Inaugural Spreenkler graduation class of software and Internet company startups

Last week, Spreenkler Talent Labs hosted its official Launch Day in Milwaukee, showcasing its inaugural class of software and Internet company startups. The dinner and networking event presented an opportunity to meet the new emerging companies and recognize the months of hard work by the founders of these companies and the Spreenkler team in launching them. More importantly, it was an opportunity to recognize the initial concerted effort in the area to use a systematic approach to create, refine, and commercialize multiple software/Internet-based products and services. And probably even more importantly, as evidenced by the event, the incubator brings together a community of like-minded people from all parts of the region and ends of the political spectrum who are motivated to work together to create exciting new technology companies in our area.

The Companies

The first company that presented was Eventcopia. The company ties local businesses with customers by linking existing event calendar systems. It enables companies to provide more detailed information to their customers about the customers’ particular upcoming events, including things to anticipate in connection with the events and special pricing and offerings that the customers can take advantage of in connection with the event. Eventcopia has at least four beta customers in the Milwaukee area.

KnockDown Ninja is a company that “puts butts into seats.” It uses social media tools in a unique way for event promotion. Specifically, it uses peer-to-peer promotion and rewards those who promote an event through lower prices for the event for the promoters and their friends. The company takes a commission on sales and is current in beta testing.

The third company that presented was CrowdSling. The company organizes and validates opinions. How so? They provide a platform to users to identify issues and for others to take supporting or contrary positions. CrowdSling also enables others to evaluate the quality of the opinions and the ability to sort the opinions by how strong the opinions are rated.

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ZoomShift offers a web-based staff scheduling tool. It enables companies like restaurants to create and communicate schedules to employees within in a couple of minutes, rather than a few hours. It also allows employees to change and swap schedules through the application. It recently landed its first beta customer.

The final company that presented was Offermation. Offermation focuses on online advertising for small business. It uses a wizard web-based system to create and monitor online advertising campaigns. It covers online advertising, coupons, text messages, and other advertising mechanisms.

The Spreenkler Team

The lead Spreenkler team members—Greg Meier, Steve Glynn, Joe Kirgues, and Emmanuel Mamalakis—did a good job with its initial class and the launch day events. I look forward to the next one.

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Matt Storms is the president and founder of AlphaTech Counsel, S.C. , which works primarily with high growth companies with operations in the Midwest. In addition to his many articles on WTN News, Matt posts regularly on the AlphaTech blog, which can be found at http://alphatechcounsel.com/blog/. He can be reached at mstorms@alphatechcounsel.com.

The opinions expressed herein or statements made in the above column are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Wisconsin Technology Network, LLC. WTN accepts no legal liability or responsibility for any claims made or opinions expressed herein.