The ballots are in! They have all been counted and recounted, and we have a winner for this year's Vator Splash NY!
Congratulations to Traxo for winning the judge's vote.
Traxo is the world’s most advanced personal travel organizer. The free service automatically detects and aggregates travel information, including: itineraries, miles, points, and elite status, directly from over 190 different travel websites, and accepts travel confirmation emails from over 1,300 travel providers, organizing everything into a single, comprehensive travel dashboard -- essentially a next-gen Tripit or Mint.com for travel.
Traxo also provides destination specific data for users, including maps, itinerary and weather.
The service, which seeks to fix the problem of fragmentation of travel information, has already imported half a million trips for its members, who have accumulated over three billion points.
We should also say congrats to Thumbs Up for winning the People's Choice Award.
Thumbs Up is the magic button for TV. You watch a show. You love a moment of that show. And you can instantly share that moment with friends.Through a plug-and-play API, TV shows integrate Thumbs Up into any second-screen app to establish a real-time connection with their audience. Thumbs Up lets the audience vote, rate and share great moments of a show with one touch in real-time - enabling new, interactive TV experiences that increase viewer engagement, live viewership and ad revenue.
The company plans to monetize by selling data to networks, giving them deeper insight into which moments the audience liked. This works best for live events, such as the Olympics, the Oscars and the Super Bowl.
It eventually plans to be an API company, meaning it will be incorporated into the websites for specific shows by the networks.
Here were the rest of our finalists:
Auctionopia is a first of its kind direct social commerce marketplace. We're excited to offer our next generation embedded instant messenger technology that allows retailers to negotiate shipping & price points with potential customers, promote to their fans, and close deals live, all within our proprietary chat interface (OpiaTalk).
Creativeworx is solving the global timesheet problem to increase revenue and accelerate invoicing. By making the capture of hard-to-obtain employee workflow data effortless, the CreativeWorx platform automatically generates business intelligence that helps organizations & individuals capture more revenue, reduce costs, streamline processes, and have better visibility of operations.
Blenture Software is the creator of Playrock, a location-based gaming network with a big twist. Mobile players can create their own location-based spaces and play multi-player games in real-time with others who are next to them.
LessonWriter automatically turns any digital text into high-quality dynamic literacy lessons for print, web, and moblie. Our program makes it possible for every to teacher to support reading in every subject regardless of their training. Our product is fully-built, used by over 30,000 teachers around the world and generating revenue from premium school and individual sales.
MatchPuppy is a brand new way for dog owners and their dogs to meet new friends in their neighborhoods. Think of us as the OkCupid for dog playdates. Owners can arrange and join playdates, whether for finding matches for a quick stroll in the park or just meeting up with other dog owners and their dogs to play some fetch and sniff some butts.
Offerbus provides a turnkey, easy to integrate engagement platform that combines notifications, virtual currency rewards and a digital goods redemption marketplace. Developers can use the platform to engage, incentivize, retain and, if needed, monetize users.
PhotoSpotLand helps photographers by suggesting great places to shoot and create great shooting experiences, with great people... or alone. We are a step above sharing photos and we don't share photos. PhotoSpotLand is the essential instrument of where, how, what and with whom to take pictures around the world and to propose and aggregate photographers communities to share the experience.
Silver Living provides critical independent research and rich media that guides families to the best senior living community for their loved one. Our professional reviews, 100's of photographs and videos, resident interviews, and in-depth analysis cut through the marketing hype.
The bill would require a report on how these industries use AI to valuate homes and underwrite loans
Read more...
Steven Loeb
The artists wrote an open letter accusing OpenAI of misleading and using them
Read more...
Steven Loeb
The role will not be filled by Elon Musk, though he will be involved in who is chosen
Read more...
Steven Loeb
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
We’re a brand new way for dog owners and their dogs to meet new friends in their neighborhoods. Think of us as the OkCupid for dog playdates. Owners can arrange and join playdates, whether for finding matches for a quick stroll in the park or just meeting up with other dog owners and their dogs to play some fetch and sniff some butts.
What people are saying about us:
https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%40matchpuppy
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Traxo is the world’s most advanced personal travel organizer.
The free service automatically detects and aggregates travel information, including: itineraries, miles, points, and elite status, directly from over 200 different travel websites, and accepts travel confirmation emails from over 1,000 travel providers, organizing everything into a single, comprehensive travel dashboard -- essentially a next-gen Tripit or Mint.com for travel.
