Last night at Mobile Monday’s demo event at the Park Plaza Hotel, seven area mobile companies presented to a room full of enthusiasts. The event was sponsored by Charles River Ventures, a venture capital firm with offices on both coasts and which focuses on making investments in the mobile space. With regard to Boston as a hotbed for startup activity, the Charles River partner shared, “When it comes to mobile, the jury is in. We have created companies that stay, and have thousands of people that contribute to the 3 ingredients successful startups needs: top entrepreneurs, a tech-savvy workforce, and venture capital.”
After Mobile Monday organizer Matt Gross’ introduction, seven mobile companies took the stage to demo the apps they are working: Fivespark, Goby, PapaProducts, Parallel Cities, ComicStrip, Appswell and Hashable. (Scroll to the bottom for photos of the presenters)
Fivespark: Fivespark helps small and medium businesses by allowing them to build sophisticated web-based apps without need for any programming skills. The company highlighted that 75 percent of workers consider their job mobile, and spoke to how companies can assist these employees by creating web-based apps that mirror the company’s current systems and processes. “Because employees are choosing from so many devices, it’s now more painful than a few years ago to build apps for them,” Fivespark says. The company’s web-based mobile app builder addresses this, using HTML5 for added flexibility.
Goby: At the intersection of search, mobile, social and travel, Goby helps you find things to do when traveling, or locally on the weekend. The company leverages hyper local content to provide recommendations, boasting 350 categories of things to do. Goby started on the web, and having built an initial presence and database there, they are now using this to fuel mobile offerings. Goby spoke to the strong level of user intent within the app, and how advertisers and brands can intersect — from brands like McDonald’s to local service providers looking to stand out. Learn more about them here.
Papa Products: Papa Products is the company behind CitiRoller and CitiStroller, two apps that help you navigate Boston (and soon other cities) on wheels. CitiStroller (baby stroller oriented) and CitiRoller (wheelchair oriented) roller use the same base platform, but each has special content catered to each distinct user group. For example, CitiRoller includes wheelchair friendly locations, while CitiStroller includes things like diaper change tables. The concept came from the founders experience (read: difficulty) navigating the T and Boston. In two weeks the company will roll out in NYC and plans to expand to Washington DC, Chicago, San Francisco, Canada and other international locations in 2011.
Parallel Cities: Parallel Cities helps strangers connect in a more meaningful way at events around the city. For event coordinators, you can append things like surveys, feedback boards, or other content on the app in a section specific to your event. For event go-ers, you can setup a profile and check in similar to Foursquare to see who else is at the event. You then have the ability to message people personally, or join in message board conversations. The company’s beta iPhone app launched in 2010, and they announced at the event that the Android app is now available, too. Learn more about them here.
ComicStrip: “People love telling stories and taking pictures of pets and friends,” the My Comic Strip team opened up with, “It’s more about the story than the photos, and Facebook just sucks for telling stories.” Their slick app allows you to create comic strip mashups from the everyday photos on your phone, choosing from templates, appending fun stickers and speech bubbles and then sharing the masterpieces to Twitter and Facebook. (In fact, their app is the only app other than Facebook that allows you to tag actually tag people in photos.) The company plans to add in-app purchases later this year for premium comic strip templates and stickers. Learn more about them here.
Appswell: Appswell is bringing the crowd to brand when it comes mobile app development. “In the enterprise space, the market is converging around mobile and crowdsourcing,” Appswell opened up with, “And Appswell is about bringing the coolest apps to the top.” Appwell’s platform is turning feedback for apps into a community of mobile enthusiasts, leveraging crowdsourcing to let the consumer describe what they want in an app. The company is bringing their platform to brands to help them determine what features their app should offer, instead of their product people. GE and Kraft are both current customers, one looking to release its first mobile app and the other looking to expand their current app and offer new features. Learn more about them here.
Hashable: “Greettomeetyou” Hashable, is looking to transform how you connect and network with people at events. The company, based in NYC with fifteen employees, launched as mobile app in Dec 2010. “Networking right now is just a line between you and the other person, but offers no depth,” Hashable explained. They are looking to tackle this “no depth” issue by understanding the connections shared between two people who just met and bringing in other content to provide real-time context, such as tweets and the ability to send private and public postings to them. The company says many describe Hashable as “Foursquare for people.”
Check out the photos of presenters below!
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