the chance to thrive, we will all thrive.”

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Boulder Startup: Orbotix Has A Fan In President Obama

Boulder Colorado based startup Orbotix Has been working on their smartphone controlled ball called Sphero for the better part of the last two years.

The company had a working prototype at the International Consumer Electronics Show in 2011. Last Fall they started filling their preorders. These days they are continuing to support their developers in bringing fun interactive apps to the ball.

An iPhone or Android can control the $130 ball. Through a smartphone app you can drive the ball, rotate the ball and play games like golf, and drive the cat absolutely crazy.

One of the most fun things to do with the ball is drive it down the sidewalk and watch the people’s reaction.

That’s exactly what President Obama did with the ball. He had originally noticed someone else controlling the ball. Obama remarked how cool the ball was and of course they let him try it.

“Excuse me — give me some space to drive my ball,” Obama said to the crowd of onlookers before taking control of the ball via iPhone, reports the DenverPost.

Sphero joins a host of other smartphone controlled toys. Orbotix may have hit the big time with their latest fan.

Check out the video here at the source: DenverPost

Colorado Start Up Answers: Dude Where’s My Everything

Steamboat Springs Colorado startup Ugrokit was founded by the wife and husband team of Carrie and Terry Requist to answer one of life’s most important questions: Dude Where’s My Everything.

Key finders have been around since the 80’s. There were some that worked like the clapper while others responded to a whistle or even others that required you keep track of a button in case you lose your keys. The idea has been refined over and over again. The ZOMM is a great iteration of a keyfinding device but that one uses BlueTooth technology and is relegated to a circular disc like device that is fastened on your keyring.

Ugrokit is different. Ugrokit uses RFID tags that are cheap, flat, washable and can attach to just about everything. The system comes with a Grok which is an orange RFID scanner that attaches to an iPhone (Android later?). You then use as many tags as you would like and you scan them into your iPhone. Once an item is scanned it’s stored and if you can’t locate that item you just wave the scanner around where you think it might be and a series of beeps tells you whether your hot or cold.