Catherine Tabor, CEO, Sparkfly. Sparkfly is one of 60 innovative firms presenting at the upcoming Southeast Venture Conference
By Allan Maurer
Merchants and manufacturers spend billions annually on offers and promotions such as coupons, daily deals, online banner ads, sweepstakes, and more, but all have shortcomings, says Sparkfly CEO Catherine Tabor.
Founded in 2001 in Atlanta, Sparkfly was an early player in the electronic offers and promotions business, initially providing employee discount platforms to large firms such as Coca Cola and SunTrust and to Emory University.
That business grew covered a million employees nationally and $3 million in annual revenue, but Tabor says merchants in the company’s program really wanted to know what employees were doing once they came into their stores to claim a discount.
“I’ll partner with someone who can take these promotions to an in-store environment,” Tabor thought, but five years ago, “it didn’t exist,” she says.
After an “exhaustive search,” the company partnered with Softcard Systems, which had built a robust platform to track millions of high speed transactions, and built its new technology on top of that platform.
Raised capital for acquisition and platform development
Previously, Softcard had been tracking sales of sugar and flour and other packaged goods at grocery stores, but, Tabor notes, “it could just as easily track movie ticket sales or anything else.”
They were on their way to the “Holy Grail” for retailers, understanding their customers at the point-of-sale.
Sparkfly bought Softcard Systems in 2010, raising an angel investment north of $10 million to fund the buy and platform development. Development of its platform is now complete.
Will present at Southeast Venture Conference
Sparkfly is among 60 innovative technology firms presenting their business plans to venture capitalists and angel investors representing billions in capital at the upcoming Southeast Venture Conference in Tysons Corner, VA, Feb. 29-March 1. The company is seeking its first institutional round.
With the world going mobile, marketers have the ability to reach many more consumers, but they need ways to tie their promotions to actual purchase data.
Sparkfly sells a cloud-based solution that enables creation and distribution of personalized offers via the web and mobile devices that will be redeemed at point-of-sale. The patented technology does not require additional in-store hardware or software.
Owning redemption at POS
The product creates a dynamic code tied to buyers redeeming offers which zips back to its servers for authentication and tracking. It then unlocks any new offers to that buyer.
“What we’re trying to own is redemption at point of sale.”
The system also can connect online advertising to brick & mortar redemption of offers, which is often the missing link in tracking ROI for online advertising.
Retailers and manufacturers can customize promotions based on individual purchase behavior to deliver and manage offers for specific products by location, time of day, and demographic variables. Customers can receive their offers via social, mobile, or web channels. Tabor says it leverages existing infrastructure in POS environments and adapts easily to multi-lane or multi-store operations.
It has integrated with POS providers, including NCR/Radiant, MICROS, Gilbarco, REtalix, IBM, POSitouch and Verifone. The company holds 16 patents with other pending.
Sparkfly is also testing its new integrated platform in pilot runs with several large brands.
The company gets paid for performance – by transaction.
It’s continuing to integrate its software with merchants, consumer package goods manufacturers, and publishers.
Tabor points out that while daily deals and online discount offers are a big business, it’s expensive to be a Groupon or a Foursquare – businesses that required hundreds of millions in startup funding.
“We have the opportunity to make all those businesses more viable,” says Tabor, “tracking people within those networks through point of sale, which provides an opportunity to reward frequent buyers and loyalty rather than just giving someone you’ll never see again a coupon.”
Sparkfly is starting a pilot program with its first national merchant, Auntie Anne’s (the pretzel chain) in the Atlanta market during February.
Armistead Whitney, CEO, Preparis, one of 60 firms presenting at the upcoming Southeast Venture Conference.
By Allan Maurer
When jets plowed into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, Armistead Whitney, now CEO and founder of Preparis, was president of a New York City-based media firm.
Along with many other company executives based in the city on that fateful day, Whitney was faced with questions about how he and his 200 employees should react to the terrorist attacks.
“I was immediately faced with some critical issues,” he says. “What should I do to ensure my employees will be safe? How will my operations, revenue, shareholder value, and brand reputation make it through? I simply had no clue.”
He and his staff made it out of the city safely, but Whitney writes that he made it his mission to find out what he would do differently if faced with such a situation again. He met with leaders form emergency preparedness and response organizations, then with CEOs of companies of various sizes. Whitney wrote about how it all on the Preparis website.
