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Change the World for Good with Piryx and Startup Weekend!Mar-12 by Alpa Agarwal
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Piryx, non-profit Startup Weekend and Microsoft BizSpark will hold a fundraising get-together for Haiti, Piryxtopia Charity Bash, at SXSW. Piryx, a global social fund-raising platform, will help by making their service available for online donations.
Piryxtopia Charity Bash will focus on raising money for the charity We Hear Your Voice, which was started after Haiti’s tragic earthquake. Since 2007, Startup Weekend has been orchestrating gatherings of entrepreneurs who pitch their business ideas, self-select, break into teams and then work to build what they hope will become successful technology start-ups. Each Startup Weekend culminates with a business competition, where participants and invited panelists vote for the best overall start-up to receive a prize. Startup Weekend’s directors, Marc Nager and Clint Nelsen, hope to hold a similar event in Haiti in the fall of 2010, in support of local innovation. According to Nager's blog post, “We believe we will find local Haitians that will have great ideas to address some of the problems they face daily. The end goal is to take the money we receive via the fundraising get-together and award it directly to new, local ventures that emerge from the event.”
Piryx has worked extensively with politicians and nonprofit groups and it was Tom Serres, founder and chief executive of Piryx, who suggested holding a Startup Weekend in Haiti. Piryx’s involvement was driven, as Serres describes it, by “lots random events, a bit of passion, and some serious desire to help. What started out as a Facebook status update related to the Haiti earthquake - turned into helping a friend embark on a quest to help a woman rescue her three adopted children from Haiti. Subsequently it was picked up by Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room - and became the sounding board for hope in Haiti. The founder, Justin Yarborough, decided not to stop there - and I wanted to make sure he knew I was with him, all the way. A groundswell of support emerged beyond anything I could have imagined, and I couldn't help but continue as promised. I figured, what better way to shed light on to the issue and help folks maintain awareness of the situation that still exists in Haiti. It's sort of become a tradition here at Piryx to throw an annual charity bash at SXSW called Piryxtopia, and we decided in light of recent events - what better cause to support.”
Piryx is a social fundraising and real-time giving platform. Dubbed “Democracy’s PayPal,” it provides payment processing, analytical marketing tools, and API's for non-profits, social advocacy groups, corporations and government and political organizations to connect with donors and volunteers. The Piryx Platform makes it easy to market and manage a fundraising campaign, all from one central dashboard. The user signs up, initiates a campaign, and provides a bank routing number, so donated payments can be directly deposited into the account, and creates a campaign page. The campaign can be launched across multiple social networks at one time, with donor campaigns pushed out to Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In and other social sites all from Piryx. Campaign organizers can promote competitive giving, analyze who responds to which messages, when and why, and track which channels effectively drive revenue. Users pay a small transaction fee, based on the value of each transaction.
Applications developed by the Piryx Developer Network are available in the Piryx App Marketplace. Developers can set a purchase price, monthly charge, or give their apps away.
Piryx was founded in 2005. Since the launch of its fundraising platform in 2009, it has served hundreds of thousands of donors, across thousands of causes - raising millions of dollars for change makers all over the globe. Piryx has been doubling in size roughly every quarter ever since. The startup has served a wide spectrum of causes. Local, state, and federal political campaigns, environmental organizations, charter schools, private schools, alumni associations, school districts, religious organizations, chambers of commerce, and even a few rock bands.
Tom Serres launched the Piryx Platform while he was a still a senior in college. He learned that leveraging the internet and e-commerce could be the most cost-effective way to launch a political campaign. He also found that a political campaign “is much like a start-up - except every year you startup fresh, build up, and wind back down. Going from zero to 60 in a matter of months, advocating a cause, and winning constituent support to hold an elected office. You basically start out with nothing, and have to build a reputable brand on a shoe string budget.”
