StartUp Beat

Company: Unrabble

Website: www.unrabble.com

Founders: Kevin Watson, Chris Rickborn, Marc Slack

Year Founded: 2009

Twitter: @unrabble

Brief Company Description: Unrabble is a cloud-computing hiring software solution that helps hiring managers make their next great hire. It’s an entirely new, and better, approach to the hiring process. It saves time and money by better qualifying candidates, automating core hiring tasks, automatically ranking top candidates based on skills and verifying claims made through social networks, thus saving hiring managers from candidates who stretch the truth.

By Kevin Watson, CEO and co-founder

Product Overview

Unrabble is a pure cloud-computing solution that simplifies and redefines the process of hiring new employees. Unrabble was created for a new class of end user who must make hiring decisions, but doesn’t have the time or resources to do it quickly, effectively and inexpensively. Unrabble is not regimented HR enterprise software, a job board, or a legacy-style applicant tracking system for processing resumes. Unrabble is an innovative new approach to hiring.

Unrabble makes it easy to create a new job posting, instantly broadcast the job to your social networks, publish it to job boards of your choice, and then quickly identify the most highly qualified candidates as they apply from multiple sources. Unrabble removes the need to invest in expensive HR software and significantly reduces reliance on HR staff and professional recruiters. Unrabble is the first solution of its kind to put hiring in the hands of the decision maker and unchain hiring from back office, administrative and expensive third-party services.

Continue reading "Featured StartUp Pitch: Unrabble’s hiring software engages both employers and employees in a social media-driven hiring process" »

Posted by startupbeat at 01:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Clever Zebo

Website: www.cleverzebo.com

Founders: Josh Krafchin, Igor Belogolovsky

Headquarters: Los Angeles

Year Founded: 2011

Twitter: @cleverzebo

Brief Company Description: Clever Zebo is a group of web marketing strategy experts who love growing small businesses by helping them find their voice and make it heard online.

By Igor Belogolovsky, co-founder

What We Do

We’re online marketing strategy all-stars. We specialize in SEM, SEO, email, content marketing and conversion funnel optimization.

What Makes Us So Awesome?

We’re actually pretty darn good at helping companies make money. We’re not automatons who just plug away unthinkingly at one channel or another; we focus on the big picture to make you successful. We’re really, really interested in learning new businesses and helping them grow, whatever it takes.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Clever Zebo seeks to bring big picture online marketing expertise to small businesses" »

Posted by startupbeat at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: ServisTree.com
Website: www.servistree.com
Founders: David Cohen and Adam Weizer
Headquarters: Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
Year Founded: 2008
Twitter: @servistree
Brief Company Description: Merchants, retailers & other biz utilize @servistree 4 socmed mktg, giftcard/loyalty programs, creditcard proc & more http://bit.ly/sPbbZg

By David Cohen, co-founder

Product Overview

Helping businesses of all sizes grow to their full potential, ServisTree.com allows companies to immediately merge the worlds of marketing, loyalty and social networking. Shoppers can tap into loyalty programs and redeem gift card offerings from local businesses via their smartphone, virtually ending the days of carrying all the cards around in a wallet or purse.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: ServisTree combines social media and the cloud to increase customer loyalty in the foodservice industry" »

Posted by startupbeat at 03:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: CoupTessa

Website: www.couptessa.com

Founders: David Horn and Francisco Gonzalez

Headquarters: Miami

Year Founded: 2010

Employees: 40

Twitter: @CoupTessa

Brief Company Description: Unique daily deal site specifically for women, delivering discounts of 50 to 90 percent off high-end merchant services and products.

By David Horn, co-CEO

Website Overview

CoupTessa is a daily deal site specifically tailored for women. Our site offers significant discounts for higher-end products and services that are in demand by discriminating female consumers. With percentage discounts typically ranging from 50 to 90 percent, we provide consumers with enticing offers, and merchants with a steady supply of sophisticated repeat customers. We are currently offering deals in five major United States cities, and our users can choose from merchants including spa/salon providers, dance and exercise classes, and dining at popular restaurants.

Founders’ Story

CoupTessa was created by myself and another former executive at Morgan Stanley, Francisco Gonzalez. I enjoyed a successful tenure at Morgan Stanley, and ended my career as the global leader of sales and marketing for some of the firm’s wealthiest clients. During a walk near my home in the Dominican Republic I encountered Francisco, and we began discussing possible business ventures. We were intrigued by the daily deal website model and decided to focus our business efforts on a certain population segment. We chose women consumers due to their considerable buying power and brand allegiance. From this chance meeting on the beach, CoupTessa was formed.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Started by two former Morgan Stanley execs, CoupTessa targets daily deals specifically to women looking for high-end products and services" »

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

Company: BetaBait
Website: www.betabait.com
Founders: Cody Barbierri and Rory Thompson
Headquarters:  Bridgeport, CT
Year Founded:  2011
Twitter: @betabait
Brief Company Description: A place for startups to connect with early adopters who love new apps.

By Cody Barbierri, co-founder

Product Overview

Launched in 2011, BetaBait is a service for startups to connect with early adopters who love to test and try new web, mobile and social applications. BetaBait’s mission is to become the destination for startups to find beta users and testers, while providing consumer and professional early adopters access to the newest applications. With the notion of early access to the latest apps, our users have opted-in to receive a daily email spotlighting all beta opportunities. BetaBait currently has a growing community of more than 400 beta users and testers and 80 startups. BetaBait is 100 percent free.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: BetaBait is connecting startups and enthusiastic early adopters through a social platform" »

Posted by startupbeat at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: RobotsAppStore
Website: www.robotsappstore.com
Founder: Elad Inbar
Headquarters: San Francisco
Year Founded: 2011
Brief Company Description: RobotsAppStore is an online robotic apps marketplace that enables robot owners to purchase and download applications written by developers from around the globe that extend the functionality of their robots.

Company: StatFly

Website: www.statf.ly

Headquarters: Santa Monica, California

Year Founded: March, 2011

Investors: Self-funded

Twitter: @statfly

Brief Company Description: StatFly Social Media Management and Analytics makes campaign monitoring and reporting collaborative, intuitive, powerful, and affordable.

By Bryan Crick, co-founder and CEO

Product Overview

StatFly is a Social Media Management and Analytics company created by both agency and tech-industry veterans like myself. StatFly’s newly launched social media reporting and management platform is designed with a usability-first philosophy to be intuitive, powerful, and affordable.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Recently launched Statfly is on a mission to bring a new level of functionality to social media campaign monitoring" »

Posted by startupbeat at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: imATHLETE

Website: www.imathlete.com

Founders: Jeff Matlow

Headquarters: Santa Monica, California

Year Founded: 2009

Twitter: @IAmAthlete

Brief Company Description: imATHLETE: leveraging technology to enhance and inspire athletic activity, through registration, fundraising and community interaction.

By Jeff Matlow, founder and CEO

Product Overview

Simply put, imATHLETE is aggregating athletic interaction. Like Fandango did for movies, TripAdvisor for travel and Yelp for dining, imATHLETE is disrupting the $90 billion amateur athletic industry by uniting the commerce and community into one single, robust platform.

We provide unique technology that helps event organizers, city governments, non-profits and governing bodies better manage their participant interactions. imATHLETE’s technology is focused on supporting the four pillars of athletic commerce: registration, fundraising, ecommerce, training. We provide systems that streamline and transform our clients’ businesses in ways never before seen: reducing workload by up to 60 percent and increasing revenue channels into new, innovative arenas.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: imATHLETE aims to disrupt the amateur athletic industry with a robust online platform" »

Posted by startupbeat at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Givepals
Website: www.givepals.com
Founders: Eric Imasogie, Adelanwa Adesanya, Kelvin Ihaza, Ore Ayodele
Headquarters: Houston, Texas
Year Founded: October, 2010
Twitter: @givepals
Brief Company Description: Givepals.com is an online social marketplace where students can buy, sell or trade their textbooks, electronics and services to other students on their college campuses.