Guidance on what to do
After considerable research, he started the Atlanta-based company Preparis Inc., a startup selling an SaaS-based platform that delivers expert information, response protocols, communications and training to help businesses meet unpredictable threats from terrorism, pandemics, and natural disasters.
Preparis is one of 60 innovative showcase firms that will present business plans to venture capitalists and angel investors representing billions in capital at the 6th Annual Southeast Venture Conference in Tysons Corner, VA, Feb. 29-March 1.
Companies face 21st century threats
In today’s world, terrorist attacks are only one threat among many that can disrupt global businesses, Whitney tells us. “Threats of the 21st century have become more complex, especially as companies outsource more. They have operations globally, in third world countries, and clients in places impacted by local troubles.”
Nowadays, then, a business has to face pandemics, cyber terrorism, nuclear meltdowns, natural disasters from hurricanes and floods to earthquakes and wild fires. Floods in Asia can hamper production of electronics parts made there from hard drives to tablets.
Yet, Whitney points out, the only preparations for meeting such disasterous business interruptions is “A plan that sits on s shelf. It can be challenging for that to be effective.”
While most larger Fortune 1000 firms do have plans in place – policies, procedures and teams, they want tech to automate it all, Whitney notes.
They need a way to automate plans
“They need a way for tech to automate it, bring it all together so that it can be accessed from any place on any device, how to protect the workforce from threats, response instructions if you receive a bomb threat, an anthrax letter.”
Technology can take those stale plans on a shelf and make living breathing programs, he says.
Downstream at smaller organizations such as a law firm, “We become their entire ecosystem with everything they need, even an emergency notification system (such as Virginia Tech installed following deadly shootings on its campus).
The Preparis system knows who do what with the product at each level and everyone from the CEO to employees can use it.
“We’ve sold to about every industry, Fortune 1000 companies, banks, attorneys. Every industry at every size has an appetite for it,” says Whitney.
In the past, most such disaster preparedness was done through consultants Preparis does it through its SaaS product that a company can download from the web and being using immediately. “We’re creating a new category,” Whitney says.
Dealing with cyber threats
Looking ahead, the company is getting into how to deal with cyber threat issues. “As new threats evolve – the pandemic fears of a few years ago for instance – we quickly add guidance for our clients.”
In the recent “Trifecta” of an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown in Japan, for instance, the Japanese government was telling its citizens it was ok to eat the food grown in Japan. But the Preparis product told its clients, “No, it is not ok to eat the food from Japan at this time.” Later tests showed that much food was contaminated with radioactivity.
“We also had a lot of our clients use the emergency messaging system when trying to find their employees.”
It must be doing something right. It has a 100 percent client renewal rate. How many software firms can say that?
The 20 employee company has raised $5 million in Series A funding. Whitney says the company is looking at a B round for growth.
“We signed a strategic alliance with Wells Fargo, which is bundling it with their products for their insurance customers. It’s a huge opportunity. Its the fourth largest insurance broker. We don’t need money for the product, but we need to hire more people to facilitate meeting increased demand for the product. That’s the main reason we would raise a B round.”
The company’s growth plan also includes mobile and social integration. Already clients can log in to the product with Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn names and passwords.
In the ten years Ian Jones, founder of mobile app company meet.com, marketed online dating sites from Friendfinder to Match.com, he tried most of them out – without success.
“I didn’t have one successful meeting,” Jones says.
His complaints about the online dating sites echo those of many others – he would discover that the photos the women he contacted had posted were a decade old. Or they sounded great online but didn’t come across so well in subsequent phone conversations.
So, in 2010, Jones decided to do something about that and created meet.com, a mobile app set to launch in March that already has 700,000 pre-joins acquired through affiliates and marketing.
Presenting at SEVC
The company, which has about 20 employees and currently has a single angel investor, will present its business plan at the upcoming Southeast Venture Conference in Tysons Corner, VA, Feb. 29-March 1. The 6h annual SEVC highlights both early and later stage investment opportunities from: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington DC.
What makes it different?
Jones tells us that one of the biggest surprises in setting up his startup firm was the “overwhelming support for the meet.com brand and the growth in the smartphone and mobile app markets.”
The brand name is one of the things that differentiates meet.com from its competitors, says Jones. “It has a much higher response rate than ‘Scout,’ or ‘Blender,’ or ‘Grinder,’ based on our research, he notes.
