August 17, 2010
talentGraphz
Record: Mowbi 
Funding Status: Bootstrapped, Seed
Founders Backgrounds: T-ShirtKing.com, Shipyard Brewing Company
Investors: Seeking investment
Industry: Mobile Application
Offering Description:
Mowbi is a mobile commerce platform for everybody.
Mowbi includes a mobile store, mobile billing and invoicing system, a mobile credit card terminal and text marketing tools. Because of Mowbi’s modular design, it is being integrated with enterprise applications while at the same time it is the perfect tool for your next garage sale. Just put your garage sale items in to a mobile store and publish the link in your classified ad. People can see, and buy, your items before they arrive plus you can accept credit cards, PayPal and Google Checkout at your garage sale.
Adding the ability for remote sales teams to buy and sell from their phones has a lot of potential to increase income and cut expenses for many businesses. Mowbi is modular so it can be integrated in to enterprise systems affordably.
Posted in Boostrap, Pre Funded, Seed Round, Start-ups |
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July 6, 2010
talentGraphz Record: Abine 
Funding Status: Seed
Founders Backgrounds: Datapower, LRN, Security Metrics
Investors: Self Funded?
Industry: Consumer Web Security
Offering Description: provides Internet privacy solutions for consumers. Abine’s products and services allow regular people to regain control over their personal information while continuing to browse, interact and shop online.
Posted in Boostrap, Boston Startup, Seed Round, Start-ups |
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June 15, 2010
Genotrope Record: Sembled 
Funding Status: Seed
Founders Backgrounds: Great Hill Partners (Boston-based private equity firm).
Investors: Friends & Family / Founder
Industry: Consumer Web
Offering Description: Sembled.com LLC helps consumers identify the easiest “assembly requried” products and strives to reduce frustration and time required in assembling a product with detailed video and photo instructions and commentary.
Posted in Boostrap, Boston Startup, Pre Funded, Seed Round, Start-ups |
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May 21, 2010
Two really great events for startups to get exposure to angel investors are being held in Boston this June.
The first event, Angel Boot Camp is being held June 1, 2010 at Microsoft NERD. This event is spearheaded by Jon Pierce, local; Hacker, Entrepreneur, Founder of Betahouse, Founding Member of The Awesome Foundation.
The lineup of is an awesome list of successful entrepreneurs and angel investors that includes Angus Davis, David Cohen and Phin Barnes to name only a few.
The stated goal of Angel Boot Camp is to educate, inspire and grow the angel investor community. As such, active and aspiring angels are the primary audience. But we also welcome entrepreneurs, VCs and other people interested in learning more about angel investing, provided they agree not to pitch at the event.
This is a must attend for anyone that has thought about or wants to learn about Angel Investing.
Two weeks after that, the Open Angel Forum Boston is coming. This event was created by the always interesting serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis (founder of Mahalo) as a response to the Keretsu Forum that was charging startups to pitch to them.
There have already been Open Angel Forum events in La, and NYC. Both angels and startups had great things to say about the events.
As yet the venue or agenda has not been announced. Currently Jason and Bijan Sabet are the only two investors listed as attending, but expectations are high the list will include the best angels and undiscovered start-ups in the area. Don’t miss this event if you want to meet the best start-ups and angel investors in Boston.
Apply here if you are an angel, start-up or interested in sponsoring the event.
Wow, that is such great news for the local web startup scene! The month of June should produce an interesting crop of new companies or provide some much needed capital for the seed program participants.
Posted in Boostrap, Boston Startup, First Round, Seed Round, Start-ups |
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April 28, 2010
Every quarter we will be compiling a list of new web properties that are in private beta or “coming soon” stage. We hope to give them a bit of exposure and help with early customer sign up.
The other goal is to encourage them to come out to the public and start to get feedback from the user community. We are rooting for you, so launch that leaky boat or take your first steps on the water.
First let’s recap the list from last quarter to see what progress has been made.
http://www.adharmonics.com/ Hard to say if they have any of these micro-targeted sites up. Here is all we can find, which is on the home page. AdHarmonics helps consumer find exactly what they’re looking for with micro-targeted sites. We bring innovation to the lead generation industry through micro-targeted sites that are open, easy to use and transparent to users. We answer consumer’s queries for education, legal help, mortgages and other categories with narrowly targeted websites. By focusing on small sets of users and providing them with the best possible options, AdHarmonics delivers high quality leads to its partners. AdHarmonics is based in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA.
http://apartly.com/ has launched. Turns out the company is based in San Fran however.
http://www.careerelement.com/index/add has launched. Turns out the company is based in San Fran however.
http://exoprise.com/ still in stealth mode, though we can cut them some slack since it is not a web company. They are seeking funding for a virtualization play.
http://www.fantourage.com/ Has launched. Easy signup go check it out.
