5 Cleantech Startups With Support from Intel

Intel Capital, Intel’s global investment organization, has invested a total approximately $10 million in five clean tech startups. Intel’s new sub-group, dubbed the Energy Systems Group will focus on the development of smart building, smart homes and smart grids.
The following startups received support:

*CPower (New York). The company delivers targeted energy management services and solutions that enable companies to optimize their facilities and operations through energy reduction initiatives and earn market payments for those reductions. This is Intel Capital’s initial funding of CPower.

*Grid Net (San Francisco). The company is a pioneer in providing the network operating system and management control plane for the Smart Grid. Grid Net’s Series C funding round includes Intel Capital’s third investment.

*Powervation (Limerick, Ireland). It provides digital power controllers for server, desktop computing and communications platforms that deliver capabilities in automatic configuration and self stabilization. Intel Capital co-led Powervation’s Series A funding round and this is its second investment in the company.

*Convey Computer (Richardson, Texas). The firm offers high-performance computing (HPC) solutions which aim to reduce energy consumption and boost performance. Convey’s HC-1 solution integrates advanced existing off-the-shelf hardware — namely an Intel Xeon processor and field programmable gate arrays — with compiler technology that minimizes the programming challenges. Convey’s Series B funding round includes the second investment by Intel Capital.

*iControl (Palo Alto, Calif.). The firm provides an IP-based platform that delivers monitored home security, remote home monitoring and home and energy management capabilities to security and broadband providers. iControl’s Series C funding round includes a follow-on investment by Intel Capital.

Web OS With Social Media Twist

Google is working on building a web OS for notebooks.A lot expects have predicted the emergence of a web OS in a year or two. Launched last week, Glide Engage is a stream front-end for the Glide , a Web OS which offers a suite of integrated Web Apps including docs, spreadsheets, photo and music uploading and sharing, calendar, email, Website creation and collaboration tools. Glide can be overwhelming. There is a lot there. But it has attracted its own loyal following of about one million registered users. In their own words “Glide is a free suite of rights-based productivity and collaboration applications with 10GBs of storage. Setup and administer up to six family member accounts including child accounts from your Glide settings panel. The Glide OS provides automatic file and application compatibility across devices and operating systems. With Glide OS you also get the Glide Sync App which helps you to synchronize your home and work files.”
You can even use Glide on virtually any mobile phone with a browser. To access Glide on your mobile go to www.GlideMobile.com

7 Mobile Video Applications

The success of youtube has been phenomenal even though revenue generation has not been so good as the user traction. A lot of other startups are replicating the same model for smartphone users. Video streaming is better and has always been on Phones. Software Entrepreneurs are taking advantage of this and have tried to give users mobile video applications.The following are a few of them as noted first by readwriteweb.

1. Ustream: Ustream recently announced the launch of their Recording App for the iPhone 3GS. The app can syndicate video to Ustream, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Ustream also lets mobile viewers discover new videos by common hashtags in the Media Feed. The company’s recently launched a white label solution for conference and business broadcasting.

2. 12cast : After much anticipation, 12seconds.tv released their video application for the iPhone 3GS. The app allows users to create a short 12 second video clip and from here they can share the video’s short URL with their friends through Twitter.

3. Twitvid and Posterous : Both Twitvid and Posterous allow users to create videos on their mobile phones and email them to be uploaded to the site. With Twitvid, friends receive a DM message with a link to the newest video. ReadWriteWeb recently covered Twitvid in a round up of Twitter video apps . Meanwhile, with Posterous, your files are instantly converted and embedded as a flash player on your site.

4. Livecast Bambuser and Flixwagon : Livecast, Bambuser and Flixwagon are all similar services that allow users to stream videos live to their channels, blogs and Facebook accounts. Depending on your community preference you can upload vlogs, short films and vignettes.

5. Qik : Qik allows users to stream live videos to their channels, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Justin.tv accounts. One nice feature of the Qik video for Android is that users can trim their clips via their phones before uploading them. ReadWriteWeb named Qik one of the top 100 products of 2008.

6. Kyte : While it doesn’t support live streaming, Kyte’s iPhone 3GS app allows users to record video and upload it to their channels in an extremely easy manner. The service also offers branded mobile sites for big name celebrities.
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10 Startup Ideas Funded by DreamIt Ventures

Philadelphia-based early-stage investment outfit DreamIt Ventures is in the business of finding, funding, and accelerating great startups. DreamIt, now in its second year, sees startup founders through the summer with seed funding and advisement, allowing them to demo their wares for media and investors mid-August.

