StartupsToWatch

2008-06-23T16:36:00.000-07:00

Osteo Corp* is developing and commercializing proprietary oral and transdermal formulations of its lead bone beta-blocker drug for increasing bone mineral density and reducing fracture risk.

Eatnation* is a social network for people who love food.

Reframe It* is a web browser plug in that creates a space for comments in the right hand margin beside any web page..

Presym's* breakthrough products are the first direct mechanical measurement of heart health and have the potential to detect pre-symptomatic cardiac disease.

JoeMedia* provides location-specific advertising opportunities through Free WiFi.

Bisnet* provides a comprehensive online Employee Benefits System.

FTP Technology* has developed a pain-free, wearable glucose monitor.

2008-05-05T23:23:00.000-07:00

Nexenta* has developed the first robust open-source storage appliance solution.

StylePath* has developed and patented a better way to shop online for style-driven products like jewelry, shoes, home decor, and accessories.

Mobile Candy Dish* allows you to purchase products with your cell phone without digging for cash or a credit card at over 2 million retail locations across the U.S.

eRealinvestor.com* offers the only web-based suite of financial analysis software for residential real estate Investors and their professional advisors.

BroadBand Central * provides and hosts Enterprise 2.0 web based SaaS applications for OEMs and their strategic partners. The company focuses its business on areas where unnecessary waste and expenses exists due to the lack of coordination. The Company’s initial markets are in wireless, digital TV, Point of Sale, data storage, computers, and their network of partners.

2008-03-06T06:32:00.001-08:00

Eldr Media* is a media (web, cellphone, print) company for the affluent and active 60+.

TimelapseMobile* creates, develops and publishes original games for mobile phones.

Evoorganic* sells weed-free watering blankets for gardens and fields.

SpokenTranslation* creates ground-breaking commercial and custom solutions for automatic cross-lingual communication.

Theraject markets micro-needle transdermal drug and vaccine delivery systems

CritterPix* is developing lower cost computer generated animated movies.

Warpshare* With five times the speed and access to more media than BitTorrent, Warpshare is the fun, easy way to get your favorite shows, music, movies, and podcasts.

TSI* is a leading provider of point of sale software (POS) and services for retailers.

RealityGap* is a developer and publisher of massively parallel multiplayer games with a unique delivery and billing system.

Jiffle* makes scheduling appointments and meetings quick and simple for anyone who needs to coordinate appointments or meetings.

Viper's*engine and motorcycles provide incredible power combined with an unbelievably smooth ride.

2007-12-02T10:18:00.000-08:00

Medialasso* makes it safe and very easy for family and friends to share personal, private messages

Loud3r is in stealth mode. It's about online enthusiast zones.

Endovention* is developing an innovative platform of vascular catheters to remove blood clots and other forms of biological debris.

Kinemo provides rich media services, enabling users to include more of their emotions when customizing their mobile phones or when communicating with their friends and family members.

Oslo Software* solves the problem of real-time resource allocation in unpredictable environments.

HealthSphere* has developped a healthcare specific search engine, with a unique categorized format, sorted by experts and user ratings.

Stonewall Technologies -in stealth mode- offers a revolutionary approach to strong authentication for the internet.

Jobsightsolutions* develops, manufactures and markets portable communications systems for mobile, temporary and remote office facilities.

Mailshooter will establish a new model of customers entering messages at a site that will carry out delivery to businesses and individuals without the sender being aware of a particular email address.

Sim Ops Studios* is creating the Next Generation of Shared Virtual Experiences on the Web.

AlterAction* the creators of Masq, is creating a new genre and multiuser story-world platform for authors and corporations to make their stories truly interactive.

NextWLAN* is migrating from municipal wifi to satellite TV provided bundled wifi services in the home based on its unique MicroNode gateway.

Connectance* is software that helps physicians and other healthcare professionals determine the most likely diagnosis of a disease quickly and accurately.

InSurfTech has developed a new conformal coating technology for electronic assemblies, providing treated industrial and electronic products with unsurpassed performance.

2007-10-11T21:20:00.001-07:00

Ustream* is a platform that provides live interactive video for everyone. Anyone with a camera and an Internet connection can use Ustream to broadcast to a global audience.

Infinity Security Solutions* has introduced a total LAN firewall solution that addresses security compartmentalization in the enterprise. The Infinity LAN Firewall runs faster than anything in its price class.

