Craigslist, you best watch your back: others have you in their crosshairs. The next attempt at disrupting the local marketplace giant comes from Uniiverse, “the world’s marketplace for collaborative living.” Think Airbnb for a wider set of services and skill sharing- a mojito tasting class (put on by the Uniiverse CEO no less), a ride share from Berkeley to…
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As someone who has spent his last three months in the liberal haven that is Boulder, Colorado, it’s hard to imagine that there are any fast food restaurants still in business out here. The only thing Boulderites seem to agree on more than politics is their health. If it isn’t free range, organic, hormone-free, and…
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Anyone who has been through team building exercises before knows how truly painful they can be. Someone tosses a NERF football at you, you nervously dig through your memory bank for a story that makes you stand out from the crowd, while simultaneously learning very little about your colleagues and feeling like you’re wasting your…
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Entrepreneurs tend to have really interesting back stories, but I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s super rare to meet one who went from attorney to retail manager to entrepreneur. “I started working at Best Buy because I kept asking my little brother for discounts,” said Will Fuentes, CEO and co-founder of Lemur…
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Imagine this: you wait too long to buy a plane ticket to Austin for SXSW, and now you need to drive 1,500 miles or so. From, like, Washington, DC. But that’s OK, you just recruit friends who also waited too long to buy their tickets and turn it into a road trip – a mobile…
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It’s not quite Groupon for nightlife; at least don’t say that to Poggled CEO and Co-Founder Joe Matthews. “I hate that. Our business is so different. We do events, not daily deals,” says Matthews. Matthews’ aversion to the comparison is fair – there are differences. Although it’s hard to deny the similarities. Timely Deals At 1pm,…
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The future of mobile notifications is here. Scenario: You’re running Coachella – a wildly popular indie, hip hop, and electronica music festival based out of Indio, California. You want to step up your user experience this year, and because of its ubiquity, you know that mobile devices are right route to make this happen. However, you…
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An amazing thing happens when you are socially connected. When your Facebook friends expand from the cities you have lived in to your past jobs, or you find yourself in a complete life change that pushes you to meet new people, you want to get past the online to meet people in person…a novel concept…
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When Jay Chahil started working in DC, he’d go out to lunch with coworkers every day – like most young professionals. “I began to realize that everyone else was pretty much doing the same thing and missing out on meeting new people. I also noticed a lot of people eating alone,” he said. “I wanted…
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Today is the beta launch of Voucheres, a web app for finding nearby discounts in Malaysia. Partnering with brands like the Body Shop, Converse, and San Francisco Coffee, it is launching in a “megamall” called Mid Valley in Kuala Lumpur. Cofounder Fadzli Shah Anuar began his entrepreneurial journey on a mountaintop in Venezuela. Instead of…
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It’s Friday. Your plans just fell through. It’s 8pm – the night isn’t getting any younger. You’ve worked hard all week, and you’re determined play. You don’t know what to do. More accurately, you don’t know what there is to do. Sponto does. This DC-headquartered, location-based social networking mobile app allows users to see what…
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Earlier this year Tech Cocktail covered the DC-based immediate response service provider/contact platform Urgnt.ly. Today, they have officially launched. Under the old model, in order to get an appointment with a service provider (the cable guy, electrician, tow truck service, etc), you’d have to first locate the provider’s phone number, make the call, fight through some…
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In late 2009, Sonpreet Bhatia, Puneet Mehta, and Archana Patchirajan had a moment of inspiration – create a useful tool for discovering New York City. It was the dream of creating this tool that led all three of them to leave their VP-level technology jobs on Wall Street. Unlike a lot of ex-Wall Street folks,…
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Have you ever picked up a product in-store, continued to browse for a bit, and while you were waiting in line you were struck with a case of buyer’s remorse before ever reaching the register? The voice in your head started saying that you were purchasing on impulse – you know nothing about the product,…
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Tell me if this has happened to you. You receive your local Groupon or LivingSocial deal of the day. The offer strikes your fancy; you purchase without hesitation. The printed voucher sits in the middle console of your car for weeks on end as you aimlessly drive past the offerer’s establishment during your daily commute….
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Scenario #1: It’s two days before Christmas. You’re broke. You still need to get last-minute gifts for your colleague, racquetball partner, and cousin. What…Do…You…Do? Answer: Antengo it. Question: What is Antengo? Antengo is the mobile solution for local marketplaces; think Craigslist meets Twitter. Antengo brings free classifieds to smartphones (Craigslist) in 140 characters or less (Twitter)…
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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
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
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
Coming off of one of our biggest Tech Cocktail mixer events in Chicago this past week, which showcased 14 early-stage start-ups, we thought it would... Read More