Showing posts with label Startups. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Startups. Show all posts

Sunday, September 18, 2011

HealthTech FAIL: lessons for entrepreneurs from startups health gone awry

Train Wreck

Editor's Note: this is a guest post written by Dave Chase, CEO of Avado.com patient relationship management company, which was a finalist in the TechCrunch Disrupt. He was formerly a management consultant to medical practice, Accenture consulting for 25 hospitals and founder of Microsoft health business. You can follow him on Twitter @ chasedave.

Healthtech represents the sector is constantly growing, but from a pool of $ 1 billion that VCs poured into startups in the past year, medical companies only got about 3 per cent of the total. Not so many startups healthtech were able to provide these large enterprises cartridges; However, last week, I drew the attention of one company healthtech seem to be doing it right: Zocdoc, which raised $ 50 million round from summer time earlier this month and suggested some points to consider for startups looking to draw lessons from experiences in Zocdoc (check out the post here.

As the above company numbers from Rip in the post, a lot of startups have not yet really demonstrated the wisdom shown by Zocdoc, resulting in an increasing number of failures healthtech over the past few years. A recent study, inter alia, underlined the phenomenon. After interviewing 110 digital business health RockHealth has recently released the findings of the study, showing the gap between companies that actually receive funding and the many people who have come up empty.

This trip sheds light on why so many companies could not blow healthtech or had to undergo significant changes in order to survive. Below you will find some of the best reasons for startup failure healthtech:

The lack of specific attention or acceptance of terms

Is well known that insufficient attention kills startups in healthcare or not but it is especially common in health care. Healthcare industry suffers from an abundance of pain points and is in serious need of shocks, so it's tempting for new startups to try to resolve them to make the greatest impact. However, these startups ignores the old saying about how to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Too many startups biting off more than they can chew. It is better to choose one major pain to deal with and go with him.

Expected consumers to pay

With the exception of weight loss programs there are not many examples of consumers pay directly for health services. Over time, this may change, the greater burden of healthcare costs gets switched to consumers, as outlined in part II of a series of health disorders (see references below). Nevertheless, I would be very cautious of any business, expecting that consumers pay in the near-term.

Expected users to enter much information

Although I believe there are more reasons why Google Health is not expecting consumers to enter information is one of the major factors in why personal health records (PHR) failed to gain significant traction. Most of the PHR rely on individual data entry, and few are willing to do so.

Requires an enormous amount of money

This tends to occur during periods of bubble where there is a grand vision and frothy financial markets threw huge amounts of money. Eventually, they were not sustainable franchise.

Require multiple and complex partnership

These runs depends on too many partnerships are likely to run into problems, these partnerships often involve the established players. Unfortunately established players have significantly different sense of urgency. Many good ideas die on the vine, waiting for business development and legal departments on established players who do not share launch a sense of urgency.

There is no understanding of the dynamics of recovery

This is definitely the number one reason why healthtech startups failed. The results of the study RockHealth highlight an important aspect of this. On a positive note 77 per cent of the VCs think health IT investments will increase in the United States by the year 2011. Already 35 digital health care companies with $ 2 m + in year 2011. It is important to note that 80% of them receive funding are B2B (i.e. sale of health professionals in business, etc.), but most entrepreneurs digital health surveyed think consumers will pay for your product or service. Despite this most entrepreneurs digital health early build B2c companies.

Before it's too late, I hope these companies will find a way for anyone except consumers pay. This can be through advertising model or technology licensing for organizations. In this case, the consumer is a product, not the client. The client is an organization.

You can find a complete study of RockHealth in embedded below for your viewing pleasure:

The following is a series of health violations listed above:

Health violations: Pharma 3.0 will encourage the transition from life science investing HealthTech
Health violations: providers will use the HealthTech differentiate and produce better results (part II)
Health violations: providers do newspaper industry mistakes (part III)

Fragment image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons


Avado is a patient relationship management platform that enables health initiative, a partnership between the individual and their health & wellness vendors and gives individual health related records.

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Dave is CEO and co-founder of Avado. Avado is a patient relationship management platform that empowers a health partnership between individuals and their & health wellness providers during ...