Infoaxe* is the next generation Search Engine searching a very different kind of Web..

Adbuddha is launching a self-service ad-management portal that solves the biggest
problem SMEs face, selecting the right advertising mix..

Engate* delivers next generation connection-level security solutions for service providers, enterprises, and small to medium sized businesses.

Energi.ca integrates a smart inverter into the solar module, focusing on the residential, small commercial and building-integrated PV solar markets.

Mobilesynch* allows consumers and enterprises to manage their information by easily updating, moving, back up, restoring and sharing information on their mobile phone.

GroupSwim is a web-based service that allows groups and organizations to create community websites for online discussions, sharing information, and aggregating group data.

Positron Systems* licenses a critical non destructive testing technology to global manufacturers and materials testing services companies in the aerospace and power generation industries.

Lamplighterstudios* is an art services company providing outsourced solutions to the video game market.

2007-09-07T12:58:00.000-07:00

Axcient is changing the way small to medium-sized enterprises protect their critical data by providing onsite backup and offsite disaster recovery as a fully managed service. Axcient integrates the onsite and offsite backup/disaster recovery into a single, managed solution.

With Ultimate Geographic Search Engine (UGSE) individuals and organizations can quickly construct their own online, map-based solutions to universal, non-trivial, and reoccurring challenges, such as looking for a new home, a career opportunity, a vacation hideaway, etc.

2007-09-05T12:10:00.000-07:00

OnMyList* exists to help a wide range of people keep track of life and connect with each other in a fresh way. All of this is accomplished using a very familiar and old format - the list. OnMyList is a free website that enables people to create, save, publish, discuss and share their lists with family, friends and beyond.

DJ Nitrogen* is an early stage startup implementing a ringtone creation and delivery service that allows end users to generate ringtones from audio content they already own and send these ringtones to their mobile phone.

Zwaggle* is an online community for parents to share with other parents. Using a points based sharing system, parents spend less money, time and resources providing for their children.

School Loop* enables innovative online communities for school districts. Families get a nightly email with homework and grades. Teachers see and act on student performance trends. Principals focus staff attention on high priority students.

The Drop Spot, Ltd.* provides outsourced "Trade-In/Trade-Up" services for retailers and manufacturers to increase revenue. Trade-In/Trade-Up programs allow customers to unlock the value of their pre-owned items and exchange them for new merchandise purchases or store credit. The Drop Spot facilitates the extraction of value through proprietary technology, business processes and key strategic partnerships to sell the pre-owned items, maximizing value for both the retailer or manufacturer and its customer base.

Accelere, Inc.* helps research organizations accelerate the clinical development and delivery of new therapeutics to patients while helping health care providers seamlessly integrate their research with care delivery. The company's solutions include high technology infrastructure, applications and services that allow clinicians and researchers to work in concert across traditional organizational and economic boundaries in a secure, HIPAA-compliant manner.

Andiamo Systems * is a business intelligence technology that measures market presence and campaign impact across the exploding universe of User Generated Media (UGM) including MySpace, YouTube, Second Life, and the millions of social networks, blogs, message boards, forums and mainstream media websites.

Digital Mountain* is a provider of a next-generation electronic data discovery platform called FileQuestTM for law firms, Fortune 1000 and government organizations on a Software as a Service (SaaS)-basis. The legal industry is undergoing an evolutionary change from hard copy files to electronic evidence management. Digital Mountain is filling an existing void for effectively and efficiently filtering, searching and reviewing electronic evidence.

OpenPlanet * has developed a next-generation tour content aggregation and delivery platform utilizing GPS technologies to enable travelers to create customized self-guided audio tours that are downloadable to their GPS-enabled device for virtually any location in the world.

Vitalwear* manufactures and markets affordable thermal/compression systems used to accelerate recovery and treat pain from a broad range of injuries and chronic conditions including arthritis, post-orthopedic surgery, and chronic back pain. The company has a number of additional affordable, highly reimbursable therapeutic medical devices in the early stages of development. Series D financing will be used to further expanding existing sales channels and to bring the new products to market.

2007-06-13T19:52:00.001-07:00

Veodia offers the first live TV broadcasting and publishing Software as a Service (SaaS) platform. Veodia’s high-end video broadcasting service caters to both professional bloggers and business users in search of a simple way of creating and distributing TV-quality video while preserving full control and ownership of their content.