By Eric Imasogie, co-founder, CEO and Product Development Leader

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Givepals is giving college and university students a new, social alternative to the campus bookstore" »

Posted by startupbeat at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Proformative
Website: www.proformative.com
Founder: John Kogan
Headquarters:  San Jose, California
Year Founded:  2009
Twitter: @proformative
Brief Company Description: Proformative connects the world’s corporate finance leaders to provide instant advice and insights on the tough financial and strategic challenges they face every day.

By John Kogan, co-founder and CEO

Product Overview

Proformative connects the world’s corporate finance leaders to provide instant advice and insights on the tough financial and strategic challenges they face every day. Proformative is the first professional social network specifically designed to help corporate finance professionals be successful in their jobs and careers. Proformative is used by more than 40,000 CFOs and has more than 400,000 corporate finance and business professionals, 80 percent of whom hold titles of Director, Vice President and above, in its fast growing network. Proformative members represent companies of all sizes—including the majority of Fortune 500 companies.

Launched in 2009, Proformative is the only social network for corporate finance professionals that provides real-time access to tens of thousands of senior financial experts. Corporate finance executives from companies like Citibank, Coca-Cola, Apple and General Electric Co. use the Proformative network for daily advice, counsel, news and information. Our products include Proformative’s extensive and dynamic peer network of 400,000 senior finance executives; Ask the Experts Q&A; News and Bloggers; Career Center; Expert Webinars; Network Newsletters and more.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Proformative—an online social forum specifically for business leaders" »

Posted by startupbeat at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Tokii

Website: www.tokii.com

Founders: Karla Stephens-Tolstoy and Al Tolstoy

Headquarters: Toronto, Ontario

Year Founded: 2008

Twitter: @tokiilife

Brief Company Description: Tokii is an online relationship management platform that helps couples explore different aspects of their partnership through interactive games of play and discovery.

By Karla Stephens-Tolstoy, co-founder and CEO

Product Overview

Tokii is the world’s first relationship management platform designed to help couples enrich and strengthen their relationships. 

Tokii gives couples a private and secure venue to work on and explore their relationship. Based on user feedback, Tokii has developed four unique tools to help couples connect:

• TradingPost – An online venue for couples to negotiate for what they want from each other. Offers can range from household chores to intimate moments. Create your own Trade Ideas or choose from approximately 1,000 already on the site.
• DiscoveryGames – Fun series of quizzes that initiate conversations and help partners learn more about each other. There are over 100 unique games available for play from over 15 wide-ranging categories, from Love to Environment.
• MoodMeter – A status system that lets partners express and know each other’s state of mind. There are currently over 30 moods to choose from.
• Profiles – Quizzes that give a view into each partner’s personality and preferences. Our current LoveZones Profile gives partners an analysis and shares how each like to be loved.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Tokii is creating a market for 'online relationship management' with a platform for helping couples strengthen their partnership" »

Posted by startupbeat at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: MentorMob
Website: www.mentormob.com 
Founders: Vince Leung and Kris Chinosorn
Headquarters: Chicago
Year Founded: 2010
Twitter: @MentorMob
Brief Company Description: MentorMob simplifies learning any topic by organizing content from anywhere on the web into a step-by-step format called a Learning Playlist.

By Vince Leung, co-founder and CTO

Product Overview

MentorMob, founded in 2010, seeks to achieve nothing less than a revolution in the way human knowledge is transferred by turning the power of crowdsourcing loose on the learning process. Its website at www.mentormob.com is a free, community-powered repository of information on any skill, hobby or subject in which the community wishes to engage—a resource that is accessible anytime, anywhere. MentorMob seeks to bring the sense of discovery, fun, and “addictiveness” back into learning while making it extremely easy. The potential for MentorMob to impact individuals, companies, organizations and society in general is significant.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: MentorMob—Crowdsourcing online education and learning through ‘Learning Playlists’" »

Posted by startupbeat at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: KnowBe4
Website:  www.knowbe4.com
Founder: Stu Sjouwerman
Headquarters: Clearwater, Florida
Year Founded: 2010
Twitter: @KnowBe4
Brief Company Description: KnowBe4 delivers next-generation security awareness training and testing, addressing the needs of business owners, IT, HR and end-users.

By Stu Sjouwerman, founder and CEO

Product Overview

KnowBe4 provides proactive next-gen Internet Security Awareness Training that really works against phishing attacks. Our training reduces phishing susceptibility by 75 percent and higher. When our customers asked for more, our answer was to present security consulting services with a special proactive angle focused on making an organization a hard target for phishers.

Founder’s Story

My name is Stu Sjouwerman (pronounced ‘shower-man’). I have been in the IT industry for 32 years and am one of the founders of Sunbelt Software, which was established in 1994. Sunbelt was recently acquired by GFI software, a portfolio company of Insight Partners, a large venture fund in Boston.

As part of the management team, I helped make the decision to build a brand new low-overhead anti-malware platform from scratch. In 2008, we released VIPRE Antivirus, which is continuing to expand in this crowded AV market. Being inside the AV industry, I came to find they have a dirty little secret: their effectiveness is not all it’s cracked up to be by their marketing departments.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: KnowBe4 –providing ‘Internet security awareness training’ to help enterprises avoid phishing and other costly online scams" »

Posted by startupbeat at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Web2Carz

Website: www.web2carz.com

Founders: Ben Wallach and Alex Bravy

Headquarters: Highland Park, Illinois

Year Founded: 2006

Twitter: @web2carz

Brief Company Description: Web2Carz is a car shopping website featuring several million used and new vehicles, a robust research section, and unique editorial content.

By Ben Wallach, co-founder

Web2Carz is a car shopping website. There are several million used and new vehicles for sale listed on the site, a robust research section, and unique editorial content on all subjects automotive. Around 20,000 unique users a day come to the site to browse vehicles, do research or read articles.

Alex Bravy and I founded the company during the summer of 2006. We both had successful careers at other Internet companies including Orbitz.com, Monster.com and Cars.com. We decided to join forces and utilize our strong technology backgrounds and auto industry knowledge to build Web2Carz. Web2Carz started attracting a fair share of the car shopping public fairly quickly and today is listed on the Inc. 5000 list as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the country.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Web2Carz—bringing robust search and unique editorial content to the car shopping process" »

Posted by startupbeat at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: CouponTrade.com
Website:  www.coupontrade.com
Founders: George Bousis and Bradley Wasz
Headquarters: Chicago
Year Founded: 2010
Employees: 20 
Twitter: @coupontrade
Brief Company Description: CouponTrade: where coupon experts buy and sell daily deals and gift cards.

By George Bousis, co-founder and CEO

Product Overview

CouponTrade.com is a secure marketplace where coupon experts buy and sell daily deals and gift cards. Our long-term goal is to teach consumers better shopping habits while helping them save money and take advantage of these awesome deals, and perhaps even make money off of their own deals and gift cards.

We’re aiming to create the web’s most extensive marketplace of gift cards, daily deals, coupon codes, map views, digital coupons and more, to empower consumers with exceptional savings to help them stretch the value of a dollar. By developing innovative technologies to support this new social shopping model, it’s our goal to put purchase power back into the hands of the people as a way to help boost the economy.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: CouponTrade.com—a new marketplace for buying and selling daily deals and gift cards" »

Posted by startupbeat at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: DoubleDutch

Website:  www.doubledutch.me

Founder: Lawrence Coburn

Headquarters: San Francisco

Year Founded: 2010

Investors: Charles River Ventures, Launch Capital, Accelerator Ventures

Twitter: @DoubleDutch

Brief Company Description: DoubleDutch is the creator of HYVE—a suite of social, location-aware mobile apps that help organizations become more transparent, data-driven and productive.

