AlphaLab grads from our 7th cycle strike a pose. Pictured companies: 8020select, MakerCraft, Krowder, VitalClip, ComVibe, and PHRQL

Photos & Video from AlphaLab Demo Day are Up

Since our 7th cycle of AlphaLab companies pitched their ideas to a roomful of investors, entrepreneurs, and advisors (as well as 200+ viewers watching live) at AlphaLab Demo Day, we’ve put up photos up on Flickr and archived footage of the pitches up on Vimeo.

Cycle 8

Right now we have the difficult task of deciding which companies will comprise our next cycle. After a record number of applications, the decision will not be easy; however, the growing quantity and quality of applicants speaks to the blossoming ecosystem Pittsburgh has created for entrepreneurs that makes it possible to not just start a company here, but to thrive here.

For more on that, our friends over at the Allegheny Conference recently posted this great video of AlphaLab CEO’s discussing the benefits of starting a company in Pittsburgh:

Open Coffee Club – Pittsburgh

Though our nest will soon be empty in preparation for the next cycle, we wanted to open up the space before the holiday break for Open Coffee Club.

Join us on the morning of Friday, December 16th for free coffee, pastries and networking. And as always, the event is open to all, so please pass along to anyone you think would be interested so we can continue to grow this entrepreneurial community!

(The PHRQL team from left to right: Jeevan Pendli, Hank Werronen, Paul Sandburg)

PHRQL, or Personal Health Recording for Quality of Life (pronounced “freckle”), is a smart phone and social networking application that superempowers individuals with diabetes to better manage their care. The app will help those with diabetes:

• Keep track of their health (diet, exercise) and vitals (blood-glucose level)
• Stay on track with personalized insights, recommendations, and built-in game mechanics
• Stay connected with their personal care network

Why is this important? As CEO Hank Werronen explains, this app will help the 25 million people living in the U.S. with diabetes (and 400 million in the world)  “be more compliant with good care management…reduce the risks of complications from diabetes and help bend down the cost curve.” A cost curve that is quite steep–$200 billion a year and counting.

Hank came up with the idea for PHRQL when he was the COO of healthcare giant, Humana. One of the company’s concerns was how to manage the costs for chronic diseases. It was obvious that the top-down solutions employed by insurance companies and the government were ineffective and inefficient.

Hank began working on a bottom-up approach by sponsoring a project at his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University. Two of the Tepper School of Business MBAs who were drawn to this project because of personal ties to individuals with diabetes, ended up joining Hank’s team full-time: Paul Sandburg (as President) and Jeevan Pendli (as Chief Development Officer).

PHRQL is focused on testing their product on young adults in transitionary phases, a time when they can lose their support network and get in trouble with the disease. If you are interested in becoming a beta tester for the company you can contact them through their facebook page (facebook.com/PHRQL).

Meet Hank Werronen, CEO of PHRQL from AlphaLab on Vimeo.

The VitalClip team from left to right (James Patula, Steven Radney, Mark Musolino, Elliot Williams)

The Idea

VitalClip is creating an iPhone accessory that makes measuring your health easy and meaningful. Their small device plugs into your iPhone and uses its sensors in conjunction with the iPhone’s to measure your vitals. By combining this information with your personal health history and other environmental factors, VitalClip will spit out a snapshot of your well-being that is easy to understand.

As the popularity of things such as the Quantified Self Movement continue to rise so do the popularity of health and fitness monitors, but, as Steven Radney explains, many “activity monitors only give you information about activity and you have to extract meaning from that yourself.” VitalClip will differentiate themselves by extracting the meaning for you, making it easier than ever to understand and regulate your health.

The Team

CEO Steven Radney, a vet in the medical device field, is joined by James Patula, the team’s software architect, Elliot Williams, an interaction designer/services designer/cognitive scientist, and Mark Musolino, a scientist who is tasked with translating all the biometric sensor data into meaningful and easily digestible information.

VitalClip will be looking for alpha users and “alpha hackers” at the end of September. So if you’re a health and fitness nut, be sure to follow their progress on twitter.

Meet Steven Radney, CEO of VitalClip from AlphaLab on Vimeo.

Krowder.com’s Co-Founders, Masami Shibatani (top) and Logan Powell

Ever come across something on CraigsList that you ultimately had to pass it up because you had no convenient way to transport it to your home?

Krowder.com aims to solve this problem experienced by so many urbanites who don’t have access to a car or truck. The web platform uses crowdsourcing to facilitate the delivery of local items using amateur talent and idle time–or, in other words–anyone with a pickup truck who has some time on their hands and is looking to make a buck.

In short, Krowder aims to

• enable people to sell things they normally wouldn’t be able to sell
• help people buy things they wouldn’t have been able to get (because they’re busy, lazy, or just don’t have access to a vehicle)
• capitalize on the economies of crowdsourcing

Logan Powell, the team’s Pittsburgh-based Co-Founder and head of Design and Marketing applied to AlphaLab after hearing about the program though his colleges at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. He has come here to build out the platform, gain traction, and prove out Krowder’s business model.