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Friday, September 16, 2011

Killer startups? BlackBox releases report/application to help avoid Deadpool founders

RIP Empson-writer at TechCrunch. He did not find friends here, he is here to win and you don't forget it. You can contact him at rip [at] techcrunch [dot] com ? more

Screen shot 2011-08-29 at 12.01.59 PM

It's not just green — or entrepreneur. The inherent risk of becoming an entrepreneur or startup founders is high. Sleepless nights, sweat equity, bribing new users come to your product — it's all part of the nerves, spinning and teeth grinding process. That's why these thugs mainly pirates in nature. But it's true that question several startups to ever make it far enough to find a buried treasure or piggyback on Facebook before fame; in fact, cold, hard reality is that more than 90 per cent of all startups fail.

This is why four young international entrepreneurs (Ziba Herrmann, Max Marmer, Fadi Bishara, Alexander Markov) created a so-called report launch genome because they wanted a deep dive into what makes a successful launch — and that causes so many to drink from a cup of FAIL.

67-page report, created in collaboration with scientists from Stanford and Berkeley, collects data from 3200 startups to date in order to work towards the creation of foundations for a new foundation for a more effective assessment of startups — by measuring thresholds and main stages of development, navigate through the early stages of a Web company. (Read our initial coverage of the launch of the genome report here.)

The report, which has a comprehensive and scientific approach to the analysis of trends launch was a success; has been downloaded 15000 times and in more than 150 publications in 20 different languages. But perhaps more importantly, the report (and subsequent data, add new companies and entrepreneurs) has already begun to show some interesting results — this can actually benefit those very people analyze. Namely, co-founder of Ziba Lasse Herrmann tells me the number one cause of the startup failure: premature scaling.

Herrmann said that group study found that 90 per cent of the startups that are 70 percent scaled prematurely, which sometimes subtle and sometimes dramatic impact on the success (or lack thereof) of their business. Self-destructing and not competition is the bane of most startups, it seems.

Thus the team behind the report, which also created the business Accelerator, called Blackbox (designed for the use of data collected from their R&D projects), wants to move beyond static reports and a tool for startups that will help them to deal with this widespread problem of premature scaling.

Today team Blackbox produces start compass, a tool built to be a recipe for premature scaling by comparing the progress of the company "5 main interdependent aspects", according to Herman: customers, products, teams, business model and finance. Compass provides entrepreneurs with the dashboard for monitoring progress on these parameters, helping them better priorities on a monthly basis, as well as help them find any inconsistencies in these measurements.

According to Herrmann many startups have problems whose solution priorities follow, not to mention measuring their effectiveness once they do, "almost always land in the proverbial grey zone". He gave these issues as classic examples of start of uncertainty: "good 5 per cent, increase retention? I have enough users to announce product market fit? Currently, step on the gas pedal and scale? "

Compass, then, is a simple benchmarking tool to reduce this grey zone by evaluating the startup type and stage of development and then compare the data of other startups of the same type and the stage — on 25 core indicators, to help them better understand their current location (and the efficiency of their direction).

For those who wish to check the Compass beta you can find it here. BlackBox is looking for feedback from entrepreneurs and founders, too, as she wants tools that actually benefit those who are there in the wild and woolly world accent — not only to researchers. This joint project, Herman said, and one that can have real consequences more data it collects.

Readers who want to check the Blackbox mini genome report report Launch: additional premature scaling-up can be found here.


BlackBox set out to find a scalable way for faster startup. As part of our opening we started genome project start to uncover mechanics as startups ...

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Monday, September 5, 2011

(Founder of watches) Napkin Labs: Should startups pitch close to venture capital?

Josh Zelman works for TechCrunch, as producer, writer, editor and correspondent. ? Read More

Riley Gibson — CEO and co-founder of the Boulder-based napkin Labs, a startup that helps companies manage and involve their Facebook fans and twitter followers. Napkin Labs launched an updated version of the service today (read, napkin Labs allows brands to better understand their customers (and turn them into colleagues) to launch Gibson flew to New York to get advice on building your business during working hours with a hunch co-founder Chris founder Dixon and first round capital managing partner Josh Kopelman.

