Tag: start up (Page 1 of 2)

Wow! Check out these Entrepreneurs Changing the World around the Globe!

September 24, 2015 / sandraanncarter / 0 Comments

This week we wrapped up our local SmartCamp events in some major cities and did we see some talent on the stage pitching! Here’s this week’s round up of innovators.

Congratulations to these great startups for advancing to the next stage of IBM SmartCamp 2015. Stay tuned next week for our final IBM SmartCamp blog post. Thanks to everyone who participated thus far!

Auckland: Eight Wire Limited
Eight Wire’s Conductor is a data integration product that is designed to fix the problems that often derail integration projects. https://www.eight-wire.com/

Austin: The Car Force

The care force connects with 162 million highly sophisticated vehicle computers on the road to the internet and enable franchise dealerships to see service opportunities in real time. www.thecarforce.com

Boston: Feelter
Feelter offers a revolutionary approach to social content harvesting, curation and monetization which can either replace or complement the solutions in the marketplace. www.feelter.com

Berlin: Panatomy and Tripdelta

Panatomy is a breakthrough visual support software for medical imaging specialists, providing the first interactive image-based diagnostic reference system for radiology. www.panatomy.com

Tripdelta is a smart flight search that finds routes and alternative flight options that other flight searches do not find and provides route suggestions. www.tripdelta.com

Cairo: Vidmy and SocialBlink
Vidmy uses Softlayer to manage a site that allows you to choose videos from around the Internet to build a custom video website and make money from Advertisements. http://www.vidmy.com/
SocialBlink analyzes information and sentiments in Arabic and English on social media channels including: Facebook, Twitter & YouTube. http://www.social-blink.com/

Melbourne: Localz
Localz enables enterprises to use the latest in location technology to enhance customer’s in-store experience, improve asset and inventory tracking and provide frictionless mobile payments, at scale. www.localz.com

Milan: Horus Technology
Horus is a wearable personal assistant for blind and visually impaired people. Worn on the user’s head, it observes the scene through a vision system and describes it to the user through a bone conduction device. It can read texts, recognize people and objects and detect obstacles and road signs. http://horus.tech/it/

Montevideo: Bquate and Tizkka
Bquate created a talent platform for the music and video industries in South America. Their dashboard allows industry professionals to make educated talent decisions based on transparency and real data. www.bquate.com

TiZKKA is the first fashion app that connects users with their favorite fashion bloggers to purchase the same products worn by the fashion bloggers seamlessly in an app. http://www.tizkka.com/

Raleigh: Plum Print and Akilis Software

Plum Print takes artwork that children create, transforms them into digital archives and prints elegant custom coffee-table books and keepsakes. www.plumprint.com

Akili Software’s Savii Care is a workflow management platform that streamlines agency tasks and allows end-users to complete those tasks in a fraction of the time.

Silicon Valley: Kukun
Kukun is a SaaS driven marketplace for home renovation that brings together home owners, buyers and sellers. www.mykukun.com

IBM's Global Entrepreneur Program for Cloud: Focus in Germany

April 22, 2015 / sandraanncarter / 0 Comments

IBM has a long and deep commitment to the entrepreneurial community. IBM works with more than 400 leading venture capital firms in 30 countries to get an early-look into new technologies and upcoming entrepreneurs. Through the IBM Global Entrepreneur Program, IBM already works with 6,000 startups worldwide, mentoring them to help them grow with free software and technical expertise, exposure to 600+ expert mentors of corporate executives and serial entrepreneurs, plus access to a global network of clients.

In Germany, we have been working together with 150 Startups. On Thursday, I will be in Berlin meeting with some of the best of the best German Ecosystem members — from startups, to VCs to incubators.

Last time here, I met with the Investment Punk https://de-de.facebook.com/investmentpunkpage

The IBM Global Entrepreneur Program for Cloud Startups is the leveling up of IBM’s current entrepreneur progam, combining the incredible power of IBM Cloud with the company’s vast, existing network of resources for startups. This program is a game changer for entrepreneurs, offering them $120,000 of free IBM Cloud platform credits for one year and deep connections to IBM’s enterprise client base. This financial offer is higher than any other cloud vendor has offered startups to date.

This is the highest value cloud startup offering in the market for two reasons: the power of IBM Cloud, and the face-to-face connections and visibility for early stage startups to large enterprise clients. We want to help ignite even more the growing community in Berlin and beyond in Germany.

