Tech Cocktail’s SXSW Startup Celebration 2012 is a very special all day extravaganza. Working with our partners and sponsors, we will create a day long platform on Saturday, March 10th that will include entrepreneurial interviews similar to last year’s Tech Cocktail Delivering Happiness interview series and some private events (an outdoor rooftop BBQ, meetups, etc) – all culminating…
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It’s that time of the year again and because South by Southwest (SXSW) is a community-driven event, the organizers let the public have a big say in the programming – 30% to be exact – and one way you can get your voice heard is via the 2012 SXSW Panel Picker. Tech Cocktail has submitted…
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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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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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Social commerce has been on fire as daily deal sites have been helping to sell excess inventory for local businesses. LivingSocial along with Groupon have been leading the charge. We have been keeping our eye on both social commerce giants as they have both been valued at over a billion dollars. I got chance to…
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Pursuing a career as a media personality via the Web rather than taking on a job as a local news anchor, Shira Lazar has built up quite a resume and following. Shira is an EMMY nominated TV and Web Personality. She is the creator, producer and host of What’s Trending on CBSNews.com. She is also…
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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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Location based services have been hot for a few years now, motivating people to check-in to collect a badge or other virtual good and compete with others. One of the leaders in the space is Gowalla, an Austin based startup led by founder and CEO Josh Williams. Josh is an entrepreneur who has had other…
Read MoreIf there’s someone who knows a little about delivering happiness to people, it’s Ben Huh, founder and CEO of Cheezeburger, a network of humor sites where over 16.5 million people go each month to get their laugh on. Ben took some time out of his SXSW schedule to share his perspective on blogs vs books, failure, and business…
Read MoreAfter a week of polling, Austin-based startup Hurricane Party came out on top of our 2011 Hottest Startup at SXSW poll. Though group texting/chat was a hot trend at SXSW 2011, it seems that the real battle was between geo-location services that help connect people either in real-life or anonymously. Hurricane Party and Localmind battled…
Read MoreWe got a chance to talk with Foursquare CEO and Co-founder Dennis Crowley on the streets of Austin, Texas as South by Southwest last week. He shared his perspective on the interaction between mobile devices and humans and where he thinks location based services like Foursquare are going. He also explained what he is excited…
Read MoreDuring SXSW, we hosted 30 of the SXSW Accelerator finalists at our SXSW Tech Cocktail event. The 32 finalists were whittled down to 12 for the launchpad competition. They included news-related, social media, social networking, entertainment, music, and web technology startups. We also would like to point out that 5 of the 6 startups that…
Read MoreThis past week we sat down with two time New York Times bestselling author Tim Ferriss. His first book, The 4 Hour Work Week, shared an inspiring manifesto for freeing you from your cubicle so you can do more of what you love, while his most recent book, The 4 Hour Body, examines all the various health…
Read MoreIn the past, South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) has been a place where startups launch and make a big splash. In 2007 and 2008, Twitter was the buzz. The last two years, both Gowalla and Foursquare grabbed people’s real-time check-in attention. This year at SXSW, the hottest trend was group texting and chat. Throw in…
Read MoreTim O’Reilly, the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, the creators of books, magazines, conferences and events focused on sharing the knowledge of innovators, has been watching the bleeding edge of technology since the beginning of the Internet and open source software. We were able to talk with Tim this past week in Austin, Texas…
Read MorePeople have gathered together to play games like chess, checkers, jacks and mahjong, for pretty much forever. Classic games like these, based around real physical objects are the inspiration for Sifteo, a San Francisco-based company that has meshed this type of tactile, classic game fun along with full-color, motion-sensing technology.
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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