Startups

Basho Co-Founder Antony Falco has raised $3 million for Orchestrate.io, a database API similar to Twilio in its capability to ease the complexity of adding features to mobile and web applications. True Ventures led this initial round joined by Frontline Ventures and Resonant Venture Partners. Falco, who left Basho a few months ago, said Orchestrate.io solves the problems that developers face when building feature-rich applications. Often it means adding multiple databases for geo-spatial, time series or any number of other features. The database problem has been ongoing. It in part stems from the limits of scale with relational databases. Over the years, companies like Amazon and Google reached their own ceilings and were forced to develop new kinds of databases for high-volume queries. The result is a lot of time spent babysitting databases so the applications run well. Orchestrate.io acts as a service on a service, abstracting the database layer. Twilio successfully simplified the way developers accessed services, such as SMS and voice. Falco sees a service that also allows developers to add features by pulling the data through an API . “The comparison with Twilio and Sendgrid is not around the problem we solve but the pattern,” Falco said in an email interview. “We are taking a complex and burdensome task — running lots of databases — and putting it behind an API that programmers can use to more quickly build apps. Twilio and Sendgrid both do a similar thing, vastly simplifying the complex, for telecom and email infrastructure, respectively. Orchestrate.io uses in-memory technology for its service. “Memory — storing indexes and hot data in memory — will be critical to performance,” Falco said. “There are three tiers – the active data and indexes in memory, disk storage for durability and data less often accessed, and as data ages and becomes inactive, a cheaper tier of fault-tolerant storage. The more we serve reads out of the memory, the better our performance will be and, without a lot of latency, users will be able to execute relatively rich queries that might require three or four queries, made sequentially, to separate databases.” Orchestrate.io is using open source databases to build the service. “We aren’t going to build databases,” Falco said. “The databases themselves can change; we are not tied to any one database. Riak (a Basho service) is of course ideal for this use case — for forming part of the foundation of this service. But other than that, we aren’t really tied to any one thing.” The company will use multiple data centers for its service to help get the data as close as possible to the application and the user. That makes sense considering the potential performance issues that may come when a large enough group of users are using a service that is just in one place. For example, an application may be installed in Amazon Web Services East region, and there might be a large number of users in London. Orchestrate will have a large enough data center footprint across different providers to accommodate users no matter their locations. The interesting story for me is about the future of the database. The real gold is in the data, but it is like a pool of oil without a way to access it. Databases access the data, organize and make it available for query. It’s inefficient. And that’s just when a developer is dealing with one database. Add a few as the features build out and the developer faces a Rube Goldberg system. It’s about getting the work done, not herding cats in a data center.

Think technology is mostly for the young? It’s just as much for the young at heart, regardless of physical age. That’s according to a new report from CDW. “Even as the Baby Boomers enter their 60s and 70s, there’s no slowing down this demographic. Most likely the buyers of the first home computers on the market, seniors are still keeping up with today’s modern technologies,” CDW reports. In particular, however, technology is playing a more active role than ever in healthcare for seniors. To prove what a powerhouse for senior health technology has become, check out the new infographic from CDW below.

The typical employer pays an average of $10,000 a year per employee for healthcare.  Keas announced at Healthbeat today two new content partnerships with My Healthy Dish and Noshtopia that will help employees make wiser nutritional choices and save employers money on health care costs.  Businesses use Keas to create and manage their workplace health programs. The system promotes healthy behavior and teamwork by rewarding people for achieving simple exercise and nutrition goals through games and social motivation. Keas’ CEO Josh Stevens said that seventy to eighty percent of health care costs are preventable, like those caused by smoking and over-eating, or conditions triggered by certain habits and behaviors. Unhealthy habits can lead to lower productivity and the business bears the brunt of these costs. Keas uses gamification to make losing weight and making healthy choices a fun, social, and mobile experience.  “It is in employers’ best interest to motivate their employees to do the right thing,” Stevens said. “Healthcare costs are rising and every time an employee takes personal time off to visit a doctor or fill a prescription can result in $250-$500 in productivity costs. The productivity savings of health employees are huge.”  Stevens said his goal is to provide solutions for the “99 percent of a patient’s life when they are not a patient.” Often this means supporting actions like eating more fruits and vegetables and reducing stress. Obesity-related conditions cost around $150 billion a year and a nutritious diet is a central element of overall wellness.  Keas recently conducted a survey to track employee sentiment towards nutrition and gain insight into what it can do to improve workforce habits. The survey found that 73 percent of the U.S. workforce frequently or always reads nutrition labels, 86 percent is eating breakfast at least 5 days a week, and 94 percent is increasing the daily intake of fruits and vegetables. 63 percent believe that fast food and junk food are leading causes of obesity, and an increasing number of people are turning to home-cooking in an effort to eat healthier.  The partnerships with My Healthy Dish and Noshtopia will help employees do things like prepare green smoothies for the morning and provide inspiration for simple-to-prepare healthy dinners.   “These are the folks that publish best content in nutrition,” Stevens said. “They provide meal planning and recipe ideas from experts that employees can use for inspiration. We want to bring everyone together, including CFOs, HR teams, wellness experts, and employees in one central portal.” The easier it is to integrate nutritious eating into every day life, the healthier employees will be and the less employers will have to pay. It seems like a win-win, except for, maybe, the fast food franchises. Photo Credit: Michael O’Donnell/VentureBeat Filed under: Enterprise, Health, Mobile, Social HealthBeat 2013 is a new conference showcasing how technology is transforming health care. We'll explore how IT is driving out inefficiencies on the hospital, practice, and patient levels. Check out full event details here, and register here. .blurb-cat-health hr { margin: 10px 0 10px 0; }

