StartUp Beat

Company: North Social

Website: www.northsocial.com

Headquarters: Oakland, Calif.

Year Founded: 2010

Employees: 15

Company Description:

Simple Applications. Powerful Facebook Pages.

By Alex Bernstein, Partner

Facebook has become a marketing must for any brand, whether a global corporation or an indie band.  But not anyone can take advantage of the offerings on Facebook due to budgetary and technical limitations.  How many brands have the budget of Red Bull and the engineering savvy of Google?  The most compelling, engaging fan pages on Facebook were built with thousands of dollars by the most talented developers and agencies.  What’s a smaller brand to do?

Shortly after Facebook launched pages for businesses, we were meeting with clients who wanted to enhance their presence on Facebook but couldn’t afford the cost to build and maintain custom applications and didn’t have the time or technical knowledge to outsource developers.  We immediately recognized a need and engineered a way that we could enable all brands, big and small, to overcome the financial and technical challenges of Facebook by offering a full suite of easy to use applications that were both affordable and powerful.

Continue reading "Featured Company Pitch: North Social" »

Posted by startupbeat at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Local Bigwig LLC

Website: www.localbigwig.com

Headquarters: New York

Year Founded: 2010

Investors: Self-funded

Founder: Ray Madronio

Employees: 11

Company Description:

“Live the Local Life” with Local Bigwig, a short-term home rental source and a place where global travelers and local homeowners meet.

By Ray Madronio, CEO

With the mission to help global travelers and local homeowners meet, Local Bigwig LLC specializes in short-term home rentals.  However, the Local Bigwig brand itself focuses on far more than short-term home rentals—it is built to be the go-to source for travelers and locals alike seeking information on everything from travel tips and logistics to the latest city happenings.

Local Bigwig’s motto is “Live the Local Life” and it encourages homeowners to share their neighborhood secrets and “hot spots” with other users and travelers.  The website encourages travelers to enjoy a more genuine experience of a city—one that is difficult to attain in a traditional hotel.  Local Bigwig is the antipode to the typical tourist-y vacation, the one in which you stop at every popular museum and landmark but don’t really feel the vibe of the city that you’re in.

It is no surprise that I started writing the Local Bigwig business plan in the Rio de Janeiro-Galeao International Airport, about to board a plane home to New York.  As a travel and real estate buff, the website seamlessly combines my two loves.  One of the first things that I asked a fellow intern on their first “bigwig lunch” was: “so tell me about your favorite spots around NYU—interesting, cool spots that not too many people know about.”  Scouring for the city’s best-kept secrets is my hobby and now, instead of spending my Sundays going to open-houses around Manhattan, I brainstorm for the website.

Company: CheckAlt

Website: www.checkalt.com

Year Founded: 2010

Founders: Shai Stern, George Karfunkel

Investors: Self-funded

Employees: 10 

By Shai Stern, CEO

There are more than 40 million households using electronic payment today.  Time is money and people want business done quickly and efficiently.  Now more than ever, companies are adopting high-tech methods when dealing with their corporate needs.  CheckAlt is at the forefront of this technological revolution.  They are helping businesses run more smoothly and cost effectively.

An alternative electronic processing solution, CheckAlt provides merchants with a fast, affordable, and reliable means to receive payments online.  Not only are businesses improving their bottom line with the service, but they are also doing their part to help the environment.

Paper checks are outdated; they are a strain on our natural resources, not to mention an inconvenience in today’s fast-paced business environment.  Receiving payments from a consumer can sometimes seem like a losing battle.  Whether the check is “in the mail” or payment simply slips the mind, CheckAlt is the solution that benefits both the merchant and consumer.  Merchants can debit a client’s account directly, making “just in time” payments easy and late fees a thing of the past.  A paper check can take up to ten days to clear, whereas CheckAlt’s e-checks or ACH are posted in only 48 hours.  Companies using CheckAlt are mitigating risks and improving customer loyalty, making business transactions a breeze.

Merchants no longer need carry the burden of credit card or wire transfer fees, plus the worry of lost checks can be eliminated.

Continue reading "Featured Company Pitch: CheckAlt" »

Posted by startupbeat at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: MyBankTracker.com

Website: www.mybanktracker.com

Headquarters: New York City

Year Founded: 2008

Founders: Alex Matjanec, Tadas J. Nikulin and Jason Reposa

Investors: Self-funded

Employees: 7

Company Description: 

“Coined the Google for banks, MyBanktracker.com offers consumers information about banks in order to help them make smart banking decisions”

By Alex Matjanec, Co-founder,

The concept to launch MyBankTracker.com began in early 2008, when Tadas J. Nikulin, Jason Reposa and I saw a need to shift the way banking information was presented by providing a more consumer-oriented personal finance portal.

Headquartered in New York City’s DUMBO neighborhood, MyBankTracker.com helps consumers make informed banking decisions and save money—and it is available free of charge to the consumer.  To meet the growing demand for easier access to clear information about the best banks and rates in the country, we provide an easy-to-use web portal that lets consumers rate and review banks, compare interest rates and learn more about the savings and investment options to best meet their goals.

Now, more than 200,000 unique monthly visitors later, we track more than 50,000 state based products and more banks than any other site in the industry—more than 1,000 to date—with rates for CDs, savings, checking, mortgage, credit card and home equity line of credit accounts updated daily to provide the most current information that helps consumers find the best rates at more banks across the country.

Continue reading "Featured Company Pitch: MyBankTracker.com" »

Posted by startupbeat at 09:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: OneRoof

Website: www.oneroof.com

Headquarters: San Francisco. CA

Year Founded: 2005

Founders: Dwight Wilson, Miguel Raimilla, and Eric Spector

Investors: Angel investors

Employees: 23

Company Description: 

“OneRoof's goal is to make a difference by facilitating sustainability of public computing worldwide by providing quality software at no cost”

By Eric Spector, CEO

We founded OneRoof, a company of entrepreneurs and philanthropic-minded backers, in October 2005 to franchise cyber cafés in the developing world and to offer a range of Internet-enabled services in small rural towns such as: email and browsing, financial services, insurance, rail/bus/air ticketing, education, and job skills training.  OneRoof opened scores of browsing centers in rural Tamil Nadu state in southern India, and in the states of Campeche, Veracruz and Yucatan of rural Mexico.

After some time working with their browsing centers, we discovered a need for timely information from their locations in India and Mexico.  This led us to research most point-of-sale (POS) software products, and they eventually chose CyberCafePro for use in our businesses.  In 2008, we moved beyond the rudimentary reporting features of the otherwise solid CyberCafePro by creating a robust, web-based online management information system.  Initially, this work was done for internal purposes, but over time OneRoof began to garner interest in licensing our software from colleagues working in government-funded telecentre networks, from owners of private cyber cafés and from government officials around the world.

Continue reading "Featured Company Pitch: OneRoof" »

Posted by startupbeat at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: CyberSynchs

Website: www.cybersynchs.com

Headquarters: New York City

Year Founded: 2008

Founder: Amos Winbush III

Investors: Self-Funded

Employees: 15

Company Description:

"CyberSynchs offers applications that enable data synchronization, sharing and transfer through the hybrid cloud"

By Amos Winbush III, CEO

Leaving my native Louisiana for New York at the age of 19 to pursue my dream of a music career, only in my wildest dreams would I have envisioned that five years later I would trade in my headphones for an entrepreneur’s hat as the founder and CEO of CyberSynchs.  In two short years the company has grown into a $20 million technology company with an ever-expanding impact on the mobile, wireless and home entertainment industries.

CyberSynchs is a Universal Data Synchronization (UDS) company that offers $2.99 per month subscription-based wireless applications that enable consumers to automatically synchronize, backup, share, transfer and retrieve mobile device content as well as other consumer electronic device data.  CyberSynchs Mobile, our flagship product, performs these actions at individual pre-determined intervals.  Users sign up for the service at www.cybersynchs.com, after which a text message is sent to his or her mobile device, providing a link that installs the CyberSynchs application.  Data synchronization is immediate; CyberSynchs doesn’t require any hardware, cables, SIM or storage cards.

That’s the 30-second elevator pitch. There is the proverbial “so much more.”

Continue reading "Featured Company Pitch: CyberSynchs" »

Posted by startupbeat at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Knewton

Website: www.knewton.com

Headquarters: New York City

Year Founded: 2008

Founder: Jose Ferreira

Investors: FirstMark Capital, Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, First Round Capital; angel investors

Employees: 45

Company Description:

“Knewton is replacing mass education with personalized learning.”

 By Jose Ferreira, CEO

The idea of learning on the Internet is difficult for some people to swallow; the phrase “online education” evokes grainy one-way video lectures, boring, ineffective lessons, and/or slimy for-profit degree mills.

Knewton is none of the above.

Instead, with the help of our revolutionary adaptive learning engine, we at Knewton are out to prove that online learning works—and in fact, can be more engaging, effective, and scalable than traditional classroom approaches.  We currently use an initial version of our adaptive learning engine in our online GMAT, SAT, and LSAT courses.

The idea for Knewton first came to me 18 years ago, when I began working at Kaplan. I saw a lot of unproven instructors teaching students at local Kaplan centers, and got tired of telling students they needed help in broad areas like “geometry.”  I wanted to be able to target students’ weaknesses at a much more granular—and meaningful—level.

Company: Lightfleet Corporation

Website: www.lightfleet.com

Headquarters: Camas, Wash.

Year Founded: 2003

Employees: 22

Company Description: “Lightfleet’s optical fabric is a breakthrough to multiprocessor computing that overcomes the performance bottlenecks of typical interconnect architectures.”

