We don’t cover hardware or med-tech stuff here too often, but this one is pretty neat. Kewl Innovations, a startup in Richardson, is working on a new device that keeps medicine at a regulated temperature but is still ultra-portable.

Give us the 30-second elevator pitch on your company

Managing diabetes is a tremendously cumbersome and frustrating practice. Amongst all the fluctuating variables that contribute to this frustration, there is one simple factor yet to be resolved. Injectable insulin, a staple drug for most diabetics, must be stored within a specific temperature range, or else its potency will rapidly degrade. In order to travel safely, people with diabetes are forced to lug around coolers, ice packs, and other ‘lunch box’ looking solutions which offer limited in capacity and consistency. 

Kewl Innovations, Inc.™ has developed a portable device that monitors and moderates the temperature of one’s personal insulin supply for 3-5 days on a single charge. Utilizing nanotechnology and advanced monitoring software, the device eliminates the need fir frozen gel-packs, and requires no effort from the user, other than a routine re-charge.

Tell us about the founders, who they are, backgrounds, and why they are passionate about your company

Kewl Innovations was founded by an engineer, sailboat captain, and insulin dependent diabetic. This makes Kewl a ‘for us – by us’ company, having sprung up from our founders personal need to create a more compatible insulin portability solution.

Do you have funding? How much?

Kewl has raised over $1,000,000 in funding from a Series A Angel round.

What are your startup’s goals for this year?

The first half of 2012 will be spent finalizing our market-ready product design. Subsequently we will be working diligently with the diabetes community to build resale partnerships, and encourage local pro-active diabetes management efforts.

The product is scheduled for release in the summer of 2012. At this time we hope to have successfully explained to our market how our solution fits into the pro-active diabetes management equation.

Learn more at www.kewlinnovations.com

Dallas entrepreneur Marshall Haas wants to paint your picture, 18th century style! The Startup Chile alum, and founder of Obsorb, recently launched a fun little side project called 18th.me.

At 18th.me, you can get your very own, hand-painted portrait of YOU inside some of history’s most famous paintings… all for just $139, what a steal!

Check it out and get yours at 18th.me.

Give us the 30-second elevator pitch for GuideHop

GuideHop is essentially a peer to peer marketplace for tours and guided activities. Anyone with exceptional knowledge of a place or particular hobby can sign up as a guide and post their tours.

They are free to set their own price and cancelation policy, accept or decline bookings, and learn about customers through their profiles. We even give them to the tools to easily get the word out about their tours through Facebook and Twitter.

Customers browse through a range activities in their city to see which unexpected new experience will grab their interest. With photographs, videos, written descriptions, and reviews from other customers, they can get a clear sense of what they’ll be embarking on. Once they have an excursion picked out, all they have to do is request a time.

Payments are made quickly, easily, and securely online, so all that’s left to do is have a great time exploring with a nifty local guide.

Tell us about the founders, who they are, backgrounds, and why they are passionate about your company

We’re a group of travelers, adventure-seekers, techies,Jackalope lovers, and one Pro Footballer, who are trying to open the door to alternatives from the mundane ways we are expected to explore a new place.

Ryan Schmitz – Co-Founder / CEO – A mountain biker, traveler, and business owner whose entrepreneurial spirit and thirst for adventure are hardly distinguishable.

Darren Woodson – Co-Founder -Three-time Super Bowl champion and five-time Pro Bowl selection. Darren joined ESPN as an NFL analyst in 2005. He appears on NFL Live and SportsCenter, as well as other ESPN platforms throughout the year.

Jeremy Roberts – Co-Founder / CMO – Our Talent Acquisition, Human Resources, and Marketing expert single-handedly guides us through the unforgiving seas of social media and user acquisition to reel in the world’s coolest guides.

T. Grove – CTO – As elusive as the mythical jackalope, T. Grove prefers to fly under the radar. A part of the computer underground scene for years, Mr. Grove has been played a major part in building and creating some of the coolest new technologies and websites for Fortune 500 companies.

Clay Teller – Lead Designer – Clay is responsible for the overall look and feel of Guidehop. He can typically be found at 4am in an Austin coffee shop wearing a t-shirt with a jackalope on it.

Aaron Bell – Aaron is Austin’s Top Hop (Community Manager). He is an expert on Austin’s outdoor offerings and is willing to give you the keys to his city.

Do you have funding? How much?

We are entirely self-funded so far.

What are your startup’s goals for this year?

As word spreads about the site, more guides bring their unique interests and activities to the public, and more customers realize just how easy it is to fill their spare time with new adventures. We expect bookings to increase steadily.

