And, if you’re a big fan of a startup who’s headed to Austin to showcase at Tech Cocktail’s Startup Celebration at SXSWi 2015, you can still support them from home by voting in the Reader’s Choice Poll! The winner of the Hottest Showcasing Startup Reader’s Choice Poll will qualify to move on to showcase at Tech Cocktail Celebrate 2015 in Las Vegas

My team and I run into these folks more often than we’d like — people who think that design is limited to branding, websites and software. But design isn’t just for graphics or interfaces. You can design pretty much anything in your business: your front door, the flow of traffic through your lobby, an onboarding process for new hires, anything. What design ultimately comes down to is starting with a set of objectives and passionately exploring how to develop a solution based on those goals....

Yesterday, I attended a presentation by Dan Chuparkoff, the VP of Product at Civis Analytics. Civis Analytics is a data and analytics giant based in Chicago. If anyone knows about testing, whether it be websites or products, it’s them. Chuparkoff was kind enough to share his wisdom with the crowd. Fun fact: not only is he an expert when it comes to A/B testing, he is also the father of identical twins, so he basically lives A/B testing 24/7....

The funding came from a mix of angels and institutional investors, including WI Harper, Crosslink, New Atlantic Ventures, and Artiman. The PlaySwell team includes several distinguished startup ventures and is led by Jordan Greenhall, who was the founding CEO of DivX. PlaySwell has made it their mission to build a new type of online community where people can showcase and share products that they’ve discovered. The Alpha site has already attracted an interesting catalogue of high-quality everyday consumer goods including everything form pocket knives, headphones, and drones....

With 84 companies within the Inc. 5000, Austin has shown proven its meddle in the discussion of tech hubs around the country. If you’re interested in seeing which companies calling Silicon Hill home are in the top 10, take a look at the list below: 1. MKS2 MKS2 is a technology business providing services to the Federal Government and commercial clients. At MKS2 Technologies, they help clients define their mission using existing and new domain knowledge....

Although CES wasn’t jam packed with the most innovative devices this year, manufactures have made it clear that their priorities have shifted towards refining products based on what consumers want. In the kitchen, that means devices are now helping us make healthier food choices, cook better meals, and manage more things at once. Anova Sous Vide “Sous vide” is a way of cooking or preparing food, which churns out restaurant quality results....

If you are thinking about taking advantage of this powerful marketing channel, here are a few things you should know before you launch your first campaign. Focus on Relevance and Engagement, Not Reach Marketers often make the mistake of going after influencers with the largest reach. But in influencer marketing, the level of engagement an influencer is able to drive, and their relevance to your niche, matter more than the number of followers they have....

As I wrote last week in 10 Tips for Startups on Naming Your Company, coming up with a great company name for your new small business or startup can be challenging and time consuming. Coming up with a memorable tagline can present an even greater challenge. A tagline is supposed to communicate to your customers and potential customers what sets you apart from your competition and also your brand’s focus....

Fortunately, there’s a bevy of excuses out there that you can utilize to effectively avoid following your dreams for another day. After all, people are more impressed by someone saying they’re an entrepreneur than actually being one, right? In a recent Reddit post, user localcasestudy looked into the top excuses that “wantrepreneurs” have for not pulling the trigger and starting a company. We’ve summarized his points below: There will always be more things to solve: capital to acquire, employees to hire and glass-front fridges to install....

Thanksgiving Feast Preparation While deep frying a turkey is delicious, it’s not worth burning the house down, which is a risk we all witness each year on the evening news. With this indoor, electric turkey fryer by Masterbuilt, you can have the best of both worlds. The extra-large basket accommodates up to 20 pounds of bird, so all of you’re family and friends can be pleased with your decision.Price: $109 Mash those potatoes, yams, or squash with maximum efficiency this holiday season with this electric masher by Breville....

Nor it should be. There are a variety of countries that offer better expansion opportunities, lower corporate tax rates, and better government incentives. The two examples that are particularly interesting are Singapore and Estonia, where a greater number of startup companies is founded with every passing year. Singapore calling In relation to Singapore, Catapult Ventures CEO Vinod Nair explains for ZDNet that this country is somewhat of a heaven on earth for the rising startups for various reasons....

Xyla is the 20-year-old CEO and founder of Parihug, the startup behind internet-connected plushes that let you hug loved ones from anywhere in the world, and she first launched the idea back in 2015, at a hack-a-thon as an engineering student. The company won the Readers Choice poll for Tech.Co’s SXSW Startup of the Year, but they also recently launched Beauty and the Bolt, an “online village that is designed to reduce the barrier to entry into makerspaces and the makerspace movement, as well as subtly change the narrative of what an engineer should look, act, and dress like....

Grab some water and download these apps: 1. Hangover Cures For when your hangover kicks in, there are a few remedy options that you can try. From the common-sense to the old wives tales, one of these should work for you. It’s available for Android. 2. BrainWave Hangover Relief The app synchronizes your brainwaves to a specific frequency by sending two different audible frequencies to each ear, which after being processed are perceived as low frequency tone-matching human brainwaves....

In today’s modern office, plenty of tasks performed everyday are less than environmentally friendly. Think of the reams of paper you need to print, photocopy, and shred – not to mention the carbon footprint you leave as you commute back and forth from home to the office. Even when the office is as free form and chaotic as an early-stage startup, there’s still plenty of waste. This can be especially true in the hiring process....

There are few overnight successes and entrepreneurs need to use the tools available to them to determine just how much their venture is actually worth. This provides a reasonable starting point to begin discussing the funding needed during an investor meeting; one that will be received positively by all those involved. Presenting an overblown value runs several risks that will likely keep a startup from securing the funding it needs including: Risk #1: Securing funding once, and never again....

Nowadays it is a lot harder to promote anything on the internet and you need to have a true professional handle your online promotional campaign in order to reap in the benefits that are associated with social media. After a discussion with the specialists at monetarylibrary.com, we came up with the following reasons why social media is no longer that effective. Consider this in order to improve your promotional efforts....

WPSpotter: For All Your WordPress Needs If your business uses WordPress to host its website and/or blog, this service is for you – and it’s a good one. WPSpotter is a subscription-based service that allows you to shift the burden of WP maintenance and updates away from your business. Use WPSpotter to submit tickets for any WordPress bug, update, or backup. Depending on your chosen subscription model, your issues will face an 18-, 8-, or 2-hour turnaround time, on all jobs....

On balance, both paths provide an opportunity to engage a global audience. And both paths require a clear understanding of the technology that needs to be leveraged in order to engage that audience. 1. The Age of Video One of the biggest changes in how the world interacts with the Internet is streaming. In the 90s, as the first audio streaming services launched (Mark Cuban’s Broadcast.com is a famous example), the idea of streaming HD content (or any video) over the Internet was a distant dream....

After months and months of trial and error, here are the top sites and tools that allowed me spend more time enjoying my vacation, rather than planning it. Gogobot– Social travel planning site that believes “planning your trip should be almost as fun as the trip itself”. This site is by far the best way to discover your travel destinations. Good for: Planning activities and receiving recommendations. All you have to do is type your destination, and you will find a detailed description of the city, recommendations on things to do and see, places to stay, and places to eat....

Here we explore why machine learning and big data analysis are so important to the contemporary consumer-buying journey: 1: Consumers Make Decisions in Real Time The only way to really understand your customers is to get better insight into how they really behave. You can turn to surveys to find out more and generalizations based on demographics can be helpful, too. In reality, though, today’s businesses need to collect the most data on how customers behave in real time and how that affects real-time decision making....