For the sixth year in a row, Strategic News Service (SNS) is selecting up to 12 businesses - top startups or businesses with new startup technology - for world promotion, based on nominations by trusted strategic investment SNS Members. We believe that these FiReStarter businesses, which are integrated into the FiRe program, are on the cusp of making great strides in improving our world. They are businesses we believe you should know about.
How does the process work?
SNS Members have access to and knowledge of key world-changing new businesses, or businesses with new technologies, that deserve recognition. We therefore invite a select number of SNS Member investment firms to nominate businesses they know that fit into this high-caliber category. From these nominations, we perform reviews and select up to 12 finalists to feature at the FiRe conference. These are businesses we hope to follow for a very long time.
In addition to promoting these businesses before, during, and after FiRe, we follow up with each FiReStarter to learn how and in what ways their business has changed as a result of their participation at FiRe.
If you would like your company to be considered as a FiReStarter nominee in 2012, or if you have any questions, please contact Sharon Anderson-Morris, Director of SNS Programs, at sam@stratnews.com.
2012 FiReStarter Companies
Morphlabs, Inc. delivers efficient computing based on optimized cloud architecture. Our mCloud Solutions enable us to provide the most cost-effective platform for delivering cloud infrastructure and and maximizing productivity for network administrators and software developers - empowering everyone to join the cloud revolution. As passionate members of the evolving cloud ecosystem, we combine open-source software, commodity hardware and our years of experience in disruptive technology innovation to ensure that businesses of all sizes can innovate and compete.
Founded by industry pioneers, Morphlabs, Inc. is headquartered in Los Angeles, with operations in the Philippines, Japan and Australia.
With Adobe and Google as next door neighbors, the One to the World™ team develops world class software in the heart of Seattle's tech-centric Fremont District. OttW's executive team has decades of combined experience producing both live events and software-driven experiences on nearly every continent on Earth. Our combined disciplines, along with a deep understanding of how to entertain and engage audiences, have informed every feature, function and One to the World ™ service to work flawlessly and intuitively under real-world conditions. We're not just software engineers...we're not just event designers and producers...we're hybrids, and this product represents a truly special and unique synthesis of our collective experiences and successes.
CSRHUB provides transparent ratings on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and makes global sustainability data accessible. Its sustainability ratings system is a powerful way of viewing CSR brand performance and a tool to help corporate managers do benchmarking, market research, and supply chain management. CSRHUB provides environmental, employee, community, and governance ratings on about 5,000 large publicly traded companies in 135 industries and 65 countries.
CSRHUB's patent-pending system aggregates and normalizes over 1.9 million data elements from 100+ data sources and provides easy-to-use search and filtering tools. As a hub, it links back transparently to all data sources. CSRHUB users can customize company ratings according to their own values and explore the factors that affect a company's individual score in depth.
CSRHUB is a B Corporation, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Organizational Stakeholder, and a Silver Level supporter of Carbon Disclosure Project. For more information, contact Cynthia Figge, Co-Founder and COO, via the FiRe Mailroom.
Cynvenio Biosystems is developing game-changing technology aimed at substantially improving the treatment of cancer patients via the comprehensive molecular analysis of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) present in their peripheral blood and collected with a simple blood draw. The information derived from this "liquid biopsy" can inform physicians about disease progression or recurrence, and patient resistance to treatment, enabling them to formulate targeted therapy for each patient. Cynvenio's instrumentation and CTC diagnostic assays have the potential to eliminate expensive, unnecessary treatments and reduce the incidence of adverse reactions to drugs while increasing the efficacy of therapies - a compelling value proposition for patients, physicians, the pharmaceutical industry, and healthcare payors.
Cynvenio is a privately held, research-stage bioengineering company that was founded in 2007 on the strength of foundational technology developed at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a development contract funded by the U.S. Army Research Laboratories via the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies.
Easy Energy Systems Inc., founded in 2006 by Mark Gaalswyk, was started to address the U.S. focus on clean energy, the need to replace dependence on fossil fuel with renewable biofuels, mandated ethanol usage around the world to reduce greenhouse gases, and the revitalization of rural America.
EES has developed a Modularized Ethanol Production System (MEPS®) that is fully self-contained, fully automatic, and factory pre-built to be easily shipped and assembled anywhere in the world to build any size ethanol plant. Using proprietary technology, EES has successfully produced cellulosic ethanol in its pilot plant, and is focused on the entire waste-to-energy market sector utilizing such feed stocks as waste milk byproducts, waste paper, waste soda pop, waste wood, and waste crop residue such as corn cobs.
The MEPS unit solves a problem of ethanol production in that the automated, smaller-size units can be located closer to often bulky waste-feed stocks, eliminating large transportation costs and energy inefficiencies. The modular and scalable design allows for ethanol production to be tested on feed stocks in a limited fashion and then expanded to any size. EES can build ethanol plants from .5 million up to 5 million gallons and any multiples connected thereof. EES went public with the MEPS technology in January 2009 and already has over 1,000 systems quoted worldwide at a total value of quotations outstanding of over $3 billion.
Finsphere was founded on the simple idea of being able to use a person's mobile phone to help secure their identity. It sounds almost counter-intuitive, but that's exactly where some of the world's best and most powerful ideas come from. In order to bring its idea to reality, Finsphere has brought together some of the best people from relevant industries to the company.
