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Think you want to start a new company and need a little funding and guidance? You might want to check into an incubator program. Today I was in Boulder, Colorado as TechStars 2008 Investor and Demo day as it launched its second years worth of startups. TechStars was founded last year by David Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown and Jared Polis and helped produce some great new startups in its first year. I previously visited the TechStars office last time I was in Boulder. Today I wanted to give you a preview of the startups that presented. TechStars Boulder demo day 2008 Class
The following 2008 TechStars startups launched:
App-X – Aimed squarely as VC’s and investors, App-X offers software as a service for venture capital and private equity fund managers and to pensions, endowments and other parties that invest in venture capital and private equity. BuyPlayWin – We all buy stuff online but do you usually buy things then turn around and battle other shoppers to get the item of free? Probably not. BuyPlayWin looks to offer the first tournament marketplace where users can win items that they plan on buying. While I like the concept, this product may have trouble gaining traction by training consumers that are used to making transactions to play games afterwards which introduces friction to the sales process. Devver – If you are a developer you might like Devver as it is a little bit more on the geek-side of the user spectrum. Devver looks to turn a developer’s desktop tools into cloud-based services. By putting developers tools in a cloud it enables them to execute more quickly, reduce setup and configuration time and enable easy scheduling, reports and make sharing easier. Foodzie – Looking for new cheese from around the world might now be possible as Foodzie offers a marketplace for small artisan producers. Foodzie is like a decentralized food version of Etsy . Foodzie definitely has promise and I expect them to do some great things. Gyminee – Having trouble getting to the gym to workout consistently? If so Gyminee is looking to help by offering a fitness social network for detailed tracking, online accountability and motivation. Users can find workout programs and track progress as well as find other workout buddies online to help them stay motivated. Ignighter – Humans are herd animals. There I said it. Thank being said wouldn’t make more sense to date as a herd? Well that is just the approach that Ignighter has taken by offering a group dating site where you and your friends and go out with others and their friends. This could take some of the awkwardness out of a blind date and might be a fun little group adventure. Peoples Software – Making plans with your friends might have just gotten a little easier as WhozAround? , a set of tools for planning and scheduling events with you friends. Founded by Susan Mernit, formerly of Yahoo, and Lisa Williams the tools plug into Facebook and your mobile phone directory making possible to setup events with one click. This startup reminds me a little bit of Plany.pus . Occipital – I use online photography sites like Flickr and Picnik regularly and occipital looks to help people like me interact with my photography. Occipital uses artificial intelligence to help organize your photo stream with a visual interface. This could be very interesting startup that reminds me of Photosynth , a Microsoft product, which presented at the TED Conference. The Highway Girl – Unlike most startups funded by TechStars, The Highway Girl, is a traveling music show hosted by the founder, singer songwriter, Samantha Murray. The show aims to sync up with artists and give their behind the scenes story (sort of reminds me of VH1 Behind the Music). The Highway Girl also will distribute exclusive music content on its website. Samantha performed on stage for us all and she is a talented musician. Travelfli – Frequent Flyer numbers, car rental account rewards, hotel rewards programs all offer travelers ways to cash in for using its service while traveling. Unfortunately, with all these accounts it is sometimes unclear as to what you can do with all your points. Travelfli looks to become a central repository for all these travel related rewards programs as it looks to educate and help travels take advantage of all their travel rewards programs. Travelfli also offers users the ability to send travel reservations directly to the service using it as a repository similar to that of TripIt . I know for a fact I am going to use Travelfli as I could use a hand with this very problem. Anchoring a solid TechStars Investor Day is Tech Cocktail Boulder 2 which I am co-hosting. The ten new Boulder startups from the TechStars program willdemo in an expo-style at the event which was open to the public and has several hundred attendees RSVPed. It should be a lot of fun and a great way to wrap up the 2008 TechStars program. We thank Lijit , TechStars and Me.dium for sponsoring the event – we couldn’t do it without your support! Did you like this article? No
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Frank Gruber is the cofounder, CEO and Executive Editor of Tech.Co (formerly Tech Cocktail). He is the author of the book, Startup Mixology, Tech Cocktail’s Guide to Building, Growing, and Celebrating Startup Success . He is also a startup advisor and investor to startups.Find Frank Gruber online and follow him on Twitter at @FrankGruber . 0Shares