Based in Colorado, Gibson alleged that his company may be at a disadvantage, because it is not near large sources of venture capital. He wondered if the move will help. Kopelman don't think and react, saying, "I'm not sure it makes sense to go to be near VC ... I think you tend to move if you find that you're starved for talent, if you can't hire to fill positions at the right level. We financed companies throughout the country. "

Dixon chime in with a tongue-in-cheek response that is often better to abandon sources of venture capital.

After an exchange of Gibson asked Dixon and Kopelman on raising money. The question is the napkin Labs to try to reach the defined indicators to make money, or he doesn't worry about benchmarks and just go for it? Dixon and Kopelman take a similar position, with Kopelman, stating "probably makes sense to have just a handful of conversations, testing the appetite and the reaction of investors." he pointed out that you don't turn, fund-raising and shuts down, but rather is an ongoing process to attract sponsors.

Make sure to watch all the videos for additional ideas, along with previous episodes, the founder of the clock with a picture of Dispatch.io, Schedit and profitably.


Napkin Labs allows you to easily locate information from your fans, followers and customers. Our online platform provides tools for market research, brainstorming and rapid, simple, product evaluation ...

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Company
Josh Kopelman is a venture capitalist and managing partner of first round capital. Previously, Kopelman founded Half.com which was acquired by eBay in 2000 year. He remained with eBay for ... Read More

Chris Dickson currently works as Director and co-founder of hunch. He is also a contributing writer for TechCrunch. He was previously CEO and co-founder of SiteAdvisor, which ...

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Sunday, August 28, 2011

From mobile games to the connected car: Sneak peak at Gazelle laboratory first 6 startups

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Earlier today, new TechStars Network member, the Tampa Bay-based Gazelle Lab, announced its first full round of program participants. This 3-month, mentor-driven program based on the TechStars model is one of the first of its kind to emerge in the Tampa Bay region –  a region that’s been pushing to become a new home to technological and entrepreneurial innovation.

This first group includes some unique companies, like a location-based mobile platform for sharing digital media, an app that connects to your car to diagnose those baffling “check engine” messages and an online ordering system for restaurants that puts big company technology into the hands of SMBs, just to name a few. We got a sneak peak at all 6 of the new companies today, and are now eagerly awaiting their launches later this fall.

While a group of 6 is small compared with other accelerator programs’ outputs, for Tampa Bay, it’s a notable number. This under-the-radar geographic region, which was previously home to Wikipedia before its 2007 relocation to California as well as the recently acquired website builder Wufoo, isn’t really on the map of notable “tech hotspots.” But Gazelle Lab is hoping to change that with its new program for early stage startups.

Below are today’s Gazelle Labs’ first participants, all of which are in various stages of development. The startups will launch this fall, when they present to potential investors at Gazelle Labs’ Demo Day event.

AutoIQ

AutoIQ is a combination gadget and HTML5-based mobile application that listens to your car in order to save you money. The company sells an off-the-shelf diagnostic gadget that connects to the onboard diagnostic (OBD) port of your vehicle. There are several different payment options for the service’s users. For $50, you receive the gadget and a year of service. You can also choose to buy your own gadget from a third-party and pay just $3/month for the service, or you can choose to pay $5/month for both the gadget and the service on a subscription basis. The OBD port is a standard port, accessible on all modern vehicles without having to get your hands dirty poking around under the hood. The gadget, which the company calls the “translator,” listens to the car’s computer and then “translates” those mysterious error messages into understandable language. Messages can come to you through push notifications, text messages, emails or via the AutoIQ online service. How bad is that “check engine” message, for example? Do you really need an air filter, as your mechanic says?

In addition, AutoIQ not only makes it easier to understand what your car is trying to tell you, it will also help you find the best prices for servicing your vehicle in town. Repair shops will eventually be able to tap into the data AutoIQ generates and target offers to groups of customers. Pricing for that aspect of the service is still being worked out, however. The service will launch first in Tampa Bay and will then roll out to Southern California, followed by the rest of the U.S.

CityQuest

CityQuest is a new (in-development) mobile application that transforms normal metropolitan landscapes into adventure-filled mini-games that “promote local commerce and vanquish boredom.” While operating in the same general space as Foursquare and Gowalla, the app doesn’t see itself as competing directly with those “check in” based networks. Its goal is slightly different – promote local discovery, encourage users to “get out of the house” and explore their city, visit popular landmarks, discover new businesses and patronize those which are their favorites.

