DiscoveringStartups -Tech Startup Reviews

As part of our ongoing Editor’s Pick series, we are happy and proud to announce PinkPangea as our Discovering Startups Editor’s Pick for October.

PinkPangea is simply a great idea. It’s a place for women travelers all over the world to share their experiences. It provides two things: deep, engaging stories from others about extremely unique experiences, and the passing on of knowledge to allow others to emulate those experiences. The DS team simply became swept up in reading all of the great stories from around the world, and because of the simple, straightforward value PinkPangea provides, we wish congratulate them on being our Editor’s Pick for October. Best of Luck PinkPangea!

Congratulations Pink Pangea!

For more information, please click here.

As part of our ongoing award series, we are happy to announce the three monthly Best-Of Discovering Startups Finalists for the month of September. The winner of the October contest was EasyHi, and is featured here.

These companies however have received exceptionally significant responses – garnering thousands of votes from our readers combined. Those achievements are by no means insignificant and deserve to be showcased here accordingly.

TheSearchEngineGuys is a new SEO firm with a unique approach: they offer exclusivity to their clients’ keywords. Instead of trying to service multiple clients in the same category, they devote their resources to solidifying a partnership with their clients. Read more here.

Gameday Housing devotes itself to one thing: providing accommodations to sports fans. Their pitch can be readily identified by anyone who has  been to a major sports event: crowds – tens of thousands strong – sell out hotels quickly. Gameday helps provide that greatly needed service. Read more here.

JackThreads is a members-only, deal-oriented fashion site for men. Given the large gap in male etailer fashion sites, JackThreads is poised for a significant opportunity. With an aesthetically friendly, brand-conscious website, the website feels like a natural fir for the fashion-minded male.  Read more here.

We are proud to announce these October finalists and are excited to present them with these Discovering Startups awards!



Discovering Startups would like to congratulate EasyHi on winning the Best-Of Discovering Startups October Contest!

EasyHi got a shocking 1,124 votes for the month, nearly double that of the number two vote-getter for October. With such a performance, EasyHi sits as the fourth most popular startup of all time.  Congratulations to EasyHi!

For those who didn’t get a chance to read this blog post, EasyHi lets users send personalized video and music ecards to family & friends. One easy thing to love about EasyHi is their message: they make it easy to connect loved ones. Their interface is very aesthetically friendly, and the interface is extremely intuitive and easy to use. I think most of us can think of a few family members (especially elderly ones) who would absolutely love receiving video e-cards from those far away. Based on the simplicity of the product, the ease of use, and the immense value it provides – even if measured by one smile at a time – we are proud to showcase EasyHi as our Discovering Startups Best-of October Winner.

Congratulations to EasyHi and good luck!

For more information, please visit their website at: http://www.easyhi.com

Discovering Startups would like to congratulate Dwolla on winning the  Best-Of Discovering Startups May Contest!

Dwolla received an astonishing number of votes – nearly 650 to be specific- and we are pleased to showcase such an innovative, interesting company.

For those who didn’t get a chance to read this blog post, Dwolla provides an alternative online payment solution to Paypal by charging users on a low, $0.25 per transaction basis rather than the standard multiple-percentage point basis that current payment providers charge merchants. By providing a more streamlined, cost-efficient system for merchants, etailers have a very visible, clear path to ROI which should significantly ease their purchase decision.

It’s a great idea and we are happy to showcase them as a Discovering Startups Best-Of Monthly Winner. Congratulations Dwolla and good luck!

For more information, please visit their website at: http://www.dwolla.com.

We have had another exceptionally successful contest for the month of May and it’s by no means over! There are a few points we’d like to announce in regards to the contests:

We would like to announce that startup posts for May are now closed, i.e. no new startups will be counted as being part of the May contest. That being said, voting for the May contest will continue until 5/21/10 at 10:00pm EST, so please get your last votes in! Those who are going to be published in the week of 5/24/10 – 5/28/10, will be included in the June contest, and the “current month” rankings will transition once the May contest is complete.

Thank you and good luck voting!

First of all, we greatly apologize for the suspended service. We had some technical difficulties that have been resolved, and we look forward to start posting reviews again with full force starting tomorrow.

Our first month was exceptionally positive, but we also realized a number of fixes and tweaks that needed to occur to our initial system. Some of them were technical, like those described here, others revolved around defining a more clear startups focus, and we also realized there were problems inherent with the voting system, like the advantages and disadvantages of contestants who were published earlier or later in the month.

This post is designed to announce a number of changes to the voting process that will take effect immediately.

First, in order to solve the lack of voting time that companies towards the end of the month have to be voted on, we are announcing a change in the timetable when posted items will be counted for each monthly contest, as well as when the votes will be counted.

