Serving Boulder, Colorado startups and the startup scene.
This Wednesday, August 25th from 6pm to 9pm, Quickleft will be hosting a ruby-centric hack fest at their offices with a few other of Boulder’s dev shops. Helping out are…
The general theme is test driven development (TDD). For a full list of potential topics and all other details, see the announcement. Come hungry!
The address:
1919 14th Street
Suite 714
Boulder, CO 80302
[Disclosure: I work at Quickleft.]
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Photo by Andrew Hyde
It turns out that my Cheap Seat for yesterday’s TechStars Demo Day was more expensive than the investors’ seats (free), but I’d happily make another donation to the Entrepreneurs’ Foundation of Colorado for a spot next year.
Just about every seat reserved in the balcony of the Boulder Theater for the community at large was filled – more people were there yesterday than last year, if memory serves. It looks like the word is getting out that this is a great event to attend. Deservedly so.
The entire first floor was reserved for investors, with many from out of town already in attendance at Boulder’s second Open Angel Forum the previous night. Laptops and smartphones were everywhere to be seen. A busy couple of days in Boulder for the investor community.
TechStars co-founders David Cohen, Congressman Jared Polis, and Brad Feld kicked things off with a few updates on TechStars’ alumni, the TechStars Global Affiliate program (expect 5-10 more Global Affiliates to pop up in the next year or so) and the Startup Visa Movement, among other things. The co-founders continue to have their hands full with developing the startup ecosystem here and abroad.
Once the presentations got going, it was slide deck after slide deck of polished pitches (in this order):
ScriptPad lets doctors write prescriptions safer and easier than traditional handwritten notes, saving lives and saving money. ScriptPad offers a freemium app to doctors and receives a per prescription fee from pharmacies.
Omniar wants to make the real world clickable, Terminator style. Find information attached to an object by taking a picture of it with a smartphone, allowing Omniar’s mobile app or apps developed on Omniar’s API to visually recognize it and retrieve any data attached.
StatsMix creates custom dashboards to help businesses aggregate, visualize, and draw insights from a variety of metrics. Drag-and-drop what you want from Google Analytics, WordPress, MailChimp, and more into a single place. StatsMix even helps analyze your data for you.
RoundPegg helps companies hire for cultural fit, evaluating job candidates on a variety of traits, comparing them to current employees, and measuring for an overall match. RoundPegg is built on a process developed by Chief Psychologist Dr. Natalie Baumgartner, putting “The Doc in a box”.
RentMonitor aims to make being a landlord easy by streamlining their Circle of Pain – marketing, tenant screening, rent collection, and property maintenance – into a Circle of Profit, especially for owners of multiple rentals. RentMonitor also helps come tax time.
GearBox has developed a robotic ball controlled by a smartphone as it rolls across the floor, entering the new “smart toy” market. GearBox plans to sell the ball and allow developers to create a myriad of games and other apps on its API.
Vacation Rental Partner takes the work out of renting out a second home. Vacation Rental Partner goes beyond marketing, allowing renters to book your property as easily as they would a hotel room, with online payment processing, booking management, and more.
BlipSnips lets you share a moment of time. Rather than sending a link to a video with a note “the clip I want you to see starts at 10:24″, BlipSnips lets you tag a particular clip from a longer video and share it with others.
Spot Influence find key influencers across the web based on your keyword search. Spot Influence grabs data from a variety of sources to calculate the Reach, Relevance, and Impact of individuals, resulting in their overall Influence score for a particular keyword.
ADstruc has created a marketplace for outdoor advertising to make selecting and bidding on billboards as easy as PPC. ADstruc allows advertisers to view available locations on Google Maps, retrieve valuable data, see their own ads superimposed on a street view of the billboard, and to bid accordingly.
Kapost is a content marketplace connecting writers with publishers. Kapost lets publishers find strong writing, facilitate payments, manage rights, and plug that content into a variety of popular content management systems.
One of the first things that jumped out at me was that many of the “asks” were for more money this year than last (again, if memory serves). Four of this year’s 11 teams were raising $500k or more, while none were in 2009. What didn’t change from last year, however, was the quality of the pitches.
The presentations were strong across the board, with each team refining and rehearsing throughout the TechStars program this summer – an entire summer’s worth of blood, sweat, and tears, distilled into 5 minutes on stage (if you haven’t seen their level of commitment in The Founders yet, you should). For anybody wanting to learn how a pitch is done, TechStars Demo Day is a great classroom. I’ll be there again in 2011.
