Yesterday I wrote about a company that gets it, when it comes to rewarding customers for doing some of the marketing legwork for them. Social Rewards is another clued-in startup that realizes a simple “thank you” – in the form of rewards, of course – can go a long way in building brand loyalty and…
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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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Milwaukee residents have a new way to save and share with local online advertising startup Offermation. The company is integrating word of mouth marketing into the daily deal model and has earned kudos as an alternate in the 2012 SXSW Accelerator Program in the Innovative Web Technologies category. Not just another daily deal marketplace, Offermation…
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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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Chito Peppler served for 20 years in the U.S. Navy, but lately he has traded his uniform for the casual dress of the entrepreneur. “After serving in the military, I wanted to start my own business. I knew how to take orders – now I wanted to be able to make them,” says Peppler. Peppler’s…
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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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During one lunch hour in 2010, reporter Travis Lowry was listening to NPR and heard about the It Gets Better project, with inspirational videos encouraging LGBT youth to believe that life will improve. Lowry decided that rather than telling them it gets better in the future, he would help them get better now. Launched this…
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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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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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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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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 a US Airways plane landed in the Hudson River on a freezing January day in 2009, some of the earliest photos came from users posting to Twitter and Flickr. Now, a new app called Spread is helping more user-generated photos make the news. Spread lets amateur and professional photographers submit their work for news…
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Plink, a Facebook Credits-based loyalty program that rewards Facebook users for their offline purchases, officially launched yesterday. The concept isn’t new: Sign your credit or debit card up on their website, make a purchase from one of the participating restaurants or retailers, and start earning rewards. What makes Plink different is the blending between offline and…
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If you are just starting a business or creating a new product line or service offering, I bet you’re struggling to come up with a name for it. That’s not surprising—good branding is hard work. It takes dedicated time, thoughtfulness, and research. Here are three sure-fire ways from an intellectual property perspective that can really…
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Tech Cocktail has been a supporter of the Startup America Partnership since its inception early last year, and now the organization is getting ready to celebrates its first anniversary (next week)! How time flies. It’s been exciting to watch the organization blossom and roll out various programs for entrepreneurs, from Startup Illinois, the first state to launch a program…
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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
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
We are excited to announce the participating startups for Tech Cocktail's South by Southwest (SXSW) event: #Startuplife Celebration presented by .CO. It was one of... 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