Another differentiating feature is the way the app will work with Facebook. It allows users to connect via Facebook and even communicate with Facebook friends for free after downloading and installing it.
Jones assures us that the app will have strong privacy and security settings and users will be in control of who they connect with.
Once users communicate with people outside their network, however, a $4.99 a month charge begins via the iTunes or Android market stores.
Jones says the app is initially going to work with the iPhone and Android operating systems with Blackberry coming along a bit later.
There are other mobile apps out there that connect people on the go, but Jones says “Our matching technology is superior, our look and feel is superior, and our privacy settings are superior.”
Jones says he thinks we’ll all be experience a “mobile bubble” that will be much more significant that the dot com boom was in the next few years.
Mobile advantages
Mobile has advantages. People are more willing to pay for mobile apps than they ever seemed to be for online services, for instance. “There is much more acceptance from consumers,” Jones says. “It’s much more common for people to push a button and buy a 99 cent or $5.00 app than it is for them to pull out a credit card and charge $19.95.”
Part of the reason for the increased acceptance on the part of consumers is that it’s more secure than online purchases, he suggests.
“People have their credit cards on file with the iTunes store or Android and there are no charge back issues.”
In terms of dating itself, the immediacy of the way the meet.com app works when people are actually on the go and out and about is a major difference from the stale photos and descriptions on online services.
The U.S. dating services market is a now a $2.1 billion business, with online dating services soaring in popularity since 2001 and representing 53% of the market’s value, according to a recent report from Market Research. But, dating website revenues are expected to grow only 7.5% this year as the U.S. market becomes saturated with 1,500+ sites and free dating sites and competition from popular social networking sites attracts cost-conscious singles, the report says.
In the not too distant future he thinks the prices on smartphones will fall even further, greatly reducing or eliminating any price barriers to consumer adoption.
Meet.com is seeking under $500,000 in an angel round and will present the details of its business plan to investors representing literally billions in capital at the SEVC.
Here’s the company’s video description of its product:
The Southeast Venture Conference has disclosed the first round of companies selected to present at the upcoming conference scheduled for February 29th – March 1st at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner, Virginia.
Sixty showcase companies from around the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions will present at SEVC 2012. Showcase companies will range from pre-IPO firms to earlier stage high growth firms.
The presenting companies are the present and future of the region’s innovation economy, representing some of the most promising technologies from a diverse range of industries, including energy, mobile, health, security and Internet among others.
The first round of announced presenting companies include:
In my last installment of this 2011 review of the RTP startup ecosystem, I went back over some of the companies I hung out with last year. Some. Just a few. Mostly the ones who did big, huge, extraordinary things. But of course that leaves out the hundreds (and yes, there are hundreds) of equally likeable and viable companies who did not do big, huge, extraordinary things last year.
I hung out with them too, just in groups and a lot of times with drinks.
And there were groups everywhere. If 2011 was the year the RTP startup ecosystem organized, it got most of that organization done at meetups, events, users groups, conferences, and galas. If it seemed like there was something startup-related going on every single week that’s because there was, and 2012 looks to be no different, just better.
There’s been no better time to be an entrepreneur in the RTP. Here’s why:
Foot on the Accelerator
2011 started off and ended with announcements from two completely different accelerators.
Artist's rendering of the American Underground space
LaunchBox Digital graduated its first class to come out of Durham in January 2011, with a big event at Bay 7 at American Tobacco (http://www.techjournalsouth.com/2011/01/90-days-work-in-eight-minutes-launchbox-digital-2010-demo-day/) (where it’s falsely rumored that I keep a secret sleeping quarters – I actually just sleep in Square 1 Bank’s conference room… don’t tell them). Seven companies held court for eight minutes apiece in front of brave ice-conquering crowd of hundreds.
That means there are three “new” programs in the RTP for aspiring entrepreneurs to get their product from concept to reality with more help than should be legal. If you don’t apply to at least one of them, you have no one to blame.
Out of the Garage
Beyond the proliferation of accelerators in the area (and honestly, how often do you get to read a sentence like that), there were literally dozens of events in 2011 that highlighted, supported, or celebrated startups. And if you know me, you know I’m all about the grass roots.