Traxo users become part of a smart, savvy online travel community and are rewarded with rich and informed social travel experiences. Conceived by founders Andres Fabris, Andy Chen and Richard Pendergast, Traxo’s executive team is comprised of business veterans with years of industry experience at companies such as Sabre and Travelocity.
For more information, please visit www.traxo.com.
Check out Splash NY Dec 2012 Winner, Traxo's presentation
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Auctionopia is a first of its kind direct social commerce marketplace. We're excited to offer our next generation embedded instant messenger technology that allows retailers to negotiate shipping & price points with potential customers, promote to their fans, and close deals live, all within our proprietary chat interface (OpiaTalk).
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
LessonWriter automatically turns any digital text into high-quality dynamic literacy lessons for print, web, and moblie.
Summary
In education, the greatest call to action is to improve literacy. The crisis that leaves 2/3 of our kids behind revolves around insufficient materials, instruction, and planning time. LessonWriter leverages the high-interest material available on the web into high-quality lessons.
Our program makes it possible for every to teacher to support reading in every subject regardless of their training. And since we know US school budgets aren’t about to expand to allow teachers to have five times as many planning hours- equivalent to applauded educational systems of Singapore and Finland, LessonWriter found a way to make planning five times as fast!
We have a product that addresses the most significant pain point in education on multiple planes and in a unique way. Our product is fully-built, used by over 30,000 teachers around the world and generating revenue from premium school and individual sales. Teachers of students in grades 4-12 as well as instructors in adult education and adult ESL programs comprise an overwhelming majority of our users.
We are currently raising a seed round to support the promotional budget and sales staff needed to nurture rapid growth and additional reseller deals.
Website: www.lessonwriter.com (Check out the short intro video on our website!)
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Thumbs Up is the magic button for TV. You watch a show. You love a moment of that show. And you can instantly share that moment with friends.
Through a plug-and-play API, TV shows integrate Thumbs Up into any second-screen app to establish a real-time connection with their audience.
Thumbs Up lets the audience vote, rate and share great moments of a show with one touch in real-time - enabling new, interactive TV experiences that increase viewer engagement, live viewership and ad revenue.
Beta results here. Beta app here. Beta analytics dashboard here.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
How to shoot great photos in great places. With great people...or alone.
NOTE: at the end few notes upon judge valutation, thanks
Connecting people with common passions: travel, photography, culture.
London | New York | Catania | Monza
Today killer app on web and mobile is sharing photos, and people now love to share great photos.
PhotoSpotLand help them suggesting great places to do it and creating great shooting experience, with great people or...alone. We are a step above sharing photos and we don't share photos.
PhotoSpotLand is the essential instrument of where, how, what and with whom to take pictures around the world and to propose and aggregate photographers communities to share the experience.
A community where people loving photography can share best locations/events where to shoot great photos, how, when and with whom to shoot.
Are you an enthusiast or amateur or pro photographer? We will help on your journey to focus on your calling as a photographer, as you can only focus and capture the souls of your photographs.
Our users are anyone who share the Passion for photography, anyone feeling emotions shooting a photo. No matter if they are enthusiast, amateur, semi-professional or professional, including blind photographers!
They all have needs in common, and we the the solution in a web/mobile platform.
A) Where to shoot great pictures
B) How to shoot great pictures
C) Shoot great pictures.
Anyone loving photos use PhotoSpotLand to ask: what, where, with whom and when to shoot great photos.
The aim of PhotoSpotLand™ is also to aggregate the micro-communities that spontaneously grow around the most popular photo-shooting Spots to share experience and knowledge.
‘Spot’, because we are interested in whatever can create interest to our users like landscapes, coastlines, mountain ranges, buildings or bridges, religious events cultural events, festivals, carnivals or once in a life time events such as volcano eruptions or lunar eclipses; in conclusion all the Spots where it is possible to take remarkable shots.
Our target is not to duplicate or recreate any of the existing social networks or mobile applications, but is to produce a tool that will allow and promote different level of information sharing, by using web or mobile on the Spot.
PhotoSpotLand™ allows photographers to plan in advance and with efficiency the best Spot with the best position, at the best time, with the right gears with advice from those who have shot there before.
Using PhotoSpotLand™ before leaving home you can find out if any other photographer is visiting the spot at the same time as you, and how he is organizing is trip.