GuideHop.com

The Dallas Angel Network is a non profit organization that connects entrepreneurs with angel investors. The DAN is run by volunteers and financial professionals interested in investing their own capital and meeting like-minded individuals within the Startup Community. The DAN does not charge entrepreneurs for its services which allows maximum  participation by entrepreneurs and increases the stream of opportunities for both startups and angels.

Launch DFW was able to catch up with The Dallas Angel Network’s CFA, Sammy Abdullah, to get quick profile of the organization, and found a great story of how The DAN was formed.

So the idea to start The DAN was really inspired by an angel deal that Kevin, James, and I were involved in.  James and I have been close friends for years and we invested in a bar/restaurant concept opening in Houston with a group of friends and other angels. We structured the deal, did the due diligence, closed the transaction, and at the end of it all, I thought to myself that I couldn’t be happier with the deal.  I mean, here we are making a good investment in a well structured transaction with a management team we love; not to mention, management was also happy with the deal. Overall, it was a win-win-win for everyone and if you said to me Sammy, what are you most comfortable with: your investment in Houston or any stock you own? The answer by far is the investment in Houston.  I knew right then I had to figure out a way to see more deals like this. The first thing that came to mind was to look for an angel group in Dallas I could join.  I did a lot of research on local groups and talked to a number of entrepreneurs about the angel community here in Dallas. I came to the conclusion that it would be best to start a group from scratch that would incorporate the best practices of angel groups all over the nation.

At this point, it was time to sign the documents for the deal in Houston, and sure enough, the attorney representing the management team was Kevin Vela over at Vela Keller PC. I talked with James and said “James, instead of faxing in our paperwork, let’s go meet Kevin” because after all, this lawyer was our adversary and after some strong negotiations that all ended well and amicably, I wanted to meet our nemesis. James and I walked into Kevin’s office, we sat down for some small talk, and Kevin asks us what our professions are. My answer was something along the lines of “I work for a big institution and my job is to invest their money in safe debt securities, but really, what I want to do is get an angel network going.”

Right then The DAN was born. What should have  been a 5 minute visit with Kevin to sign some documents turned into an hour long conversation about how Kevin, James, and I could work together to make  The DAN the strongest angel group we could make it. As we did our research, talked to other angel groups, talked to VC, and talked to entrepreneurs about how best to structure The DAN, the time finally came to get a website going. James and I have a good friend, Chris Koller, who builds beautiful sites.  I went to Chris asking his company, Ideal Growth, to build us a website at the friends and family price. Being a dear friend, he of course agreed. I began to tell him what it was for and began talking about The DAN with him, and he came to me and basically said “Sammy, I love the idea of The DAN, and I will build the site for free as long as I can be involved.”

Even if he wasn’t building the site for free, Chris is an incredibly smart guy and would be a great addition to the team, so I agreed right there on the spot. That is the story of how Kevin, James, Chris, and I formed The DAN.

The DAN’s founders are investors themselves and Sammy offers a couple of examples of investments made and some background on the co-founders.

James Austin and I invested in the bar/restaurant concept in Houston and represented a substantial level of the overall $405,000 investment. Chris Koller bootstrapped his own company, Ideal Growth, and Kevin Vela graduated law school and immediately opened Vela Keller PC. I have also been a part of four start-ups and loved working in high risk, small companies. We created The DAN to do deals, so there will be plenty more to come, hopefully.

The DAN recently had its first pitch night in January,  Sammy tells us the feedback was excellent and offers an update on one of start-ups that presented.

The feedback we got was excellent and we actually have assembled an investor group to pursue one of the transactions (Digital Proctor). The presenters really stole the show as both Digital Proctor and SMART OES killed it, and everyone was very impressed with the caliber of entrepreneur we had. We got lucky finding them, and just hope the next meeting can have entrepreneurs who are as well polished and astute as those two are. Overall, everyone appreciated the meeting, liked the format, loved the presenters, and liked the fact that The DAN isn’t trying to collect money from either entrepreneurs or angels; we have strictly assembled the group to do deals, and I think people really appreciate that.

We are pursuing a transaction with Digital Proctor, although the discussions are still preliminary. We are spearheading the transaction, the investor group has met, and we are currently finalizing a term sheet to submit to DP (Digital Proctor).

As for future pitch nights, He tells us.

