Austin Startup Week 2011

I attended a few of the events for Austin Startup Week. For a first year event it was packed with enthusiastic entrepreneurs, website demos, and plenty of networking events. It reminded me of being at SXSW Interactive. Austin Startup Weeks revolves around the Capitol Factory Demo Day which I’ve heard is a little tricky to get into. I see Austin Startup Week becoming a bigger event in the next couple of years. Here’s a few sites and notes that grabbed my attention this past week.

WeSTART – 10 Speakers. 5 Questions.

http://westart.eventbrite.com/
There were some first time startup pitches and some well marinated ones. I hope they do this every year, for I could see this event growing and becoming pretty popular. I couple of startups that stood out were Eric Katerman, Forecast and Mark Phillips, Are You Watching This?

Capital Factory Demo Day 2011

http://www.capitalfactory.com/demo/
This was an all day event where new startups pitched their app or service to an audience of potential investors. It sounds like this event has been going on for a number of years and what spawned Austin Startup Week. I watched Demo Day online by live video feed. Here’s a few business that grabbed my interest:
•    Apptive – Build and publish simple apps for your business with no design or coding skills.
•    The Daily Dot – An online newspaper for news and events in the web industry.
•    Forecast – An app for telling your Foursquare friends where you will be in the future, giving them time to actually meet you there.
•    Greenling – Order local fresh vegetables  online and have them delivered to your front door.
•    Infochimps – A marketplace for buying and selling data. Thousands of data sets available. Access by download or API.

Startup Bazaar

I couldn’t make it to the pitch session but saw a few interesting demos:
Agent Aquarium –  Allows people to find a Realtor by providing access to live MLS performance data.
Dealuv – A group deal platform that requires the user to share the deal on their social network in order to get the coupon.

I finished the week at September’s Austin Tech Happy Hour. It was the biggest I’ve seen it all year.

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