And when on the spot can discover who already are around, sharing advice, gears, backup problems (battery fault, a miss tripod or flash etc). Receive immediate updates about parking spaces, wind, if there is any dangerous situations etc….by using the map you can visualize all the nearest photographers, find out which photographic equipment they have, and brand and model of the gear they use as who is available to give advice. The app will also allow the photographer to send messages to each other, so if while you are on the spot and encounter a technical problems (like a battery failure), or need a different tool for your camera you can find if anyone in the vicinity is able to help. Or only the experience to shoot together...You also may ask a close by and more experienced photographer how to take the best shot.
And if there are nearest blind photographers offer to advice and guide.
So PhotoSpotLand™ solves practical problems of anyone who share the passion for photography giving them the chance to plan, to shared experience and meet others with the same passion, having fun and saving money. On a timeline base we also connecting photographers with people who've taken photos of that spot before!
We want to change the way people shoot photos. We will help on users journey to focus on users calling as a photographer, as she can only focus and capture the souls of her photographs...Alone or on a shared experience.
With a special project, we also want to help blind photographers, we are sure that blind and 'normal' photographers can transmit and exchange one each other enthusiasm, new vision, and experience.
The market is so big, we adress potentially million of users worldwide. Think how many PhotoSpotLand user we can catch just in famous Spots like Piazza di Spagna in Rome, Piccadilly Circus in London, Time Sq in NYC etc. hundreds of thousands a day, often creating micro-communities.
On the biz model side, customers are big and medium players in the photo market industry and in tourist industry. We are customers broker, as every community born to. Collecting our users/photographers deep data and information, for each user We know: Users Photographic Gears, oldest, newest, lens,software, hardware, smartphone, tablet etc. We also know annual spending ans gears wish list. And thanks to our timeline we know travel begaviour and plans.
Main revenue model is native and traditional advertising, sponsorized spots etc. Only US Social Travel Market is more than 100million $
The team include experts in marketing, communication, social media, photography, PR, design, professional journalist, DB management and in our advisory board we had expert in marketing and opinion research, usability, famous photographers etc.
Mario Bucolo (Founder & CEO)
Serial Entrepreneurs, Intnl Mktg, Comm, Social media expert & Awards winning professional photographer
Mark Fabiani (Strategic, PR legal and Communications Counsel)
Special Counsel to President Clinton Chief of Communications, Al Gore Presidential Campaign, Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles
Luca Marturana (CTO)
Master degree(cum laude)on Computer Engineering.Skills on scalableDBenvironments,a plethora of programming languages,including mobile apps.
Mirko Santangelo (chief designer)
Visual Designer & Adobe Certified Expert
Cinzia Costanzo (content and social media manager)
Master degree in History and Conservation of Artistic Heritage, Content editor of Museumland.net. Expert in Social Media and visual arts.
Alberto Ottimo iOS Developer
Paolo Zellner (Financial Strategies Counsel)
Free Thinker, A lifetime Banker
Our competitors are fragmented and/or not focused, mainly dediated to sharing photos or location without a clear focus point, we are a step above, we help their users. Our main competitors are tradional magazine where our paying customer spent every months incredible amount of money.
Our mobile app (ready in summer) will be the only one to work in bidirectional, interactive, mode also when NO data connection. Useful for travelers want to save money on data roaming. We use our special technology, U.S. Patent Pending
NOTE: we have clear idea and plans on how to attract mass market audiences and how to get them to use the app/service on a regular enough basis. BUT due to public aspect of this form we can't share, we will more than happy to provide this information to judges on private base thanks.
NOTE for judges:
Team:
Judge "Wouldn't expect to see the second person listed in a small company team to be PR, Legal and Strategic. These skills are more important later." In fact Mark Fabiani is our co-founder and advisor, main role is to support us in the US market.
Novelty and product/service
Judges: "But I'm not sure it's the top priority for many people. It isn't clear enough from the summary how PhotoSpotLand will make the photos better and create a wow moment for people.", "Do we need another photo app? Is this a big enough market?"
Are same users that will create photospots around the world, we don't "make teh photos better" we advice users where to find great place where and when and hwo to shoot great photos. Isn't only an app but an entire platform and thanks to the project idea we are outside from sharing photo market/apps, totally different from other apps.