We want to have pitch nights as often as possible, but we will only do so when we have two presenters that we have diligenced on the front end and that are well polished and “presentation-ready”. The worst thing we could ever do is waste angels time with entrepreneurs who aren’t financeable, so while I would love to have meetings all the time, we will only do so when we have great presenters that are ready.

Organizations similar to The Dallas Angels Network charge companies for access to their investor network and to make presentations,  Sammy explains how it is able to offer the same services without charging startups for its services.

The DAN is bootstrapped. We set it up as a 501(c)3 intentionally so that people see we are technically a charity and therefore the DAN can’t distribute any proceeds to anyone. While we’re always happy to have sponsors for our  events to pick up the bar tab, we really don’t see any reason why we can’t  operate The DAN on time alone. Kevin, James, Chris, and I have each put in $200 to pay for expenses along the way and so far we’ve been able to get to this point and still have money in the bank. Don’t get me wrong though, we’ve had help in the form of donations of services. For instance, we couldn’t have set up The DAN without Vela Keller donating their legal  assistance, Idealgrowth donating the website, and numerous individuals in Dallas and at other angel groups outside Dallas taking the time to discuss  how best to structure The DAN. In addition, Hully & Mo’s gave us a room to present in at no charge and we hope they continue to do so. The support we’ve received to date has been great, and in an ideal world, The DAN will never have to ask angels for any money to cover operating expenses. And never, will we ever, ask entrepreneurs for a penny at point.

Follow The DAN on Twitter.

After completing business school, Jeff Borden wanted to start a business that wasn’t overly complex or difficult to operate. Being a cyclist, he went into the bike parts business, selling products both offline and online. While operating the business, he noticed how price wars began to erode the brands the dealers carried, as well as the reputation of the dealers themselves. Feeling this pain firsthand as a retailer, Borden sought to counter that influence, and out of this sense of fairness arose BPA, one of 5 companies in Tech Wildcatters inaugural class.

BPA’s SaaS solution allows clients to gather and manage advertised retail pricing in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost, and strives to help companies maintain the equity and value of their brands, rather than be forced to compete on price. While he hears that the flexibility, power, and ease-of-use of his solution sets it far apart from competitors, another challenge seems to be looming, considering the news that ICANN’s rewriting of the rules for web addresses is set to take place in the next couple of years. With these rule changes, more players are sure to appear in the online space. The expansion of global top-level domain (GTLD) registration might be too tempting for cybersquatters to resist, leading them to reserve GLTDs such as .pepsi, .ford, or .walmart. BPA and its clients will have to monitor this closely, and be ready to adjust their strategies accordingly.

Borden is fortunate enough to have not made any significant business decisions that he regrets — although he has had his share of people trying to tell him what he should do next, whether it be new features or new market opportunities. So Borden’s lesson is to channel, or focus, your efforts on what you think is best, and don’t always let peripheral players influence you.

BPA is poised to enter another fundraising round shortly, and will use the capital to grow quickly and aim to be a market leader.

Jeff Iacono is co-founder of CollegeJobConnect.com, one of 5 teams in the inaugural class at Tech Wildcatters, a Dallas-based mentorship-driven microseed fund and startup accelerator.

CollegeJobConnect (CJC) grew out of some inefficiencies Iacono noticed while going through undergraduate recruiting as a student and while he was part of the Lehman Brothers undergraduate recruiting committee. He asked himself how he could provide a more targeted platform specifically focused on enabling undergraduates and employers to engage and connect with each other.

While the Monsters, Careerbuilders and HotJobs of the world try to be all things to all people in the job search and placement world, CJC offers a more unique approach. Its value proposition to clients is that CJC can significantly reduce recruiting costs while expanding their brand and reach to students looking for internships and entry-level positions.

The most challenging part of running CJC is being adaptive and effective.  CJC’s founders have to be able to go from holding client calls in the morning, to writing code for a new feature on their website in the afternoon, to refining their business development strategies in the evening.

If Jeff were to offer advice to other startups, it would be to test your company’s thesis early and often, and adjust as needed.  Jeff is a big follower of Steve Blank, who advises entrepreneurs to practice customer discovery and customer development, or put in another way: finding if there is demand for your service and figuring how to effectively reach your potential customers.

CJC is in the closing stages of raising capital. The deal is expected to be finalized in the next several days. CJC is working with a handful of clients that are looking to recruit undergraduates in a better way and they are very excited about the impact they’ll have on the recruiting industry.

