Looking to change the world but don’t know how to even get started? The Boulder, Colorado-based Bold Academy is a program for people just like you. It was founded by the team of Amber Rae and Nathaniel Koloc.

What exactly will the academy teach you?

The program curriculum will include a series of expert-led workshops, skill-building sessions, and learn-by-doing experiences that fall into the following categories:

• Self-awareness. Knowing yourself, your purpose, what to be true to, and when you’re at your best.
• Integrity. Behaving in a way that is consistent with your true self.
• Confidence. Overcoming societal expectations and being powerful and compassionate in who you really are.
• Risk-taking. Fluency in failure, experimentation, and iteration as the path to success.
• Resourcefulness. The ability to generate passion, money, resources, and manpower around an idea, cause, or project.
• Strategy. Knowing how to draw clarity from chaos and make plans that work.

All of the workshops will follow a hands-on approach. The aim is to create participatory experiences that will be framed, undertaken, and then debriefed as a group.

Co-founder Amber Rae shared her vision for Bold Academy:

“I want every single person who attends to experience the almost indescribable feeling of being alive, knowing that you’re doing the work you’re meant to be doing, and contributing to our world in a positive way. What takes some people years, or even a lifetime to reach, we’re going to make happen in four weeks.”

Throughout July in Boulder, attendees will learn from a host of different mentors with experience at NBC, TED, Apple, and E! (including Seth Godin). The first class will only be 24 participants and the application deadline is April 5th at midnight PST. The Bold Academy will select 50 finalists by April 9th, and then the first 24 to submit their tuition of $7,500 will be in the first class.

If $7,500 seems steep for your budget, you will be happy to hear it includes all programming/workshops/speakers, housing (you’ll be living together in the “Bold Mansion”), healthy food, all transportation in Boulder, access to a personal trainer/nutritionist, access to a career coach, as well as numerous activities and adventures like cooking classes, dance lessons, yoga sessions, camping, and a few other surprises. If you still need help with the tuition, the Bold Academy will be offering a fundraising platform.

As we continue to realize that experiences are more and more valuable and important pieces when it comes to happiness, it’s no surprise to see a program like the Bold Academy launch. So if you’re available in July and looking to take on an experience that could prepare you for a journey to change the world, you might want to apply for the first-ever Bold Academy.

Back in 2010, we introduced you to BookBrewer, a Boulder-based company offering electronic publishing services to writers.  Since then, the e-publishing industry has seen tremendous growth, with BookBrewer growing right alongside it. 

If you’ve looked into publishing an e-book yourself, you know it is not enough to be a brilliant writer with a unique idea, because at some point, you will have to wrangle your words into a publish-friendly format.  Easier said than done.

BookBrewer helps you self-publish a book electronically or in print, then sell it through major retailers like Amazon and Apple, sell directly from their websites, or publish to branded iPad apps. BookBrewer boasts a community of 6,000 writers, including everyone from first-time writers to New York Times Bestsellers, and even large online publishers such as AOL’s Huffington Post and The Denver Post.

“People should realize that the digital book revolution is about more than e-books,” BookBrewer founder and CEO Dan Pacheco told me in an email.

Print is seeing a new life through Print on Demand. We recently published a full-color print book for The Denver Post about the Broncos, which they sold directly from their website. It generated close to $10,000 in profit for them in a 6 week period. Print orders outshone e-book orders by 4 to 1.

I asked Pacheco for his take on the rapid success experienced by the e-book publishing industry.

E-books are a great revenue opportunity for online content producers for one simple reason.  Readers pay for content in the form of e-books, and also Print on Demand, that they won’t pay for on traditional websites.  They appreciate the convenience of being able to take a carefully curated collection of articles with them on the go to read on their Kindles, iPads, iPhones and Androids.

They say everyone has a novel in them, just waiting to be put to paper and shared.  Why not put yours to laptop and give BookBrewer a try?  You can check them out online or at Tech Cocktail’s SXSW #StartupLife Celebration.

Writing is hard, yet you know you need to fill up your blog with great content that will help brand your company and sell your products and services. BlogMutt, which we covered back in October, is helping companies solve this problem with the motto, “We work like a dog to fill up your blog!”

Boulder-based BlogMutt is a crowdsourced blog writing service providing all original content for just about any business blog. The company differentiates itself from other content providers by being easier to use than comparable, lower-priced services and much less pricey than contracting PR agencies to do similar work.

I asked co-founder Scott Yates if he had any advice for those wanting to launch a professional services company.  Yates cautioned against relying on friends for market testing.

“If you think you have a good idea, don’t test it with your friends, who will tell you that they like it because they like you,” Yates said. In fact, even in the testing stages, Yates recommends asking for money to try out your service.

Test it with someone you don’t know and test it by asking them to pay for it, even if it’s not built. You can always give the money back, or even better, you can build the thing to provide the service. When you want to test the market just remember that people will always tell you how much they like your new thing, but the only test that matters is if they are willing to pull their credit card out of their wallet.

As for those already running a company, Yates believes in focusing on your core business.  “New businesses should outsource whatever is not core to your business,” he said. “If you are a technology business, you need to have the technology in-house, but you can certainly hire out things like logo design or writing blog posts.”

Be sure to stop by and meet the BlogMutt team at the Tech Cocktail SXSW #StartupLife Celebration tomorrow.

Editor’s Note: Thank you to Vitrue, a sponsor of our #Startuplife Celebration and Tech Cocktail’s special SXSW video series. Check out Vitrue’s live daily updates from SXSW!

Question: What is the annual value of all unredeemed loyalty points?

Answer: $16,000,000,000

You don’t need to be a CFO to realize that’s a lot of money.  Credit card companies, banks, and retailers dangle these various loyalty programs in front of us in an attempt to earn our dollar.  More often than not, it works; free is an enticing price.  The problem is, the excitement from their incentive program is usually short lived and before we know it, we’re off chasing the next carrot.

KULA Causes not only helps you make use of those unused loyalty points, it allows you to do so altruistically.  This new Boulder-based startup converts your loyalty points from a wide variety of programs to “Kula” (the site’s currency), which can then be donated a charity or cause of your choice.  Being a philanthropist has never been easier and more convenient.  

In order to take off, KULA will require strength in both the quantity and quality of partnerships with both loyalty programs and charities.  Gerrit McGowan, KULA co-founder and CEO, is up to the task.  McGowan’s experience includes working with the UN and various national governments.  He founded Syntegrity Consulting Group and, following a merger in 2006, became a partner in EcoPlan International, Inc.  I caught up with McGowan to learn more about KULA, the future of social good, and the Boulder startup scene.

Tech Cocktail:  What was the inspiration behind KULA?

KULA Causes CEO and co-founder, Gerrit McGowan

Gerrit McGowan:  KULA was born as a result of my previous career. I spent the past decade working as a consultant in the development sector – advising governments, civil society, the private sector, and UN organizations in the area of Local Economic Development.  Bringing representatives of these types of organizations into multi-stakeholder decision making processes, it became clear to me that there was a negative feedback loop at play. Specifically, the private sector and civil society could not easily build mutually beneficial relationships. Charities were always seeking private sector dollars to operate. But private businesses had little incentive (other than altruism and PR) to support the charitable sector. I wanted to find a way to incentivize brands to support charitable causes — by providing tools that could measure and monetize the value of corporate philanthropy and social responsibility.

Tech Cocktail:  What effect do you predict the social sharing of one’s conversions and donations playing in the adoption and use of KULA Causes?

McGowan: Social sharing is a key component of KULA. As most brands have learned, it is rare that a consumer will share the brands they frequent in their social media channels. Rather, consumers tend to talk about brands when they have negative experiences. Positive experiences with brands are expected.

But if a brand enables a consumer to support a cause they care about, that consumer will be far more likely to share their experiences across social media.

As an example, I won’t post that I bought a pair of shoes at Brand X on Facebook, but I will definitely post that Brand X enabled me to support my favorite charitable cause. Therefore, KULA has social media connectivity throughout every step of the giving process.

Tech Cocktail:  What do you see for the future of the crossroads between technology and social good?  What effect will an improving economy play in the growth of this movement?

McGowan:  The information that we now have at our fingertips has offered us more knowledge, awareness, and transparency into brand activities and operations. This alone empowers consumers to make more informed decisions and enables us to find brands that have similar values to our own.

Technology has really become the key driver of social good.

The same goes for charitable causes. In the past it was very difficult to find charities that work on issues we care about. Hence the success (and dominance) of the large charities. They simply had greater brand recognition. But now it is much easier to find causes of all sizes that we care about – as well as information about the efficacy of their operations.

Moving forward, I believe that technology will reinvent the way we give – and make philanthropy and social change an activity of the masses. It will become far simpler for us (as consumers) to support our favorite causes simply by making our every day purchases. KULA is taking the lead on this evolution, transforming consumers into philanthropists simply for being loyal customers.

Tech Cocktail:  Can you touch upon the startup scene culture of Boulder, CO? What other local startups and resources have stood out to you?

McGowan:  As a graduate of the University of Colorado, I have watched the growth and evolution of the Boulder business community for 15 years. Although I left 10 years ago, I came back often and was amazed by the changes each year.

The concept of KULA was actually born while I was living in Vancouver. And as KULA is actively engaged in the loyalty marketing space, I chose to start the business in Europe in 2010. But it didn’t take long to recognize that the US market was perfectly primed for a business like KULA. So when deciding where to move the business in early 2011, it became evident that Boulder would be one of the options.