https://www.mercavo.com/ still in private beta
http://openmile.com/ Launched, although not a consumer site of interest to you and me, they have both logistics domain experience and web backgrounds. We wish Evan and company good luck.
http://socialgrow.com/ they have launched. check it out and give them feedback on usability etc…
http://www.talentreef.com/ not launched yet. They do have a survey and form for prospective customers to sign up for a consultation. No web app at this point.
http://www.yana.com/ Launched. It is a community to help people live happier and healthier lives. Join and set some goals and let the community encourage you to fulfill them.
http://www.zaang.com/ Launched. It is a web site where people can have conversations on a specific topic with people who are like them. Check it out, you can search for a topic of interest. As always with user generated content, there is not alot a first but it grows over time. Also Zaang is hinting that this is just the beginning and their “really big” idea is coming this quarter. Stay tuned.
So there you have it. Half have launched and it is a varied and interesting group. Please take some time and give them a little user love.
Now we come to the new list of sites to watch in the coming months. Give them some sign-up love if you are interested and encourage them to take the plunge into the light of day.
http://www.fashionstake.com/
http://localot.com/
http://www.universalmetaphor.com
http://www.jumpseewow.com/
http://www.blogcastr.com/
http://tutorialtab.com/
http://mogoterra.com/
https://alpha.wattzy.com/
http://www.waysavvy.com/
http://www.fanzanimal.com/
Posted in Boostrap, Boston Startup, Editorial, First Round, Pre Funded, Start-ups |
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April 18, 2010
I attended the talk by Bill Warner , Building Start-ups from the Heart, at CIC last week. I must admit that the title was a bit touchy feely for me and anything that smacks of new age gobble-di-gook sends me straight outside to the BBQ where I can slow cook some ribs, throw back a few brews and crank up the Lynyrd Skynrd.
But knowing Bill’s stalwart efforts to vitalize the startup economy and his angel involvement with local web app companies, curiosity got the best of me and I went in spite of the title.
I’m glad I did because the talk turned out to be very practical advice with a framework for taking action. My skepticism was completely washed away. Those of you that know me know that the events I produce and attend must provide some value to the community beyond just a smoozefest and this talk easily fit the bill.
The main concept is that you must build your startup around an armature of Intention. How do you intend to help people? The Invention of your startup is a conduit to flow your intention to your users. Keeping true to your intention is very important and when you are diverted from it, the energy needed to create an awesome product which resonates with users and produces a re-generative cycle of growth, is diminished.
The other concept Bill spoke about was CoFlow, which is a state you should seek when building a company where the additional co-founders amplify the intentions of the founder and produce an organization where the sum is greater than it’s parts.
My main take away from the talk was a new framework for understanding what you are trying to accomplish with your start-up and a better way of crafting a pitch which is based upon the problem you are solving rather than what your product is. This is a much more powerful way to present your company whether explaining it to someone at a cocktail party or to investors.
It turns out that this method of presenting your “pitch” dovetails nicely with a post by Chris Dixon discussing how to size your market using a narative rather than numbers when pitching to VCs.
This interview Bill Warner did for the Tom Peters blog will give you a better idea of his concepts in his own words. It sounded like he was working on a book explaining these concepts, so keep your eyes open for that to hit and by all means, if you get a chance, go see the talk if he does it again sometime.
Posted in Boostrap, Editorial, Start-ups |
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February 23, 2010
Genotrope Record: Stamp Mobile 
Funding Status: Seed
Founders Backgrounds: Urban Interactive, Blackstone Group
Investors: ?
Industry: Mobile Applications, Mobile Commerce
Offering Description: Stamp’s loyalty program is a different breed. Points, rewards, customer management tools — sure, we have that. But we also provide the spark to help you build real relationships with your customers.
Posted in Boostrap, Boston Startup, Career, Pre Funded, Seed Round, Start-ups, Startup Job |
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February 9, 2010
Genotrope Record: Peerium
Funding Status: Self Funded?
Founders Backgrounds: Harvard PHD CS, Microsoft
Investors: ?
Industry: White label iPhone apps, B2B web infrastructure
Offering Description: A serverless platform that lowers the overhead of internet applications. Peerium is a software company focused on building a highly scaleable , serverless application platform. Currently creating white label iPhone apps.
Posted in Boostrap, Boston Startup, First Round, Seed Round, Start-ups |
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January 30, 2010
Genotrope Record: Plummelo
Funding Status: Seed
Investors: ?
Industry: Consumer Web, B2B
Offering Description: Plummelo is a web service that allows users to collect and share recipes, to plan meals, and to print shopping lists for meal plans. Plummelo combines these three activities in one convenient place. Plummelo makes cooking easier.
Posted in Boostrap, Boston Startup, First Round, Seed Round, Start-ups |
1 Comment »
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