Notehall allows college students to buy and sell lecture notes and study guide materials online. According to DreamIt, Notehall is currently active and generating revenue at three universities and has more than 13,000 users and 5,500 documents for sale.
While at Dreamit, Notehall has successfully launched an automated recruiting campaign at Drexel University and is planning to rolling out its services to more institutions this fall. The team is also in the process of raising a round of funding.

OurShelf , currently in public beta, helps users to catalog, lend, and manage their belongings while searching for items they need to borrow from friends for short-term use. Users can also use the site to list their unwanted items for sale on multiple third-party auction and classifieds sites.
A personalized social shopping experience is created by laying an item graph (complete with related items and reviews) over a social graph. DreamIt describes the app as being “like Del.icio.us for physical goods.”

Parse.ly is an aggregator of web content. Still in private beta, the site claims to adapt to user preferences to “filter, prioritize, and even suggest relevant content from countless news and blog sources across the web.” DreamIt claims the app works better than Google Alerts. We weren’t able to test-drive the app ourselves, but this is a hot space with a few excellent competitors, and we eagerly await the finished (or public beta) product.

Postling is a site we reviewed a scant week ago. Founded by half of Etsy’s founding team, along with a former Etsy and Amazon.com product manager, the site aims to be ground zero for small business publishing to social media platforms.
Postling lets users publish content simultaneously to many major social platforms, including blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. In addition, users can read and respond to comments left by readers. The site offers paid accounts only. Aimed squarely at enterprises only, Postling is revenue-ready.

SeatGeek, currently in private beta, aims to be the Farecast of event tickets. It’s a web app that will forecast sports and concert ticket prices so consumers know whether to buy a ticket now or wait until the price drops. For sellers, the app helps them determine the best time to sell their inventory. DreamIt tells us that SeatGeek’s crawlers have compiled millions of ticket transactions and have aggregated other factors that influence ticket prices. The patent’s pending on that money-making algorithm.
And although free accounts are available now for consumers, this fall will bring premium subscriptions for brokers and other ticket sellers.

Straight Up English is a SaaS company now in private beta and launching public in the fall. It aims to address the most persistent speech challenges for ESL learners in areas such as word stress, intonation, and pronunciation with a multi-modal approach and a focus on oral communication. DreamIt tells us that this startup will include both web and mobile apps and communities for students and teachers.

The “three screens” of this startup’s name refer to mobile, computer, and television screens. The team plans to converge and capitalize on all three with social gaming apps, the first of which is FanGamb, a fantasy sports game that tests players’ abilities as sports bettors.The app is in private alpha and will go live by the start of the NFL season. The team is due to announce the close of a six-figure seed capital raise in the near future.

The team behind Trendsta were formerly some of the minds behind myYearbook and Owned (a top-10 Facebook app). They think they know teen influencers pretty well by now and are selling brands on a marketing platform that, according to DreamIt, “puts products in the hands of the most influential teens on the web… as they create buzz about those items.” The team has so far been working with hot-name brands such as Atlantic Records, Penguin Books, Neutrogena, and Polaroid.

Jobaphiles is for employers who want to auction their part-time jobs and one-time gigs, allowing them to hire the most qualified and competitively priced applicant and saving them time and money. Also, jobseekers compete with the added knowledge of one another’s qualifications and bidding prices.

Kidzillions , now in private beta and live in the fall, is an online allowance and chore management system that helps kids learn to spend and save in our cashless society. Kids work for money to buy real stuff as parents assign chores and monitor their progress.
And that wraps up DreamIt Ventures’ graduating class of 2009. We’ll be keeping an eye on these companies, sites, and apps as they go live, secure funding, and take their next steps.

Source: DreamIt Ventures

Trends, Ideas and Opportunities for a startup

In my last three posts I have deliberate focused on startup ideas because I think the world deserves to know about the ideas I have been thinking about. I believe that an idea has no value if is not being implemented or has not been implemented. As I write this post, I am going through a customer discovery phase of my new startup idea. I am trying as much as possible to contact at least five companies who share the pain I have discovered. The primary research will prove my assumptions right or wrong. I read about so many ideas and predictions of new trends and opportunities for startup by popular bloggers, and I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt that in as much as there are good ideas, the real value is in the implementation. If somebody believes in the ideas I blog about he or she can implement them and I will be happy to be a beta tester. In the mean time I am trying out few once from the large pool of startup ideas I have. I will keep you posted with ideas in every post. You are welcome to share your comments on the ideas I blog about. In the mean time check out Whats Next After Web 2.0 and Mobile Opportunities For Startups and listen to what Eric Schmidt has to say about where the opportunities are in the future

Startup Ideas from 2 Startup Industries

A lot of startups exist as a business with contributions from the public to gather content. Startups like Digg , Reddit , stumbleUpon and Wikipedia have been able to create something useful that attracted users who ended up providing content for these sites. Others have created platforms that allow innovation and creativity by leveraging on architecture of participation.