Numbler is like Scrabble and Sudoku had a baby. Players build math equations in a familiar crossword style board. It has all the mental fun of popular games like Scrabble and Words with Friends, but using numbers and equations instead of letters and words. Numbler is a universal app available of the Apple App Store and is suitable for educational and recreational users of all ages. Video (0:54): http://youtu.be/OSYRGwlPTV8

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Everybody’s talking about the m-commerce boom, but if you look past the sophisticated surveys, app owners are struggling to figure out why their conversion rates fall short of expectations. It’s not surprising if you consider the fact that mobile shopping cart abandonment rates are around 97 percent. Many frustrated developers have asked me how they can decrease these huge numbers that just don’t fit their business model. I’ve tried to look at this challenge differently, not as a payment expert but rather from a psychological viewpoint, exploring our users’ needs and expectations throughout the checkout process. Many influential payment companies in this ecosystem have introduced backend solutions that address merchants and developers’ needs. So as a developer you can now enjoy easy APIs, friendly onboarding, methods with reduced processing fees, all of which make their lives easier. The one factor that’s left out of this equation is the user, who somehow seems to be neglected, even though they’re the only one who controls the transaction. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a psychological theory used to understand human motivation. The hierarchy is based on five levels of needs. In order to reach the next level, a person must first satisfy the lower level of needs. Even though it’s a little far from the original framework, some of its principals can actually be applied to understand the influence of users’ needs in reference to mobile conversion rates. Basic needs: keep it simple Twenty-nine percent of mobile shoppers who abandoned the checkout process did so because they were required to register before buying. Mobile commerce is here to stay. We’re not just targeting early adopters anymore. However, in order to achieve mass market adoption the basic process needs to be clear and simple. Many app owners require that their users create an account, even for a one time purchase. Yet people need to get their feet wet before jumping in the water. Forcing users to register and remember yet another password can be a huge barrier for someone who still has concerns about their purchase. Every complication along the way gives the user a chance to stop and rethink their buying decision, while chasing away most impulse buyers among your users. This is obviously less basic than the need for air or food, but it’s probably the key factor to increasing conversion rates. Main takeaway: Facilitate a simple checkout, avoid forcing the user to create an account or use a password. Safety: Give them peace of mind Forty-two percent of consumers have stopped or abandoned a purchase on a website because of a safety or security concern. Security concerns are probably the #1 barrier to online shopping, and things don’t improve on mobile. However, it’s a matter of perception rather than facts. The level of security available with today’s range of technologies is high. Financial risks exist in the physical commerce world as well, but whenever there’s a mobile payment involved, the fear factor kicks in and users becomes more alert. Delivering a secure process isn’t enough; our biggest challenge is to make users FEEL that the process is secure. One of the problems in most checkout experiences on native apps is redirecting to the PSP’s web page to complete the transaction. At that very point where your user has finally grown to trust you, you pull them away to a different site and bring them back to square one in terms of their attitude towards the purchase. This triggers many doubts about this unfamiliar external page, about its level of security, and what could go wrong while trying to return to the app. Creating a full native experience will ease those concerns and give your users more piece of mind. Main Takeaway: Maintain a native in-app payment; avoid redirecting to an external web page. Belonging: create a familiar environment Forty-nine percent of mobile shoppers don’t shop more on their smartphone due to an awkward shopping experience. A