In March, I wrote about Startup Madness, the second in a series of homegrown events from Scott Kelly that announce and market the launch of local tech startups (http://www.techjournalsouth.com/2011/03/startup-madness-it%E2%80%99s-not-as-crazy-as-you-might-think/). Kelly just held another Launch Days very early this year, and has two startup events on the calendar for Spring and Summer that focus on high school and college entrepreneurs.
In June, Triangle Startup Weekend (http://www.techjournalsouth.com/2011/06/try-before-you-buy-triangle-startup-weekend/) made a welcome return to the area with over 100 entrepreneurs spending three straight, sleepless days and nights building a company from scratch. TSW makes a repeat engagement in April this year, and will be very interesting as some of those folks ran with their companies and likely still haven’t slept.
Not to be outdone, the gamers put on their own party, Raleigh Game On (http://www.techjournalsouth.com/2011/08/game-on-rtp-indie-game-companies-take-matters-into-their-own-hands/) packed 150 game developers and gaming enthusiasts into the Hive in downtown Raleigh in August. I, for one, have always felt like the gamers should and could be more visible in the RTP startup ecosystem. Between Joystick, Game On, and other recurring events like the TGI Social, 2011 was a big step in the right direction.
And let’s just pretend I already talked about ExitEvent.
Oh, Yeah, There are VCs Too
I’ve always been amazed at how accessible the local VCs are and how few startups and wanna-be startups take advantage of that accessibility. Here are two ends of the spectrum I talked about in 2011.
Jason Caplain
Jason Caplain from Southern Capitol Ventures is involved with a lot of events, meetings, get-togethers, and so on, probably more so than any single local investor.
In April, I wrote about the, get this, 28th annual CED Venture Conference (http://www.techjournalsouth.com/2011/04/ced-venture-2011-mission-accomplished-now-what/), where for a small price (in terms of value), you can catch up with a keg of VCs, angels, and dozens of funded and unfunded startups. Watching and learning from the public pitches alone is worth the price of admission.
And by the way, that was on the heels of the SouthEast Venture Conference and the East Coast Game Conference, both of which are coming up again in 2012.
If anything, 2012 is going to build on this strong support structure that sprung up in 2011. So if you ever, ever thought about ditching it all and starting a company, well, my friend, this is your year. Apply, attend, meet-up, discuss, engage and party. Of course, there’s all that hard work and risk, but at least you’ll have hundreds of others slogging it out with you.
Despite the brouhaha last year over Netflix splitting its streaming and DVD rental services, effectively doubling the cost of having both, the company posted better than expected Q4 results this week.
Netflix needed the boost. It saw its stock price slide 60 percent after the price hike and a failed attempt to split itself into two companies last year.
But Netflix earned revenue of $876 million in Q4, compared with $596 million in the same period the year before, although net earnings actually dropped to $41 million or 73 cents a share compared with $47 million and 87 cents a share a year ago.
Despite a loss of 800,000 subscribers in Q3, the company saw Q4 subscriber numbers rise to 24.4 million, up from 23.7 million last year.
The company faces competition from Amazon, Hulu, and other streaming video sources.
We find Netflix particularly useful to watch those novelistic TV series, especially when they’re available to stream. We caught Downton Abbey, Spartacus, and a bevy of older BBC productions that way.
You can hear Marc Randolph, co-founder of Netflix, at the upcoming Southeastern Venture Conference, Tysons Corner, VA, Feb. 29-March 1.
MCLEAN, VA – Are you looking for a way to get your innovative technology company in front of top venture investors, entrepreneurs and potential partners and clients? TechMedia’s Southeast Venture Conference, 2012, set for Feb. 29-March 1 at the Ritz-Carleton in Tysons Corner, VA, has issued its final call for presenting companies.
The SEVC’s focal point are high growth, innovative companies from a variety of technology sectors such as Internet, Software, Bio-IT, Greentech, Medical Devices and Mobile.
SEVC 2012 will feature presentations from over 50 of the region’s top high growth tech companies.
Additionally, there will be keynote speeches from national experts and a number of investor and entrepreneur oriented panel discussions will be held on topics such as IPO and Secondary Market Strategies, Venture Capital Outlook, M&A Trends and Best Practices, Limited Partner Viewpoints, Early Stage Fundraising Strategies and Global Investment and Growth Strategies and more.
Presenting companies will span a wide range of life cycles from late stage Pre-IPO firms to promising high growth startups seeking their first institutional rounds.
