Posts Tagged → Startups
Incubate Miami – Fall 2011 Program, APPLY NOW!
Incubate Miami just announced the launch of its third Startup Accelerator program, which will start on September 15, 2011. Applications are now open for the top ten South Florida startups wishing to participate in the proven program that accelerates business growth and culminates in the exciting Demonstration Day showcase on January 19th 2012. Venture Capitalists, Technologists, Marketing and Brand Management Professionals are a few of the mentors already confirmed for the program.
Incubate Miami’s Fall 2011 program follows the successful completion of its Spring program where seven companies participated and graduated.
Following completion of the program, Tedd Bernard, founder of AlmostFamous.com said, “California has Y-Combinator, New York has BetaWorks, Boulder has TechStars, and now AlmosFamous is getting famous by starting out in Miami. The entire community has rallied behind us proving that the market is ripe for entrepreneurship. This was showcased by an attendance of more than 180 people in Incubate Miami’s second ever Demo Day”.
“Miami has always had the talent to be competitive, the Incubate Miami program provides the missing piece to bring the community together to support technology startups in the market with services and investment,” says Marc Billings, Founder of Incubate Miami.
Incubate Miami announced earlier in the year its partnership with the TechStars Network, the internationally renowned startup accelerator model. The increasing national exposure for Incubate program companies is already having impact on the success of the businesses. Entrepreneurs ready to participate in the fastest and most interesting startup program in Florida are encouraged to apply through the Incubate Miami website: www.incubatemiami.com.
About Incubate Miami
Incubate Miami supports emerging science and technology companies in Miami. Founded by Marc Billings, CEO of Digiport, in 2009, Incubate Miami provides multiple layers of support for entrepreneurs. The mission is to accelerate the growth of startups and innovation and to develop a vibrant technology-based community that creates high-skill, high wage jobs in industries that drive the global economy. Incubate Miami is a network member of the TechStars global startup movement. The Incubate Miami program is operated by the Enterprise Development Corporation, the leading organization in South Florida providing incubation programs and assistance for science and technology companies (www.edc-tech.org)
Incubate Miami is located at 200 Southeast 1st Street, Suite 601, Miami, FL 33131. For more information call (786) 220-7145.
TheDailyCramp.com – Know Her Flow!
Is that time of the month when the shit hits the fan. Yeah, your women has the cramps!! You probably ask yourself: “Why can’t I be advised or alerted before this happens? Or, why can’t I understand her? Please, somebody HELP!”
Well, we can’t help because we simply don’t understand women, but, we know the right people that can help.
Two bright investment bankers came up with a multi-million dollar idea to help men understand women and their menstrual cycle. They’ve created “TheDailyCramp.com” [The Daily Cramp], which aims to help guys know what’s happening in their chick’s mind during their cycle. The system consists of a free daily newsletter that uses male-oriented humor to explain the cramps. What better way to start your day than by reading a hilarious newsletter that accurately illustrates mood swings of your girlfriend, wife, mother, sister, daughter or some other women in your life? Yeah, this is a hit.
Launched today on April 1st (Happy April Fools’ Day!!), the idea for The Daily Cramp came to founder Jon Hilley while he was talking to his girlfriend about her “hormone cycle” and how to understand it. Hilley thought that if he could somehow explain to guys, in a funny way, what his girlfriend was telling him about the cramp, he could create a successful business. Not long after, he pitched his idea at Startup Weekend Miami, receiving great feedback. Couple of days later, he was already testing a service.
The Daily Cramp‘s newsletter has a bit of everything humorist; sometimes it will make girls laugh and sometimes it will just embarrass them (without going over the edge), it’s part of the fun! “The Daily Cramp will definitely make sense of a chick’s crazy cycle, while still making you laugh every bit of the way. The whole point behind The Daily Cramp is to entertain men while educating them on being better and understanding partners to the ladies in their lives,” Hilley says.
The newsletter works this way: after you subscribe they ask you a few silly questions (such as the girl’s name, duration of cycle period, etc) which helps create your custom newsletter about the women you intend to keep track of. Everyday they send the newsletter with a chart modified to predict changes in emotions, a bear’s face that changes with her flow, plus a few lines of witty commentaries explaining the current situation of the lady you’re tracking.
After being up for a couple of months in beta mode, The Daily Cramp attracted about 6,000 subscribers without even releasing a newsletter. Based in Miami, FL, the now company, aims to attract as many subscribers as they can. They are planning to soon release a service that will make The Daily Cramp an even more interesting tool by making women desperately wanting to join the service. Hmm, do I smell bloody celebrities?
The Daily Cramp is a bootstrapped service with a highly efficient revenue model. Just ask Thrillist (the email newsletter for dudes) about their ramping $10MM in revenues just last year, or The Daily Candy (other email newsletter service) which was sold in 2008 for about $125MM to Comcast. Email newsletters may not sound sexy, but they literally print money. The Daily Cramp may generate $48MM in advertising sales by the end of 2012 if they achieve their set number for subscribers. Hilley says that, “if we make you laugh everyday, we are going to be successful.” Let’s hope they can achieve those numbers.