If there’s one thing the health care industry needs, it’s technology innovation that’s actually usable for both doctors and patients. To help identify the next generation of industry-changing innovations, VentureBeat’s HealthBeat conference included a Grand Rounds Innovation Showdown that pitted some of the most promising startups against a panel of expert investor judges. We received hundreds of nominations, and narrowed the field down to just 10 finalists. Today, those finalists made their pitches onstage at HealthBeat. We looked at five startups in each of two stages of development: those that have received $3 million or more in Series A or later funding, and those have received $300,000 to $3 million in seed-stage or early Series A funding. The winners, without further ado, are Beyond Lucid, the maker of a tablet app for emergency medical responders; and Liviam, a social networking tool for people with serious illnesses. Series A and above WINNER: Beyond Lucid Technologies Beyond Lucid Technologies created a tablet app and device system that serves emergency medical responders when they’re out on the road, answering calls. It ties location data to an emergency document for a specific patient, but won’t connect it to the internet so the location data works in any  type of weather. It can send patient data within 30 seconds, so doctors aren’t waiting for a piece of paper with the responder’s scribbles about the situation. It’s available for $1500 per mobile license. Currently, the company has raised $600,000. Procured Health Procured Health looks at all the different devices that a hospital that may need to buy. The problem with the current way hospitals order the thousands of different pieces of technology they use to keep people alive, is that doctors must rely on Google or costly analysis that is difficult to wade through. Procured Health is a software dashboard that pulls in data about all the different medical devices on the market and from there, analyzes them and can pull out relevant pieces of information that hospitals can use to make an educated purchase. For example, a doctor could see if a device recently had a bug that was fixed and could use that information to get a discount. Empower Interactive Empower Interactive is a software service that provides training on cognitive behavioral therapy techniques via web-based and mobile tools. CBT is an effective tool for improving mental health outcomes, and Empower’s research shows. Its tools are meant to be used in a clinical setting, in combination with talk therapy or other treatments. Ringadoc Ringadoc is a cloud-based calling service that connects patients directly to a doctor using a “ring-off system.” Jordan Michaels, the company’s chief executive and co-founder, explained that currently patients calling doctors go through a call center and the calls are often not recorded so information can go into the patient’s medical record. The way it works is a patient calls the same phone number they’ve always called and record their issue. That message is then sent directly to a the doctor’s app, allow the doctor to respond via text. The calls are then documented. Better Doctor BetterDoctor is a website and mobile app that helps you find a doctor. Ari Tulla, chief executive of BetterDoctor explained that 70 million people need to find a new doctor every year. Unfortunately, the process by which people do this is painful. You have to look one up through your insurance company, try to find ratings and any malpractice issues through Google, and then look at their website that often looks like it was built the same year Snake was. The app will look at your location and push different doctors around you to your phone. It further refines the search by your insuarnce plan and the specialty you need. The next step for BetterDoctor is to get more doctors on board because without them, the app will fail. Seed round competitors WINNER: Liviam Liviam provides a social

Having a child may be a joyful experience, but it is also an expensive and uncertain one. Women entrepreneurs can (and should) play a central role in developing products that address the unique and widespread set of problems faced by mothers everywhere. Four female entrepreneurs came together at Healthbeat today for a panel titled “By Women, For Women: Building Technologies for the Chief Medical Officer of the Home.” Each of these women has a child under the age of four and each is building technology that can cut down on the costs and fears associated with family medicine. A study by the Department of Labor found that women make approximately 80 percent of health care decisions for their families and are likely to be the care giver when a family member falls in. Despite this fact, only four percent of health care CEOs are women. There is a huge opportunity to improve the experience of care for pregnant women and mothers and bridge the gender gap between the people making consumer products and the people using them. “I started thinking about this company when starting a family of my own,” said Leah Sparks, cofounder and CEO of Wildlflower Health. “I worked in health care for a decade, but pregnancy was the first time I dealt with the health care system as a patient. It opened my eyes to gaps in terms of resources available and risks. When I first started talking about my idea for Wildflower, the response from VCs was it was a niche market. Women represent half the population and pregnancy is the number one driver of hospital costs a year — does that sounds like a niche to you?” Wildflower Health is a mobile platform that helps pregnant women track milestones customized to their due date, be aware of risk factors, and take personalized actions. The app has already reached 15,000 pregnant women and can significantly cut down on doctor visits by helping women monitor their pregnancy and feel like they are in control of the process. The costs and fears don’t end once a baby is born. Quite the opposite. Infants and toddlers present whole new sets of health concerns. After spending hours and hours in the pediatricians office with her now two-year-old, Amy Sheng set out to create more convenient alternative. “Anyone who has children knows that pit you get in your stomach when your child is sick,” she said. “The options are either to take your kid to the doctor during the work day, or go after hours to an urgent care clinic or ER. Neither of those options are good. People want to be empowered in their home to see what is wrong with their kid, to collect data and make an informed decision about whether it is serious enough to see a doctor.” Sheng is a cofounder of CellScope, a company that makes a smartphone attachment that can snap images of middle ears. Sheng said and there are 25 million ear infection related visits a year in the U.S and ear infections are one of the most common reasons why kids go to see doctors. Using the CellScope, parents can capture photos of their children’s’ ear and transmit it to a doctor to be diagnosed and treated remotely, or brought in for a visit if necessary. Wildflower Health and CellScope strive to cut down on the time women spend in clinical environments and provide the tools they need to manage their health from home. This not only cuts down on cost and anxiety levels, but also has significant implications for the position of women leaders. Having children is frequently cited as an obstacle to women advancing their careers. Maternity leave is undesirable for employers who don’t want to disrupt workflow and many mothers struggle to balance a time-consuming professional life with the demands of young children. Discrimination against pregnancy and mothers is an issue that contributes to the ‘gender problem’ in the business world, and any tool that can save women time stands to support their profession