Showcased companies will address a national audience of more than 700 venture capitalists, private equity investors, investment bankers, entrepreneurs and technology industry executives.
ATLANTA – TechAmerica Georgia and the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) today unveiled the finalists in the “Cool Technology” category for the ninth annual Spirit of Endeavor Awards.
This category recognizes the Georgia company that has developed and/or introduced the most innovative new hardware, software or a technology-service in the state in the past 18 months and can demonstrate the success of that product over the past 12 months.
The finalist companies include OpenStudy, Cardlytics, TripLingo, ViziTech USA and SoloHealth.
One of the winners from last year, Nanolumens, went on to compete at the national level and ended up beating others in its category, including Microsoft Kinect.
The winner of the “Cool Technology” award will be determined by onsite text voting at the Spirit of Endeavor Awards ceremony running from 7:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. on December 9, 2011, at TWELVE Atlantic Station in Atlanta.
The Spirit of Endeavor Awards recognize and celebrate innovative technology companies and individuals in Georgia that drive new ideas, invigorate the community and lead people through technology.
“Each of our finalists in the ‘Cool Technology’ category represent some of the most innovative thinking in Georgia and we are proud to recognize them for their hard work to improve the way we live and do business through technology,” said Tino Mantella, president and CEO for the Technology Association of Georgia and TechAmerica Georgia.
“Georgia has become a hotbed for new and established technology companies and the Spirit of Endeavor Awards are our way of recognizing the companies here who are making a difference, not only in our state, but on a national and global level as well.”
The “Cool Technology” finalists were nominated for the following reasons:
· OpenStudy is dubbed by TechCrunch as a “platform for Massively Multiplayer Study Groups.” It connects students studying the same subjects into online study sessions where they can help each other understand lessons, prepare for tests and stay motivated. Currently 75,000 students from 190 different countries and 1,500 different schools are registered.
· Cardlytics Transaction-Driven Marketing platform is a unique advertising platform that enables banks to deliver rich, relevant rewards to their customers based on purchasing history while fully protecting their privacy. The platform is able to reach customers through online banking, mobile banking and mobile apps, social media, email, SMS and ATMs. The company recently secured $33 million in funding and is on track to reach 75 million U.S. households by Q2 2012.
· TripLingo creates a customized experience to help leisure and business travelers navigate the local lingo and culture. With apps available via the web, iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and Nook, TripLingo offers language tools in over 13 different languages and packages local customs, idioms and an intelligent learning system to make it easy for travelers to learn essential bits of the local language and culture both prior to and during trips.
· ViziTech USA holds proprietary intellectual property allowing the company to develop 3D imaging as HoloProjection images similar to the famed HOLODEK from the movie “Star Trek.” The images are not confined to a video or screen, but rather move right out into the classroom, engage students and allow them to interact with machines or objects. Students can get a real feel of how something acts or operates by using their hands to control the interactive image. The company currently assists teachers and trainers in schools throughout Georgia, the Department of Defense and several Fortune 500 companies.
· SoloHealth offers the SoloHealth Station, a free and bilingual health screening kiosk that provides vision, blood pressure, weight, and body mass index screenings, as well as an overall health assessment and access to a database of local doctors. SoloHealth Station is a more comprehensive version of the company’s Eyesite vision testing kiosk for which the company received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to advance it into a more comprehensive self-service health and wellness station The company plans to provide highly personalized and interactive healthcare opportunities for consumers, advertisers and retailers by placing these kiosks in high-traffic retail locations. SoloHealth is targeting a nationwide rollout out of the SoloHealth Station in 2012.
SoloHealth presented at TechMedia’s Southeast Venture Conference in 2010 and nabbed $4 million in financing in April this year. The next SEVC is coming up in Tysons Corner, VA, Feb. 29-March 1.
The 2011 Spirit of Endeavor Awards are sponsored by Platinum sponsor Concurrent, Gold sponsor ASAP Solutions Group, and Silver sponsor Burnette Insurance, CresaPartners and Intel. A portion of the proceeds from the event will benefit the TAG Education Collaborative.
Kabbage chairman Marc Gorlin will speak at the Internet Summit Nov. 15-16 at the Raleigh, NC Convention Center.
Remember those cartoons where an alien approaches a fire hydrant or a telephone pole and says, “Take me to your leader?” Turns out it’s not bad advice for startups seeking funding, says Marc Gorlin, chair of Atlanta-based Kabbage.
