Pinterest has opened new doors (one being to Tech Cocktail’s new Pinterest account). They’ve created an entirely new means for how people consume images and videos. They’ve raised the bar for how people share and interact with images. And because Pinterest has changed how the masses browse media, there now exists an ocean of untapped…
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Let’s be honest – trying to one-up your friends is an effective way to constantly improve upon yourself and become the best version of you. And it’s just plain fun. James Dickerson and his team know this – it’s why they’re launching Leap, an app that allows users to create challenges with their Facebook friends…
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Last summer I wrote about ParkingPanda, a mobile, real-time parking discovery tool that lets users rent out their underutilized spaces to a community of drivers. Since then, ParkingPanda has grown in Baltimore and will be launching in Washington, DC in about one month. I checked in with co-founder Nick Miller to hear about what’s new…
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Last week, Fiksu, one of our showcased startups in Boston last September, announced the results of their December indexes, which looked at app store competitiveness and the cost of mobile app marketing. I was curious as to what this data meant for startups and mobile app developers. As it turns out – a lot. If…
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Arqball’s bootstrapping founders, Abhi Shelat and Jason Lawrence, are having a blast making visualization technology for education and scientific use. Their newest product, Arqball Spin, will be debuting at SXSW in March. Arqball Spin is like YouTube for 3D. It lets you capture, author, annotate and share 3D visualizations of objects using your phone or…
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Now that Timeline is becoming mandatory, Facebook users are scrambling – some begrudgingly – to pick cute and clever cover photos. For the uninspired, a new Android app helps you choose cover photos that are sure to pick up some “likes.” Facebook Timeline Covers: D33P lets you input photos from your albums, your newsfeed, or…
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Three years ago, James Khoo’s sister drove her car into a tree and was knocked unconscious. She was hurried to the hospital with the help of passers-by, but Khoo and his family didn’t know what happened for several days. “Those 3 days were very torturous for us,” he recalls. Inspired by that experience, and a…
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For a new generation of students, “test prep” will no longer conjure up the image of sleepy, 3-hour Kaplan classes or 10-pound Barron’s SAT books. One startup ushering in the digital age of studying is Chicago-based BenchPrep, backed by Lightbank. Founded in 2009, BenchPrep has recruited more than 150,000 students to their online learning platform…
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Imagine turning on the pipes and seeing no water flow. Instead, you spend hours waiting for it to be turned on so your family doesn’t go thirsty. This is normal for millions of households in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, reports NextDrop. The San Diego startup sends text messages to locals in Hubli, India, alerting…
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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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Miami is known more for their beaches, babes, boats, and bars than startups. VaultBox.me could change that – in more ways than one. This brand new startup that launched last week is a cloud-based inventory management system that lets you easily list all the items you own using your iPhone (download the app here) or…
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As an enthusiastic writer and reader, I’m excited for the release of Quotogram, an app for discovering, organizing, and sharing quotes. You can view recent, popular, or your friends’ quotes, and search by author, keywords, and tags. If your favorite quote is nowhere to be found, you can submit it (or correct any misquotes). The…
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But why? Anyone with children has likely heard the above question more times than they can recount. Sure, you can just answer, “Because I said so,” but as soon as you’re not there to say so, they won’t. If you’re trying to get your kids interested in art, forcing them to attend a class and…
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Launching last week as part of 500 Startups’ third class, eSpark Learning is leveraging iPad apps to make learning more engaging for young students. “Consider a typical student’s modern entertainment options – iPods, iPads, Wii, Nintendo, Xbox, video games, social networks, HD television, 3D movies. Why are we mostly using sophisticated technology to merely entertain…
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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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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