If you’ve ever been charged with event planning – in your job or otherwise – you know it can be an overwhelming and detail-driven process. From conventions and expos to festivals and high school reunions, event planning means having lots of balls in the air, so you’d better be a juggler, right? Austin-based Whindo is…
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It’s a fresh new year, but some of us might not be so excited about returning to the same office we were at in 2011. As you reflect back on the year behind you, do you find yourself thinking about new challenges or a change of scenery? How can you make it the best year…
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Michael Galpert, co-founder of Aviary, a New York City-based startup, joined me for a chat to share what inspired him to create his startup, why he loves that technology has enabled everyone to be connected and how he looks to help entrepreneurs, as well as share some personal stories about his journey as an entrepreneur….
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Today Keepstream was acquired by InfoChimps, an API marketplace, for an undisclosed amount. Launched last year as part of the Austin-based Capital Factory startup accelerator, Keepstream, which we covered previously, allows you to easily curate various social media streams and save them to use later (long after Twitter and other streams may have disappeared). It comes…
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A veteran of the startup world as creative lead at Threadless, Digg and others, Jeffrey Kalmikoff has been leading up the product team at San Francisco-based startup SimpleGeo. I got a chance to sit down with Jeffrey while at South by Southwest to discuss his role, experience, and share his advice for any entrepreneurs looking…
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DC-based Salsa Labs, which provides online organizing and fundraising solutions to nonprofits, associations, and political campaigns, has received a $5 million investment from Edison Ventures, a VC firm that focuses on emerging growth IT companies. Salsa Labs is definitely a startup success story in the making. They bootstrapped for several years and have grown into a…
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Gretchen Rubin has had amazing success with her 5th and most recent book, The Happiness Project. Of her previous books, some have succeeded while some never found an audience. When she took on her 5th book, she approached it differently: She found her audience ahead of time and leveraged the Web to build momentum, thus…
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Foursquare announced 10 million users in June with an amusing infographic. It also boasted a 6:1 ratio of “Yay!”s to “Ugh!”s in Foursquare check-ins, making their users “very happy people.” But one thing Foursquare users might be less happy about is that check-ins are for keeping tabs on your friends more than actually connecting with…
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For anyone with naturally straight hair who’s longed for curls and waves, it may sound absurd that people blessed with kinkier locks would have hair issues. But they do, and they spend more money on their hair than the rest of us – and it’s a sizable market. A couple of weeks ago I learned…
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If you read our story earlier today about the drop in VC funding, you might be a little panicked. However, all is not too depressing in the world of VC funding, as startup BlackLocus has raised a $2.5 million Series A round of venture capital financing. The round was co-led by Texas-based DFJ Mercury and…
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Many people don’t realize that you can actually get sick while in the hospital. Hospital-acquired infections are a significant problem in today’s healthcare facilities. In 2002, 1.7 million such infections either caused or contributed to almost 99,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Austin-based Xenex Healthcare Services has created a machine…
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For most students, Facebook is the perfect partner-in-crime if you want to procrastinate during finals week. But new Facebook application Hoot.Me is turning the social network into a collaborative study tool. Hoot.Me allows users to switch their Facebook experience into “study mode,” meaning that students can see what their friends are working on and join…
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I first interviewed Matt Galligan as he showed off SocialThing at the first Tech Cocktail Boulder mixer event in early March of 2008. SocialThing officially launched into private beta the next day at SXSW, and six months later was acquired by AOL. At that point, I went to work with Matt on lifestreaming and social…
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Being in business for the last 21 years, TicketCity.com founder and CEO Randy Cohen, has a lot of war stories. Randy joined us to share some of those stories as well as his tips on being a successful entrepreneur. It all started with a “big epiphany” which opened up Randy’s eyes on how to run…
Read MoreAustin-based Jackson Electronics is now taking pre-orders for its iRoc, a complete in-vehicle integration solution for the iPhone. iRoc replaces your vehicle’s existing radio, making your iPhone the source and control of your entertainment, navigation and communication systems. While seeking a way to integrate a Smartphone into his son’s new truck, iRoc’s founder developed a…
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We have talked with Garrett Camp before and marveled at the growth of his social recommendation engine, StumbleUpon. The site has been growing like a weed and sending around more social media traffic than Facebook or Twitter. Pretty impressive. We love StumbleUpon as it’s a great way to find new relevant content on the web via…
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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