We ended up choosing Boulder for a number of reasons. Not only is it a beautiful place to live and recreate, but the blossoming tech startup scene is impressive. The density of entrepreneurs in Boulder is extraordinary alone, but the growing number of social entrepreneurs and triple bottom line businesses made Boulder even more attractive to us than the traditional hubs of the Bay Area, NYC, and Boston.

I would recommend Boulder to almost any startup out there. Although we still face some challenges with access to finance and investment, the quality of life and the sense of community among local entrepreneurs is unprecedented.

KULA has recently landed a second investment round – a seven figure deal that closed a few weeks ago and will officially be announced in the near future.  KULA Causes is one of the featured startups at the Tech Cocktail’s SXSW #Startuplife Celebration.

Blank slate has never been so colorful.

At last year’s SXSW, Tech Cocktail covered a new robo-ball-toy called Sphero.  The robotic ball, controlled by your smartphone, puts a heavy emphasis on design.  While the ball’s clear exterior rotates in order to achieve movement, the interior remains balanced. The result- Sphero’s bottom half continually faces the ground (similar to how the same side of the moon always faces Earth), while the top half of the interior shines a variety of brightly colored lights.

At the time of Sphero’s SXSW demo, the technology showed promise, but its application left something to be desired.

At this year’s CES, the robo-ball-toy began to better demonstrate its potential.

“We demoed two games; the first is an arcade-style space invader game where you physically tilt Sphero to interact with the interface on your iPhone.  The second game is called Chromo, where you correctly match the colors on the screen by physically moving Sphero in the right direction. These are just the beginning of what’s possible,” says Paul Berberian, Sphero CEO.

The two way interaction between Sphero and a mobile device is cool, but in reality these games are only the tip of the iceberg for the robotic ball’s capability.  Now that the company has opened its SDK and API to developers, Sphero is limited only by imagination.

I reached out to Berberian to help paint a clearer picture of what we could expect from Sphero moving forward (or sideways and backwards).

Tech Cocktail: What was the inspiration behind Sphero? Clearly its use (at least as of now) is entirely recreational. What sort of opportunity do you see in recreationally-focused technologies outside of traditional gaming hardware?

Paul Berberian: Our founders, Ian Bernstein and Adam Wilson, had this idea of controlling real world objects from their smartphones. Initially they were controlling light switches and garage doors and starting their cars but as they advanced their ideas in TechStars, they heard the same question from all their mentors, “Do you love what you are doing?” The answer was no – they just turned their iPhone into an inexpensive remote. Following the “Do what you love” advice of mentors, they came up with idea to build a ball robot. Ian has been building robots since he was 12, and Adam was also a hardcore hacker/maker. The notion of building a phone-controlled robot was equally appealing.

The ball robot is a really special device. It never gets stuck, it has no parts that stick out and get in the way, it is super elegant, simple to understand and just cool. Making a ball robot, especially one as small as Sphero, was a huge technical challenge that Ian and Adam were determined to solve.

Let’s first dig into driving. You have never owned a device that has known its presence in three dimensions – let alone two – that can report it’s position and take commands from the user. For example, your car’s GPS knows where it is, but your car doesn’t. On top of that, the motor in your car is not controlled by the GPS – it is controlled by your foot on the gas pedal.

Every RC gadget in the world works like your car. Every gadget, except for Sphero.

When you direct Sphero forward, you are really making a request – for example “move on a heading of 10º at 80% power.” The computer on your phone and in Sphero then translates that request into action. Sphero’s motors are commanded at over 400 times a second, ensuring that the ball goes 10º and stays on that heading. A computer is involved in every request and every action. This allows for the creation of some really cool and innovative types of games. Imagine a simple racing game where you can send your opponent a “virtual” oil slick and cause his Sphero to lose control momentarily – you can’t do that if you are simply commanding the motors wirelessly.

Now let’s dig deeper. Sphero’s ability to retain its heading is remarkably sophisticated. We use the same algorithms used on airplanes and spacecraft. But unlike airplanes and spacecraft, Sphero’s heading is still intact even after violent collisions with a wall (don’t expect your plane to still fly if it hits a wall). This little robot can be commanded to perform actions that reference the user’s original position. For example, imagine playing Minesweeper on your living room floor. The only way for Sphero to be able to track a grid is to be able to keep track of its position – and it can.

Since Sphero is connected via Bluetooth to your phone, your phone can use that incoming data stream to create all sorts of game play. Sphero is aware – it knows if it hits something, it knows which way it is pointing, it knows if is falling or rising.

Finally, there is Augmented Reality. Within AR, real world objects must be identified so that virtual objects can interact with them in a spatially correct manner. Sphero is the ideal real world object to detect.  It looks the same from every angle, its size never changes, you can change its colors programmatically to help identification, and you can make it move. We have an AR pong demo in the works, where users look through the cameras on their devices and volley Sphero back and forth using virtual paddles on their screens.

Beyond gaming, we have a lot in the works but I can’t really disclose much at this time. Let’s just say there are plenty of people that would love a super cheap, highly accurate, 6 axis IMU [inertial measurement unit].

Tech Cocktail:  What is your vision of Sphero moving forward? Since releasing your SDK, are there any apps in development that have stood out to you?

Berberian:  Sphero is a magical robot ball, but the true magic happens when you see what apps are possible. I have the fortunate position of seeing things well before they are developed into any apps or firmware release, and I am constantly amazed at what this little guy can do. We have a handful of third-party developers starting to dig into our SDK as well, and we are giving them all the love we can to make sure their dev experience goes well. AT&T made an app for a developer conference and that was a huge hit – but right now I can’t really disclose anything more. I can say that as we ship more units, we expect to engage even more developers. Over the next couple of months we will be hosting events that folks can come and hack away to learn about the Sphero SDK.

Tech Cocktail:  You certainly have a proven track record: six companies started, six start-ups sold. What learning lessons do you bring from your previous successes? What makes Sphero different from any of your previous ventures?

Berberian:  Focus on the product, focus on the customers, and the rest will take care of itself. Sphero is an emotional product. People either love Sphero or they don’t get it (most love it). I never had so much customer emotion and passion tied into a product. I have never had this much momentum before launch, never had this much press interest, and never had a product that used such remarkable technology in such a deceivingly simple package. Plus I never had this much fun. We’re making a robot ball with games – it’s like the world’s best job for a gadget geek like me.

Tech Cocktail:  One columnist said that Sphero wasn’t the future of gaming, instead it was “the future of cat toys.” How would you like to respond to this criticism? What challenges does Sphero face moving forward?

Berberian:  Everyone sees the world through the lens of his or her own experience. Some folks can see potential, and others can only see what is two feet in front of their face. Sphero is absolutely magical from a technological standpoint, and the potential is just beginning to be tapped. If you bought a new computer and all it had on it was a chess app, all you would see is an automated chess machine. But what makes your computer special is it can run numerous apps. You might use your computer for writing, while someone else uses it for gaming. Same machine, different function. Sphero is the same – there are a small number of apps today, but what is developed tomorrow will change how you think about robots.

Coming to CES this week are Cubelets, small multicolor cubes you can snap together to create robots that move, chirp, and light up.

Cubelets come with different programming, and what they do depends on how they’re combined. “Action” blocks include Drive (with wheels), Flashlight, and Speaker (which chirps). “Sense” blocks respond to environmental factors like brightness and temperature. And “Think” blocks, take inputs from adjoining blocks and output numbers.

All this means you can create a robot that drives forward when it senses your hand behind it (see the video below), or spins like a lighthouse, or performs simple mathematical operations. The cost for Cubelets is a bit high: 6 blocks sell for $160, and they take a few months to ship.

Cubelets are built by Modular Robotics, a Boulder-based startup cofounded by PhDs Eric Schweikardt and Mark D. Gross and spun off of research at Carnegie Mellon University. With funding from the National Science Foundation, they are marketing Cubelets as a different type of kid’s toy (for kids 8+) and selling them to science centers, children’s museums, and hobbyists. (Check out this tug-of-war game an 8-year-old boy invented.)

“We believe that toys shape the way that children think about the world,” says Modular Robotics, which was inspired by systems in nature like flocks of birds. If kids are intrigued enough to play around with Cubelets, I imagine it would be a fun process of experimentation, trial and error, and creativity.

But adults might actually be a better market for these expensive and complicated toys. Adult commenters in the Modular Robotics forum are chattering away about new ideas for Cubelets – like a Camera block or “Leave Me” block that detaches itself – and the ability to reprogram their own blocks (which Modular Robotics is working on).

You can find Cubelets at CES’s Eureka Park, an area featuring almost 100 startups in partnership with the National Science Foundation, the Startup America Partnership, CNET, and UK Trade & Investment. Check out the amusing video of Cubelets below:

Tell me if this has happened to you.

You receive your local Groupon or LivingSocial deal of the day. The offer strikes your fancy; you purchase without hesitation. The printed voucher sits in the middle console of your car for weeks on end as you aimlessly drive past the offerer’s establishment during your daily commute.

I know I’m not alone. The issue lies in the gap between rush of purchase and redemption; life exists between the two causing you to forget.

Daniel Newman, CEO and Founder at Roximity believes he has the solution.

This Denver/Boulder-area based start-up delivers personalized, time-sensitive discounts directly to your phone (smartphone or not) when you enter the proximity of a participating business. Roximity aims to improve upon location based deals by better incorporating mobile technology and specific user preference.

“‘Location’ and ‘deals’ are both hot, buzzwordy spaces right now….We aren’t a “daily” deals product. We don’t blast out the same deal to an entire city, whether they are looking for a Brazilian wax or not. Roximity only sends (incredibly relevant and custom) alerts when they make sense, based on a combination of time, location, and of course the users preferences and history.” says Newman.