IBM Cloud also offers startups an advantage in technical breadth: IBM is the leading vendor to provide a full suite, from bare metal to platform services with DevOps, in both virtualized and hybrid environments. Bluemix is IBM’s cloud platform as a service, which offers a tremendous breadth of services to help startups build and scale their innovations quickly, as well as leverage rising volumes of Big Data from growing mobile and social networks, IoT devices and more.

“IBM is the only large tech firm offering face-to-face, in-person connections to enterprises and mentoring that is so critical for early stage companies,” said Robin Hrassnigg, CEO of Diabetizer, a German startup and IBM partner recently recognized by the World Health Organization for its innovative health care app, in a statement. “As our company continues to scale our app, which uses cognitive computing and cloud to help diabetics manage their treatment with flexibility and accuracy, we will increasingly look to these types of in-depth connections to bring our approach to big data to different industries.”

IBM is also offering entrepreneurs connections to its enterprise client base through regional face-to-face events, as well as CIO and entrepreneur meet-ups. These face-to-face connections with enterprises are invaluable to early-stage companies, and IBM is the only large tech firm to offer interactions at this level.

The IBM Global Entrepreneur Program for Cloud Startups also offers entrepreneurs the most extensive global network of local technical expertise through IBM’s 43 Innovation Centers, all of which also host local tech community events and meet-ups. And Using IBM Bluemix allows companies to accelerate the time it takes to bring their innovation to market – from weeks and months to hours and days.

Go Entrepreneurs!

IBM SmartCamp Finals is Almost here!!! Join us!

February 10, 2015 / sandraanncarter / 1 Comment

Join us for the SmartCamp finals with a set of AMAZING Entrepreneurs!

Monday, Feb 23
3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
MGM Hotel
Rooms 312–317

http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/us/en/interconnect/devat/smartcamp/

Entrepreneur Country in Europe – Start-up Fever in London! Infographic

September 17, 2014 / sandraanncarter / 0 Comments

entrepreneurcountryglobal.com/toolbox/item/ibm

Pacesetters are 2X more likely to leverage a Start-Up Partner for Innovation

September 1, 2014 / sandraanncarter / 1 Comment

To get the full study: ibm.biz/IBMBTT14

2014: Year of the Entrepreneur

July 10, 2014 / sandraanncarter / 1 Comment

Have you noticed the new energy around Entrepreneurship?

For instance, Shark Tank is one of the most popular family shows. Families are teaching their kids about the potential and the feasibility of changing the world.

We now have Restaurant Start-up and even Walmart is running a “entrepreneur” event to gather new products for its US stores.

And more women are also joining the trend …. did you know that nearly 20% of angels invested in women-led businesses — the percentage grew more than 40% from the previous year, according to the Center of Venture Research.

Why is this the case?

1. There is more access to capital and it costs less to start a business. With new technologies like cloud, the cost to begin a start up is less, and areas like social enable businesses to market like the large companies for less.

2. There is more “hope” now in the economy that in the past few years. Yes, CNBC says we are in the period of overjoy, there are signs that our economy is improving — it’s a good time to start a business.

3. Corporate America isn’t fulfilling the “need to show value” and to “change the world.” To attract and retain the best employees, companies should be more proactive and willing to invest in their workers’ future. Many believe they have to create their own company to get that culture.

4. Mentoring abounds. I see IBM offering business and technology mentoring. Virgin is focused on mentoring in the UK and the list goes on. Mentoring provides confidence to get started!

5. Support is pervasive. Unlike in the past, support for start-ups exists in networking groups, meetups, and beyond. For example, for women entrepreneurs, some groups are National Association of Women Business Owners, Women’s Toolbox, PBWC, WITI, and Women 2.0.

I love this time of Entrepreneur Energy and know 2014 will truly be the Year of the Entrepreneur!

The Power of the Entrepreneur and the Ecosystem! IBM Entrepreneur WEEK!

February 5, 2014 / sandraanncarter / 2 Comments

Once upon a time, Silicon Valley was the only place in the world where entrepreneurship seemed to happen through spontaneous combustion. So cities and countries all over tried to copy it–with only modest success.

Well, something strange is happening in the early years of the 21st century. Startup fever is on the move, both within the United States and globally.

The spirit of global entrepreneurship will be on display Feb. 6 in San Francisco, where the IBM SmartCamp program will present its fourth annual Entrepreneur of the Year award. The contestants, boiled down from 1200 applicants, qualified for the finals via a series of regional contests last year. They hail from Brazil, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the Middle East, Australia and Malaysia—as well as a couple of unlikely spots in the United States, Camden, N.J., and Fresno, Calif.

