StartupBin Stories

Usually startup stories make us even more enthusiastic about our plan of starting a business. It is scientifically proven that seeing people succeed make us work even harder to achieve our goals. If you are looking for startup stories, then the best way to find them are on the best startup forum, StartupBin. Here are a few stories that will provoke your imagination:

Tep


Tep isn’t just a fitness tracker, but a motivational buddy who’s awfully cute. The app features an endearing pet giraffe you nurture by keeping up with your miles, steps and other workout metrics. Tamagotchis, anyone?

Behind the cuteness is the serious goal of helping people, particularly young women, be active and healthy. Tep’s Hungarian team first came together at a hackathon in 2013 and won a $10,000 prize a year later in the Microsoft Imagine Cup student innovation contest.

“We have [a] vision to make people become more active on a daily basis and support a healthier lifestyle,” says Tep CEO Akos Boros. In addition to the contest award, the startup has also received $22,000 from a game developer accelerator and raised a seed round of $45,000.

Azure provides Tep a reliable backend that can handle user spikes, and Microsoft Visual Studio Online and Blend help the company work with designers to bring its gamification ideas to life.

“Our whole backend is based on Azure,” says Zsolt Jandzso, Tep’s Windows Phone developer. “It can be easily managed, because all of our services are in one place and we don’t have to navigate across different sites.”


Buying Butler


Graham Blaney got the idea for Buying Butler when he was helping friends and family buy big things like a car or kitchen. He was using his skills in procurement strategies and IT outsourcing to target relevant suppliers and analyze large amounts of data, and realized he could address a need for many consumers.

Founded in 2013, the England-based startup is a digital concierge buying service that gives people personalized data to help them make complex purchases. The startup has raised more than $600,000.

“What our platform does is scrape all the data and present it back in a really rich, visual fashion,” says CEO Blaney. “The big vision we have is we want to empower every consumer to be able to purchase with the confidence of an expert every time.”

BizSpark and Microsoft Ventures helped Buying Butler grow and refine its product, while Azure provides the capacity the company needs to expand quickly. The startup also uses Azure Machine Learning and Stream Analytics to interpret billions of data points, including prices, specs and reviews.

“Azure gives us the flexibility to align business needs and technical capability at a price point that works for us as a startup,” says Buying Butler CTO and Co-founder Steve Weston.


Vipeline


The concept for New Jersey startup Vipeline began when co-founders Dave Barker, Chris Wall and Alex Hamilton identified pain points in publishing and advertising for native video generation and consumption.

They went on to create an API-driven, turn-key solution that enables users to record video comments from any device to the digital footprints of brands, advertisers and publishers. The solution is driven by an asset management system with a streamlined moderation dashboard for curating and deploying the content.

“We’re trying to create community for publishers, brands and advertisers,” says CEO Hamilton. Vipeline’s module lets content creators build an interactive “video social ecosystem” in their own environment, he says, instead of relying on third-party social media sites for engagement.

Started in 2012, Vipeline bootstrapped until this year, when it completed an angel round of $680,000. BizSpark helped Vipeline save money on demo and pilot programs that gained clients, and Azure provides cloud, storage and Web app services that help Vipeline scale.

“Microsoft Azure and BizSpark have both helped Vipeline grow,” says Hamilton. “The Azure platform has been easy for our developers to utilize and really simplified our development process.”



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