In 2002, Newman, the longtime Colorado resident, left CU-Boulder for New York City to pursue his passion of developing mobile products. It was only a couple years later when he met Austin Gayer, with whom he’s been working on mobile start-ups ever since. Their first project, a mobile payment system, was eventually shelved because ‘[it] was a little ahead of its time, and kind of scared the carriers,” says Newman.

Today, however, the duo, plus additional co-founder Joe Mease, are much more confident in Roximity’s timing. “Even a year ago, the idea of a geo aware app would have been uncomfortable for people, but with the rise of companies like foursquare, user behavior and understanding has really changed.”

Although still not officially released, Roximity is already tracking over 10,000 stores, mostly transfers from Newman and Gayer’s previous mobile projects. Upon launching at this upcoming year’s CES, Roximity will be actively pursuing fundraising, in large part to grow the sales team to expand their presence into new cities. “We have been doing all of our testing in the Denver/Boulder area but our launch partners have locations all across the U.S. Roximity deals will be available nationwide based on where our current merchants have locations,” says Newman.

The Roximity software may become a relevant addition into your life whether you sign up for their service or not. Earlier this year they won the Ford SYNC App Developer Challenge at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon in San Francisco. Newman admits that the victory was a bit serendipitous, “Roximity has been a long time idea but we never really had time to work on it because of all the client work we kept getting. I decided that the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon would be the perfect place to actually knock out a prototype. Not only did we get the prototype built, but we won.”

Their prize: integration into the new Ford SYNC with AppLink. It’s no wonder they won. The Roximity blog offers the following explanation of how their service will integrate with the Ford SYNC:

Roximity with Ford SYNC provides drivers with voice-controlled, hands-free access to our offers. We’re tapping into the location aware service, and providing those same awesome offers directly to you in your vehicle in a really unique, contextually aware way.

Jump in your car on a cold winter morning, SYNC will ask if you need a coffee or a bagel? Instead of just listing off the nearest coffee and bagel shops, SYNC hooks up with Roximity to find the nearest coffee and bagel shops with offers too.

Newman says to expect the public release within the first few months of 2012.

As previously mentioned, Roximity is officially launching at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 10th, 2012, however, interested users can sign up on their website now.

We have covered, sliced, diced and analyzed the startup accelerators for awhile now and even produced the first startup accelerator rankings this past year. Yesterday, TechStars, a Boulder-based startup accelerator program, took a step to help simplify the process by offering a unified application form for startup accelerators at accelerato.rs.

The website gives startup founders an opportunity to create one application and apply to a number of startup accelerators. This helps save entrepreneurs precious time and helps startups accelerators have a single format for startup applications. This will help produce an easier flow and offers startup founders a single place to go to see all the various deadlines. It also will let startups track their acceptance status for each of the programs that they apply to.

Currently, there are 14 accelerator applications offered through the site, with some of the more prominent accelerators like Y Combinator and Excelerate Labs not using the service. The project was funded by the Kauffman Foundation who will be able to leverage the product’s startup data for other initiatives.

Nicole Glaros, Director at TechStars in Boulder, stopped by our Tech Cocktail Delivering Happiness at SXSW tour last March to talk about entrepreneurship.

If you are not familiar with TechStars and are in the very beginning stages of your startup, check them out.  They are a mentorship-driven seed accelerator with locations in Boston, Boulder, NYC, and Seattle.  They will give you a little bit of  capital, but mostly a ton of advice and guidance.  Getting into their program is not easy – they typically get 700-800 applicants for each program, and only 10 companies make it in (in NYC, it’s 20 – they have 2 programs there).

Nicole shared her insights on the gaps in technology that need filling – helping the web do what it does better and integrating calendar/email/address book functions better – and why the lean startup movement is a great trend.  She also shared some valuable advice for startups that every entrepreneur should take to heart.

You can watch the nearly 4 minute video here:

Online advertising is such a crapshoot.  If you don’t do it right, you end wasting a lot of time and money.  Boulder-based startup Trada crowdsources online advertising by harnessing the expertise of creatives and those in advertising to provide you with an optimized ad/image combination.  Until today, it was only available for Google, Yahoo, and Bing.  Today, they are launching the service for Facebook.

Trada hopes to solve the problem of “ad fatigue” on Facebook.  Because you end up seeing the same ads over and over, you eventually become “blind” to them.  By using an expert crowd to create hundreds of ads, Trada is betting that a constant fresh supply of ads will catch the eye of viewers.

Don’t let the term “crowdsourced design” throw you off.  This is not spec work in the one-winner-takes-all model. Trada’s creative marketplace is different because it’s performance based. Designers generate hundreds of relevant ad images for an advertiser and get paid for every click or conversion generated by the ad.

If you have tried and failed at online advertising, try out Trada and let us know what you think with a comment left below.

Last fall, Colorado suffered a devastating wildfire. As the flames spread, they left a trail of tweets, Flickr photos, and collaborative Google maps – disconnected information that was constantly changing.

This natural disaster was the inspiration for Crowdspoke, a news platform centered on topics where users vote stories up and down – and a useful illustration of how it differs from Reddit.

“Sites like Reddit are good for discovering the best of the web; we organize communities around very specific topics,” says Michael Pasko, who attended Purdue University with his two cofounders and previously founded Coupious. “It allows you to peer into the conversation around the topic.”

“Crowdspoke also has a much greater emphasis on real-time content,” he adds.

Along with reader votes, Crowdspoke uses an algorithm to balance popular and recent content, in topic pages as narrow as iPhone 4S reviews, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and even Tech Cocktail. A Livestream section shows the latest content pulled from Twitter, based on keywords selected by users, and readers can sort by images, videos, and links. This model is similar to the Washington Post’s Trove, which is based on topics but has more editorial curation.

The Crowdspoke team currently chooses which topics to create and delete, but they plan to move to a more user-controlled system. They are also exploring different business models, such as selling data aggregated around topics or licensing their feeds to other websites. Crowdspoke showcased their work thus far at our Tech Cocktail Boulder mixer.

As the beta continues, Crowdspoke will work on putting the most popular content front-and-center and improving the UI, which is fairly plain right now – another way it will distinguish itself from Reddit.

A host of startups are helping users save energy, from Opower’s energy reports to the smart thermostat from Nest Labs. But Simple Energy cofounder Yoav Lurie thinks users – despite their good intentions – need more motivation.

“The premise in much of the industry has been if you present the data, they will come,” explains Lurie. “But after an alarmingly short period of time, people stop caring about energy data.”

So Simple Energy has gamified energy saving, with advice from PhD and motivation expert Dan Ariely. Their online platform lets users compare their energy use to their Facebook friends’, after normalizing it for home size, number of occupants, and weather. Leading savers can earn badges, points, and real-life prizes like gift cards and iPads. This idea earned Simple Energy a spot in TechStars Boulder 2011 and $900,000 in seed funding, as well as a spot at our Tech Cocktail Boulder mixer.

Rather than sell to consumers, Simple Energy is targeting those with a pressing incentive to save energy: utilities, which are facing government regulations related to energy efficiency and demand response. Cofounder Justin Segall has worked with utilities before, selling renewable energy credits and carbon offsets.

Besides gamification, Simple Energy is aspiring to make energy data relevant to users. Lurie previously worked on Recovery Act spending tracker Recovery.gov, whose most popular feature was the ability to input your zip code and see nearby government spending.

“We were posed with this great challenge: how do you make an incredible amount of government spending relevant to real people, and make it understandable how it affects their lives?” says Lurie. One of the ways Simple Energy makes data relevant is specific energy-saving tips, like turning down thermostats and changing light bulbs.

Simple Energy is working with utilities in Southern California, Texas, and the Southeast,] and hopes to land a national customer and start charging per kWh saved, rather than per user. “We’re not quite there yet, but when we get there, we’ll be the most cost-effective energy efficiency program available,” says Lurie.

Rather than counting pennies with Google AdWords, bloggers have a new option to make money: Blogmutt, which was showcased at our Tech Cocktail Boulder mixer.

BlogMutt writers create posts for companies that have no time to blog using suggested keywords. Companies then browse the crowdsourced entries and pick one post per week.

BlogMutt’s challenge is to strike a balance: to be valuable enough for writers but cheap enough for businesses, which currently pay $79 a month for the service.

“Our potential customer needs us because they are so busy. Because they are so busy, however, they don’t have time to focus on us,” explains Scott Yates, who has already worked on two startups with cofounder Wade Green. Yates says that some businesses don’t even have time for their 5-minute signup process. With this in mind, BlogMutt plans to auto-insert blog posts into company blogs, rather than simply emailing them over.

As for writers, some may be less than enthusiastic about the Boulder startup’s motto: “We work like a dog to fill up your blog!” BlogMutt, which has attracted 35 active bloggers, gives writers no byline or ownership of their content, and pays less than $10 per post – and only if a company selects it.

“This is not something a former New York Times journalist is going to jump at,” Yates admits. But he thinks it can appeal to bloggers who write quickly and don’t want to endure back-and-forth with editors.

BlogMutt may not be for everyone, but it is certainly a viable option – especially when aspiring writers are already blogging, for fun or for practice, for no money at all.

According to FullContact, my first name is Kira, my last name is M. Newman, I’m female, and I live in Washington, DC. Other than the middle name blip, that’s pretty accurate, considering I left DC only two months ago. You can see what FullContact knows about you here.

FullContact helps developers enhance their app’s contact list by correcting misspellings; adding full names, job titles, and social media links; and suggesting an updated image. Costing as little as 3 cents per contact, this service has attracted customers like Contactually and SnapEngage.