To watch a live stream video of the day’s activities, visit here starting at 9 a.m. US Pacific Time. To participate in a peoples’ choice vote, click here.

This year, IBM SmartCamps are being held as part of IBM’s inaugural Global Entrepreneur Week. All week IBM has been celebrating the great work startups do through a series of events around the globe offering startups and entrepreneurs the tools and expertise needed to innovate, transform and grow using key technologies such as cloud, big data analytics, mobile and cognitive computing.

This globalization of entrepreneurship has been building for a number of years, but now it’s so obvious it hits you upside the head. A signal of the shift came last year when MoDe, a mobile phone top-off payment service founded in Kenya, won the IBM SmartCamp Finals in New York City.

Sure, Silicon Valley and now San Fran are still an incredible engine of innovation and entrepreneurship. But, there are plenty of other tech boomtowns now. According to data from the CrunchBase directory, New York City created 1,438 startups in the past five years; San Francisco, 1,448; London, 1,075; and cities including Berlin, Bangalore, Istanbul, Moscow and New Delhi are revving their own startup engines.

Here’s an example of Entrepreneur Day in Tel Aviv!

While Nairobi, Kenya, only registers in a small way on the directory, dozens of startups like MoDe have emerged there in the past few years—many of them aided by tech startup incubators and entrepreneurship hubs.

One of the IBM SmartCamp finalists, Reengen, which makes an energy-use dashboard for the owners and occupants of buildings, got a helping hand from Girisim Fabrikasi, a tech startup accelerator in its hometown of Istanbul, Turkey.

While incubators are helpful, there are other vital ingredients in a healthy startup ecosystem—among them venture capital, the cooperation of governments and universities, and, often, a stimulating urban culture and support from already established businesses.

It doesn’t hurt that the barriers to entry are collapsing. Startups are aided by the availability of open source software, inexpensive cloud computing services and government tax breaks. In addition, development platforms like Google’s Android and Apple’s IOS power the app economy.

IBM is deeply committed to supporting startups in bringing new technology and customer solutions to market through mentorship, partnership, matchmaking and free access to IBM technology. Most recently, IBM has entered the platform space, with its Watson Developers’ Cloud, which is designed to enable startups to build applications on top of IBM Watson—the technology that beat two grand-champions on the TV quiz show Jeopardy!

To help get startups up and running on the developers’ cloud, IBM is offering support to the entrepreneur and venture communities through workshops and seminars on topics such as development skills, as well as networking opportunities. IBM has also dedicating a $100 million investment to support the seeding and growth of startups and businesses building apps in the IBM Watson Developers Cloud.

It’s amazing what a startup can do when it gets a helping hand from bigger companies. Streetline, a San Francisco-based firm that won the Entrepreneur of the Year award two years ago, subsequently became an IBM business partner. It now ranks as the largest smart parking solutions provider in the world. It has recorded more than 170 million parking events in the US, Germany and the UK.
Another example is Sproxil, which provides a consumer verification service through mobile devices. Since participating in IBM’s Global Entrepreneur program, Sproxil has expanded to 10 industries to help consumers protect themselves from fake or stolen goods and helps brand owners maintain supply chain oversight. Sproxil was also named the best HealthCare startup up by Fast Company for 2013 and the #7 in the overall top startup category.

Who’s next for explosive growth? This year’s SmartCamp finalists include Temando, of Australia; TMC, of Malaysia; Shopa, of the United Kingdom; Reengen, of Turkey; Nova Lumos, of the Middle East; Geekie, of Brazil, and Coriell and OnFarm, of the United States. Fix on those names for a minute. For one or more of them, this could be the start of something big.

We’d love for you to join us at our IBM Entrepreneur Week Feb 3-9 for a mix of great virtual and in person events!

This week will be global!!!

Intrapreneurs and Entrepreneurs are great friends!!!

Entrepreneurs provide the spark. Intrapreneurs keep the flame going.
Entrepreneurs are found anywhere their vision takes them. Intrapreneurs work within the confines of an organization.
Entrepreneurs face many hurdles, and are sometimes ridiculed and riddled with setbacks. Intrapreneurs may sometimes have to deal with conflict within the organization.
Entrepreneurs may find it difficult to get resources. Intrapreneurs have their resources readily available to them.
Entrepreneurs may lose everything when they fail. Intrapreneurs still have a paycheck to look forward to (at least for now) if they fail.
Entrepreneurs know the business on a macro scale. Intrapreneurs are highly skilled and specialized.