• New 30 to Launch Event in Seattle

    We've had a lot of signups for the 30 to Launch Series for Windows 8 happening at Rocketspace in San Francisco in June. So, we've decided to open another one in Seattle. Here are the details.

    Photo courtesy of Ttstam on Flickr under Creative Commons license

    Seattle 30 to Launch Windows 8 Series

    Come join us at SURF Incubator in Seattle over the course of 4 different Wednesday nights to build great Windows 8 apps. Throughout the course of this four-part series, guests will have a chance to learn from Microsoft experts about the world’s largest opportunity for app developers.

     

    We’ll also have great food and drink each night, and you’ll also have the opportunity to win great prizes! (See Official Rules here)

     

    Register now! 

    SURF Incubator

    Exchange Building

    821 2nd Ave., 8th Floor

    Seattle, WA 98104

    Wednesdays, June 20, 27, July 11, 18 from 6pm-9pm

     

    Series Schedule

    June 20 - Week 1:
    · Business Opportunity for Windows 8
    · Designing Apps with Metro Principles and the Windows Personality


    June 27 - Week 2:
    · How Metro style apps drive end user impact
    · Building Metro style apps with HTML and JavaScript
    · Creating Windows 8 Metro Style User Interface (UI)

     

    JULY 4 – SKIP – HOLIDAY WEEKEND


    July 11 - Week 3:
    · Bring Your App to Life with Live Tiles and Push Notifications
    · Integrating with key Windows 8 features

     

    June 18 - Week 4:
    · Applying the finishing touches
    · The Business Opportunity Continued: Monetizing your app
    · The Windows Store

  • The Euro Summit for Those Not in Europe -- A Twitter List for Getting Trends Data on Startups on the Continent

    The European BizSpark Summit starts June 7. 

    We've got a lot going on right now in the run up to the event. There's this People's Choice Awards challenge. We're going to give the People's Choice Award to one of the fifteen companies that gets the most Like votes through Facebook. You can go to this site and make your selections, but we have also written up a summary of what each company does here. 

    I've gathered all of the Twitter handles of the people who will be at the event.  You can follow them live during the event as they tweet out what is going on in these panels. We are also going to live stream the event throughout, but it makes no sense to put that link up now, so just wait and you will be able to stream the panels while you work next week. 

    Here are the Twitter handles of Microsoft people on the ground, who will keep you informed of the startup activity during the summit (Note: A Microsoft champ is a person working for Microsoft who interacts on a daily basis with entrepreneurs and startups. They are the person who can tell you the most about the BizSpark program as it relates to activities in their particular country. We have four of them going to this event; they range in countries from France, to Netherlands, Portugal and Belgium):

    • Bindi Karia (UK) BindiK
    • Blaise Vignon  (Microsoft France champ) Blaise_V
    • Mark Voermans (Netherlands BizSpark champ)  Markvoer
    • Ruud de Jonge  (W.Europe evangelist startup lead)  ruudj
    • Microsoft Europe MSEurope (Brussels team – also the team behind Microsoft EU)
    • Ben Piquard (Belgium champ)  benpiquard
    • Soha Hohnecker (W.Europe startup lead)  twiiitme
    • Henrique Carreiro (Portugal champ)  hcarreiro
    These people are impomrtant to follow even after the summit. They are the people at Microsoft in Europe who are having some intense interactions with the entrepreneurs and startups that are growing rapidly across the western part of the continent. If you want to sniff out trends, or get some eye-opening insights into how the developing business world is emerging in these areas, it would be good to put them into a list and monitor what they are saying.
    In fact, we have already done that for you.  Here is the BizSpark EU Twitter List. 
    You can also follow Douglas Crets, Director of Social Media for the BizSpark Program. He is @douglascrets on Twitter.
  • BizSpark European Summit 2012 Finalists

    JamPot have developed a Software as a Service (SaaS) product (TheAppBuilder) that enables anyone to create a mobile phone “app” for a fraction of the current developer fees. TheAppBuilder is a game-changing product as no technical skills are required. It’s a global market that’s growing exponentially. There is significant, growing early sales traction, with recurring revenue model, and highly scalable business. Recognized by Microsoft, Engadget, Fast Company & BBC as revolutionary!

