Startups come out of their caves

(My Business Monday wrapup)

By Nancy Dahlberg ndahlberg@miamiherald.com

The most popular story on Starting Gate last week was  Guide coming out of the startup cave, as CEO Freddie Laker calls it, and  unveiling its plans to turn online news stories into videos complete with avatar “news anchors” such as a dog, robot or anime character (I‘m holding out for the cat). Guide ( www.gui.de) is planning to launch its public beta at SXSW, where it was also selected to pitch in the SXSW Accelerator.

But that’s not all.

•  AdMobilize also came out of the cave,  unveiling AdMobilize.com full of videos and other information that explain its new kind of advertising network — walkers and commuters can be paid for displaying the brands they already know and love, says CEO Rodolfo Saccoman.      

•  Jared Kleinert, a junior at Spanish River High School in Boca Raton,  launched a private beta of  Synergist,  www.synergi.st, a crowdsourcing site and online community for social entrepreneurs. Anyone can sign up for the beta, with which they can meet other social entrepreneurs, collaborate in a free online workspace and share their projects to gain support directly from the community. They can also back other projects and get rewards for helping others start social movements, he says.

This Wednesday brings  Start-Up City: Miami, a huge one-day conference on Miami Beach,  to continue the conversation about building a local tech hub and explore the practices of other successful cities in this arena. Because of overwhelming demand, the venue was moved to the New World Center’s main performance hall. The event will be livestreamed at  http://events.theatlantic.com/start-up-city-miami/2013/ and local watch parties include one at FIU’s College of Business Complex, Room 240, 11200 SW 8th St. Participate on Twitter with the hashtag #StartupMiami.

For more startup  news and  guest views, including a post about last week's Miami Chamber economic summit where the tech talent base and tech education were on the agenda, check out  The Starting Gate blog on MiamiHerald.com/business and follow me on Twitter @ndahlberg.   

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/10/3226985/startups-come-out-of-the-cave.html#storylink=cpy

Comments

[Tom Ordonez (@tomordonez)]

I would really call it 'come out of the cave'. I never heard of them until a few weeks ago. It's a paradox. Startups need to focus to be successful and spend less time "community-ing". But if you don't do community you lose the chance of great connections. What are the right proportions of ingredients for startup success? 4oz of Lean Startup, 2 teaspoons of coding, 3 pinches of PR and cook in the oven for 3 months?