TODAY'S COCKTAIL OF TECH STARTUP STORIES:
The latest cocktail of emerging technology news, people, startups, products, and innovations for the true tech enthusiast.
| Can't Find Auto Events Near You? PaddockScene Has You Covered |
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Great Falls, VA, is home to Katie's Cars & Coffee, and every Saturday morning at 6:30 am, the coffee is served alongside revving engines and candy-coated paint jobs. The locals all get together for a few hours to show off their Jaguar E-Types, Ferraris, and Acura NSXs while enjoying their morning Joe. While the weekly crowd is large enough, there are still plenty of automotive enthusiasts in Great Falls, VA, that might be left in the dark about Katie's Cars & Coffee. Michael Briskie, the founder of PaddockScene, taught me that the automotive scene gets its news out via word of mouth, and that if you are out of the loop, you are missing events. To keep domestic and international auto enthusiasts of all levels in on the action, Briskie developed his platform as a jumping off point that aggregates professional, amateur, and non-racing events taking place within a 200-mile radius around your location. Users create their own profiles and can personalize a calendar that incorporates different clubs, venues, and their favorite make and models of cars. If tricking out your page is not enough, you can also submit your own user-generated content about anything automotive. This all works to solve the central issue that surrounds word-of-mouth advertising by bringing awareness of these events to as many people as possible. From professional drivers to newcomers alike, the founding principle behind PaddockScene is to include everybody: even NASCAR fans. "I had a proof of concept early on, back when I was keeping track of auto events in a Google Calendar," says Briskie. "My friends kept asking to check out the upcoming events, and I knew that I could create a viable, general use platform."
Briskie took that Google Calendar and turned it into an organized, centralized hub. While other sites like MotorsportReg, TrackProAdvisors, and DLBRacing do in fact cover events, they remain too niche or stray from non-racing events like luxury auctions and local gatherings. PaddockScene is only two weeks into its live beta, and Briskie was worried that the paradox of user-generated content might cripple him: you need an audience to get content, but you need content to draw in an audience. In a brilliant display of lateral thinking, he cut the Gordian knot and self-uploaded as much unique content as he could. "I may be very small still, but I see a lot of potential for PaddockScene to expand in the future," affirms Briskie. "With effort and a strong PR push I will get a groundswell of support."
The ultimate end goal for Briskie is to mold PaddockScene into a platform that promotes and sells tickets for automotive events, much like Eventbrite, Ticketmaster, and Song Kick do for concerts. This dedicated entrepreneur is riding the Autobahn to startup success, and leaving failure behind to eat his dust. PaddockScene will be featured at Tech Cocktail’s Boston Mixer & Startup Showcase on August 27th. The post Can’t Find Auto Events Near You? PaddockScene Has You Covered appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| SparkLabKC Holds Demo Day for Inaugural Class |
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Today, SparkLabKC is hosting their first demo day for their inaugural class of startups, providing them an opportunity to pitch to prospective angel investors and venture capital investors from across the Midwest. Over the course of the 90-day intensive program, the 10 affiliated startups involved received seed capital, mentoring, free workspaces, and free legal, accounting, financial, and human resources advice. The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute will sponsor the demo day, hosted at the National World War I Museum. Kansas City Mayor, Sly James, will address the crowd with an introduction to the event followed by keynote speaker Jim Spencer, founder of Newsy. The 10 startups that helped make SparkLabKC's first demo day possible are: - Briefcase: This multi-platform application delivers real-time push notifications of available jobs, aggregates job board data, and keeps job seekers at the front line of the application process.
- FoilioMatch: An educational portfolio platform designed for students navigating the competitive field while applying for college, graduate school, or their first job.
- Knoda: A prediction software platform that offers a place to make and track predictions of any type to determine who is right and who is wrong.
- Prodigy Arcade: They create gaming platforms for kids that center on learning the building blocks of programming.
- NeighborsGrow: A mobile software application that makes home food gardening easier, more efficient, and social by letting gardeners coordinate with their neighbors to access resources.
- Innovative Health Media: The e-AWV System gives physicians an efficient, easy-to-use, and intuitive way to provide the Annual Wellness Visit while meeting Medicare requirements.
- VolunteerMark: Their online software makes it quick and easy to track and recognize volunteer contributions while giving nonprofits the tools and information they need for donor reporting and grant funding.
- FormZapper: A software company that provides secure and convenient document management solutions for targeted industries, streamlining workflows, and increasing efficiency.
