Are you passionate about leveraging the power of technology to build a better world? Startup Weekend and Hub Ventures are teaming up to launch a “Technology for Good” 54-hour event at Hub San Francisco, located in the thriving SOMA tech corridor. We’re bringing together talented startup enthusiasts to spend the weekend building mobile, web, software, and gaming solutions focused on economic empowerment and job creation, health and safety, the sharing economy, sustainable transportation, civic engagement, and more. The top teams will be admitted to the finalist round for the Spring 2013 cohort of Hub Ventures, an opportunity to take your startup to the next level. Winners will also receive valuable perks including Facebook Ads credits.
Hub Ventures is a startup accelerator that provides funding and support to for-profit, scalable startups leveraging the power of technology to solve the world’s biggest challenges. The program is based at the Hub Bay Area, a purpose-driven collaborative workspace, and provides high caliber entrepreneurs with a rich ecosystem that helps them build their companies better and faster. We operate 12-week program cycles during which startups receive seed funding of up to $20,000 and engage in mentorship with experienced entrepreneurs and investors, weekly workshops and speaker events, peer collaboration, and investor connections. Hub Ventures is part of the Global Accelerator Network, championed by TechStars. Applications for the Spring 2013 cohort are open until December 10.
Check out these exciting "tech for good" platform opportunities during the event:
Mobileworks is the world's first "fair trade" crowdsourcing platform. Backed by Hub Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, Bee Partners, and more, Mobileworks provides web applications and startups access to thousands of skilled, qualified, and fairly paid workers from around the world that can be embedded in an application in seconds. Startup Weekenders can build a complete solution in hours, with microwork employees from around the world, simply by using the Mobileworks platform and API to automatically hire people to carry out work.
CheckInOn.Me, a Hub Ventures company, welcomes hackers to use our new API. CheckInOn.Me is a proactive automated personal safety system that checks on people as often as they want, whenever they want. If we don't get the right response in the right amount of time, an emergency process can be triggered. Our technology assures that kids walk to and from school safely, gives domestic violence victims a virtual buddy system, monitors the ill/homebound and their medical regimens, and helps women around the world walk through their cities confidently. Developers can build some or all of our patent-pending technology and approach into websites, apps, and other systems. Target audiences include online daters, realtors, kids, Craigslist buyers/sellers, and people on both sides of ride sharing, couch surfing, and errand running experiences. Your app can change lives!
Givkwik, a Hub Ventures portfolio company, is a social rewards platform for good causes. Starting at just 25 cents per touch, our GIV button makes it easier and more affordable to discover and reward your favorite nonprofit organizations. Developers can integrate our GIV button and points engine API to create playful ways to learn about a good cause, say "yes" to support it and broadcast to the social graph. Games, social interactions, competitions and alternative input mechanisms (accelerometer, camera, geo-location, bluetooth, etc.) are encouraged.
Africa's Talking makes it very easy for developers to build applications for the basic mobile phone. While internet penetration rates are still in the low tens in Africa, the basic mobile phone is now a mainstream product in Africa. In order to reach this population, applications based on the basic mobile phone i.e. SMS & USSD applications are the missing link. Our SMS/USSD API makes it very easy for developers to integrate SMS & USSD into any website, CRM or ERP. Examples of applications using our API are www.changa.co.ke (SMS Based Crowd Funding), www.smsvoices.com (SMS Polls & Surveys), www.smsleopard.com (Bulk SMS communication system), www.m-kopa.com (Affordable Solar Lighting Solutions). USSD Applications include M-PESA (Kenya's highly successful mobile money transfer system), Mobile Banking and Credit Top Up. Our API provides you access to SMS Shortcodes, SMS Sender IDs, USSD Codes and has easy to follow tutorials in major programming languages. The basic mobile phone remains the channel of choice to finally bridge the digital divide by offering services across the basic mobile phone. Developers can use our API to enable basic mobile phone users to access information from the web e.g. an SMS Query system, build SMS native systems such as www.changa.co.ke or even integrate SMS/USSD into CRM and ERP systems.