Instead of checkins, the game will utilize “quests” – simple and fun tasks that enable users to earn badges and points and acquire gold. But unlike other apps that employ gamification techniques, CityQuest doesn’t want the rewards users earn to be meaningless. That’s why players can choose to donate gold they earn to local charities, community groups or schools in the form of actual cash. And regular users who acquire “experience points” will actually be able to help shape the game’s future development, suggesting businesses that should be included in future quests, for example. Of course, there may be a “deals” angle, too, where gold could lead to discounts at local stores, but that’s further down the road. The app will initially launch on one mobile platform this fall, and will then be ported to more platforms in the future. CityQuest also tied for first place at Tampa Bay’s Startup Weekend last month.

Dropost.it

Dropost.it, another mobile app that emerged from Tampa Bay’s first Startup Weekend, allows you to “drop” text messages and media in a geographical area for others to receive when they get there. That media can be music, video, photos, games, or any other digital file. The best way to understand Dropost.it is to think of it as sort of “location-based graffiti.” It’s not designed to be a niche experience, but rather a location-based platform for sharing media. There are several possible uses for this sort of technology, ranging from geo-fenced location-based reminders to in-store promotions where the app’s users receive discounts at local businesses. But the most intriguing thing about this app is how it attaches a real-world location to the online, virtual world.

Using Dropost.it, you could see a video of an interesting event that happened at particular spot. Or maybe you discover a simple game to play while waiting in the long line at the bank. Or you arrive at the grocery store, and get a message from your roommate to pick up some milk. Messages posted to Dropost.it can be set to public or private, as desired. It will also integrate with social networks, like Twitter, Facebook and Google+, to enable friend discovery. Dropost.it will be available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone when it launches later this fall.

Leads Direct, Inc.

Leads Direct, LLC is an online lead aggregator and cost-per-lead provider for multiple service-based verticals. That description is being kept fairly high-level because the company’s founders are still at their day jobs. This company is taking a different approach from the other startups in Gazelle Lab in that it isn’t disruptive in terms of the core service being offered, but in the way that the service works. Lead generation is a business that’s been around for some time, and has a sound business model, the founders explain, but the company plans on making some changes to address specific needs in each vertical they target. The company will initially target property management and real estate, where it will provide advertisers with more control over budgets, a better understaning of where ad dollars are being spent and itemized billing – all things its competitors currently lack. In short, Leads Directo will offer a Google AdWords-like toolset for acquiring leads.

Red Hawk Interactive, Inc.

Red Hawk Interactive plans to integrate restaurant listings and menu ordering systems into streaming video services. While it can’t discuss specifics, the company says it’s in talks with a well-known streaming video brand. And it’s currently reaching out to others in the same market. To give you an idea of the clients RedHawk has in mind, streaming video services like Netflix, Hulu, or Boxee are the types of targets the company is interested in talking with. RedHawk would provide a way for these service to display links to restaurants via the screen that loads before you start the movie. For example, under the movie’s description, would be a simple option that read something like “Order Food.” Clicking the link would take you to a list of participating restaurants with online ordering systems. The way this interface would look and operate is up to the streaming video provider, as this would be a white label product only.

However, RedHawk’s goal is not to function as an ad platform. That means local restaurants are not buying the links, or paying for a higher position. Instead RedHawk pulls from menu providers’ lists, and filters those by zip code in order to suggest the available restaurants to end users, along with delivery times and delivery areas. The customer would then be walked through a simplified online ordering system. RedHawk isn’t the final product name for the service, which has been in development since April.

Teburu

Teburu (Japanese for “table”) provides a web-based and mobile platform for restaurants to easily manage their online and mobile ordering services. For small to medium-sized restaurants, it’s still a challenge to get the information from the ordering system to the kitchen, says Teburu. Typical third-party systems often forgo expensive point-of-sale (POS) integration and instead phone the restaurant, fax in orders or send orders via email. Teburu makes POS integration a more affordable option, or restaurants can opt for the company’s specially designed HTML5 tablet application which runs on locked-down mobile hardware and software, like a customized version of Android, for example. The app will alert order takers to incoming orders via flashes or beeps. Then staff simply inputs the order in their own system.