By John Peers, CEO

Imagine for a moment that firms on Wall Street can execute trades and trading algorithms much faster, where trading even milliseconds faster can mean millions in profits; or that the military can put high-density analytics systems like facial recognition in command aircrafts to speed intelligence, decision support and response efforts; or that today’s leading Internet service providers and search engines can dramatically accelerate services while cutting power and cooling costs in half and minimizing server footprints in over-crowded data centers.

Enabling these types of strategic advantages and business opportunities is what drives our team at Lightfleet, and today this vision is closer than ever to reality.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: Lightfleet" »

Posted by startupbeat at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: doddle/ Mobile Imagination, LLC

Website:www.doddleme.com

Headquarters: Jupiter, Florida

Year Founded: 2009

Founders: Jim Robertson and Richard Kwiat

Investors: N/A

Employees: 14

Company Description:

"Doddle puts the production industry in the palm of your hand."

By Jim Robertson, Founder and Principal

You might be wondering by now—what’s a doddle?  Well, by definition it means a job or task that’s easy to complete.  And that’s exactly what this new smartphone application delivers.  Imagine taking all the production guides from around the world, and putting them in the palm of your hand.  Initially designed for iPhone, the “it” phone for the production industry, doddle promises to transform the lives of production professionals—from movies and television to audio, and video production segments—by giving them the unique ability to plan, communicate with, and manage their workforce from their smartphone throughout the creative process.  It’s a doddle!

No more wasting countless hours frantically searching through antiquated and cumbersome production guides or squandering precious time schlepping to an office to fax call sheets and call disconnected equipment rental shops.  In short, doddle makes it possible to work the way you do, “On the go.”  This extraordinary app is revolutionizing the production industry, letting professionals spend less time chained to a desk and more time in the field where the magic is created.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: doddle/ Mobile Imagination" »

Posted by startupbeat at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By David Kaiser, CEO

With the surging popularity of online video viewing, Coincident TV (CTV) is a new technology that transforms online video into a unique type of browser.  It enables viewers to simultaneously watch a program while being presented with a vast menu of relevant online information, such as a given character’s Facebook page, a live Twitter feed, or a link to purchase the same type of hat another character is wearing.  The sequence and combination of possibilities is only limited by the content creator’s desires and business objectives.

I was inspired to develop CTV in 2008 while watching the news on television with my laptop beside me.  A story during the broadcast caught my attention, and I attempted to look up additional information on my computer.  However, I quickly became frustrated with the disconnected experience.  By the time I found the related story, I had completely lost my train of thought and also lost focus on the newscast.  That simple yet profound experience motivated me to build a technology that would create a truly seamless online viewing and web surfing environment.

What I developed is a form of “hypervideo” technology: a simple-to-use software suite that combines online video, social media, weblinks and commerce into one immersive experience.  At its core, CTV is a language to describe manipulating media (video, web display, web services and feeds).  We are also developing third party tools, a player, an editor, an analytics portal and a PERL library application, that enable quick, intuitive creation and playback of CTV files.  Over time, we anticipate that content publishers and software developers will embrace our language and build their own authoring tools to create better multimedia experiences.

Why are we doing this?  In a nutshell, because audiences have adopted online video viewing at astonishing rates.  According to a recent Nielsen report, there were more than 141 million unique video viewers in February 2010 and a whopping 10.3 billion videos were streamed in the same month.

With these types of numbers, it’s clear that people want both the instant gratification of using the Internet to connect and research, along with the entertainment value of video.  To date, no one has been able to take these two parts and make them into a singular ecosystem.  This is the void that CTV is filling, as well as providing rich monetization opportunities for content creators and great, unique exposure for brands.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: Coincident TV" »

Posted by startupbeat at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

E-commerce 2.0 is here, and Friendgiftr is proud to lead the way.  We are the first social media and mobile based company in the world to offer real, purchasable brand name company products—currently virtual and physical gift cards—to be bought through social networking sites like Facebook and mobile phones like the iPhone.  We have partnered with over 135 big names in the retail and restaurant businesses—players like GAP, Starbucks, Chili’s, Banana Republic, Sephora, Regal Cinemas and others—specifically with the intent of enabling consumers to shop from anywhere.  In other words, we have started to commercialize both the social media and mobile platform spaces for the first time in the U.S. but are also moving into other profoundly innovative areas so people can quickly and conveniently make purchases (most of this is still secret for now).

The idea behind this entire concept occurred in late 2008, as there was a realization that the then novel social media and mobile application platforms would become huge commercial playgrounds if you leveraged them properly.  In other words, there was an increasingly palpable feeling that a company could market and sell real brand name products to the existing users in these communities just like they had on eBay (as an aside, one of the brilliant parts of eBay’s business model, for example, has been that they have allowed smart companies to set up online retail storefronts on their website, adding great value for customers, businesses, and eBay itself).  When Facebook and Apple created their own application programming interfaces (APIs), it became clear that, just like on eBay, companies were willing to establish large footprints on these platforms.  But they were only doing so with virtual goods and virtual games.  And that is when Friendgiftr was born.  We realized that these companies were doing a great job at monetizing items like virtual smiley faces and cupcakes but that the market was much bigger for real products, which is the void we wanted to fill as the first company to offer real products through these APIs.

Company Description in 140 characters or less: 

"eJamming pioneered synchronizing high-fidelity live audio streams among musicians so they can play and record together online, in real time."

By Gail Kantor, Co-Founder and CEO, eJamming

All the activities musicians perform—playing, recording, writing, rehearsing, and arranging as well as learning, can now be done together live over the Internet.  All they need is eJamming AUDiiO’s pioneering software, a broadband connection, an audio interface device and a microphone.

You may be surprised to learn that until now, musicians haven’t been able to collaborate online in real time like other creative people have.  Technology has been the obstacle.  Bandwidth, speed and latency have made it difficult, and musicians have been patiently waiting for technology to catch up.

Our company, eJamming Inc., has spent the past decade pioneering live, synchronized, high quality audio-streaming technologies that bring musicians together to play and record online across the world.  eJamming co-founder Alan Jay Glueckman and I formed eJamming in 2001 to develop software that fills the void that kept musicians from participating in the online revolution that has connected most other people over the Internet.  Previous online collaboration solutions for musicians did not address real time or synchrony.  Yes, collaboration tools and games exist, but none are appropriate for music-making.

For musicians, timing is everything.  eJamming AUDiiO’s Jam Mode facilitates playing online from multiple locations by providing the fastest possible transmission speed and full pristine audio to inspire the session participants and satisfy their requirement for the highest fidelity reproduction of their instruments.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: eJamming" »

Posted by startupbeat at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Company Description in 140 characters or less: 

“KODA is the leading online community that introduces today's young professionals to the world's employers.”

By Jeff Berger, CEO

Finding a job in this economy may have just gotten a little bit easier.  Our San Francisco and New Orleans based social recruiting startup, KODA.us, is making waves in the private investment community for our innovative approach to helping people find jobs.  We just received an additional $1.5 million in private angel funding to support KODA’s growing user base and continued community expansion.

I see KODA challenging traditional resources like classifieds and job boards by getting “back to the basics” of the job search.  The recruitment industry doesn’t work for today’s young job seekers.  I know, because I was one of them.  The unemployment figures are staggering for recent college grads (with national rates topping 17 percent).  I truly believe that part of the problem is that recruiting sites aren’t paying attention to how young people communicate and what employers are really looking for.

Born out of job search frustrations as a recent Tulane graduate in a post-Katrina New Orleans, we designed KODA to fill the gap left by social and professional networks and job boards:

-Social networks are for socializing, not for finding a job.

-Online professional networks only work for those with already-existing contacts after several years of work experience.

-Traditional resumes and job boards are impersonal and static—a growing frustration for a generation that is accustomed to wide-open communication channels.

I see our team as pioneers in the “social recruiting” space.  We define it as using an online social medium to find your best candidate.  KODA is the first online community where young professionals and companies can come together in a professional environment that encourages self-expression.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: KODA" »

Posted by startupbeat at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Dialectic Networks

Website: www.dialecticnet.com

Headquarters: Osprey, Florida

Year Founded: 2005

Founder: Lee Hansen, CEO

Employees: 15

Company Description in 140 characters or less: 

"Dialectic Networks offers public/private commercial cloud computing and virtualized data center environments for mid/enterprise clients."

By Lee Hansen, Founder & CEO 

Businesses in all kinds of industries today are dependent on one common area—technology.  From the simplest ice cream shop all the way up to the most complex, multinational Fortune 100 corporations, all companies have some sort of technological backbone driving operations.

Large companies often have hundreds of thousands of square feet worth of space dedicated to housing massive amounts of technology such as servers and storage.  Some of today’s largest companies even contract with other businesses to house their data in separate places, just in case something goes wrong and they need to access data during or after a disaster.  Smaller companies may not be this complex with their data but still rely on technology to help drive the business.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: Dialectic Networks" »

Posted by startupbeat at 01:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Currensee

Website: www.currensee.com

Headquarters: Boston

Year Founded: 2008

Founders: Asaf Yigal, VP of Product; Avi Leventhal

Investors: North Bridge Venture Partners

Employees: 20 

Company Description in 140 characters or less:

"Currensee Inc. is the first Forex trading social network that connects Forex traders based on real-time trades."

By Dave Lemont, CEO and President

Currensee was founded in August of 2008 by Asaf Yigal, a highly successful software development executive and one of the founding members of Onaro.  Asaf was a member of the founding tech team at Onaro, which was acquired by NetApp for $130 million.  At Onaro, Asaf was responsible for setting the overall product architecture, including the early versions of the product and building out the professional services practice in the company.  Previous to that, Asaf was Project Manager for an algorithmic research project in the Israeli Navy.

