Startups

Less than a month after unveiling the Bing Fund, Microsoft's startup/accelerator incubation effort announced today the enrollment of its first two startups.

App development services provider Buddy and online games advertising service Pinion will get access to the software giant's technology assets and expertise, as well as its funding, the Bing Fund said today.

Buddy was founded by former Microsoft employees Dave McLauchlan and Jeff MacDuff. The Kirkland, Wash.-based company aims to reduce the amount of time mobile and Web app developers spend writing, testing, and managing server-side code. Bellevue, Wash.-based Pinion helps gaming communities … Read more

Pitching your startup idea to investors, journalists, and random people on the street is a rite of passage for all entrepreneurs. You have to convince hundreds (if not millions) of people that you're building something worthwhile and that they should get on board.

Most pitches fall flat though (the best VCs invest in perhaps 1 percent of the startups that pitch them), and it's often because of simple problems that could've been avoided. Nervous entrepreneurs stray from their story, and arrogant entrepreneurs demand unreasonable valuations and then get laughed out of the room by top-tier angels.

Here … Read more

Groupiter is perhaps the simplest workflow product I have ever seen. It's brilliant, instantly understandable, and looks (based on the demo I saw at a 500 Startups event) highly usable.

I am not yet convinced it is a long-term business, but the product concept is spot-on.

Here's what it does: When you save a file in Dropbox, Groupiter pops up and asks you to enter a comment about the file. Other people you're sharing with can see the comments attached to versions of the files. That's it.

Groupiter CEO Chris Dyball says that since we now … Read more

Many of us remember how liberating mobile phones were when it came to meeting people: "Which street corner was that again?" "Should I buy tickets for both of us?" "Sorry, I'm running late."

A start-up called Twist, though, believes phones can make the process much more convenient -- by automatically handling some of those messages.

With an iPhone app, the startup's technology tracks when a person leaves on a journey and tells the person at the destination what the expected time of arrival is based on data from Google Maps, Bing, and … Read more

Imagine a floating city of entrepreneurs; a veritable Googleplex of the sea. That's the vision behind Blueseed, a San Francisco startup.

The company plans to deploy a cruise ship 12 nautical miles from Silicon Valley -- in international waters -- and convert it into a metropolis of floating offices so foreign workers can launch their companies without obtaining work visas.

Despite a number of bills currently in Congress that aim to expand immigrant work visas, "there is no entrepreneurial visa," says co-founder Max Marty. "I think that's a terrible problem."

The answer, according to … Read more

Uber, a company that lets people request private car service in select cities, is trying to appeal to a less-affluent customers by using non-luxury, hybrid vehicles, according to a new report.

According to Uber, which spoke with The New York Times in a story published yesterday, the hybrid service will kick off in San Francisco and New York on Wednesday. The cars will cost customers 10 percent to 25 percent more than a standard taxi fare between two locations. According to the Times, its premium service typically costs customers between 40 percent and 100 percent more.

Uber is one of … Read more

Choosing the right market opportunity will make or break a startup. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs choose to tackle markets that are over-saturated, not realizing their mistake until it's too late.

I've listened to thousands of pitches from thousands of startup founders. Most of the time, these pitches don't stand up to my scrutiny for one reason or another. Some don't have differentiating features while others simply don't tackle big enough market opportunities.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks that trips up most entrepreneurs though is their lack of market and competitive research. They come up with … Read more

REDMOND, Wash. -- Anyone who's ever tried on a pair of pants, a blouse, or a skirt can testify to the challenge of finding the right size. Medium doesn't always mean the same thing to every company.

"The industry is designing for an ideal body shape that is not us," says Raj Sareen, chief executive and founder of Styku, a Los Angeles-based company that's using Microsoft's Kinect motion-sensing video game controller to solve the problem.

The 1-year-old, nine-employee company has developed a product that uses Kinect to scan a body in three seconds to … Read more

"Mithril" is a metal in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," said to be stronger than steel but much lighter in weight. It's malleable, doesn't tarnish and extremely rare.

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel hopes some of the invented metal's properties are imbued on his new venture capital firm of the same name, announcing this morning that the San Francisco-based company is seeking growth-stage technology companies in which to invest.

"Technology holds solutions to most of the world's most pressing challenges, from resource scarcity to disease," Thiel … Read more