1. Open Innovation
The first idea revolves around Open Innovation. Products are listed under three categories. Platforms that allow peer to peer (p2p) product creation .There are sites that initiated by corporate organizations and last but not the least is public sector peer production for institutions and agencies. The list of ideas and products can be found here: Open Innovation Ideas and Online Crowd Powered Ideas and startups.

2. Enterprise 2.0
A lot of applications have been built around the web 2.0 buzz. Companies have always been concerned about how their data can be safe with a startup that has products on a remote server and sometimes the service is even still in beta stage, but these startups expect enterprises to sign on and pay for particular service. The greatest concern has always been security. But some companies have are doing great and new companies are springing up every day in the enterprise space. Kart has identified opportunities in four areas with great potential. Enterprise 2.0 Opportunities

Consumer Startup Ideas

I have always believed that succeeding with a consumer application in the internet is very difficult.Even though i have explored a coupled of them I still think consumer applications takes time to get to main stream.But If the idea is mission critical and solves the pain everybody has, you are likey to make it mainstream.There are just too many consumer applications out there.Consumers have so much choice that the least frustration they go through on your application,they are bound to leave without thinking twice about it. Tim Oreilly urges Web.2.0 firms to solve real world problems He believes that the world gas been bedeviled with too many web applications that are not making impact in the world.He thinks its high time somebody concentrated on ideas that solve global problems that has the potential to impact somebody’s life positively.He says most startup ideas are concentrated on leisure and entertainment.I have my Own opinion on that.
Anyway think about these Ideas and let me know what you think:

• A Market place for Volunteers/charitable Organizations
There should a marketplace of sorts where these information can be assessed and volunteers can be matched to organizations looking for them. Moreover, volunteers should be able to share their stories, be they words, images or videos such that these stories can be told to the rest of the community. In fact, volunteers and organizations can even rate each other to create some form of reputation mechanisms.

• Social Commerce
A startup that will use TipJoy’s API to create a service for online stores to allow their customers to purchase their goods via Twitter. I will offer discounts to twitter purchasers that will agree to broadcast their purchase to followers. I will allow users the option of making that broadcast.

• “We are all stuck in jobs we hate. How do you create products that help people do what they are passionate about and enjoy a healthy financial income? Empowering people and giving them a means to an alternate lifestyle that people love?”

• search engine for (Amazon.com’s MP3 library, iTunes and AppStore and Imeem)
Sign up as an affiliate of Apple through LinkShare. Then I get access to Apple’s 6.5mm song data feed (download data feed spec doc), you have to pay an a mount to LinkShare (which gives you access to product feeds from many of their merchants). You’ll then earn a percentage of any sales that result from your iTunes or Appstore search engine.

Saas Startup Ideas

Software as a service is being talked about everyday by trend experts, Industry Bloggers, and trend predictors.I have been Thinking about how best to to take advantage of this wave.But it is not that easy to build a startup to serve the businesses.I have been thinking about ideas that can fly and subsequently emerge into a company that can scale like salesforce. Salesforce is the leader of the software as a service market. The 7 Secrets to SaaS Startup Success by Salesforce is great.I am attracted to this market, but I need a lot of insight to run a company like that. Ben Yoskovitz has great insight in the saas market. What Do SaaS Companies Have to Prepare for 2009? has a lot of advice. .
For all the trends and companies taken saas to the next level visit. .

A couple of ideas I have stumbled upon whilst surfing the web:

• Professional Virtual Office Easily manage your data (emails, contacts, meetings, documents, tasks,…) in your virtual office from any computer with a Web browser and an Internet connection. Share yourdata and access shared data efficiently in the context of work or leisure groups. Your data are safe andavailable anytime on the Web, on a PDA (online or offline) or on a WAP capable cell phone.

• Simplify your Online Life . develop tools that improve Internet user’s digital lifestyles. Tools make it easier to communicate online, whether that means one web-based inbox for email and social networks or some other method the community has yet to dream up.