Go on see “The Crazy Bear” for yourself!
Visit Their Facebook Page
Follow @TheDailyCramp
Refresh Miami March 24th Meetup
Refresh Miami March 24th Meetup:
Join us this month as Matthew Wensing from StormPulse.com tells us about how he scratched and clawed his way through building his startup from the ground up into one of the leading Weather data providers on the internet.
Wearer of many hats: co-founder, Python developer, visualization guru, front-end grunt, marketer, user-experience champion, and father of four. Co-founder of Stormpulse.
When: Thursday March 24
Pizza and sodas will be provided as usual. We will be moving to the Rathskeller on campus beer and drinks.
Schedule:
7:30-8:00: Networking
8:00-8:30: Presentation by Matthew Wensing
8:30-9:30: Beers and drinks at Rathskeller
LOCATION: University of Miami CAS Gallery
1210 Stanford Drive
Coral Gables, FL
Google Maps for direction visit here!
Parking at meters on Stanford Drive and Pavia Garage (free): HERE
RSVP on Facebook
RoomSurf.com – The #1 College Roommate Finder
We’ve all gone through the burden of college applications, deciding where to attend, and what career to pursue. But, for a lot of high school seniors what scares them the most is finding out who they’re going to roommate with. Thankfully there are people that thought this before you did and created a system to help you find the perfect roommate. This solution is called RoomSurf.com [RoomSurf].
Launched last year, RoomSurf is a website dedicated to help students identify and connect with compatible roommates. Users create a profile and take a personality based test. Then an algorithm, specifically designed to help you get matched with potential candidates, rates potential candidates among other incoming students at your college. These potential candidates go through the same test you do. Potential roommates are matched according to a criterion that includes studying habits, overnight guests, music, religion, politics, sexual orientation, and eating habits among others. After you find a roommate of your preference you can request your school to allow you to have him/her as your roommate with a mutual consent from the other student.
The website also works as a social network for students; after they create their profiles, students are able to speak with hundreds of other students attending the college. They can share ideas, talk about topics, and organize events beforehand or during the semester to meet the incoming class or make new friends (possible future roommates). This helps keep students using the website in between semesters when business is slower. The ultimate mission with RoomSurf is to help students spend more time getting to know their best potential roommate matches, and less time trying to find them.
It all started back in college when co-founders Dan Thibodeau and Justin Gaither, from the University of Miami, saw a need in the marketplace — students were trying to match themselves by posting surveys on discussion boards, and reading through hundreds of posts by others. The perfect solution came at a time when the use of social networks was rising and online matching services was growing exponentially.
Their current target market is seniors in high school attending four year institutions in the United States. The website covers over 800 school networks across the US and have over 112,000 subscribers after only a year in service. Their revenue model is quite simple, they charge a small one time fee ($4.95) for premium services such as chatrooms, instant messaging, and video chat in the near future.
Both co-founders realized that being an entrepreneur at an early age wasn’t an easy task. They had to overcome dozens of challenges and obstacles to create a now-healthy business. They where hit with criticism by people telling them that they wouldn’t achieve their target traffic numbers. As a consequence, they accepted the challenge, focused on their goals, and went full force to reach them. They now own a company that has reached thousands and is already profitable after a year in business.
RoomSurf is a self-funded company that was part of the University of Miami’s Launch Pad.
The Launch Pad, opened in 2008, offers career guidance, resources, and advice to entrepreneurs, innovators, and inventors at the University of Miami.
Visit RoomSurf.com today, and help somebody find their college roommate for the next 4 years.
Don’t forget to follow @RoomSurf
YouCeleb.com – Look Famous At Exclusive Prices!
Have you ever wondered what your favorite celebrity was wearing at that basketball game you were watching couple of nights ago? Or who made the purse and the pair of glasses that Kim Kardashian was rocking last night on her tv show? And what if you could buy the items for just a fraction of the price when group-buying over the internet?
Well we found the perfect website for you (life for you was so sad before this). YouCeleb.com [YouCeleb], is a daily-deal website inspired by celebrity fashion. Every day they host a deal based on one celebrity and one article of clothing that they were wearing. The consumer can then get that piece of fashion good for an exclusive price. That’s not all, every time you buy something through their services, YouCeleb works with the celebrity that was featured on the deal so their proceeds go to a charity of their choice.
This idea has struck so many people that the website has already reached about 20,000 subscriptions and has sold over 200 deals, this is amazing considering the website had a soft launch on February 1st. YouCeleb, based in Miami, FL uses a system such as any other group buying website were it has to reach a minimum of deals bought to get the discounted price on the item. Before this concept, brands weren’t monetizing the fact that famous celebrities where using their products publicly. Celebrities are the special recipe in the early-success of this company. Everybody wants to look like celebrities, so, this is your chance to do it while not entirely giving away money to the already rich celebrities and brands.