We are headquartered in Boston.  The company employs over 20 employees and has raised $6 million in funding from North Bridge Venture Partners to date.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: Currensee" »

Posted by startupbeat at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Stonefield Software Inc. and Stonefield Software USA

Website: www.stonefieldquery.com

Headquarters: Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

Year Founded: 1991

Founders: Mickey Kupchyk, CEO; Doug Hennig, CTO

Investors: Bootstrapped

Employees: 20
 

Company Description in 140 characters or less:

Stonefield Software, makers of award winning Stonefield Query, develops BI database reporting software with the end-user in mind.
 

By Mickey Kupchyk, CEO and President

This is how I describe Stonefield Query to non users: Stonefield Query is a user-friendly Business Intelligence database reporting software tool.  With its step-by-step wizard driven design, Stonefield Query makes report writing a snap for even the most novice user.  No more waiting for IT or report developers to build reports on their timetables.  Stonefield Query lets you take advantage of the wealth of information stored in your business database when you need it.

People are surprised when I assure them Stonefield Query lets you create elegant and persuasive Quick Reports, Charts/Graphs, Cross-Tabulation Reports and Labels (mailing, barcode, etc) in minutes with little or no technical knowledge.  Stonefield Query is loaded with built-in features you expect in an enterprise BI reporting solution such as scheduling, ability to email reports, formula editor, and more.

Stonefield was incorporated in 1991.  My past experience as a Certified Management Accountant (CMA) and integrator of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems helped me design an ERP implementation and consulting division.  My partner and co-founder, Doug Hennig, relied on his expertise as a software developer to set up a custom software development division.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: Stonefield Query" »

Posted by startupbeat at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Web Site: www.parimics.com
Headquarters: Saratoga, Calif.
Year Founded: 2002
Founder: Axel Kloth, CTO; Royce Johnson, CEO
Investors: Self-funded
Employees: 5

Web Site: www.bizwiki.com

Headquarters: Aldershot, United Kingdom

Year Founded: 2006

Investors: Self-funded

Employees: 12

Company Description in 140 characters or less:

“Bizwiki.com is the user-edited Business Wiki.  Anyone from Bizwiki’s fast-growing audience can add and edit business listings for free.”

By Matt Aird, Co-Founder

Bizwiki is literally a wiki for business.  The site launched in the U.S. in July 2009, promising to change the way local search works by enabling its users to build up the most detailed and up-to-date index of business using wiki-style functionality.

Three years ago myself and co-founder Keith Hinde were discussing our frustrations with the long delay and lag between when a company’s details change and when they have been updated during our work for conventional directory and “Yellow Pages” publishers.  Tens, even hundreds of thousands of important details such as a company’s addresses and phone numbers may be incorrect or out of date, but the books keep on being printed.

In a break with traditional Yellow Pages websites, Bizwiki invites business owners and representatives to get involved in adding and improving their records with everything from contact details to prices and opening hours, completely free of charge.  These can be updated with changes and additional information quickly and easily on the site.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: Bizwiki" »

Posted by startupbeat at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Web Site: www.yakaboutit.com

Headquarters: Buffalo, NY

Year Founded: 2009

Founder: Jeff Gawronski, CEO

Investors: Self-funded

Employees: Gawronski, with a board of advisors and outsourced contingent workforce.

Company Description in 140 characters or less:

“Shop for the latest and most unique products you’ve never seen before. Yak About It only features products from independent inventors.” 

By Jeff Gawronski, CEO

YAK ABOUT IT is an e-commerce e-retailer that only carries items from inventors and independent entrepreneurs.  The underlying goal of YAK ABOUT IT is to get products noticed and Yak’d About.  The web site not only wants to provide consumers with great products, but it is also geared toward making inventor based creations a success.  Achieving the same wide-spread placement and awareness that large suppliers and companies do is an uphill battle for independent entrepreneurs.  Inventors are the true underdog.  In general, inventors and independent entrepreneurs face two major hurdles in getting their products noticed and, consequently, enjoyed by you, the consumer: (1) access to retailer shelf space, and (2) customer awareness once shelf space is awarded.

YAK ABOUT IT’s goal is to remove these roadblocks.  When you visit YAK ABOUT IT, you are purchasing, paying attention, and showing retailers which products are worthy of notice.  Giving products you like recognition through the sharing of opinions, purchase, and comments within YAK NATION, you become a part of the product’s climb in popularity.  It’s important to YAK ABOUT IT that consumers like you have a real voice within our YAK NATION.  Your voice is also heard every time you tell a friend or post what you’ve found throughout the web (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc).  The true long-term success of products is only achieved when you, the customer, make a purchase and share your experience of the purchase.  It’s these same useful benefits the inventor had in mind when he or she stopped life to work on bringing his or her vision to market.  YAK ABOUT IT featured inventors and start-up entrepreneurs appreciate your help in getting their products noticed!  And YAK ABOUT IT welcomes you to the very beginning of increasing awareness of these tremendous products!

YAK ABOUT IT featured products all started off as ideas, ideas conceived of by ordinary people like you and me.  The people behind these inventive products had the courage to change their lives as they once knew them and take a risk on their dreams.  This vision to bring a product to market and to start a company is not all-encompassing; it’s not a dream shared by everyone.  The learning process, hard work, cash investment and time make it all the more special for inventors and independent entrepreneurs when their ideas are brought to market.  The problem is that once a product is ready to sell, it doesn’t mean that a sale is guaranteed.  It’s not that the invention or creative product is useless; rather, the product lacks awareness.

Where would you go to look for new and useful inventions?  Where are the products from innovative inventors featured?  Before the birth of YAK ABOUT IT, the answer was nowhere.  New, market-ready inventions were all in random locations on the Internet or spread out in mostly smaller, niche retail stores.  YAK ABOUT IT’s mission is to get new products noticed.  Now inventors and start-up entrepreneurs’ new, innovative or exciting products can be found in one central place—YAK ABOUT IT.  You now have one spot that ensures that previously unknown products of yesterday become popular products of the future.  Join us at the ground level and YAK ABOUT IT!

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: YAK ABOUT IT" »

Posted by startupbeat at 02:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Web Site: www.8kmiles.com

Headquarters: Santa Clara, CA

Year Founded: April 2009

Founder: Dr. Suresh V. Chari, CEO

Investors: Bootstrapped

Employees: 20

Web Site: www.earthtone.net  

Year Founded: August, 2007

Founders: Nader Alaghband, founder and CEO, and David Reid, founder and CFO

Investors: Angel investors

Employees: 10

Launch date: February 10, 2009 (Northeast U.S.); October 2009 (National launch)

Company Description in 140 characters or less:
“Earthtone is an online service that connects businesses and users to a network of independently-operated print providers across the country.”

By Nader Alaghband
Earthtone developed out of a mix of personal experience and professional ambition.  My colleague and friend David Reid and I came up with the idea for Earthtone a few years ago.  We were trying to find a local green printer where we could have an important presentation professionally produced quickly and conveniently.  We tried to search for the right supplier online, but the process was both time consuming and inefficient and we spent several fruitless hours searching through hard to comprehend pricing lists without finding what we were looking for.  In the end, David and I had to resort to the yellow pages and call all the printers in the relevant section to find out what services they offered and what environmental accreditations they had.Most places wanted 24 hours just to turn around a quote—not much good to us given that we were cutting it close, time wise!  We realized that there had to be a better way to get something as simple as twenty copies of a 20-page presentation, printed on 100% recycled stock, nicely bound and finished by an ISO-accredited printer.

We were surprised to find that in spite of many affordable, independent print businesses to choose from, there wasn’t any way to find them, not to mention to compare their services in one place before placing an order online.  Sure, some printers had websites but they were hard to find online, and even once you did find them, they were so hard to navigate that you’d end up getting frustrated and just calling the place up, spending time on hold and finally getting a quote for something that wasn’t quite what you wanted anyway.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: Earthtone" »

Posted by startupbeat at 08:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Web Site: www.veeple.com
Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA
Year Founded: August, 2007
Founders: Scott Broomfield, CEO, and Craig Sproule, CTO
Investors: Self-financed and friends-and-family
Employees: 12

Web Site: www.vidoop.com

Headquarters: Portland, Oregon

Year Founded: 2006

Founders: Joel Norvell, CEO, and Luke Sontag, President, Technology

Investors:

Employees: About 30 

By Joel Norvell

How many passwords do you currently have to remember?  How often have you tried to log onto an important Web site, such as your bank or retirement account, and struggled to remember which username and password you registered with?  On the flip side, do you worry that your financial information is unsafe, because you use the same username and password at every location?

Vidoop got its start in 2006 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I met co-founder Luke Sontag.  Luke had gotten a glimpse of the security problems that plague large financial institutions when he worked as a security analyst at a bank.  We knew that that there had to be an easier way to handle secure logins.

We founded Vidoop to provide a solution to the problem of remembering complex passwords that provided a great user experience while still maintaining the strong login security required by our most sensitive online accounts.  At the same time, we discovered there was also the opportunity to turn logins into a revenue generator for financial institutions.

Protecting users’ identities has become a hot topic lately.  The increase in hacking, from keylogging malware to phishing attacks, has made it vital that online financial accounts be able to protect their consumers.  At the same time, our research shows that 69 percent of Web users who connect to financial institutions online have at least four or more passwords.

Enter Vidoop’s ImageShield.  Instead of making consumers remember a static password, Vidoop uses the human mind’s superior ability to recall pictures.  Sites protected with Vidoop present their users with an ever-changing grid of photographs in different categories—cars, boats, cats, flowers, etc.  Each image is tied to a one-time sequence of letters, which the user types in like any other password.  Only the user will know the correct categories, since automated hacking attacks are not able to interpret images, and the actual letters entered onto the site change with each login.

To provide even more security, Vidoop offers a range of multi-factor authentication options.  In addition to the ImageShield, financial institutions can elect to have one-time passwords sent to a user’s cell phone or to have a confirmation by voice phone.  With these methods, Vidoop makes sites easier to use and harder to breach.