TechStars Demo Day and Tech Cocktail Boulder

Aug 1, 2014
- Camila Souza for the San Francisco Edition
Foodzie co-founders Rob LaFave and Emily LaFave launched Forage , an ingredients and recipe delivery service that allows customers to recreate their favorite restaurant dishes in the comfort of their homes. Both co-founders previous venture, online food marketplace startup Foodzie, was acquired by video eCommerce service Joyous  in a combination cash and stock deal. Putting their entrepreneurial experience in online food delivery service to test once again, their new venture  Forage  allows customers to have a restaurant-like experience in the comfort of their homes and without the hassle of prepping the ingredients. Forage has access to recipes from various restaurants all over town, so you can pick your dish and they deliver the ingredients to your home along with the recipe (You don’t even have to go shopping). They set you up to cook and savor. This is a fair compromise between getting your food delivered in a brown paper bag and having to deal with everything that comes with eating out. It is an alternative to saving not only time but money. “Our mission is to help people connect through good food. As we set out to help people cook more often, we heard over and over that people only have about 20 minutes to cook a weeknight dinner. And then it hit us… Every restaurant can fire a dish in 20 minutes,” stated in the website. So now imagine your favorite dish, personalized to your buds (spicier or zestier) at the comfort of your home. Sounds like a great Friday plan to me. Did you like this article? Yes No
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Foodzie Co-Founders Launches Food Delivery Service Forage

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San Francisco is a great town for foodies and Forage , the brain child of Foodzie founders Rob and Emily LaFave , has emerged as an option for those who want to cook their favorite restaurant dishes at home. The service, which launches today, gathers all the ingredients used in selected restaurant recipes and hand-delivers them right to your door. The promise is that amateur chefs will be able to make these same great meals as the pros in under 20 minutes. It’s a twist on the crowded restaurant meal-delivery startup trend, and it’s piqued the interest of Twitter’s Ev Williams and Whole Foods Board Member Hass Hassan, both of whom have invested an undisclosed, but modest sum into the company, according to Emily LaFave. Forage pairs up with notable SF restaurants like Dosa and Hapa Ramen, and then sources ingredients from some of their more popular dishes. Alta CA’s pierogies tend to sell out before 8 pm every night, for instance. But folks can order from Forage to get the same exact ingredients, and then follow its instructions to make those same dishes in the comfort of their own homes. The idea came from Emily’s background working in restaurant kitchens and culinary school. “We could cook anything in less than 20 minutes,” she says. “This isn’t about chopping your onions for you. Think pork ramen stock and fresh ramen noodles from Hapa Ramen, fresh pierogi dough from Alta SF, dosa batter from DOSA, or Greek marinated meats from Souvla, all restaurants in San Francisco.”
Emily believes Forage picks up where Foodzie left off by incorporating a restaurant cooking element instead of just delivering food items. Joyus swallowed up Foodzie in a combo cash and stock deal a couple years back. While most of the dishes are sourced from SF restaurants, Forage will deliver their meal kits all over California. Emily mentions plans to expand beyond the Golden State as things get rolling, but the main goal is to teach the foodies in California how to cook like a restaurant chef for now. “I believe most people will build their cooking skills by showing up and cooking each week, not through a culinary program like most professionals,” she says. “You can learn something even in 20 minutes.”
The cost for the meals is $60 a week, which buys you four credits. Each credit equals a meal serving, for a flat price of $15 each. You don’t get to choose which dishes you want when you want them, however. Each week has a specific food theme. Some weeks it’s all South Indian meals, while another might be Greek or Eastern European. The meals are selected each week by Forage’s editorial team and head chef Stephen Beaumier (formerly of Cyrus, Quince, and Noma). “Foragers,” as those who order from the site are called, can also submit meals they would like to see shared at some point. Forage then does the legwork to connect with the restaurant and get access to their recipes. “With the innovation in the delivery model and chef ­derived ingredients, we can create fresher, higher quality, and more interesting ingredients to speed up cooking time and maximize flavor,” Emily says.

