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SVASE Announces Launch: Silicon Valley 2009 Award Winners
Mountain View, CA - June 10, 2009 - The Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (SVASE) today announced the selection of the "Launch: Silicon Valley 2009, companies awarded "Most Likely to Succeed" honors in categories, including: Next Generation Internet, Technology (2), Mobile/Next Generation Internet, Mobile and Clean Tech.
The awardees from Silicon Valley and around the world were selected from 30 new companies that presented to the audience and a panel of VCs and Angels, which voted on the finalists. The event received a record 400 global applicants to present, up over 35 percent from 2008
"Launch: Silicon Valley has grown to become a global event showcasing products and services from the most exciting of the newest startups from around the world," said Chris Gill, President and CEO of SVASE. "The success of this year's event, clearly demonstrates that the next generation of emerging technology companies continue to view Silicon Valley as the place to pitch their products to, and network with the top VCs, Angels, corporate executives, prospective customers and partners. Equally as important, this network which SVASE represents is looking to early stage entrepreneurs like these to find the next great company."
Note: To view and download winning companies' event videos, PowerPoint presentations, and summaries, please visit the following: http://launch2009.fordela.com (courtesy of Fordela Corporation http://www.fordela.com/)
Launch: Silicon Valley 2009 award recipients by presenting category are:
Next Generation Internet category: ECitySky
Gamexiu is a browser based, real time 3D massively multiplayer social entertainment platform that sells avatars and virtual items to the online youth community in China. For more information please visit: www.gamexiu.com
Technology category:InDxLogic
We provide software and services to automate, data mine and standardize the indexing of documents and data to electronic health records providing health care organizations with significant short term ROI. For more information please visit: http://www.indxlogic.com/
Mobile/Next Generation Internet category: CellWand
CellWand develops and manages mobile applications accessed through abbreviated dialing codes such as #TAXI and #PIZZA. These Mobile Search applications help mobile phone users get connected to the right businesses and information while on the move and target specific high call volume industries where poor or limited service exists. These applications are offered through wireless carriers in the U.S. and Canada and CellWand is compensated directly by the wireless carrier as part of a revenue sharing partnership. For more information please visit:http://www.cellwand.com/
Technology category: Replay Solutions
Replay Solutions provides QA and development engineers with a solution that records and easily reproduces any software bug, with no code modifications and without the need to recreate the environment the bug originally occurred in. For more information please visit: http://www.replaysolutions.com/
Mobile category: HearPlanet
HearPlanet is the geo-aware audio-guide to the world. We give a voice to all the places on earth and provide access to services, all via your mobile phone. For more information please visit: www.hearplanet.com
Clean Tech category: Lumiette
Lumiette manufactures and distributes Flat Panel Lamps that are energy efficient, long lasting, easily dimmable, and which offer uniform general illumination. The lamps' unique form factor effectively serves commercial and residential buildings and both indoor and outdoor applications. For more information please visit:http://www.lumiette.com/page.php?id=1
Launch: Silicon Valley 2009 was designed as Silicon Valley's demonstration platform to uncover and showcase products and services from the most exciting of the newest startups in next generation internet, technology, mobile and cleantech.
Launch: Silicon Valley provides companies with the opportunity to present themselves to investors and other influencers who can help shape their success. In addition to the presentations, participants also have the opportunity to network with the audience.
For more information about the event, and an overview of all the companies that presented at "Launch: Silicon Valley 2009," please visit the following URL: http://launchsiliconvalley.org/index.htm
Launch: Silicon Valley is Presented by SVASE and co-sponsored by the early stage venture capital firm Garage Technology Ventures and Microsoft, which hosted the event at the Microsoft Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View. Additional sponsors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Townsend Townsend and Crew, Nair & Co., the Band of Angels, Sand Hill Angels, the Angels Forum, Cooley Godward Kronish, The Kauffman Fellows Program, PR Newswire, Halosys Technologies, Keiretsu Forum, Krause-Taylor Associates, Life Science Angels, Link Silicon Valley, and VentureDeal.
About SVASE
Founded in 1995 by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs, The Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (SVASE) is the largest and fastest growing nonprofit in Northern California dedicated exclusively to helping technology and life science entrepreneurs start and grow successful businesses.
