Blog
Five Years of Spotlighting & Connecting Startup Communities
by Frank Gruber, CEO & Founder of Tech CocktailSo you have an idea. What do you do with it? That’s often the biggest obstacle for entrepreneurs. If you don’t have like-minded people to connect with, getting an idea off the ground can be especially difficult. Not to mention, once you do get that idea off the ground, you need a support group to experience the roller coast ride that is entrepreneurship.With this problem in mind, I created TechCocktail and hosted our first mixer-style event in July of 2006 in Chicago to serve as a remedy for some of these issues. The event was open to all, with the goal of bringing the Chicago technology community together so that attendees might be able to connect and potentially help...
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Alley vs. Valley: Why we're coming home
by Aaron Harris, Co-Founder and CEO, Tutor Spree. Tutor Spree is an online marketplace for high quality tutoring.I wrote this post at an important part in Tutorspree's evolution - our graduation from Y Combinator. We made the decision to move from The Bay back to NYC, and took some time to explain why. A little over four months ago, we found out that we had gotten into Y Combinator. After we were done jumping up and down and shouting, we realized that meant we were going to have to pick up and move from NY to the Bay Area. Between running around and looking for subletters, buying tickets, packing, and saying goodbye to friends, we had glimpses of what the move might mean. We talked about whether or not we’d stay in...
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Help Raise Funds To Make The Founder Labs Documentary
By Resmi Arjunanpillai VP Marketing, Founder Labs. This post originally appeared on Women 2.0.Sponsor an educational video series from Founder Labs and get one hour of 1:1 time with startup luminaries and VCs like Steve Blank, Eric Ries and Ann Miura-Ko: Details here.Founder Labs is a pre-incubator focused on the first phase of launching a mobile startup. In five weeks, Founder Labs participants build a founding team, validate an idea and create a working prototype of their product, creating successful companies like Spoondate and Cake Health.We are producing an educational video series of eight episodes that focus on the early stage team and company formation and idea validation that takes place in Founder Labs. The...
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On the Road to Support Entrepreneurs at DEMO and Around the World
by Laura P. Thomas, Accredited Business Communicator, Dell. This post originally appeared on Direct 2 Dell. Our new Entrepreneur in Residence Ingrid Vanderveldt’s Twitter handle is @ontheroadwithiv and that’s just what I did last week – went on the road with her to California.Our first stop was Silicon Valley and the DEMO conference, where we often got the question “What is Dell doing here?” We got a chance to explain it at the Startup America social media lounge in this video:While there, we got to hear from many interesting startups around the globe – from Dell-like dorm room entrepreneurs to more experienced innovators. More than 90 companies were vying for...
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Job Growth Depends on Reducing Entrepreneurial Risk
by Maxwell Wessel and Neil Khare. This post originally appeared on the Harvard Business Review Blog.Building businesses and creating jobs in America during the twentieth century was like taking a test with an answer key. We had it all — strong capital markets, rich natural resources, unparalleled higher education, and geographic separation from two devastating wars. It was our not-so-secret formula for success. The problem with that formula is that it's gone.Today's America will need to find a different formula for competitiveness and job creation. It's our belief that the best path to sustainable competitive advantage will come from lowering the risk to entrepreneurship and encouraging its pursuit — not from...
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It all started last Friday night.
by Tony Lyu, co-founder of Adgame. Adgame was the MEGA Startup Weekend Education Track winner and the DEMO Fall 2011 Rising Star. AdGame promotes education and improves advertisement effectiveness through educational games within online display ads.A lot can happen in a week.Friday5:30pm - Inspiring speeches by Reid Hoffman, Steve Case and more. This is my second startup weekend, and it's obvious they weren't kidding with the "Mega." The talent pool looks deep. 8:00pm - Pitches start in the Education room. I came half-enthusiastic about a video-based P2P expertise certification idea which we developed at the last Startup Weekend. I'm near the end of the pitch line. A few pitches in and already a couple...
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Why Young Companies?
We’ve had an amazing week here at the Startup America Partnership. We began last Friday with Mega Startup Weekend at Microsoft and went straight into DEMO Fall 2011, where we officially launched our new platform.We’re incredibly excited that young companies can now register as a Startup America Firm and gain access to over $700 million in products and services provided by our partners like American Express OPEN, Dell, Intuit, Microsoft and many more. All of the startups out there should register today!One question that has been raised is why we’re so focused on “young companies.” The simple reason: startups create jobs. Data from the Kauffman Foundation shows that from 1980 to 2005, firms less than five years...