Furthermore, the cost of deploying stronger authentication has been prohibitive, but Vidoop can lower cost and potentially eliminate it from the equation.

While Vidoop’s authentication solution is licensed per a financial institution’s user base, Vidoop can change authentication from being an overhead cost to a revenue generator by selling the images in the grid to advertisers for product placement.  So, instead of seeing a generic flower in the image-grid, consumers might see a bouquet from Flowers.com.

It sounds simple, but it has great potential.  For financial institutions willing to share ad revenue, we can provide Vidoop’s strong authentication for free in exchange for sharing revenue from the ad sales.  For financial institution sites that choose this option, the advertising version of this model works like this: Vidoop provides the image grid application.  The financial institution simply integrates this application with their existing authentication infrastructure.  Vidoop supplies the image and advertising content, and they share viewing-related data, such as how often each image was shown or clicked on.

It’s pretty simple, the financial institution keeps its users, and Vidoop provides usable security, stronger authentication, and a better user experience.  And with sponsored images the everyday login suddenly becomes a revenue generator and marketing asset.

So where are we today?

Physically, we moved the company to Portland, Oregon, in September to take advantage of a stronger economic environment and talent pool for our company.  Our headquarters are now closer to our customers, partners and West coast engineering talent, which will further drive the development of our products and solutions.

As a company, Vidoop has rolled out its platform for financial institutions, and we have also launched a free password manager—myVidoop.com—that is available to anyone on the Web.  Like any start-up, we welcome interest from investors, but we are also aggressively marketing our strong authentication to financial institutions and other higher transaction businesses.

Multi-factor authentication shouldn’t come in the form of expensive key fobs, tokens, or USB drives.  It should be simple and secure as image recognition, and it should be easy, fun and an opportunity to generate revenue.  Vidoop’s authentication solutions finally allow profitable, usable, secure access.

That is a solution everyone can embrace.

Vidoop - www.vidoop.com

Posted by startupbeat at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Web Site: www.biztrader.com

Headquarters: New York

Year Founded: 2008

Founder: Colby Sambrotto, CEO

Investors: Private Investors

Employees: 3

By Colby Sambrotto

Launched in April 2008, BizTrader.com is a global hub for business.  Users can buy, sell and value businesses, find value-added advice about all three processes, and get access to financial services and consulting.  Think of it as a global exchange for small business.  There are currently more than 25,000 businesses listed for sale on the site.

BizTrader.com’s wide range of services include Web 2.0 functionality such as video capability, mass listing syndication and distribution, RSS feeds, chat boards, and real-time, automated translation between English and Spanish.  This improves the ability for small business owners and buyers to easily connect on a global scale.

I founded BizTrader.com after serving as COO of ForSaleByOwner.com, the world’s largest resource for buying and selling real estate without a broker.

ForSaleByOwner.com was sold to Tribune in 2006 and after going through that process, I was inspired to start BizTrader.com to meet the needs of entrepreneurs and investors.  The company’s start up was funded by the original team of partners that created ForSaleByOwner.com.

At BizTrader, I am responsible for all executive and operational aspects of the business including overseeing business development, Web development and strategic planning.  We currently have three employees, and we utilize a team of more than 20 consultants domestically and abroad.  Over the course of the next few months we will make strategic hires in our business development area, and in marketing and sales.

Based on industry statistics that tell us only 25 percent of businesses for sale in a given year are actually sold for any of a variety of reasons, BizTrader.com has created a blended sales model, which enables owners to list their enterprises for a potential by-owner – no-commission sale.  Clients may reach out for the assistance of a professional broker if necessary should their by-owner sales efforts prove difficult or unsuccessful.

Significantly, our “blended” model offers owners a far better potential of selling their businesses than surprisingly abysmal industry averages.

According to the IRS, there are about 25 million small businesses in the U.S., which includes home businesses and very small businesses with no employees.  And of the 25 million approximately 5 to 6 million small businesses have one or more employees.

Our primary targets are those enterprises with at least one employee (5,547,000—of which 80.5 percent have annual sales of less than $1 million).  At any given point, it is estimated that as many as 20 percent of the owners of these enterprises are actively considering the sale of their businesses.  That’s roughly a million enterprises.

Significantly, only 25 percent of these enterprises (250,000) will sell in a given year and business brokers will be responsible for about 50 percent of that total.  The low level of success is most often blamed on owners overpricing their businesses—not the performance level of the brokers.

Almost unbelievably, 75 percent of the businesses for sale remain unsold every year while 90 percent of the potential buyers remain on the sidelines.

At BizTrader.com, we primarily derive our revenues from three sources:

All-Inclusive Listings – Priced at $49 Until Sold, enable sellers to highlight their ventures on BizTrader.com as well as numerous related sites.  Owners may attach up to six pictures of their ventures and use as many as 3,000 words to describe their ventures adequately;

Web Site Advertising – For entities such as financial institutions and franchisers who want to reach BizTrader’s sellers and buyers;

Exclusive “Blended” Broker Model – Brokers are able to list their client businesses-for-sale on the Web site for free.  Additionally and exclusively, BizTrader.com provides sellers the opportunity to seek the assistance of a professional broker should they encounter difficulties with their “by-owner” efforts.

In the blended model, owners needing help are directed to brokers who have contracted with BizTrader.com to serve the needs of prospect clients forwarded to them.  BizTrader is paid a “finder’s fee” of 10 percent of the total commission received by the broker should a sale eventually take place.  BizTrader’s management believes that there is an outstanding opportunity for a new player to address the deficiencies in the current market approaches, which fail to address the needs of the bulk of the marketplace.

Led by a seasoned, successful management team, BizTrader.com is moving aggressively into the businesses-for-sale industry with an array of new and unique tools for business owners and business brokers to help them sell effectively.

BizTrader – www.biztrader.com

Posted by startupbeat at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Web Site: www.prismastar.com

Headquarters: Chicago

Year Founded: 2005

Founders: Joshua Z. Tabin, CEO

Employees: 30

By Joshua Z. Tabin

PrismaStar has developed a patented product search tool that helps shoppers find the best products and services.  It is designed for use on the web, in kiosks or from mobile phones.  Founded in Prague, Czech Republic, in January 2005, PrismaStar has recently opened offices in London and Chicago.  The company is growing quickly, and currently employs thirty staff.

Our vision is simple: To be the leading provider of e-commerce and consumer guidance technology.  Consumers have been neglected far too long.  PrismaStar is here to change that by creating the most comprehensive and unbiased tools available for making purchase decisions.  By helping shoppers find and decide on the very best product for their individual needs, we give shoppers confidence to move forward with a purchase.  After all, we’re consumers too. Our goal is to make shopping fun again!

AnswerOil

PrismaStar’s product selection engine, AnswerOil (www.answeroil.com), uses patented interdependent slider technology to help consumers make better, faster, decisions.  AnswerOil revolutionizes the online and in-store kiosk shopping experience by focusing on what and why consumers buy.  Shoppers can search for any product feature or specification and trade-off the importance of different features; fine-tuning their search, and sorting and ranking relevant results in real-time.  Because every shopper’s needs and priorities are different, our technologies are designed to allow each shopper to choose what they are searching for rather than have it dictated by the retailer.  We put the shopper in control of their search.

The AnswerOil user interface allows fast, easy comparison of multiple products based on any and all specifications.  As shoppers tweak their search, the results dynamically sort in real-time.  For retailers, AnswerOil brings higher sales conversion rates, higher customer satisfaction, fewer product returns, more repeat business and, ultimately, higher revenues.

Happy Customers

Jessops

In July 2008, PrismaStar signed Jessops, the UK’s largest photography retailer.  The cornerstone of Jessops’ success has been its exceptionally high standard of customer service.  PrismaStar has brought this standard to an even higher level since implementing AnswerOil for the Jessops web site (www.jessops.com).

123Shop

AnswerOil was implemented at 123Shop, a camera retailer in the Czech Republic (www.fotoplaneta.cz).  This resulted in a two-fold increase in their sales conversion rates.

“The ratio of visits to orders placed has doubled and user feedback is also assuring us that we hit the mark,” says Pavel Včíslo, Director of Sales, 123shop.cz.  “Potential customers going through the decision-making process were frustrated by the difficulty of finding relevant and accurate product information.  The AnswerOil Product Selection Engine is our response to this problem.  The system makes it significantly faster and easier for a shopper to find and choose the best camera for them.”

Award Winner

PrismaStar was awarded the first-place 2007 Internet Effectiveness Award by Economia Online, a leading Czech business publication, for its implementation of AnswerOil in 2007 on a Czech and Slovak hotel search site at www.hotelselector.cz.

Mology

We are very excited about the imminent launch of Mology, a social networking site for online consumer electronics shopping (www.mology.com) powered by AnswerOil.  The site currently features just a camera selector, but other product categories will be added soon, followed by a unique feature that will allow users of Mology to create their own personalized selectors to use AnswerOil to help them make virtually any decision.

More functionality will be added to the site to make Mology the place where Techthusiasts go to discuss, rate and buy consumer electronics online.

Business Model

By licensing our patented AnswerOil technology, PrismaStar provides retailers with a solution that quickly and easily identifies what consumers want, increasing the likelihood of making a purchase.  Retailers pay a monthly licensing fee and we take care of everything else.

DataOil is part of the back-end of AnswerOil and is a proprietary system that gathers, integrates, and validates highly detailed and accurate product specification data, which is also available for purchase.  Another component of the technology is Real-time Performance Metrics (RPM), which stores and analyzes every purchase made via the AnswerOil selection engine.  The result is unique, unsurpassed market research data—captured in the natural act of shopping—that tells our customers WHY shoppers are purchasing their products.  This data will also be sold in the future.

Finally, Mology generates revenue via a variety of affiliate programs and by bringing the power of AnswerOil to the world.