    Autitouch develops intuitive software to speedup diagnostics of autism. Autitouch was founded in 2010 by Freena Eijffinger, after she witnessed the long diagnostic evaluation trials for autism her younger brother went through. These trials are currently done by hand, which is labor intensive, error prone and subjective. A normal computer with upstanding monitor, a mouse and keyboard can’t be used, as this setup interferes with social interaction. Autitouch found a way using Microsoft Surface technology to work around these obstacles and offers 4 soon to be validated diagnostic tools that will change the diagnosis of autism forever.

    Commerce Guys empowers e-Retailers through Drupal Commerce, a completely configurable open-source eCommerce solution offering unprecedented flexibility, scalability, and security. Nine months after the initial release, Drupal Commerce already empowers more than 14,000 eCommerce websites, like the Royal Mail and McDonalds and has received recognition from Gartner (Cool Vendor 2012).

    Entetrainer develops mobile applications for sports brands helping ball sport players to realize their best potential by making training a fun and social experience. The first product is a speed radar app for hockey, which has been licensed to the NHL. The product is scalable for all major ball sports e.g. football and tennis. It also provides an innovative experience for sports leagues and equipment manufacturers to connect with their customers.

    Fitting Reality brings innovation to the retail experience on a global scale through developing a virtual fitting room VIPodium. Its unique approach leverages technologies like Microsoft Kinect and Windows Azure to address the most critical issues the fashion industry faces today. For customers this means a unique controllable and interactive shopping experience solving their FIT/SUIT pain. For fashion brands and retailers this means an opportunity to boost profit margins, and challenge the very basics of retail industry through creating new standards and rules for fashion retail.

    Foresight provides an innovative and unique cloud based solution for one-click cyber continuity. Using the Foresight solution, web site owners can now ensure cyber continuity with no interruption to the web site availability. In addition, Foresight offers an immediate response to website downtime, disaster recovery, peak-time load, distributed denial-of-service and cyber-attacks – using one integrated and cost effective solution.

     

    miMedication is a web tool that enhances self-management for chronically ill people with a focus on asthma and COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). A key ingredient is the personal electronic health record, combined with patient education to inform patients about their medical condition. miMedication aims to provide early warning signals when patients are at risk, using data in their personal health record. By recording cough sounds, algorithms will identify variations in the acoustic parameters, which can be related to lung conditions. It is only by combining patient education with a personal health record, that patients can progress to self-management.

    MobileBits is an independent developer for every platform with an AppStore (Windows 8, iOS, Android, WP7...). The 25-people-strong-team is based in Hamburg and Hannover, Germany and has been previously developing games for more than 15 years for PC, XBox360 and the PS3. MobileBits now fully concentrates on its own cross-platform technology Delta Engine and the games created with this technology.

    theOblong takes complicated technology problems and delivers elegant, cost effective, easy to use software tools to the everyday user. We focus on conceiving, building and delivering disruptive software products: MapCite - an innovative set of web mapping tools that enable our clients to gather, visualize and interrogate location based data, generating extremely elegant and complex mapping quickly and efficiently. MatchCite - a highly innovative tool that brings Master Data Management and Data De-Duplication capability to the masses, enabling enterprises to significantly improve efficiency and reduce costs by creating a 'single version of truth' for customer data.

    The multiplatform digital publishing solution. Paperlit is the easiest mobile and web publishing solution for traditional newspapers, magazines or catalogues. A beautiful and easy to use reading experience for readers and a great targeted platform for publishers. It provides publishers’ branded apps for Windows8, iOS, Android, Facebook and Web with easy integration of multimedia content, rss feeds, html5 content. The publisher can also easily integrate payment/billing and advertising system to monetize the content distributed via the branded apps.

    Parking Defenders connects your smartphone with your car by providing access to a marketplace of parking spots, so that next time you are looking for one you don’t have to waste time and gas!

    PlaceChallenge is location-based platform for outdoor games. The platform provides API for game developers and marketing agencies to create their own engaging scenarios. On top of that the PlaceChallenge company created two games:

    - RunAway – people run around the city looking for a person with virtual coin. Everybody can take the coin from other players near to them and run away. To win you have to have the coin at the end of game.

    - Tail – people run around a city creating a tail behind them. They need to block the road of the player competing against them. All games are connected with social networks.

    Red Badger is a creative software company. The company is passionate about helping others to solve their complex problems using technology in innovative ways. Its strength is in rapid prototyping to “fail fast” and “fail cheaply” and the ability to convert prototypes to robust, scalable production products. Red Badger employs the best tools, best practices and agile methodologies to deliver the right solution. Its UCD approach to everything showcases great UX and design coupled with a meticulous approach to technical quality and attention to detail.

