Braxton Jarrett, CEO of ATDC company Clearleap was interviewed by NewTeeVee at the CONNECTIONS™: The Digital Living Conference and Showcase. In the clip Braxton discusses the changing attitudes of cable providers and how web video has become part of the providers product roadmaps.
As I head off to watch the finals of the GRA/TAG Business Launch 2009 this morning I wanted to share with you the tactics that Balaya used to be the leading vote getter in the People’s Choice Contest, and boy did they earn it. Balaya’s win was no accident, but a well thought out social media marketing plan. The tactics employed by Balaya are transferable to many different social media marketing situations and Seth Michalak was kind enough to share them.
It’s a long list, but no one ever said this social media marketing stuff was easy. But hopefully, some of the tactics that Balaya used to win the People’s Choice Contest can be used by many startups to help grow their business down the road.
Since January I have been devoting a good chunk of time leading the preliminary judging of the TAG/GRA Business Launch Competition.
This year 76 companies submitted preliminary applications and 47 full
business plans were presented. After the 47 plans were received
entrants were invited to provide an overview of their companies in a
three minute unaided presentation. Today TAG notified the companies of
their status. In alphabetical order the selected semifinalists are as
follows.
AccelerEyes: simple software for powerful visual computing.
BandMetrics: tracks, analyzes, and scores the overall popularity of
musical artists by aggregating and interpreting online content.
Balaya: Internet collaboration tools.
Cobot Health: an intelligent agent solution for personalized health conversations and recommendations within peer communities.
Fans Want More: a telemetry data collection service provider providing
new media visualization solutions to the sports industry.
Fizzbee: an online social networking product that lets users create an interactive story from a digital photo.
MedsFile: your medical records anytime, anywhere.
Millionaire Moms: a platform designed to help entrepreneurial Moms find and achieve their own vision of success.
ReinventEd: creates immersive game based learning experiences for middle and high school students.
TalentSoup: an Internet service that provides a highly efficient matching engine to connect talent with advertising projects.
VOC Systems: a speech based customer feedback method to service organizations that can benefit from on-site service recoveries.
VQLink:
provides headend and network products for video service providers that
enable them to add more HD channels and improve video quality while
lowering expenses.
WebIvy: enables marketing organizations to quickly and inexpensively optimize concept to market for online initiatives.
The
semifinalists are being offered an opportunity to practice their 20
minute pitches next Monday and will present and defend their plans
privately to an esteemed panel of judges
on May 6, 7 & 8. The selected finalists will present to a
panel of judges and the public on June 3 at IBM.
Regardless of
how far a company gets in the competition to win the $100k in cash and
$200k in prizes the aim of the contest is to move all of the companies
forward in their development. And from this perspective it is my hope
that all of the companies that entered believe that they are winners.
BeyeNETWORK,
which focuses on providing their viewers with access to the thought leaders in business
intelligence, recently spotlighted ATDC member company Izenda. In the spotlight Izenda CEO Sanjay Bhatia explains how Izenda Reports integrates
with existing applications to empower users to create and customize
their own reports over a browser without technical help or training.
You can download the Izenda_podcast or go directly to the spotlight to hear Sanjay's thoughts on why Izenda is gaining significant market traction and the future of BI reporting.
Late last week ATDC member company WorthPoint announced that they signed a key partnership agreement with Terapeak. Terapeak, provides eBay sellers and buyers with two years of trending data to help target the best products to sell, as well as 90 days of item-specific data to guide average expected pricing, sell-through rates, list timing, keyword choice and category selection. Under the terms of the agreement, Terapeak will provide WorthPoint with eBay’s entire daily sales of antique and collectible data for inclusion in WorthPoint’s database.
This is an important achievement for WorthPoint as they continue to build a data asset of art, antique, and collectibles pricing to enable people to learn more about the value of their collectibles. Prior to this agreement WorthPoint’s database already housed over 30 million items, They have data from more than 500 auction houses and millions of products sold for retail. The eBay data will now complement this database, so that consumers, collectors, dealers and others will be able to accurately assess the value of most any item. WorthPoint expects to add over 1 billion items to its database as a result of the Terapeak agreement. That’s a lot of stuff. Enough to transform WorthPoint into the ultimate online resource for collectors and sellers.
