Plug and Play San Diego Selects Five Companies for Startup Camp

Plug and Play San Diego logo used with permission

five-month program in San Diego and move to the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale for the final 10 weeks, and features a combination of workshops, speakers, mentorship sessions, and coaching. Companies that complete the Startup Camp also get an opportunity to make a presentation to venture investors at a “Demo Day” event in Silicon Valley.

The winners chosen for Plug and Play’s third Startup Camp are:

Ahorro Libre: Based in Tijuana, Ahorro Libre (Free Savings) provides a Web-based technology platform for arranging micro loans and other financial services in emerging economies. The startup’s first objective is to help shift users from Rotating Credit Associations (groups of individuals who agree to meet for a defined period to save and borrow together) to a simple and transparent platform that can be easily used by anyone with basic Internet knowledge and access to SMS messaging.

Brandisty: A cloud-based storage service, San Diego-based Brandisty provides image resizing, typography, color pallet generation, and color space conversions for digital and print without customers needing to know how to use Photoshop or Illustrator—making it easy for users to store, modify, and distribute their brand.

Hotelbeat: A Web-based platform, San Diego-based Hotelbeat provides business intelligence analytics for the hospitality industry, focusing on the underserved hotels ranked with one-star to three-star ratings.

Locbit: A Web platform intended to make the Internet of Things (IoT) easily accessible. San Diego’s Locbit connects devices to networks everywhere, by unifying IoT on one software platform that is accessible by any Internet-connected device. For example, at the 2014 PGA Open tournament at San Diego’s Torrey Pines Golf Course, Locbit technology enabled fans to access the massive NeoVision screens throughout the course. By scanning a QR code, tournament fans could access player bios and other tournament information, and automatically receive the latest scores on their mobile phones.

Statim Health: A Denver-based startup, Statim Health enables users to make GPS-based side-by-side comparisons of prescribed medical procedures, diagnostic services, and other healthcare options to the most qualified and affordable care.

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.