By Lawrence Coburn, founder and CEO

Product Overview

DoubleDutch is the category leader for geo-social productivity apps for the enterprise. DoubleDutch HYVE is a suite of social, location-aware mobile apps designed to help organizations become more transparent, data-driven, and productive. By enabling every team-member, customer and stakeholder to communicate through structured status updates, enterprises can maximize performance and measure productivity like never before.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: DoubleDutch—bringing geolocation mobile productivity apps to the enterprise" »

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

Company: SmartRecruiters

Website: www.smartrecruiters.com

Founder: Jerome Ternynck

Headquarters: San Francisco

Year Founded: 2010

Investors: Angel

Employees: 10

Twitter: @Smartrecruiters

Brief Company Description: SmartRecruiters’ free recruiting software makes hiring easy for business by leveraging the power of free open software, social networks and job sites.

By Jerome Ternynck

SmartRecruiters provides free online recruiting software that meets the needs of small-to-medium businesses (SMBs). Our job posting and applicant-tracking Software as a Service (SaaS) platform has over 10,000 companies, with 200,000 job seekers and 25,000 job openings already processed, proving that our approach to recruiting gets results.

Throughout my career, I have been passionate about developing solutions that work to eradicate unemployment globally, through innovation in HR software. I started my first recruiting company at age 22 in Eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall fell. I then turned my attention toward the recruiting software industry in 1999 by pioneering one of the first global enterprise SaaS platforms.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: SmartRecruiters—making hiring smarter for SMBs by utilizing powerful Internet-based tools" »

Posted by startupbeat at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: LogicMonitor
Website: www.logicmonitor.com
Founder: Steve Francis
Headquarters: Santa Barbara, California
Year Founded: 2008
Twitter: @LogicMonitor 
Brief Company Description: Hosted monitoring of networks, servers, applications, storage, cloud and virtualization. Monitoring, alerting, graphs, reports—out of the box.

By Steve Francis, founder and Chief Product Officer

Product Overview

LogicMonitor is a hosted monitoring solution that monitors all elements of an IT Infrastructure—network, servers, applications, storage, cloud and virtualization—from a single pane. With embedded knowledge of most data center vendor’s equipment, LogicMonitor will tell you everything you need to know about the health and performance of your systems, and proactively alert you to any issues without you having to spend months becoming a monitoring expert, or purchase any costly hardware.

The all-in-one SaaS-based solution provides monitoring, alerting, graphing, and reporting right out of the box. So you can have robust monitoring not in weeks, or months, but today.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: LogicMonitor—an SaaS, single-screen solution to IT infrastructure monitoring" »

Posted by startupbeat at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: eDrinkit.com

Website: www.eDrinkit.com

Founders: Omid Sabet and Alex Roizen

Headquarters: San Diego, California

Year Founded: 2011

Facebook: www.facebook.com/edrinkit

Brief Company Description: “eDrinkit.com features deals specifically focused on nightlife and entertainment. Our customers enjoy discounts of 50-90 percent off drinks, VIP bottle service, cover charge, private transportation, wine/brewery tours and fun vacations to places like Cabo San Lucas.”

By Omid Sabet and Alex Roize, co-founders

Product Overview

Founded in 2011, eDrinkit.com was created to assist venues in promoting their business, while providing customers with deals to popular nightclubs, bars and restaurants. The company offers customers discounts of 50-90 percent off drinks, VIP bottle service, cover charge, as well as other deals for social activities, including private transportation, wine tours and vacations. The company is located in San Diego and will soon be expanding to additional cities in California, as well as Nevada and Arizona.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: eDrinkIt.com—bringing deals exclusively to the clubs and bars scene" »

Posted by startupbeat at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Small Bizeo

Website: www.smallbizeo.com

Founder: Kal Gullapalli 

Headquarters: Philadelphia

Year Founded: 2011

Brief Company Description: “Small Bizeo is a research platform that provides objective data, consolidated reports and insightful investment analysis to small business and franchise buyers.”

By Kal Gullapalli, founder

Company Overview

At its core, Small Bizeo is a franchise and small business research portal. When looking at a franchise, we look at average store economics, failure rates, growth rates, litigation issues and specifics within the Franchise Disclosure Document (300 page Annual Reports created by franchisors). Second, we have a listing platform people can use to search existing businesses for sale.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Small Bizeo—aggregating research and business intelligence for small businesses and entrepreneurs" »

Posted by startupbeat at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: nanoRep
Website: www.nanorep.com
Founders: Doron Herzlich, Aviv Dror, Amit Ben Shahar, Ofer David
Headquarters: Herzliya, Israel
Year Founded: 2009
Twitter: @nanoRep

Brief Company Description: “nanoRep is the instant-answer, self-service help-desk solution and ticketing system promoting rapid business growth and minimizing customer support costs.”

By Doron Herzlich, co-founder and CEO

Product Overview

nanoRep is the only help-desk solution capable of instantly answering between 80-92 percent of incoming customer support queries, enabling startups, SMBs and enterprises enjoying rapid growth to keep support costs flat. It does this via a self-learning, Q&A tool that integrates to a company’s website one of three ways—(1) as a floating widget, able to follow customers across every page of the site, (2) embedded within a company’s support page, (3) or via a Facebook application. Companies input their FAQ into a single knowledge base, and with every customer question asked and response provided by a support rep—across all channels: email, live chats, Facebook, Twitter and more – the knowledge base automatically builds itself up. Within three months, nanoRep is able to accurately answer up to 92 percent of customers’ questions, leaving only 8-15 percent to be escalated to support reps via an intuitive ticketing system. Try it here.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: NanoRep—bringing a smart and efficient help-desk to businesses of all sizes and their customers" »

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

Company: Mobilecause

Website: www.mobilecause.com

Founders: Douglas Plank and Danny Scalisi

Headquarters: Calabasas, CA

Year Founded: 2009

Twitter: @Mobilecause

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mobilecause

Brief Company Description: “Mobilecause, currently serving more than 900 nonprofits in the U.S., is the leading provider of Mobile Communication, Mobile Data Gathering and Mobile Donations to the nonprofit sector.”

By C. Douglas Plank, founder and CEO

Product Overview

Mobilecause is leading the way in mobile technology designed to serve the nonprofit sector. Empowering charities with mobile tools that enable them to easily communicate, build mobile lists, gather important CRM data, and raise money through various mobile means—from carrier billed to traditional credit card pledge fulfillment. In 2010, the U.S. nonprofit sector raised $211.7 billion in donations from individuals. When you include corporate, public and private foundations, it totals $290.89 billion. During the 2008-09 economic crisis, giving dropped 13 percent according to the Center on Philanthropy. This fact alone has accelerated the need for nonprofits to better utilize traditional and new tools like mobile to address donor attrition including lower response rates for direct mail, email, telemarketing and event participation. Given the explosion of mobile smart phone technology, the fact that consumer donors are accessing their email, looking at the nonprofit’s web page, texting and viewing rich media through their mobile device—it is imperative that nonprofits act quickly to take advantage of this new bustling technology explosion in order to reach current and new supporters via mobile.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Mobilecause—Empowering social enterprise (nonprofits) through mobile communication, data acquisition and mobile giving" »

Posted by startupbeat at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Weyrich Enterprises

Website: www.divaliciousapp.com

Founders: Andrew Weyrich and Rich Kessler

Headquarters: Fairfax, VA

Year Founded: 2010

Twitter: @DivaliciousApp

Facebook: www.facebook.com/divaliciousapp

Brief Company Description: “Weyrich Enterprises is the inventor of Divalicious, a revolutionary mobile shopping application for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, which was created to make mobile shopping easier than ever by featuring nearly one million fashion and beauty items from 300 popular brands in one centralized location.”