Technology Square Research Building
Thursday, January 8, 2009
7:30 to 9am
85 5th Street, NW
Atlanta, GA
Map
On January 8th at the monthly TAG/ATDC Entrepreneurs Society meeting the GRA/TAG 2009 Business Launch Competition will officially kickoff. The winner of the competition will receive a $100,000 cash award courtesy of the GRA and a diverse array of services valued at an additional $200,000! This year the competition is focusing on Internet technologies. This includes companies that are developing products, online services, or backend technologies that are using or extending the reach, flexibility and ease of the internet. There is a particular interest in companies within the fields of digital media/technology, cleantech, mobility and securities. If you have a start-up business that fits in one of this areas and would like to get your hands on the prize you are going to want to attend this session.
Come hear from past winners, ReachCall, IVOX and
Acculynk, as the CEOs from each of these
companies tell us of their progress since they won. Then I am going to moderate a session to provide some insight into what it takes to make it to the finals. Details regarding the 2009
competition will also be provided.
ATDC is pretty excited to be the host sponsor of CloudCamp Atlanta which will take place on on January 20th from 4:00 to 9:30 pm.
CloudCamp is an unconference where attendees can exchange ideas,
knowledge and information in a creative and supporting environment,
advancing the current state of cloud computing and related
technologies. Like any unconference, CloudCamp is an informal member-supported gathering that relies
entirely on volunteers to help with meeting content, speakers, meeting
locations, equipment and membership recruitment.
This is going to be a popular event. About 80 people have registered to attend. Join them.
If you have not seen the news from The Atlanta Business Chronicle or TechJournal South, 2080 Media (aka PlayOn Sports) has raised $3 million in a round led by Imlay Investments with Noro-Mosely Partners participating. What you may not have heard is that ATDC Entrepreneur in Residence MIke Eckert is going to be joining PlayOn's board along with Greg Foster of NMP. What I know that you have not heard is that the company joined ATDC last week.
PlayOn is a digital media company providing an end-to-end solution for the production, management, and distribution of professional quality TV-like live events over the Internet at a fraction of the cost of traditional television. Led by David Rudolph, the company is technology and asset spin out from Turner Broadcasting. More then four years has been spent testing and perfecting the PlayOn platform.
PlayOn's initial market focus will be on sports content. The company has seen demand from organizations such as universities, high schools, and leagues to generate media exposure for their sports and programs. Aside from the direct financial benefit the exposure provides, it also has a positive effect on recruiting, alumni cultivation, and general awareness. Media entities have also desire the exclusive sports content that PlayOn enables them to create and distribute.
PlayOn is shooting for the big space between user generated content at YouTube quality and what you see on ESPN every day. Should be an exciting to watch the game unfold.
ATDC’s newest member company, Purewire, is tackling enterprises’ most pressing security problem today: web security. The rapid growth of web-based applications, along with the rise of user-generated content and social media, has led to new threats that old security solutions are ill-equipped to address. The team of visionaries and leaders at Purewire recognized this threat and put their experience and talent to work. The result: a SaaS enterprise web security solution that takes a holistic approach to secure corporate networks and users from malicious people, places, and things on the Web.
Purewire is on to big things. The company recently closed a second friends and family round led by Sig Mosley and ATDC’s Seed Capital Fund and is presenting at this week’s Venture Atlanta event. They are well positioned to become a leader in the $1 billion web security space. And it’s no surprise that the company is doing so well. The management team has great experience behind them. They were all executives and original management of Cyphertrust, a messaging security service, that was sold to Securecomputing (now McAfee) in 2006 for $273 million.
ATDC is very excited to have Purewire join the team. You will definitely be hearing more about how Purewire is securing business and social interactions on the Web.
It’s celebration time for the online world of antiques and collectibles. This week, WorthPoint announced plans to acquire GoAntiques, a well-established online network for buying and selling antiques. The acquisition translates into a whopping 1 million-plus visitors a month to the WorthPoint site. The combined companies now rank above PBS’s Antiques Roadshow at the top of organic search for antiques. Truly, this is a great marketing coup for the Atlanta-based WorthPoint. Expect to see rapid acceleration in the site’s already significant organic growth.
With 100 million avid collectors around the world and the global collectibles market estimated at $150 billion a year, combining two of the premier websites for art, antiques and collectibles was just common sense for Will Seippel, Founder and CEO of WorthPoint Corporation and Jim Kamnikar, President and CEO of GoAntiques, Inc. – and we agree! It’s exciting times for growing companies like WorthPoint.
Go to your basement, grab a "collectibles" item and check it out for yourself!