“This is a problem that nearly every person in the world has,” says cofounder Bart Lorang, about keeping contacts current.

FullContact works by aggregating digital contact records and using a patent-pending algorithm to figure out the most accurate information. This distinguishes it from competitors like Jigsaw, which facilitates contact sharing among businesses; and Plaxo, which targets consumers rather than developers.

Founded in 2010, FullContact graduated from TechStars Boulder in 2011 and attended our Tech Cocktail Boulder mixer, and they have raised $1.85 million in funding.

You may be surprised at how much FullContact knows about you, but they have taken steps to protect privacy. You can claim your contact information, hide certain parts, and disable future updates. FullContact also makes sure data is publicly available before releasing it, although private data can be used to confirm a public record, and prevents ad networks from purchasing contact info.

With privacy addressed, FullContact’s next step is to streamline the process of updating contacts, which currently involves sending files back and forth in XML, json, or vCard formats. They plan to create a “contacts under management” system that updates automatically and provides a confidence factor for each field.

Developers can check out their libraries here.

Lackluster analytics getting you down?  ReportGrid, a company that was showecased at our Tech Cocktail Boulder event on Monday night, is here to the rescue with a simple API – and intelligent, eye-catching analytics to boot, which they deliver as a service through a web browser. They are also a Startup Weekend company and graduate of the TechStars Boulder class.

ReportGrid’s mantra is simplicity as it aims to filter your data through its API and provide detailed, useable analytics for customers who are developing web and mobile applications.  The end-user analytics display is worth writing home about as well.  The API plugs into a SaaS vendor’s product, allowing visualizations and analytics to become part of their product’s offering to customers.  Currently, ReportGrid is powering analytics for a range of customers, including SnapEngage and Fidatto.

Headquartered in Boulder, ReportGrid’s advisors include Jim Franklin (SendGrid), Ari Newman (Jive Software), Bill Boebel (Rackspace), and Doug Derwin (Taylor & Company IP Law).  They just closed a $750K round of seed funding earlier this month.

Do you lean on certain groups of friends to share and recommend books, websites or videos?  Chances are you are sharing via email.  Email takes care of one-to-one sharing; Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon cover one-to-many sharing, but there are few services that cater exclusively to small group sharing.  Skmmr offers a new way to share content with groups of friends.

Skmmr allows users to create circles, limited to 8 members, around a common interest or hobby.  The idea, according to Skmmer co-creator Zack Shapiro, is that Skmmr allows you to share content with only the people to whom you believe it will best resonate, thus initiating a conversation, instead of broadcasting to a roomful of people.  As you’re browsing the web and come across something that may be interesting to your Skmmr circle, you hit the bookmarklet and choose the appropriate group.

Shapiro had this to say:

We wanted to limit the group size to eight for a few reasons. First, psychological research has shown that you typically have 2-8 good friends in any segment of your friends circle. These might be the people that you turn to most about Design, for example. Second, we wanted to keep the signal to noise ratio very high and we figured that by keeping groups small, we could do that.

Skmmr’s competition include Clipboard, which gives you a simple bookmarklet for your browser that will let you select a full element of a web page to save and share with whomever you like.  There’s also Google+; however sharing and setting up circles can seem a bit daunting.  Skmmr seeks to be the clear signal among a more noisy Google+.

What remains to be seen is whether people will use Skmmr in place of something as ubiquitous as email.  The challenge will be, as it is for any startup, to get people to sign up and use Skmmr in groups.  It’s not as simple as “if you build it they will come” but rather “If they come, I will too.”

Skmmr presented at Tech Cocktail’s Boulder mixer this past Monday night and previewed it to the world for the first time. Skmmr will be launching into beta later this week so sign up if you are interested in getting a chance to take a look at it early.

If you are like most startups, you are working with a tight marketing budget.  If you’ve been thinking about spending some of those dollars for online advertising, check out Boulder-based The Trade Desk.   Their goals is to help you figure what is this impression, this user, and/or this website worth?

Their data-driven marketing suite, which they showcased at our Tech Cocktail Boulder mixer last night, offers you a single place to buy all forms of online media. They help you buy online media more efficiently than anyone else by using massive amounts of data, superior valuation algorithms, machine learning technology, and good old media savvy.

So the suite is composed of 2 products that work together:

The DESK provides access to the major ad exchanges, allowing for real-time buys at the most granular level.  They access high quality, brand-safe inventory that extends the reach of a campaign to millions of websites and billions of impressions.

The ADSERVER offers stand-alone tracking and reporting, so you can see the entire purchase funnel, from impression, to click, to conversion and figure out how your various campaigns are working together.

If you didn’t make it to the event last night, definitely check out their website to learn more.

According to Boulder, CO-based startup Radish Systems, research shows that people understand information at least 50% better when both seeing and hearing.  If you want to do a better job explaining what it is your startup does to potential investors, partners, or clients, check out their new product ChoiceView.

It is a really cool idea, which attendees at last night’s Tech Cocktail Boulder event got to see for themselves.   You can instantly share complex visual information with anyone (anyone using their free ChoiceView app, that is) while talking to them or even texting with them.

You can show off a product, photo, diagram, document, map, menu, or video snippet.  The visuals are transmitted simultaneously on the same phone line as the call and are completely secure.  Mobile callers can save the visuals and use them later.

ChoiceView was publicly launched at the Computer Electronics Show in January 2011, where it won an Enterprise Connect Award.  Since then, ChoiceView has won several recognitions and was recently awarded the BCBR’s IQ Award for Most Innovative Product.

The co-founders are a husband-and-wife team, both of whom hold PhDs: Theresa Szczurek is CEO and Richard Davis is CTO. This is their second co-founded company – their first Radish invented a land-line protocol that became the defacto standard data-voice technology integrated in over 90% of the computers shipped in the 1990s.  They successfully sold the company in 1996.  When mobile started to boom, they developed a similar but different technology housed in the Cloud for Apple and more recently for Android mobile devices.

Download the free app from the Apple Store or Android Market and give it a whirl.

After a short hiatus, I am excited to have the Tech Cocktail team back in Boulder today to host one of our classic Tech Cocktail mixer events. The event will showcase a number of the latest startups from the local area, as well as some of the latest tech innovations from X.commerce and Mapquest. The X.commerce eXpress tour bus will be on hand and you can take a tour or watch our video tour. Also Mapquest will be showing off it’s latest creation MqVibe.

We started hosting our classic mixers in Boulder working with our friends at TechStars, Lijit and Threadless back in 2008. Since then, Boulder and it’s tech landscape has changed quite a bit! Take a look…

• TechStars has grown significantly to become a nationally top ranked accelerator program in Boulder, Boston, Seattle and New York.
• Lijit was acquired, and friends like Micah Baldwin, who was a staple in the community with Lijit at the time, has moved on to become CEO of Graphicly, which has now moved to San Francisco.
• Harper Reed, who was with Threadless and flew out to Boulder from Chicago to support our first Boulder mixer, has moved on to be CTO of the Obama campaign.
• At our first event we showcased a startup called SocialThing (before they even launched), introduced them to AOL (where I was working at the time), and watched them quickly get acquired - the first exit of a TechStars startup.
• After being at AOL for a little while, SocialThing’s Matt Galligan went on to start up SimpleGeo in Boulder, which eventually moved to San Francisco before he moved on to his next endeavor.
• Ari Newman and Filtrbox showcased at our first event and then went on to be acquired by Jive Software.

So there have been lots of changes in just a few short years and I am excited to be back in Boulder to see how this startup city’s eco-system continues to evolve and grow.

The eleven startups featured in Boulder are as follows:

• SimpleEnergy
• Radish Systems
• Skmmr
• The Trade Desk
• BlogMutt
• FullContact
• fidatto
• U Grok It
• FlixMaster
• Crowdspoke
• ReportGrid

Lijit Networks, which provides advertising and analytics tools to publishers, announced Tuesday its acquisition by Federated Media Publishing for an undisclosed amount.

“While the details of the transaction itself weren’t released, this acquisition ranks among the most significant outcomes for the region in the past 10 years,” said Seth Levine, managing director of Foundry Group, Lijit’s lead investor. The acquisition comes less than 6 months after Lijit raised $10 million in its latest round of funding.

Lijit connects online publishers with advertisers, as well as offering tools to measure and boost audience engagement. Federated Media seems to focus more on advertisers, helping them create “conversational” marketing on publishers’ sites. With the acquisition, Federated Media can now integrate Lijit’s proprietary analytics tools and real-time bidding platform for selling advertising, and reach 300 million global unique visitors, as measured by Quantcast.

In a deal that has been in the works since May, Lijit is becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Federated Media and top Lijit executives are taking on leadership roles at the media company. Lijit’s founder and CEO, Todd Vernon, will be Federated Media’s EVP of technology. Lijit plans to hire 30 to 40 employees and move to a bigger office in Boulder, Tech Cocktail captured a video office tour after the first Tech Cocktail Boulder mixer.

Startup incubator TechStars announced today that is has raised $24M from Foundry Group, IA Ventures, Avalon Ventures, DFJ Mercury, SoftBank Capital, SVB Financial Group, RRE Ventures, Right Side Capital Management, TechStars Alumni and several individuals. This new funding will be used to offer every new TechStars company an additional $100,000 in funding in the form of a convertible note upon acceptance into TechStars.

TechStars was launched in 2007 and is already funded by over 75 venture funds and angel investors. The startup accelerator, which provides funding, mentorship and networking opportunities to a select group of companies each year, maintains programs in New York, Boston, Seattle, Boulder, and even in the cloud with its newly formed TechStars Cloud. TechStars funds approximately 60 companies per year, and the new funding will apply to all of the company’s 2012 and future programs.