Viziontech Imaging * designs and develops an advanced technology ultrasound probe in a new conformable format for 3D medical imaging. This rugged, silicon-chip-based probe relieves the hospital/technician/specialist pinch-point and solves the current probe problems for portable ultrasound systems.

Cleanreset * provides a solution for anyone who has ever said:“I just want my PC back the way it was”. Cleanreset protects the configuration and integrity of the PC, abandoning all changes when a user ends their session by logging off. Subsequent users log on to a clean system without any tracks from the previous user’s session.

Baycom's Dial-Send-Read, is a new and exciting service that works on standard cell phones with text messaging capabilities. You dial the specific DSR number for the information you want, press send, wait for the beep, and then a few moments later you’ll receive a text message with the most current information on a diverse range of outlets such as live music schedules, sports scores, movie show times, and a whole lot more. The DSR service offers businesses a new way to communicate with their customer base by giving consumers new and more efficient ways to get information about goods and services. Users can then store the DSR numbers in their contacts to get information anytime, anywhere.

Yodio * is a personal internet audio publishing platform that gives users the power to record from anywhere using their phone. Users can create audio cards, stories (yodiocasts) and tours (yodiotours).

2007-06-02T12:10:00.001-07:00

Votigo* is an online community that allows any business, band, organization or individual to easily create and share their own customized photo or video contest. Contests provide marketers a great opportunity to engage their customers and safely participate with user-generated content. Until now, it's been too difficult and too expensive to create and manage a compelling online contest. There were no turnkey solutions available to marketers. Votigo solves this problem by providing a simple-to-use, fully customizable contest service.

Legalonramp* provides content, connectivity and execution services to help legal professionals deliver higher quality work in less time and lower cost. They are working with leading professionals from major corporations and leading law firms to provide technology and services that will meet the business imperatives of the future.

Twist Semiconductors* provides a high voltage mixed-signal power IC proprietary process to enhance the efficiency and operations of such diverse electronic systems as ultrasound medical equipment, consumer electronics, LED lighting, offline power,motor drivers,etc...

Grouply*: Can't keep up with the daily flood of messages from your groups? Grouply provides a free internet service enabling users to access all of their existing online groups in one place (currently in restricted beta,will launch very soon.

Verical* is a stealth-mode start-up that has solved the problem of counterfeit and fraudulent goods and components in global secondary industrial markets such as electronics.

Full Circle Energy may have what a lot of green advocates (and energy companies) have been waiting for so long. A coal gasification technology that not only gets rid of all CO2, but also improves on the conversion efficiency of both existing and new power plants. The same technology can be applied to Municipal Solid Waste and produce energy, or ethanol.

Panthaen Informatics' motto is "Your world in the palm of your hands in just 3 clicks of your thumb". A spinoff of MIT's Media Lab, they focus on applying AI to text-free mobile local search (aka geo-cognitive search).

Brand-Habit dubs itself the local directory for the fashion obsessed. They allow designers, local retailers and advertisers to cost-effectively reach targeted audiences of cross-channel shoppers who are attracted by rich content, community and the ability to search effectively online for brand products and locate the nearby stores that sell them.

2007-04-11T17:06:00.001-07:00

GoUAskMe provides location based services over the phone using state of the art speech recognition and text to speech technology. They now provide gas prices, traffic and real estate information. Will they provide telephone numbers in the future? Stay tuned...Best of all it's free... backed by local advertising of course.

StarAnalytics is a software startup with revenues and some marquee customers. The company sells software the old-fashioned way into the Business Intelligence market. Their first product is a must for large companies implementing financial applications around Hyperion solutions.

2007-03-27T18:47:00.000-07:00

Practice Fusion has been getting some attention from the Wall Street Journal and other publications. The company offers systems to put medical records in digital files, at a price that's hard to beat -- free. The service will be funded by advertising. In addition to a medical records system, Practice Fusion offers practice-management tools, such as billing systems. Practice Fusion's target is the 2/3 of physicians who operate in small groups of 8 or less. Physicians Integrated Medical Group, an association of about 500 independent doctors in San Francisco and San Mateo counties, is the first medical group to sign on with Practice Fusion.