Published: 3/12/2010 8:00 AM
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Loopt Keeps Friends in the LoopMar-11 by Alpa Agarwal
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 In the spring of 2005, Sam Altman, a sophomore computer science major at Stanford, had an epiphany as he walked out of class. Turning to his friends, classmates, and eventual co-founders Alok Deshpande and Nick Sivo, Sam asked, “Wouldn't it be great if I could open my mobile phone and see a map of where all my friends are right now?” From that idea Loopt was born in Silicon Valley. The co-founders won first place in the business plan competition by the Business Association of Stanford Engineering Students (BASES) and after that were able to secure funding to build a prototype service from Y Combinator, an early stage investment company that helps young entrepreneurs get past the challenges of starting a business. By September of 2005, the response to the prototype was so strong that the Loopt team made the decision to leave school and pursue their dream full time. Joined by co-founders Rick Pernikoff and Tom Pernikoff, they launched the company with $5M in funding from leading venture capital firms, Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates.
Loopt provides a “social mapping service” – that focuses on finding friends, places, and events -- who's around, what's going on and where to go, helping friends connect on the fly by showing users where their friends are located and what they are doing via detailed, interactive maps on their mobile phones. Users can share location updates, geo-tagged photos and comments with friends in their mobile address book or on online social networks, communities and blogs. The service facilitates serendipitous meetings between friends, allowing users to receive alerts when their friends are nearby, explore places and events recommended by friends, and share their own GPS-based location, status and photos with a few or all of their friends. Users can add friends to their trusted network by entering a mobile number, by searching the contacts on their phone, searching for Facebook friends also on Loopt and from a “suggested list of friends you may know on Loopt” feature. Encouraging these serendipitous friend meetings is a core part of what makes Loopt users come back time and again. I remember spending many wonderful afternoons in Brady Commons at my alma mater, the University of Missouri. Hanging out with friends, eating greasy pizza & watching people walk in-and-out; hoping for serendipitous meetings consumed, I have to admit, much of my time. This was before mobile phones, but even those would not have helped because as Loopt’s co-founder Alok Deshpande notes, “A phone is not good at multi-way communications.”
In addition to the popular Friend Alerts feature that notifies users when any of their friends are nearby, Loopt offers Pulse, which helps users find something fun to do. Pulse integrates information from multiple sources to show users what’s going on around them. Information from Microsoft Bing, Citysearch, Zagat, Eventful, and Tasting Table, as well as the personal recommendations of a user’s friends and the Loopt community can all be consolidated on one screen. The Tips feature allows users to post their own recommendations on local places and events. Users can view their friend’s journals to see what they’ve been doing and leave comments for them, or access their friend’s favorite places and events, to navigate new neighborhoods or cities.
Loopt was designed with user privacy at its core and offers a variety of effective and intuitive privacy and security controls. Location and other information can be hidden as well shared and Loopt users are added as Loopt friends only after they accept a user’s friend request or if a user accepts their friend’s request – so it’s a ‘double opt in’ friend connection.
 On March 10th, Loopt announced a new version of its application, which expands the Loopt’s Pulse feature to include tens of thousands of local events, and allows check-in to events, and the ability to RSVP to events posted on Facebook. For some music events, users can actually hear a sample of the band playing at a certain venue right within Loopt. This new version of Loopt also features a full guide to the music, events and celebrations at this month’s SXSW in Austin. Loopt users can check-in at certain SXSW venues for the opportunity to win giveaways and other special offers. “Locally-relevant content is crucial for helping people to truly discover the world around them,” said Sam Altman, CEO of Loopt. “By adding Events to our Loopt Pulse, our users can now not only find great places to eat and drink, but also discover music, movies, dance, comedy and theater events going on in their neighborhood right now.” Loopt now features music and entertainment content from new partners SonicLiving, Zvents and Metromix – expanding upon Loopt’s existing suite of leading content providers – including Zagat, CitySearch, Microsoft’s Bing and TastingTable.
Today, Loopt has over 50 employees and more than more than 3 million registered users, and has launched its social mapping service across all major U.S. wireless carriers, including Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Boost & MetroPCS, and over 100 mobile phones. The startup makes money through hyper-local targeted advertising and coupons.
