Emil Hajric, CEO of HelpJuice, gave a demonstration to investors at the Capital Factory’s Demo Day 2011. His company was one the five Capital Factory 2011 Demo Day Finalists. HelpJuice makes an application that makes updating knowledgebases like Frequently Asked Questions or FAQs for companies easy.
Tag: startups (Page 10 of 10)
Jack McGary, co-founder of SpeakerMix, gave a presentation to investors and others at the Capital Factory’s Demo Day 2011 Wednesday morning. SpeakerMix was one of five Capital Factory 2011 Finalists.
Speakermix is a one-stop shop for finding a speaker for an event. The company’s website is like an online match making service for event planners and speakers.
The market for speakers is $10 billion annually, McGary said. SpeakerMix already has 6,500 speakers on its site and has booked $1 million in speaking engagements, he said.
“We’ve got to work with everyone from Michael Phelps to Glenn Beck,” McGary said.
“There’s a ton of really great speakers that meeting planners are not going to find on Google.”
Kirtus Dixon, co-founder and CEO of GroupCharger was selected as one of the five Capital Factory 2011 Finalists. He pitched his company to investors during Austin Startup Week at the Capital Factory’s sold-out event Demo Day 2011.
Dixon’s company, GroupCharger, seeks to get alumni more actively involved and donating to their Alma Maters through its first web application called AlumniCharger. But that’s not an easy task.
For example, Oklahoma University has an alumni base of roughly 300,000, but only 8 percent give back every year, Dixon said. The university is using GroupCharger’s app to increase engagement with its alumni, Dixon said. The app finds alumni on social networks and then sends event information, invitations and introductions to other area alumni.
“Alumni who stay in touch with their schools after graduation are three times more likely to give back,” Dixon said.
Higher education institutions receive $30 billion in contributions annually and universities spend $2.4 billion on technology to engage alumni, Dixon said. The market is huge with 1.5 million alumni clubs, 55,000 alumni associations and each university spending, on average, $125,000 a year to market to alumni.
GroupCharger launched its beta version in July and it has 20 customers including the University of Oklahoma, the University of Texas and Texas A&M University. They pay $500 for the service, Dixon said.
GroupCharger is seeking to raise $200,000 in venture capital and already has $75,000 committed, Dixon said. It needs the money to expand to 40 universities which will be its break even mark to profitability, Dixon said.
SwimpTopia makes it easy to join a swim team.
The Austin start-up, known as TeamTopia, first product is SwimTopia, a web-based application that reduces the paperwork hassle involved in joining a swimteam, said Mason Hale, CEO of co-founder.
Launched earlier this year, SwimTopia has 2,700 registered users and 1,100 athletes for 6 teams. It has processed $120,000 in registration orders.
“At this point, we have a working product and customers who are happy,” Hale said.
The U.S. swimming market is estimated at 2.6 million athletes on 25,000 teams paying $250 registration fees and dues and another $300 million in merchandise and equipment.
50 million youth sports athletes in the U.S. that spean $5 billion in merchandise and registration fees.
“Every team uses its own registration, communication systems,” Hale said. “When I see this I see a big opportunity to save a lot of people a lot of time. To take the hassle out of something that is supposed to be fun. To enable coaches to spend more time coaching and parents to spend more time with their kids.”
The swim market is huge but it’s just the entry point to the overall youth sports market with 50 million children enrolled in organized youth sports, Hale said.