By Rich Kessler, co-founder and CTO

Product Overview

Divalicious is a new mobile shopping app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that completely changes the way you shop. By giving users access to 300 retailers, we put an end to driving from store to store, standing in long checkout lines, and having to search for the size you need only to find out it’s out of stock. The full day adventure at the mall is a thing of the past. Those hours you couldn't spare but had to, can be yours again with everything at the tip of your fingers.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Weyrich Enterprises—bringing social media and mobile technology to the shopping experience with the Divalicious app" »

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

MomentFeed is a fully-integrated platform for businesses to manage social media channels across multiple locations. The Santa Monica, CA–based company was founded in 2010.

SUB: What is the value proposition MomentFeed offers to both merchants and customers?

Reed: MomentFeed offers an integrated solution for managing Foursquare, Facebook Places, Twitter Places, and Gowalla across hundreds or thousands of locations. In a nutshell, it maximizes the efficiency and efficacy of utilizing these platforms for companies with more than 20 locations. There is a lot of secret sauce involved in synchronizing all of this data and activity across so many locations and services, such that a brand can have a comprehensive, holistic, and accurate view of how consumers are engaging with their locations at the local and global levels.

Continue reading "Q&A with MomentFeed founder and CEO Rob Reed about social media management for businesses with multiple locations and the companies recent $1.2 million seed funding round" »

Posted by startupbeat at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Cloudware Hosting

Website: www.cloudwarecity.com

Founder: Keith Hall

Headquarters: Warrington, UK

Year Founded: 2010

Twitter: @cloudwarecity

Brief Company Description: “Cloudware Hosting Ltd. provides an easy way to offer paid subscriptions to web apps, service and content websites, via Cloudware City”

By Keith Hall, founder and CEO

Product Overview

Cloudware City is designed to provide a pain-free way for website owners to include subscriptions and recurring billing to their sites, and can plug into popular web content management systems like Joomla and WordPress. The service utilizes a combination of the latest technologies to offer a one-stop platform from marketing and selling subscriptions in its web app store through to cloud-based end user subscription authentication, and can be up and running within three minutes.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Cloudware Hosting—a new platform for content subscription management and app monetization" »

Posted by startupbeat at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: BiteHunter

Website: www.bitehunter.com

Headquarters: New York City

Year Founded: 2010

Twitter: @BiteHunter_com

Employees: 6

Brief Company Description: “BiteHunter.com is the first real-time search engine helping frugal foodies locate great dining deals in their area from one website.”

By Gil Harel, co-founder

With more than 10 years of online management experience in the hospitality and restaurant industry, I was hungry for my own business venture in the dining industry. While working on my first startup in the industry, I saw a problem in the market. It was fragmenting and users had to spend too much time trying to find the great specials and deals everyone was offering to them. We wanted to alleviate having to go to multiple sources just find that $5 off. So, my business partner and I put our heads together and came up with the idea of helping consumers dine out without the guilt of spending money AND make it easy. Thus, BiteHunter was born. Although it was founded in early 2010 by myself and Ido Shillon, BiteHunter did not release its official beta version of the site until March 2011. From there, we rapidly grew.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: BiteHunter—a search engine for daily deals at restaurants" »

Posted by startupbeat at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: CPAlead

Website: www.cpalead.com

Founders: Robert Reynolds and Troy Krzyston

Headquarters: Las Vegas

Year Founded: 2006

Twitter: @cpalead

Employees: 20+

Brief Company Description: “CPAlead is an online marketing company enabling web publishers to monetize their premium content.”

By Robert Reynolds, co-founder and CEO

Product Overview

The CPAlead Widget is a web content monetization tool that provides consumers and web publishers with a payment alternative to traditional advertisements and paywalls. It works like this: when a person visits a website with premium content, they complete a brief survey, quiz or game, which unlocks the content they wish to view. These incentive-based offerings are sponsored by advertisers who then pay the website publisher for each one that is completed.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: CPA Lead—changing the online ad landscape with an unconventional approach" »

Posted by startupbeat at 08:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: aisle411

Website: www.aisle411.com

Founders: Nathan Pettyjohn and Matthew Kulig

Headquarters: St. Louis, MO

Year Founded: 2008

Twitter: @aisle411

Brief Company Description: “aisle411 is the premier mobile shopping platform allowing users to navigate to products down to the specific section of an aisle.”

By Nathan Pettyjohn, co-founder and CEO

Product Overview

Approximately 24 percent of all retail revenue is lost because consumers cannot find the products they want, or information about it.

aisle411 is a mobile in-aisle shopping platform that empowers anyone with a mobile phone to find and navigate to products and promotions quickly and easily in retail stores. With intuitive voice recognition technology powered by Nuance, we offer a unique in-store search and comprehensive mobile retail shopping solution. With the aisle411 app, users can instantly locate products in stores down to the specific section of the aisle, manage shopping lists, find offers and share experiences with friends via social media integration.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: aisle411—helping consumers navigate the brick-and-mortar shopping experience" »

Posted by startupbeat at 08:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Pikimal

Website: www.pikimal.com

Founders: Eric Silver

Headquarters: Pittsburgh, PA

Year Founded: 2010

Employees: 13

Twitter: @Pikimal

Brief Company Description: “Pikimal is a decision engine, using only facts, that allows users to sort, compare and determine the most important products for them.”

By Eric Silver, founder and CEO

Product Overview

Pikimal is a decision engine that allows users to sort, compare and determine the most important products for them. We use only facts—no marketing, bias or opinion—to help users find the best product or choice for them.

Our mission is to help consumers make the best buying decisions. From data that is scattered, vast, and technocratic, we gather it all in one place behind an intuitive interface aimed for use by everyday shoppers. We help users choose amongst brands and types of products, allowing users to find the product that best suits individual needs and preferences. Through our website, consumers interact with product Pikis, or web applications, which convey each product’s qualities, specifications and features. The Piki allows the user to select how important each feature and specification is to the user, and, upon adjustment, the Piki determines the products that best match the user’s preferences. Behind each Piki is a current, comprehensive database of products generated from available information.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Pikimal—on a mission to save the web from marketing" »

Posted by startupbeat at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Sentigo

Website: www.sentigo.com

Founders: Gadi Shvadron and Omri Braun

Headquarters: Ramat Gan, Israel

Year Founded: 2009

Brief Company Description: Sentigo’s Wall St. Scanner enables users to make wise investment decisions by providing a one-stop source for information affecting the stock market.

By Gadi Shvadron, co-founder and CEO

Product Overview

Wall St. Scanner is a free smartphone app which uses sophisticated text analysis and proprietary algorithms to aggregate and capture the online sentiment of publicly traded companies and market data. Its unique method combines information gleaned from both traditional news media and corporate websites and opinions expressed on social networking sites, chat rooms and blogs. The application enables users to make wise investment decisions by providing a one-stop source for all of the information affecting the stock market.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Sentigo—helping stock traders make more informed investment decisions" »

Posted by startupbeat at 08:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Creaza

Website: www.creaza.com

Founding CEO: Jostein Svendsen

Year Founded: 2011

Employees: 6

Investors: Founders

Brief Company Description: Everybody has a story to tell, and Creaza enables the world’s stories to come to life via video with its intuitive, socially engaging and affordable cloud-based video production platform.

By Jostein Svendsen, CEO

Product Overview: Creaza is the cloud-based online video production platform designed to enable users to collaboratively produce, share and store user-generated video. By combining the power of broadcast-quality HD and the vast reach of social media, Creaza is in an unrivaled position to “make video social.”

Creaza is about to become the cloud’s video production platform of choice for consumers, businesses and professionals who want to produce and collaborate on self-generated, broadcast-quality video content. Creaza is affordable and easy to use, yet it gives video content producers creative freedom.

