startupi

The Imagine Cup, an international technology competition for students that held its finals in June in Egypt, awarded first prize in the Design category to Willburn, a team from Bauru, in the state of São Paulo. Don’t worry, dear readers. I know you are interested in technology, innovation, business and other noble causes: Willburn’s work is not just eye-candy! This team was considered best in the world this year for building a platform which interprets gestures to create an educational tool. Called Cheops (as in the most intact of the Seven Wonders of the World) it is a multitouch application for assistance in literacy. Confused? Take a look at the following video and interview! Read more…

Imagine a world where technology helps solve the world’s toughest problems. This was the theme of the Imagine Cup 2009, an international competition for technology students. Imagine, too, that among over 300,000 competitors from 142 countries, five Brazilian teams won four of the nine official categories, plus three of the ten special prizes. Brazil was on top of the world in this year’s edition of the event. Check out the winning teams and their projects. Read more…

Last month HotWords, the Brazilian contextual advertising company, merged with Canalmail, one of the two big Spanish digital marketing companies. Read more…

In September 2006 the blog Read Write Web (RWW) had a post called “Top Web Apps in Brazil “. Fabio Seixas was the source of that information and gave RWW an overview of the Brazilian web app market. The idea behind this post was to find out what’s happening with the web apps cited in that post since then.

Read more…

One of the objectives of Startupi is to encourage the Brazilian startup market by encouraging awareness of startup efforts and projects. There’s no doubt it is interesting for us and for the whole ecosystem to consolidate and enable a free exchange for this information.

Having said this, I’ve launched a form for anyone who has a technology startup, webapp shop, etc. to send us information about their project so we can add posts, analysis or interviews. Over time we intend to create a collaborative database for the public.

As it’s not possible to discover every startup that exists - and there are many - I’m counting on collaborating from these entrepreneurs to help us with this project. It’s easy - just fill out the Google Spreadsheet form at this link.

Don’t be shy! Thanks!

This blog, Startupi, has a definite objective. In Brazil in recent years there’s been a surge in internet startups, businesses seeking a place in the sun. It’s a market of people with innovative ideas which is not covered anywhere on the internet.

The idea originated when an American investor, Michael Nicklas, was researching the Brazilian market and could not find a single source for this type of information. In his search he contacted people like Gilberto Jr. and founded Social Smart to promote investment in the Brazilian market.

SocialSmart is a holding company that is an umbrella for two startups at the moment: Amanaiê, which develops social applications (predominantly using Open Social) and now Startupi, this blog which intends to cover the growing Brazilian startup market.

But is there an audience for this?

This question is easily answered. For starters there are many undiscovered tech startups in Brazil. Moreover, there are already investors interested in this market who are putting their money into innovative ideas.

The great challenge for Startupi is to stimulate this market in various ways: connecting entrepreneurs and investors, educating people with good ideas on how to procede, transforming the Brazilian market into an attractive place for venture capital, and more.

So enjoy this blog and I hope that Startupi serves as a platform for discussion about the startup market in Brazil.