Category: Startup Monday
StartUp Monday: Hall – Group Chat and Instant Messaging for Companies
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that features some of the best and brightest companies in the Bay Area. They are often companies that we have our eye on or have worked with in the past & would like to share with friends and followers of ABCey Events!
Hall is a social app that brings your team together. You can chat, share files, and create groups with people both in and out of your company. Businesses can easily send and receive messages one-on-one or in groups with users who are in- and out-of-network which erases the need to constantly check your work email.
Another feature of Hall is the ability to integrate other services, such as Dropbox, Jenkins, and Hubot, so you can check out what’s happening on online services all in one place.
Why We Love Hall: Hall is not only FREE, but it is accessible anytime, anywhere! You can access it from your iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux and the Web because it syncs across all devices. It’s perfect for events because we can easily communicate with our client and send messages to all of our staff in the blink of an eye, no matter what device we’re on! We’re not the only ones who love Hall as Intuit, VH1, Zynga, NetApp, Amazon.com, and JCPenny are loving the product too!
Would you use Hall’s group chat and instant messaging for companies you’re interested in communicating with? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
Available on iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac , Windows, Linux and Web
Start Up Monday: Munchery
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that features some of the best and brightest companies in the Bay Area. They are often companies that we have our eye on or have worked with in the past & would like to share with friends and followers of ABCey Events!
With the mission of “reinventing weeknight dinner!” Munchery provides for its followers not only affordable food delivered right to your door, but healthy food as well (and did we mention tasty!) Working in event planning we understand what it’s like to live life on the go, being swamped with overflowing meeting and scheduling, planning out what’s for dinner is usually just an after thought to an already stressful day. But with Munchery meals you get food that is good as well as convenient with an ever changing menu that is sure to rival your local chinese take out!
How it works: Every day a team of local chefs create a variety of handmade entrees and desserts, all you have to do is select an entree of your choosing and select a time for delivery between 5-9pm (and don’t forget to tip your delivery driver).
Why we love it!: Not only does the Munchery provide it’s customers with deliciously affordable meals but for every meal ordered a meal is donated! And not to mention that the business is green, using sustainable packaging with boxes made of renewable plant fibers.
Would you try out Munchery? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
Startup Monday: Smore, Design Online Flyers
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that features some of the best and brightest companies in the Bay Area. They are often companies that we have our eye on or have worked with in the past & would like to share with friends and followers of ABCey Events!
Smore allows you to easily design online flyers to showcase your upcoming events with customizable layouts! Simply update your flyers to capture your event’s theme, send your creation to all of your subscribers, and track your success!
How it works: With the easy-to-follow format, Smore allows you to customize your flyer to match the theme of your event. From the Smore website, you can publish your digital flyer to all of your social media sites, over email, or on to other flyers in your city. With a special analytics capacity, Smore provides numbers regarding your top incoming traffic sources, how your recipients’ interactions with the flyer, and how effective your flyer really is!
Why we love it: Smore makes it so easy to design online flyers to really draw attention to your events. Our favorite part is how much information we can gather using Smore’s analytical technology and learn about what areas we can improve upon. With three different models to chose from, with prices ranging from $19 to $99 per month, Smore provides a variety of options to publicize events!
Will you use Smore to design and publish professional flyers for your next event? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
Startup Monday: PlagScan, The Unique Content Verification Tool
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that features some of the best and brightest companies in the Bay Area. They are often companies that we have our eye on or have worked with in the past & would like to share with friends and followers of ABCey Events!
This week, we want to draw your attention to PlagScan, a startup located in Palo Alto. PlagScan offers an unique content verification tool and is the leading service for the detection of plagiarism in Germany, including many parts of Europe. PlagScan is now establishing its service in the US market, cooperating mostly with academic institutions. While most other plagiarism detection services are only available for the academic market, PlagScan can be used for business as well.
You might wonder how a plagiarism detection software could be relevant to your job or your business and why ABCey would recommend to check PlagScan out. Let’s say you are an event planner, marketing director, or work in any job that requires creativity and unique content. You spend a lot of time writing marketing texts, blogs, or press releases. Wouldn’t it be great to check if your work is actually unique and hasn’t been written before?
Plagscan is useful even if you are not the one writing the content for your business. Let’s say you have hired writers or interns. Imagine they use published or copyrighted content in your business blogs, without giving proper credit. This is called plagiarism and would shed negative light on your business. With PlagScan you can easily check for plagiarism and make sure that your content is unique.
How it works: PlagScan uses advanced technology in its software that compares billions of online sources with the document you want to check. You can easily upload a document or copy and paste text. After submitting your text, you get a detailed report with the results.