Founders’ Story: Creaza’s founding team is Norwegian and has known each other for a number of years. This year, they have come together to launch Creaza, which has roots in a video editing platform with more than 160,000 users in the educational market in Europe.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Creaza—making video production social" »

Posted by startupbeat at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Tip It Girls
Website: www.tipitgirls.com
Headquarters: Louisville, Kentucky
Employees: 2
Investors: Founders

By Christian W. Hahn, co-founder

Product Overview:

Tip It Girls was created to make discovering and sharing the things girls love easy and fun. A simple separation of followers and friends allows for either private or public/open communications. Anyone can see public tips, but only Tip It Girls (friends) can view private tips.

Users of the Tip It Girls network don’t have to search for friends, but rather can make new friends by watching what they tip on the tip scroll. Tip It Girls shares every new public tip on the tip scroll, which is on the site’s homepage and the iPhone application’s front page. Every few seconds, when a new tip is added, the other tips scroll down.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Tip It Girls—an online social sharing space for girls only" »

Posted by startupbeat at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Giraffic

Website: www.giraffic.com

Founder: Yoel Zanger, CEO

Headquarters: Tel Aviv

Year Founded: 2008

Employees: 7

Company Description (in 140 characters or less): “Fully-distributed VOD acceleration and delivery cloud.”

By Yoel Zanger, CEO

Product Overview

We offer the Giraffic Fully Distributed Video Acceleration Cloud, which has been adopted by more than 500,000 users across the world in less than 3 months, with over 10,000 new users joining daily, accelerating and offloading 70-80 percent of customers’ video traffic.

Our technology has proven its ability to save online video distributors over 50 percent of their bandwidth costs, delivering video content with a smooth playback and virtually eliminating the annoying re-buffering pauses.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Giraffic—video-on-demand acceleration in the cloud" »

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

Company: XYZ Interactive
Website: www.xyzinteractive.com
Founders:  Michael Kosic, CEO, and Andrew Lohbihler, CTO
Headquarters: Toronto, Canada. Silicon Valley office at Plug and Play Tech Center  
Year Founded: 2002
Employees: 3
Investors: Angel
Company Description (in 140 characters or less): “XYZ has a very low cost 3D positioning sensor technology enabling touchless and gesture control for all electronic displays and interfaces.”

By Michael Kosic, co-founder and CEO

Product Overview: XYZ is a software licensing company, the magic in what we do is not in the hardware sensors, but in the positioning method. Our method enables 3D positioning using common IR components like you would find in your TV remote control. Although our technology can be applied to many markets, (switches, appliances, industrial displays, toys, badge-tracking...) we expect it will find its way first to smartphones, e-readers, tablets, and associated peripherals.

Founders’ Story: The founders of XYZ Interactive are Michael Kosic and Andrew Lohbihler. We met in the 90s when Andrew was still working at Nortel and Andrew had come up with a method for accurately locating cell-phones for E-911 purposes using just base station software changes. We shared a passion and a core belief that as our systems around us inevitably became more complex, our precise location (down to the mm) would become more and more important and valuable. We believed that having a low-cost method of doing this would create huge opportunities and value and so founded XYZ Interactive.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: XYZ Interactive—a new twist on a proven technology that enables touchless and gesture interaction at a price that could have 3D sensors everywhere" »

Posted by startupbeat at 08:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: LocalYokel
Website: www.localyokelmedia.com 
Headquarters: New Canaan, Connecticut
Founder: Dick O’Hare, CEO
Year Founded: 2011
Company Description (in 140 characters or less): “Local Yokel Media is the Internet’s first hyperlocal online ad marketplace.”

By Dick O’Hare, co-founder and CEO

Our Company Background:

With the tremendous growth of the Internet, consumers continue to migrate online for local information. More local businesses are moving their advertising spend online, to follow this audience. As a result, online local advertising is now a $16.1 billion market and growing rapidly. Meanwhile, “hyperlocal” content is booming—filling the editorial void left by the waning coverage from traditional local media organizations. This valuable, community-level content presents a compelling, targeted advertising opportunity. Research shows that 80 percent of consumer spending happens within 20 miles of home. Local Yokel Media (LYM) focuses on those 20 miles (and more) to help local marketers reach only those communities within their immediate service area on publisher content those community audiences know and trust. This level of granular ad targeting delivers “geo-contextual” relevance which drives overall ad performance and media efficiency.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: LocalYokel—making hyperlocal online advertising work" »

Posted by startupbeat at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: MediaRoost
Website: www.mediaroost.com
Headquarters: Metuchen, New Jersey
Founders: Mark Krieger and Fred Pack
Year Founded: 2011
Investors: Self-funded
Employees: 3
Company Description (in 140 characters or less): "MediaRoost’s Twitter Management Tool, TweetRoost, helps groups and individuals monitor & manage tweets, bringing order to the chaos."

By Mark Krieger, co-founder and president

Product Overview:

Designed for departments within large or small organizations (sales, marketing or customer service), and agencies (marketing, advertising and public relations) that manage one or more Twitter profiles, TweetRoost provides a central platform to manage, assign, tag, search and archive Twitter conversations. Automatic brand-monitoring is provided.

Unlike other Twitter management solutions, TweetRoost includes a powerful saving capability that enables users to permanently archive all incoming and outgoing Twitter streams. Users and groups can internally tag, comment and discuss via threaded conversations all Twitter interactions and utilize auto-assignment, routing and approval functionality to support social media processes and workflow. 

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: MediaRoost—social media management for the enterprise" »

Posted by startupbeat at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Loffles
Website: www.loffles.com
Founder: Brandon Yoshimura
Headquarters: Providence, Rhode Island
Year Founded: 2010
Employees: 4
Company Description (in 140 characters or less): “Loffles is an online giveaway service for consumers that provides advertisers with a new channel for consumer targeting and engagement.”

By Brandon Yoshimura, founder and CEO

Product Overview

Loffles is an online sweepstakes service for consumers that provides advertisers with a new channel for consumer engagement and businesses with a promotion solution that maximizes brand impact.

Consumers register on loffles.com by completing a user profile. This enables Loffles to recommend relevant giveaways while simultaneously capturing data points that allow advertisers to target specific audiences.

To enter a giveaway, a user must first choose a contest from our prize catalogue. After clicking a prize, a user is presented with a 10, 15 or 30-second video ad. After watching the ad and answering a few questions to confirm message reception, the Loffles user is entered into the giveaway drawing.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Loffles—Armed with 500K in seed money, Loffles seeks to bring real legitimacy to online sweepstakes and prize marketing" »

Posted by startupbeat at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: ADmantX
Website: www.admantx.com
Headquarters: Hartford, CT
Year Founded: 2010
Employees: 12
Investors: Atlante Ventures ($2.8 million, closed 6/8/11)
Company Description (in 140 characters or less): “ADmantX reads URLs and knows consumers ‘frame of mind’ in real time for superior contextual ad data including emotions and buying intention.”

By J. Brooke Aker, CMO

Product Overview

ADmantX is a contextual targeting data provider that improves the match between ads and content using semantic and natural language processing technology. We provide unique data channels on buyer intention and emotions that represent a consumers “frame of mind” in real time. This advanced contextual data is cookie-less and a viable alternative to behavioral targeting or can supplement the same. Recent Yahoo research suggests a combination of behavioral and contextual targeting generates 40 percent better ad engagement.

Founders’ Story

ADmantX is a spinoff of Expert System which is a leader in semantic web and natural language (NLP) processing platforms. Thus ADmantX was born from a 20 year history of spell checkers, grammar checkers, NLP, semantic networks and semantic coding tools across hundreds of corporate and government engagements. Now tuned for the digital advertising vertical space ADmantX is uniquely placed to excel at providing contextual data at a speed, depth and accuracy level not seen before.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: ADmantX—Taking online ad targeting to a new level (without cookies)" »

Posted by startupbeat at 08:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: RMZ Development LLC

Product: MyStream

Website: www.mystreamapp.com

Founder: Richard Zelson

Founded: 2010

By Richard Zelson, founder and CEO

Product Overview

MyStream is a new device-to-device(s) music streaming app that eliminates the cumbersome practice of sharing headphones or using a splitter in order to enjoy listening to music with friends. Using MyStream, music fans can wirelessly share their favorite songs with any other app user(s) within range.