Published: 3/11/2010 8:00 AM
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Monetizing the Real-Time Web with OneRiotMar-10 by Alpa Agarwal
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Since releasing its real-time ad network, RiotWise, in January this year, OneRiot, a Microsoft BizSpark real-time search technology startup, has seen “explosive growth,” claims Tobias Peggs, General Manager for OneRiot. “We will serve more ads than searches in March this year …. We are the first company to monetize the real-time web.”
Founded in 2006, in Boulder, CO, and funded by Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Spark Capital and Appian Ventures, OneRiot has already had enormous success with its real-time search engine, which scours the social web - Twitter, Digg, YouTube, Delicious, MySpace, Facebook, URL shorteners, and other services - to find the freshest, most popular and socially relevant news, videos and images. OneRiot crawls not just tweets and diggs, but crawls the pages behind the links themselves. This is all done in real-time.
According to Peggs, about 40% of all search queries, display intent that can be served by real-time search. For example, when searching for “Haiti,” it can be inferred that a user is not looking for a Wikipedia or CIA Factbook article about the country, but information about the earthquake. Most general-purpose search engines are partnering with real-time search technology companies to display these fresh results & OneRiot is positioned well for the future.
However, signals from the social web add value in more ways. For example, after the demise of Michael Jackson, a TMZ story was the number one link on OneRiot. But instead of serving the same information – that Michael Jackson had died – from 20 other news sources that picked up the same TMZ story, the second link was Jackson’s Thriller video, because fans were celebrating Jackson’s life. By harnessing crowdsourced curation of content & capturing the pulse of society on any issue, at any moment in time, OneRiot’s PulseRank algorithm – which like PageRank for the realtime web – uses numerous signals to find the freshest, most relevant content for users.
OneRiot’s ad network, RiotWise, streams contextually relevant advertisements, producing 3-4 times industry standard click-through rates. For example, if the user is trying to find out what's going on right now for “Chile,” RiotWise will serve up links to freshly published, quality content - news, stories, videos, etc - concerning the earthquake in Chile. RiotWise ads directly match the user’s intent - in other words, they add value to the users’ experience; they help users do what they are trying to do in the moment. Advertisers include a range of publishers such as entertainment sites, sports networks, and news organizations. In Peggs’ words, “Approximately 40% of search queries - across all search engines - display an intent that would best be served by results from a real-time search engine. That's a huge market, and it needs monetizing. That's what we do.”
What is really neat about OneRiot’s advertising platform is that they turn the top search results into advertisements on-the-fly, so they can be immediately re-purposed, to serve the unique timeliness of the real-time web. And this in turn makes for a painless process for advertisers. By simply signing up with RiotWise, they see their content show up both as search results and as sponsored advertisements.
OneRiot’s marketing strategy has focused on partnerships right from the start. Though OneRiot.com is a destination, 97% of their searches are driven by their partner network comprising over 100 web sites & numerous applications. For example, users of Internet Explorer 8 can download OneRiot’s search bundle, including OneRiot search, “what's hot” video webslice, powered by Microsoft Silverlight, and other services.
Tobias Peggs talks about OneRiot at Le Web 2009
See OneRiot's White Paper for more details on its search engine technology.
Published: 3/10/2010 7:00 AM
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Join us for lots of cool events at SXSW & connect with innovative BizSpark startups!Mar-09 by Alpa Agarwal
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SXSW is an exciting opportunity for you to meet the members of the Microsoft BizSpark team and to connect with the founders of several innovative BizSpark startups. We’ve got lots of fun BizSpark activities at SXSW lined up for you.
Come & connect with innovative BizSpark startups!
Amulet Devices builds voice enabled devices such as the Amulet voice-enabled remote control, that enables users to fully control their Windows Media Center via voice. Users can record and watch TV, listen to their favorite music, and view DVDs, videos and photos, all using simple voice commands.
Cheezburger Network, is the Seattle-based company behind one of the largest blog networks and some of the funniest and most popular blogs on the Web, including the LOLcats repository, I Can Has Cheezburger? and FAIL Blog. CEO and founder Ben Huh launched the company in 2007, aiming “to make the world happy for 5-minutes a day.”
Graphic.ly is a cutting-edge digital content delivery system and community platform for comic publishers, creators and enthusiasts, and provides an immersive social experience and marketplace around digital comics and associated merchandise.
