The votes are finally in for the Summer of Innovation $2k to $25k Competition.
Sixty startups joined the competition, which kicked off in early August. The event ended on August 31st, with the Service Jobs Now leading the pack with 67 votes. But as in many of the Vator-hosted competitions, the popular vote is only counted as one vote.
(Note: SJN founders - Alex Roizen and Jonathan O'Bierne - are in the video presenting their company.)
The other judges - Bernard Slede, HP Ventures, Chris Redlitz, Trans Media Capital, Joy Tang, One Village Foundation, Ed Lambert, Bridge Bank, Tyler Rorabaugh, Semantic Seed, Ed Lucero, IPEVO, David Fleck, Wild Pockets, Quincy Jones Jr, III, Ehustle.com, QD3 Entertainment, Howard Hartenbaum, August Capital and Eghosa Omoigui, Director Strategic Investments at Intel Capital, weighed in with their votes as well.
Each judge voted for their six favorite startups. We then combined their votes with the popular vote, and here is the final standing for the six winners.
No. 1 Service Jobs Now
No. 2 Truevert
No. 3 Calinda Software
No. 4 DialPlus
No. 5 LendingKarma
No. 6 FightLaunch
So, what does Service Jobs Now win?
SJN will receive between $2,000 - $5,000 cash and prizes to build a protype or "alpha" version of your application or services, and the opportunity to demo your winning application or service at a Semantic Seed specified event this fall to angel investors and venture capitalist from Silicon Valley. The winner will also become one of the six finalists, competing for the chance to win the Grand Prize of $25,000 or 2nd place of $15,000. Click here for more on the awards.
Be sure to check out Vator's other competitions. Vator and TheFunded are hosting their very first co-produced event, called Juice Pitcher. If you want to be one of the eight to 10 startups pitching, join the Juice Pitcher competition in which we will select the presenting companies.
Also see the 8KMiles $15k competition.
Founder and CEO of Vator, a media and research firm for entrepreneurs and investors; Managing Director of Vator Health Fund; Co-Founder of Invent Health; Author and award-winning journalist.
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Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
FightLaunch.com is the World's Largest Community of mixed martial arts (MMA) Fighters, Promoters, Gyms and Fans. Martial artists use the site to connect with world class promoters and training gyms that can help launch their careers. Gyms use FightLaunch to connect with thousands of fighters in their area that want to train.Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
DialPlus is a San Diego, California based company setting out to change the definition of a phone call by automatically showing visual information from the web for a phone number before, during and after the call. DialPlus will become the de facto standard for translating a phone number in to visual information, enabling any type of device that can make a phone call, has a display and has internet connectivity.
DialPlus creates a better web
experience by deconstructing and re-assembling just the right information,
right when you want it. DialPlus solves the constrained browsing and content
discovery issues of the mobile phone by breaking down the silos of the mobile
ecosystem. For every phone number, DialPlus presents just the right
information, mobile applications, web services and mobile search in a clean and
intuitive interface to enhance the call.
A multitude of experiences can be
created using the DialPlus platform. An
enterprise or mobile CRM solution can be enabled by simply plugging that
information in to the DialPlus platform. An Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
system can become visual for callers using DialPlus.
DialPlus is a powerful advertising
platform. DialPlus can target ads based on a users demographics (age, sex,
location) as well as psychographics. Targeting ads based on call intent and
calling history further empowers an
advertiser to reach a user when they are most engaged with their phone.
Our philosophy is simple: allow people
to use the phone the way they always have — making and receiving calls, and let
DialPlus provide endless possibilities to easily and intuitively access useful
information, services and applications based on your calls.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Service Jobs Now (SJN) is an online networking site working to introduce applicants looking for jobs in the hospitality service industry with employers looking for work. SJN is a place for hospitality employers such as Hotels, Restaurants, Bars, and Nightclubs to post job openings, shifts, or just their profile to be noticed by eager applicants looking for work. Applicants are able to create profiles and submit resumes to venues of their choice, without the hassle of leaving home, paying for parking and transportation, or even printing a resume. SJN is taking the industry with the highest turn over rate and streamlining the hiring process; making it easier and cheaper for both employer and employee to find the perfect working relationship in the quickest amount of time.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Calinda Software provides social collaboration solutions for SharePoint, to make SharePoint simple as social and efficient as collaboration.
Calinda Software’s solutions enable customers to create and customize Social Intranets, Enterprise Social Networks and E-mail Enabled Collaboration sites with Microsoft SharePoint easily and cost-effectively. All conversations are consolidated in a consistent, efficient and flexible collaboration stream. It includes patent-pending e-mail gateway technologies to collaborate with external guests without opening the firewall and giving direct access to the SharePoint sites.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Truevert (www.truevert.com) is a vertical semantic search engine with an attitude. This attitude colors the way that Truevert looks at the world. The underlying technology lets computers understand language the way people do. Truevert applies that technology to deliver the most focused and useful search results possible.
Truevert's first product is a green search engine. It sees the world through the lens of environmental and sustainability concerns. Truevert knows what words mean from this perspective. Search for the word "CFL," for example, and it returns pages about compact fluorescent light bulbs, not the Canadian Football League. Search for toilets, and it tells you about water-saving and composting toilets, not Porta-Johns or the latest creation from Toto.
Truevert learns its attitude automatically. No one has to design categories or identify synonyms for it to work. Verticals or topics are Truevert's point of view. Topics can be as broad (e.g., consumer products) or as narrow (e.g., an individual) as you like, in any language. It takes only minutes, and no particular skill to create a new vertical.
Truevert's second product, Meaningz, launched in private beta on September 14, 2009. Meaningz uses the Truevert technology to power personal semantic search. It uses your twitter feed and the pages that your friends recommend to understand what words mean to you. Meaningz is a personal agent that identifies the information you care about in your social network and on the web. It surfaces what you and your friends know and care about—who you are, where you are, what you know, who you know. Meaningz cuts through the crud and ambiguity of the Web to return targeted, timely, search results from your network and from the web that are uniquely focused on your interests. Go to www.meaningz.com.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Joined Vator on
Joined Vator on
Vator Investment Club; Internet/tech advisor at ADVSR, Ackrell Capital; eDrinkit - Co-Founder, SFiNX - Co-Founder; M&A banker/advisor at Ackrell Capital; Vator Delegate