nyone who has transitioned from blurry vision to the perfect pair of corrective lenses or glasses knows just what a blessing clear vision is. But going to get your vision tested can be time-consuming and annoying. And to make matters worse, optometrists spend about an hour per patient doing routine steps to collect information for a vision test when they could be helping patients with actual health issues.
Blink, a company formed out of the MIT Media Lab, is looking to change all that.
The company started with a 3D-printed smartphone add-on for measuring eyes for glasses, but the product has since evolved to provide all the service and equipment necessary to offer a full vision test, on demand.
After spending 90 days under the mentorship of TechStars, 11 startups pitched their ideas to an enthusiastic crowd of investors and members of the tech community at NYC Winter 2015 Demo Day on Friday morning.
For many of these companies, Demo Day is the first time to show their product to a captive audience that includes press and potential investors.
The mood at Friday's Demo Day was especially upbeat given New York-based craft marketplace Etsy's IPO just a day earlier.
Every presentation from Techstars' demo day was good — but these startups really stood out.
CollegeFeed, started by Sanjeev Agrawal and Aman Khanna, helps students from universities like Stanford and Carnegie Mellon connect with entry-level jobs.
La Fundación Línea Directa ha elegido a los cinco finalistas de su proyecto de aceleración de emprendedores, que bajo el nombre “Premio Emprendedores y Seguridad Vial” busca estimular la actividad emprendedora en el ámbito de la Seguridad Vial con el objetivo de reducir los accidentes de tráfico y los fallecidos en carretera. Las cinco iniciativas finalistas, escogidas entre casi 60 candidatos, han sido las siguientes:
The trio of synthetic biologists behind Industrial Microbes, a new East Bay-based startup backed by Y Combinator, have had years of experience in working with biofuels.
They met at LS9, a biofuels startup that took more than $80 million of venture investment through the height of the cleantech wave and sought to create fuels from specially engineered bacteria. From a venture perspective, LS9 was a wash in the end and sold for up to $61.5 million last year.
The competition will take place on March 19 at the IBM Innovation Center in Cambridge. The winner will receive $10,000 cash prize, entry into the Harvard Business School Worldwide New Venture Competition, and exposure to the Harvard investor community.
Judges include John Burns of Boston-based Breakaway Innovation Group and Russell Elliot of Cambridge-based Akamai.
Lingua.ly, which saves language students from the tedium of traditional textbooks, has raised $1 million. Participants in the round include Udi Netzer (a returning investor), Shai Rephaeli, Yochy Investments, and Seed Fund 1776.
The site and apps pulls articles from the web-based on vocabulary lists and each users’ interests. TechCrunch last covered the startup when it launched its free Android app in April 2014 (it is also now available for iOS).
Looker, one startup with business-intelligence software people can use to pull up visualizations of data sitting in corporate databases, has raised $30 million.