From this point forward, posts for a given month’s contest will be eligible for votes in the last week of the preceding month, as well as the first three weeks of the month itself. So, if the April contest was repeated under the same rules, any post that was published in the last week of March, or the first three weeks of April would have been eligible for the April contest.

Additionally, the voting for the contest will close on the last day of the month at 10:00 pm. So, even the last company which is posted in the period will still be able to have a full week of voting time.

This should greatly alleviate some of the problems with our first contest.

Secondly, we realize that there were a number of companies who should also be recognized, even if they did not garner the top spot at the end of the month. Therefore, we decided to add four monthly awards, starting with April’s contest.

We will be continuing to give out the monthly Best of Discovering Startups award to the startup which garners the highest number of votes in each monthly voting period.

We are announcing a new award type however called a Monthly Finalist award, and they will be given to the companies which come in the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th places in the monthly competition. There is no differentiation in the awards between the places, since they are designed to recognize the value of the startups even though they did not win the contest outright. They will also collectively be covered in a post when the winners are announced at the end of the month.

Lastly, we will also be adding an “Editor’s Pick” award. This award will be roughly equivalent to the “Best of Discovering Startups” award, and it is the company that the Discovering Startups staff recognizes as their favorite for either demonstrated growth or potential. There is no official policy for picking the recipient, other than it is the company that demonstrates the most potential as seen by the industry veterans on our staff. The only requirement for eligibility is that a startup must have at least 15 votes. The reason is that we at Discovering Startups want the companies to be vetted first and foremost by our readers. After that, we will pick the recipient that we feel best reflects the nature of the award.

That’s it! Thank you very much for all of the support and we look forward to reviewing more startups and announcing the additional winners for April immediately.

Discovering Startups would like to congratulate Media Bright as our first monthly Best-Of Discovering Startups award winner! They have had an exceptionally positive response in both votes of confidence from our readers, as well as in the comments left by the company and we are happy to showcase them as our first monthly winner for April.

For those who didn’t get a chance to read this blog post, Media Bright tackles the seemingly omnipresent problem at college campuses of matching prospective young interns with promising opportunities. The problem – like any job position later in life – is usually how to start or where to get your foot in the door. Media Bright mitigates that resistance, and provides a clear value proposition to both parties.

Congratulations Media Bright!

For more information, please visit their website at: http://www.mediabright.net.

As part of our first announcement, we’d also like to point out that there will be additional awards given out for the April contest on Saturday and Sunday respectively. The May contest will commence on Monday 5/3.

This is a quick post to let all of our readers know that the April contest will end tonight (4/29) at midnight, and the winners will be announced tomorrow (4/30)!

Since we just launched the voting/competition component this month, we realized early that there were some deep flaws in the model since companies who were reviewed later in the month (especially those reviewed yesterday), were inherently disadvantaged. We do apologize for not anticipating this, and assure our readers that we will be announcing changes for the next month’s contest. However, we will keep this month as originally stipulated in  the rules, since we feel it is even more unfair to change the rules of a live competition mid-stream.

That being said, we are so proud of the overwhelming response from all of our readers and are excited to announce the winners (yes there will be additional prizes given) of our first month’s contest. Thank you for all of the support and get your last votes in! (

First, we want to thank our users for the tremendous outpouring of support we’ve received from them after launch. We’ve gotten hundreds of responses from startups all over the United States asking to be reviewed. We’ve also received dozens of unsolicited compliments about the site and the concept – so thank you!

We are more than happy with the initial traction we’ve seen and only look to improve our service – attracting more eyeballs, which in turn equates to more traffic to the startups we review, improving the site and its functionality, as well as streamlining the submission process – and this post is meant to announce the first part of that process.

We just released a new version of DS that has fixed nearly a dozen bugs reported from you – our users. Some things were minor, like the color rendering oddly in some browsers, and some were more complex, such as trouble reported with the submission process. Our users should see a major improvement in their experience, but we still request that you send any additional problems you find  (or of course general suggestions), to .

Our first official “Best Of Discovering Startups” monthly competition is just about to wind up in less than a week, so get your last votes in. We’ve been shocked at the responses from our readers and are happy to see our top two startups this month – MtCareNavigators and PracticeFusion – with over 100 votes each and encourage our audience to keep up their incredible engagement!

From all of us at the Discovering Startups team, it truly is gratifying to see such a large, positive response and we thank every one of our users. Check back on Monday for our next wave of startup reviews!

Discovering Startups is announcing that it will officially be active as of today. Therefore, it’s first active month, including the monthly contest will be April. We are looking forward to reviewing startups on a daily basis and you  – as a reader – are invited to vote for your favorite startup. We will comment once or twice a month on the current monthly contest standings, and officially announce the winner at the end of each month. The most voted startups will be featured in an additional news post from us, in addition to the “Best-of” DiscoveringStartups award. We hope you enjoy the first startups that will be added soon!