Despite the threats of tornadoes and hail, Mass Innovation Nights hosted its fourth gathering of early-stage startups last night in Waltham, at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation. Looking around at name tags, it was clear that even if you weren’t in attendance, you’d have a pretty good idea of what was happening simply by following @MassInno’s event on Twitter, which organizers mentioned early on.
The free event included product pitches from four local startups and demo tables featuring 10 companies. Once again, the room was crowded, with local tech marketers, newly minted MBAs and entrepreneurs checking out the companies. The majority of the companies presenting represented mobile and web-based startups whose offerings range from a a current Babson student’s location-based mapping software, Antloc, and a startup working to help web researchers annotate and share information (Webnotes, which we wrote about nearly a year ago ), to text-message marketing startups KaOoga and Jittergram, which we’ve also covered in the past.
Other companies included: Drync, a wine-finding and sharing iPhone app startup that was co-founded by Brad Rosen, who formerly co-founded Zync Inc., a Boston developer of predictive social networking applications, acquired by uLocate Communications Inc. in August 2008.
Other companies showing their (soft)wares were:
Perhaps it was just this month’s company lineup, but the similarities to another successful (and free) demo-laden networking event, the Web Innovators Group, was hard to miss. Whereas WebInno is now offering up its 22nd event (coming up soon, on July 15, at the Cambridge Royal Sonesta), MassInno has done just four, but has already gained some decent buzz in the community. The format is similar to WebInno, but just as the lines between mobile/communications and web/Internet have blurred and intermingled, so have the types of companies each event invites to present. For example, the July lineup at WebInnno features several types of startups, including iPhone and location-based apps, whose business reach far beyond simply “the web.” They include:
- Planet Cazmo
- Thunder Thimble
- BuySellAds
- Shareaholic
- Muzzylane
- Localytics
- Fluent Mobile
- The Tor Project
- CaptureCode
That events that are now happening in both Waltham and Cambridge is good — folks from different parts of Massachusetts are showing up at both. And blurring the lines of which tech sectors and startups are hot, in the name of innovation, isn’t a bad thing either.
Posted by dbanks
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[...] Banks, editor at Mass High Tech, is also speedy on the keyboard, here’s his write up from last night with kudos to our older brother-at-arms, Web Innovators Group. (Next week in Cambridge – will we [...]
This was the third event that NaviSite attended and once again it was filled with great conversations, great companies and was inspirational to all. New England is a great place for startups with all of our great talent and support groups like this one. NaviSite is happy to host several startups and we have special programs for them.