Voice-messaging firm Vontoo growing

March 12, 2008

Three-year-old Indianapolis tech startup Vontoo says it has broken into the big time.

Its client list has jumped from 60 in early 2007 to nearly 800 today, and the company has received nearly $2 million in private funding as a result of the growth.

Vontoo develops permission-based voice messaging services, primarily for marketers in the financial, entertainment, retail and sports industries.

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Top Ten Legal Mistakes Made by Entrepreneurs

Executive Summary:

The life of a startup can be precarious, a wrong turn disastrous. Harvard Business School professor Constance Bagley discusses the most frequent legal flops made by entrepreneurs, everything from hiring the wrong lawyer to puffing up the business plan.

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The Curious Genius of Twitter

Fast Interview: Co-founder Evan Williams talks about why it helps to have a side project, why he had to leave Google to found Twitter, and why Twitter isn't called Friend Stalker.

Is Twitter the next big thing or a twempest in a tweepot? Twitter is a free "micro-blogging" service that allows users to send updates, or "tweets" -- messages of up to 140 characters that answer the question "what are you doing now?" The updates are kept on the user's profile page and distributed to friends via text messages, instant messaging, RSS feeds, and other applications.

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SearchMe, a search engine startup with a visual interface

03.11.2008

SearchMe is another search startup that wants to take on Google, but it’s more inspired by part of the iTunes interface. It is a visual search engine, of sorts, that shows you results in a series of revolving panes, with each pane featuring a search result. In iTunes, this format is used to feature the covers of albums, not search results.

In case you were interested in switching away from Google, SearchMe has some other potentially useful features. It offers categories to help you find what you’re looking for, faster. For example, if you type in “labrador puppies,” as seen in the demo video below, you can click on an icon for puppies to clarify that you’re not looking for information about a province of the Canadian government. If you want a list of SearchMe search results instead of the visual interface, you can drag open the list from the bottom of the screen.

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Qatari woman entrepreneur recounts tale of success

Al Sulaiti broke traditional barriers to emerge successful.

DOHA  She had dreamt of becoming an entrepreneur when she was a child but having been born into a conservative Qatari family she was married off at 13.

But marriage and children couldn't stop Mona Al Sulaiti from pursuing her dream. Fighting all odds, she continued attending school and eventually graduated with a business administration degree.

She wanted to set up a fashion design business but didn't have the means to start off on her own. Determined, she took up a job at the Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar (VCUQ) as an assistant

to the dean.

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Storage/Sharing Startup Drop.io Raises $2.7M

Storage site startup Drop.io has raised a $2.7 million Series A round led by DFJ Gotham and RRE ventures. The 5-person company has raised $3.9 million during its lifespan, which dates all the way back to last August; we guesstimate the company is now valued in the $7 million to $10 million range. That means co-founders Sam Lessin (24), and Darshan Somashekar (25), both fresh from Bain, are now competing with Tumblr's David Karp for NYC's "kids with the sexiest, best-funded startup" award.

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