The team expands many timezones and aside from Logan includes Tokyo-based Co-Founder Masami Shibatani, a developer in St. Petersburg and a business development team from MIT based out of California.

To learn more about krowder visit krowder.com, follow @krowderPGH on twitter or keep up with their blog.

Meet Logan Powell, Co-Founder of Krowder.com from AlphaLab on Vimeo.

The CommunityVibe team from left to right: Wesley Kim, Kariithi Kilemi, Vishal Agrawal (Not pictured: Harsimran Brar)

CommunityVibe’s primary product, the ComVibe web portal, came into existence after the core team members recognized the “limited online options for tenant management, and the disconnect that existed between tenant satisfaction and property manager services.”

After conducting extensive market research with 10 property managers in and outside the Pittsburgh region, the team built the first iteration of their product that they got five local property managers to test. After feedback from their alpha product, they were able to launch ComVibe last year: a software as a service application that helps property better manage and communicate with their tenants, market their properties and build a community around their properties.

With a working product and a paying customer, the team came to AlphaLab to polish up their sales cycle and enforce their value proposition, because, as Kariithi says, “at the end of the day, if we’re not creating value, we cannot charge for it.”

The CommunityVibe team includes Founder and CEO, Kariithi Kilemi, Wesley Kim who focuses on backend development, Vishal Agrawal working on user interface and the user-testing process, and Harsimran Brar who’s heading up product management.

Learn more about the ComVibe web portal by visiting ComVibe.com or following them on twitter.

Meet Kariithi Kilemi, Founder & CEO of CommunityVibe from AlphaLab on Vimeo.

The MakerCraft team from left to right (Justin Endler, Corissa McClay, Dan Dwire, Nicholas McClay)

MakerCraft is building an app where users can design customized jewelry that can be shipped to them pre-made or–in the spirit of DIY–as a kit they can put together themselves.

The idea for the company came out of a personal pain Co-Founder and CEO, Corissa McClay, experienced when she was designing her own jewelry: “I was frustrated with the idea that when I was making jewelry I had to actually use my materials to figure out if a design was good enough.”

Luckily Corissa had an understanding husband who was also a seasoned programmer that could build a program for her. But after thinking about it, the couple realized if Corissa was having this much trouble with the issue, she probably wasn’t alone.

With only a month before AlphaLab’s application cycle would be closed, the husband and wife team got all their stuff together and applied to AlphaLab. The program’s hands-on mentoring and creative co-working space really appealed to Corissa and AlphaLab had always been “on their radar” from being involved in Pittsburgh’s startup and gaming community.

Once they got accepted to AlphaLab’s Summer/Fall 2011 program, Co-Founders Corissa (CEO) and Nicholas McClay (Platform Architect) signed on Justin Endler to work on their API and web development, and Dan Dwire to work on mobile design and development.

The team is taking an agile approach to development. As Corissa explains, “It just makes sense…why build something no one wants to use?” To ensure the team doesn’t waste time building features that will just collect dust, Corissa has been holding focus groups where she talks to groups of women about their habits surrounding jewelry and crafting, as well as familiarity and comfortability with technology. After these sessions, the participants get to make and take home a piece of jewelry both as a thank you and as a way for MakerCraft to discover their target market’s price points. Before they leave, each person is asked what they would be willing to pay for what they just made if they designed it using MakerCraft’s app.

You can stay current with MakerCraft’s progress through their blog, twitter account and facebook page or sign up to be a beta tester to help them hone their app (and make some awesome jewelry in the process).

Meet Corissa McClay, CEO & Co-Founder of MakerCraft from AlphaLab on Vimeo.

It’s official: Our newest and seventh cycle of AlphaLab companies have moved into our East Carson offices!

One of our favorite traditions at AlphaLab happens when we transition from one cycle to the next. All the entrepreneurs leave words of wisdom, inspiration, or encouragement for the incoming companies on their whiteboards, the bottom of their desks, and now–-thanks to the healthy dose of Lin’s Asian Fusion we eat each cycle–through fortune cookies.

As sad as it is to see Cycle 6 go, it’s exciting to usher in a new crop of companies to grow both the AlphaLab community and the greater entrepreneurial community in Pittsburgh.

We hope you’ll join us at the next Open Coffee Club to welcome our six new companies (date is still TBD) and until then, we invite you to take a look at some of the advice our previous companies left.

Can you guess which ones go with which company or entrepreneur? (Ok, one of them might be easier than the others.)

“GIVE ‘EM THE ZUCK!” – Olde Ancient Proverb

“When in doubt…CLEAR YOUR CACHE!”

Things you have to do by end of AlphaLab

• Work at least one 100 hour week
• Go to The Library happy hour with other teams for “Beer o’clock”
• Engage in Foursquare battle for Mayor of AlphaLab
• Stop Reading This and Call a Customer

“Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.” –Aesop

To Do:

1. Talk to customers
2. Nail your M.V.P.
3. Remain Capital Efficient
4. Ship! Ship! Ship!
5. Change the World
6. Hide the Scotch

Genius does what is must, and talent does what it can.
We are what we think.
This is your day! Expect great results with those ongoing works.

