Let’s Get Started!
The guys at TechCrunch reviewed a Houston startup that’s been covered by Startup Houston, Natuba. Overall, a lame article as the author did not really take the time to review the site, but the comment stream is great, especially if you know who the people are.
Check it out.
Online marketplaces are not new to the web, but specialty marketplaces focusing in on the long tail are cropping up all over. Last week I profiled Bubblevine and recently I came across Love2Trade, a free trading community that allows you to buy, sell and trade items, simply by trading the items you want for the items you don’t want.
Love2Trade’s differentiation from other similar sites is that there is no transaction fee on trades made between users. Typical free trade or barter sites tend to be more of a classified ad listing service (such as Craigslist or backpage). In addition to posted listings the company has a partnership with Oodle to provide visitors access to listings from several other sources (such as eBay, Facebook Classifieds, backpage and others).
Another nifty feature to the site is that they also provide item ratings/feedback and user communication via “Trade Zones” and “Zone Talk”. Houston based Ash Metry, founder of Love2Trade told me that, “any trader can also start a “Trade Zone” of a smaller community and invite friends and other traders that they might have something in common with. They can also engage in forum style discussions via Zone Talk.”
“I started with this idea after realizing that most people, including myself, purchase stuff that ends up sitting in their garage,” stated Metry. “The idea of Love2Trade is to make use of those purchases by trading them for things that you actually need instead of spending additional money on more stuff. We also wanted to build our business concept around the idea of providing a free service and donating part of our revenue to charities, non-profit organizations and causes that we believe meet new and emerging needs in communities, nations, and the world. We believe that by supporting these organizations and causes we will be able to help others in need.”
If you play around with the site, you can use the coupon code ‘grace’ which would give up to $5.00 off any featured ad.
Startup Houston and the Houston Technology Center are proud to present
The May Houston Startup Happy Hour.
Demo by Strongroom Solutions
The May Houston Startup Happy Hour features a live presentation of StrongRoom Solutions. StrongRoom Solutions offers a B2B service called the Payables Lockbox that is an online bill-pay service that lets business customers view, approve, and pay invoices online. There will also be an open mic opportunity for all startups to share recent announcements with the rest of Houston’s startup community.
New Location! New Format!
Here is your chance to meet Houston’s growing network of emerging startups, entreprenuers, investors, and technology enthusiasts to share drinks, tips and beta invites. Swap business cards and war stories and learn something new about Houston’s Tech Scene!
Join Us For:
The Tasting Room
When:
Thursday, May 1st (tomorrow)
6pm - 9pm
Where:
The Tasting Room @ River Oaks
2409 W. Alabama
(713) 526-2242
(Click here for map)
RSVP (here)
Sponsored by Phillips & Reiter, LLC
Our sponsor for the May Startup Happy Hour is Phillips & Reiter, LLC. Phillips & Reiter is a new kind of law firm, offering an innovative approach to managing legal services. Their senior legal executives provide counsel to growing organizations on an as-needed basis, at a fraction of the cost compared to hiring a full-time General Counsel or traditional law firms. P&R has offices in Houston, Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth. Continue reading ‘Join us for the next Houston Startup Happy Hour on Thursday May 1st’
Local entrepreneur Monica Yoo, sister of serial entrepreneur and Natuba founder Richard Yoo, has just launched her first venture, Bubblevine, a marketplace for college students within a school commuinity to buy and sell stuff to fellow students in a safe and comfortable environment: campus.
“While I was a junior in college at Trinity, I was looking for apartment furniture on Craigslist but found that the stuff I needed was all over town, often in sketchy areas that I wasn’t comfortable going to,” says Monica. ”Meanwhile, college kids were throwing away stuff at semester’s end. So I set out to create a market on campus for selling and buying stuff and Bubblevine was born.”
Bubblevine is free for students and only for students (you need a college email address to join). The intent is to develop a micro-local marketplace on campus so non-students are excluded from buying or selling items. Current schools listed on Bubblevine are:
Additional schools will be added over time.
As we wrote here, Guy Kawasaki is coming to Houston to speak at the Houston Technology Center about his book, The Art of the Start. We will be there covering the event and asking questions that we hope will help Houston’s entrepreneurs and startups. In addition, we’d like to ask for your input.
What questions would you like to see us ask Guy that you think would help entreprenuers and startup companies in Houston to succeed? Add your questions in the comments section.
We had a great time at the April Houston Startup Happy Hour this past Thursday with the JamsBio launch. The turnout was greater than we expected and filled the entire bar area (see photos and video below). We went with a different venue (The Tasting Room) and format (Demos + Networking) for this month’s startup happy hour and I’ll have to say that while we still have some tweaking to do, it was a great event.
Stephen Newman, Matt Williams and the rest of the JamsBio crew did a great job with their demo as well as bringing lots of free T-shirts for everyone and we were excited to be part of their launch. Also, many thanks to JamsBio for also sponsoring the event so that we could offer free drinks to many of you who made it by early.
I learned of two new social media startups at the event that are due to launch in private beta soon, and one established startup that just successfully secured their second round of funding. Unfortunately, I can’t report on them yet, but there are a lot of details that will be coming out soon. Marc Nathan of the HTC also announced Guy Kawasaki’s upcoming appearance at the HTC to give a presentation on The Art of The Start. Overall, very exciting to see the many new things going on in Houston’s startup community.
