Wiggio

Wiggio, a startup out of Cornell University that provides group collaboration software for college students, recently surpassed 100,000 users. Since their January Beta launch, they've been seeing 1,000 users sign up daily and have now spread to 500 colleges. Congratulations for reaching the milestone!

In their recent update, Dana Lampert (founder who started the company his senior year) explained that the next challenge will be to "sustain and accelerate this growth over the summer by starting to push exposure in some of our secondary markets, including non-profit organizations, youth sports leagues, K-12 schools, boy/girl scouts, religious groups, and small businesses."

They're now integrated with Facebook with their new app, Wiggio Boards. Here is a description that they put out:

In this app, you can create a Wiggio Board on Facebook, invite people from your Facebook network into this private group, and take advantage of some very powerful group communication tools. In short, you can post a message to your group from Facebook, from Wiggio, or by sending an email or text message into your group’s address. Each member can set how they’d like to receive these messages (by email, text message or a daily summary email). For example, I have a Wiggio Board for my family. I’m out on a Sunday afternoon and I text message into my family’s Wiggio Board to see when they want to meet. My message then goes to each person’s cell phone – my brother replies to the text message, and his reply gets redistributed back out to the whole group. All the while, this mobile discussion is being archived as a threaded conversation on Wiggio.

In the future, they aim to add video conferencing and instant messaging. Then you could really do group meetings in bed without leaving the dorm.

If you have some dough, they're looking for their second round of financing.

Are you looking for free advertising space, press coverage, or introductions to venture capitalists for potential investment? If so, check out our elevator video pitch competition on Vator.tv, a social network and media site for start-ups, entrepreneurs, and investors. We've partnered with the funded start-up becasue we share the same goals; to discover great companies and technologies, introduce them to the world, and analyze their models, stories, and impact they may have on you and I.

Are you able to pitch your company in under a minute, or even thirty seconds? Well, you should be able to do it in one sentence. The easiest way to do this is to compare your model to another one (or two if it is a combination) that people already know and understand. Just twist the story to make it specific to your company. You'll likely need a couple different versions if an individual isn't familiar with the other companies. Either way, its important to be able to pitch your start-up in different contexts. The simple reason for this is that people come to understand concepts, models, ideas, or value propositions by examining them from different angles or view points.Continue Reading...

Koofers, a site that helps students swap old tests, share notes, view grades, and post opinions of teachers, just received an infusion of $500,000 of a $2 million dollar round of financing. They were also recently named one of the top 25 finalists (out of 600) of Facebook's fbFund developers competition, which already received $25,000 from and in the running to receive the grand pot of $225,000. They'll be using the money to expand to more campuses past the 25 that they're already at.

Their name refers to an old term coined "coofers" in the early 1940's, which refers to old tests or homework that are available to students to study with for new tests. The term is actually specific to Virginia Tech where the startup was founded. LaunchBox Digital, an incubator similar to Obsidian Launch and Y Combinator, helped with the initial seed financing that got followed up by New Atlantic Ventures and Altos Ventures in the recent round.

The investment round follows a trend of similar investments that are geared towards educational sectors and startups that aim to help students and those interested in continuing education. Here are some examples:Continue Reading...

Wiggio is an all encompassing group management platform for college students that includes everything from document management to bulk text message reminders. It was created by Cornell Seniors to literally have all necessary functionality in one application instead of using, 5 different websites for 5 different features, bouncing countless emails to schedule meetings, using list-serves and phone trees to remind people when those meetings are, keeping track of who does what and where those revisions are kept, and having a single location to track deadlines and collaborate online when no one wants to roam into the winter cold to meet on the other side of campus in up state New York. Group projects in school are a straightup pain. Wiggio helps make group collaboration easy.

Startups that aim to tackled "pains" with actual solutions tend to fair better than those just trying to create a cool app just for the sake of it. This is likely part of the reason why they managed to raise nearly half a million in seed financing and captured the attention of students who are using it at 286 different campuses.

The platform literally streamlines the whole group process. But, they aren't trying to recreate the wheel by building their own applications; instead, they are leveraging applications already built and packaging them into one system. Below are some of the features that you can use to manage your group:Continue Reading...