Kabbage, which provides working capital to online merchants, nabbed a $17 million B round in August led by Mohr Davidow Ventures and its investors include BlueRun Ventures, David Bonderman, founder of TPG Capital, and Warren Stephens, CEO of Stephens Inc., and the UPS Strategic Enterprises Fund.
So Gorlin understands the venture dance. He’ll discuss “The things VCs never tell you about raising money” at next week’s Internet Summit in Raleigh, NC, where he’ll be one of dozens of digital media, marketing and entrepreneurial thought-leaders participating.
And one of the first items on his list of things for entrepreneurs to consider when seeking venture capital is to the right person immediately.
“No firm where we went in through anyone but a senior partner went anywhere,” Gorlin says of Kabbage’s own experiences in finding venture backing. “If you get a meeting with a principal or associate, the odds of it going anywhere sink to infinitesimal levels,” he says.
While Gorlin’s slide presentation uses humor to make its points, the points are serious.
He’s Just Not that Into You
For instance, his “He’s Just Not that Into You,” section warns that “No means no, maybe means no and soft yeses mean no.”
Nevertheless, Gorlin says, persistence is the key. “Never stop trying,” he says. He’ll point out how many times big investors said “no” to investing in a company before they said “yes.”
Gorlin has solid advice for entrepreneurs. He suggests not pitching the most important venture capitalists on a potential list first. “You’ll get better,” he says.
Know your market
One of the most important things for entrepreneurs to do to prepare for a pitch to a VC, he says, “Is to know your market.”
It’s also a good idea to know your VC. “Take people they invested with out to dinner. Talk about the terms they got.”
Gorlin also suggests, “Don’t be afraid of venture capitalists and their pedigrees. Don’t make them smarter than you.”
But if you do get some discouraging comments, don’t think you’re alone. Gorlin says that one firm told the now quite successful Kabbage, “Your management team is weak and not smart enough to make this work.” Uh huh.
He’ll share more of the actual comments Kabbage received during its fund-raising process, stories, facts and other solid, if funny, advice direct from the digital fund-raising trenches.
Internet Summit is near capacity, so if you’re going, better register soon. During its own fund-raising process, Kabbage presented at TechMedia’s Southeast Venture Conference. The 2012 SEVC in Tysons Corner, VA, is set for Feb. 29.
Amazon has purchased Charlotte-based speech-recognition firm Yap, according to a report in The Atlantic. Citing an SEC filing, the magazine notes that neither company announced the merger of Yap with Dion Acquisition Sub, which lists a Seattle Amazon building address.
The magazine says that “The acquisition is particularly interesting given the prominence of Apple’s voice efforts and the depth of Google’s.’” It speculates the acquisition may be Amazon’s step into the voice control field. Amazon has steadily moved from being primarily a retailer to being a tech company selling ereaders, tablets and cloud services.
Yap’s technology, which goes beyond the voicemail-to-text service it shutdown recently, may be Amazon’s first move in developing a rival to Apple’s Siri on the new iPhones.
Yap, which presented at TechMedia’s Southeast Venture Conference and was profiled here, raised a $6.5 million A financing round from SunBridge Partners in 2008. The sixth annual SEVC is just around the corner, February 29 – March 1, 2012 at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner, VA.
“Yap is truly a leader in freeform speech recognition and driving innovation in the mobile user experience,” said Paul Grim, general partner at SunBridge Partners in a statement following the funding. “It is increasingly clear that the fastest, easiest, and safest way to interact with services on a mobile device is using your voice, and Yap makes this both possible and intuitive.”
Founded in 2006 by brothers Igor and Victor Jablokov, the company raised $1.5 million from individual investors in May 2007.
The system also can connect online advertising to brick & mortar redemption of offers, which is often the missing link in tracking ROI for online advertising.
The Southeast Venture Conference has disclosed the first round of companies selected to present at the upcoming conference scheduled for February 29th – March 1st at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner, Virginia.
Despite the brouhaha last year over Netflix splitting its streaming and DVD rental services, effectively doubling the cost of having both, the company posted better than expected Q4 results this week.
ATLANTA – TechAmerica Georgia and the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) today unveiled the finalists in the “Cool Technology” category for the ninth annual Spirit of Endeavor Awards.
Amazon has purchased Charlotte-based speech-recognition firm Yap, according to a report in 