“Acceptance into TechStars now means an additional $100k of funding from a diverse group of top tier investors,” said TechStars founder and CEO, David Cohen. “This funding comes from a wide swath of the venture community nationally which means that TechStars companies will now enjoy tremendously broad support from a large number of investors that are each vested in their ultimate success, while avoiding the signaling problems associated with taking money from a single venture fund or investor.”

This additional funding will help to level the playing field between TechStars and fellow incubator Y Combinator. When Yuri Milner and SV Angel offered Y Combinator companies $150,000 in convertible debt earlier this year, Y Combinator became quite attractive to startups looking for an accelerator program. Now TechStars has strengthened its own magnet to attract the most innovative and promising startups.  

The TechStars schedule for 2012 is available here. Applications for all 2012 TechStars programs are open now, with deadlines fast approaching.

Have you ever been curious about what a venture capital firm actually does from day-to-day? Boulder-based Foundry Group, which specializes in investing in technology startups like Zynga, Fitbit, Gist and more (when they were early stage), may be able to help paint a clearer picture. The group lead by Brad Feld, Seth Levine, Ryan McIntyre and Jason Mendelson have taken it upon themselves to share a special behind the scenes “hard hitting documentary” about life as a venture capitalist called “I’m A VC”.

Watch the “I’m a VC” below.

Yesterday, we shared some thoughts from SimpleGeo VP of Product Jeffrey Kalmikoff, and today SimpleGeo founder Matt Galligan has decided to move on. We’ve been following Matt for quite sometime now from his days as a TechStars startup with SocialThing, where I first interviewed him at one of our events. Six months later the company was acquired by AOL.  At that point, I went to work with Matt on lifestreaming and social networking products at AOL.

Matt left AOL in 2009 to start his new venture SimpleGeo, which we covered previously. Matt took the company from zero to mega-funded and then hired on Jay Adelson as CEO to help continue to keep the ball moving forward and build a stronger company. We sat down with Matt Galligan at South by Southwest as he shared his thoughts on the latest tech trends.

In a blog post on his personal blog today, Matt had this to say:

“…my passion is in founding and building companies. So I knew there would come a day where I felt like I would need to pursue new ideas. Today is that day.”

Spoken like a true entrepreneur. Congrats to Matt on growing SimpleGeo and stepping out when it’s time to move on to the next thing. I assume that is bittersweet feeling but it takes a true entrepreneur to see that as an opportunity to build the next big thing. He went on to say he will be working with TechStars in the interim as well as the non-profit 1% of Nothing.

Good luck Matt, we look forward to seeing what’s next!

Today in Boulder was TechStars demo day at the Boulder Theater as the top ranked U.S. startup accelerator program launched it’s latest class. We’ve been covering the TechStars Boulder program since it’s inception and you check out last years class here. This year, lead by Nicole Glaros and the founding team of David Cohen and Brad Feld, the Boulder program produced a class of dozen new tech startups.

The following twelve companies launched at TechStars Boulder demo day 2011:

Creative Brain Studios has created a powerful yet easy to use game development engine that allows engineers to create their game once and publish it to a number of smartphones, tablets and computers without having to re-code the game. This could really save developers time and make it easier to roll out a game a multiple platforms.

Flextrip offers an API enabling online travel companies to monetize the world’s largest selection of tours & activities. Flextrip also has a consumer facing product that helps travels find things to do while on their trip.

Flextrip at TechStars Boulder Demo Day 2011

FlixMaster creates technology that enables anyone to build branching-path video mash-ups, that pull videos, audio files, forms, and images from all over the web, to play in a single video window.

FullContact is the API that keeps contact information current. Developers can easily tap into FullContact’s database of over 100 million contact records to quickly turn partial, out-of-date contact records into fresh, complete contact records.

FullContact at TechStars Boulder Demo Day 2011

GoSpotCheck supplies brands with real-time insights into their in-store merchandising through an innovative mobile application. Our crowdsourced mobile workforce is paid cash to conduct “missions” that brands create, such as taking pictures or videos of a product’s shelf positioning, verifying that promotional materials are correctly displayed, and conducting price checks.

InboxFever is a platform and marketplace to build and sell email powered applications. With InboxFever, developers can add the email functionality a modern web service needs. Some of InboxFever’s example applications send driving directions, food recommendations and stock quotes just by simply sending an email.

Meal Ticket provides a mobile, social, web platform for foodservice distributors to better engage with their restaurants in order to increase customer acquisition, retention, and sales. The application available for iPhone and Android looks to help consumers save money eating out.

Mocavo and Report Grid at TechStars Boulder Demo Day 2011

Mocavo is the first and largest free genealogy search engine. In the past similar services have been membership based services so it was a pleasant surprise to see this free search option.

ReportGrid provides an API that makes it super easy for SaaS vendors and technology platforms to give their customers deep analytics and insightful reporting. This product reminds me of Chartbeat which we just covered.

Simple Energy looks to change how millions of people save energy by revolutionizing how utilities engage their customers. The applications use game mechanics to compare your real energy usage to your friends and neighbors. This makes energy efficiency social, fun, and simple.

SimpleEnergy at Boulder TechStars 2011 Demo Day

SocialEngine turns anyone into a great social media manager by suggesting tactics to help them manage and grow their communities. SocialEngine scans your social media campaigns and suggest specific actions you can take to magnify their impact. This could be helpful for anyone using social media for business.

TruantToday is a truancy alert system that instantly contacts parents when students skip school, bring students back to the classroom. It allows schools to send out instant text and email messages to parents when students cut class. Ferris Bueller would not stand a chance with this type of system.

TechStars Boulder 2011 Launch Class

Editor’s Note: Special thanks to Andrew Hyde for supplying the photos from TechStars Boulder Demo Day.

Ever wonder where your meal comes from?  Foodies may have a new obsession as one forward-thinking company is trying to answer that exact question.  Foodtree amplifies the power of social sharing with a snazzy new iPhone app that launched last weekend.

We’ve all heard the scary statistics: multiple cows in one burger, or the fact that an average meal travels thousands of miles before it lands on your plate.  With the Foodtree app, it’s easy for food lovers to share photos of food in their local communities, as well as where they found it and where it’s from.  It’s wired to work specifically in farmer’s markets right now; however, Foodtree plans to expand the experience to include restaurants and grocery stores.

The app is free and “unlocked ” in Vancouver and Boulder, with users in other cities organizing to unlock their communities.  The app displays a real-time feed of food photos near you.  Are you wondering what’s in season near you?  Foodtree can help.  Do you have a “local eggs” guy?  You can promote him.

And for a final dash of seasoning, Foodtree is valiantly aiming to build an open, comprehensive database of information about food, its origins, and how it has been produced and made its way to our plates.

Failure is something that we all face everyday. It’s how we react to failures that makes us who we are. Startups are a constant flow of successes and failures. Micah Baldwin, the CEO of Graphic.ly, has most recently created community around digital comics and worked at various startups through the years. Micah joined us at the Startup Mixology Conference in Chicago last fall sharing his interesting perspective on startups, success and failures.

Perhaps the most poignant part of his talk, Micah expressed the following while comparing being an entrepreneur to being a gangster (music included):

As an entrepreneur…
At some point you have do horrible things.
At some point failure enters the game.

Watch the video with Micah Baldwin the CEO of Graphic.ly as he shares some insights on startups and failure.

Calling all skiers and snowboarders–especially those of you who live for back-country skiing and boarding!

Zeal Optics, a Boulder, CO-based company that designs and manufactures innovative, high-performance sunglasses and goggles, has expanded their GPS-imbedded snow goggle line with a new Zeal Transcend GPS™ model.  The Spherical Polarized & Photochromic (SPPX) goggle will be available for the 2011/2012 winter season for MSRP $549.

The features in these goggles are beyond cool.  All goggles include Zeal’s advanced optics and Head Mounted Display technology by Recon Instruments.  GPS graphics are viewed in the bottom right side of the goggle and are completely non-obtrusive for front and peripheral vision.

This newest model cuts glare that fatigues the eyes and auto-light adjusts when exposed to the sun’s rays (the current two models separate out those features).

Vertical odometer screenshot

But the best feature is the vertical odometer technology that provides real-time performance statistics including speed, altitude, temperature, and time.  To access this information, you simply download a software application provided by Recon Instruments, and you can manage and “playback” ski runs overlaid on Google Earth.  You can also see your fastest and slowest speeds, review individual runs, and see vertical distance covered.  If you had a really great day, you earned major bragging rights, and—guess what?—you can share the data on Facebook and Twitter.

Zeal’s current models, Spherical Photochromic (PX) and Spherical Polarized (SPX), are available through the summer for MSRP $399 but check them out here on Amazon where you might find better prices.

Sphero is an innovative robotic ball that puts a whole new spin (pun intended) on the interactive experience by turning your smart phone into a robot controller.

This new game platform, which is open to developers, changes the way we use our smart phones and takes gaming to a whole new level.  The Sphero ball, which is the size of a baseball, can be transformed into the object in a game on your phone – think racing through a maze using the Sphero on your floor, taking part in a head-to-head sumo match, or controlling a device in your friend’s apartment from within your own apartment.

Sphero allows real-time data updates during game play, directly connects physical information from the ball to the phone, and works with almost all major smart phones via Bluetooth technology.  Their simple-to-use API allows programmers of any level to create an app.  To learn more, check out their developer program and this video:

Sphero is one of the featured startups at our SXSW Accelerator Kickoff on Sunday.  Stop by to learn more about ordering the device, which is expected to ship at the end of 2011.

