Having been a part of starting and growing local startups for the better part of a decade, few people have as good a feel for the Baltimore startup scene as Ron Schmelzer. From a baseball cap apparel company to a IT marketing intelligence firm, Schmelzer’s business ideas have changed, but his companies’ location hasn’t. Now onto his seventh year in…
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Project management is not for the faint of heart. If you can successfully shepherd a complex, months-long project with multiple stakeholders from beginning to end, you have the skills, should you ever want to start a new career, of a world class cat herder. The hardest part of project management, of course, is just keeping…
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Potential job candidates can look great on paper, but resumes often give no indication of their most important skills: critical thinking and problem solving, two things that are crucial in the workforce. A new website is offering a distinct way for employers to scope out top-notch talent. ShinyNeedle allows them to post job descriptions with…
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One of the highlights of much-maligned Google+ is the Hangout: video chats with up to 10 people. But a new competitor landed last fall in public beta: Spreecast. Like Google+ Hangouts (and unlike Skype), Spreecasts can be public or private. And they require no software downloads: just enter the video URL and start talking with…
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If you’re looking for expert advice, where do you turn? Probably friends, colleagues, your network, and/or LinkedIn Answers. But how do you know if the advice you are getting is really good, or if it’s everything you should know about a certain topic? HighTable, which just launched in beta on April 2, was built to…
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At Tuesday night’s Tech Cocktail Champaign Mixer event, we had the unique opportunity to showcase 5 startups that are so early stage they are still in either conceptual or research mode. Thanks to the University of Illinois’s focus on engineering and science at their Urbana-Champaign campus, 4 of these startups are very hard science-focused. Here…
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Maybe it is your budget that drives you to the classifieds or the thrill of finding a unique piece that will stand out in your home – either way, finding second-hand furniture is an arduous task, from poor-quality photos to scrolling through photos of furniture with holes, tears and other dubious damage. Furnishly aims to…
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Google has been fending off critics ever since it launched Search Plus Your World – which works more like Search Plus Our World, often favoring Google+ results. But beyond the hubbub, there’s a real problem here that Google’s trying to solve, albeit clumsily: people search. That’s the impetus for Ark, a recent Y Combinator grad…
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Following the lead of metro-targeted startups like Uber, ParkMe and SeatMe, UrbanSitter is now offering an online payment feature. With this new feature, the site that connects parents with babysitters through people they know should continue on its path of stellar growth, especially with the infusion of $1.75M in seed funding they closed on this…
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“We’ll figure it out later.” That’s how some startups, who might be breaking laws or regulations, decide to deal with it. We’re so tiny that no one will care, right? If you want to err on the side of caution, take a few minutes to sign up for TrakBill. Designed for lobbyists, this new service…
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This huge number should probably come as no surprise, but it’s still rather unnerving: Nearly 12 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2011. With so many of us storing proprietary information on not only our laptops, which we lug through cities and airports, but also our mobile devices, which we bring everywhere, we…
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When you see a delicious looking picture of a meal, you probably begin craving something to munch on. Once you launch mor.sl, expect that effect – times one hundred. The landing page of this recipe-discovery site is full of neatly organized pictures of all sorts of meals, with recipes one click away. Not to overwhelm…
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No matter how fancy your marketing campaign, hungry your sales team, or useful your app or product, you won’t achieve the growth you need unless you have a full understanding of your customers’ behavior – especially where they might be getting stuck in the sales funnel. One of the showcased startups at our Tech Cocktail…
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The team at GroupToast believes that when you want to party with your friends, you shouldn’t have to call a gazillion places, wait for call backs, negotiate drink fees, and then have to coordinate everything. I’d have to say that I agree. This Chicago-based startup gives people the ability to have venues compete for their…
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If you’re interested in both giving and getting, Chicago-based Toodalu can help you rack up cash for yourself and your favorite charity – all by simply going about your daily shopping routine. Toodalu is a new breed of loyalty rewards that generates charitable giving to the causes you choose, each time you spend at a…
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Thinking about producing an explainer video for your website? Finding video producers is easy, which you know if you’ve started a search. What’s difficult and ultimately time-consuming is finding the right video producer at the right price. You can spend weeks doing research, contacting producers, getting estimates and then narrowing down the proposals and picking…
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Two months after the iPad 2 debuted in March, around 40% of users surveyed said... Read More
This post is part of Tech Cocktail’s “Healthy Entrepreneur” series,... Read More
Locating quality startups in San Francisco is like spotting bees in a hive.... Read More
Today, we’re excited to announce that Tech Cocktail has taken a $2.5M... Read More
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