CONT3NT Archives - Serious Startups

AngelHack, World’s Biggest Hackathon Coming To DC And We Have Free Tickets

The old days, picturing a dark room filled with pocket protectors, broken glasses and keyboards are long gone. The hackathon has become a big part of our culture in the startup world. It seems like everyone with a pulse on technology has found the way to create a hackathon to design this, hack this, break into this, vet this, or program that. Microsoft recently held a huge hackathon on their Windows 8 platform. Startup Weekend holds several hackathons every week.

None of these hackathons can parallel the enormous size, booty (prize stash), resources and sponsors of Angelhack.

Angelhack is going down this weekend in 11 cities with 2500 hackers and one gigantic Angelhack crown. Hackers, coders, developers, founders and entrepreneurs will converge on Tel Aviv, Paris, London, Washington DC, Boston, Toronto, Los Angeles, Seattle, Santiago and San Francisco for one crazy weekend of hacking.

The event kicks off at 9:00am on Saturday morning and runs through 5:00pm Sunday night. This hackathon isn’t for the weak at heart though. This isn’t a turn the lights off at midnight and come back at 8am kind of hackathon. Angelhack will run continuously all weekend long.

Angelhack is one of the most critically acclaimed hackathons in the world because of the creativity and startups that it helps create. All 11 locations will narrow the field down to 25 teams from around the world. These 25 teams will win six weeks of mentorship and be flown to Silicon Valley where they’ll show off their finished products to media, investors and other startups. In the past 30% of the finalists have found enough funding to continue building out their companies.

Our good friend Anton Gelman, the CEO and co-founder of Cont3nt is the Washington DC AngelHack coordinator and he’s given nibletz 35 free tickets to the event. Just go to this link to get your ticket and enter the word “nibletz” you’ll instantly save the $60 off the hackathon ticket price and be ready to go.

Gelman told our friends at DC’s inthecapital.com:

“Over the summer, I happened to be in New York and decided to check out AngelHack New York. Crazy enough, I won! They sent us to San Francisco in the following month to compete with other winners from other countries. It was probably one of the coolest events I’ve been to, and then I thought, this was such an amazing experience in New York, why can’t we have one in D.C.? So I arranged a few meetings, made a few phone calls, and was able to convince them to host an event here in D.C. And here we are, the first AngelHack competition is going to happen this weekend!”

Did we mention that Angelhack offers $650,000 in cash and prizes. If you’re anywhere within 300 miles of Washington DC, your plans for this weekend are now set.

Linkage:

Get a free ticket to Angelhack from nibletz click here

Source: InTheCapital

More startup news from Nibletz

And while you’re registering for events

DC Startup: Cont3nt.com Was Just About King At Capital Connection TechBUZZ

anton gelman,cont3nt,nibletz.com,capital connection,techcocktail,techcrunch,

(photo: dcfounders.com)

This year at Capital Connection/TechBUZZ in Washington DC, Cont3nt was just about king. Cont3nt is an awesome new platform that helps monetize citizen journalism in new ways. The theme around the site is free press and free money and it’s the brain child of founder Anton Gelman.

Before we dive all the way into the story, this particular story isn’t just about Cont3nt, it’s also about Gelman who’s family came to the United States as refugees, to seek the very freedoms that power Cont3nt. It’s also about Gelman because he is one of the nicest people in the DC startup community and a master networker. While we are in DC quite a bit we’re not based there, yet we manage to bump into Gelman at every single event.

By the time last Thursday night had rolled around we had scene Gelman’s pitch for cont3nt four times, never skipping a beat.

So what is cont3nt? Well you can learn more in the pitch video below but in summary, cont3nt is a platform for free lance semi-pro and pro videographers to post content and monetize it at the same time.

The problem today is that social media is kicking traditional medias ass in sourcing video content for major news events. While it takes major news networks hours if not days to prepare to source a story, and hundreds of thousands of dollars to boot, the citizen journalist and the semi-pro and pro freelancers can jump on the news in minutes. Sometimes, they luck into a story as it unfolds before their eyes.

Using content’s proprietary delivery methods the top traditional media firms in the world can get access to this content in minutes rather than hours or days.

Cont3nt offers a variety of methods for selling content on the site to freelance journalists. The journalist can decide if they want to sell an exclusive piece to one outlet or license it out to several.

While cont3nt bills itself as citizen journalism, by Gelman’s own admission it’s the first market place for freelancers with some experience to get their pieces sold. It almost mirrors the “stringer” system that died sometime in the 90’s. (I used to string for CNN Radio and Gannett).

There are other consumer focused citizen journalism sites out there like rawporter which is designed for anyone with a smartphone to report the news and get paid for it,

People seem to like it. That’s why Cont3nt was just about king at the recent Capital Connection/TechBUZZ conference. Gelman and cont3nt were selected a week before the conference by Startup America as their entry into the TechBUZZ competition. With minimal time to prepare Gelman pitched on Wednesday of last week at TechBUZZ.

Cont3nt was selected as one of the top 3 best of the buzz at TechBUZZ and had to pitch for a second time on Wednesday and then on Thursday again as an entry into the “main stage” pitches as part of Capital Connection.

To top that off, Gelman also pitched one more time on Thursday night at the TechCocktail event featuring a keynote from Startup America CEO Scott Case.

Check out Gelman’s pitch below:

Linkage:

Find out more about Cont3nt here at Cont3nt.com

Check out more of our Capital Connection 2012 coverage here

Where on a sneaker-strapped, nationwide startup road trip and could use your help check it out here

28 Startups Compete For Best of The Buzz In Washington DC, 3 Are Victorious

We’re now bringing you coverage from both TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 and CapitalConnection 12/TechBUZZ in Washington DC.

Today in the nation’s capital 28 different companies did four minute pitches to a packed house vying for “Best of the BUZZ”. Those three companies will head to the Main Stage tomorrow afternoon to compete in the TechBuzz Showdown.

In this contest the audience is given the power to vote via the Disruptathon app.

The 28 companies were:

CloudeAssurance, Inc.

By audience vote the three “Best of BUZZ” at this years TechBUZZ 12 are:

Augaroo
Cont3nt
Speek

Augaroo is building a next generation real time big data visualization system called Zoomdata. The system processes real-time data streams and generates tactile, interactive visualizations on web and mobile denies. Through Zoomdata, which is currently beta testing, users can experience data analysis in an entirely new way.

Cont3nt.com was the winter of the Startup America TechBUZZ Challenge Contest earlier this month. They won the coveted 28th presenter spot in today’s competition. Cont3nt is a real-time marketplace for entrepreneurial media and visual journalism. The platform allows video journalists to monetize their content in new disruptive ways without having to “know somebody”.

Speek is a simplified conference calling ervice which leverages modern web services and VOIP/Telephony takeaways. Speek users will be able to own a “Spek” line which may be shared via a personal URL. Speek leverages viral growth principals and will offer free and premium services.

TechBUZZ kicked off today in Washington DC with a keynote from Founder and CEO of Opower Dan Yates. Tonight will be an evening of festivities celebrating the “Sterling Companies” alumni of the 25 year Capital Connection program.

Tomorrow there will be pitches on the main stage by companies who are a little further along then the ones today. They may come seeking funding, they could also be pre-IPO. No matter what, Nibletz the voice of startups everywhere else, will bring you all the action.

Tomorrow rounds out with a keynote by America Online founder Steve Case. Later tomorrow evening is a TechCocktail DC Sessions event with Startup America CEO Scott Case (no relation).