Noxilizer *, a C stage company, is developing proprietary, next-generation sterilization technology that is critical to enabling new product commercialization in multi-billion dollar markets for advanced medical implants. Noxilizer's solution -room-temperature terminal sterilization- permits new polymers to be used and eliminates the need for multimillion dollar sterile facilities. Noxilizer will commercialize its sterilization systems, including products and consumables, for in-line manufacturing as well as for stand-alone, point-of-use systems.

Signalink Technologies Inc.* has developed a core communications platform and engine that is deployed by using the existing wiring infrastructure in any building. This award winning "power line" technology eliminates the need for additional wiring in most apartment and condominium fire alarm signaling retrofit situations. They are initially focused on the Fire Protection industry. The Fire-Link system is a supplemental fire signaling system targeting multi-tenant residential buildings. It sends signals over the power line, with or without AC power on, and puts the alarm where it is needed most: the rear bedrooms.

Kandy Brights is the inventor, manufacturer and marketer of a patent-pending line of delicious chocolate birthday candles that really light! Kandy Brights are a fun, taste–treat alternative to boring all-wax birthday candles. The initial product set, which closely resemble their established all-wax counterparts, include eight-packs of sticks and numbers 0-9. Kandy Brights™ are consumer- and retail-tested, and ready for market. They were the inspiration of a 12-year-old girl at a family birthday party. Now you can Eat Your Cake and Candles Too!

Femsuite * has a range of products (some of them available now, some in the pipeline) aimed at gynecologists and their patients. The company’s signature products are its FemEye One and Two lines . The FemEye One is a reusable camera that comes with disposable sanitary sleeves and may eventually replace the traditional colposcope. The FemEye Two (available soon) is a unique, disposable shaft – reusable handle, uterine camera that will cost the end user well less than one hundred dollars.

Altedo * offers a software-as-a-service web-based version of a your desktop folder system that allows sharing content and managing and coordinating projects with others. Altēdo currently supports email, calendar, contacts, files, notes, tasks and bookmarks. Information is stored in context-sensitive project folders in a familiar tree structure. Folders contain everything about a project or customer, and can store any type of item. Folders can be individual private folders, or shared folders accessible by other Altēdo users. Additionally, Altēdo allows its users to share items with others without accounts on the system.

2007-02-25T13:51:00.000-08:00

My friend Brian Boyer at Perkins Coie alerted me to the next French Connection/Tech Connection meeting on March 19th. Four startups will demo at L'Atelier BNP-Paribas in San Francisco.

GrandCentral was founded by former DialPad and Yahoo execs Vincent Paquet and Craig Walker. Their value proposition is very simple: "One phone tied to you, not your location, ...for life". Criteo is a Web 2.0 collaborative recommendation engine for merchants and portals based in Paris and SF, backed by French VCs. As you surf the web, privately funded and Paris-based Yoono lets you effortlessly discover similar sites, blog notes and people sharing the same interests based on community rankings. Djingle, also Paris-based, offers a platform for low-cost, high quality TV and Video On Demand.

2007-02-22T07:15:00.000-08:00

Graspr* was recently founded by Teresa Phillips, ex VP Business Operations at Yahoo is still in stealth mode. Think of it as a (broad) vertical video web play. For more info contact her at tap graspr [dot] com.

Ephox* is a revenue stage startup seeking bridge and series A funds to accelerate product development and scale its customer base. The company makes productivity software for wikis, blogs and content management systems (CMS). Their first product is EditLive, an online tool for business users creating web content that offers the most robust features, customizability, extensibility,and seamless integration with popular enterprise CMS software.

Red Condor* is another revenue stage startup seeking bridge and series B funds to deliver an extended product offering to its target markets. Using the industry's first “hybrid” perimeter-based security appliance, Red Condor delivers on-demand, high performance, easy-to-use network management and security products, continuously updated to defeat the latest Internet threats. Supported by 24x7 technical support, Red Condor network security solutions dramatically reduce the administrative burden of network security.

Nomadrive *, in alpha stage, has built patent pending application virtualization software which enables users to carry any application on a portable storage device such as USB Flash key or USB disk drive and run from it without having to install. Their solution enables the user to carry and run all applications on any computer without administrative privileges, allowing the user to use public computer at airports, internet café or hotels. They already have a number of high profile angel investors and are finishing their bridge round.