Long time Tech Cocktail friend and supporter Micah Baldwin has been busy – running a company and raising money. Baldwin is CEO of Boulder-based startup, Graphic.ly, a digital comic book hub where fans can get the latest and greatest while connecting and sharing with others. The site has over 150 publishers and creators with over 2,000 books in their store – and sales are trending up. Fortunately, now that Baldwin’s completed their Series A round, raising $3 million from DFJ Mercury (with 500 Startups, Dundee VC, Ludlow Ventures and some angel investors as well) he can get back to business – growing and expanding the coolest comic book experience in the world.

We were able to catch up with the CEO and get his perspective on this latest round of funding and his outlook for the company.

Tech Cocktail [TC]: How long did the process take for raising this round? Can you tell our audience a little about the process and what your most important goals were?
Micah Baldwin [MB]: The process took a couple of months, but when it got down to the raise, it took a couple of weeks. There are three things a company needs to raise money successfully: vision, team and traction. Luckily, we found the right investors that were as excited as we are about our vision, team and early traction. We had dozens of folks to work with, and we really were careful to choose investors that understood the entertainment space, ecommerce, startups, etc. in a way that aligned with our open and community driven philosophy.

Micah Speaks at Tech Cocktail's Startup Mixology Conference

TC:  What exciting plans do you have on the horizon for the company?
MB: First, I plan to sleep. For at least a couple of hours. We are focused on giving the community what they have been asking for, an engaging, immersive experience around comic books/graphic novels. There are plenty of online comic book stores, but there are few places that allow you to enjoy both the art/storytelling and the sharing/discussion. We are looking to expand the comic book experience by bringing in audio, video, casual gaming and other digital content that really make for a fantastic holistic experience.

TC:  How will this round help Graphic.ly get to the next level?
MB: It will allow us to double down on the two things that are required for startup success: deeply talented developers and innovative technology. We have hired 4 people in the past month alone — all developers — that have already had a huge impact on our future.

TC:  Tell us a little about your audience and how this will help grow your base. We saw a mention that your Chrome app has really helped – what does that tell you about your market?
MB:  Definitely there is a huge international market. Google is a great partner, and its clear that people are still using the web, regardless of what Apple might have you believe… Our experiences around being a launch partner with Google were great. We were able to truly develop not only a product that has gotten a ton of kudos and use, but it has helped us understand our market better, and what people are looking for in an experience like ours.

From Graphic.ly: "Sure, it runs on your desktop, mobile phone, and fancy new iPad. But it’s not just a digital comic reader. It’s also a comic book hub—a place to find, share, and learn..."

TC:  You’re in a very unique business and must come up against nay-sayers all the time. What’s your advice to young entrepreneurs who face similar challenges?
MB:  Listen to the nay-sayers. Often they have great points. Don’t be so focused that you miss the pitfalls that are ahead of you. Focus on: clarity of vision, strength of team and depth of traction, and you will be fine.

TC:  Any specific messages you’d like to share with hopeful but unpublished comic creators out there?
MB:  Its not difficult to get your stuff out on the web – check out ComicPress a great plugin for WordPress. And then hustle, hustle, hustle. And, if they need any help, shoot me an email at micah@graphicly.com, or call at 720-248-8499 or IM me on GTALK at micah@graphicly.com. Happy to help in any way I can.

TC:  Some last words to share?
MB:  I havent been this excited about what we are working on in over a year. I’m excited that our vision has been validated by top line investors, and I am just very impatient to get some of our new stuff out the door!!

Thanks so much, Micah! We’re looking forward to exciting things this year from Graphic.ly.

Additional reading about Graphic.ly and Micah Baldwin:
Take Comics Turns Graphic.ly & Raises $1.2M – Jan 2010
A Conversation with Graphic.ly CEO Micah Baldwin – March 2010

Watch this video of Micah Baldwin talking about Graphic.ly and the comic book experience.

Want to become a published author? Yeah, me too. In most cases, this is accomplished in one of two ways:

1. Gaining recognition from one of the major publications. For 99.9% of writers, this is nothing more than a pipe dream.
2. Self publishing and distributing an ebook. This has been the popular route for many bloggers over the last few years, but a writer is limited by the size of his/her own audience.  There’s little hope for new discovery.

Add to the equation that building an aesthetically pleasing layout can be a serious investment of time and money, and most writers quickly dismiss the e-book idea.

That was then. BookBrewer is now.

“[Our service] lets people turn blogs and documents into e-books within a few minutes,” says Dan Pacheco, co-founder and CEO of BookBrewer.  Not only is ebook publishing easier than ever, but their recent partnership with Borders, allows for excellent exposure as well.  “Borders Get Published powered by BookBrewer” incorporates the BookBrewer service into the massive Borders ebook library and email newsletter.  Escaping obscurity can potentially be faster and easier than ever.Dan was nice enough to do a quick video interview in addition to a great written interview (see below).

Tech Cocktail (TC): BookBrewer’s partnership with Borders is undoubtedly a major victory for you and your team (in addition to the CrowdPitch Award).  Can you briefly explain what, if any, hurdles you had to jump in order to land the deal?  What advice can you pass along to entrepreneurs hoping to accomplish a similar feat?

Dan Pacheco (DP):  We started talking about our concept four months ago with Jon Nordmark, who had contacts at Borders. We met Jon through the Founder Institute, an intensive four-month technology training and mentoring program with sessions all over the world.

In early June we were just refining the pitch for BookBrewer and were showing off some rapid prototypes of the idea using Axure Pro (an amazing tool for that kind of thing). A few weeks later we were invited to present it to a Borders executive. We then spent the next two months creating an alpha, which we promoted in highly-targeted Google ads and Twitter posts to attract an impressive collection of charter authors. When we finally went into beta a month ago, we were able to show Borders not only that we could execute our vision, but that we could also attract the kind of authors they were looking for. All of that made it very easy to craft and sign a deal.

My advice to other entrepreneurs: create good ideas, but also show that you can deliver on your promise. Communicate with your potential partners at each step of the way. Anyone who invests in your company — whether through funds or reputation — is taking a risk on you, and they want to know that you can deliver over the long haul. Think of every interaction as the beginning of a potentially longer courting period.

TC:  Speaking from experience, can you offer any words of wisdom on what not to do in the process of starting a new company.  Is there any moment in the process where you look back and wish you could do it differently?

DP:  My only regret is not starting up my own company earlier. I should have done it about 6 years ago. I’m having a blast! Of course there are also uncertainties, but as many rock climbers in Boulder can attest, that’s part of the thrill.

TC:  Are there any other words of wisdom that you would like to convey to aspiring start-ups?

DP:  It’s important to think through your business plan and understand your customer, but there’s something else that’s actually more important. Make sure you are absolutely passionate about what you’re doing, and understand your reasons for doing it. Not everything will be easy, and if you’re going into a startup simply to make a killing and you don’t have a higher goal to propel you through the dry times, your startup could very well kill you. Life and business are about more than just acquiring money and things. Meaning trumps all of that.

While the phrase “Do what you love and the money will follow” does not always hold true with every endeavor, I still believe that doing what you love is ultimately what matters most. “Do what you love and reward will follow” is probably more accurate. Do it enough times and it will probably pay off with money as well — statistically speaking. In between that monetary success you should except a lot of dry spells. Creating meaning is what will help you make it through those periods.

TC:  What other exciting products, services, and partnerships can we expect from FeedBrewer?

DP:  We don’t talk about partnerships in the pipeline, but we have a working list of 50+ companies — mostly content-related — that we think are sitting on some very attractive potential eBooks. The eBook market has grown more than 200% in just one year and is on track to generate $6 Billion of a $20 Billion annual book market in the U.S. alone. Once these companies realize the potential, we think they will jump in and redefine the book market.

Magazines are perfect eBook authors, and most don’t even know it. Over many years they create evergreen content that is supported by time-bound advertising, and it then goes into archives, never to be seen again. We think they can use BookBrewer to create eBooks that will generate instant revenue (for example, recipe collections or workout routines).

We’re also thinking a lot about how video and, for lack of a better term, “user experience” will change the eBook experience. When you look at what iPad apps like FlipBoard and Boulder-based Graphic.ly do with images and visual presentation, it makes you wonder how long “readers” will be OK with simple text and images. Textual books will always be around and we think they’re great, but after self-publishing authors play with the iPad their imaginations start to go wild. They’re already asking us if we can let them embed videos in their content.

TC:  The “About Us” page on FeedBrewer indicates the name was inspired by your team’s mutual love for Colorado craft beer.  Are there any consensus favorites amongst the group?

DP:  Hands-down: Hazed and Infused from Boulder Beer, followed by Illusion Dweller from Mountain Sun. I also can say with certainty that the Mountain Sun Brewery off Pearl Street has one booth that is magic. Whenever you sit in that booth with someone else, something special will happen that affects your life for years afterwards. It’s happening to me two times already!

Thanks again, Dan.

Since 2007, the team of Brad Feld and David Cohen has been running the TechStars incubator program and seed funding startups. The program, which started in Boulder but has quickly expanded to Boston, Seattle and New York, provides startup founders with support, advice and mentoring  during the program. Some past successes have included SocialThing, Filtrbox, Gyminee and Occipital as they all have had exits through acquisitions.

We have been following the program along since the beginning and have teamed up with TechStars to host our classic startup mixer events in the past. So we were excited when Brad Feld and David Cohen shared their news about writing a book called, Do More Faster, about the TechStars way of incubating startups. The book is filled with stories from past TechStar entrepreneurs as they look to share the knowledge that has helped create the success of the program.