The overall goal is to provide SMBs with the same level of control over their menus and online ordering presence as larger companies have. The product will be white-labeled so restaurants can control own branding. A mobile app framework is also in development which would allow restaurants to take orders via a branded mobile application. Teburu already has a large chain testing the service right now, but will open up to others later this year.


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Monday, August 15, 2011

DreamIt ventures graduates 15 startups in New York

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Tech Accelerator DreamIt Ventures is holding its Demo Day for its New York class of startups today. The 15 companies include students and alumni from top academic institutions like Harvard Business School, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University and Carnegie Mellon University. Several of the founders also have past work experience at companies including Yahoo, Microsoft, American Express, and McKinsey.

This event is the first opportunity for media and investors to see the startups present their ideas. There will be 250 to 300 people, almost all investors, attending today’s presentation.

DreamIt Ventures was founded in 2007 in Philadelphia, and ran its first class of startups in summer 2008. The firm provides common accelerator services, such as shared office space, a cash stipend for developers, a variety of donated services to help developers with legal and accounting issues, PR assistance, a speaker series with tips from investors, an advisory board consisting of early stage entrepreneurs, and, most importantly, one-on-one mentorship for the participating companies.

After having received several hundred applications for inclusion in this year’s program, DreamIt narrowed down the applicants to just 15 startups.

For the second year in a row, five of the companies were selected in partnership with Startl, the non-profit social enterprise dedicated to accelerating digital innovations for learning, from kindergarten to college, both in and out of the classroom.

The full list of graduates is below.

1DocWay

1DocWay brings the doctor’s office online. Patients can interact with their doctor over a secure video chat platform offering increased access to clinical care, especially for the rural, elderly, disabled and busy. As a result, physicians receive additional revenue generating opportunities and scheduling flexibility.

The platform is live and in a closed alpha with anchor clients using 1DocWay in varying clinical applications, including a $35 million psychiatric health system with 75 clinicians, 94 beds and 6 outpatients clinics.

AfterSteps

AfterSteps is an online end-of-life planning service that simplifies death preparation, just like TurboTax does for tax preparation. AfterSteps enables users to create a complete end-of-life plan, store it, and then transfer it to designated family members upon death, ensuring that they have this critical information when they need it most.

AfterSteps was a finalist in StartUp2011, Silicon Valley Baby Boomer’s Conference, and Harvard Business School’s Business Plan Competition. It’s currently a finalist in MassChallenge. While at DreamIt, AfterSteps launched its initial version, acquired its first paying subscribers, signed its first distribution contract, and was featured in Forbes.

AppAddictive

AppAddictive utilizes “Apps” and “Ads” (Appvertizements) in a marketing platform for businesses to acquire customers through social media. It integrates content, ad campaigns, messaging and analytics into one platform so businesses can optimize connections, commerce and advertising in social media.

By removing the multiple steps of advertising across different social networks, AppAddictive makes it easy for businesses to interact with their fans and make them buy.

AppAddictive also makes it easy for businesses to acquire customers from user generated web content, a Facebook platform of social apps and ad network. They have paying clients and are currently generating ad revenues from millions of impressions per month.

AppBrick

AppBrick provides robust mobile solutions for content producers. BookBrick™ and StoryBrick™ empower authors and publishers to easily create, launch and manage powerful apps via an intuitive, web-based interface – no programming required. AppBrick-powered apps deliver a rich, social and engaging new reading experience to consumers across multiple platforms. At the same time, AppBrick provides smart analytics and introduces new direct marketing and sales channels to authors and publishers. It also provides a new way for authors and publishers to reach and connect with their audience.

BookBrick™ enhances digital books with rich-media, productivity tools and social features, while StoryBrick™ easily converts digital children books into an interactive, customizable storyboard.

Clothes Horse

Clothes Horse is a platform that enables consumers to shop for clothing across retailers with a single user profile. It’s like a Facebook Connect for fashion, they say.

Their first product is a Saas solution that retailers plug into their website which recommends the best fitting clothes based on a shopper’s body size and favorite past purchases. As users provide more information about their wardrobe in each shopping experience, a Fashion Graph is created that connects users, brands, and clothes.