TutorOwl * is a revenue stage company that wants to grow in the field of offshored, real-time, 1 on 1 tutoring, taking advantage of the growing market for individualized, quality, lower-cost tutoring as well as the resources afforded by the No Child Left Behind initiative.

2007-02-09T18:06:00.001-08:00

Zortal * is rapidly emerging as the leader in the lucrative market for youth sports league management and registrations (and associated e-commerce). Ever stood in line to register your kids? Ever had to phone umpteen other parents to figure out where the new venue is or whether the game has been cancelled...No more... At revenue stage and inciting quite a bit of interest. (Disclaimer: I am an advisor and investor) .

UtilIT has developed an automated virtual IT infrastructure for small and mid size enterprises allowing users to subscribe to applications (Microsoft Office 2007, Adobe Acrobat Professional, QuickBooks, etc.) and IT features (data storage, protections, back up, hosted Exchange email, Hosted BlackBerry, Treo, Windows Mobile) all via the Internet. The company has over 1,300 end users and partnerships with Microsoft, Citrix, HP, Salesforce.com and others. CEO Chris Boone asserts that his fully maintained SaaS platform is gathering interest from large and small enterprises, ISPs, hosting companies and ISVs alike.

Convergent Mobile Devices is still in semi-stealth mode. Their new products MobiTags (interactive print advertising 2-D tags for camera phones) and MobiZones (not yet released as of this date) are aimed at the burgeoning market for mobile advertising. This may be a slight morphing for CMD, which previously was only focused on MobiPlay,a technology that claims to give users true portability of their content. (For example users could play full size videos on their mobile phones off smart flash drives)

Rallypoint was formed by Rocket Ventures' Jeff Allen and David Adams to deliver to your TV every form of Internet content (multiple scores, chat, IM, photos, videos, traffic...) you would ever want to see on your big screen (while watching the Raiders lose...) They plan to bypass cable providers and use multiple platforms including IPTV set-top boxes and new Internet enabled TV sets. Alpha stage.

2007-02-03T12:00:00.001-08:00

Geospot's CEO Joe Chen has so many ideas for applying his technology ("LBS for the rest of us") that his vision seems at times a bit unfocused. For both end-users and e-businesses, his new-generation web based vector map engine and vector-tile streaming promises the most interactive maps and deepest individual and community overlays yet, with multi-language capabilities, annotations, wikis, highlights, real time publishing,tracking and interaction. In alpha now, in beta soon.

Apptus* works off the salesforce.com platform (50,000 customers by year-end) and offers on-demand Contract Management Solutions to automate the entire contract lifecycle and related process. Kirk Krappe describes his product as high-functionality, low-cost, up-in-a-day and has customers to prove it. The higher end of the market has seen a lot of activity due to SOX, aka the Perpetual CPA Employment Act, but as Kirk puts it, formalizing and managing contracts is a necessary step of every company's sales process.

Byteshield's * Veteran CEO Jan Samzelius learned from crackers and created a product that solves the problem of software piracy by "making it near impossible and certainly impractical to steal software, while completely safe and transparent for the user." The company's multiple protection steps allows publishers to mass distribute full feature trial versions with full control over use. Byteshield has signed its first customers.

DMD Mobile is the leading provider of mobile technology and mobile media for the off-deck consumer wireless market in North America. The company, launched in 2004, is at revenue stage.

Younite* has developed a distributed information exchange model where the server is not the data store for personal information. Organizations can connect to Younite's personal information exchange and still keep their customer data where it belongs…. on their systems. End-users too can keep their personal information and their address book on their computers.

PlantSense* has developed a consumer micro-climate probe that connects to the PlantSense web site and helps consumers grow healthy indoor and outdoor plants. Their product is simple and fun and delivers both plant diagnosis and recommendation. They are distributing their product both through retailers and specialty catalogs and web sites.

Fonjax* is still in stealth mode. Suffice it to say that they plan to dramatically improve the quality control and deployment of mobile applications.

Opelin's* Titanize product transforms content management by establishing a virtually permanent connection between files on the PC and files on the internet, allowing the consolidation of five usually separate services — protect, access, synch, share, and publish — into a single online product. Titanize is distributed by McAffee and powers McAfee's local back-up and archiving.

Xilas Medical sells patented medical devices, which are founded on evidence-based medicine and are clinically proven to reduce foot ulcers and amputations in diabetic patients.