• Contact Management Easily create, manage, and search an unlimited number of contacts, export to vcards, even share contacts with any email address. On the run? Seamlessly download and view your contacts on your phone, laptop, or iPod. Gone are the days of business cards piling up and sticky notes on your desk, Keepm makes everyone you know searchable, shareable, and always accessible.keepm.com (good concept)

• Segment: “Platform as a Service”. Product: a web-based development & hosting platform allowing small businesses to model , build and manage autonomously their own information system, for a small monthly fee.

• Web hosted Virus scanner for enterprises instead of relying on downloadable software. Enterprise subscribes to scan their computers automatically.

• As search engine that crawls and searches for reports on Africa and developing countries. Information aggregated are bundled as reports and sold to companies that needs market analysis and other info for business decisions.

TechCrunch Network Search Engine

I have been using techcrunch a lot to find out about technology news and emerging startups on the internet.Recently I stumbled upon the TechCrunch Network Search Engine .Its a great tool that has helped me tremendously.I have been looking for a site with startup directory like what techcrunch provides.All the startups featured on both TechCrunch and Crunchbase are presented in a way that makes it possible to track what they do easily. What makes it very useful fro me is that I type particular industry and it returns all the startups that are featured under it in a perfect way.Its especially useful if you are conducting research under competitive analysis.

How to Predict a High Tech Startup Success

Predicting the success of startups has always been difficult. IF founders know how they are going to fare in the coming years after a successful launch, there would not be failed startups. A lot of successful software entrepreneurs have given their advice and secrets to up and coming entrepreneurs. I have tries to aggregate some of this advice here. Enjoy:

1.Test the business viability of what you want to do
It is one thing to have a great idea for a product, or have sweet skills that would add a lot of value to potential clients. But it is quite another to fully build a product and—more importantly—make money on that product, or sustain and grow a services company over the long term. You need to sit down and honestly assess the financial viability of what you want to do. This involves asking some really hard questions: Who will buy your products or services, and why will they be compelled to? What is your unique value proposition? What kind of resources—people, infrastructure, and money—will building this company require? How much income will there be, and when will the income start flowing in? How long can you personally go without making any money? Are you willing to decrease your standard of living, if necessary, to make this work? If the numbers aren’t looking very promising in the short term, do you have a source for a loan or other type of cash infusion? How much of your time will making the company successful require? By Dirk Knemeyer of Digitalweb.

2. Hire Smart People
“Borrow brains. You aren’t smart enough to succeed on your own. Surround yourself with mentors, advisors, and winners. Read everything. Grab every idea you can get your hands on”. Andy Sernovitz. He is the author of “Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking.

3. Product and Services
If your product/service/team is very tech-oriented, be sure to also hire a web/UI designer with marketing experience to make your product compelling and easy to use. Then allow this designer affect change by focusing at least half of engineering efforts on implementing necessary changes for improving user experience. Angie Chang. She is a co-founder of Women 2.0, a networking group of young women entrepreneurs located in the Silicon Valley. She is also a web and UI designer by trade. You can find her blog at http://thisgirlangie.suprglu.com

4. Focus
Big companies jump in with their brands to try to take market share from the leader while startups pioneer new categories and sell out for millions. The benefit of operating a niche startup is that everyone who visits the site will be looking exactly for what they provide. Niche is all about being on the narrow point of the wedge; that advantage, though, is ruined when a startup tries to be everything to everyone. The larger the market, the more specialized a company must become. In the struggle for life, no two startups can occupy the same position. If they try to do so, one company will drive the other to extinction. By Jawad Shuaib, the founder of Shuzak.com: The social network for geeks.
5. Create a checklist with deadlines and assignments
Once you have the outline set up the way you want it, assign each item to the team member best equipped to handle it. Then, set a deadline for each item. Set it up as a “checklist “so you can see what you have to do, when each item has to be done, and what’s already been done. A tip I hear quite often is to use a three-point method for keeping track of the items on your checklist: 1) leave the “Done” area blank if you have not begun to work on the item, 2) add a dot or a circle
in the “Done” area if that item is currently being worked on and 3) Convert the dot/circle to a check mark once the task has been completed. Curtiss Grymala from Ten-321 Enterprises.

6. Launch early, update often
Often times, I’ve seen startups never get off the ground because they never launched their product. It sounds stupid, I know, but these are brilliant people who focused so much on a full feature set that the whole thing caught fire before they got it out of the oven. Getting your product launched is just the beginning. Content updates, monetization, and advertising are the driving point of your business, most likely. With no product, how will you ever make money? To sum it up, concentrate on your most valuable features with the highest return, launch your product, and make frequent updates. (For more information on this topic, see the Rapid Release Model methodology.) James Thomas from WackyLabs.com

Most of these tips can be found at centernetworks