Live long and prosper…or at least get traction.

Good Luck! Now SHIP SOMETHING!

On May 11th AlphaLab’s five newest startups were introduced to the public during Demo Day.

This was the first time Demo Day was combined with Innovation Works‘ Annual Meeting and Investor Day. The near all-day event reporters started referring to as Innovationpalooza drew record numbers of investors, entrepreneurs, press and startup enthusiasts both in-person and online.

If you were unable to attend the event, you can now watch the archived footage of the companies’ pitches thanks to Vivo, a streaming video platform and an AlphaLab Alumni company from Cycle 3.

RhoMania

RhoMania makes restaurants more profitable by replacing their traditional drink list with an interactive tablet device designed to increase customer’s willingness-to-pay for more expensive, higher margin alcoholic beverage items, such as wine.

RhoMania AlphaLab Demo Day Pitch from AlphaLab on Vimeo.

Geneva Mars

GenevaMars presents Zachy the Robot, an exciting new interactive cartoon series for the iPad and other touch computing devices. Zachy the Robot teaches young children basic STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) concepts through fun stories and characters, fully animated content and engaging interactive puzzles.

GenevaMars AlphaLab Demo Day Pitch from AlphaLab on Vimeo.

Wawadoo

Wawadoo is the recommendation engine for events, to answer the question “What do YOU want to do?” Wawadoo has captured much interest in recent months from media/blog coverage, business partnerships and early user feedback.

Wawadoo AlphaLab Demo Day Pitch from AlphaLab on Vimeo.

Tutor Technologies

Tutor Technologies delivers Intelligent Tutoring Systems for science and engineering. While the $20B e-Learning market continues to grow, intelligent e-Learning solutions for science and engineering are lacking due to the difficulty in handling these unconstrained domains. Our team, consisting of software, curriculum, research and education experts, is uniquely qualified to create a platform for these solutions.

Tutor Technologies AlphaLab Demo Day Pitch from AlphaLab on Vimeo.

Delirium

Delirium creates sync-based products that work across web services, clients and devices. Our first product, Reverb, allows users to easily synchronize, share and back up their address book and contact information across address books and contact sources.

Delirium AlphaLab Demo Day Pitch from AlphaLab on Vimeo.

Delirium was named Most Innovative Company at Funded by Night–read the company’s account of their experience on their blog.

The Resumator closes a $700k investment from outside the region

NoWait wins Contegix Start-up, Boot-up Competition and is featured on popular food blog, foobooz

AlphaLab hosted the 3rd Innovation Happens Pittsburgh last week–pictures from the event (including the one above) are now up on our Flickr page

And mark your calendars—the next Open Coffee Club Pittsburgh is scheduled for Friday, 5/13 at AlphaLab!

Aside from preparing for AlphaLab’s Demo Day, we are in the midst of selecting our 7th cycle of companies. While it has always been difficult to decide on which companies to take, this year it has been even more so, as we received the highest quantity and quality of apps since AlphaLab opened in 2008–definitely a good problem to have and just one of the great indicators of Pittsburgh’s blossoming entrepreneurial scene.

Today our SouthSide space is eerily quiet, as four out of the six companies located here are in Detroit participating in Funded by Night. Delirium, Tutor Technologies, Wawadoo, and NoWait are all among the small group of companies that were selected to pitch for a chance to win the $100k convertible note that will be given away at the end of the night.

Since you’ll be hearing all about our current cycle of companies soon enough at Demo Day, I thought now would be a good time to update you on what some of our alumni have been doing.

Bueda (Cycle 2) released a conversation platform that allows you to have conversations across multiple networks with anyone you’d like. And feel free to tune out of the conversation for a bit using the much appreciated mute button.

Careerimp (Cycle 5) launched Resunate, a web app that uses “Semantic Intelligence” to tailor your resume to individual positions you’re applying for–-a must in the days where most HR professionals are using applicant tracking systems that may automatically take your resume out of the mix if the right keywords aren’t there. Watch how Resunate can work for you:

This is Resunate from Career Imp on Vimeo.

Chogger (Cycle 1) launched the long awaited new version of their website, making it easier than ever to make and share comics on the web. Seriously. It’s insanely easy.

Both RhoMania (Cycle 6) and Black Locus (Cycle 4) were winners in Rice University’s Business Plan Competition. RhoMania took home the Best Presentation Award ($12k) and came in 5th for Darren’s creative elevator pitch. Black Locus won the Tech Transfer Award ($100k).

Shoefitr (Cycle 4) continues to receive lots of press for their 3D imaging technology for shoes that make both online buyers and sellers happy. After winning “Most Likely to be Acquired” at LAUNCH conference, their product has been featured in places like TIME, WebBeatTV, and in this nice piece from their alma mater. But the most impressive news lately may be that Shoefitr’s co-founder and CXO, Nick End (pictured in the middle), placed 29th in the Boston Marathon with a time of 2:22:30.