Congratulations to all the TechStars Boulder 2010 teams for surviving the summer – I can’t wait to see what you all do next. Which of you will be the first to earn a gold shirt for being acquired?
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Way Below Status Quo (http://waybelowstatusquo.com/) is a group of three prolific bloggers and entrepreneurs (@colinismyname, @TMFproject and @instigatingandi) who are road tripping across the United States this summer, stopping in cities and towns to learn more about the community and give back.
Throughout the way, they will be tweeting, blogging and video blogging about each stop, location, local business and people they meet.
Boulder is one of their stops!
Thursday, July 29th. Come join for the day at the various events we’ve hosted and planned for this group.
Schedule:
*At 2:00 PM, a team that’s part of TechStars, http://kapost.com/ will be meeting with the WBSQ team at Atlas to discuss entrepreneurship, their new product and looking for feedback/ideas from bloggers.
If you can’t make the events during the day, come to The Bitter Bar to learn more about their project, mingle, show what a great community Boulder has and enjoy a delicious drink.
More information here: (http://social.waybelowstatusquo.com/wp-content/uploads/files/wbsq_mediakit.pdf).
You can RSVP for any/all of Thursday’s plans here: http://statusquo-boulder.eventbrite.com/
*If you want to participate or have a good idea to be included on their schedule, please reach out to any of these three Boulder gals:
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This morning I got the chance to talk with Andrea Pawliczek from duckduckDeal!, a company that offers a free iPhone application, which connects customers with great local deals. But before I asked about the cool features of the application or the benefits to merchants, I had to ask why the name duckduckDeal!. Andrea said it was a play on the children’s game of “duck, duck, goose” and instead of the goose being “it” in tag, the goose is a great deal!
The software works in two ways:
The software is available for customers as a free iPhone app (a Droid version will be available soon) or you can visit their Web site, if you want to check out merchant discounts. So, if you are out and looking to grab lunch or drinks with friends you can quickly browse a list of merchant offerings and see if your favorite place is giving a discount.
duckduckDeal! allows merchants to instantly create offerings, like happy hour discounts. So, instead of simply throwing out a coupon and possibly having them redeemed at peak times, merchants can target special promotions during their less busy times and connect with an audience that may have a little more flexibility, like students.
This coming Monday, July 19th, duckduckDeal! is having a treasure hunt. Clues will be released via Twitter @duckduckdeal), Facebook (Facebook.com/DuckDuckDeal), and on their website and the free iPhone app that lead to ducks hidden around Boulder. Find a duck, win a prize. The finders of the first three ducks will win prizes including gift certificates and cash. Along with a prize to the finder, the discovery of each of these ducks will release a piece of our treasure map on this page.
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Eric
I met with Eric Jackson founder of Boulder Community Computers a non-profit that is addressing the digital divide starting in Boulder. Eric got the idea for starting Boulder Community Computers while working at Community Cycles in Boulder and his idea is based loosely on the same spirit – education, volunteerism and community. Boulder Community Computers not only provides training but also gives individuals an opportunity to work towards “earning” their own computer. Individuals can “earn” through their volunteer hours. They also refurbish old computer equipment, including iPhones. This serves two purposes:
One of the principles of the organization is to provide individuals with real world skills, which they can market about themselves today. It is also serving to provide an alternative to people spending $500 on a new computer; they can come and volunteer, get trained, meet experts, join a community and get involved. The value of the community aspect is worth more than the $500 some may spend on a new PC.
Eric wants to blend the best of the for-profit and non-profit worlds. Boulder Community Computers has the soul and heart of a non-profit but is operated like any for-profit business. They use proceeds from their store to help fund this effort. Eric is a strong believer in creating a sustainable, working business model that isn’t simply a charity.
I asked Eric what has been one of the biggest accomplishments and he said, “We are building a community here, which I think is synonymous with the idea of family. We have people come in and express a need and we feel great knowing that we are an organization that can help or we have others dropping in, who don’t need a computer or training but want to help out because they want to see this idea succeed”. But Eric admits they still need help developing their business model. If you have an interest in helping out, applying your business expertise to help build an organization with a soul, contact Eric. But if you are in need of a computer, or training stop by the shop and volunteer.
2232 Pearl St, Suite 200
Boulder, 80302
Phone: 303.335.0411
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Several people new to town have suggested a forum for this site.
Since we know the Vanilla guys so well, it was a natural choice.
http://boulder.vanillaforums.com/
Lets jump on it and start some discussions, you never know who is out there.
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