Retailers want this because it tackles their top friction points today: successfully turning shoppers into customers and minimizing returns. The company is currently working with brands both large and small who have signed up for DreamIt’s Charter Partner Program.

Cognection

Cognection commercialized three decades of research in consumer psychology and behavioral economics, similar to Dan Ariely’s work in the book Predictably Irrational, to generate a new type of product recommendation engine that makes the online retail experience more meaningful for consumers and more profitable for retailers.

Recommendations combine the most important product attributes with implicit user preference data to enhance the customer experience with easier choice justification. Conceptually, Cognection focuses on the following: “Given what we know about your preferences, here are the best products for you. Now let’s get you there faster and construct product comparisons that make those products even more attractive.”

The company identifies, quantifies,and fixes human irrationality, it says, “to nudge consumers to direct customers through the conversion funnel in a manner optimized for better choices that end frustration in e-commerce.”

Hoot.Me

Hoot.Me is a Facebook application that allows students to switch Facebook into study mode. With Hoot, students are able to see what their friends are working on and collaborate inside of Facebook.

For example, if a student is working on calculus homework, Hoot lets the student see in real-time all of his or her friends working on calculus. He or she can then browse through old study sessions or create a new session to collaborate from within Facebook using group video conferencing, screen sharing, and smart chat (which allows typed math equations to be automatically reformatted to look the way they would in a textbook). If friends are not available or can not answer the question, Hoot enables tutors to connect with those who need their help via an affordable transaction fee.

KeepIdeas

KeepIdeas helps consumers organize and collaborate on decisions in the cloud. It’s a social “Evernote for verticals.” Engaged members are already keeping 30,000 ideas -including recipes, hotels, couches, homes, and more.

Growing by focusing on vertical markets, partners of its primary product, KeepRecipes, range from Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto to iVillage, with “more exciting announcements on the way.” The platform will eventually expand to KeepTravel, KeepDecor, KeepHomes, and more.

LearnBop

Learning one-on-one from an individual tutor has been shown to increase a student’s performance by an entire letter grade. Unfortunately, it is economically impossible for every student to have their own personal tutor. Until now.

LearnBop’s authoring tool enables tutors to create interactive math and science problems online that respond to and learn from a student’s incorrect responses with real-time clues, as a tutor would in a one-on-one scenario. Using LearnBop’s
proprietary platform, college students have reduced the amount of time it takes to create such lessons for the calculus curriculum from 12 months to 2 months. Some LearnBop lessons are open sourced and can be modified for local use, while premium lessons are available for sale in LearnBop’s online marketplace. Clients include Carnegie Mellon University and CUNY and many others are currently in beta.

LetsGiftIt

Let’s Gift It is a platform for social gifting. It gives online retailers a plug-in tool which allows multiple contributions towards high ticket items on their registry,
wish-list and product pages. By socializing the buying experience for high ticket/high margin products, the company helps online retailers generate incremental revenue and increase average order value while helping gift givers collaborate on high-end gifts.

Pandaly

Pandaly creates interactive games that provide users a better way to discover, rate, and share discounts with friends. Through these experiences, Pandaly collects information on individual preferences which it uses to recommend the most relevant deals to each consumer.

Pandaly recently released its first experience, The Daily Deal Showdown, in which users are presented two deals and asked to choose their favorite. Other games are due this fall.

Re-Vinyl

Re-Vinyl is a mobile application that connects musicians and related brands to their fans to increase fan engagement and revenue opportunities for the band and brands.

Within this context, Re-Vinyl provides a number of services for the bands and their fans. Among other features, it provides a platform where musicians and related brands can tell and sell their story on their terms and which includes a
toolkit where fans can collaboratively remix, respond, and purchase musical content.

TakeTheInterview

Take The Interview is a cloud-based video interviewing platform for employers and candidates.

As an employer, you know in the first few minutes of meeting someone if that candidate is not a fit for your organization. Many interviewers waste valuable time and resources interviewing candidates that could be screened prior to the in-person interview.

Take The Interview provides a time-saving filter between the resume review and the in-person interview, by offering asynchronous (not-live), under-5-minute interviews that employers can control and review at their convenience.

