Co-written with Jesse Millard
And you thought six second Vines or Snapchat was all you needed to tell your story, how about one second clips? Elly, a social-based network, allows users to record one second clips, add music and hashtags, then stitch it all together for a longer compilation. This startup is just one of the five digital tech companies Tallwave, a commercializer, chose for their 4th High Tide startup program.
Tallwave announced their new participants at their custom workspace located in the Art Deco Luhrs Tower in downtown Phoenix where their five startups will house for the duration of the program. At the end of High Tide, two of the startups will be eligible to receive $50,000 in seed funding. This year 76 companies submitted to be considered for High Tide, but came down to five.
READ: Luhrs City Center to house Tallwave’s High Tide program
The five startups are…
DuuL (Gilbert) Wanna make money playing video games? Duh, sign me up. DuuL, currently in beta, will offer a web portal that allows gamers of all levels to access tournaments for their preferred games. Players will be able to win prizes, money and earn all the bragging rights. What makes DuuL stand out is that its tournaments are geared more towards the casual gamer. The people who watch professional live streams can finally compete amongst themselves. So, if your skill is not in the thousandth percentile in League of Legends, then DuuL is for you. Their recent win was taking third at Google Startup Weekend.
Elly (Walnut, Calif.) One second is enough time to capture your friend crossing the finish line, jumping into a pool or eating their favorite food truck meal-put all those moments together and you have a fun video to share. This social-based network allows the user to record, make and share compilations from their one second clips. Users can choose from three types of story formats, Life Line (personal moments and events), Compilations (shorts films made from previous clips) or Earth Life Line (a place to be inspired and share your story with the world). Users can also add filters, hashtags and music to their clips along the way. To date, Elly users have uploaded 7,000+ clips and the company is realizing a 30 percent growth per week.
Watch Elly demo below
[youtube]https://youtu.be/9nNStW4iT90[/youtube]
HumansFirst (Scottsdale) Buying something online with just the sound of your voice is ready for your smartphone. Co-founders Yada Schneider and Gregory Goehner partnered up to form HumansFirst and built the Cold Smoke platform, a SaaS platform for mapping natural language to web services APIs. Using this platform, HumansFirst developed apps that have the ability to listen, comprehend and execute customer requests using Natural Language Processing.
The first apps to run on Cold Smoke are HER and VoiceForce. HER is a personal online shopping and reservation assistant where consumers can shop, book travel and checkout with their voice through ones’ mobile device. Currently HER searches for deals on Amazon, Best Buy, Nordstrom, and 40+ more sites.
VoiceForce is an app that helps salespeople make up-to-the-minute updates, searches, and edits to their Salesforce accounts on-the-go. Hello HER, I’d like to book a trip to San Diego.
Watch HER app demo below
[youtube]https://youtu.be/3K5OX9G7aeI[/youtube]
MESH Digital (Portland, Ore.) Take back some control over the ads that appear while searching the Web. MESH allows users to be more selective with their advertising interaction and have the ability to block unwanted or irrelevant ads. MESH strives to deliver permission-based ads rather than targeted ads generated by marketing machines. The service gives the user options to accept or reject the ad through a thumbs up/down system, will replace unwanted ads with brands you have “meshed” with, and offers notifications about what brands are attempting to connect with you. MESH currently works on Chrome.
PikFly (Phoenix) If you are craving your favorite salsa, baked goods or beauty product made by your local merchant but don’t have time to get it, no worries, PikFly will bring it to you. This startup is helping small businesses sell more products Valley-wide by aggregating products in their marketplace from locally owned, non-franchised businesses and offer same-day delivery. The cost of the delivery is based on distance to the destination ranging from $7 to $20, and an additional fee for heavier orders. PikFly has over 60 merchants and is currently servicing customers in The Valley of the Sun with more cities to come.
Read more about Tallwave at AZTB
Photo contribution courtesy of Tallwave