Play Chef With Forage’s Twist On Restaurant Delivery

Small companies test the waters with e-commerce firms' deals of the month; the marketing is targeted, but the returns are murky. By Maggie Overfelt
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Early Bird Foods Nekisia Davis' Early Bird Foods saw a 30% increase in sales after its granola was included in a Foodzie box. Nekisia Davis, founder of Early Bird Foods in Brooklyn, recently took a marketing gamble. Foodzie, a San Francisco firm that sells monthly subscriptions for its boxes of small-batch, artisanal food, wanted to include a bag of Early Bird's olive oil-tinged granola in one of its March shipments. While Ms. Davis found the idea of 2,800 potential new customers alluring, the deal did come at a cost. The size of Foodzie's one-time order was more than double what Early Bird typically fills in a week, but Foodzie would pay about 20% less than what Ms. Davis charges other stores that carry her goods. "It's about exposing 2,800 people to Early Bird who haven't heard of us before," she said. In the end, the deal seemed to pay off. Early Bird has seen a roughly 30% increase in online sales since spring. "I only know this through many, many people telling me they received the box," said Ms. Davis, whose 3-year-old company pulled in $250,000 in revenue last year. She said she would definitely do a deal like this again. "Foodzie markets to people who buy specialty food already—they'll buy a $9 bag of granola and not blink—and that's the customer base I'm looking for. "
Early Bird is one of many small companies in New York City testing the waters of subscription commerce ("subcom" for short), a rapidly growing corner of the $200 billion e-commerce market. According to industry insiders, more than 30 firms like Foodzie operate Web-based deal-of-the-month club models, charging anywhere from $10 to $40 a month for their preselected assortment of goods that target a particular niche. BarkBox, for example, sources high-end dog supplies, Bespoke Post culls men's luxury lifestyle gear, and Birchbox, a New York startup that helped pioneer the market, sells beauty-product samples. As the market swells—Birchbox has more than 100,000 paid subscribers, up from 50,000 in 2010—so does a potentially lucrative marketing channel for emerging brands. Cravebox, which was spun off of SheSpeaks, a winner in Crain's New York Business' Perfect Pitch competition, peddles lots of household brand names, but 40% of its product partners are small and midsize businesses, said Cravebox CEO Kitty Kolding. "Target marketing can be a challenging and expensive thing to do, particularly if you [operate] in a small niche," said Dan Hesse, founder and CEO of Local Offer Network, a daily-deals aggregator based in Chicago. With the boxes, "merchants now have a more effective way than ever to put their products in front of people likely to be interested in them. "
Elizabeth Stein, CEO of the three-employee Purely Elizabeth, an organic, gluten-free food line she founded in 2009, said she's seen a sharp rise in repeat customers online since her cereal samples were included in an October box from Blissmo, which appeals to shoppers searching for eco-friendly products. "So many people are reluctant to try something new," said Ms. Stein, whose Manhattan company has revenues of less than $10 million. "But this is about giving them an easy trial, and hopefully then they become loyal customers. "
However, as Ms. Stein and other small business owners can attest, the return on investment of getting into a box can be a little murky. The subcom space is a primordial soup; players' business plans vary greatly. While Foodzie and BarkBox pay wholesale prices for the merchandise they pick, Blissmo asks partners to provide free samples. And Cravebox, which boasts 200,000 affluent subscribers, charges brands a $5 slotting fee for each box they want to be placed in, which can quickly add up for a small company. Most require partners to pay for shipping to their fulfillment centers, but many box companies will handle marketing extras like company write-ups. "If you're going to lose money on the transaction itself, you have to be very careful. Not only are you spending money to produce your product, you're also paying to get it into the box," said Utpal Dholakia, a management professor at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business, who has been studying the subcom market. "And of course, the biggest hurdle is that there's no guarantee that the consumer is ever going to buy anything from you ever again. "
Correction: SheSpeaks is no longer the parent company of Cravebox. That fact was misstated in an earlier version of this article, published July 12, 2012.