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1 Weekend. 30 Ideas. 3 Winners.
This post was written by Claire Lee, Microsoft Business Development, Emerging Business Team; it originally appeared on Microsoft Bizpark Blog, yesterday.And…. It’s a wrap. Phew. What an incredible few days.From Startup Weekend, to DEMO Fall, with Startup America.Here’s the premiere of our movie from the experience:Today at #DEMOcon we reached the finale of our Startup Weekend experience – with @Adgame selected to pitch to the seasoned audience of investors and startup pundits pitching as the Rising Star: a company created in 54 hours by Tony Lyu and Gaia Costantino.On stage, Tony nailed it – “Education, Gaming and Advertising were having a vigorous orgy inside my head! So we learned to code,...
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So this is what a bullet feels like.
by, Aaron Cammarata Founder and CEO, Gablinga. Gablinga won the Gaming Track at MEGA Startup Weekend, and the chance to pitch at DEMO Fall 2011.I’d like this post to be wittier and more clever than it will undoubtedly be.I blame sleep deprivation.It began Friday night at the Mega Startup Weekend event, held at the Microsoft Mountain View campus. Being recently blessed with the freedom to pursue my independent employment (read: downsized), it was time to realize my career goal of starting a videogame company. I had an idea I had been working on for months in anticipation of the studio shutdown, and thought it might be time to trot it out and see what happens.I had done some real soul-searching as to whether or not to share the idea....
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DEMO Fall 2011: Lights, Camera, Action
It's day three at DEMO Fall 2011 and the startup energy in our HD Social Lounge is still going strong. Yesterday our CEO Scott Case announced the public launch of our new platform, "My Success Kit". "All startups in America can sign up to join the Startup America Partnership to get access to dozens of our partners, including another $330 million worth of in-kind resources and services to help America's youngest companies be more successful." Young companies can now register to become verified Startup America Firms and gain access to resources from more than twenty five leading companies. Fourteen new partners have added another $330 million of private-sector commitments offered by the...
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Open for Questions: Youth and the American Jobs Act
by Ronnie Cho an Associate Director in the White House Office of Public Engagement. This post originally appeared on the White House BlogHi everyone. I’d like to invite you to a very special edition of “Open for Questions” on Wednesday, September 14th, at 4:00PM EDT. Please join me and senior White House officials, as we field questions on how the American Jobs Act will impact young Americans.I'll moderate this conversation with:· Brian Deese, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director, National Economic Council· Roberto Rodriguez, Special Assistant to the President for Education PolicyWe’ve...
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54 Hours
by Cristian Liu, co-founder of Live Home Free. (Live Home Free won the Health Track at last weekend's Mega Startup Weekend.)If I asked you what you did in the last 54 hours, what would you say? Do you even remember most of what you did in those 54 hours? Now what if I told you that in 54 hours you could go from ideation to product creation to launching a company? Sound impossible? Not at Startup Weekend.For those who haven’t heard of Startup Weekend, their website describes their worldwide events as “an intense 54 hour event which focuses on building a web or mobile application which could form the basis of a credible business over the course of a weekend. The weekend brings together people with...
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Our Startup America Regions are all over the news!
Have you been recently featured in the media? Let us know.