MyStream users simply browse their library and select the songs or podcasts that they want to share with others via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. The interface is simply designed with minimal buttons and tabs. Utilizing our Live Streaming technology, users can listen to and simultaneously stream full songs synchronously with other users. Utilizing MySound asynchronous technology, users can browse through another user’s MyPlaylist, select a song, and listen to a 90-second clip of that song. A “Buy” button appears on a listener’s device next to each song or podcast that is played for them. This button creates a direct and search-free link to the iTunes store to enable instant music purchases.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: RMZ Development’s MyStream app uses Bluetooth for wireless music sharing" »

Posted by startupbeat at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Enloop
Website: www.enloop.com
Founder: Cynthia McCahon
Headquarters: San Francisco
Year Founded: 2010
Employees: 6
Investors:  Family and friends

Company Description (in 140 characters or less): "Enloop helps entrepreneurs and small business owners auto-write business plans, test their idea and forecast their success."

By Cynthia McCahon, Founder and CEO

Product Overview

Enloop is a free software-as-a-service tool that helps everyone from the seasoned business owner to students dreaming up businesses in their dorm-rooms to quickly build bank-ready business plans and quantify the probability of success for their business idea. Users complete a simple step-by-step online form and Enloop automatically generates a customized business plan and performance score for the user, complete with text, financial forecasts and ratio analysis prepared on-the-fly, ready to present to financial institutions.

Founders’ Story

Enloop was created out of frustration. I had been helping small businesses with their financials for over 15 years and watched a lot of people break into their savings and 401ks only to end up empty-handed because they didn’t understand their risk. The simple truth was that there was no system that could help people answer the essential question of ‘How do you know if a business idea is a good idea’? Why? Because a good business plan helps you communicate business ideas, financials and the risk associated to partners and lenders. And a great business plan helps you communicate with yourself about whether the business is worth pursuing.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Enloop—Bringing sanity to the small business planning process" »

Posted by startupbeat at 02:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Orpheus Media Research (OMR)/Clio
Website: www.cliomusic.com
Headquarters: New York City
Year Founded: 2010
Investors: Self-funded

Employees: 4-8

Company description (in 140 characters or less): “Orpheus Media Research is an advanced music research and development company that automates the search, analysis, and discovery of music.”

By Greg Wilder, Founder and CSO

Product Overview

Traditionally, large libraries of music have been very difficult to organize and search. Most music search technologies rely on metadata, or written descriptions of the music, rather than looking at the music itself. This has inherent limitations, as words can never fully describe our experience of what we hear.

Clio is the only pure music-to-music search and discovery platform that uses music to find music, producing higher quality matches and analyzing music at least 5,000-10,000x faster than existing keyword search technology. Clio eclipses traditional search methods, allowing metadata to refine, not define, music search and discovery results.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Orpheus Media Research/Clio – Taking automated music search and discovery to a new level" »

Posted by startupbeat at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Vizu
Website: www.vizu.com
Headquarters: San Francisco
Year Founded: 2005
Investors: Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson, Greycroft, Innovia and angel investors including Ron Conway, Mike Maples, and Esther Dyson
Company Description: "Vizu measures the effectiveness of your online brand advertising and tells you what is working in real time."

By Dan Beltramo, co-founder and CEO

Department store magnate, John Wannamaker, is famous for saying, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Vizu answers that question for you.

Broadly speaking there are two types of advertising: Direct Response advertising which attempts to drive immediate, measurable actions such as a website registrations, online purchases, application completions, etc.; and Brand Advertising which attempts to influence your attitudes and opinions about products in the way desired by the advertiser.

In the online environment, measurement of direct response advertising has been a science for many years. Direct response ads have long been measured consistently based on Click Through Rates (CTRs) and Cost Per Actions (CPAs). Brand advertising, on the other hand, was often not measured at all or was measured using lengthy custom market research studies that were often methodologically compromised and only delivered results months after an ad campaign had been completed.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Vizu—Pioneering innovative brand advertising measurement for ‘affordable real time brand lift data’" »

Posted by startupbeat at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Tongal 
Website: www.tongal.com
Headquarters: Santa Monica, CA
Year Founded: 2009
Founders: Rob Salvatore, Mark Burrell, and James DeJulio 
Employees: 5
Quick company description (in 140 characters or less): “Tongal allows companies to use crowdsourcing to develop fresh, high quality video content while propelling undiscovered talent.”

By James DeJulio, President and Co-Founder

Product Overview

Tongal is the leading creative social platform that empowers companies to tap into its crowdsourcing model to concept and produce video campaigns.

Tongal’s web platform circumvents the Madison Avenue system by using social media in a process that incentivizes talent around the world to collaborate with each other and the organizations that need them, creating fresh, compelling, high quality content. For a fraction of the cost of traditional means, brands can rise above the noise and propel undiscovered talent.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Tongal – Using the web to democratize the film and video production business" »

Posted by startupbeat at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: uSell
Website: www.usell.com
Year Founded: 2010
Founder: Doug Feirstein 
Company Description (in 140 characters or less): “uSell.com is the leading cash commerce platform that easily and securely turns your electronics into cash.”

By Doug Feirstein, CEO and Co-Founder

Product Overview

uSell.com is the leading cash commerce platform that turns people’s cell phones and electronics into cash—and everybody needs extra cash.

uSell.com operates by purchasing unwanted, high-value items directly from consumers, providing them fast payment, erasing all personal data, and then either refurbishing or recycling the phone, depending on its condition. Convenient and secure, uSell helps consumers avoid the hassle and risk of peer-to-peer sales channels such as eBay and Craigslist.

uSell.com’s 100 percent happiness guarantee ensures our customers are deliriously happy or we’ll make it right.

uSell.com is a subsidiary of Upstream Worldwide, Inc., a publicly traded company headquartered in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. For more information please, visit www.UpstreamWorldWide.com.

Founder’s Story

The original idea was hatched when a friend and I tried to sell some old electronics that were sitting around on eBay and realized that the process was very cumbersome. We believed that there had to be a better way for people who wanted to dispose of their old electronics and keep them out of landfills and get some cash in the process.

Continue reading "Featured Company Pitch: uSell—A new secondary marketplace for high-end electronics" »

Posted by startupbeat at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Joshua Schwadron, founder and CEO

Product Overview

Betterfly helps people find tutors, coaches, stylist, trainers or other "Betterists" who can help them be better at something. At the same time, Betterfly helps those Betterists get new clients and brand and market themselves.

Tutors, coaches, stylist, trainers and other "Betterists" list themselves on Betterfly and create their own Sites to market the services they offer related to personal betterment. Then, people looking to be better can search and book the tens of thousands of service providers listed on Betterfly’s 300+ Category Pages by price, location, verified reviews, availability and more. By catering to individuals instead of companies Betterfly enables users to compare apples to apples, people to people.

Continue reading "Featured Company Pitch: Betterfly—connecting ‘Betterists’ to new clients" »

Posted by startupbeat at 02:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: AirRun
Website: www.airrun.com
Headquarters: Chicago
Year Founded: 2010
Founder: Rob Matthews
Investors: Privately-Funded
Employees: 6
Company Description (in 140 characters or less):
"AirRun is the first of a new generation of social media applications that enable hyperlocal peer-to-peer (P2P) commerce."

By Rob Matthews, Founder and CEO

Product Overview

AirRun is a free app available for the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and eventually Android devices. We connect two groups of people—those who are looking for a product or service (seekers) and those willing to perform the task (runners)—in a geography-based marketplace.

