Posts Tagged ‘TechStars’

Startup incubator TechStars is holding a bracket-style tournament to find out which startup reigns supreme.

Sixty four startups that have a functional product, but have not been through the TechStars program, and have not yet raised or earned $250,000 will face off against each other in a battle royale for $25,000 in prizes. The tournament winner based on user votes will get Rackspace hosting, free advertising, and other goodies, while semi-finalists get invited to the TechStars for a Day mini-camp, and automatic consideration as a TechStars program finalist.

The voting will start on March 14, and TechStars is taking nominations through March 9. The 64 with the most nominations will make the cut.

Nominations are being accepted through the TechStars web site, and through Twitter by tweeting “Hey @TechStars, I nominate @COMPANY TWITTER NAME HERE for the @StartupMadness Tournament http://tsta.rs/sumadness”

Rachel Sklar (@rachelsklar) of EarlyStager opened up the all female panel stating the success and energies of upcoming start-ups is genderless: talking about gender is a waste of time. Each female founder gave their perspective of social and building start-ups from the ground up.

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If spreadsheets and long e-mail chains are getting you down, here’s a startup that might help. Kapost is a newsroom platform that works with any CMS to help publishers manage a large team of contributors. We recently met up with with CEO Toby Murdock, a former staffer at AOL, to find out how Kapost plans to be the Salesforce of the publishing industry.

“You don’t have to use Salesforce, but everyone does,” Murdock told mbStartups. “We looked at the publishing industry and saw that it was under a lot of stress and pressure. Publishers, in order to succeed, were using larger groups of content contributors than they had in the past.”

He and co-founders Mike Lewis and Nader Aknoukh created a platform where editors can use concepts submitted by contributors and readers to create assignments, manage an editorial calendar, revise drafts and publish articles to simplify the administrative process across multiple sites. The system works with WordPress, Movable Type, Joomla and other popular content management systems.   “If you’re an editor, your focus should be on the content and the editorial vision for your site,” Murdock said.

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TechStars, the Boulder based startup incubator and seed financer, is now launching TechStars Network – a network of startup accelerator programs around many cities in US and the world. The accelerators in each city will be independently owned and operated, but will receive professional advice, best practice guidance, networking aids from other accelerators within the TechStars Network.

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In a bid to encourage U.S. entrepreneurs, the White House launched the Startup America Partnership, a non-profit campaign to encourage the development of new businesses.

With backing from Facebook, IBM, Intel; and leadership from AOL founder Steve Case, Startup America, the campaign pledged to provide $2 billion in matching funds from the Small Business Administration to select startup companies.

In partnership with Colorado-based startup incubator TechStars, the campaign also intends to expand the TechStars mentorship model to nurture 6,000 new entrepreneurs around the country; and encourage large businesses to invest in smaller ones. IBM has pledged to invest $150 million in new entrepreneurs, and Intel has pledged $200 million, according to U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra.

Other partners include Facebook, which intends to host startup events around the country, HP, and Google.

Startup America will be funded in part by Case’s Case Foundation and the entrepreneurship-focused Kauffmann Foundation.

GearBox may have just found a way to take your smartphone to the next level. The smart toy company’s invention lets you use your smartphone to move a special ball — opening the door for future activities like smartphone golfing with real objects. Read more