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There’s been a lot of debate around what the right age to be an entrepreneur is, and if there’s really a correlation between age and running a successful business. Well, we have some new input for you on those questions: We met three extremely smart entrepreneurs – aged 13, 16, and 22 – on a youth panel at TiEcon 2013, and they’ve been up to some cool stuff. Jordan Casey, 13 If you think Mark Zuckerberg was young when he started Facebook, wait till you meet Jordan Casey, a self-taught programmer and the 13-year-old founder and chief executive of Casey Games from Waterford, Ireland. He hands you his business card with a smirk on his face and tells you, “I run an independent mobile video game company called Casey Games.” His inspiration was Club Penguin, a Flash multiplayer game. “I saw some of the users of the game were making websites about it, so I thought this could be a fun hobby, and so I went to the store and bought a book on programming,” said Casey, who started programming when he was all of nine. A year later he started working on programming projects and got himself into building games. Casey founded his company when he was 12 and already has four mobile games and one web game on the market. His first game, Alien Ball vs. Humans, which released in February 2012, was No. 1 on the app store game charts in Ireland. Casey has built key partnerships with Adobe and Microsoft, who provide him with free software and support his initiative. He has one staff member, a designer, and he tells us, “My parents have to be the directors of the company because I’m too young.” His parents are super proud of him, and they accompany him to conferences and events. “At first my parents didn’t understand what I was really doing. Instead of making games, they thought I was playing games,” said Casey. “Once they realized what I was doing, they became very supportive of me.” Tanay Tandon, 16 Nick D’Aloisio made waves when he sold Summly, his news summarization app, to Yahoo for a whopping $30 million this past March. That put 16-year-old Tanay Tandon, founder and chief executive of Clipped, a content summarization app, in the spotlight. Although Clipped provides an output similar to Summly, they use a different approach, Tandon told VentureBeat. “Summly has taken a keyword based approach to summarization, while Clipped is more grammatical,” he said. The Clipped algorithm “analyzes how humans might actually read content” based on “subject-predicate-object-pattern-like sentences” to draw summaries. A sophomore at Cupertino High in Cupertino, Calif., Tandon founded Clipped in January 2013, and he’s already seeing some traction. To date, he’s had 130,000 downloads for his iOS and Android apps, with 10 million summaries provided. He was incubated at Teens in Tech and is now “in talks” with some investors. He got started with programming on Android apps and wants to study “something computer science,” going forward. “People would drop out but I value education. I definitely want to go to college,” said Tandon, who wrote pattern recognition algorithms for his app from the ground up. When he catches time between school and his startup, Tandon like to play tennis. Aron Beierschmitt, 22 Aron Beierschmitt founded his company, Foundation Games, in 2010 when he was 19. He employs 15 people and has offices in San Francisco, Philippines, and Sydney today. He has raised $850,000 in funding from angel investors, including the founders of Treyarch – the guys behind the popular Call of Duty series – and some other veterans from the gaming industry. Interestingly, he stumbled upon his very first investor, Steve Vachani, on LinkedIn. “I took advantage of the early LinkedIn ability to send a lot of InMails without paying for them,” said Beierschmitt. So far, Beierschmitt and his team have developed five iOS games and are working on three more. “Most of our titles have seen typically 500 to a million downloads” with no real marketing, Beierschmitt told V