Whether it’s a college student without a car craving a late-night snack or a small business that needs a package delivered on a deadline, seekers post a job to AirRun’s marketplace, which uses Google Maps to geo-locate the individual. Runners can browse the marketplace and find the jobs most convenient for them. After claiming the job, the runner performs the task and receives an agreed-upon payment from the seeker.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: AirRun—A unique hyperlocal job marketplace for short-term tasks" »

Posted by startupbeat at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch – PR for People: Using technology to bring PR to the masses" »

Posted by startupbeat at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Move That Block

Website: www.movethatblock.com

Headquarters: Albany, NY

Year Founded: September, 2010

Founders: Todd Drowlette and Patrick Gray

Investors: Privately-Funded

Employees: 30

By Todd Drowlette and Pat Gray, Co-Founders

Product Overview

MoveThatBlock.com is an innovative, cutting-edge website that offers professional quality, one-stop shopping for jobs, dating, commercial real estate, residential real estate, apartments & home rentals, vacation rentals only before found on pay-to-post sites. We offer more features, better functionality, and dynamic cross traffic that no single pay-for-use competitor offers. Our custom features are easy to use and allow simple searching and posting in an uncluttered environment. MoveThatBlock.com is the world’s first premium quality site to offer full access free of charge across multiple categories in the Essential Life segment of the Internet. We also offer personal, step by step guidance through life’s most difficult decisions, providing local experts in each step of the process. From buying a home to landing that dream job or date, we’ve got you covered. You never have to go it alone. Welcome to the Block.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch – MoveThatBlock: Connecting consumers and local professionals for free" »

Posted by startupbeat at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: ExpertBids.com

Website: www.ExpertBids.com

Headquarters: Chicago

Year Founded: Launched in November 2010

Founder: Nick Cronin 

Investors: Self-funded, in addition to a small angel investment 

Employees: 3

Company Description: ExpertBids.com is a professional services marketplace where clients can get personalized bids from lawyers, accountants and consultants.

By Nick Cronin, Founder and CEO

Product Overview

ExpertBids.com is an easy-to-use platform which connects clients and professionals saving both parties time and money.

The site works like this: Clients register and post a service request which either lawyers, accountants or consultants can view. Professionals then search the requests by location, category, and other criteria. When they are interested in a service request, they can send the client a personalized bid using either a flat fee or an hourly rate. The client can then review the details of the bid and the professional’s profile, which includes information such as their name, educational information, licenses, websites (i.e., Linkedin, Facebook, etc.), and finally, past client reviews of the professional’s work.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch – ExpertBids.com: A free marketplace that connects potential clients with professionals" »

Posted by startupbeat at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: GameStaq

Website: www.gamestaq.com

Headquarters: New York City

Year Founded: 2009

Founder: Joseph Gindi

Investors: Self-funded and private equity

Employees: 4

Quick Company Description: GameStaq is a simple way to buy and sell videogames at fair and preset prices.

By Joseph Gindi, Founder

Company Overview:

GameStaq is a peer-to-peer marketplace that features set fair pricing for the buying and selling of console video games. I knew that traditional brick and mortar game resellers introduced huge markups. The spread between the price you would receive for selling a used game and the price to buy that same game is just too wide.

We bring together sellers and buyers at an equitable price that is developed by looking at average pricing across the web. Our transaction process is simple. A seller offers a game, and then is matched with a buyer looking for that specific title. GameStaq is always the mediator, as we have eliminated any need for the buyers and sellers to interact, so there is no auction or haggling. Through transparent and equal pricing, we establish a marketplace where neither party feels like they are getting a raw deal. Furthermore, we guarantee all transactions and ensure all personal information including payment data is kept secure.

The site has more than 12,000 current users after being live for about 10 weeks. We focused our initial outreach to the hardcore console gamer community that desires the best and latest games.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch - GameStaq: Making the used video game market a snap" »

Posted by startupbeat at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Eegoes

Website: www.eegoes.com

Headquarters: Boston and Vevey, Switzerland

Year Founded: 2010

Founders: Guillaume Molter and Al Zane

Investors: Self-funded (currently preparing round A funding)

Employees: 6

Company Description: Connect like-minded people worldwide and provide organized relevant information based on its users’ interests.

By Guillaume Molter, CEO and Co-Founder

Product Overview

We built eegoes to be a leading new generation social networking site. The goal of eegoes is to provide a user-friendly and relevant platform for engaging social interaction. We deliver what matters most to users, which is relevant, geo-located and organized content based on their interests. What we want to do is to offer a tool that will help you to deal with all of your online identities, will simplify your online life and will help you stop wasting your time.

At the same time eegoes also aims to be:

-a “stand alone” social network (like Twitter or Digg) where people can connect with others and share some links, pictures, videos and events in the easiest way possible.

-a social media client (like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck) allowing our users to access and filter content from their other online identities and share some content on them (this feature is in development).

-a content portal (like YouTube or Flickr) where people can search and browse random content shared by strangers which has been automatically (semantically) organized around categorized “Networks” which are themed into categories like Travel, Sports, Music and more.

These three aspects of the product make it a unique actor in the market.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: Next generation social networking with Eegoes" »

Posted by startupbeat at 01:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: TekTrak

Website: www.TekTrak.com

Headquarters: Los Angeles

Year Founded: 2010

Founders: Arik Waldman, CEO and Luka Sklizovic, COO

Investors: Angel Funded

Employees: 5    

Company Description: TekTrak provides smartphone security by allowing users to track their phone, and secure any sensitive data stored on the device.

By Luka Sklizovic, Co-founder and COO

Product Overview

We have all experienced losing an electronic device, whether it was a digital camera, mobile phone, MP3 player, etc. Well, after losing one too many phones, we decided to find a solution to this problem that would not only help us know the location of our devices at all times, but also make sure that the content within those devices was safe.

Smartphones, like all other mobile phones, are used so frequently these days that they are more susceptible to loss than any other electronic device. Did you know that 20-30% of phones are lost every year?! Throw cloud computing into the mix, and you might be losing more than just your device; your privacy, contacts, emails, bank account access, pictures, business documents, etc.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: TekTrak...never lose your smartphone again" »

Posted by startupbeat at 02:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Expensify

Website: www.expensify.com

Headquarters: San Francisco

Year Founded: 2008

Founder: David Barrett

Investors: Hillsven Capital, Baseline Ventures, Red Swoosh founder Travis Kalanick, Redpoint Ventures

Employees: 8

Company Description: Expense reports that don't suck!

By David Barrett, Founder

Product Overview

Expensify does “expense reports that don't suck!”  We do that by importing expenses *and receipts* from your credit cards and mobile phones (so no typing or paper receipts), submitting expense reports through email (so no printouts or envelopes), and reimbursing through QuickBooks and direct deposit (so no manual bookkeeping or physical checks).

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: Expensify--making the expense report less tedious" »

Posted by startupbeat at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: 1SaleADay

Website: www.1saleaday.com

Headquarters: Brooklyn, NY

Year Founded: 2006; website launched in 2007

Founder: Ben Federman

Investors: Self-funded

Employees: 40

Company Description: 1SaleaDay offers unheard of discounts on name brand electronics, watches, jewelry, toys and wireless gear. Deals last just 24 hrs!

By Ben Federman, Founder

What is 1SaleADay.com?

1SaleaDay.com offers rock-bottom daily deals on electronics, watches, family products and jewelry with unheard-of deep discounts up to 90 percent off retail on products that are only available for just 24 hours.  The site is the largest independently-owned daily deal site in the world, and wields tremendous buying power to offer outrageous deals to more than 350,000 daily site visitors on everything from high-end GPS units and digital cameras to pearl necklaces, luxury watches and even housewares and games.  As a special surprise, the company clears out its inventory with its Chunk o’Junk Deal that features a box full of items randomly selected from past deals—for just $10.  Customers never know exactly what they’re going to get, but Past Chunk o’Junk deals have included laptops, MP3 players, GPS units and even a 42-inch TV.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: 1SaleADay brings ultra-discount shopping to the web" »

Posted by startupbeat at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Assistly

Website:  www.assistly.com

Headquarters: San Francisco

Year Founded: 2009

Founder: Alec Bard, CEO

Investors: True Ventures  and Social Leverage

Employees: 10

Company Description: Assistly is an elegant, web-based platform that makes customer support in a social marketing culture smarter, easier, and more affordable.

