Every startup pivots at least once during alpha or private beta to improve their concept and/or open up new markets or applications. This has certainly been the case for DC-based Restin Chairs, which was called Restin Digital when I first met co-founders Barry Womack and Frank Taylor last month. Their story is almost a perfect…
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Fresh off their official launch at SXSW, where they were a showcased startup at our #StartupLife Celebration and competed in the SXSW Accelerator as 1 of 48 startups, Votifi is poised to have a very busy year. Launching during a roller coaster of a campaign season that is preceding a presidential election in the fall,…
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Venga spent 8 months “gold plating” their first product: an app for browsing nearby restaurant specials and events. It had the catchy feature names (like A List and Rutbuster), the exclusive deals, even a prize involving a Top Chef – and was available on iPhone, Android, and Blackberry all at once. But as Venga worked…
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Society is becoming ever more transparent. What we’re doing, who we’re doing it with, and where we’re doing it is now being broadcast for any and all who wants to see. Not all information is meant to be shared openly and freely however. Your breakfast burrito, sure (if you must). Your wi-fi password, probably not. What…
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Last week a movement was launched to provide students with inspiring opportunities at leading tech companies. SummerQAmp is a nationwide initiative to train a new workforce in high-tech skills and help create tech jobs for young Americans. SummerQAmp was developed as a commitment to the White House’s Summer Jobs+ initiative and as a call to…
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There’s no doubt that professional networking could work better. At least that’s the premise behind the new wave of web and mobile apps aiming to make the experience more efficient. Earlier this week it was Shortlist. Today it’s TappedIn. In a nutshell, Zainab Zaki, TappedIn co-founder, promises that her service will “make every conversation matter.” Because,…
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Founder Guy Wolcott of DC-based startup Sawbuck wants to change real estate. “We saw how anti-consumer the real estate business was. Real estate brokers hoarded access to the secret MLS data to protect their old models. So we wanted to give consumers more control – starting with giving them easy access to more information and…
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The Fort, a DC-based startup accelerator that launched earlier this year, is quickly becoming a center point in the DC area. With its office space granted by DC Mayor Vincent Gray, the Fort currently houses thirteen early-stage startups as it looks to offer a hybrid accelerator model for the DC region. Today, the Fort, lead by…
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Imagine this: you attend SXSW with basically just an idea for a startup. You haven’t started coding yet, you are weeks or months away from alpha, but you go anyway and talk to anyone who will listen to you, like Robert Scoble, who then tweets about you, which is picked up by someone at a…
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Getting a new social application to go mainstream is getting harder to achieve (not that easy was ever an option). Although the market for these applications is still growing, there already exists the pre-established favorites. For every Pinterest and Instagram, there are ten social startups that’ll fail without your even hearing their name. So instead of…
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When we first covered Feastie last September, we had decided that 2011 was the year of the recipe site. Despite the very crowded market they are operating in, Feastie, a DC-based recipe search site that generates shopping lists based on what you want to cook, has continued to grow, evolve, and stay competitive. Part of…
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If you are a super busy startup founder, always out on the road doing business development, talking to funders and potential partners, and pretty much tethered to your smartphone, imagine how much easier your life would be if you could instantly get a lot of information about the person calling you. Is that person the…
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Many of us spent last night with our eyes glued to the TV and our fingers glued to our keyboards during the Oscars. Meanwhile, social analytics platform AddThis was humming away monitoring our social media activity. Below are some insights (as interpreted by me) from their data. Everyone loves Pinterest. AddThis saw Oscar-related sharing on…
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“And what I’m interested in, is investing in people.” – Arthur Rock A company can have the best concept for a product/service, perfect timing, and an endless access to capital, but without the right people, a startup’s days are numbered. It’s the difference between the Titanic sinking and safely landing an engineless plane in the Hudson….
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Raise your hand if you’ve worked at hourly retail or hospitality job. Yeah, a lot of us have. Remember filling out paper applications and scheduling interviews with the manager – which of course meant you had to travel to their location at least twice? A new DC-based startup called JobOn wants to change that decades-old…
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Whether you’re selling tickets to a small yoga class or a large concert venue, this process can be synonymous with headache. On one hand, you have the customizable software option, but that’s a massive upfront cost. On the other, you can use a third-party client, but they’re going to ask for a large slice of the pie….
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Two months after the iPad 2 debuted in March, around 40% of users surveyed said their iPad was their primary computer, up from around 30%... Read More
There are a number of startup accelerator and incubator programs in the United States. We are fans of these programs (not to be confused with... Read More
We are excited to announce the participating startups for Tech Cocktail's South by Southwest (SXSW) event: #Startuplife Celebration presented by .CO. It was one of... Read More
With our Startup Mixology Conference coming up next week followed by our classic Tech Cocktail DC Summer mixer which will showcase a handful of early-stage... Read More