- Your Adoption Finance Coach: They bring the critical step of Adoption Finance in-house through personal coaching, webinars, and an online gift registry branded to the adoption agency’s web site.
- FanAddict: A music events destination and discovery tool for music fans to track their favorite artists.
The post SparkLabKC Holds Demo Day for Inaugural Class appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Music and Entrepreneurship: Why You Should Attend Tech Cocktail Celebrate |
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"I know how it feels to wake up f****d up Pockets broke as hell, another rock to sell People look at you like you’re the user Selling drugs to all the losers mad Buddha abuser But they don’t know about the stress-filled day Baby on the way mad bills to pay" - Notorious B.I.G.
Hip hop might be the first music culture to talk about it so openly, but the marriage between entrepreneurship and music has deep roots that transcend genre. It was four guys from Liverpool who sang, "It’s been a hard day’s night / and I’ve been workin’ like a dog," and tell me if this sounds familiar: young hustler on the make, charming ladies and hitting the scene hard, trying to convince the money men to back his next big hit to be dropped on the masses to provoke mass hysteria and international acclaim? It should sound familiar; that’s Mozart, Beethoven, and every other dude with funny hair whose head is now a marble bust. "Either you slangin' crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot" "Slangin' crack rock" is the freemium model most mobile and Internet startups leverage to attract free users only to convert them to paying customers later. "Wicked jump shot" applies equally to the talent it takes to be a great musician or a successful founder. The intersections of the music and startup worlds are uncanny. Startups have VCs. Musicians have labels. First you have to form your best team. Get the band together. Then you have to get funded (signed). Then gain traction (downloads, airplay). Finally, airplane money (concerts, soundtrack to the new VW commercial). The game is the same. So is the pain. The convergence of startups and music was made literal by the original SXSW. Tech Cocktail Celebrate has taken this convergence and built upon it – much like any great startup founder or musician would. It's like George Thorogood covering, and improving upon, John Lee Hooker’s "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer," which covered Amos Milburn’s original 1953 version. Or like Friendster inventing social networking, MySpace making it better, and Facebook coming in and making their version the one everybody nods their heads to. Tech Cocktail has taken the hottest startups from more than 25 cities and invited them to a battle royale to determine the capo di tutti capi of startup founders. To sweeten the deal, they’ve joined forces with the Life is Beautiful music festival for five days of awesomeness. The lineup includes the likes of The Killers, Beck, Kings of Leon, Vampire Weekend, Imagine Dragons, Pretty Lights, Jurassic 5, and many, many more. Joey Bada$ just got announced? What?! Dawes? SICK! Frankly I'd be psyched for this alone. Merging the two events together is genius. Did I think of this? Perhaps. Let’s pretend I did. It's gonna be awesome. A more civilized and less annoying SXSW, if you will. I'm looking forward to attending for a number of reasons. First, I won the SXSW Tech Cocktail Pitch contest and I hope to defend my title and take home a new cocktail glass trophy for the mantle. In case you missed it, I won the SXSW Pitch Jam by promising that if I won, my cofounder would get his ass tattooed in Austin…My co-founder John is in his 40s, looks like the nutty professor, is a Berkeley MBA, was tattooless, and did not agree to this beforehand (how could he have, when I just made it up?) And he did it! It was awesome! My mouth wrote a check that my cofounder’s ass had to cash! It made the papers. (The pictures are the best part). I'll be bringing my "A Game" to Vegas for Celebrate and I refuse to come home without another cocktail glass trophy. I don't want to give away too much this early in the game, but here are some early thoughts on winning tactics I just may deploy: - Tech Cocktail’s martini glass logo would make a great ass tattoo. I’m just saying…
- Rap my pitch to the beat of Notorious B.I.G's hit "Juicy"
- Pitch like Ben Affleck's character in the only scene anybody remembers from Boiler Room
- Make someone streak downtown Vegas
- Steal Mike Tyson's Tiger?