We were delighted to get our hands on a special excerpt from the book to share with you. This particular excerpt was written by Jeffrey Powers, the co-founder of Occipital, makers of the Red Laser iPhone application that sold to eBay on June 23, 2010. Occipital shares their story , including the pivot to create Red Laser. The last time we caught up with the team in Boulder, they were still focused on ClearCam, the iPhone photo application that improved the quality of photos with the use of computer vision – we talked with Jeff Powers about it on video here.

Enjoy the Do More Faster excerpt below and be sure to order your copy of Do More Faster.

Be Tiny Until You Shouldn’t Be

by Jeffery Powers

In December 2008, the situation for Occipital was dire. We had a $10,000 deferred legal bill, dried up personal bank accounts, and no revenue. Seven months earlier we had flown out to Boulder to join TechStars with little more than a prototype piece of software that could recognize the logos on paper receipts. In the first week, we realized that everybody thought the technology was cool, but otherwise hated the idea.

Then we found a sexier idea that everyone loved. We were going to build a huge, multiplatform consumer application that used artficial intelligence to solve the world’s photo organization problems. There was a lot of buzz in our favor after we demonstrated an early prototype in September, but we failed to close funding for a number of reasons.

This failure gave us one major asset: a big chip on our shoulder. We didn’t need anyone else’s money. We already had what we needed, which was a core competency in computer vision, a technology area that we believed had incredible intrinsic value. In fact, we were borderline arrogant about it—we hypothesized that we could just hack off a tiny chunk of this technology and turn it into revenue. We tested this, stayed small, and launched ClearCam on February 3, 2009. ClearCam is a $10 iPhone application that captures high resolution photos with the aid of computer vision. ClearCam was poular and we immediately were cash-flow positive. Near-death averted and hypothesis reinforced.

We got excited about going big again. But this time we wanted to become even bigger, which translated into technology that was an order of magnitude harder. That led to a near-merger with a group of seasoned entrepreneurs and another failed attempt at getting investors excited. The chip on our shoulder got bigger and led us to hack off a slightly larger chunk of technology than ClearCam. This turned into RedLaser, the first iPhone barcode scanner that really worked because it used computer vision to compensate for blur.

The response to our new product blew us away and RedLaser claimed a position in the top five paid applications on the iPhone App Store for many months. Today, we’re more confident than ever about the technology area we have focused on, we have a growing reputation with consumers, and we have the money to stop worrying about the premature death of the company.

By staying tiny and taking incrementally harder technology steps, we saw Occipital’s value increase dramatically. Now that we’ve found a formula that works, we are finally about to start growing our team from a stronger position than at any point in our history.

You can also see David Cohen and Brad Feld in the video below or come out to meet them in person as they are currently on a whirlwind book tour that will be in DC on October 28th and then at the Startup Mixology Conference in Chicago on October 28th.

This past week the TechStars startup incubator based in Boulder, Colorado launched another class of startups. Interestingly, of the twenty-four startups that have been a part of the TechStars program over the years, six have been acquired. We’ve hosted a few TECH cocktail Boulder startup mixers (as explained here and here) in the past which showcased many of these startups. While we couldn’t be there this past week, we decided to take a closer look at this year’s class of eleven new startups that launched at the TechStars Boulder Demo Day 2010.

John Laramie of ADstruc at TechStars Demo Day 2010

ADstruc is an auction and listing marketplace for outdoor billboard advertising. ADstruc is looking to take what in many cases is a business (outdoor advertising) that is managed offline and bring it to an online dashboard so that anyone can buy and sell space from the comfort and warm glow of their computer. The team is native to New York and moved to Boulder to participate in the program this summer but plans to return to New York in August.

Tom Markiewicz of statsmix at TechStars Demo Day 2010

StatsMix allows companies to easily build, visualize, and share custom management dashboards for displaying and analyzing key metrics (for example, data from Alexa, Eventbrite, Facebook and more) from their own Websites and external APIs. So basically StatsMix aggregates all the various stats about your Website into one easy-to-read layout. We (at TECH cocktail) are definitely going to enjoy using this one.

The gearbox team of Ian Bernstein and Adam Wilson at TechStars demo day 2010

GearBox is a startup that works with consumer electronics companies and developers to bring phone controlled open devices to market. It’s first product is a robotic ball which is controlled via a mobile smartphone. How could men resist this one as it combines playing with balls and gadgets? Applications can be built on top of the smartphone via APIs. Check out this video to see the ball in action as this could be the next hot office pastime right up there with Rockband, foosball and airhockey.

Vacation Rental Partner makes it easy to manage your vacation rental home by offering homeowners the tools to market, take payments and handle and track reservations. Similar to HomeAway, VRPartner targets vacation rental homeowners who manage their own home and don’t want to pay management companies. Conveniently, VRPartner also handles outside vendors such as housekeepers and pool cleaners. The system also makes it easy to get your listing out to other popular advertising outlets like Craigslist among others.

Carlin Gettliffe of omniar at TechStars Demo Day 2010

Omniar is focused on making the real world clickable. What does that mean exactly? Well, Omniar offers a visual recognition platform and developer platform to enable anyone to create applications. According to Don Dodge who recently covered demo day, Omniar is already working with early adopters in the real estate, museum, and retail sectors, enabling them to allow one-click visual search and information retrieval. We could see this being a pretty amazing augmented reality offering and it kind of reminds us of WhereMark.

Richard Grote and Dave Angulo of spotinfluence at TechStars Demo Day 2010

Spot Influence looks to find the most influential people around any topic on the Web. It provides a search engine and has made their technology available using APIs for partners who want to integrate it more fully. Using the search box as the entry point, Spot Influence starts a data collection process which feeds into a proprietary algorithm that enables them to accurately score the influence of people in context. They then build out profiles on the Influencers and return them in a filterable and sortable list with a cumulative score as well as scores in Relevance, Reach, and Impact. The most interesting thing about Spot Influence is that they calculate influence in context. They believe that having a large number of Twitter followers doesn’t necessarily mean someone is influential.

John Bliss of BlipSnips at TechStars Demo Day 2010

BlipSnips is a way to create social context around specific moments in time in a video. BlipSnips offers a technology that allows users to jump to a specific point in a YouTube video and then share a direct link to that video. BlipSnips currently offers a set of free consumer tools, but plans to work with video publishers to drive engagement for commercial video productions. We actually met with BlipSnips co-founder Matt Ludwig in Portland, Maine when the product was still very much in stealth mode, so we were excited to see it launch.

The Kapost team at TechStars Demo Day 2010

Kapost is aimed at creating a marketplace for crowdsourcing your web content. The product offers an easy way to collect user contributed content and even offers a way to compensate them for contributions. Kapost could help many publishers find contributors to create a unique social media publication in a similar fashion to Examiner.com or Huffington Post. We got a chance to sync up with co-founder Michael Lewis at CES in January and explained how a plugin on WordPress would make our lives a lot easier than moving platforms to Grogger (which was the platform they were working on at the time).  It seems they have taken some of our feedback to heart as they re-branded and launched plugin services for crowdsourcing content on existing platforms like WordPress, Drupal, etc. We are going to be giving them a try here on TECH cocktail.

Deanna Bennett and Brett Yates of RentMonitor at TechStars Demo Day 2010

RentMonitor takes the headache out of being a landlord for those managing 3 to 50 properties. The system handles rent collection, advertising, tenant screening, maintenance, and tax issues. If you have ever rented a property either as a landlord or as a tenant you will understand the need for automating the process. We reviewed this startup back in 2007 when it was a Chicago-based startup named Propertize. At the time, they offered similar landlord services but we urged them to also offer tenant communication and invoicing tools and it appears that is what they have just launched, along with the re-branded name, Rent Monitor.

Scriptpad at TechStars Demo Day 2010

ScriptPad transforms the iPad and iPhone into a digital prescription pad allowing doctors to write prescriptions faster and safer than their existing paper process. ScriptPad hopes to help eliminate prescription writing mistakes which contribute to thousands of deaths each year by sending prescriptions directly to the patient’s pharmacy. ScriptPad will offer the service free to users but will be paid for (by the pharmacies) for each prescription that is transmitted. Check out the ScriptPad demo video to see the application in action.

Tim Wolter of RoundPegg at TechStars Demo Day 2010

RoundPegg looks to scientifically ensure that every hire you make is a fit for your company culture. Using self-service surveys, RoundPegg blends technology with psychology to try and play an office culture matchmaker. Check out this slide deck for more info on RoundPegg and see if its a good fit for your company or organization.

Congrats to David Cohen, Brad Feld and the rest of the TechStars team. It looks like another interesting class of startups and we look forward to helping to cover their entrepreneurial journey. We also plan on coming back to Boulder to host a startup mixer event again soon and look forward to seeing some of these folks.

Editor’s Note: Special thanks to Andrew Hyde for supplying the fabulous photos from TechStars Boulder Demo Day as they made this article much more rich and engaging.

Last time we met the Michigan born, Boulder, Colorado based startup Occipital they were focusing on the soon-to-be-launching Occipital ClearCam iPhone application that helped improve the quality of your photos. It was an innovative notion at the time as it turned your 2 megapixel iPhone photos into a 4 megapixel photo in just a few simple clicks of the thumb.

Download the Occipital ClearCam iPhone App

Soon after, Occipital created Red Laser, a rather handy and popular iPhone application that turns the phone into a bar code reader for comparison shopping of any product. So we were excited to find out this past week that eBay has acquired Red Laser so that Occipital will be able to refocus on being a computer vision technology company and begin to develop additional products.

