Latest VatorNews stories

• Four tactics to negotiate like a flea market pro

  by Ryan Phelan, July 25, 2017

  Always ask for a discount, incentives and sweeteners

  I was at a flea market with my sister recently. As I walked around, I was amazed at the price tags. Why should that fancy chair cost so much? Then, it occurred to me. That's just the starting price. Nobody pays the asking price at the flea market. If you do, you're a chump. At the flea market, you're expected to negotiate the price down. It's the same way in business. The sticker price is just the

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• The past, present and future of digital imaging

  by Steven Loeb, July 24, 2017

  Smartphones have changed the way we interact with photos, and soon there will be cameras everywhere

  A decade ago, I had one of the most formative experience of my life, spending 10 weeks in Europe, traveling by van to 13 different countries. Of course I wanted to document my trip, and this being 2007, it was all done on digital camera. That plants the experience at a very specific moment in time: just a few years earlier, I would have had a regular camera with film in it. Just a few years later,

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• Custom studio service, Cover, closes on funding round

  by Josiah Motley, July 24, 2017

  The startup focuses on creating, building, and obtaining permits for backyard studios in LA

  Currently only available to LA residents, in part due to new regulations in the area that makes it easier to be granted building permits, the Gardena, California company takes buyers through the entire process of building a structure, from designing and building the accessory dwelling unit all the way to the actual on-site construction. Founded by Xavier Rivas, with Thomas Heyer as the lead designer,

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• Here’s how Amazon’s Alexa hooks you

  by Nir Eyal, July 21, 2017

  Voice interfaces like Amazon's Alexa are very engaging.

  We’ve never seen her face, but we talk to her throughout the day, every day. She helps us keep track of our to-dos and shopping list, reads us the news and weather, and can sing nearly any song we’d like to hear. In fact, we have become so accustomed to her presence that we invited her to join us in nearly every room in the house. She listens to us when we say goodnight and is there first

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• Meet Laura Sachar, Managing Partner at StarVest Partners

  by Steven Loeb, July 21, 2017

  StarVest puts money into B2B companies, in sectors that include IoT, fintech and infrastructure

  Prior to founding StarVest, Sachar was responsible for direct private equity investments at Gabelli Securities where she sourced digital media investments in Multex Systems and the first institutional round of Digital River. In the early 1990’s, she identified digital media as a growth area and founded Sachar Capital, which sourced Redgate Software as an investment opportunity for its Advisory

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• Startup competitions seeking virtual reality companies

  Competitions include the Casual VR Startup Contest, Gear Indie Contest and G-Startup Worldwide

  Vator has been holding its own competitions, using VatorX, to find and filter for the best startups. We've had some very successful and notable winners in the past that have gone on to raise big funding ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• Startup competitions, accelerators, programs this week

  Samsung NEXT Start, Robot Launch, SplashX Health and more

  Want to list your startup competition or accelerator? List on VatorX. If you're a startup looking for competitions, bookmark the listing or join Vator to get a weekly update on what's happening around ...
  By Kristin Karaoglu
  

• Six strategies for marketing your startup on a tight budget

  Focus on serving your initial customers really, really well

  Creativity can get you past a tight budget. The trick is to remember that you can do your own marketing, you need to make sure that the right people know about you and that you take advantages of the new ...
  By Dante Munnis
  

• When distraction is a good thing

  Distractions are often seen as a bad thing, but that's not always the case.

  Is distraction a curse or a blessing? Not giving full attention to what we should be doing makes us miss deadlines, fail classes, and crash into other drivers. Distraction certainly has a price. Nonetheless, ...
  By Nir Eyal
  

• Top startups shaping the future of personal photos

  Many startups are changing the ways photos are shared, edited and stored

  When most people think of photo sharing and images they likely think of the major platforms and big companies: Instagram and its parent company Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Twitter, Dropbox, Snap and Flickr. ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• Party City partners with Punchbowl, makes $4M investment

  Party City will use the Punchbowl platform to launch its own digital invitation platform

  The world of offline and online retail are merging. Just look at Amazon's $13.4 billion acquisition of Whole Foods, and Walmart’s $3 billion purchase of Jet.com last year. You had the preeminent ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• Startup competitions seeking women-led companies

  Calling all female founders; Here's your list of programs with prizes

  Vator has been holding its own competitions, using VatorX, to find and filter for the best startups. We've had some very successful and notable winners in the past that have gone on to raise big funding ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• Meet Jonathan Struhl, General Partner at Indicator Ventures

  Indicator Ventures focuses on enterprise companies, with initial checks of $500k

  Venture capital used to be a cottage industry, with very few investing in tomorrow's products and services. Oh how times have changed. While there are more startups than ever, there's also more money chasing ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• Google acquires Indian AI company Halli Labs

  AI has been a key part of Google's strategy, including the launch of Gradient Ventures this week

  Artificial intelligence has become something of a buzzword in Silicon Valley these days, with seemingly every company now adding the phrase to their description, likely just to get noticed. That being ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• Digital health investing on track to hit record year in 2017

  There was $6.5B invested in the first half of 2017, already making it the third biggest year ever

  Digital health has been one of the most exciting spaces in tech over the last few years, with advancements in wearables, telahealth, big data and electronic health records. These are changes that will ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• How the hottest tech IPOs have fared since going public

  Many tech stocks, including Facebook, Twitter, Etsy, Grubhub and Box are up on the year

  There were 25 companies that decided to go public in the second quarter of this year, compared to just nine in the same period in 2016. The tech sector especially has seen a revitalization, with some of ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• Accelerators targeting VR startups

  These include accelerators from Samsung, HTC, Qualcomm and Disney

  For startups, there are numerous paths for getting their name out there. One way, which Vator has been covering recently, are startup competitions, but another popular method to get a foot in the door, ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• Meet Whitney Rockley, Managing Partner at McRock Capital

  McRock invests in Industrial Internet of Things companies, with $3 to $4 million initial checks

  Venture capital used to be a cottage industry, with very few investing in tomorrow's products and services. Oh how times have changed. While there are more startups than ever, there's also more money chasing ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• Deconstructing video to make it more shareable

  Videogram’s Sandeep Casi on breaking down video into atomic bits

  Video is transitioning from an add-on feature to a primary digital communication platform, as production and consumption are still at the earliest stages, though comprising the fastest growing and most ...
  By Steven Loeb
  

• DNA testing - on the road to regenerative medicine

  Orig3n’s Robin Smith on how he’s capturing DNA, blood samples toward advance precision medicine

  We recently had Dr. Craig Venter speak at our Splash Health 2017 event. Dr. Venter is the first person to sequence a human genome, simply put: the instructions and information about human development, ...
  By Bambi Francisco Roizen
  
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