The Brains

I began my career in 1982 as a computer programmer on the CDC Cyber/PLATO mainframe at the Computer Education Research Laboratory of the University of Illinois.  In 1986, I worked for SuperValu Corporation as a programmer working on Burroughs (Unisys) mainframe computers and PC-based database systems.  In 1990, I transitioned into the field of Corporate Sales and Management for ComputerLand.  In 1993, I moved to Chicago to work for Elek-Tek, where I leveraged relationships with large companies such as Case Tractor, GE, Philips and Tribune to build a sales team whose annual revenue reached $30 million in just two years.  In 1996 I started Tabin Corporation (www.tabin.com) and by 1999 it was the 83rd fastest-growing company in the United States (according to Dun & Bradstreet).

In 2000, I was awarded the Chicago-Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame Award.  By mid-2001, Tabin Corporation’s monthly revenue grew to nearly $4 million per month from offices in Chicago, Dallas, Texas, and Seattle, Washington.  Sales growth of 4,250 percent for the five years from 1997 ($600,000) to 2001 ($26.1 million) would have placed Tabin Corporation number 26 on the Inc. 500 had it not been sold to California-based EnPointe Technologies in October 2002.

My energy comes from collaborating with my staff—a multi-cultural collective of inspired young technology enthusiasts, whose creative spark is constantly turning ideas into reality, thereby making a positive difference in people’s lives, in ways they did not previously think possible!

PrismaStar – www.prismastar.com and www.answeroil.com

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Company:  rSitez, Inc.

Web Site:  www.rsitez.com

Headquarters:  Sparks, NV

Year Founded:  2007

Founders:  Rohan Hall, Sylvie Hall

Investors:  Private Investors

Employees:  10

By Rohan Hall, Founder and CEO

Web 3.0 - Monetizing Social Networks

Web 3.0 will be about monetizing social networks.  Entrepreneurs will use social networks to create revenue from advertising, membership fees and service fees.  Non-profits and associations will collect donation, association fees, event fees and convention fees online.  And corporations will be able to target products and services to specific audiences while having full control of their brand.  They will not be able to do this with the current large generic social networking sites.  They will need to do this with their own targeted branded site where they have total control of the site, content, and revenue.

I had a discussion about this concept with my wife, who is also my business partner, two years ago.  My wife was an EMEA Manager at Oracle.  I owned an ERP technology consulting firm whose clients included PeopleSoft, Honda, Sierra Pacific Resources and other multinational organizations.  It was clear to us that the benefits of online social networks had not yet reached many corporations, groups and organizations—some of which had offline networks with millions of members.  In addition, I realized that entrepreneurs like myself had not yet figured out how to capitalize on social networking.

Many could not afford or did not have the ‘know how’ to build a complex application like this from scratch.  The unexplored value of social networking is found in its potential to easily attract and monetize existing or new networks, but this value was not available to everyone.

rSitez evolved from this epiphany.  We provide an application where entrepreneurs, corporations, associations, non-profits, and any other group, individual or organization can create an online social network in minutes and monetize this network.  The entire process to create and start monetizing a new social networking site with our application takes less than 30 minutes.  What’s great about this for our clients is that we do practically everything for them.  We create a full-featured Web 2.0 site with blogs, chat, IM, photos, video, personal profile, groups, forums, newsletters, email and a variety of other features; we host the site for them or our enterprise customers can host the site themselves; we provide 7 days/24 hours support for our customers;  we provide regular upgrades and add the latest technology innovations at no additional cost to the product; we provide daily backups and security features; and we provide a variety of monetization features.  We also provide full customization services to clients who want to modify the software to further meet their business needs.

Because no technical skills are needed to create or manage our sites, we believe that our platform will continue to provide opportunities for everyday individuals and groups who would like to benefit from the social networking trend.  Not only are our clients able to turn on monetization features, but they can easily turn these features off as well.   Our customers are given full control of the site, content, members, revenue, and other features.

The results have been extremely successful for both us and our clients.  We continue to grow our customer base and revenue month over month.  We were profitable the 2nd month after launching the business and continue to be profitable today.  We generate revenue from licensing fees, hosting fees, advertising, and consulting fees.  We will also introduce transaction processing fees in the future.  We are privately funded and will be seeking investment to expand our market presence in the near future.

This month is our one year anniversary and we are in the process of releasing Version 3.0 of our product where we will release a variety of new features and additional monetization options for our clients.  We look forward to continued success for both ourselves and our clients in the coming future.

rSitez - www.rsitez.com

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Web Site: www.plandone.com

Headquarters: Petaluma, Calif.

Year Founded: 2006

Founder: A.J. Wacaser

Investors: Privately funded

Employees: 4

By A.J. Wacaser, Founder and CEO

PlanDone is a disruptive project planning tool that is transforming the web-based project collaboration market.  Designed to help companies and their teams complete projects on time, PlanDone is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) social project planning application that utilizes web 2.0 features such as instant messaging and wikis to help distributed teams work together more efficiently and effectively.

After managing a team of software engineers in India and California while reporting to managers in California, Illinois, and Amsterdam, I grew frustrated with missed deadlines and incomplete projects using complex, bulky tools not designed for efficient communication.  I found the use of email, traditional project software and document editors ineffective and I knew there had to be a better way to collaborate.

After many years of research and development, in 2006 I developed what would later be called PlanDone, web-based project collaboration software to help small-to-medium sized businesses manage and complete their projects.

Most project team members have no formal training as professional project managers and are left to use linear, static tools and processes in isolated meeting spaces.  PlanDone prevents commonly experienced problems with managing projects such as accessing the most current document.  These problems are solved by providing a centralized, interactive platform designed to gather and capture critical pieces of information such as files, guidance, goals or ideas within an open, flexible framework.

PlanDone also organizes, prioritizes, schedules and enables better communication in a maintenance-free, hosted application that is easy to use for staff members at every level of the company.  The software was designed to support people in the way they work naturally—not forcing them to change their working style based on the confines of the software features.

Unlike other products, PlanDone has a built-in wiki system for tracking recent changes, a priority ranking system for differentiating task importance, an instant message system that captures chat information directly into the supporting documentation and a projected deadline system for accurately pinpointing end dates with certainty.  PlanDone avoids the back and forth document version confusion by dynamically tracking the most current version in the wiki and providing clear expectations as action steps to team members of their prioritized tasks and due dates.  Teams report higher productivity, more accurate deadline projections, greater ability to get back up to speed, and reduction in miscommunication and confusion over shared roles.

Business Model

IDC forecasts that the small and medium-sized business (SMB) enterprise applications market will grow to $80.3 billion by the end of 2012, representing a 10.6 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the 2008-2012 period.  PlanDone fits nicely in this market and offers users a subscription-based model—either month-to-month at $16 per user for up to three users or discounted six and 12 month packages.  PlanDone’s services are best suited for small-to-medium sized business in the following industries: consulting, healthcare and manufacturing, but any industry that wants to cut costs and save time with distributed team planning and task management implementation can benefit from PlanDone’s solution.

Current Needs

We are currently evaluating early stage investment firms that have experience in the web 2.0 field to bring in seasoned management teams.

AJ Wacaser has more than 15 years of experience working in public and private software companies in desktop and web development.  He has managed numerous teams around the globe.

Previously AJ was the Web Development Manager at KnowledgePoint, an HR software company in Petaluma, Calif.  He helped guide development through the dot com boom/bust and helped many small businesses with a suite of pay-per-use, on-demand HR productivity tools such as HRTools.com, JobDescription.com, PerformanceReview.com and PersonnelPolicy.com.  These products are currently owned by Administaff.  When HRTools.com launched in 1999, the site was selected as a Codie Award finalist.

AJ graduated from Augustana College, and earned a M.A. in Environmental Planning from the University of Illinois.

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Web Site: www.sightmind.com

Headquarters: Fremont, California

Year Founded: 2006

Founder: Angie Wong

Employees: 4

By Kim Rubin, CEO

SightMind is a national Internet Protocol-based (IP) video surveillance, networking and security company.  We utilize IP-based digital video technology to provide local government agencies, educational institutions and large industrial facilities with the most technologically advanced service in its industry.  We have distinguished ourselves among more than 16,000 vendors and installers in the U.S. market today through the recent launch of our new SightMind franchise opportunity.

The company is a one-of-a-kind business opportunity in a highly fragmented market.  For independents, others in related industries or even newcomers to the field, the SightMind business investment comes with a proven business model, processes and necessary support tools to gain a significant competitive advantage.

As a seasoned entrepreneur with four prior technology businesses under my belt, I plan to grow the business from its home market in Northern California eastward across the country through franchising.

With the networked video surveillance industry reaching a sustained 44-percent annual growth rate, the switch from ageing analog cameras to sophisticated networked security systems will further propel the segment’s growth to new heights.  The sophisticated, reliable IP-based digital surveillance systems are proven to reduce theft, vandalism and injury claims.  System software delivers core business values such as locating parking spaces and reading license plates automatically, using a resolution 32-times greater than that of an average analog camera.

The sophisticated capabilities of our networked video systems not only provide direct cost-savings to many of our business-to-business customers, but also improve customer service and can help organizations focus on running and growing their business.  Every system we install has network monitoring, redundant storage and a system maintenance contract with up to a five-year service agreement.  Today’s systems deliver proven business benefits, which is what is driving the extreme industry growth.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: SightMind" »

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Web Site: www.ourstage.com
Headquarters: Chelmsford, Massachusetts
Year Founded: 2007
Founder: Ben Campbell
Investor: Signature Capital
Employees: 36

By Ben Campbell, Founder and CEO

OurStage is a brand new way for the world to discover the best new music—and for the industry to discover the best new artists.  Our goal is to solve the single greatest challenge facing the music industry in the new world order—separating out the truly great artists from the millions of people marketing their music online today.  At its simplest level, OurStage uses the work and the wisdom of the broader Internet community to rank from best to worst (not rate as in one to five stars) the music of thousands of emerging artists each month.  We use this information to produce rankings or charts to allow consumers to easily find and stream the very best new music—and to allow industry players (venues, sponsors, music labels, etc.) to identify who the best new artists are, and subsequently give them job opportunities.