Loopt, a Silicon Valley based start-up, founded in 2005 by Sam Altman, Nick Sivo and Alok Deshpande, is the creator of a new location-based, social-mapping service. Loopt helps friends connect on the fly by showing users where their friends are located and what they are doing via detailed, interactive maps on their mobile phones.
Metaio develops augmented reality software for enterprises, helping them visualize their product ideas from concept to manufacture, ensuring the viability of their production processes. Their “Unifeye” software platform not only lets users place 3D animations directly into live video streams, but also supports the seamless integration of images from the external user environment.
Notice Technologies helps local businesses advertise more effectively in the world of the Web, Twitter, Facebook, and emerging technologies that have captured consumer interest.
NutshellMail aggregates all your latest updates & email messages from a variety of social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more into one snapshot email, sent to your primary email address on your schedule.
OneRiot, based in Boulder, Colorado, was founded in 2006 by Kimbal Musk and Robert Reich. OneRiot is a leading realtime search engine and the first marketplace for advertising on the realtime web. It crawls the social web and ranks results according to their PulseRank or level of social buzz. A growing number of third-party search engines, websites, and mobile applications show their users realtime search results, and realtime ads, powered by the OneRiot API.
Piryx was founded in 2005 by Tom Serres. Piryx is a social fundraising and real-time giving platform. It has been called “democracy’s PayPal,” and it provides payment processing, analytical marketing tools, and API's for non-profits, political organizations, and social advocacy groups to connect with donors and social advocates.
RedCritter, founded by Mike Beaty, is a cloud computing platform enabling Silverlight developers to build context aware applications that run inside Microsoft Outlook. RedCritter Apps can pull information from around the Web and across a company’s Intranet, supporting rich media, interactivity and animation.
Wildfire Interactive allows organizations to create attractive, branded interactive promotions such as sweepstakes, contests, giveaways, and incentive-based surveys, and to simultaneously publish them in multiple social networks and on their website.
WildPockets, founded by Shanna Tellerman in 2006, is democratizing game development, making game development free, open and accessible to everyone. Its development platform provides an easy way for anyone to create, publish and monetize 3D games.
Yammer, founded by David Sacks and Adam Pisoni in 2007, provides a real-time communications platform for companies, groups and organizations. In addition to micro-blogging, Yammer enables enterprises to create communities for B2B collaboration.
Published: 3/9/2010 9:00 AM
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Join the BizSpark team and many cool startups at SXSW, MIX10 & DEMOSpring!Mar-08 by Alpa Agarwal
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SXSW, MIX10 and DEMOSpring are exciting opportunities for you to meet the members of the Microsoft BizSpark team and to connect with the founders of several innovative BizSpark startups. We’ve got a variety of fun activities lined up for you at the conferences.
SXSW Interactive
March 12th – 16th, 2010, in Austin, TX, USA
Microsoft BizSpark invites you to join us for a “Meatup” for Startups, a meetup event with a decidedly Texas twist. Join the party for BBQ and great conversations with entrepreneurs from BizSpark startups, Cheezburger Network, Loopt, OneRiot, Piryx and Yammer. 5 attendees will be chosen from the audience to come up with a caption for a featured LOLcats picture. Cheezburger Network CEO, Ben Huh, will announce the winning caption voted on by applause. Winner will receive a Zune HD. Get Loopt on your phone to receive a sweet treat at the Meatup. Go to www.loopt.com on your mobile phone to download Loopt now.
For an invitation, please email your name and company description to msftebt@microsoft.com.
March 15th from 5:30 – 7:30pm at the Beauty Bar (617 E. 7th St.)
