With everything that’s happening online, you should be up to date on how to get your website ranked.  Every startup needs to find out more about the various techniques and methods that will help them promote their products and services on the internet more effectively. One particular common development that web marketers all over the world possess is by using blogs like a form of a search engine tool.

These days, having a blog on your website is no longer unheard of – one can now practically produce his or her own website in minutes and may readily compose anything and everything you think of and submit it online to the world to view. However employing a blog that factors in search engine optimization (SEO) is a completely different factor for your site.  Blogging to both inform people about your products and services and gain in the rankings is a great trick used by most of the most popular sites out there. Read more →

Pebble Founder, Eric Migicovsky will be the guest for Startup Grind Toronto’s first event to inspire startup enthusiasts on May 30th. Buy your tickets here. In the words of the immovable Tony Stark … “Let’s do a headcount shall we?”

• Persistence,
• low cost startups,
• the issues of identifying and supporting innovators,
• bridging local and global markets,
• crowd funding,
• a graduate of local incubation … but then what? Read more →

Caine Monroy, a 9-year old boy living in Los Angeles, went with his Dad to work at his used auto parts store in East LA all summer long. He loves games and decided to make an arcade out of cardboard, tape, and brilliant ingenuity. He built a claw machine, a double shot, a soccer scorer, and all sorts of other games you’d find at an arcade – all out of cardboard. He even had a “Fun” pass for $2 which gave you 500 turns instead of 4 for $1. Simply genius.

Once his first customer finally came, he realized the potential and organized a massive flash mob. Once it got to the homepage of Reddit, or as he called it “the frontpage of the internet,” success would not be denied. Just watch the video. It’s so inspiring. If only we (founders) would all be so persistent.

First Report: Have you ever been to the dentist in unrivaled pain, only to be taken to a new level of Hell when the dentist tells you the cost to repair? Major dental work in the US can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $30,000! The ‘same’ work can be done in other countries for a fraction of the cost, but who knows what service you’ll get? Dental Departures is trying to solve this problem by finding providers, verifying their quality, and bringing them to you.

Dental Departures, a Seattle startup founded by ex-Expedia vet Paul McTaggart and Aaron Stagl, is disrupting the US dental industry in a big way. Last month the bootstrapped company impressively did $500,000 in revenue, up from $300,000 in December. Read more →

***This post was written by entrepreneur Kurt Varner who moved from LA to Silicon Valley to launch his startup***

I’m almost two weeks into my adventure, and it’s definitely been an exciting experience thus far. Let me bring you up to speed.

I arrived in Mountain View around 10PM on Saturday the 17^th. I drove directly to Hacker Dojo so I could make some food. I signed up for a membership and prepared the lovely meal you see below. Read more →

After I read about the guy who moved up from LA, and is living in his car while he finds a co-founder and get his startup off the ground I was pretty floored. Yeah there’s some flawed logic there, but that’s not the point. The fact that he physically got in his car, drove up to Palo Alto, and now parks at night in secluded dark areas is really impressive to me. It’s dangerous but that’s part of what makes him cool.

After reading his story the other night, I tracked down his phone number and he happened to be 5-mins away from my house. I invited him over for a warm meal and 60-minutes out of the freezing rain. Kurt Varner is a married designing who is meeting with anyone and everyone in the Valley in hopes of finding a great co-founder or group of people that he can join with to change the world.

Watch and hear him in his own words.  Read more →

Founded by the world record holder for most drives from the knees (6+ hrs plus), Brian is trying to improve golf swings everywhere through video and competition. See the full pitch below.

StyleMusse is Pinterest for fashion with a cleaver twist. It sucks in content from the Facebook fan pages of popular design sites and brands. See the founder describe it below.

BusyFlow integrates everything you use on a daily basis to a single workflow. See the demo:

If you read any tech news last week, you’d have been hard-pressed to miss the news of the video game/documentary film project “Double Fine Adventure” quickly racking up $1M in pledges over at Kickstarter.  As I type this, that project is funded to the tune of $1.689M with 29 days to go in its fundraising campaign.  We’re witnessing crowdfunding turning the corner and the beginning of a change in the game.

Read more →