StartFast 2014
Startfast, Syracuse’s Summer Venture Accelerator, has announced the teams that will be participating in the twelve week intensive program. A list of the finalists from Startfast for a day can be found here. Startfast works with highly-scaleable tech ventures to grow the business quickly. They offer an initial investment of $25,000 in exchange for 7% of a company’s equity. They also provide leadership, mentors, a number of interns and a tech and design expert to work with the startups. This year’s teams are as follows:
This is my venture. Platypus TV is a social video platform that timestamps conversations to allow for long tail engagement around content. The business was recently listed as one of the top eight collegiate startups by Student Startup Madness and attended SXSW for the pitch competition after releasing the Beta in January.
This dating app, available on both iOS and Android, takes the guesswork out of relationships that start on the internet by offering real time video chat, instant messaging services, video profiles and phone calls. The venture recently raised $150,000 in a seed round. Jason Sherman, the founder, is no stranger to startups. He founded Picklify in 2011 and has spent a number of years mentoring entrepreneurs and offering consulting services.
Sooligan was created in 2011 by a team that had met at UC Berkeley. As they began their new careers in unfamiliar cities, they saw a need for relevant, up to date location based information. In 2012 Sooligan participated in the ARK Challenge accelerator based in Fayetteville, Arkansas. They have since focused on gaining users at various college campuses.
This two person team from New York City is using data bubbles to better organize app usage. By tying applications to data bubbles, and those data bubbles to locations, they can allow users to easily access the information needed at that point of time in an organized, easy to access manner.
This search engine focuses on connecting professionals and companies with the researchers. Each research request is submitted to multiple researchers, allowing for efficient, expert research achieved through crowd sourcing.
Mass Mosaic is a marketplace for, well, everything. The website allows for any form of trade, exchange or sale of products, services and skills. This venture has been in its current iteration for the last three years, prior to their focus on creating a comprehensive exchange site the founders worked on films and collaborations to help humanity.
Startfast and the accelerator mentors will work with the teams in Syracuse over the summer. Teams will pitch their ventures and summer progress on the August 14th demo day, which is open to the public.
content provided by: Sarah Roche, sarahr.roche@gmail.com
