Indy Gaining Steam As Startup Community

Here is a list and brief description of the competing startups from
vergestartups.com.

CoatChex
CoatChex is focused on bringing innovation and value through today’s technology to an industry that hasn’t been touched in decades. The patent-pending process optimizes coat check-in and retrieval functions and reduces the risks that are commonly associated with checking coats, making it the hassle-free solution to running a secure, profitable, and efficient coat check station.

Team Mash
TeamMash is a daily email for sports fanatics. Every day, their editors scour the web for the best sports content. Each morning, they email you a mashup of what happened with your favorite teams in the past 24 hours. It even contains links to hand-picked articles from around the web.

FoundOPS
FoundOPS is developing an operations platform to help small field service operate more efficiently by gamifying carbon savings. In one, easy to use cloud based system, they’ve incorporated GPS technician tracking, drag and drop dispatching, and intuitive customer service management. The platform is provided for free, but customers are incentived to purchase premium features such as route optimization, QuickBooks integration, and BI reports in order to increase their carbon savings.

Adproval
Adproval is a service that streamlines the process of direct ad sales for small and medium bloggers while allowing them to maintain relationships with their advertisers. Working with an approved advertiser lets bloggers use their voice – by means of product reviews, featured posts, etc. – to back them as a sponsor, making ad space on that blog more valuable. Bloggers set up their sponsorship offerings with Adproval and put a page on their blog where advertisers can choose what they want and make an offer. If the blogger finds the advertiser suitable and approves of them, the ad image is automatically uploaded to their blog, the payment is automatically transferred, and the relationship is managed through their dashboard on Adproval.

Lisnr
Lisnr aims to change the way that consumers experience audio by turning what has historically been a passive experience into an interactive engagement platform. Lisnr is an app that allows music or any other audio medium to passively trigger consumer interactions, direct to their mobile device, during a consumer’s listening experience. Lisnr is completely source agnostic as notifications can be sent from audio being played anywhere.

PetBookings
PetBookings.com is the first and only website to offer instant and confirmed online reservations to the $3.5 billion professional pet care industry. They are launching v2.0 of their website platform Friday October 5, 2012 and are armed with some remarkable test data going to market. Pet owners (B2C) are not only experiencing the convenience and benefits of booking online with instant confirmation, but pet care facilities (B2B) are also seeing a significant impact on their bottom line.

Lesson.ly
Lesson.ly is a teaching and learning marketplace. It’s like iTunes, but with lessons and courses instead of songs and albums. It is “the simplest way to learn” and is currently in beta-testing.

Bonfyre
Bonfyres are private groups created around events where you can share chats and photos. All of these shared photos become part of group photostreams, called Memories, and are accessible only to others at that bonfyre. Simple event planning, private real-time sharing and collective group photos in one app, just like it should be.

Squarejive
Squarejive is a free mobile application that recommends things to do nearby. The app is built upon a mosaic design that allows users to seamlessly find and share events across Facebook, Twitter, SMS Text, and Email. With Yelp integration, the app also includes business profiles for over 400 venues in Indianapolis. They intend to launch Squarejive version 1.0 on October 13th at the Broad Ripple Music Festival.

Modulus
Modulus helps developers spend less time configuring servers and more time building products. Modulus does this by providing a complete platform that companies can use to host and scale their internet-based applications. We add to that an integrated database and file storage solution, and wrap everything under a powerful statistics engine.

Visit Apps
Visit Apps empowers Convention & Visitors Bureaus (CVBs = tourism agencies) to harness the mobile channel to deeply engage their visitors. Visit Apps has built a proprietary platform that allows any CVB – from the quaintest of towns to a bustling metropolis – to have their own mobile app. Visit Apps is a SaaS startup in the explosively growing mobile sector (available in iPad, iPhone and Android devices). The Visit Apps team is led by Santiago Jaramillo (serial entrepreneur of University Storage & MyMusicCamp.com).

Diagnotes
In an effort to eliminate the problems associated with effective communication and care during on-call medical encounters, Diagnotes has developed an integrated software solution that provides critical information, secure communication and convenient documentation for healthcare providers via their smartphones, focusing initially on on-call physicians and the 50-100 million such patient encounters conducted annually in the US.

Source: Verge, Powder Keg

September 17, 2012

News Release

INDIANAPOLIS (Aug. 31, 2012) – Verge, the largest community of tech entrepreneurs, startups, software developers and investors in the Midwest, announced today that ExactTarget, Develop Indy, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) and Indiana University: Innovate Indiana have joined the sponsor lineup for the Powder Keg, the first-ever national conference for startups and entrepreneurs to take place in Indianapolis.

Five hundred ambitious founders and creative technologists from across the country will descend on Indianapolis from October 17-19 for the inaugural Powder Keg, which will host more than a dozen inspiring keynote speakers and presenters, while showcasing the nation’s most innovative startups.