Why we love it: PlagScan is cost-effective and fast. The company offers a competent service that is definitely worth investing in. Best of all: PlagScan also helps to improve your search engine optimization.
Would you use PlagScan? What do you think about this software? Tell us about your opinion in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
Startup Monday: Travel Planning App, Gogobot’s “GoGo This Week”
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that features some of the best and brightest companies in the Bay Area. They are often companies that we have our eye on or have worked with in the past & would like to share with friends and followers of ABCey Events!
ABCey Events loves exploring and discovering San Francisco, but isn’t afraid to use travel planning apps to find out about events going on around the city too. That’s where Gogobot comes in to play. From hotels, vacation rentals, things to do and restaurants, Gogobot is a travel planning app for iOS and Android that lets you know where to go based on what city you are visiting and when you’ll be there. With more than 740,000 reviews and 4 million photos of more than 60,000 destinations around the globe, it is one of the largest sources of reviews for restaurants, hotels and attractions. Founder and CEO Travis Katz created the travel planning app to help people of all lifestyles and interests be aware of the happenings going on in their current city through recommendations by their friends and people like them. It is considered “the go-to place for places to go.”
Gogobot creates personalized, authentic experiences for you by highlighting places popular with people who share your tastes and interests. Once downloading the app and creating your Gogobot account, you choose travel styles or interest categories called “Tribes,” which will allow the app to match your personal style to others around you. Then you are given recommendations of sites and attractions by other people with similar interests so you know you’ll love them!
Last Thursday – September 11, 2014 – Gogobot announced the addition of “GoGo This Week,” a hand-curated list of events and activities in six cities around the world: Los Angeles, New York City, San Diego, Silicon Valley, London and San Francisco! Each week, when Gogobot members open their app, they will see 10 – 15 fresh, personalized recommendations of great events in their local area – from activities to festivals to restaurant openings – based on their distinct “tribes.” Users are able to tap through to learn more about each event and “Why to GoGo.” With the bookmarking feature to save events on multiple lists to check out for later, users are able to share lists with their friends who can also add events to the lists. The future goals of this travel planning app includes expanding the “GoGo This Week” feature to more cities in the coming months by bringing on editors for each city to create the hand-curated lists.
ABCey Events loves Gogobot’s new feature, GoGo This Week, because we are always looking for new ways to discover the fun events in San Francisco as well as showcase the events we are producing. Because Gogobot is a source of trusted travel advice for so many users, event publicity can spread at an even greater rate and can be targeted toward people who would be interested in our events!
Will you download Gogobot? What do you think of its extension, GoGo This Week? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
Startup Monday: Unwind Me, Massage Booking Made Simple
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that features some of the best and brightest companies in the Bay Area. They are often companies that we have our eye on or have worked with in the past & would like to share with friends and followers of ABCey events!
Mondays don’t have to be so manic with this week’s startup – Unwind Me. Launched publicly last month at Y Combinator’s semi-annual Demo Day in Mountain View, Calif., Unwind Me is a web application massage booking service that lets you order a massage therapist straight to your home for a flat rate of $89.
How it Works: For customers, Unwind Me is simplifying the process of booking a massage and in true San Francisco startup fashion- allowing instant gratification to its many users through massages only hours after booking online; it’s massages made simple! For the massage therapists working with Unwind Me, the startup’s low overhead costs means they get to see a greater portion of the $89, all while enjoying an extremely flexible schedule.
Why We Love it: We’re so excited to watch this company grow. We’re thinking this will be incredibly useful for conferences. Imagine being able to offer massages at your conference booth or networking happy hour!
What type of events would you like to see Undwind Me at next? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
Start Up Monday: Double Dutch
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that features some of the best and brightest companies in the Bay Area. They are often companies that we have our eye on or have worked with in the past & would like to share with friends and followers of ABCey Events!
Today’s Startup Monday post features DoubleDutch, a company that specializes in data-driven mobile technology. They use engagement data from the mobile event app to ensure that each event is better than the previous one. Located in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District, DoubleDutch features applications for events, conferences, associations, and trade shows worldwide.
We love that this company has all our event essentials covered with their award winning data-driven event app. Having the event agenda, surveys, and attendee networking options all available on one application makes it super easy for us at ABCey to keep up to date with all the latest event logistics!
How it Works: DoubleDutch allows each client to design their app to look exactly how they like. They make it easy to fully customize the branding of the app and easily configure layout. With the mobile agenda option, event participants can access the up-to-date mobile guide at any time and easily create their own personalized agenda with a few simple taps of their mobile device. DoubleDutch can also facilitate both digital and in-person networking. Attendees can connect with others based on interests, professional titles, and more! And to keep attendees engaged and interested, DoubleDutch features a survey and poll option within the app to provide feedback.