SVASE provides support and resources for entrepreneurs, from the idea through initial rounds of funding to product launch, delivered at 12 monthly events and a continually evolving web site.For more information about SVASE, please visit www.svase.org.
About Garage Technology Ventures
Garage Technology Ventures is a seed-stage and early-stage venture capital fund headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with investors that include Thomas Weisel Partners and CalPERS, the California Public Employees Retirement System. Garage is focused on investing in emerging technology startups in the Western U.S. Garage is also the creator of the "Art of the Start," a renowned conference series for entrepreneur education. For more information about Garage, please visit www.garage.com.
Droid May or May Not Provide Enterprise Solutions
Viximo Repositions As Content Provider With New CEO And $5M In Funding
This is simply a reposting to of article without any comments to test old blog. The link is above for original author...and below is the pasted article...
It's been clear for awhile that changes were afoot at Viximo, but only recently has it become clear just how dramatic those changes are going to be. The company has restructured, with some employees let go last month and former CEO Rob Frasca replaced by Dayna Grayson (of Viximo investor North Bridge Venture Partners) as acting CEO. Viximo closed a new round $5 million round of funding from North Bridge and Sigma. Perhaps most importantly, the company is refocusing itself around a new virtual goods strategy: providing content for partners to sell.
This new strategy relies on one key fact: Viximo has changed, but not as much as you might think. Regarding Frasca's departure, Grayson only stated that he had decided to part ways with the company and pursue other opportunities. Founder and VP of Marketing Brian Balfour, CTO Sean Lindsay, and VP of Products Ravi Mehta are all still with the company. Viximo's core business is still virtual goods. What Viximo is doing different now is really trying to leverage the creativity of its network of 3,000 creators as one of its primary assets.
"We're really excited to see our strategy coming to fruition. We've always felt content was the key to making virtual goods successful. At the end of the day, the thing that drives a virtual economy are the items that consumers want and quality is key," said Balfour.
Viximo's designers have already produced 1,500 virtual goods that are already approved and ready for partners to incorporate into their apps and games. Most can be seen in Viximo's revamped online marketplace. Viximo is maintaining its in-house design team, too, and looking to partner with brand and agency partners to create high-end virtual goods based around IP brands and celebrity licensing.
Mehta named Beelya as one of the new Viximo's first content partners and also mentioned the company had signed a deal with a major talent agency to begin work on celebrity items.
"What we're hearing from the market is that people need a payment solution, people are looking for ways to gather reports and analytics, and a really critical problem is content. Publishers don't have enough content to fulfill demand that they're seeing, whether it's a social network or an online gaming site or a virtual world," said Mehta.
Where Viximo is really taking its new virtual goods direction is a very Apple-like place, with an emphasis on creative products provided to partners in a curated, comprehensive way. Viximo's partners get access to a modularized system for deploying Viximo's products in their app. The platform also carefully tracks purchase data and reports back to the client, allowing the client to make more informed merchandising decisions when it comes to their virtual catalog.
"We want to supply a wide range of artist sand we want to enable artists, brands, firms to put things into our ecosystem that will be curated and have a high volume. Instead of static virtual gifts these are things that are more interactive and really high-quality. You get content that users really want. That's the strategy of providing a really large portfolio of content," said Mehta.
Finally, the platform allows developers to quickly create RMT or achievement-based currencies in their apps or plug existing systems into the Viximo platform. The platform's currency component handles payment solutions for a game's microtransactions, too. Mehta estimates it would take about five days to completely integrate a platform with the new Viximo solutions.
What Viximo won't be doing so much in the future is selling content directly to consumers. While the company has published 15 iPhone apps, each at the $.99 price point, Grayson states that Viximo doesn't really intend to build out its iPhone platform at this point in time. Instead, its allowing its developer community to create most of its upcoming iPhone content using VixML. The games Viximo released last week were created by its creator community, too.
Right now Viximo's offers reach 20 million unique monthly users through a dozen publishers and plans to apply its funding to growing its customer base, which could increase its monthly uniques dramatically. Clearly Viximo is looking to become a comprehensive microtransaction solution for any developer interested in bringing virtual goods or currency into their product. It's a bold move and it'll be interesting to see how it works out for Viximo in the long run.
""It's amazing to see how quickly that market is maturing, especially given the economic climate," said Grayson. "Publishers are now realizing how powerful virtual goods as monetization tool can be."