Recent News:
10/19/12 - Startup Communities Across the Country, Huffington Post (Startup America Partnership)
10/19/12 - Bonfyre partners with Powder Keg Conference 2012, St. Louis Business Journal (Startup MO & Startup IA)
10/17/12 - Food Waste In, Renewable Energy Out: Startup Re-Nuble Is Crowdfunding the Local Green Economy, Huffington Post (Startup DC)
10/17/12 - Powder Keg aims to blast Indy startups onto national scene, Indianapolis Business Journal (Startup IN & Startup MO)
10/17/12 - Featured Startup Pitch: Founded by a group of teachers with tech backgrounds, ActiveGrade seeks to fundamentally change the way grading is done in schools, Startup Beat (Startup IA)
10/03/12 - How Tory Burch Created A $2 Billion Empire In Less Than A Decade, Business Insider (Startup America Partnership)
10/01/12 - Voices of the Tech Community: What do Ecosystem Need? The Miami Herald (Startup FL)
9/20/12 - Entrepreneurs make pitches as Startup Maryland and its studio bus rolls into UMBC, The Republic (Startup MD)
9/20/12 - USF-led partnership awarded $1 million to launch new companies, Tampa Bay Business Journal (Startup FL)
9/19/12 - Startup Bus tours Maryland, stops in Baltimore area to promote entrepreneurship, Baltimore Sun (Startup MD)
Startup America at DEMO Fall 2012:
10/11/12 - Startup Connection: Nourishment for mind, body and soul, St. Louis Business Journal (Startup MO)
10/05/12 - The 14 Most Interesting Startups To Emerge From DEMO, TechCrunch (Startup CA & OR)
10/04/12 - St. Louis startups look to cash in on DEMO showing, St. Louis Business Journal (Startup MO)
10/04/12 - St. Louis’ Click With Me Now, Evtron Pitch At DEMO 2012, Techli (Startup MO)
10/03/12 - DEMO Gods: Birds, brains, and the best products of the season, VentureBeat (Startup CA)
10/03/12 - BRIEF: Stamford's eBrevia Wins Scholarship for Tech Conference in Silicon Valley [The Hartford Courant], Bloomberg Businessweek (Startup CT)
10/03/12 - LifeStyleFeed brings the Seventh Art to restaurant selection, VentureBeat (Startup DC)
10/03/12 - Playing recruiter: This startup pays you to find your friends jobs, VentureBeat (Startup DC)
10/03/12 - Don’t like checking your mail? MailGapp may have your solution, VentureBeat (Startup HI)
10/03/12 - Itography hopes to lure advertisers to location-based virtual collection game, VentureBeat (Startup TX)
10/03/12 - Weekend warriors: Track your fitness with Novusport’s social mobile sports game, VentureBeat (Startup TX)
10/03/12 - Today, birdwatching. Tomorrow, saving the entire planet!, VentureBeat (Startup CA)
10/03/12 - Demo Fall 2012: Creating More Focused Social Networks, PC Mag (Startup OR, DC, IA, VA)
10/03/12 - Demo Fall 2012: Business and Commerce Applications, PC Mag (Startup MO & Startup CT)
10/03/12 - Stamford's eBrevia Wins Scholarship for Tech Conference in Silicon Valley, The Hartford Courant (Startup CT)
10/03/12 - RecBob takes the work out of after-work sports, VentureBeat (Startup IA)
10/03/12 - Watch RecBob’s DEMO presentation at noon (Live stream), Silicon Prairie News (Startup IA)
10/02/12 - Meet The 8 Startup Winners From Startup America’s DEMO Contest, Nibletz (Startup TN, OR, IL, DC, CA, IA, CT, MO)
10/02/12 - Cut through the legal fog with computer-generated summaries, Global Reporter (Startup CT)
10/02/12 - Cut through the legal fog with computer-generated summaries, VentureBeat (Startup CT)
10/02/12 - Birdeez app flies toward birdwatchers' iPhones, TechHive (Startup CA)
10/02/12 - Bonfyre Takes on Private Mobile Sharing with New App Focused on Real Life, Not Newsfeeds, Herald Online (Startup MO)
10/02/12 - Three St. Louis startups launch products at California conference, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Startup MO)
10/02/12 - This Barrel Is Ready to Roll! Launching Our Tech Startup, HuffingtonPost (Startup DC)
10/02/12 - For big-ticket items, social shopping needs more screen-sharing, VentureBeat (Startup MO)
10/02/12 - Flite’s new Touch Ad Studio lets top publishers actually make money on mobile, VentureBeat (Startup CA)
10/02/12 - Bonfyre launches mobile app to combine private with social sharing, St. Louis Business Journal (Startup MO)
10/01/12 - CoPatient Launches Online Platform to Audit & Appeal Medical Bills on Behalf of Patients, Sacramento Bee (Startup OR)
10/01/12 - D.C. job-search start-up launching at DEMO in Silicon Valley, The Washington Post (Startup DC)
10/01/12 - D.C. at Demo: High School CEO debuts Hallway, The Washington Post (Startup DC)
09/30/12 - Hills Bank and Trust promotes four, The Gazette (Startup IA)
09/29/12 - RecBob wins Startup America contest, will pitch next week at DEMO, Silicon Prairie News (Startup IA)
09/13/12 - Click With Me Now wins a trip to DEMO, St. Louis Business Journal (Startup MO)
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