Why We Love It: As event professionals, we know last minute content and schedule changes are inevitable. However with DoubleDutch’s content management system, our job becomes a lot less of a headache! Throughout the event, valuable information about attendees’ whereabouts, interests and sentiments is collected. The DoubleDutch CMS allows organizers to see this information in real time and make any necessary adjustments to the event. DoubleDutch also provides concise and specific event analytics so you can identify which sessions, speakers, and exhibitors are buzzing, and which ones need extra attention before it’s too late. Having all of this information and features included in one application makes DoubleDutch a company that we think will definitely have a positive impact on the event industry!
Will you be using DoubleDutch in the future for your next event ?! Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
StartUp Monday: Flipboard
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that features some of the best and brightest companies in the Bay Area. They are often companies that we have our eye on or have worked with in the past & would like to share with friends and followers of ABCey events!
This StartUp Monday we are featuring the best social news magazine app Flipboard! Flipboard allows the user to collect and share news articles that they are interested in and create their personalized online magazine. Instead of searching several different news websites or blogs, everything is curated into one simple individualized feed.
We also love that Flipboard has articles from major news networks such as BBC and very specific interest sites like BizBash for event planning tips. Flipboard makes it super easy for us at ABCey to keep up to date with all the latest event industry trends in one place!
How It Works: Flipboard is a simple and super easy to use app for all of your daily reading pleasure! Once downloaded, the user will start by picking a few topics they are interested in and sign into their social media sites so that all their newsfeed updates will be listed. Once completed, the user will be directed to the “Table of Contents” which has four separate sections: things you follow, cover stories, content guide, and search. Even if you are lost on what to read, Flipboard’s content guide has tons of recommendations on top stories. After the user is set up, they can add and scroll through their personal magazine to curate articles they want to read!
Why It’s Great: Once the user finds an article they want to read, it is added to their personal online magazine and the pages flip in the same magazine way! The style gives the reader the sense that they are reading a full magazine, instead of only reading selected articles based on their interest.
Will you be using Flipboard in the future for your daily reading updates?! Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
StartUp Monday: Intercom
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that features some of the best and brightest companies in the Bay Area. They are often companies that we have our eye on or have worked with in the past & would like to share with friends and followers of ABCey events!
We are really excited about this gem we found! Intercom is designed to increase sales and foster customer loyalty, by combining all aspects of helpdesk, email marketing and automated marketing! Its goal is to let companies start meaningful dialogue with customers depending on who they are, and how they’re using an online product. It’s a whole new dimension in customer service, and designed by former employees of Facebook, Apple, Google and Amazon, they must have something special!
Using a simple JavaScript code on your website or app, developers can use this product to track customers as they sign in. Using this data, companies are able to interact with customers more easily, with on-the-spot messages divided based on customer demographics! Intercom looks at many descriptors of customers online behavior as to more effectively interact with them. This is beneficial for the company and the customers because the company learns how to make the customer happier!
Reviews say Intercom is easy to use and the pricing is refreshingly transparent! They are aiming to replace platforms such as Zendesk for customer support. We are really excited about it because as connoisseurs of digital marketing strategies, we love to see innovative new ideas that make it easier for companies and customers to interact and engage!
Would you use this tool for your next website or app? Do you think it’s helpful for customers? We’d love to hear what you think in the comments below, or on Facebook and Twitter!
StartUp Monday: Hyperfair
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that features some of the best and brightest companies in the Bay Area. They are often companies that we have our eye on or have worked with in the past & would like to share with friends and followers of ABCey events!
Do you ever wish you could be in two places at once? We sure do! This week, ABCey would like to showcase San Francisco based Hyperfair, a startup with a platform for running online trade shows. This immersive 3D virtual expo & tradeshow experience dynamically revolutionizes the way we collaborate globally and allows everyone to attend or host an event from anywhere in the world!
How It Works: Select if your hosting or attending a virtual expo, trade show, conference, or a career fair. Once the event is set up, Hyperfair allows you to move your avatar around a three-dimensional space. There’s also features that include chatting with other attendees (either via text, Skype, or voice), browsing products, and exchanging business cards. What a unique and cool way to expand your networking skills!
Why We Love Hyperfair: This 3D experience recreates real world dynamics that would be found at a physical event by giving users fully customizable virtual avatars that facilitate lifelike interaction. Hyperfair also enables global audience participation with an event that anyone can attend just by logging into their computer! Imagine being able to attend an overseas trade show right at home on your couch! This is definitely a company we can’t wait to see grow and evolve!
Will you be checking out Hyperfair!? The idea of a virtual trade show isn’t new, but the practice hasn’t exactly taken off . Watch Hyperfair Video Here! Let us know what you think of Hyperfair via Twitter or Facebook, or leave us a comment below!