Atlanta Startup Riot 2013 Presenting Company Notes

Today we had another great Startup Riot in Atlanta. The way it works is that 450+ people get together to hear 40 startups give a three minute pitch followed by two minutes of Q&A from two judges. At the end of the event three winners are selected for prizes and glory.

Fireplug

• Turn information into knowledge
• Get credit for what you read
• Humans crave feedback
• Keeps track of what you’re read
• Can push recommended content you haven’t read

deductmor

• 10+ million people with 1099 income
• Able to capture more receipts
• Take a picture of a receipt on your phone
• Less cost for tax prep and get more deductions
• iPhone app

Spensa Technologies

• Agribusiness
• Problem: $20B/yr crop loss
• $4.5B/yr on insecticide
• Insect populations drive decisions
• Sticky trap catches insects and then they’re counted to make insecticide decision
• Product: automated insect monitoring using z-traps
• Web-connected software
• Visualizaion and management tool for insect monitoring activities

Campus Bubble

• One community for student, faculty, and administrators
• Facebook fails as a closed university community
• emorybubble.com/preview
• Relevant discussion, events students actually like, deals, etc

TuneWolf

• Bars usually have a juke box or the bartender/employee controls it
• Music app controls a web service that interfaces with a computer in the bar that interfaces with the local speakers
• Pay to play and more interactive

College Canvas

• Student debt topped $1 trillion
• An online market for students to sell handmade items
• facebook.com/collegecanvas
• Like Etsy for college student made stuff

Abeo

• Like moneyball for talent management
• Improved profit through reduced turnover
• Battle between fast growing tech companies
• Psychological characteristics help determine effectiveness in a role
• Social application with personality tests
• Behavioral model and motivations model

Agency Spotter

• Quick, painless, and easy to find the right creative agency
• $760B is spent annually on agencies
• 560k agencies across the globe
• Better way to find an agency
• Ratings and reviews
• Charge money to the agencies to be listed

IS3D

• Interactive technology for science education
• Real world problem-solving skills
• 3d game engines to learn skills
• Real-time assessment of skills
• $3/student/year

Pipefish

• You are greater than the sum of your social graph
• Social media assumes you are defined by your friends
• Detect taste preferences from people
• Help e-commerce companies make personally relevant product recommendations
• Looking for B2C companies that need an analytics partner
• Travel, restaurants, and fashion are the first three

Mr. Arlo

• New way to plan and book travel online
• 80% of travel is booked by women
• Uses social networks to see what travel options friends like
• Travel taste graph

Banyan

• Github for science
• Make it easy for scientists to share
• Easy to publish and share in under 5 minutes
• Assigns an individual ID to each change a researcher makes
• $6 billion market for software for scientific collaboration

Guardian Watch

• 911 is broken
• Enable first responders and citizens to save lives
• Mobile app to live stream video from the scene of an emergency
• Sell to emergency responders

SafeImageMD

• Solve inefficiency in managing medical imaging data
• Images from CT scans and MRIs
• CDs and DVDs are currently used
• Cloud-based storage solution
• Browser-based DICOM data viewer (comes from CT scans)
• Web-based image uploader
• Software that sits on network or desktop to sync files
• 1/3 of worldwide image storage is for medical data

Shindig

• Facebook’s events page wasn’t cutting
• Social network for social people
• Keep track of social life by instantly sharing plans with friends
• Combines Facebook’s API and Foursquare’s API

WorkReadyGrad

• Connect students with mentors, alumni, and employers
• Students document career goals and what they’ve accomplished
• Digital portfolios
• Addressing the skills gap

Wagglez

• Local. Mobile. Deals.
• Local discovery and deals
• Raising $350k

Ten Eight

• Commercial real estate mobile app
• Tour books are standard issue print outs of the buildings to be toured
• Buildings are judged on feel and complicated spreadsheets
• It’s a tour book app plus rating system
• Data analytics on tours
• Ability to tell building owners about competitive set, ratings, and notes

Excelegrade

• 80% of schools use mobile devices in the classroom
• 46 of 50 states teach against common standards
• End-to-end digital assessment solution
• Assessments and assignments administered on mobile devices
• Paperless and personalized learning
• $3 billion market
• Freemium subscription business model
• Per student per subject per year fees

Persint

• Most people don’t where they stand to improve their financial profile
• Financial uncertainty leads to fear and stress and then to budgeting
• App that makes it easy to compare your financial metrics against peers and provide insight
• Generates a score about your financial health
• Gives recommendations like cheaper credit cards, get a cheaper car, etc
• Pre financial manner app

BrainPik

• The best deals in town
• Offers platform with feedback
• 10 – 50% off combined with getting feedback surveys from customers
• Text code based to mobile phones
• Trying to create next gen Yelp with the survey feedback component

VacationFutures

• Wholesale rental marketplace
• VRBO is good but takes up more time than outsourcing to vacation rental company
• List for free on the site
• Property manager has access to inventory and can diversify their risk

cMEcompete

• Social mobile platform to make it easy to connect people in participatory sports
• Apply the concept of meetups to participatory sports
• Registration and sign-in app as well as social app

CloudyDays

• Ability to scale app is a major challenge
• Testing the cloud from the cloud
• Load testing application
• Benchmarking against the competition

TheOfferMachine.com

• Lead gen marketer platform
• Conversion optimized pages
• Intelligent lead forms
• Advanced lead hygiene
• DIY integrations

Iron Gaming

• 156 million gamers in the US
• 64 million ages 2-17
• No centralized scorekeeping
• Improves online gaming
• Match.com for gamers
• Sports Center for gamers

Flairtab

• Cloud-based TV service for doctor offices
• 30 min average wait time at doctor office
• Tools to hep engage, inform, and educate patients
• Freemium model for doctors
• Supported by advertising
• USB device uses WiFi for content and plugs into TV

Bookup

• Text book exchange
• Connect users directly
• Users say what books they want and what books they have
• Raising $150,000

Excelegrade was the winner today and was my favorite as well.

I’m looking forward to next year’s Startup Riot.