Give us the 30-second elevator pitch of your company

PureDiscovery has reinvented the art of search and discovery for HR. Our unique technology is able to not only capture collective intelligence from resumes on a massive scale, but to utilize that intelligence to semantically link people to documents, people and most importantly what they know. Using our technology organizations can transform their static resume databases into dynamic knowledge graphs that enhance collaboration, innovation and discovery.

Tell us about the founders, who they are, backgrounds, and why they are passionate about your company

PureDiscovery was founded by Dave Copps. Dave is a serial entrepreneur that previously co-founded and sold Engenium Corp to Marsh MacLennan in 2006.

Do you have funding? How much?

PureDiscovery is privately funded. We have raised just over $2M in the last 4 years.

What are your startup’s goals for this year?

Technical Goals: To build the worlds largest AI layer.
Financial Goals: To reach profitability on a month to month basis.

www.PureDiscovery.com

Give us the 30-second elevator pitch of your company

Memory Reel is the simplest way to maintain a personal journal of your life.

We pull together the photos & updates you already share on your favorite web sites (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Gowalla etc.) and seamlessly place it into an online journal that you can share with family & friends.

Memory Reel was born out of our founders’ personal need to manage the narrative of their life stories in a fast moving world. A world where digital media, the Internet and mobile platforms are fundamentally changing the way we record our experiences and share our lives with friends and family.

Tell us about the founders, who they are, backgrounds, and why they are passionate about your company

Nikhil has more than 10 years of global experience in the technology industry. He has worked for Fortune 500 companies such as Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft during which time he held various roles in Strategy, Product Marketing and Product Development. Aside from his extensive corporate experience, Nikhil holds an MBA in Marketing & Entrepreneurship from SMU’s Cox School of Business and a BS in Computer Science from the Florida Institute of Technology. Nikhil has three software design patents pending with the US Patent office.

Before co-founding Memory Reel, Nikhil was the founder & principal at Inventive Path LLC, a product strategy and innovation consulting firm based in Dallas, TX as well as a partner in Social Span Media an interactive media company that specialized in helping clients extend their product and brand strategies by building virally engaging marketing solutions on various social media platforms.

Brian is a self taught programmer and technologist, Brian has been writing code since he was in high school. After university at Texas A & M (he studied Economics not Computer Science), Brian was a partner at Downtown Cartel, a boutique Web 2.0 development company. Brian was also the lead developer for hashtags.org the first ever twitter aggregation site in the world. He is an active contributor to many open source web technology projects such as datamapper and merb

Do you have funding? How much?

We were self-funded for the first 9 months. Since then we have raised a friends and family round.

What are your startup’s goals for this year?

We just launched an early version of the Memory Reel service. We will be rolling out a number of exciting new features in the upcoming months. Our goal for the end of the year is to acquire our first 100K users and start bringing in revenue by 2H 2010.

www.memoryreel.com

Give us the 30-second elevator pitch of your company

Traxo has created an automated, intelligent and regularly updated travel dashboard that travelers can use to organize, manage, research and share their travel plans (e.g. the Mint.com of travel).

Once a user links Traxo to their favorite travel websites (a one-time, set-and-forget process), our system automatically detects and aggregates their travel reservation information into logical trips (currently supports 40+ sites, and growing).

Tell us about the founders, who they are, backgrounds, and why they are passionate about your company

Traxo’s founding team of Andres, Andy and Richard, all previously worked together at Travelocity.

Do you have funding? How much?

Have raised $500K from a series of 20+ private angels.

What are your startup’s goals for this year?

Deploy compelling new features and functionality, scale user base, and raise Series A.

www.traxo.com

Give us the 30-second elevator pitch of your company

Call-Em-All’s automated messaging service allows you to automatically call or text every phone number on your list. Simple. Professional. Affordable. Clients include: Inc. Magazine, Siemens, Dominos, BBB, YMCA, Spurs, Avon, Syracuse and many more!

Tell us about the founders, who they are, backgrounds, and why they are passionate about your company

Founders – Brad Herrmann, Stephen Barclay, Hai Nguyen, Dick Herrmann. At Call-Em-All, our mission is simple: Provide a simple, affordable, convenient solution for groups of all sizes to communicate. With 60 plus years combined experience building telephony, voice, and web technologies, you could say we are into this kind of stuff! Our team comes from a variety of backgrounds and professional experiences. We as partners are very different individuals, but we all work together wonderfully as a team. Yin/yang – it just works for us.

Do you have funding? How much?

Self funded, no outside funding.

What are your startup’s goals for this year?

Tell em’ all about Call-Em-All! Promote our new SMS text messaging feature. Create the go-to group messaging service, voice + text.

www.call-em-all.com