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Pitch Across Maryland tour scopes out ed tech at Towson
When the Pitch Across Maryland bus tour visited Towson University this week, it heard from local startup companies that are
trying to help teachers and students, such as by making studying more effective and finding the best place to have a beer.
The three-week tour is Startup Maryland’s fourth annual celebration of entrepreneurship in the state — part showcase, part pep rally, part networking event for emerging businesses.
“Our biggest goal for Startup Maryland is retention,” said Startup Maryland founder Mike Binko. “We want to keep great talent, great individuals, and great ventures here – not just in Maryland, but in this region.”
With that in mind, the bus tour focuses on what Binko calls “the four Cs”— celebration, coaching, connections and capital — and on building a sense of community, he said.
At each stop, a handful of entrepreneurs will get on Startup Maryland’s big yellow bus – technically an RV – and record a two- to four-minute pitch video for their company. Those videos will be uploaded to YouTube when the tour is over so viewers can vote for their favorites.
A panel of investors, advisers and serial entrepreneurs will also review the videos and select eight finalists to present at the Maryland Technology Development Corp. (TEDCO) Entrepreneur Expo Nov. 17, Binko said.
Wednesday afternoon’s tour stop focused largely on education technology startups, including several residents of the university’s TU Incubator.
One of those is HonorScroll, an electronic platform that crowd-sources review materials to help users study, said CEO and Co-founder Christopher Vasiliades, a law student at the University of Maryland who got the idea for the app while he was clerking for a Court of Special Appeals judge.
Vasiliades realized he was already forgetting much of what he’d learned in his classes and was often looking at his phone to check Twitter and Facebook.
“I thought, OK, what if every time I pull out my phone, I [see] short, little tidbits of information that are related to my studies?” he said.
HonorScroll users enter the ISBN numbers of the textbook they’re using for class, then use the program to make notes — sort of like digital flash cards – that are then shared with every other user studying the same text, Vasiliades said.
When users look at their phone, a review note will appear, offering a quick reminder of what they’ve been learning, he said. There’s also a social-networking component that will allow users to connect with each other, he said.
The company is finishing up a final version of the app that it plans to launch within the next month, using Towson University as a proving ground, Vasiliades said.
Another education technology company that pitched on the bus is Communication APPtitude, founded by a pair of speech-language pathologists. The company has developed a series of apps to help middle school and high school students with various learning disabilities build their vocabulary.
So far, the two have financed the company – which has five apps available on Apple’s iOS store – by themselves, said Co-founder Beth Lawrence.
“We’re actually looking for funding [for] advertising, marketing, and also to build a web version,” Lawrence said. “That’s what the teachers are saying they need.”
A pair of Towson students boarded the bus to talk about an app they’ve developed to help users navigate the bar scene in a given area.
BarStars uses Yelp and Facebook data to “check-in” users when they arrive at a bar; the app then collects and reports this data so other users can instantly see how many of their friends are at each bar, the average age of the patrons and the ratio of men to women, said founder Joe Wernig, a graduate student in computer science.
“We keep everyone’s name private,” Wernig said. Users will be able to see how many of their Facebook friends are at a bar, for example, but not which ones, he said.
Bars will be able to pay a subscription fee to advertise within the app, Wernig said.
Other companies that recorded pitch videos included Hoppen, a social-networking app created by a local high school student, and Hop Theory, which sells sachets that can be dropped in a glass of dull beer to enhance the flavor.
Pitch Across Maryland will continue its tour through Oct. 2; upcoming stops include Fort McHenry, where the bus will meet up with Steve Case’s similarly-focused “Rise of the Rest” bus tour Monday morning; and Port Covington, where Betamore and Plank Industries are hosting the inaugural Beta City event Oct. 1.