Download the Red Laser iPhone App

Congrats to the Red Laser team. We look forward to seeing Red Laser continue to evolve under the direction of eBay, and Occipital continuing to create innovative new products.

Looking for a high-energy evening of 5-minute talks by people who have an idea? That is exactly what you get with Ignite. Ignite events are generally hosted by a local entrepreneur or community leader and offer local speakers a chance to get up on stage and speak their mind for 5 minutes with 20 slides paced at 15 seconds apart. Created in 2006, just six months after we hosted our first TECH cocktail mixer event, by Brady Forest and Bre Pettis in Seattle. Brady and Bre turned the event over to conference and publishing company, O’Reilly Media, and since then Ignite events have spread to a number of cities across the globe. We are excited to share a few upcoming Ignite events that you might not want to miss.

Ignite Chicago is hosted by Stella Fayman and Tim Jahn and will take place on June 9th at TechNexus. Join some of the local Chicago thought leaders as they share their ideas in speed talks made of 20 slides that change every 15 seconds. The event is $6.11 and you can RSVP here to attend.Tickets are going fast so sign-up today!

Ignite DC is hosted by Jared Goralnick and will take place during Digital Capital Week on June 16th at Town Danceboutique. Join a handful of interesting speakers as they rattle off their ideas in 5 minute lightning talks. The event is $15 to attend and includes food and drinks. To attend this event you must RSVP here – keep in mind there are a limited number of tickets available.

Ignite Boulder is hosted by a dozen different Boulder-based community leaders like Andrew Hyde among others and will take place on June 24th at the Chautauqua Auditorium. The event is $10 to attend and is sure to draw a large percentage of the Boulder tech, startup and entrepreneurial community. To register to attend the event you must RSVP here.

Ignite takes place in a number of the other communities where we also host our TECH cocktail startup and entrepreneurial mixer events, some include Detroit, Boston, San Diego and more.

Today Boulder-based startup DailyBurn, a fitness social network for detailed tracking, online accountability, and motivation, announced on its blog that a majority stake in the company was acquired by IAC’s MindSpeak Interactive Network. Here is the announcement:

Today we are very pleased to announce that we have joined forces with IAC to create a partnership that we believe will provide the resources needed to increase our position as the leading online destination for fitness. You can read more information about the announcement here and here.

DailyBurn got its start as a TechStars 2008 startup as Gyminee. Gyminee demoed at our second TECH cockail Boulder mixer event. I got a chance to meet the team and talk about their product at the event in the video (below).

After TechStars, DailyBurn was backed by some angel investors which included Garrett Camp (founder of StumbleUpon), Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress) and  Tim Ferriss (Author of Four Hour Work Week). I assume they all did well in the acquisition but terms of the deal were not disclosed. Congrats to the DailyBurn team and all the investors and mentors involved.

We are constantly hearing about great employment opportunities from companies that are part of the TECH cocktail community and we want to help them find great new team members. So we are going to call out some featured gigs that have been posted to the TECH cocktail Job Board. It is only $200 to post a job for 90 days and we will be sure to help get the word out that you are hiring.

Check out these cool jobs and apply if you are interested:

Developer Jobs

PHP Application Developer @ Agentis Energy in Elmhurst, Illinois

Technical Developer @ West Monroe Partners in Chicago, Illinois

Sr. Java Developer @ Vibes Media in Chicago, Illinois

Sr. Web Developer @ Vibes Media in Chicago, Illinois

Sr. Systems Engineer @ Vibes Media in Chicago, Illinois

Python Developer @ GeniusRocket in Bethesda, MD

Ruby on Rails Engineer @ VC Backed Startup @ Assistly in San Francisco, California

jQuery Web Development Engineer @ VC Backed Startup @ Assistly in San Francisco, California

Ruby Ninja (Chief Programmer) @ Formative Labs in San Francisco, California

Social Media, Marketing & PR Jobs

Field Marketing Manager @ ooyala in Mountain View, California

Content Marketing Senior Manager @ Blackboard in Washington, D.C.

Sales and Business Development Jobs

Sales Engineer @ Vibes Media in Chicago, Illinois

Operations Jobs

Operations @ Braintree in Bartlett, Illinois

Internships

Writing/Journalism Intern – Chicago @ TECH cocktail in Chicago, Illinois

Writing/Journalism Intern – DC @ TECH cocktail in Washington, D.C.

If you are hiring you might want to post a job. We are sure to help you find some great talent out there.

Photo Attribution: Photo by bredgur

Location has a been a hot topic lately as mobile applications and advertising platforms continue to arise. SimpleGeo, a Boulder, Colorado based startup founded by Matt Galligan (formerly of SocialThing) and Joe Stump (formerly of Digg) looks to help make adding location based services and data to your applications a breeze. Presenting at the O’Reilly Where 2.0 conference today in San Jose, California, Matt Galligan launched the platform which looks to offer an array of data bundles and location based cloud services.

The company already has more than 4,000 developers utilizing the SimpleGeo platform for new and existing applications and more than 1,000 additional developers are awaiting the product’s formal launch.  The company introduced two major products today:

• SimpleGeo Storage Engine a scalable, cloud-based, pay-as-you-go system that allows users to store location data and perform geo-spatial and temporal queries efficiently.

• The SimpleGeo Marketplace allows developers to discover a wealth of geodata from numerous sources, all normalized and available in one location.  The SimpleGeo Marketplace creates a new economy for geodata providers, putting them directly in touch with developers that want to use their data.

At South by Southwest a few weeks ago SimpleGeo showcased its APIs with the launch of the sample application, Vicarious.ly. Vicarious.ly is a visual representation of the real-time location-based stream of information to showcase the APIs and application partners which include BlockChalk, Brightkite, Bump Technologies, Flickr, Fwix, Foursquare, Gowalla and Twitter.

Vicarious.ly SimpleGeo Sample Application

This is exciting news for anyone looking to create an application that is going to factor in location. I had a chance to spend some time with SimpleGeo CEO Matt Galligan at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona in February. We ducked out of the rain for a pint to conclude a busy week and he shared an impromptu simple definition of SimpleGeo in this video (below).

Comic books have been around for quite sometime with the first U.S. comics appearing in the early 1930′s newspapers. Graphic.ly, a startup we previously covered, is looking to change the way we think about comics by offering an interactive online comic book experience. We recently caught up with Graphic.ly CEO, Micah Baldwin in this video conversation (above), and he shared some news with us. Since our conversation with Micah, Graphic.ly has also released its first comic book for sale, the title Wanted #2 for just $0.49. Additional titles are supposed to be this week, on April 1st.

Four years ago Frank Gruber and I founded TECH cocktail. We sought to bring the Chicago startup and technology community together in a meaningful way and have been fortunate enough to do that and much, much more. I am very proud of the organization we built and what we’ve accomplished since our first TECH cocktail mixer event in July of 2006.

Over the past four years a number of startups we showcased went on to raise money and build solid businesses with GrubHub and The Next Big Sound being just two of those companies. Others have even been acquired like JellyFish.com and SocialThing. On top of that we have helped many great people meet others who could help them with their businesses.  We even expanded TECH cocktail’s operations to cities like Washington D.C., Boston, Boulder, Ann Arbor, Champaign, San Diego and others. Check out the video from our first TECH cocktail event (below) as it really brings back memories and shows you just how far TECH cocktail has come.

I met many great people over the years as well. Some have become good friends and others trusted colleagues. It has been a great ride.

However, it is time for that ride to end for me. As I begin to think about graduating from the University of Chicago next year I realize I need to focus on school, my family and finding a career path that suits me. Frankly, I would not be able to give TECH cocktail the attention it needs to move to the next level as a technology media and events company.

No need to worry about the future of TECH cocktail though.  Just as I began thinking about leaving TECH cocktail, Frank decided to take the entrepreneurship plunge full-time after moonlighting to build his own personal brand and TECH cocktail since 2005. Frank has also been driving technology and media initiatives for Tribune Interactive, Classified Ventures and AOL since 2001. As part of that plunge he will be running TECH cocktail in a full time capacity, focused on growing the media business. If anyone can make TECH cocktail grow stronger, it’s Frank. Everyone who knows him knows that when he puts his heart and soul into something, good things come of it and I know he will be putting his heart and soul into growing TECH cocktail after my leave.

All in all, this was the perfect time for me to exit. Of course, I will still be involved tangentially and will likely help with the Chicago event but it will be in a much decreased capacity.

Thank you all for letting me take this ride with you and for your help in building this fantastic organization. It has been a blast. See you at the next TECH cocktail Chicago in May!

With the fury of CES email launch pitches and events the last couple week, I did not get a chance to share the news and our congratulations to Filtrbox with the rest of the TECH cocktail community.

Filtrbox, one of the first Boulder TechStars companies, was also one of our first TECH cocktail Boulder demoing startups. We have covered them a couple of different times as they rolled out a solid social media alerts and monitoring dashboard. I always referred to it as “Google Alerts” on steroids and used the daily email digests to monitor a number of filtrs at one time.

Check out the video from TECH cocktail Boulder 1 and you will see them sharing the Filtrbox story around the 2 minute mark:

According to Jive Software:

The acquisition of Filtrbox enables Jive to broaden the reach of our top-rated Social Business Software with a highly complementary technology.

Filtrbox had this to say:

The combined company will now tackle a much bigger opportunity in the marketplace as we will provide the only integrated social business software offering that both discovers conversations and provides the community space to enhance and facilitate the conversation.

Congrats to Ari Newman, Filtrbox and TechStars on your startup being acquired and best of luck with your future endeavors. For additional analysis check out these articles on TechCrunch, Rocky Radar, Colorado Daily and Mashable.