The entrepreneur that brought you a wealth of hilarious and embarrassing text messages is now devoting her time to Banters, a platform for sharing quotes. Cofounder Lauren Leto started the site, then called Bnter, in 2010. It recently changed its name to Banters and launched a new iPhone app that integrates with Siri for recording…
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Conversion is king, at least in the land of online sales. You can run all the multivariate and A/B testing in the world, but when it comes to turning a prospect into a customer, there’s no replacement for a salesperson’s ability to overcome a buyer’s hesitations. Chat& makes this possible. With features such as live…
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Last March at SXSW, Tim O’Reilly called Fluidinfo his favorite startup. Three years earlier, Robert Scoble said it was “unfundable” but “world-changing” – yet Fluidinfo has since raised $1.3 million from investors including Esther Dyson and O’Reilly himself. Why is Fluidinfo garnering such praise, and why is it so hard to understand? Fluidinfo is basically…
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WITNESS, a nonprofit focused on documenting human rights abuses, has long been distributing cameras and training citizens to use them. But with cameras now available as software on smartphones, WITNESS has an opportunity to create a camera specifically designed to capture photos of human rights abuses, war crimes, and social justice issues. The first version…
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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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When I first checked out Remixt.us’s beta, I was a bit skeptical: it looked like a bunch of nice image collages, but I wasn’t sure why users would create them. But talking to cofounder Angela Min, I began to see how it could be beautiful and meaningful. Remixt.us’s bookmarklet lets you grab content from all…
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Have you been bouncing an idea for a great new product around in your head for a while, but unsure of how to get started to bring it to life? NYC-based startup Quirky is a social product development site – or online idea community – that gives anyone the chance to become a great inventor. …
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If the holidays are sneaking up on you this year, consider giving your friends a “cling.” iOS users on Clingle, a location-based social network, can now send holiday gifts – like $5 for a latte at Starbucks or $10 Fandango movie tickets. Best of all, they can make the gifts a “surprise,” so they don’t…
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Advertising is expensive. TV ads can cost millions of dollars to make – and then you have to hope your audience isn’t fast-forwarding right over your ad on their DVR. Advertising on mobile devices (tablets and smart phones included) run the same risk – will your audience even get your ad, let alone see it?…
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Three NYC-based, entertainment-related startups we have covered previously – 2 focus on food and drinks, 1 focuses on social TV watching – shared some fun updates with me over the past month: BiteHunter, which we covered in April when they demo’d at Tech Cocktail NYC, launched its second mobile app to add a few user-requested…
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We’re excited to announce that – just in time for holiday shopping – Goodzer has launched nationally. Last time we saw Goodzer (just about a year ago), the Reston, VA-based company was preparing to launch their beta service in New York City, helping consumers find the products they want at the best price, in real-time at the stores…
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Gojee, the curated recipe site that we covered previously, launched Gojee Drinks and announced over 200,000 members on Thursday. The new section has the same gorgeous photos and easy search of Gojee Food – with the ability to sort by what you have, crave, and don’t like – except the pages have names like non-alcoholic…
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Ray Madronio worked for 2 years with a housing provider in New York City building a network of rental properties. He is also a certified realtor in New York. So when it came time to work on a startup, housing was an obvious choice. Local Bigwig, cofounded by Madronio in 2010, is a platform for…
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I love buying gifts for people. When I shop, I’m always on the lookout for presents to buy for family and friends. Often, I buy gifts way ahead of time, to tuck away for the next special occasion. If you think gift giving is more of a chore than something to get excited about–or if…
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If you are looking for way to navigate around your city, you might want to check out the New York-based startup FlyKly. FlyKly offers a electric bicycle in two models: the sleek, forward-thinking Modern (shown here and above left) or the rugged, classical feel of the Vintage (shown here and above right). Both come at…
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The Pipeline Fellowship, an angel investing bootcamp for women, announced today 2 investments to boost the role of women investors. PhilanTech received $50k from the fellowship, and anothoer $55k from the fellowship’s alumnae network, Pipeline Angels. It is no surprise that the number of women in leadership positions at startups is small. While recent studies…
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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