Among its employees are people with deep knowledge of the banking and wireless industries, software engineering, analytics, regulatory environments, and finance. Finsphere employees have collectively worked in more than a dozen startups, dozens of Fortune 500 companies, and at times as independent consultants. They have also filed, or been issued, more than 40 patents (not including those Finsphere has filed and is still developing). The team has a shared vision of the type of company they want to build: one that sees business as a community dedicated to its customers, its partners, and its employees.
Magnet Systems is a next-generation enterprise software company. Powered by a cloud-based modern technology platform, Magnet's social business software offerings are focused on providing users a natural and intelligent experience.
Magnet's first application, Sales WIN (Workplace Interaction Network), is designed to help sales professionals win more deals, faster. Sales WIN tracks, organizes, and prioritizes sales activities during team and client interactions and collaboration.
FiReSpotter:Bill Janeway
Participating at FiRe 2011 Alfred Chuang, Founder and CEO (FiRe Speaker) Renee Spooner, Corporate Communications
Spigit is the leading provider of collective idea management software, connecting employees, customers, and business partners for innovation and insight discovery.
Using enterprise-grade social technology, Spigit's software taps into the collective intelligence of an organization and transforms it into actionable, predictive information. By incorporating incentives, idea graduation, idea trading, and real-time analytics, Spigit allows companies to harness the social capital within. Spigit's technologies are used by the largest and most innovative companies in the world, including Pfizer, AT&T, Southwest Airlines, Allstate, AAA, and Lloyds TSB. It currently powers innovation projects at numerous Fortune 2000 companies, and has been named Best of Software Interop 2008, and is listed on the AlwaysOn Global 250 list - the power list of the top 250 private global technology companies.
FiReSpotter:Cary Davis: Managing Director, Financial Services, Technology, Media and Telecommunications, Warburg Pincus
Terremark Worldwide (Nasdaq: TMRK) is a leading global provider of IT infrastructure services delivered on the industry's most robust and advanced technology platform. Leveraging data centers in the United States, Europe, and Latin America with access to massive and diverse network connectivity, Terremark delivers government and enterprise customers a comprehensive suite of managed solutions, including managed hosting, co-location, disaster recovery, security, data storage, and cloud computing services.
Terremark's Enterprise Cloud computing architecture delivers the agility, scale, and economic benefits of cloud computing to mission-critical enterprise and Web 2.0 applications, and its DigitalOps(R) service platform combines end-to-end systems management workflow with a comprehensive customer portal.
Participating at FiRe 2011 Chris Drumgoole, Senior Vice President (FiRe Speaker) Cynthia Klein, District Sales Manager Steve Neiger, VP Sales, West
Vantage Data Centers architects, builds, and leases highly efficient, scalable, and flexible data centers with unprecedented TCO savings. Vantage Data Centers buildings can reduce data-center power and cooling costs by millions of dollars per year. The Vantage Santa Clara campus is the largest LEED® Platinum candidate data-center project in the U.S. Tours of the Vantage campus are available to Future in Review attendees upon request.
Participating at FiRe 2011 Gregory Ness, Vice President, Marketing (FiRe Speaker) Jason Green, Director (FiRe Speaker)
Wave Systems Corp. (Nasdaq: WAVX) is a leading provider of client and server software for hardware-based digital identity and security. Wave's solutions enable organizations to know who is connecting to their critical IT infrastructure, to protect corporate data, and to strengthen the boundaries of their networks. Wave's core products are based upon the Trusted Computing Group's Trusted Platform Module, the industry-standard hardware security chip included on most enterprise-class PCs shipping today and deployed on an estimated 300 million PCs. Wave software is also compliant with the self-encrypting drive standard (Opal), which is being implemented by numerous hard-disk drive manufacturers to help protect data at rest.
Wave's flagship software offering, EMBASSY® Trust Suite, has been tested and qualified on platforms from all the leading PC OEMs. More than 60 million copies have been shipped from Dell alone, where it comes pre-installed on most business-class laptops. In 2007, Wave expanded its presence in hardware security by joining forces with global hard-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology. Wave is now the leading provider of support and management tools for Seagate's self-encrypting drive (SED) hard drives, available through Dell and others. Fujitsu, Hitachi, Samsung Semiconductor, and Toshiba have all recently developed their own versions of self-encrypting hard drives, compliant with the Opal storage specification from the Trusted Computing Group.
Participating at FiRe 2011 Steven Sprague, CEO (FiRe Speaker) Brian Berger, Executive Vice President, Marketing and Sales
For the sixth year in a row, Strategic News Service (SNS) is selecting up to 12 businesses - top startups or businesses with new startup technology - for world promotion, based on nominations by trusted strategic investment SNS Members. We believe that these FiReStarter businesses, which are integrated into the FiRe program, are on the cusp of making great strides in improving our world. They are businesses we believe you should know about.
How does the process work?
SNS Members have access to and knowledge of key world-changing new businesses, or businesses with new technologies, that deserve recognition. We therefore invite a select number of SNS Member investment firms to nominate businesses they know that fit into this high-caliber category. From these nominations, we perform reviews and select up to 12 finalists to feature at the FiRe conference. These are businesses we hope to follow for a very long time.
In addition to promoting these businesses before, during, and after FiRe, we follow up with each FiReStarter to learn how and in what ways their business has changed as a result of their participation at FiRe.
If you would like your company to be considered as a FiReStarter nominee in 2012, or if you have any questions, please contact Sharon Anderson-Morris, Director of SNS Programs, at sam@stratnews.com.
