DC Startups on the Rise

by Elias Shams

Social Matchbox, the Washington DC-based organizer of events for startups held their Spring 2010 Launch Series event at the  US Navy Memorial Heritage Center in downtown DC on Thursday night.  Out of sixty five  DC, VA, MD based startups, they had selected eleven to present to a 235 handpicked attendees representing the East Coast’s leading venture capital firms, angel investors, startup executives, software engineers, designers, startup industry professionals, and tech industry bloggers. I had the pleasure to be one of the evaluator.

Although, all eleven of them did a great job presenting their products, here are the ones that caught my attention the most. I think with a decent funding, right management, and the right execution,  they might be able to make it big.

1. Cardagin

Surprisingly, I found out their founder and CEO, Rob Masri is an old friend of mine from my telezoo days during the Web 1.0 era.

Although most of us have tons of loyalty cards in our wallet or purse, but how many times have you forget to take them with you to CVS, Safeway, etc.? It happens to me all the time.

Cardagin has the solution. Its mobile platform digitizes loyalty card programs for small businesses, currently with the focus on college towns. It also allows local businesses to publish mobile ads and push them to members of their loyalty programs.

They are currently serving University of Virginia’s population in Charlottesville, VA, where the company is headquartered. From my conversation with Rob, it sounds like college towns are perfect for their type of service because college students are always looking to save money and they use their mobile phones a lot. They plan to expand to other college towns.

The company is currently providing consumers with a free service to manage their loyalty programs, but soon they will focus is on providing solutions for businesses as well. For a yearly access fee for the test period, merchants receive scanner-enabled kiosks, which are integrated with various point-of-sale systems, to scan mobile phones. They also receive access to Cardagin’s site, which will track coupon usage, visits, and ad effectiveness.

The consumer offering is free, but in the future there may be an optional monthly fee for users who want to receive promotions outside of their loyalty programs or to get real-time “discounts on demand” from, for example, local restaurants.

Their app is currently available on iPhone, but they plan to build it for all other smartphones including Andriod.

I am curious how they are different from Foursquare, Gowalla, Scanaroo and Cardstar. Anyone?

2. CardStar

How many membership cards (Gym, grocery stores, healthcare,  subway, etc.) do you have? And how many times you forgot to carry them with you? Even if you remember to take them with you, there’s only so much room in your wallet or purse.

CardStar is a really cool iPhone app that basically, it’s database software designed to store most, if not all, of your membership cards for virtually all merchant and service categories: drug stores, grocery stores, gyms, libraries, retailers, and travel and entertainment agencies.

The app includes about ton of companies. If you are a member, you can just enter the membership number and the barcode of the card will be automatic retrieved and stored in the iPhone. Next time you need to use the service, you can just display that code on the iPhone’s screen and show that to the scanner instead of the card.

What I like about CardStar the most, it allows for entering membership of merchants or companies that are not already included in the app. Now all I need to get into the gym are tight shorts and my phone.

The app is currently free and good for iPhone users. From their site, it looks like they are working on Apps for other smartphones including my Android

3. WhereMark

The Northern Virginian based company,  WhereMark is an App currently available  on iPhone. They launched their app late last year for iPhone 3Gs free of charge. What I like about their App the most is the fact that I can place my own POI (Point of Interest) and they will store that information for future use.

WhereMark is a practical application designed to enhance the way you experience your environment in everyday situations. WhereMark will find your next meal, get you to the nearest subway, lead you to a museum, and more. You will be able to create your own augmented reality by saving wheremarks that will help you to remember a new nightspot or a favorite place in the park. The Visor displays wheremarks floating over reality; simply tap the wheremark for more details, such as address or phone number.

Their space is pretty hot so as the number of competitors – Layar, Wikitude and more.  You can download the app from iTunes here.

4. Starfish Retention Solutions

Starfish is an Arlington-based maker of student-retention software that helps pinpoint at-risk students in real time, based on their daily course work performance and then connect them to helpful resources.

Starfish will track when a student has not logged in to the course management system for more than a week and then let an appropriate party know. That same party will also be alerted when a student gets two consecutive progress reports with a score of less than 70 percent.

The company draws from the information living in your course management, portal and student information systems. In addition, they enable your instructors and advisors to communicate any concerns they have about a student’s performance. They then connect students to the support resources designed to help, while capturing insight into which services are working.

5. CouplesSpark

CouplesSpark is an online community for anyone in a committed relationship and having a problem maintaining it. They help to make your relationship work before it heads south

If you are having a problem with your partner, simply post the issue anonymously on the site. Others from the community get into the loop to help out.

During such a poor economy and high unemployment rate, I think we could use a little bit of help here once they get funded

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