The ranking process is done in our unique judging engine, which leverages an extraordinary series of proprietary anti-gaming technologies, preventing overzealous individuals from unfairly inflating the ranking of any given artist.  We are totally artist-agnostic.  In other words, we are not focused solely on “independent” artists.  We are focused on new artists and new music.  Artists on OurStage may be free of any association with any label, may be signed to a small independent label, or even signed to a major label.  We are about discovering the best new music, regardless of the source, as opposed to discovering the historical music catalogue of the major record labels, which is what most other “music discovery” sites do.

OurStage has enjoyed dramatic growth and general market acceptance since our launch less than two years ago.  We currently have more than 50,000 member artists, 250,000 registered users and two million unique monthly visitors.  In addition, several artists have achieved career-altering success as a result of exposure on OurStage.  Artists have garnered record label and publishing contracts, booking agent deals, mentoring sessions with major artists, profiles in national publications, and performance opportunities to tour and open for major acts and participate at major music festivals.

In early 2008, we began a very successful partnership with the world’s largest music site, AOL Music, to share some of our content with their community.  We’ve recently partnered with the world’s largest concert promoter, Live Nation, to offer opening slots at major performances to top-ranked OurStage artists through our talent and gig finder service, Marketplace.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: OurStage" »

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Web Site: www.tricklestar.com
Headquarters: Hong Kong
Year Founded: 2007
Founders: Bernard Emby and Thomas Joergensen
Investors: Self-funded
Employees: 2 full-time

By Bernard Emby, Co-Founder 

TrickleStar has developed a range of energy-saving products with a strong focus on those which help to reduce the amount of standby power consumed by PC and TV accessory devices.  These types of devices are in hundreds of millions of homes worldwide, and standby power is a big problem that can be alleviated with the use of TrickleStar’s products.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: TrickleStar" »

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Web Site: www.socialvibe.com
Headquarters: Los Angeles
Year Founded: 2007
Founders: Joe Marchese, Brandon Mills, David Levy
Investors: Redpoint Ventures
Employees: 24

By Joe Marchese, President and Co-Founder

SocialVibe.com is a new social media platform that facilitates interaction between people, the brands they love and the causes they care about.  SocialVibe is truly reinventing advertising by recognizing the power of the people within social media and converting media dollars into charitable donations.  We recognize that individuals hold the key to generating attention and wielding influence in social media.  It’s a powerful new way for brands to interact with people and it’s changing the way brands participate in social media.

Some time ago we realized that to crack the social media code, more power needed to be in the hands of the people who were creating the content; to be able to choose the advertising they are aligned with, and to allow people and the causes they cared about to benefit in meaningful ways from sharing their influence.

SocialVibe allows people to choose a brand to support, earning chances to get brand perks and points within SocialVibe.  The points that members earn are then turned into funds for the charitable cause of their choice.  SocialVibe is aligned with such brands as Coca-Cola, Adobe, NBA, Sprint and Nestle.  Most importantly, SocialVibe.com has partnered with the most requested non-profits in the space including Komen for the Cure, WWF, Partnership for a Drug-Free America, Invisible Children, One Laptop per Child, PETA and Donors Choose. I don’t know that there is anyone right now doing what we are doing, but then again if I thought there was we wouldn’t have started this business.  The idea that people can band together online to make a big difference in the real world is what social media is all about.  In social media, people are media and only with peoples’ explicit permission can brands find their way into their online profiles.  SocialVibe tries to recognize all of this.

It was SocialVibe’s members that led the site to where it is today: people caring about social issues but not having the monetary means to make a difference.  When we founded SocialVibe, the idea was simply that people controlled all the valuable attention and influence that brands wanted and that the people should get to decide how that value gets shared.  We weren’t “charity” themed, we were actually “member choice” themed.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: SocialVibe" »

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Web Site: www.sodahead.com
Headquarters: Los Angeles
Year Founded: 2007
Founders: Jason Feffer, CEO, and Michael Glazer, President
Investors: Mohr Davidow Ventures, Tech Coast Angels, Ron Conway, Mission Ventures
Employees: 22 

By Jason Feffer

Continue reading "Featured Company: Big Moving Pictures" »

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Web Site: www.envysion.com 

Headquarters: Louisville, Colorado

Year Founded: 2006

Founder: Dan Caruso, Executive Chairman

Investors: Columbia Capital; High Country Venture; Bear Equity

By Matt Steinfort, CEO

Envysion provides a web-based video management service that enables organizations with multiple locations to use remote video to improve performance and profitability.  Envysion Video is an enterprise-level solution that transforms traditional surveillance video into a strategic management tool that enables increases in efficiency, quality, brand consistency and the bottom line.

Envysion Video solves two main problems.  The first is how to make video of multiple locations accessible to people throughout an organization.  Envysion Video allows authorized users to view, search and share live and recorded video of any number of locations via a single password-protected web interface.  Users can watch, analyze and improve whatever aspect of the organization they are involved with, whether it is security and loss prevention, operations, marketing, training or human resources.

The second is how to enable users to quickly find specific video.  By integrating video with a customer’s point of sale (POS) or other event-based business data, Envysion enables users to click on events in a report (such as "voids" or sales of a certain product) and immediately see the associated video.  Users can also create custom reports and receive automatic alerts when business rules that they define have been broken.

Founder's Story

Dan Caruso, Chairman of the Board of Envysion, Inc., was one of the founding executives of Level 3 Communications.  From inception in 1997 through 2000, Dan was responsible for engineering, construction and operations.  Between 2001 and 2003, he was responsible for most of the company's lines of business and marketing functions.

Continue reading "Featured Company: Envysion" »

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Web Site: www.mocana.com

Headquarters: San Francisco, CA

Year Founded: 2004

Founder: Adrian Turner, CEO

Investors: Southern Cross Venture Partners, Shasta Ventures

Total Capital Raised: $12.1 million

Employees: 30

Company News: www.mocana.com/press.html

By Adrian Turner, Founder and CEO

Mocana is a security software company that delivers comprehensive protection for any embedded device or “thing” connected to the network.  This includes smartphones, PDAs, routers, switches, printers or VoIP phones, but also more everyday items like automobiles, home appliances, cash registers, power meters and HVAC equipment.  These “attached devices” are quickly outnumbering PCs.  Forrester Research predicts that there will be more than 14 billion devices on the net by 2010—and that 95 percent of these devices will be something other than a PC.

Product Line

Mocana offers its Device Security Framework (DSF) to deliver comprehensive protection for any device connected to any network, wired or wireless.  The Device Security Framework is made up of over a dozen separate Mocana product offerings that reside at different places on the device, network, or application stack to provide comprehensive device security and management.  Some of the DSF offerings are NanoSSL, NanoSSH, NanoUpdate, NanoBoot, NanoRadius and NanoSec.  Mocana’s DSF is designed for device manufacturers and service providers and includes design processes and software that are embedded into devices during the manufacturing process.  All components of the Device Security Framework feature an asynchronous event driven architecture, very high performance and very small memory footprint specifically designed for the special challenges that embedded device security engineers face.

The newest addition to the Device Security Framework is NanoDefender, an embedded Intrusion Prevention System technology that secures all aspects of a device: communications, identity, access, privilege, control and execution.  The new product, now being offered to device manufactures, enables product engineers to create a rules base of acceptable behavior for any applications running on the new device.  If an application begins behaving erratically due to malware or some other security threat, NanoDefender terminates the application so that the malware can’t spread across the network or impact the functioning of the device.

It’s clear that the existing “signature-based” model of detecting and eliminating viruses and malware can’t work forever—and it can’t work at all in the device environment.  That’s because there’s just too much bad stuff out there.  With millions of malware signatures required inside any antivirus product today—and 3,000 new viruses and malware signatures being added every hour of every day—there’s just no way an attached device would be able to keep updated or dedicate the processing power needed to screen all traffic against all virus signatures.  By turning the current “virus signature” security model on its head, NanoDefender monitors behavior against a rules base of acceptable actions, and thereby frees up administrators from having to monitor this rapidly-expanding army of viruses, trojans, worms and other malware at all.  It also provides a broader net for catching future Internet-based threats, since it does not rely on specific signature-based fixes.

The “Internet of Things”

The rate at which mobile devices are proliferating is staggering.  In fact, there are predictions that the number of devices on the Internet could reach far into the billions in the next three years.  According to a white paper by Harbor Research, there are approximately 2.8 billion mobile phones in use today, with 1.6 million new ones added daily.  Whether you call this phenomenon “the network of devices” or the “Internet of things,” the underlying message is the same: connectivity permeates our society.  Nearly everything in our day-to-day lives—from TVs and cell phones to cars, medical devices, networking equipment, thermostats, industrial sensors, aircraft and home appliances, and everything in between, connects (or will soon connect) to the network to operate.

Continue reading "Featured Company: Mocana" »

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Web Site: www.reliantaudit.com
Headquarters: Laguna Niguel, California
Year Founded: 2006
Founder: Dipak Shah
Investors: Privately funded
Employees: 26
Company News: www.reliantaudit.com/news_events

By Dipak Shah

Reliant provides software and consulting services for chief audit executives who want to reduce the high cost, complexity and uncertainty of enterprise-wide audits.  To effectively manage risk, auditors need efficient audit processes, reliable test data and continuous visibility into risks, controls and audit results at any time.  Reliant delivers all of these and more with the only continuous risk management solution for auditors.  With Reliant, organizations can continuously monitor controls, streamline audit operations, automate control testing and remediation, and implement a dynamic risk framework that shows up-to-the-minute status of audit programs.  Using pre-packaged, standards-based controls for compliance, operational and financial audits, we help organizations reduce risk while gaining efficiency, quality, insight and assurance throughout the audit process.