Thinking inside the subscription box

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Online food marketplace and subscription tasting box service Foodzie has been acquired by video eCommerce service Joyus,  in a combination cash and stock deal. “It was clear to me that video was the key to telling stories about food,” Foodzie co-founder Emily Olson wrote in an email to users, “The people, the place, and the craft behind the food. Video brings all of this to life.” Foodzie will eventually become “Joyus Food,” joining Apparel, Home, Beauty, and Lifestyle as a branded category. The company will continue to offer its signature tasting boxes on a one-off basis, but will discontinue its subscription service after July. The seven person Foodzie team will all join Joyus, which uses online video to help customers discover things they’d like to buy across multiple verticals — sort like the Home Shopping Network, but on the Internet. Joyus, which has raised $7.9 million from Accel Partners, presents short video vignettes like “World’s Best Makeup Setting Spray” and “Essential Eats For The Backyard BBQ”  in order to entice users to buy a collection of products. Foodzie raised a modest $1.02 million from Jeff Clavier and others prior to its acquisition. Those with a keen eye might notice that the “Essential Eats For The Backyard BBQ”  vignette actually stars Olson, who will be moving onto a video host role inside Joyus, becoming the chief curator of Joyus Food. Co-founder and husband Rob LaFave will take on a business development type position. Olson also tells me that aside from a content standpoint, the company decided that Joyus would be the best fit based on the  background  of its founder and Chairman Sukhinder Singh Cassidy. Former Googler Cassidy has been named one of the  Most Powerful Women in Business by Fortune and has spent time at Amazon and as CEO of Polyvore for two years. So she knows her eCommerce shiz I’m assuming. Olson asserts that her vision for a successful eCommerce company is one that includes all verticals, and she feels like the Foodzie ethos has much more of a chance for success within a larger company. “There will be some new big players emerging. I think the big e-commerce businesses that will be built will involve multiple categories where you can leverage resources across categories,” Olson said, “but will take a different approach on discovery whether that’s video, flash sale, personalization or subscription.”
She’s super-positive about not just an end, but a new beginning for Foodzie after a four year-long journey. “Four years ago, Rob and I lived in North Carolina far away from any entrepreneurial community,” Olson told me, about the rewards of getting Foodzie off of the ground and what she learned about creating a startup, “Through building this company we are now in the center of both a food and entrepreneurial community in San Francisco. Four years later, I see a huge amount of interest and demand for the good food we wanted to share with the world (that continues to grow) and that feels pretty awesome. Oh and did I mention I created a job where I eat good food for a living? Chocolate is the ultimate reward. ;)”
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Food Subscription Service Foodzie Gets Gobbled Up By Video Shopping Network Joyus

Companies in the agtech space, such as equipment manufacturers, surveying drones, geospatial intelligence firms, and farm management platforms

Agriculture Technology (Agtech)

Startups and tech companies offering online grocery, food, beverage, and meal delivery services.

Food & Meal Delivery

Acquired

Seed VC

Seed VC - II

Foodzie is an online marketplace for food lovers to discover and buy food directly from small, artisan producers and growers.  Foodzie's views its mission as one that aims to help change the way people eat. More specifically, Foodzie aims to help the small food producers across the country find customers and grow their business.

In June 2012, Foodzie was acquired by Joyus. The valuation of Foodzie was undisclosed. Other terms of the deal were not released.

Name	Work History	Title	Status
Emily Olson		Founder	Current
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Name	Emily Olson	Subscribe to see more
Work History
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Wells Fargo Success Story

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Platform Overview

Foodzie

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Foodzie Management Team

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