The possibilities are endless. I'm already booked. It's going to be epic. And when I get on stage, it’ll either be the best pitch you've ever seen or the worst train wreck on earth. Either way: entertaining and with booze after, so WIN! See you soon. In the meantime, start hydrating – and practicing, if that’s your thing. Personally, I like to wing it. Game on. Your friend, Danny Grab your tickets to Celebrate now! The post Music and Entrepreneurship: Why You Should Attend Tech Cocktail Celebrate appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| ABSOLUT Vodka Says: Take a Real Lunch Break |
| 11:00:58 AM | Kira M. Newman |
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Inspired by Sweden's daytime dance parties, ABSOLUT Vodka is bringing dance parties to the United States to help people loosen up on their Friday lunch break. ABSOLUT Lunch Break* is inviting people in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston to attend their dance parties this summer, which continue into September. Attendees get to sample one ABSOLUT cocktail – no more than that – dance around with glow sticks, and pick up a bagged lunch to take to the office. The event is free, and any donations you make go to food charities. It began last year in New York in partnership with Flavorpill, a media company featuring local news and events. Considering that entrepreneurs are often pushed to work through lunch – ordering food on Seamless or getting a catered spread – we wanted to know what they might be missing out on. Below, we chatted with Afhdel Aziz, brand director of ABSOLUT Vodka; and Sascha Lewis, cofounder of Flavorpill Media. Tech Cocktail: Tell us about Sweden's trend of daytime dance parties. Afhdel Aziz: In Sweden, where all ABSOLUT is made, a trend emerged around lunchtime clubbing – a simple and fun concept that allowed creatives a true break from their day. The idea is daring to defy everyday convention by turning a typical lunch break into a daytime dance party. . . Tech Cocktail: Why is dancing, in particular, helpful during the day? Aziz: ABSOLUT Lunch Break allows for a creative opportunity to get out and meet new people. Dancing, in particular, is a great way to let loose and get moving amidst a world where we’re often tied to our desks at lunch. . . Tech Cocktail: Is there a trend toward shorter or nonexistent lunch breaks? Sascha Lewis: With overflowing inboxes and never-ending to-do lists, there’s been an oppressive trend of ordering straight to one’s desk or skipping lunch altogether. . . Tech Cocktail: Why is it important (especially for startups) to take a lunch break? Lewis: We . . . [encourage] fellow startups and creatives to take the opportunity to break away from the traditional lunch-in-front-of-a-computer routine and engage with others to inspire the rest of their day. *You have to agree to get email updates from ABSOLUT to enter the site, but they don’t collect your email. I imagine you get automatically subscribed to their list if you actually RSVP and fork over your email address. The post ABSOLUT Vodka Says: Take a Real Lunch Break appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
| Angel Ed: Using An Angel Investment Mentality to Help Students |
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The angel investor plays a crucial role in the growth and development of a startup in two distinct ways. First and foremost, they fund the startup, providing new opportunities for the fledgling company. Second, they provide wisdom through mentorship, steering the startup down a path to success. After getting entrenched in the angel and VC world, Navah Fuchs decided to take the obvious success behind that model and apply it to a whole new world: education. Angel Ed was designed as a nonprofit platform to help students finance their education in a debt-free way while building network connections through mentor-guided leadership. "I had originally wanted to be a teacher," says Fuchs. "But I got so upset with how bad the education system is and how little impact one single teacher makes, so I pivoted to the tech world."
Through Angel Ed, students can showcase their academic achievements, passions, and goals, much like a startup would their product. Potential investors can get to know the students and provide funding to cover what specific students might need to complete their education. Angel Ed then accepts the funds on behalf of the students and then pays the bills for them. Their students can also opt to crowdfund the remaining portion of their necessary academic funds by tapping family and friends. But that is only half of the angel investor mentality that Fuchs and her co-founders have ingrained into Angel Ed. The platform puts the student first, connecting them to mentors who can teach them how to establish professional networks, put their education to good use, and spend their money in the right ways. "On our model, if students have to take out debt, it is a managed risk, and there will be a reward in the form of professional success," says Fuchs. "Unsupervised debt translates into a complete lack of fiscal literacy."
Looking at the long term, Angel Ed is collecting hordes of empirical data surrounding their current 100-student class. By recognizing student successes and failures, Fuchs and the team can specify which universities and programs are best for the students. "We are aiming to be the biggest source of data for how universities assess their programs," says Fuchs. "I see us bringing some much needed transparency to the higher education field."
Typically, investors look for ROIs on their investments. While a startup would bring money back to them, the student ROI translates into graduating on time and using their education to work a dynamite job. And as their students head out into the professional world, capitalizing on opportunities they have created, Angel Ed asks only one thing in return. They want students to remember their roots and pay the kindness forward someday when they are able. Angel Ed will be featured at Tech Cocktail’s Boston Mixer & Startup Showcase on August 27th. The post Angel Ed: Using An Angel Investment Mentality to Help Students appeared first on Tech Cocktail  |
WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER
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