By Alec Bard, CEO

What Is Assistly?

Assistly is a hosted customer support platform that organizes and manages all of your customer conversations into a system that makes customer support efficient, fast, and effective. Assistly delivers the most current and relevant information about your customer requests to the right people in your organization and gives your teams intuitive and powerful tools to WOW your customers.

We understand that a sustainable competitive advantage is determined by your relationship with your customer. We help our clients embrace the customer-focused model, drive positive customer experiences, and build brand value.

So How Is Assistly Different?

- Listen to Your Customers IN REAL TIME

Assistly's help desk software collects and organizes all of your customer conversations into a single framework. This comprehensive, real-time view captures not only what customers are saying to you but also about you so you can intervene to manage your reputation and capitalize on "good buzz." As your support organization grows, this will keep your customer service agile and efficient.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Assistly wants to make customer support more social" »

Posted by startupbeat at 05:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: WebiMax

Website: www.webimax.com

Headquarters: Mount Laurel, NJ

Year Founded: 2008

Founder: Ken Wisnefski

Investors: Self-funded

Employees: 100+

Company Description:

By Ken Wisnefski, Founder/CEO

Product Overview

In 2003 when I was building my first venture, VendorSeek.com, I sought a Search Engine Optimization firm that could help the site achieve higher natural search results to help lower our growing monthly Pay Per Click ad spend.  We were a small company and did not outsource anything at that point as we frankly could not afford it.  We spoke with several SEO firms and decided to take a leap of faith and work with a firm that “guaranteed” a dramatic improvement in our rankings.  Six months and over $50,000 later, the site did not rank even slightly better in natural search results and the company informed us that our monthly cost would have to increase in order to see results.  I then realized that I needed to learn how to get my website to rank well in order to effectively expand my business.  It was not an easy task but over the next five years our natural search results improved dramatically and we were able to fine tune our PPC spending down from nearly $200,000 a month to just under $50,000 a month.  When the call came from a large company to buy VendorSeek, I was reluctant but frankly the offer was too good to pass up.

I always envisioned helping other companies achieve the same sort of success through our online marketing initiatives and, based on my experience, believed there were few firms that could actually deliver desired results.  With that notion in mind, less than three months after the sale of VendorSeek, I launched WebiMax.  Our company has now grown to over 300 clients and is rated by TopSeos.com, an independent third party evaluator of SEO firms, as the #1 SEO firm in the United States (http://www.topseos.com/rankings-of-best-search-engine-optimization-companies).

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: WebiMax seeks to make SEO easy and effective for all" »

Posted by startupbeat at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: CabCorner

Website: www.cabcorner.com

Headquarters: New York City

Year Founded: 2008 (launched in 2009)

Founders: Jonathan McKinney and Jesse S. Sommer

Investors: Self-funded

Employees: 6

Company Description: CabCorner.com connects people located in the same area who are headed the same direction around the same time.  Save costs and the planet!

By Jesse S. Sommer, Co-founder and COO

Product Overview

When my friend and fellow Wesleyan University alum Jonathan McKinney approached me to share an idea he was concocting, neither of us could have anticipated the enthusiasm with which the public would greet what would one day become “CabCorner.”  Our web-based, mobile-accessible “social transportation logistics utility” is designed to connect individuals located in the same area who are headed the same direction around the same time.  Its mission is to reduce street traffic, subway congestion, and urban pollution.  Yet beyond the environmental benefits, we seek to transform taxicab paradigms and habits, expanding taxi travel to a new demographic that previously couldn’t afford it.  By leveraging cities’ private taxi networks, we’re creating a new form of public transit, and driving more business to cabbies.  Currently operating in NYC, CabCorner.com is accessible worldwide.  And it’s also entirely FREE to use!

While our team didn’t invent the concept of “cab-sharing,” it’s a matter of mere modesty to say we perfected its implementation online.  And the biggest players in our space agree; our acquisition of CabEasy this past spring was followed by our acquisition of industry pioneer Hitchsters.com a few months later—and in both cases the founders of these sites approached us to join our enterprise.  We’re so grateful that the media has embraced and promoted our product, and the recent proliferation of competitors has actually benefited our company by introducing web-users to this idea.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: CabCorner wants to fill empty 'back seat real estate'" »

Posted by startupbeat at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: RecreateMyNight

Website: www.recreatemynight.com

Headquarters:

Year Founded: 2010

Founders: Tejpaul Bhatia

Employees: 5 full-time and 5 part-time

Company Description: RecreateMyNight allows users to relive their shared experiences online within a single, streamlined view.

By Tejpaul Bhatia, President

Product Overview

Today, more than ever before, we live and share our lives online.  The members of “Generation Y” are now reliving many experiences on social media platforms and mobile devices.  After a night out, whether at a concert, wedding, or just a party with friends, within minutes there tends to be an enormous amount of fragmented data (photos,videos, tweets, status updates and check-ins) relating to the events of that night. I founded RecreateMyNight.com to be a web-based platform where users can easily discover, compile, share, and relive experiences collectively.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Piece together memories of your nights out with RecreateMyNight" »

Posted by startupbeat at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: Moonit

Website: www.moonit.com

Headquarters: New York City

Year Founded: 2010

Founders: Dana Kanze and Mason Sexton, Jr.

Employees: 6

Company Description: Moonit is a social engagement tool that provides users to with a new way to analyze their relationship compatibility and introduce friends.

By Dana Kanze, CEO, and Mason Sexton, Jr., President

Product Overview

Moonit is a social optimization resource that provides insights into Generation Y users’ relationships.  The core offering allows users to enhance their romantic, platonic and professional relationship connections by running compatibility assessments based on astrological underpinnings, while receiving relationship guidance based on psychological guidance.

Through a personalized “Mooniverse,” users are able to run comprehensive relationship compatibility assessments; track their relationships via daily relationship horoscope alerts; play matchmaker by setting up their friends; obtain expert and peer advice via “The Couch” feature; and get the scoop on celebrity matchups and breakups via “The Stars” feature, while sharing their relationship stories and opinions in the form of blog posts and community contributions.  Moonit is integrated with Twitter and Facebook, allowing users to import contacts and broadcast relationship status and compatibility ranking updates.

Continue reading "Featured Startup Pitch: Moonit offers a social tool to determine relationship compatibility and make connections" »

Posted by startupbeat at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Company: SoftCity

Website: www.SoftCity.com

Headquarters: Montreal, Quebec

Year Founded: 2008

Founders: Blaise Rabaud and Marc-Antoine Ross

Employees: 11

Company Description: The world's leading social commerce platform for developers and software enthusiasts to learn, grow and earn.

By Marc-Antoine Ross, co-founder and COO

SoftCity began, in its earliest form, as a project for Blaise Rabaud, a former employee of the software publishing company, Avanquest Software.  Blaise had successfully launched an e-commerce business based in France that sold hardware and software as early as 2002.  His belief in the Internet as a tool for communication and collaboration would eventually lead to SoftCity’s creation in 2008.

The concept for SoftCity was to build a new kind of software community, one where the developer and the user interacted.  It wasn’t just about selling more products, it was about true social interaction, a comfortable and safe ecommerce platform and a community built on sharing and developing knowledge. 

Enter Marc-Antoine Ross, whose passion for social networking, e-commerce and collaboration helped Blaise solidify what SoftCity could be.  By harnessing ecommerce with a solid platform built on enterprise technology, the two set out to accomplish their goal.

Continue reading "Featured Pitch: SoftCity creates online community for software enthusiasts" »

Posted by startupbeat at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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 her