This past year I have attended several demo days and covered Launched Box Digital in DC and Dream It Ventures in Philly among others. Yesterday was the demo day for another local incubator, this time it's in Pittsburgh. Yes the "Steel City" has more than just steel these days, as six new start-up companies showed off their stuff as part of the Alpha Lab extensive six-month start-up business incubator program. AlphaLab provides funding, free office space, expert business advisors and services during its biannual program in Pittsburgh. Alpha Lab was created by Innovation Works a seed stage investment firm.
The start-up class of companies included:
CloudFab is an online platform that provides distributed manufacturing resources for businesses who are creating mass customized goods across various product categories. This market is called “fabrication-as-a-service”. The CloudFab system also contains tools to facilitate and enhance the quoting, ordering and manufacturing processes.
Fooala has created an open online ordering platform that enables restaurants to expand online presence and grow sales by accepting orders through various web-based and mobile channels. Fooala’s platform includes an ordering engine that can be easily embedded in a restaurant’s website, as part of an online food portal or as a widget on content sites or mobile devices.
LeftRight Studios is developing a branded gaming network consisting of entertaining mobile games and a tools platform that helps create branded games with unique marketing and promotional capabilities.
NavPrescience is a Carnegie Mellon University spin off developing next-generation GPS applications that incorporate greater prediction and personalization capabilities. The technologies automatically learn drivers’ routing preferences and predicts future destinations by observing their driving patterns.
Vivo has developed an integrated live video marketing platform for businesses and organizations that want to use live video to enhance their online sales and marketing efforts. The platform includes a suite of integrated set of tools for broadcasting, marketing, and sales and allows businesses to control its branding and integrate e-commerce, advertising and other monetization tools.
Zipano is a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff that has developed a privacy layer that enables users of information sharing services (including social networking, location-based applications) to better control and manage with whom they share their personal information.
Congrats to Alpha Lab and the start-up that launched yesterday. I look forward to hearing more about these companies as they go out on their own in the business world.
