Cloud Computing - eWeek

Cloud Computing: 10 Innovative Startups That Rocked the Under the Radar Conference

By Chris Preimesberger on 2011-11-16


On Oct. 10 at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View, Calif., 29 hand-picked startups flew in from all over the world to showcase their wares to an audience of potential customers, partners and investors at Under the Radar. Judges included executives from Intuit, Google, NetSuite, Microsoft, Visa, Qualcomm, Inc.com, Best Buy, American Express, Etsy, Anthem Worldwide, ADP and others. This event was similar to speed dating; companies got only a few minutes onstage to tell their stories in front of industry VIPs before it was the next company's turn. Through an intense vetting process for this twice-a-year event, Dealmaker Media selects startups with some of the industry's most innovative business models to present to experts and executives looking to partner with and acquire new technologies. These startups are inventing new solutions in analytics, retail, human resources, sales, customer engagement and more. This eWEEK slide show rounds up of some of the most interesting new companies to survive this grueling process. The list is in no particular order.

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Expensify, San Francisco

Using Expensify's software, business users can import expenses and receipts from credit cards and mobile phones, submit expense reports through email, and reimburse everything online with QuickBooks and direct deposit.

BlackLocus, Austin, Texas

BlackLocus helps online retailers price their products. With machine learning algorithms developed at Carnegie Mellon, the BlackLocus SaaS platform tracks both competitor prices from the Web and internal data from its clients to provide real-time intelligence to online retailers. When online retailers are able to offer the right product, at the right price, to the right people, sales explosions will occur.

Ginzametrics, Mountain View, Calif.

Ginzametrics is a scalable search engine optimization platform that serves the needs of advertisers, publishers, agencies and e-commerce companies at a global scale. It manages millions of keywords across large site portfolios in about 20 global markets. Ginzametrics integrates with Google Analytics, Omniture SiteCatalyst and more to provide engagement insights for organic search.

GoInstant, Halifax, Canada

GoInstant is a cloud-based service that helps businesses get closer to their customers. Using GoInstant, you can share a Web browsing session within seconds; there are no downloads or plug-ins to get in the way. For sales, this means you can use GoInstant to demonstrate products, closely engage customers and improve sales conversions. For support, GoInstant lets businesses use Web browsing sessions to in effect reach customers wherever they are to assist sales, diagnose problems and demonstrate potential solutions.

Movable Ink, New York, N.Y.

Movable Ink breathes life into email. Using the Movable Ink App Gallery, marketers are able to send personalized email to targeted audiences. The email content can change when the email is opened, based on time of day, recipient's location, device used and real-time business rules. The company claims its customers see greater click-throughs, conversions and engagement with Movable Ink.

Revel Systems, San Francisco

Revel Systems has developed an iPad point-of-sale app that the company claims is disrupting the retail market "one store at a time." Desktop POS terminals may become obsolete as less and less cash and checks are used in transactions. The system provides store owners with a way to connect the virtual world to the physical with their open API.

Rypple, Toronto and San Francisco

Rypple is a social performance platform that helps managers and their teams recognize one another for great work, share key priorities, give and receive feedback, and coach people to achieve their goals—all in real time. Rypple captures all relevant data in one place, so it becomes easy for a manager to get a snapshot of employee performance at the end of a goal, project or quarter. Employees get the continuous feedback, coaching and recognition they need to improve faster and stay engaged. Managers ensure that their teams keep focused on the right priorities. Business leaders build a high-performance-feedback culture at work.

Salespod, Zagreb, Croatia

Salespod calls its product a "Swiss army knife" for the mobile workforce and describes it as a comprehensive field sales and service automation product for smartphones and tablets. This can be used by field sales representatives, service technicians and merchandisers. It is designed to boost sales and productivity through real-time coverage of field work, smart analytics and collaboration.

Stitch, San Francisco

Stitch, a design-focused, fully integrated business management suite for the SMB market, was created to solve problems the founders experienced while operating product-based businesses. Stitch integrates inventory management, order fulfillment, invoicing, accounting and business analytics through numerous sales channels (i.e., online, wholesale, consignment, trade shows) into a single SaaS product offering.

Wave Accounting, Toronto

Wave Accounting is a free online app that eliminates laborious manual entry tasks and generates accountant-friendly reports without requiring the business owner to know anything about accounting. Wave also may change the business side of small business SaaS apps. The company is offering Wave completely for free—not just a free trial. The company claims that in less than a year, Wave already has attracted 50,000 small-business signups in 189 countries around the world.

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