Audit has traditionally been a labor-intensive effort that requires huge amounts of manpower and time at the end of every quarter and fiscal year.  During this time, other operations can come to a screeching halt as resources are poured into the audit efforts.  As everyone who has gone through an audit will tell you, this is not an efficient process.  But there’s something else that gets lost; the business intelligence and business process management improvements that you can derive from continuous risk management.

And that’s how Reliant is different.  It would be hard to find a company today that is looking at risk in a continuous manner.  A controller may know the balance in bank accounts at any given time.  Your COO may know the inventory at any time.  There are even compliance managers who can look back and identify where risk has occurred using spreadsheets.  However, if you ask a CEO or CFO if they know where the risks are high for their business on a given day, all they will have are some static reports from the past.  This is where Reliant’s continuous risk management will fundamentally change how businesses view audit.  We enable companies to observe, understand, manage, and remediate risk continuously throughout the quarter, instead of waiting until the end of the quarter for the avalanche of financial reports.

Reliant Solutions helps to improve efficiency, quality, insight and assurance throughout the audit process.

Continue reading "Featured Company: Reliant Solutions" »

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By CaseyRyan, CEO

TickerMine is a collector of real-time channel and point-of-sale market data.  The company allows its customer base to integrate TickerMine’s real time data into current analysis of stock investment ideas, or a portfolio review.  Data can also be used by business professionals to track competitors, identify trends, or spot new opportunities in the market that are being revealed daily at the point of sale.

TickerMine was founded by me and three additional partners who were experiencing the significant changes in the financial research industry on a first hand basis.  Before founding TickerMine (and currently serving as CEO), I worked as a sell side equity research analyst.  While working at Wells Fargo Securities and then Nollenberger Capital Partners, I saw the strong need for primary data on the companies and industries that I covered.  The ability to source accurate, real-time information did not exist in equity research departments and the money to hire outside consultants did not exist, as trading commissions were squeezed and revenues for broker dealer firms fell between 2000 and 2007.

My partners and I developed a method to collect large sets of primary point of sale data, efficiently and cost effectively.  The view became one of offering this valuable service to the broader financial community with the belief that if analysts needed this type of data it meant that most investors and money managers needed the data as well.

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Web Site: www.syncplicity.com 

Headquarters: San Francisco
Year Founded: 2007
Founders: Leonard Chung, CEO; Isaac Hall, Vice President of Technology; Ondrej Hrebicek, Vice President of Product and Platform
Investors: Angel investors
Employees: 4 plus part-time contractors
Company News: www.syncplicity.com/Press

By Leonard Chung, CEO

Syncplicity is a company with a simple goal: eliminate the limitations, headaches, and worries associated with user data.  We have built a product that ensures your files are always available, wherever and whenever you need them—automatically.  

Chores such as backing up or emailing files back and forth are a thing of the past.  Create a letter on your desktop, and it’ll be on your laptop, waiting for you.  Use Google Docs or want to view your letter on your cell phone?  No problem—your letter is already there, ready to go.  Sharing your letter with co-workers?  They’ve already got the latest version.  Any edits they make are safely synchronized and every file along the way has been backed up so there is never any risk of data loss.  All of this is done seamlessly.  Syncplicity is the only product that never asks you to change the way you work or forces you to create new places to store your data.  Just install Syncplicity and leave your worries behind.

The Real Cost of Data

Quick: name the most important part of your computer.  It’s a bit of a trick question as the most important and expensive part of a computer isn’t something you can touch like the processor or hard drive.  It’s your data.  Data is the only part of your computer that increases in value over time.  Over time, your data becomes more valuable as you invest more time and money while the rest of your computer loses value.

Think of how much time and money you spend taking care of your data.  If you do a good job, it’s costly, difficult, and monotonous.  The time and money spent managing copies across a desktop and laptop or between home and at work, spent tracking and emailing files back-and-forth to share and collaborate with others, and spent protecting data with backups is high.  If you do a bad job, the time and money lost to inconvenience (going to work and realizing the file you wanted is still at home) or catastrophe (your hard drive crashes) is even higher.

Eliminate Headaches

Given that data is the most important part of a computer, why is it still so hard to deal with?  Why hasn’t there been a solution that is broadly adopted?  There are many specialized products available today that do everything from backing up files to uploading photos to Web sites.  We founded Syncplicity around the realization that these products were as much of the problem as they were the solution.  The costs and headaches of losing and managing data were just replaced with learning and managing multiple products, each devoted to a small sliver of the overall problem.  Backup and folder sharing software, Web site word processors, and photo uploaders, oh my!  Users didn’t want multiple products, but instead a single solution.  They wanted their data to be available anywhere, anytime they needed it, but they didn’t want to just replace one type of headache for another.

Continue reading "Featured Company: Syncplicity" »

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Web Site: www.collegetonight.com
Headquarters: Los Angeles
Year Founded: 2005
Founders: Zach Suchin, President & CEO; Jason Schutzbank, Executive Vice President & CTO
Investors: Publicly held (result of a reverse merger with Simex Technologies)
Employees: 6 full-time; 40 part-time; hundreds of campus representatives
Company News: www.collegetonight.com/press

By Zach Suchin, Co-founder, President & CEO 

College Tonight, Inc. owns and operates the web site www.collegetonight.com, an interactive service and networking platform for the college market that targets both active students and alumni.  As the antidote to “anti-social” networking, College Tonight differs from other social networks by promoting active social interactivity in the "real world" rather than the sedentary lifestyle nearly all competing social networks relegate their users to behind a physical computer screen.  College Tonight fosters in-person communication and activities with an emphasis on nightlife and other social events both local to the user's college campus and beyond that area for more broadly-based communities.  The web site provides an online forum for students to exchange information on social activities happening offline, serving as a catalyst for real-life relationships and interaction among users.

Founders' Story:

During college, I provided marketing and branding for several different companies and organized high-profile nightlife events for college students and celebrities.  It was a very unique situation because the celebrities loved hanging out with the college students and obviously, the college students were thrilled to party with their favorite artists.  It was a rare melding of the two worlds. 

Toward the end of college, I started developing the College Tonight concept with my partner Jason after a microcosmic success story in a conference called “Emory Nightlife” on the school’s server.  While the server was meant for strict academic and school sponsored extra-curricular, what was started as a conduit of communication between me and my small group of friends, quickly turned into the most populated group on the school server, with hundreds of “add-me” requests being processed each day.  The conference eventually reached about 85 percent of the undergraduate populous at Emory University with a strictly opt-in population.  There was even a practical sub-module in the group called “Drunk Lost & Found” meant for those who lost items at various events around town, which ended up becoming more relevant than the official school’s lost and found conference.  Since November, 2005, my partner and I have been developing College Tonight.

College Tonight was started completely organically, through a natural need at one school in Atlanta.  Jason and I realized that this was by no means an isolated vacuum in the market and we both put all of our money from our previous businesses into creating version .5 of the service.  This beta version of the service was meant to test with the Emory community exactly what features were going to be utilized and would be worth expanding upon.  In September of 2006, we held a beta launch event that attracted many people, including the largest periodical in the South, the Atlanta Journal Constitution.  We started to get press that no one expected.  At this point Jason and I knew it was time to take our knowledge of what worked and what didn’t, and we started to raise funding for a more official version of the service.  We hustled and finally achieved enough funding to develop the current version of the site.

Continue reading "4/22/08 - Featured Company: College Tonight" »

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Web Site: www.adooga.com
Headquarters: Santa Monica, California
Year Founded: 2007
Founders: Perrin Chiles and Chris Sherrill, Co-Founders
Investors: Privately funded
Employees: 6
Company News: www.adooga.com/media.html

By Perrin Chiles and Chris Sherrill, Founders

Offering more than 250 contests and over 19 million dollars in cash and prizes, ADOOGA is the powerful search engine that connects creative, Internet-savvy fans with content-seeking brands by aggregating online contests in one user-friendly site.

At ADOOGA, our mission is to simplify the discovery and entry process for anyone who wants to participate in online contests.  There are hundreds of photographers, filmmakers, musicians and writers out there waiting to be discovered and receive recognition (or cash and prizes) for their work.  Now, ADOOGA is here to help expedite the realization of those dreams.  Check it out; hone your skills to enter a contest or two, and win money to fund your next record, indie flick or photo exhibit.

Talent agencies are scouring sites like MySpace, Facebook and YouTube looking for the “next big thing”—ad agencies and corporations should be doing the same thing by viewing the growing list of contest winners, dubbed ADOOGA All-Stars.  The Internet is such a powerful way to connect creative people with bold brands.  We wanted to simplify the process of putting talent in touch with the brands looking for fresh ideas.

Along with the growing popularity of social networking sites where members can share music, videos and other content they’ve created, the web is seeing a surge in blue chip brands tapping the creativity of the Internet generation to create their next big campaign through contests on sites such as YouTube, MySpace and BrickFish.

Continue reading "4/16/08 - Featured Company: ADOOGA" »

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Web Site: www.pluggd.com
Headquarters: Seattle, Washington
Year Founded: 2006
Founders: Alex Castro, CEO; Jonathan Thompson, Chief Architect
Investors: Intel Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Employees: 13
Total Capital Raised: $6 million
Company News: www.plugged.com/news

By Alex Castro, Founder and CEO

At Pluggd, we are bringing a new slate of products to market this year that we hope will mark significant advances in the way consumers experience web video and in the way that advertisers can monetize that video. 