Commercial viability
Judges: "It will take something amazing from the product to get lots of users and make money.", "Would anyone actually pay for info they can probably find via Google?"
yes, of course traction is the main point. On the second opinion, our users don't pay and in anycase info we shares are'nt on google ;)
Thanks
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
With 700,000 apps in both the Apple and Google Play stores, competition to get installs is fierce. But unless you are a highly addictive game, an even bigger challenge is getting customers to use your app after it’s installed. Brands spend millions to acquire app customers but fail to keep them engaged and active and are unable to maximize ROI.
Offerbus addresses the problem with a turnkey, easy to integrate engagement platform that combines notifications, virtual currency rewards and a digital goods redemption marketplace. Developers can use the platform to engage, incentivize, retain and, if needed, monetize users.
Adapting a behavioral model developed by Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab, Offerbus help brands and developers seamlessly integrate an engagement fabric into their existing application experiences. Customizable, personal trigger notifications combined with a virtual currency rewards maximize engagement and retention by encouraging and rewarding habitual use.
Our platform also incentivizes the sharing of those engaging experiences across social media. This both reinforces usage (the more friends and family you have using an app, the more likely you are to retain and use it yourself) and increases free distribution opportunities giving marketers a double return on ROI.
For those developers who want to leverage our platform for monetization as well, Offerbus provides a mediated offer wall solution which brings together multiple offer providers This allows customers to shop for personalized deals and earn additional rewards.
Competitors include Badgeville, Pocketchange and Bunchball. A handful of carefully selected customers are testing out or in the process of integrating our solution. We are self-funded.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
One of the key problems with most enterprise systems is they rely on manual entry of data from workers. CreativeWorx has solved this problem for certain organizations and continues to expand the market potential with additional solutions.
By making the capture of hard-to-obtain employee workflow data effortless, the CreativeWorx platform automatically generates business intelligence that helps organizations & individuals capture more revenue, reduce costs, streamline processes, and have better visibility of operations.
The first product on the CreativeWorx platform solves the global timesheet problem to increase revenue and accelerate invoicing.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Key Problems Solved for Customers: One of the most challenging problems for an organization is its inability to efficiently collect accurate data related to how worker’s spend their time. The ramifications are significant as poor data collection routinely leads to missed revenues, unnecessary operational costs and delayed invoicing. The CreativeWorx platform eliminates these challenges by automatically collecting this information, performing real-time analysis and then notifying the right people at the right time.
Products & Services: The first CreativeWorx product is the patent-pending TimeTracker, which silently captures real-time data from an employee’s open applications, email, browser, phone calls, mobile phone activity, GPS location data and more to generate accurate timesheets. TimeTracker provides unprecedented efficiencies that capture billable activities which are typically lost, reduces the costs associated with timesheets, and accelerates invoicing and revenue collection.
Target Markets: TimeTracker delivers measurable value to organizations that generate revenue via billable hours. This includes attorneys, accountants, consultants, software developers, advertising agency & creative professionals, and contractors. Though TimeTracker is market-agnostic, CreativeWorx is targeting the advertising industry initially to leverage the founders’ deep industry expertise and TimeTracker’s distinct competitive advantage.
Total Addressable Market: In 2011, $18 Billion was spent on tools that directly improve the creative production process. The CreativeWorx platform and tools will compete favorably in this space. The business intelligence market is relatively untapped and addresses the $45 Billion of production services.
Customers: We have two paying customers: the global ad agency JWT and another mid-sized ad agency, to be publicly announced shortly. TimeTracker was released as beta product in September, 2012.
Competition: The CreativeWorx platform provides workflow solutions with a focus on business intelligence and extremely appealing user experience. Competition is fractured in the creative space with very little focus on business intelligence, and in most cases the time tracking software is a manual operation. Many enterprise platforms (SAP, Microsoft, Salesforce.com) offer a time tracking component, though we will provide an alternative solution by integrating TimeTracker.
Strategy/Barriers to Entry: Our expertise with the Adobe Creative Suite platform provides competitive advantages related to our real-time data gathering in the creative industries. We anticipate first-mover advantage for implementing real-time business intelligence for creative professionals improve operations and directly improve bottom line results. Additionally, CreativeWorx has filed two patent applications and will continue to file where appropriate to protect our unique IP.
Business Model: CreativeWorx derives the majority of its revenue from subscription services. However, there are additional revenue streams including application licensing, commissions from third party services, support agreements and subscription to data analyses.