    The Berlin-based 6Wunderkinder created Wunderlist and Wunderkit to build productivity software for everyone. Both products are growing exponentially worldwide and have attracted millions of users in 18 months. Wunderlist has been named App of the Year in Japan and both apps have been downloaded in over 100 countries around the globe. 6 Wunderkinder is supported by an experienced group of investors including Niklas Zennström’s Atomico.

    xBrainSoft is a software editor born in 2006 in the incubator of Usilink Group, a leading ambient intelligence actor. xBrainSoft publishes the IAS development platform (Intelligent Agent Server), allowing all operators and application developers to create their own personal assistant like the Siri Apple solution on all mobiles and appliances (Cars, Homes, Enterprise Offices). xBrainSoft launched Angie in February, a personal assistant, for the Window Phone marketplace in France.

  • Microsoft Accelerator Taking Applications Until June 29 -- Free Azure Hosting to Build Stuff

    Sam Rosenbalm, BizSpark Managing Director, has been mentoring and visiting with entrepreneurs at the Kinect Accelerator class in Seattle since April. He’s also helped dozens of startups around the world figure out how to leverage Windows technology to build supported sustainable apps and companies in the cloud.  We’re combining the best learning from those startups, mentors from TechStars, and direct access to Windows Azure executives and engineers to bring you the Cloud class at the Microsoft Accelerator Powered by TechStars.  Startups will move to Seattle for three months, August 27 to November 29, and will receive funding, free cloud services and training.

    Who should apply?  Startups can have just an idea or an established application that leverages the cloud.  That could be a mobile, client or web app and doesn’t have to leverage existing Microsoft technology.  Some of our existing startups use Windows Azure for gaming, high performance computing, big data, ticket sales, event management, video distribution, and web services.  We even have one scaling up online casting sites for Hollywood!  So what are you waiting for?  Visit http://bit.ly/JcvY3v to get registration information and apply by June 29th.

  • Guest Post: Adam Peterson, CEO, Vipecloud: Other People's Marketing

    Most entrepreneurs are familiar with the term Other People’s Money. In fact, some believe Other People’s Money is the simplest definition of doing business. There is another OPM that is in many ways just as important, and that is Other People’s Marketing.

    Adam Peterson, CEO of Vipecloud writes about new marketing strategies for startups in social, as part of our guest blogging series at BizSpark. 

     

    New companies are popping up at hyper-speed making it challenging to stand out to potential users. So how do you capture the attention of your market?

    Answer: The same way you operate your personal social media.

    Build relationships with your customers by re-using other people’s content. Why reinvent the wheel when you can simply be the contributing source of interesting content to your audience?

    90% of the content on sites like Twitter, YouTube, and other similar services are created by 10% of the users (GigaOm). Even President Obama at the 2012 White House Correspondent dinner joked that the Huffington Post has done a fantastic job of providing news by linking to real news articles.

    So roll with it. The simple secret to building a loyal following is to regularly stay in front of your users. That presence can come via emails, Twitter conversations, Facebook pages, blogs, and your product itself. Most every major social network sends out weekly update emails showcasing top content created by others. You can too.

    What content is the best to share with your customers through these various channels? The following can all be found in blogs, on Twitter, and for the most engaging content, on YouTube (there is an enormous amount of business relevant videos on YouTube that are not being utilized effectively).

     

    • Webinar recordings
      • Industry overviews, thought leader interviews, 3rd party informational presentations.
    • Industry trends
      • Gartner and IDC reports or excerpts (both have YouTube Channels too).
    • News specific to your company’s industry.
    • News about your customer and prospect’s industries.
      • Company news, product releases, and expert interviews.
    • Interesting content that is industry agnostic.
      • TED Talk, Khan Academy, and Newsy videos.
    • Newsworthy updates about your company.
    • General how-to information
      • Sales training blogs/videos, social media training blogs/videos.

     

    Being the source of interesting content by taking a few minutes to find relevant information on a regular basis will help you build a following so you can focus on building a beautiful product.

     

     

    About the Author

    Adam Peterson

    CEO, VipeCloud (www.vipecloud.com, @VipeCloud)

    EIR, StartX (http://startx.stanford.edu, @StartX)

    #video, #videomarketing, #businessvideo, #youtube, #startup, #startups, #bizspark, #entrepreneur, #entrepreneurs, #sales, #marketing