“You won’t attend the Powder Keg if you’re looking to participate in ‘workshops’ or sit in on ‘educational tracks’—it’s not that kind of event,” said Verge President and Founder Matt Hunckler. “Instead, we want to give entrepreneurs in the Midwest an event that exemplifies the spirit of entrepreneurship: sharing and leveraging the power of perspective shifting ideas so they can spread as widely and effectively as possible.”

Coinciding with ExactTarget’s Connections, the Powder Keg will also treat attendees to high-caliber speakers presenting during North America’s largest marketing conference. Past Connections keynotes have featured technology and innovation thought leaders including Virgin Group Founder and Chairman Sir Richard Branson, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, among many others.

Additional Powder Keg sponsors include:

•Venture Club of Indiana
•Broad Ripple Works
•Ice Miller LLP
•PopLab
•Barnes and Thornburg LLP
•McGladrey LLP
•SmallBox
•BLASTmedia
•KA+A
•ProfyleTracker
•Dittoe Public Relations
•Navidar Group LLC
•Indiana Small Business Development Center
•Slane Capital, LLC
•Sharon Brown Events

For more information about Powder Keg registration, speaking or sponsorship opportunities, please visit http://powderkeg.org, or contact Matt Hunckler at matt@vergestartups.com.

About Verge
Verge, the largest group of software entrepreneurs in the Midwest, is an innovative community of tech entrepreneurs, software developers, and business investors. With more than 1,700 members in multiple cities, Verge has provided a stage for hundreds of entrepreneurs to launch their businesses in front of 1,000-person audiences and connect with capital, customers and talent.

Source: Verge

News Release

INDIANAPOLIS (Sept. 17, 2012) - The Indiana Economic Development Corporation announced today that it has joined the sponsorship line-up for the Powder Keg, the first-ever national conference for startups and entrepreneurs to take place in Indianapolis from Oct. 17-19.

"The Hoosier State continues to be the state of choice for innovators to take risks and pioneer cutting-edge technology, and this conference is the latest proof that Indiana is a hotspot for growth-oriented, high-tech firms to do business," said Dan Hasler, Secretary of Commerce and chief executive officer of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation. "We know that up-and-coming companies find Indiana's combination of entrepreneurial culture, low-cost environment and ample supply of energetic and talented Hoosier graduates the perfect combination to help them grow from startups to global leaders."

The Powder Keg, organized by Verge, an Indianapolis-based community of tech entrepreneurs, startups, software developers and investors, will convene entrepreneurial energy and talent from across the Midwest. The conference will feature 500 founders and creative technologists, host more than a dozen inspiring keynote speakers and presenters and showcase the nation's most innovative startups.

"You won't attend the Powder Keg if you're looking to participate in 'workshops' or sit in on 'educational tracks'— it's not that kind of event," said Matt Hunckler, founder and president of Verge. "Instead, we want to give entrepreneurs in the Midwest an event that exemplifies the spirit of entrepreneurship: sharing and leveraging the power of perspective shifting ideas so they can spread as widely and effectively as possible."

The Powder Keg continues to provide momentum to Central Indiana's growing community of technology-oriented, high-growth companies. According to the 2011 Best Places for High Tech Growth study by EMSI and the Praxis Strategy Group, the Indianapolis metropolitan area ranked 11th in the nation for high-tech growth, industry concentration and growth momentum. Also, earlier this month Indianapolis ranked as one of the top "cities with the happiest young professionals" by Forbes, landing at number four on the list.

The Hoosier State is home to numerous high-tech, entrepreneurial companies, including ExactTarget, Aprimo, Author Solutions, Interactive Intelligence, Angie's List, Compendium, Right On Interactive and Scale Computing. Just last month, Indiana welcomed Appirio, a global technology-enabled cloud service provider, to the state when it announced plans to open its second U.S. office in downtown Indianapolis, creating up to 300 high-wage jobs over the next few years.
For more information about Powder Keg, please visit www.powderkeg.org or contact Matt Hunckler at matt@vergestartups.com.

About Verge
Verge, the largest group of software entrepreneurs in the Midwest, is an innovative community of tech entrepreneurs, software developers, and business investors. With more than 1,700 members in multiple cities, Verge has provided a stage for hundreds of entrepreneurs to launch their businesses in front of 1,000-person audiences and connect with capital, customers and talent.

About IEDC
Created by Governor Mitch Daniels in 2005 to replace the former Department of Commerce, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation is governed by a 12-member board chaired by Governor Daniels. Dan Hasler serves as the chief executive officer of the IEDC.
The IEDC oversees programs enacted by the General Assembly including tax credits, workforce training grants and public infrastructure assistance. All tax credits are performance-based. Therefore, companies must first invest in Indiana through job creation or capital investment before incentives are paid. A company who does not meet its full projections only receives a percentage of the incentives proportional to its actual investment. For more information about IEDC, visit www.iedc.in.gov.

Source: Indiana Economic Development Corp.