Here are some of the other startups and tech companies that were seen at the event:
Based on our April experience, here is how we plan to run the May event.
Let us know your thoughts. Did you make it to the Happy Hour? Was it a good event? Did you meet new and interesting startups and people? Did you like the demo or would you recommend another way to show off Houston’s hottest startups? Tell us what you think in the comments section.
Houston based Vision 20/20 (a wholly owned subsidiary of ThinAir Wireless) has launched three new services targeted towards safety minded consumers and touted as Peace of Mind (POM) products:
My first encounter with the Vision 20/20 team was some time ago when Tech Crunch had done a write up about the POM Offender Locator last year. The product is basically a mashup of sex offender data and Windows Live Maps.
The POM Alert System at first glance seem very similar to First Alert System Text, which Ed Schipul introduced me to some time ago, although F.A.S.T. is more focused on disaster events while POM Alert can be more user-designed.
POM Pilot is a more robust GPS system that I will let the team at Vision 20/20 explain.
I found out today via Marc Nathan and also via Dwight Silverman’s TechBlog that Guy Kawasaki is coming to the Houston Technology Center to speak about The Art of The Start on Thursday, April 24th at 7pm. I can’t tell you how excited I was to hear this news as this is obviously the type of speaker that could increase visibility for Houston in the startup world.
Apparently Guy was pretty impressed by all of the Houstonians at SXSWi and asked Dwight if he could set up an opportunity for him to come to Houston and speak. With all of the great minds in the Houston tech and startup communities, I’m sure we’ll have a lot more to impress Guy with when he gets here.
You can find more details over at Dwight Silverman’s Chron TechBlog.
You can register for the event on the Houston Technology Center site (here)
Also, we’re putting together a list of startup questions for Guy, so if you have any good ones that you would like to share or get answered, make sure to add them in our comments section.
Update: Hurry and register now because I’m told that they are already nearing capacity
Startup Houston and the Houston Technology Center are proud to present
The April Houston Startup Happy Hour.
Sponsored by JamsBio
The April Houston Startup Happy Hour features a completely new format including a live presentation of JamsBio.com launched publicly this week by Mouth Watering Media LLC. JamsBio is a new and unique website created by and for music lovers to exchange memories about life experiences and the music associated with them. There will also be an open mic opportunity for all startups to share recent announcements with the rest of Houston’s startup community.
New Location! New Format!
Here is your chance to meet Houston’s growing network of emerging startups, entreprenuers, investors, and technology enthusiasts to share drinks, tips and beta invites. Swap business cards and war stories and learn something new about Houston’s Tech Scene!
Join Us For:
The Tasting Room
When:
Thursday, April 3rd
6pm - 9pm
Where:
The Tasting Room @ River Oaks
2409 W. Alabama
(713) 526-2242
(Click here for map)
RSVP (here)
Meet Houston’s most innovative startups and entrepreneurs!
The Tasting Room at River Oaks has a great venue where there is room to socialize with the group, as well as areas to have side conversations. Try some great wines (and other mixed drinks) and share the latest and greatest info on yourself and your new tech venture. The wine cellar room also has a plasma screen TV and laptop that can be used to give other demos and show off your site.
Continue reading ‘Join Us for the April Houston Startup Happy Hour this Thursday’
I have seen recent articles from Stacey Higginbotham with the Austin office of GigaOm as well as StartupHouston’s own Josh Tabin talking about what it takes to make a town a successful breeding area for technology startups and decided to follow up on a point that Josh made about the need for close proximity to foster collaborative effort. I am also of the belief that even though we live in an ever-increasingly virtual world, there is value in having highly talented people grouped together in a specific geographic area, especially in a city that is as spread out as Houston is. This not only adds some of the intangible social aspects, but helps to build the identity of a startup community.
To that wit, I would like to make a proposal, and that is to identify an area in town that all startups would consider first on their list of areas to set up shop. The area that I am proposing would be called the Houston Startup Corridor. The Houston Startup Corridor would encompass the Midtown/Montrose/Museum areas and is indicated in the Google Map below (this map is publicly available). Things to like about the Midtown/Montrose/Museum areas are that they are eclectic, artsy, have reasonable rental and lease rates, and have close access to great resources like the Houston Technology Center and Rice University. In fact, the Houston Startup Corridor would be anchored by the Houston Technology Center on one end and Rice University on the other.
There are already a few companies and groups that are moving into this area. One is the Caroline Collective, a coworking and office space at 4820 Caroline that is intended to foster collaboration and innovation across Houston’s technology and creative communities. I also understand that the Caroline Collective has already signed up a handful of startups for their new offices and will be announcing them soon. Another company is MouthWateringMedia, founders of JamsBio.com, at 4203 Montrose, providing a unique way for people to frame the memories of the their life with the music that made it special. They got a great deal on a one year lease and love the cultural feel the Montrose area provides.
So, what do you think? Do you think that outlining a specific area where Houston’s tech startups should call home will help to grow the startup community in general? Do you think that this area offers the best environment for startups to set up shop? Take a look at the map and tell us what you think in our comments section.
Recent Comments