How this works is that YouCeleb browses around all those paparazzi shots of the most “in” celebrities at the moment to identify the brands they’re wearing. Then they work with the brands to bring you the same great opportunity of looking awesome at discounted prices. Amit Dharmani, the founder and CEO of YouCeleb, explains that he wanted to create a model where it was a triple-win situation. Unlike Charlie Sheen, who is #bi-winning, Amit thinks that the brand, the celebrity/charity, and the consumer should all benefit to create a #tri-winning situation. Everybody wins with this website! Usually brands give celebrities with their new clothes and accessories so they would wear them and somehow capture the attention of the consumer to buy the product. But let’s get real, how many times you wonder what brand are those amazing sunglasses you just saw your favorite celebrity wearing?
YouCeleb’s target market are women between the ages of 18 through 35. The company thinks that this is the range of the women who buy online. They specified that they will not only focus on women, but that will also be launching daily deals for men. And with the now-booming of daily-deals websites, YouCeleb surely has a product everybody wants to be a part of. Currently they are handling about 120 brands, and dozens of charities. They are getting ready for a full blast launch at the end of this month to have the daily-deal out there. Featuring new things everyday! YouCeleb has already captured the spotlight in places all around the US. They had thousands of subscribers from the west coast when they launched thanks to the fashion and celebrity active interest in the area of Los Angeles.
YouCeleb is part of the December 2010 graduating class from IncubateMiami, a technology business incubator in Miami that offers tools, and support that young companies and entrepreneurs need.
Go Ahead, Look Famous – Get Your Daily Deal Delivered
Here’s a video of how YouCeleb.com works, enjoy!
Don’t forget to follow @YouCeleb
Startup CloudShopper.com – Crowdsourcing Shopping Recommendations
The main use of CloudShopper is to help the user understand how a product stands among his/her social circle to make better decisions on what to buy. Let’s suppose you want to buy a present for your friend Mark whose birthday is around the corner. You don’t know what to get him but certainly have some ideas. You then go to CloudShopper, put together a list of products and then share it with your friends on Facebook. Your friends are then able to discuss, give their opinions, and/or suggestions on the potential gifts for Mark. Once you’re done reviewing products with your friends, you can directly buy the product chosen through CloudShopper and make Mark happy on his birthday.
Launched last year on December 15th, CloudShopper uses Amazon’s large inventory to sell all kinds of products. They also make it easy to find the best deals available on products. Just imagine the possibilites of this, what if you could review deals from LivingSocial (Amazon backed company) as potential gifts?
CloudShopper has grown to more than 5,000 unique visitors in over a month, that’s pretty quick considering they are a self-funded company with little to no cash for marketing. We hope they can get to attract a numerous amount of users.
Their target market is people who are more into social media; tech savvy persons in the ages of 18 through 35, also known as “social digitals.” They are planning on launching a mobile app in the next 5 to 6 months, and make browser (toolbars) integration to better serve users.
This is a perfect service entering the rising market of social commerce. It helps consumers reach a decision on what products to buy and certainly make them happier with their acquisitions. It’s a great idea to make your friends give their opinion on products; they already do in person when you shop at a mall, so why not do it digitally?
Need a creative and airy space to work? WTF? White Table Foundation (VIDEO) – Ft. Lauderdale
If you are one of those over-productive individuals that loves working in creative and open spaces, then today is your lucky day! The White Table Foundation or WTF however you want to call it , as described in their website,
is a place where freelancers can come together to use beautiful, modern facilities to practice their craft and run their businesses while being surrounded by an environment that promotes collaboration…like a think tank on steroids. We want to be more that just a collaborative, coworking space – we want to give the tech and creative communities in South Florida a hub – a place to host events and meetup groups as well as a place that they know they can come to share and grow ideas into realities.
According to WTF, their space is open, airy and full of white tables. Its location and facilities makes it perfect for hosting events and is the perfect setting to impress clients.
So if you are in the Downtown Fort Lauderdale Area and need a space to work your genius and exciting ideas you should definitely check it out ASAP. They even have a beautiful waterway where you can dock your boat if thats your method of transportation.
Here is an interview by Agustina Prigoshin to one of the Co-Founders, Willie Morris
WTF is located at 1109 Las Olas Blvd., Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
Visit www.whitetablefoundation.com for more information on the co-working space, pricing, upcoming events and upcoming contests. Also, make sure to follow them on Twitter: @thewhitetable
Don’t forget to follow the creator of the video/interview: Agustina Prigoshin @AgustinaP
Incubate Miami Opens Its Doors
Miami is a growing city with tons of opportunities to develop healthy businesses. Organizations such as this new incubator brings a new way for companies down here or emerging startups to get help in developing their businesses. Slowly Miami has become an international icon in the business of trading and global markets which entices new emerging businesses to consider it as their main point to build their startups.
Marc Billings, CEO of Digiport, in collaboration with The Enterprise Development Corporation of South Florida (EDC) opened IncubateMiami with the main purpose of accelerating the growth of startups and innovation to develop a vibrant technology-based community that creates high-skill, high wage jobs in industries that drive the global economy.
Here is a video by Eric Oetjen from Semantic Seed interviewing Marc Billings..
To contact IncubateMiami go here
Follow Semantic Seed @semanticseed
Be part of their upcoming event here in Miami! Check it out:
Startup Camp 2011 (Miami Edition)