For starters, we have invented technology that allows web users to “search inside” a web video (or audio) file, before consuming the entire file.  This allows the consumer to find the section they want, then “surf” directly to that part of the video.  In this way, we hope to make video browsing much more like web page browsing.

Our patent-pending “Heat Map” technology is an innovative user interface that guides users to the content topics they wish to see or hear in an audio or video file.  The goal is to make multimedia search as easy and intuitive as general web search.

When a user clicks “play” on an audio or video file, Pluggd processes the file through our Content Publishing system, which essentially generates a transcript of the words and associated topics that are present in the file.  When a user enters a keyword search term, the query flows through our Transcript and Concept databases, generating a color-coded heat-map.  The heat-map shows relevancy of sections of the file to the search term.  Red indicates a direct match, orange a near-match, and blue a non-match.  Intuitively, a user can advance the “scrubber bar” to the part of the file that he or she wishes to see (or hear).  The system works for files of any length, enabling a new kind of viewing experience that puts the navigation of the video or audio file directly into the hands of a user who can browse according to their interest in topics they choose.

Not so long ago, popular video was the exclusive province of movies and television.  These programs were characterized by the following:

*High cost of production

*Established channels of distribution

*Monetization through direct purchase or attached advertising

Let’s take the popular situation comedy, “Everybody Loves Raymond,” as an example of the realities of video production by Old Media.  Each episode cost over five million dollars to produce.  The network, CBS, ordered 26 episodes for a standard season.  The program ran for nine seasons.  The high cost of production reflected the considerable talent of the writers, actors and unionized production crew of a hit show, which could only have been brought to life under a mature television production system.

Continue reading "4/8/08 - Featured Company: Pluggd" »

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Web Site: www.overlay.tv
Headquarters: Ottawa, Canada
Year Founded: 2007
Founders: Rob Lane, CEO; Tyler Cope, Chief Architect; Nadav Zin, Vice President Products and Services
Investors: Celtic House Venture Partners, EdgeStone Capital Partners and Tech Capital Partners
Employees: 20
Total Capital Raised: $4.6 Million
Company News: blog.overlay.tv/press/

By Tyler Cope, Founder and Chief Architect

Overlay.TV is an interactive media company that provides a video commerce platform that enables Internet users, content owners and e-commerce sites to monetize and customize their video assets by overlaying contextual information directly onto online video content and linking to external websites.

Choice - Opt-In 

The original idea for Overlay.TV was conceived while watching my wife watch TV.  She would sit down to a line-up of shows that had been PVR’d the night before and be delighted with the fact that the next few hours of her evening would be spent happily viewing the shows she had selected.  Of course, there would be the occasional commercial interruption that she would fast forward through but at least it wasn’t like the bad old days where she was forced to sit through several minutes of advertisements.

My wife wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary.  Everyone I know has their own variation of on-demand content consumption.  Some people pause a show when it starts, make dinner and then resume viewing when dinner is done, allowing them to skip past all the commercial breaks.  With the Internet-oriented method of viewing content, users also shun the “traditional” advertising.  Banners, pop-ups and the like have very low click through rates and the minute that a video sharing site introduces the television model of interrupting content to show an ad, many of their users become upset and simply move on.  The common attribute among these viewers is that they are watching content without paying any attention to the advertising.  Traditional advertising models have not kept up with advances in technology and are severely broken.  Any new model would need to work in the world where the user expects to watch what they want, when they want it. This was the first ingredient for the idea.

The Content is The Ad

The second ingredient was this: Although people will choose to disregard the interruptive type of advertising that has been chosen for them, product placement is still partially working. My wife will watch a video or show and make a comment about the shoes, handbags, hairstyles or the lifestyles of the rich and famous. She might simply be curious about what an item is or she may actually be interested in buying something just like it.

Given the right timing, the right mood and the opportunity to dig deeper into what is being shown, these people would most certainly either read more about or purchase items on the spot. If the mood or timing isn’t perfect, they might just set the thought aside for another day. If only they knew exactly what thought to set aside. 

Users

Assuming that you could come up with an unobtrusive system that allowed people to delve into what they were watching, how would that system know what the objects in the video are? Artificial Intelligence isn’t even close to being able to identify objects in video at the detailed level required. Viewers want to know what brand, where it can be purchased and what is comparable. To do that, you need either the people that were involved in creating the content or people who know about the subject matter. That leads me to the third ingredient: the users. 

Users would be able to identify, classify, tag and comment on objects inside the content.

Continue reading "3/20/08 - Featured Company: Overlay.TV" »

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Web Site:  www.circleup.com
Headquarters:  Newport Beach, Calif.
Year Founded:  2006
Founders:  John Payne; Doug Tung; Jim Jonassen
Investors:  Sid R. Bass Associates and early angel investors
Employees:  15
Total Capital Raised:  $3 Million
Company News:  www.circleup.com/my/cu/info/press/

By John Payne, Co-Founder and CEO

The evolution of emailing has been incredible to watch since its inception.  From a techie tool used by engineers, academics and scientists to the defacto method of communication for hundreds of millions of people, email has transformed the way that people from all walks of life communicate.  Instant messaging has been hot on its heels in the younger demographic and is now reaching critical mass even in the enterprise.  With emails worldwide totaling almost 100 billion messages daily, an almost unmanageable torrent of information flows every single day.  And with the emergence of the social platforms and their proprietary messaging and publishing systems at places like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5 and others, the problem of group collaboration and communication across these heterogenous messaging systems has continued to grow.

It is no surprise that although Internet communications among groups is the most widely used collaboration tool in existence, the messaging systems themselves have proven to be relatively inefficient when it comes to group communication and information gathering.

For a year now, CircleUp has turbo-charged group communication via email, instant messaging and social networking services already in use around the world today.  Where messaging has failed, CircleUp has taken the lead in creating an innovative communications tool that allows users to gather information, make plans or decisions and collaborate more effectively.  CircleUp is a social communications service for real world groups that is built to make people’s lives easier and reduce information overload.

Continue reading "2/19/08 - Featured Company: CircleUp" »

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Web Site:  www.answerbag.com
Headquarters:  Santa Monica, Calif.
Year Founded:  2003
Founder:  Joel Downs
Investors:  *Answerbag is owned by Santa Monica, Calif.-based Demand Media, which acquired the company in 2006.
Company News:  www.demandmedia.com/news-media.asp

By Joel Downs, Founder and CEO

What is Answerbag?

Answerbag.com is more than a leading, independent social knowledge platform and online destination.  To the many users, Answerbag is a community of people helping others.  Users can ask questions, share answers and collaboratively evaluate information, while building a permanent archive of knowledge and experience.  Other sites that share the Answerbag platform—bloggers, web publishers, etc.—leverage the company’s knowledge platform to provide live, social Q&A to their audiences.  Answerbag’s mission is to help people find and share knowledge.

As of February 2008, Answerbag has 236,000 registered members who have asked more than 500,000 questions.  The site receives over 10,000 answers per day (totaling 2.1 million answers to date since the site’s creation) that are provided in response to the 1,500 daily questions that are received across 6,000 categories.  Additionally, Answerbag serves Q&A to 5-and-a-half million unique visitors per month.

What is Social Q&A, and How is Answerbag Different?

Continue reading "2/12/08 - Featured Company: Answerbag" »

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Web Site:  www.thinkpassenger.com
Headquarters:  Los Angeles
Year Founded:  2005
Founders:  Andrew Leary and Justin Cooper
Investors:  Shelter Capital Partners

By Justin Cooper, Co-Founder and Chief Innovation + Marketing

Most forward thinking marketers would agree that the advertising and marketing landscape has changed dramatically over the past few years with the dawn of web 2.0 and the powerful influences of social media.  As more and more consumers embrace social media as a way to communicate with each other, marketers are clamoring to tap into this relatively new medium and its vast influence.  Perhaps the greatest marriage of social media and marketing can be found in the engagement of targeted consumers with an established brand in a collaborative process of “co-creating.”

Passenger has built upon the idea of co-creating by redefining collaboration to bridge the communication gap between businesses and their most valued customers.  This rich, interactive experience is about meaningful relationships that turn dialogue and on-demand access to opinions into actionable insight.  The ability to capture and gain a clear understanding of the human context in which these collaborative activities take place will drive business innovation and growth while empowering your customers.  Passenger’s mission is to make these collaborative relationships possible through an incredibly user-friendly platform.

Continue reading "2/7/08 – Featured Company: Passenger" »

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Web Site:  www.ehow.com
Headquarters:  Santa Monica, California
Year Founded:  1999
Customers:  More than 13 million per month
Investors:  *eHow is owned by Santa Monica, Calif.-based Demand Media, which acquired the company in 2006.

by Gregory Boudewijn, eHow General Manager

eHow is a rich content web site where professional experts and people with expertise can come together and share their knowledge to create and contribute to a growing library of “how-to” information.  Every month, more than 13 million people visit eHow to learn how to do just about everything.  eHow has more than 150,000 articles and is growing by the thousands each month thanks to its easy-to-use publishing tools, which enable professional experts and members to express their knowledge through text, images and video.  Video is becoming an increasingly important medium for how-to information and eHow continues to focus on building its user tools and video library.  In the near future, video will become a prominent part of the eHow experience and compliment the text articles.

The eHow web site is more than just a reference library where users can find comprehensive and useful how-to information.  eHow fosters a conversation between readers and experts through a robust set of social network tools that launched in April 2007.  Readers share their thoughts and expertise through ratings, comments, person-to-person messaging and community forums.  They can also build a network of friends around their interests.  Putting a face behind each piece of content lets eHow add depth to the readership experience.  Finding useful how-to information is important, but connecting readers to experts and creating a dialogue is invaluable.

Continue reading "2/1/08 - Featured Company: eHow" »

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