Late Night with Cheezburger, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark: Late-night party that will feature margaritas, beer, and of course—cheeseburgers, and karaoke
Sunday, March 14th, 10:00 pm – 2:00 am, Cedar Door, 201 Brazos Street, Austin, TX 78701
http://sxswcheezburger.eventbrite.com/
At the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW, 20 startups, including Microsoft BizSpark companies Metaio, Wildfire Interactive, NutshellMail, Amulet Devices, & Notice Technologies, will be selected from a pool of over 200 companies in the online video, audio, social networking and web apps spaces to make pitches to a panel of judges. March 15-16, 2010. Hilton Austin Downtown, 500 East 4th Street, Austin, TX 78701
The SXSW TECH Cocktail presented by TECH Cocktail & sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, will showcase over 30 startups, including BizSpark companies OneRiot, Piryx, RedCritter & Wild Pockets, in a casual expo-style mixer. Sunday, March 14th. 8:00 PM – 10:30 PM. Palm Door, 401 Sabine St, Austin, TX 78701
Piryxtopia 2010 – A fundraiser for Haiti
This event is focused on raising money for the charity, “We Hear Your Voice,” which was started after the tragic earthquake that left Haiti in shambles. We Hear Your Voice began as a mission to unite a mother with her 3 Haitian children, but has grown into an effort to assist all children devastated by the disaster.
Saturday, March 13th (9PM – 1AM), Speakeasy, 412D Congress Ave, Austin, TX
Website: http://314.piryx.com/
Tweet-up with Windows Azure: Cheezburger Network CEO, Ben Huh will provide a how-to session on using Windows Azure for sites they anticipate will receive a lot of traffic. Saturday, March 13th, 4-6 pm, Windows Phone Blogger Lounge
Microsoft BizSpark startup OneRiot is teaming up with Taptu, a mobile search engine, and BizSpark startup Loopt, a location-based social-mapping service, to run a scavenger hunt with giant inflatable dinosaurs using mobile phones, geo-tagging and status updates.
The Yam-up (tweet-up) will be a quick overview about BizSpark startup, Yammer, and will focus on how they’ve created a new communications platform that improves the way co-workers and business partners collaborate. Yammer will be raffling off 2 flip video camcorders at the event.
Tuesday, March 16th, 4 – 6PM, Windows Phone Blogger Lounge
Bizspark startup Cheezburger Network speaks at How to Rawk SXSW Interactive, March 12th, 2PM
BizSpark startup Loopt talks about The Life Graph - You Are Your Location, March 15th, 2PM
BizSpark startup OneRiot talks about Social Search, March 15th, 11AM
BizSpark startup WildPockets talks at Anyone Can Create a Video Game session, March 15th, 9AM
Join us at other Microsoft activities:
Email Microsoft BizSpark team members, Brian Hoskins, Christopher Griffin, Midori Lawler & Sharon Koshy to connect with them at the conference.
MIX10
March 15th–17th 2010, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas
Explore the art and science of creating great user experiences at MIX10. Designers and developers will learn about Microsoft’s broad web platform and tools that help bring together the clients, servers and cloud services needed for creating great, rich web applications.
Demos will feature Microsoft Silverlight: the cross-browser, cross-platform and cross-device browser plug-in that helps companies design, develop and deliver a new class of rich, secure and scalable cross-platform applications and experiences on the Web. Silverlight delivers high quality video and leverages the .NET platform, with backend support for rapid development.
Email Microsoft BizSpark team members, Dave Drach, Julien Codorniou, Matthew Clark, & Michele Johnson to connect with them at the conference. Connect with the founders of Microsoft BizSpark startups Curse.Com, Graphic.ly, and Seesmic.
Software and Web Entrepreneurs: Go Big with BizSpark and WebsiteSpark: Come and learn about BizSpark and WebsiteSpark from Microsoft. Discover how Microsoft provides startups and web professionals with the latest development tools, production server licenses and the marketing opportunities they need to get big fast, at no cost. Also hear about the worldwide network of experts available to help entrepreneurs succeed. Meet startups and web professionals who got very successful building innovative websites and applications on the Microsoft Stack with the Sparks program.
Published: 3/8/2010 9:00 AM
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Featured Network Partner
The featured BizSpark Network Partner is TechStars: a mentorship driven, seed-stage investment fund. Read more...
Featured Startup
The BizSpark startup of the day is Avetrium, based in Canada. You will find below an interview with Tim Smith, COO of Avetrium. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!
Read more...
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