Take The Interview launched during the summer and already has over 80 beta customers.

Pictour.us

Pictour offers a marketplace for photo tours that you can use whenever you travel to a new city or even to discover new things to do in the city in which you live.  Pictour allows anyone to create and publish photo tours that are displayed on an engaging interactive map that can be easily browsed on the web, a smartphone, or downloaded for offline use right in the traveler’s pocket.


Financial-organization:
DREAMIT VENTURES

DreamIt Ventures is a venture capital firm specializing in incubation and seed investments. The firm seeks to invest between $10,000 and $30,000 in each company. The organization was founded...

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Sunday, August 7, 2011

Startups on TV: TechStars teams up with Bloomberg offer inside look at building a business

RIP Empson-writer at TechCrunch. He did not find friends here, he is here to win and you don't forget it. You can contact him at rip [at] techcrunch [dot] com ? more

name-that-reality-tv-star-may-9-2011-600x600

Move American Idol, and when you hover the Survivor? There is a new reality show (okay, a documentary reality series) in the town, but fortunately nobody was getting voted off the island. In this version of the tech TV he launches and their founders iteration, scrambling through the feature sets and compete for the affection of the investors.

This is a great premise, as the reality surrounding the early stage of the launch may be kinetic: this may well be a car chase in Bullitt, of course, but this is of course the hard, fast, and if the founders play their cards can have a significant impact on the future success of their company (better).

But, in General, the early evolution of startups — and the role of major technological incubators in promoting this growth is taking place behind closed doors. Or low rent, common premises, with lots of empty pizza boxes. Now thanks to a partnership between the TechStars and Bloomberg TV, all eyes will get a comprehensive look at what it's like to be the founder of the command to start a glove at the advanced technology incubator.

This miniseries "reality-documentary", entitled "techstars" will be the Prime Minister on September 13 at 9 pm, with six episodes, passes through 18 October. It will air on Bloomberg TV on cable and online.

As for the participants: the series will feature 11 startups who participated in the programme of the New York City TechStars, which took place from January this year in early April and includes OnSwipe immersion Labs, Nestio, singer, ToVieFor, Shelby tv RedRover, MigrationBox, CrowdTwist, FriendList and ThinkNear.

David Tisch, Managing Director of TechStars in New York and David Cohen, founder and CEO of TechStars, both of which featured in the show, tell me what viewers can expect a real glimpse of what it's like TechStars company: "all this is 100% real and representative" what it means to be part of the incubator.

TechStars have multiple networks, looking to make a reality type shows on business-incubator, but ultimately chose Bloomberg TV saying that for the reasons stated above. They want to be objective, evidence-based series that captured the essence of what it is like to be the founder is actually an incubator and not over-a well-produced and skewed in favor of the dramatization. Bloomberg seemed like the right fit.

Of course, that being said, Cohen and Tisch assured me that there will be some drama-run drama, of course. Yes, there will be a few changes. But not to overestimate: I hope it will be "objective" look at what it's like taking the idea to execution, developing feasible business model, user search and discovering the best way to pitch to investors.

Viewers can also expect cameos many of TechStars mentors in New York, including immodestly founder Dennis Crowley, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Jeff Clavier SoftTech VC, Chris Dixon (founder collective, hump), Alexandra Wilson (seated gilt Groupe), Gary Vaynerchuk and "tens" anymore. You can check the list of TechStars mentor here.

Moreover it should also be interesting to watch Bloomberg Television Council of the judiciary, along with Cohen and Tisch and many TechStars mentors open business models and offer startups and sharp criticism of their founders and tips as they move through the program, the reality show style.

All eleven of the startups make an appearance in the series, although some of them on camera, more than others. TechCrunch covers some of these companies, which you can check out here for OnSwipe, Nestio, immersive laboratories, singer and ThinkNear. Seven of the 11 startups TechStars Winter programs also went on to raise funding, since several soon to close the Tisch and Cohen said. So maybe a good demo day at the store. As long as it's better than the last episode of The Sopranos, I.

Currently open applications for Boston's Winter programme and New York in the spring, and you can apply here.

«Techstars» trailer to see the video below:


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